I AM BACKKKK! Well actually I returned late sunday night but then I was exhausted and also I have work and also catching up on the real life things I wasn't doing while on vacation, so. I am still exhausted but I am at least nominally kind of here! AND I COME WITH LOTS OF BOOKS.

Look, my vacation was CANOE TRIPPING, which when you do it right (which obvs I do) leaves you lots of time to hang out in the beautiful wilderness with a book. So. I read NINE BOOKS while on vacation! Plus I had a couple I didn't post about from before the trip. Plus I read a book yesterday. So. Let's go!


Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes, by Ella Cheever Thayer

This is a 19th century book featuring an online romance -- that is, a TELEGRAPH ROMANCE. It is pretty much the cutest thing ever, and the only thing that could have made it cuter was if it were a LESBIAN TELEGRAPH ROMANCE. Alas, this was not to be, but I greatly enjoyed it nonetheless. And there WAS a great lady-lady friendship! As well as some dude-lady friendships! And SO MUCH of me grinning delightedly at the screen because of the amazing parallels between telegraph life and internet life and how FAMILIAR it all seemed despite being so different!

My biggest quibble was with the subplot of Quimby, who gets treated terribly by the narrative. I really disliked that whole bit, especially that the reader is supposed to find it funny. Poor Quimby. He is a very nice, not particularly clever young man who is constantly having accidents and doing things wrong and falling into scrapes and brushes it all off by saying he's "used to it" and I just feel so BAD for him that his friends just find it funny that he's gotten accidentally engaged to a lady he doesn't like, instead of HELPING HIM OUT OF THIS SCRAPE. I don't even personally like Quimby very much but THAT IS NO EXCUSE FOR WHAT THE AUTHOR DOES TO HIM.

I kind of wish I could read a version of this book where Quimby just wasn't even a character because I liked EVERYTHING ELSE about this book and the author could darn well have made ways for the plot to work without doing mean things to Quimby.

(oh also I could do without the assumption that being redheaded is automatically a bad thing. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE.)



Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril & Romance, by Marthe Jocelyn

I really enjoyed the fact that this was set in Ontario! I...hm, I don't appear to have a lot to say about this book. It was good! I liked it! It's recommended!



Monks-Hood, by Ellis Peters

AWW YEAH monastery politics! Gosh I love the bit where the previous abbot (Heribert) rides serenely back to the abbey and presents the new Abbot Radulfus in exactly the way that most gets at Prior Robert while coming off as entirely innocent and lovely. Also WELSH VS ENGLISH POLITICS, also super awesome! I love how firmly these books are situated in their era and place! Also there was a mystery and stuff, yeah, and I enjoyed that too. And Cadfael being delightfully himself as always.



Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald

Kind of an uneven collection, imo! George MacDonald makes a practice of being very nearly good. Let me comment on the two stories I like best:

1. The Light Princess -- I loved loved loved this story as a kid, buuuuut rereading it now I'm quite sure I had very different priorities than the author. I'd actually kind of forgotten what a starring role the romance plays in the story! And that the story ends with her regaining her gravity (in both senses of the word)! BECAUSE I WAS UNINTERESTED IN THOSE BITS. Anyways. I love her joy in falling, I love her joy in swimming, I love how she's so clearly different from everybody but perfectly happy with being herself.

2. The Day Boy and the Night Girl - WOW YES GOOD I love this one! I love how Nycteris is brave and clever and inquisitive and does her very best to understand the world despite the extremely paltry education she received, and persists despite any fear she might be feeling! I love how Photogen is happy and carefree and thinks himself so brave but is actually incapable of dealing with how terrified he is upon his first encounter with the night! I love how the two of them are actually portrayed as equals! (also ngl I love that the entire story is basically a fascinating but unethical science experiment with a tragic lack of controls and an excessively small sample size :P)



The Confession of Brother Haluin, by Ellis Peters

I think my favourite thing about this book is that it's a murder mystery where the murder itself is almost incidental to the actual mystery! I was not altogether happy, though, with the villain's motivations and parts of the portrayal. Still a very good book though!



The Android's Dream, by John Scalzi

This book starts slow - the whole first chapter is nothing but an extended fart joke, and yes the fart joke drives the plot, and yes I enjoyed it the first time I read the book a few years back, but this time I found it an uninteresting way to begin the story. I only got invested after we finally arrived at Creek, the main character. But once we did it was GREAT. Highly enjoyable and well-executed straight-faced crack, which is one of my favourite things!

I will say though that it had disappointingly few ladies. Nearly all of the main characters and background characters were dudes, and of the two female characters with any screentime, one was dead and the other had very little agency. Don't get me wrong, I loved both Hayter-Ross and Robin, but. I mean, Robin even points out at one point to Creek that he keeps phrasing things to her as questions even though she doesn't actually have any choice in the matter! SIGH. But I did still enjoy the book a lot, despite this caveat. My fave characters: Creek, Hayter-Ross, and Takk. Also I am still deeply deeply fond of Sam Berlant's lack of pronouns.



The Wisdom of Father Brown, by GK Chesterton

Reading this after having so recently read some Brother Cadfael books, I couldn't help drawing unfavourable parallels. Father Brown stories don't have enough focus on the characters for me -- I don't feel, even after having read two whole books of Father Brown stories, that I really know or understand Father Brown at all. Also I'm just not very captivated by the plots of the stories. Also the more of this book I read the more I was like, "GK Chesterton I am DEEPLY SIDE-EYING YOUR PORTRAYAL OF OTHER RACES/CULTURES."



Psmith, Journalist, by PG Wodehouse

Thoroughly enjoyable! And I enjoyed that we got to see a few small cracks in Psmith's facade in this book -- he is genuinely shocked and troubled by what the tenemants he discovers are like! And he actually realizes at one point that his hijinks this time COULD RESULT IN HIS DEATH! But he carried on being unutterably himself regardless. EXCELLENT. Could have done with a wee bit more Mike & Psmith interaction, imo, but what bits were there I thoroughly enjoyed. Also: apparently reading a Psmith book infects my mental thoughts with Psmithian speech patterns for the rest of the day, and it's kind of hilarious!



A Matter of Oaths, by Helen S Wright

AAAAHHHHH THIS BOOK. I picked it up because the author offers it as a freely downloadable ebook and I needed things to put on my ereader before my canoe trip. The book started out a little slowly but I persevered because I had been promised LADY CAPTAIN PLUS A GAY RELATIONSHIP. And hey, it DELIVERED, along with some seriously fascinating worldbuilding!

I was a huge huge huge fan of Rallya (highly-competent snarky middle-aged lady with no romance plotline, and acknowledged by pretty much everyone in the book as being just as competent as she is!). The dudes in the book didn't excite me a whole lot though, and the Rafe/Joshim romance didn't do enough work to convince me before it became a thing. It's like how when I read fanfic for an otp, if I'm reading it as a convert then it can start from the premise that OBVS the two people are well-suited and into each other, but if I'm reading it with no previous knowledge or without being a shipper then the fic needs to do more work. This book felt like it was assuming the reader was already a shipper.

But I really loved the worldbuilding, of the two empires with their immortal emperors who are constantly at war but are still each other's Most Important Person because hell when you are the only two immortals OBVS you will feel some sort of connection of SOME kind of intense emotion about the other! And I love how the guild is a buffer between the two and a very important power in its own right, and I love the reveal at the very very end about who/what Rafe is because WOW GAMECHANGER FOR EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD'S POLITICS.

So in conclusion I came for the original slash and stayed for the politics and the badass lady captain? Also: THIS BOOK NEEDS A FANDOM. SO BADLY.



Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L Sayers

I decided to reread this one because I remembered how fun all the advertising hijinks were, and also because Peter Wimsey is just an utter delight to spend time with and I love him ridiculously much. YEP THIS BOOK IS STILL SUPER FUN. I'd forgotten, though, the unfortunate subplot with Dian. I do not enjoy her role in the narrative. Also I'd forgotten that the book ends with Wimsey encouraging the murderer to commit suicide, which I am also not a fan of. Sigh. BUT THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE BOOK IS RIDICULOUS DELIGHTFUL FUN.



Strong Poison, by Dorothy L Sayers

WOO INTRODUCING HARRIET VANE!!! Also also also holy crap I'd forgotten that this was the book that had the extended MISS CLIMPSON INVESTIGATES THINGS section and basically Miss Climpson is the best forever??? YES. YES. YES SHE IS.

Also this book has one of my fave lines describing Wimsey ever: "'If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle,' said Harriet, severely."



Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale

Gosh I love this book to itty bitty bits. It is all about THE POWER OF EDUCATION and THE POWER OF SOLIDARITY and GIRLS BEING AWESOME and RECOGNIZING THAT PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT STRENGTHS AND ALL ARE VALID and pretty much it is all the feels and the sort of book where I am like I 100000% APPROVE THE MORALS OF THE STORY. Not that it's preachy! But like ANY story has morals underlying it, whether you acknowledge them or not, and this one is just really really really the sort of book where I can be like I DO NOT FEEL SAD OR UNCOMFORTABLE ABOUT A SINGLE DECISION THE AUTHOR MADE.



Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers

Where to even begin with this book? There's just SO MUCH in it! It's really interesting and thoughtful and lovely and delightful and ALL THE THINGS. It is a book about woman's role in society, about gender relations, about education, about power, about -- agh, I really should have written my thoughts immediately after finishing this book but I wasn't at my computer at the time (THANKS CAMPING), so now I forget everything I wanted to say. But seriously, this book is Sayers' masterpiece, imo, and it's glorious and it gives me both all the thoughts AND all the feels!

(also I appreciate that at the end Wimsey's realized he's been a bit Nice Guy with his attentions to Harriet and is genuinely sorry for how he's behaved; and I appreciate that Harriet never actually felt pressured by his attentions and always felt sure that if she told him to, he really would leave her alone, she just could never actually make up her mind to do so. I like that they are both fallible humans who have not been their best selves in how they've treated each other but they have GROWN UP and become healthier people and now can be good for each other!)

(also holy crap I am not a sexual person and tend not to notice people's bodies because it's just...not information my brain finds relevant or interesting, but the bit where Harriet finally notices that Peter is a MAN WITH A HUMAN BODY and not just a housing for a brain? Sayers sells it REALLY REALLY WELL.)



Poor Yorick, by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU

YESSSSS I totally backed Ryan North's choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet kickstarter and IT ARRIVED THE OTHER DAY. I flipped through a bit of To Be Or Not To Be but that is one seriously large book with a deeply complicated set of paths for choosing your adventure, and the strategies I developed as a kid reading Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books don't work so well when the adventure is over 600 pages long. So I turned to the short prequel Poor Yorick instead. MUCH simpler hierarchy of choices!

Here's the thing: I am a terrible awful completist and can't bear the notion of missing some part of the story in a choose-your-own-adventure story so I have always methodically gone through every single option with liberal use of all my fingers as bookmarks as I make my careful way through the book in such a way that I can be sure I have read and followed EVERY option and discovered all. Poor Yorick gave me no troubles in this regard! But now I am scared to attack To Be Or Not To Be because I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO DO IT in such a way where I won't lose myself down the long, branching paths! Possibly I will have to lightly mark in pencil every time I choose an option so that I will know what I have and have not done? AGH.

Anyways. Poor Yorick was charming and I am super thrilled to have To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure in my life. Backing that kickstarter was an AMAZING use of my money. Heck, I already felt like I'd nearly gotten my money's worth just from the entertainment value of the email updates Ryan North sent to the backers on a regular basis! AND NOW I HAVE A LARGE AND SHINY AND LAVISHLY-ILLUSTRATED CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE HAMLET AS WELL. :D