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cyphomandra) wrote2025-11-12 09:14 am
cyphomandra) wrote2025-11-12 09:14 am
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Books read, September
I forgot to put a divider between September and October in my highly technical & detailed booklog (an enote I stick titles in) so have just put half the books in each.
Horse trouble, Kristin Varner (graphic novel). 12 year old Kate loves horses and riding, but everything else - the mean girls at the stable, her concerns around puberty and body image, her brother’s creepy friends etc - isn’t going so well. And then she starts falling off her horse - is riding also not going to work out for her, or can she find a way through this? This is fine and I like the horse stuff but the rest of it is all a bit similar to other middle grade graphic novels I’ve read recently, which is probably the point but I need some variety.
The unlikely doctor: from gang life and prison to becoming a doctor at 56, Timoti Te Moke. I left in the subtitle because it provides a useful summary. Timoti spent the first six years of his life with loving grandparents - then his mother (and new, abusive, stepfather) took him back, and everything fell apart. Crime, state care, prison, gangs, here and in Australia - and then, in his 30s, he decides to take another path, and starts training as a paramedic, only to end up charged with manslaughter four months out from the end of his course. Timoti comes through as thoughtful, passionate, and surprisingly unresentful. There’s a ghostwriter credited, and they’ve done an excellent job, although it is a tiny bit annoying because it means there probably won’t be another book.
Can I steal you for a second, Jodi McAlister
Here for the right reasons, Jodi McAlister
Not here to make friends, Jodi McAlister
These are a trilogy set during the filming of a (fictional) Bachelor-style reality TV show, Marry Me Juliet, filming in Australia during the pandemic, written by an academic who specialises in romance fiction. I actually started with the second one because I picked it off the GLBTQ section of the local romance bookshop, and was quite some way into it before finally being baffled enough by the references to another couple to check - all three books do, however, cover the same time period (and only the middle one is same sex). Chronologically - in Here for the Right Reasons, Cece, an ex-foster kid who’s just lost her job, sees the show as her only possible chance- but then gets eliminated in the first episode. Due to lockdown, however, all the eliminated contestants are being kept on site, and Cece ends up spending time with Dylan, the show’s Romeo. He’s aware of her situation, and pitches a friendship arc to the show’s producers to get her more exposure - but are they able to stay friends, or do they want something more? Can I Steal You for a Second - Mandie signs up for the show to get over her toxic ex, but lies about that ex being female (she’s bi) to avoid the hassle that would go with being publicly out. And she’s doing well, but while she likes the show’s Romeo, it’s one of the other female contestants (also helpfully called Dylan) whom she’s really attracted to… Not Here to Make Friends has Lily Fireball, the season villain (she shoves Cece into a pond in the opening episode) revealed as a plant, and one with a complex history with Murray, the show runner - can they sort themselves out and save the show? I liked these while never being entirely swept away by any of the leads.
Heroines on horseback, Jane Badger. Nonfiction about the history of horse books, from the early books that were all about the horses themselves as characters (Black Beauty etc) through to the golden days of the Pullein-Thompsons et al and onwards. I have read quite a lot of horse books but do have some odd blind spots (I have never systematically tackled the Jill books and have only read the first three Jinnys despite really liking them) so it’s nice to catch up with some old faves and get nudged into trying some new. Badger is publishing horse books as well, and I’m currently dithering over acquiring a Caroline Akrill adult novel that sounds v Jilly Cooperish (Akrill has a really compelling style and a fondness for bonkers characters, but her het romance elements haven't worked for me, whereas Cooper’s often - suprisingly - do).
Katabasis, RF Kuang. I guess this is the Kuang I’ve least disliked so far? However this is partly because I consistently revise my expectations of her books downwards, so should not be perceived as an endorsement. Once again Kuang has an intriguing set up - Alice Law is at magical college, desperate to do well, but a mistake preparing a working for her exploitative genius professor kills him and leaves her in need of a supervisor’s endorsement, so she goes to Hell to get him back, helped/hindered by Peter, her rival for academic glories with a mysterious and frankly baffling secret - and falls apart on the execution. There are some nice moments in Hell and a secondary character (another academic) I quite liked, but meh.
What did you eat yesterday doujinshi 1-7, Fumi Yoshinaga. I don’t know why it never occurred to me earlier to look for these (there are more but they got ahead of where I am in the series). Explicit content for her more sedate series , which has always very firmly kept the bedroom door closed. I liked that Shiro and Kenji are not entirely sexually compatible (Shiro really wants to be more dominated while Kenji feels guilty for being too pushy/selfish) and that, as with the series, it’s a portrait of a relationship over time.
Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones (re-read). Sirius, a powerful luminary, is banished to Earth in the body of a dog after he is convicted of the death of another luminary, something he knows he didn’t do. He is almost killed immediately when someone sticks his litter of puppies into a sack and tosses them into the canal, but survives and is adopted by Kathleen, the unwanted Irish relation living with a family who range from indifferent to actively cruel after her father was imprisoned. As usual with DWJ I forget how bleak her endings are until I run head-on into them - this one, in particular, is painful because Sirius is mostly triumphant and only dimly aware that it isn’t the same for everyone else concerned.
Horse trouble, Kristin Varner (graphic novel). 12 year old Kate loves horses and riding, but everything else - the mean girls at the stable, her concerns around puberty and body image, her brother’s creepy friends etc - isn’t going so well. And then she starts falling off her horse - is riding also not going to work out for her, or can she find a way through this? This is fine and I like the horse stuff but the rest of it is all a bit similar to other middle grade graphic novels I’ve read recently, which is probably the point but I need some variety.
The unlikely doctor: from gang life and prison to becoming a doctor at 56, Timoti Te Moke. I left in the subtitle because it provides a useful summary. Timoti spent the first six years of his life with loving grandparents - then his mother (and new, abusive, stepfather) took him back, and everything fell apart. Crime, state care, prison, gangs, here and in Australia - and then, in his 30s, he decides to take another path, and starts training as a paramedic, only to end up charged with manslaughter four months out from the end of his course. Timoti comes through as thoughtful, passionate, and surprisingly unresentful. There’s a ghostwriter credited, and they’ve done an excellent job, although it is a tiny bit annoying because it means there probably won’t be another book.
Can I steal you for a second, Jodi McAlister
Here for the right reasons, Jodi McAlister
Not here to make friends, Jodi McAlister
These are a trilogy set during the filming of a (fictional) Bachelor-style reality TV show, Marry Me Juliet, filming in Australia during the pandemic, written by an academic who specialises in romance fiction. I actually started with the second one because I picked it off the GLBTQ section of the local romance bookshop, and was quite some way into it before finally being baffled enough by the references to another couple to check - all three books do, however, cover the same time period (and only the middle one is same sex). Chronologically - in Here for the Right Reasons, Cece, an ex-foster kid who’s just lost her job, sees the show as her only possible chance- but then gets eliminated in the first episode. Due to lockdown, however, all the eliminated contestants are being kept on site, and Cece ends up spending time with Dylan, the show’s Romeo. He’s aware of her situation, and pitches a friendship arc to the show’s producers to get her more exposure - but are they able to stay friends, or do they want something more? Can I Steal You for a Second - Mandie signs up for the show to get over her toxic ex, but lies about that ex being female (she’s bi) to avoid the hassle that would go with being publicly out. And she’s doing well, but while she likes the show’s Romeo, it’s one of the other female contestants (also helpfully called Dylan) whom she’s really attracted to… Not Here to Make Friends has Lily Fireball, the season villain (she shoves Cece into a pond in the opening episode) revealed as a plant, and one with a complex history with Murray, the show runner - can they sort themselves out and save the show? I liked these while never being entirely swept away by any of the leads.
Heroines on horseback, Jane Badger. Nonfiction about the history of horse books, from the early books that were all about the horses themselves as characters (Black Beauty etc) through to the golden days of the Pullein-Thompsons et al and onwards. I have read quite a lot of horse books but do have some odd blind spots (I have never systematically tackled the Jill books and have only read the first three Jinnys despite really liking them) so it’s nice to catch up with some old faves and get nudged into trying some new. Badger is publishing horse books as well, and I’m currently dithering over acquiring a Caroline Akrill adult novel that sounds v Jilly Cooperish (Akrill has a really compelling style and a fondness for bonkers characters, but her het romance elements haven't worked for me, whereas Cooper’s often - suprisingly - do).
Katabasis, RF Kuang. I guess this is the Kuang I’ve least disliked so far? However this is partly because I consistently revise my expectations of her books downwards, so should not be perceived as an endorsement. Once again Kuang has an intriguing set up - Alice Law is at magical college, desperate to do well, but a mistake preparing a working for her exploitative genius professor kills him and leaves her in need of a supervisor’s endorsement, so she goes to Hell to get him back, helped/hindered by Peter, her rival for academic glories with a mysterious and frankly baffling secret - and falls apart on the execution. There are some nice moments in Hell and a secondary character (another academic) I quite liked, but meh.
What did you eat yesterday doujinshi 1-7, Fumi Yoshinaga. I don’t know why it never occurred to me earlier to look for these (there are more but they got ahead of where I am in the series). Explicit content for her more sedate series , which has always very firmly kept the bedroom door closed. I liked that Shiro and Kenji are not entirely sexually compatible (Shiro really wants to be more dominated while Kenji feels guilty for being too pushy/selfish) and that, as with the series, it’s a portrait of a relationship over time.
Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones (re-read). Sirius, a powerful luminary, is banished to Earth in the body of a dog after he is convicted of the death of another luminary, something he knows he didn’t do. He is almost killed immediately when someone sticks his litter of puppies into a sack and tosses them into the canal, but survives and is adopted by Kathleen, the unwanted Irish relation living with a family who range from indifferent to actively cruel after her father was imprisoned. As usual with DWJ I forget how bleak her endings are until I run head-on into them - this one, in particular, is painful because Sirius is mostly triumphant and only dimly aware that it isn’t the same for everyone else concerned.