August book post
Started off the month reading The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Did not care for the former, thought the latter was fantastic, still do not feel qualified to offer opinions on what is widely considered classic literature and am particularly intimidated by how many people have how many thoughts on Sherlock Holmes, SO.
Pyg: The Memoirs of Toby, The Learned Pig, Russell Potter
Won this off Booktrib. It's... decent? It's not as clever, charming, or insightful as advertised, but what the hell ever is (and some humor may have been lost on me anyway, given how little I know about the 18th century). Mostly, it's. A story about a cute animal meeting famous historical figures with no real plot or overarching conflict. I really could not get invested in it at all. There were a few things I thought were going to be neat plot threads and explored in a bit more detail, but they all dropped off the face of the earth in favor of "Toby goes to a place. People are or are not immediately on his side. Time elapses. They are, or are still, on his side now." Meh.
Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
TYBALT
Okay but no I think this series is CONTINUING TO IMPROVE. Book 1 had a bit of idiot plot, book 2 had TONS of it, but book 3 was solid and these two are better! I will continue reading them for as long as there is sass and Tybalt and DRAMATIC REVEALS about Faerie or Toby or the people around her. McGuire's a bit unsubtle about who is a bad person we should dislike, and who is therefore prolly gonna be a suspect, BUT all the non-obviously-evil characters are still rad as hell and many of them have interesting development - or, if not development, more stuff getting revealed about their pasts so it kind of comes out to the same effect?
TYBALT
Also, LUIDAEG
Montmorency on the Rocks and Montmorency and the Assassins, Eleanor Updale
More like Mantearsmorency amirite. The Montmorency books are way the hell more obviously YA than the stuff I usually read, and I say this as someone who does deliberately read a non-negligible amount of YA. There's not a whole lot of complexity or subtlety, and the narration tends to spell things out way the hell explicitly no don't worry you don't have to interpret this here's exactly what's going on. In some ways, pleasantly straightforward; in some ways YES I KNOW /ALL THE EYEROLLS.
Another thing that may be an artifact of YA-ness or may just be... a thing... is the INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC SOAP-OPERA-TACULAR PLOT TWISTS CALCULATED TO CAUSE MAXIMUM MISERY TO OUR MAIN GUYS, AND THEN SOMEONE LIES AROUND SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY FOR A BIT AND THEN GETS OVER IT BUT THEN SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS. I honestly found it kind of endearing and hilarious in its consistent predictable whumpage. OH NO DR. FARCETT'S DOING SCIENCE AGAIN, TIME FOR THE UNIVERSE TO SMACK HIM BACK DOWN. There is one impressively gruesome event near the end of Montmorency and the Assassins that actually made me sit up and take things seriously, but for the most part? Dapper gentlemen and many contrived ways to CRUSH THEIR SPIRITS, hahaha what.
And Montmorency would totally be the sort to have a Tumblr full of OPERA FEELS and DAPPERNESS. Reaction gifs and "Puccini I can't" and reblogs of snazzy clothes.
Pyg: The Memoirs of Toby, The Learned Pig, Russell Potter
Won this off Booktrib. It's... decent? It's not as clever, charming, or insightful as advertised, but what the hell ever is (and some humor may have been lost on me anyway, given how little I know about the 18th century). Mostly, it's. A story about a cute animal meeting famous historical figures with no real plot or overarching conflict. I really could not get invested in it at all. There were a few things I thought were going to be neat plot threads and explored in a bit more detail, but they all dropped off the face of the earth in favor of "Toby goes to a place. People are or are not immediately on his side. Time elapses. They are, or are still, on his side now." Meh.
Late Eclipses and One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
TYBALT
Okay but no I think this series is CONTINUING TO IMPROVE. Book 1 had a bit of idiot plot, book 2 had TONS of it, but book 3 was solid and these two are better! I will continue reading them for as long as there is sass and Tybalt and DRAMATIC REVEALS about Faerie or Toby or the people around her. McGuire's a bit unsubtle about who is a bad person we should dislike, and who is therefore prolly gonna be a suspect, BUT all the non-obviously-evil characters are still rad as hell and many of them have interesting development - or, if not development, more stuff getting revealed about their pasts so it kind of comes out to the same effect?
TYBALT
Also, LUIDAEG
Montmorency on the Rocks and Montmorency and the Assassins, Eleanor Updale
More like Mantearsmorency amirite. The Montmorency books are way the hell more obviously YA than the stuff I usually read, and I say this as someone who does deliberately read a non-negligible amount of YA. There's not a whole lot of complexity or subtlety, and the narration tends to spell things out way the hell explicitly no don't worry you don't have to interpret this here's exactly what's going on. In some ways, pleasantly straightforward; in some ways YES I KNOW /ALL THE EYEROLLS.
Another thing that may be an artifact of YA-ness or may just be... a thing... is the INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC SOAP-OPERA-TACULAR PLOT TWISTS CALCULATED TO CAUSE MAXIMUM MISERY TO OUR MAIN GUYS, AND THEN SOMEONE LIES AROUND SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY FOR A BIT AND THEN GETS OVER IT BUT THEN SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS. I honestly found it kind of endearing and hilarious in its consistent predictable whumpage. OH NO DR. FARCETT'S DOING SCIENCE AGAIN, TIME FOR THE UNIVERSE TO SMACK HIM BACK DOWN. There is one impressively gruesome event near the end of Montmorency and the Assassins that actually made me sit up and take things seriously, but for the most part? Dapper gentlemen and many contrived ways to CRUSH THEIR SPIRITS, hahaha what.
And Montmorency would totally be the sort to have a Tumblr full of OPERA FEELS and DAPPERNESS. Reaction gifs and "Puccini I can't" and reblogs of snazzy clothes.