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i started reading one of us is lying by karen m mcmanus. i don't know if i'll finish it. I love tropey pulpy books but it's a little odd to read... the characters are very familiar "types"- the jock, the brainiac, the misfit, the popular girl. the details about the school are also very weird.

for example, the plot kicks off when a teacher finds the characters' phones in their bags. this is framed as his standard practice at the beginning of class, which is like... if you need to search a backpack for an object as small as a phone, you need to get into all the nooks and crannies. i'm not in high school any more, but my every-day backpack has more than 8 separate, zippered areas that could hold a phone. imagine doing a thorough check for a class of thirty high school students. imagine doing it for, i dunno, four classes. imagine doing it five days a week every week. already, it's kind of a weird concept. ALSO at my local public schools, there are rules about searching students' possessions and persons like the requirement to get school administration involved. (obviously there's more to it than that, and there are provision for emergencies and immediate threats to health and safety, and different rules about stuff like private property vs school lockers... but random spot-checks of students are not allowed.)

there's also this thing with epi-pens. at the book's fictional school, the nurse keeps some epi-pens in a drawer in the health room and it's clearly marked and you can run in there and grab one if there's an emergency. i'm not saying that's a terrible idea, i'm saying that at the schools where i have familiarity with epi-pens rules, it doesn't work liek that. each kid/family provides the epi-pen for themselves. the epi-pen can be kept in the health room, or the family can sign a form allowing the student to carry their own epi-pen. but each epi-pen belongs to a specific kid, and you can't give a kid someone else's epi-pen (i mean you're not supposed to; no one i know has ever been in the horrible situation where they had to decide to do/not do that. but officially you're not supposed to do that!!!!)

plus the police keep questioning the students without any indication that their parents/guardians have been contacted. and the principal is just kinda letting it all happen? Idk how police investigations work in schools but i hope that if the police showed up to question my kid, the school would at least call me to let me know.

so like. is the book good? i dunno, but the book is weird. i'm still reading it for now but it'll have to do something interesting soon or it goes on the "donate" pile.

I am loving the localised onomatopoeia in these international editions of Thud!

While the Chinese go for the triple-whammy of Peng! Peng! Peng!

Happy Pumpkin Spice Season to the guy who would have loved them the most!

Graphics glitch makes for entertaining weather report…🔊 🔊

When I was a kid I read a ton of books that were definitely not appropriate for my age. One of two things would happen:

I was too inexperienced to understand what I was reading, and it had no effect on me.

I understood what I was reading, and I leveled up.

@beradan and I went to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire today as unnamed White Rat and Saint of Steel acolytes.

Emily's embroidery is from art by @magpiemalarkey, mine was designed by my partner based on art from various Kingfisher romance covers.

Vimes and 71 hour Ahmed just really have.... something in jingo. The conversations he has with Ahmed where they're comparing their approaches to policing and Ahmed points out that vimes experience in the city is very different from his own.... the way they both struggle with the scope of what they can do vs what Ahmed calls being part of a big crime..... the way vimes's conversation with Ahmed changes him/reveals himself to himself, his dream that he can chase the big crimes and do something about the bigger more systemic crimes.... I don't think vimes really has a relationship like his one with Ahmed elsewhere in the series. Ahmed is his peer and an established officer on his own right. It's just interesting

Magrat: "He will make friends easily" she whispered. It wasn't much, she knew, but it was something she'd never been able to get the hang of.

Nanny Ogg: "A bloody good memory is what he ought to have," she said. "He'll always remember the words."

Granny Weatherwax: "Let him be whoever he thinks he is," she said. "That's all anybody could hope for in this world."

Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please reblog.

Some very important facts in my life right now:

I'm currently visiting NYC with my kidlets, aged 8 and 10.

We are staying about three blocks away from the Empire State Building.

There is currently a giant inflatable dragon wrapped around the Empire State Building.

Kidlets are delighted by the dragon.

Kidlets are rather more delighted by the dragon than might be expected.

Yes, you might say, it's a dragon wrapped around a famous skyscraper, where's the surprise in that?

No surprise.

It's just that they're extremely excited.

They're reading Terry Pratchett 's Guards! Guards!

A book that features a giant dragon swooping off the tallest tower in the great city of Anhk Morpork.

They are quoting the book constantly

"The shape that looked like a large pair of wings unfurling was, in fact, a large pair of wings unfurling."

All the time

"Dragons don’t have friends! The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive!"

Little girls, wandering through the tourist attractions of midtown Manhattan, like

"A people united can never be ignited!"

With such enthusiasm

"This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon! One man, one stab!

I love them so much, I'm so proud, I picked the right partner, we made the best possible kids

(It's a promo for HBO's Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon)

if you pick up a large rock in a stream you might just find an angry guy

What is this book for you?

In a literal sense, I re-read several Discworld books as a kid that fell to bits (not sure why, but ‘Interesting Times’ in particular). As a teenager, this was ‘High Fidelity’, ‘The Prestige’ and Brett Easton Ellis books, none of which I’ve returned to since!

I don’t re-read much as an adult, except that I listen to the audiobook of ‘I, Partridge’ every few months and read ‘A Christmas Carol’ every December and revisit short stories by Kelly Link, George Saunders and Carmen Maria Machado quite often.

How about you?

Wait I'm genuinely surprised by the results! (Tumblr apparently doesn't let you view your own poll results before voting closes unless you vote in it, which I didn't do)

I really wasn't expecting it to be that close, and I didn't think Going Postal was going to win??? I truly believed that it was shaping up to be an absolute sweep by Monstrous Regiment...

observations, personal opinions, and discworld spoilers below the jump

Observations from the sideline: Although both books have their fans, the Monstrous Regiment fans really made an impression with their passion! The pro-MR commentary was thoughtful and persuasive. I saw folks saying that MR is more emotionally and thematically complex, and that there are more characters who are well-rounded. And of course, the queer rep in MR makes it special for readers as well.

Another idea I saw pop up a few times was the special place that one's first/introductory Discworld book holds in one's heart. Couple of people mentioned that factor in conjunction with Going Postal. I personally know someone whose first Discworld book was MR, and I have gifted MR to someone to try to hook them. (My first Disc book was sourcery btw and I was like 8 so I didn't understand... most of it. i'm pretty sure i got it in an airport???) People also commented that Going Postal is more "fun." It's lighter, it's more of a romp. This might make it more of an "easy sell" for trying to hook your friends into Discworld, but I'm sure it depends on your friends :)

One thing I love about GP is how the plot is resolved. That message on the clacks? The message from the dead--giving them not only a chance to be heard again, but a chance to strike back at the company that killed them--feels so right. And yet, it's fake. It's a lie. It's an unethical, unscrupulous lie, and it works. It's real, but it's fake--but it's real enough. It makes a difference and changes the world, at least the world of Clacks operators. By implication, "the dead" speak one more time, and they save lives by forcing a management change at the Trunk. This is the book that gave us the shorthand GNU. GNU Terry Pratchett. We're in on it, too. A man's not dead while his name's still spoken. Is that real? "It's what should have been true," so--maybe it's real enough to make it through the night.

Going back and forth--there are really good points to be made in favor of both books. Monstrous Regiment is a great book. Pratchett did an amazing job with it. There's so much meat on that bone. It's well-written, it's funny, it's heartfelt. The gender stuff is really interesting (I'm not doing Discworld and gender, but if I were it would be its own chapter at least). There's Igorina! The scene at the end with the Duchess and sending the soldiers home permanently changed part of my brain--but I don't know if it was as strong, in terms of character and theme, as GP's big scene.

Comparing MR to GP was, I realized after the poll was underway, comparing apples to oranges. The number of rounded characters is different, the plot complexity is different, the character of the story itself is different. It's a weirder comparison to make than I realized at first. But I really appreciate that people not only voted but also shared their thoughts. It was genuinely thought-provoking in a way I haven't gotten to enjoy in a long time :) So (if you read this far!) thank you for voting and sharing your thoughts!

Bonus: why did you pick the one you did?

...Or tell me the options are wrong and [your write-in candidate] trounces both of them

A Patricia c wrede book I haven't read?!

This badly cropped Terry Pratchett quote I found is here for anyone who wants it

Book of the month: September 2024

Book of the month! I take a book from the "to read" pile, and I either finish it by month's end, or I don't finish it and add it to my amnesty list. No guilt, no "required" reading.

This month's book is The Art Of Teaching Children by Phillip Done.

This might be a bit of a cheat because I'm already halfway through it, but I started it in like. 2022 or something. Every time I pick it up, I enjoy it. BUT. Well. I'm with kids all day, and then I go to school to talk about kids, and then I come home and tell stories about kids... reading about them on top of all of that is a bit much. So there's also the fact that, well, sometimes I just need a break from kids!

An excerpt from the summary is below:

After more than thirty years in the classroom, award-winning teacher Phillip Done decided that it was time to retire. But a teacher’s job is never truly finished, and he set out to write the greatest lesson of his career: a book for educators and parents that would pass along everything he learned about working with kids. From the first-day-of-school jitters to the last day’s tears, Done writes about the teacher’s craft, classrooms and curriculums, the challenges of the profession, and the reason all teachers do it—the children.

I'm optimistic I'll finish this, but tbh it's not guaranteed. Starting in a few weeks, things are going to get intense in this household, and they're going to stay intense until at least December. How fortunate, then, to have a well-written book about a topic I like with a tone that is generally uplifting, inspiring, and comforting.

book of the month: august 2024

I'm still doing book of the month, just not every month. (Book of the month = pick a book from the "to read" pile; if I don't finish the book by the end of the month it does in the donation box and gets added to the amnesty list)

August's book was The World for a Shilling by Michael Leapman. I finished it! It was good :) It's nonfiction about the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.

Summary:

Conceived as a showcase for Britain's burgeoning manufacturing industries and the exotic products of its Empire, the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace was Britain's first national spectacle. This book examines the story of how the exhibition came into being; the key characters who made it happen (from Prince Albert, who was credited with the idea, to Thomas Cook, whose cheap railway trips ensured its accessibility to all); and the tales behind the exhibitors and exhibits themselves, from the Koh-i-noor diamond to the more quirky inventions on display - Queen Victoria was very taken with a bed that physically ejected its occupant in the morning, for example. One quarter of the British population had visited the exhibition by its close; this is the story of how it fired the imagination of the era.

I was interested in this book because The Great Train Robbery (Crichton) and At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Bill Bryson) both mention/talk about this event. It just stirs my imagination. (Also, not going to lie, I kinda also got vaguely interested because of the Fallen London game.)

This book contains a lot of descriptions of things. Not even descriptions of events, but whole chapters describing the contents of different exhibits. AND YET it was an interesting and easy read. I believe that is a mark of the author's skill.

One thing I wish I could have gotten more of a taste of is like... detailed-verging-on-fictionalized descriptions of specific moments. For example, the book opens with this description of a group of people from one village who traveled to the exhibition. For many of them it was their first (and possibly only) time to visit London. When they arrive, they were practically an exhibit themselves as the city folk goggled at the country visitors. It really engaged my imagination and gave my compassion/empathy something to hang off of. I wish there had been more scenes like that, where small moments in peoples' lives were used to illustrate a larger point about the event/about society at the time. (For example, that was used to introduce how this event was very much once-in-a-lifetime for many of the attendees, and highlight how unusual the Exhibition was for its opportunity for people from different classes and backgrounds to mingle.)

My biggest criticism is that it didn't stick the landing--if you pick this book up (and you might want to! I liked it!) just skip the last chapter entirely. It was a downer and it didn't add anything. I don't know what editor allowed that in. The book opens with a lovely illustrative moment, and it should end with an illustrative moment.

Overall, very happy I bought and read the book. I would recommend it to people interested in this part of history (but, like me, are not serious scholars of history), and I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't already have an interest.

I love her and her work so much! I wish more people read her work-- the Circle of Magic as much as Tortall! Reading her work makes me feel so good and her books are still very important to me.

If people are sad about The Wizard Facism game coming from someone you used to look up to and admire, may I suggest an author whose books are filled with nuanced characters and strong, dynamic women?

Tamora Pierce has been writing since the 80’s and has two worlds of magic and fantasy and bonus!!! Isn’t a transphobic POS.

State of the bookshelf: August 2024

During August I got sick and my partner got sick (enough that I stayed home to care for him) so we had more reading time. All of these books were good in different ways

A book that I didn't expect but really stood out was BROOMS by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall. It's a graphic novel. I enjoyed it but I also felt like there was so much love (and so much meat left on the bone that went unpicked due, I assume, to constraints of page count, time, and man hours) that it should have been like a miniseries.

I'll paste the summary below since I'm still not feeling 100%. You can probably see what I mean if I say there's so much in terms of character and world building to explore. I didn't feel cheated or like it was incomplete, I just wanted more

Mississippi, 1930s. Magic simmering beneath the surface, kept in check by unjust laws and societal expectations. But for six extraordinary women, the roar of enchanted engines and the thrill of the forbidden broom race offer a chance to rewrite their destinies. Meet Billie Mae, captain of the Night Storms racing team, and Loretta, her best friend and second-in-command. They’re determined to make enough money to move out west to a state that allows Black folks to legally use magic and take part in national races. Cheng-Kwan – doing her best to handle the delicate and dangerous double act of being the perfect “son” to her parents, and being true to herself while racing. Mattie and Emma — Choctaw and Black — the youngest of the group and trying to dodge government officials who want to send them and their newly-surfaced powers away to boarding school. And Luella, in love with Billie Mae. Her powers were sealed away years ago after she fought back against the government. She’ll do anything to prevent the same fate for her cousins.

Between books, lost, forlorn....

I love the comments on the going postal v monstrous regiment post ❤️❤️❤️ really getting me thinking

Bonus: why did you pick the one you did?

...Or tell me the options are wrong and [your write-in candidate] trounces both of them