I haven't posted much here about what I'm reading at any given time, but I think it's important / fun to look back on. So here's my current slate of in-progress fics & books.

Waiting for AO3 Updates:

The Hunt and the Fall, by Taz_Eichel.
This work is 125K words so far, and I have the feeling we're only partway through. The ship is Boba Fett/Din Djarin, and the genre is heavy, high-protocol BDSM with Boba as the strict Dom and Din as someone who is so wracked with guilt and shame that he has a hard time believing his Master could actually... value him. (Which, I gotta admit it's difficult to see it at first -- but Boba definitely values him.)

To me, this story is like one of those political marriage stories where the two leads are forced to wed for "Reasons," but later fall in love... only there's a whole lot of X-rated BDSM shenanigans going on, instead of having to go to the royal ball on the prince's arm.

I appreciate Taz's measured pacing and deep exploration of Din's feelings. (The entire fic is written from Din's POV.) Reading this work makes me feel like my own fics are too rushed and surface-level. I could have doubled my word count and really gone deep... in so many places... but I didn't! Ahhhh, regrets!

Moribundia, by Obtenebratia.
This fic is for my favorite ship, Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux, but it's written so differently from how I usually do it. We're only 2 chapters and about 10.5K words in, and it's all from Hux's POV (and I think it will continue to stay that way), and Hux is so tortured, and also petty, spiteful, nasty, murderous, and just miserable in every possible way. Kylo Ren is truly a monster in this; irredeemable. We can see exactly why Hux is betraying him and the First Final Order...

... and I love it. I'm second-guessing all my fics where I wrote Hux as someone who's basically mentally sound and just has a bit of a defensive streak and a habit of saying mean things. Obtenebratia's Hux is tormented. He is not okay in any way. I have some dire fears about how things are going to go -- I'm strongly reminded of the fic Not for Nothing by sweetsuesparrow, which made me cry so hard. This fic is marked "Creator Chose Not to Warn," which could mean we're in for a Major Character Death. But I'm going to hope for a happy ending anyway.


Kindle Books

• Penitent, by Dan Abnett. This Warhammer 40K book is the sequel to Pariah, which I did enjoy. Overall, the Warhammer world is quite depressing. I'm just reading it to try to find ships, and someone recommended this Bequin series to me... but I'm a bit over a book in and not really feeling any ships yet. I haven't read any of this since June.



• Spear of the Emperor, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. The next book after Helsreach, which is also in the Warhammer universe and which I also read only for the shipping. I did get inspiration for my fic Non Sum Dignus, so that was worth it. But damn, Helsreach was depressing. I know the whole universe is called WARhammer, but I don't actually like war stories very much.

Physical Books

The Women Who Threw Corn: Witchcraft and Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, by Martin Austin Nesvig. I found out about this scholarly book on Reddit, of all places, when the author did an Ask Me Anything. I'm a fan of Aztec history, especially after getting into the ship Mizrak/Olrox from Castlevania: Nocturne, so this book is a natural if I want more background information on 16th century Mexico, which I do -- of course I do! (Also relevant to my interests: Aztec Batman.)

I haven't read too much of this yet so I can't comment on its overall message, but every time I pick it up I'm pleasantly reminded of academia. That was such a good time in my life, and I often miss it (but not enough to give up my tech salary, haha!).


Books I am Not Reading (but should be)

I have so many other books on the shelf that need to be read, but I have either not actually started reading them yet, or have paused them indefinitely in favor of more pressing matters. They taunt me with their information, which currently I do not have time to ingest. Here's the list:

• The Sunforge by Sascha Stronach - Māori-inspired futuristic fiction where the gods are real. Queer, probably poly-friendly, filled with mushrooms. Sequel to The Dawnhounds, which was an influence on my fic for Five Figure Fanwork Exchange, Tournament of Dragons.



• Doll Seed, by Michele Tracy Berger - Creepy sci-fi / fantasy horror / spec fiction by a black author - I've read a few of these, and yes, they were creepy!



• Hild, by Nicola Griffith. I went to a talk by her a few months back and then bought several of her books. This is a story from 7th century Britain. I'm always interested in cultures before they were mixed with invaders, and 7th century is after the Romans, but before the Normans.



• Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom, by Alexandra Edwards. This was a gift to me from a friend because they know I like fanfic, but I haven't had time to crack into it.



• The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy, by Adam J. Davis. I bought this because I had an idea for a Gingerpilot fic set in the south of France where Hux is a bishop and Poe is a sexy troubadour who may also be a heretic (spoiler: he's totally a heretic). I have over 10k words of outline for how the plot will go, and I did a ton of research in late 2023 / early 2024 -- but it's so hard to write in a time that long ago! I wrote my fic Let the Day Perish in 7th century England & Scotland, and that was tough for me, and I'm sure I got a lot of things wrong... but at least that was England, so I feel a bit more comfortable writing in it. But France? That's not only a different century and a whole different mindset, but a different country than I'm used to. So I bought this book to help orient me to the shift in political culture within the Church of the time, away from spiritual leaders and towards functionaries who were entwined with the local kings -- for better or worse.

Ugh, there are too many things to read! I need to institute a weekly Reading Evening so I can try to get through some of all the books I keep collecting!

How often has this happened to you? You're reading your child a book for the millionth time, and since you're stuck on the front pages while she points at everything, you read the Library of Congress summary of the book's plot, and you think, "That is not what this book is about AT ALL."

Case in point: "A Mop For Pop," by Foster  & Erickson, illustrations by Kerri Gifford Russell, part of the "Get Ready... Get Set... Read!" series from Barron's Educational, ISBN 0-8120-4680-3. The Library of Congress summary reads: "Illustrates graphically and in rhyme why lop-eared rabbits do not belong in ice cream shops."

Did they not read the book? The whole part about how the bunny uses its tail and ears to clean up the ice cream it spilled, thus endearing itself to the curmudgeonly ice cream shop owner, who then changes his store's policy from "NO PETS" to "PETS WELCOME"? That was the entire point! I mean, besides using the words "mop," "lop," "hop," and "stop" as often as possible.

The job of coming up with summaries for children's books is probably not very much fun. Can you imagine having to read children's books and summarize them in 140 characters (or however many they get) for hours on end? They probably have about a minute per book to find the kernel of plot (if there even is one) and come up with a summary that will be entered into the ginormous LOC database to endure until the end of time. It's probably not the reason they went into Library Science, is what I'm saying.

Once I started noticing that some of our books had Library of Congress summaries and others did not, I began looking through all our children's books to see which ones have summaries, and what they say.

Here is the summary for "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie": "Relating the cycle of requests a mouse is likely to make after you give him a cookie takes the reader through a young boy's day." This is accurate, although uninspired, and I'm not sure they needed the word "Relating" at the beginning. I can't argue that they should try to find a way to express how whimsical and sweet the book is, because those are value judgments and presumably there is no room for subjective value judgments in the serious work of a LOC Summarizer.

The best summary I've found so far is the one for "The Easter Bonnet Parade," one of the zillions of Strawberry Shortcake books. It's short, succinct, accurate, and includes a note of mystery. "To celebrate Easter, Strawberry Shortcake and her friends decide to have an Easter bonnet parade, but what will Honey Pie Pony, who does not wear a hat, do?" My only quibble is the slightly awkward wording of "the last half. I'm guessing that the summarizers are forced to use one and only one complete sentence.

I have been wondering who wrote these summaries, and under what circumstances. Who are you, mysterious Library of Congress summarizers? Do you realize the power you have to entice or repel readers from future generations who may use your summaries as guideposts in the sea of 21st-century children's fiction? Do you care? Do you not care? Are you just trying to summarize books as quickly as possible so you can go home? Have you been put off the idea of having children of your own by reading some of the pap that's produced for them? Any LOC Summarizers plowing through stacks of children's books while knowing that their own relationship is on the rocks? 

Clearly, there is a prime time drama here that is screaming to be made. But who will write the summary?

530) Ever read the children's story "The Giving Tree"?

The tree loves a boy, and she gives and gives and gives to him. She gives her flowers, her fruits, her leaves, her bark, she lets him build a swing and carve his initials into her flesh. Eventually the boy grows up and goes away, but she still loves him. Then the boy comes back and chops her down to use for wood. And even after that, the stump that's left loves the boy and lets him sit on her when he's old and tired.

This was always a horrifying story to me. The relationship was so one-sided. I guess the point of the story is that love isn't fair.


Comments: thaernulie  wrote: Yeah, that story meant a lot to me in highschool, since it was a near-perfect description of how I felt about every guy I had a crush on then.  Not something I'd want to read to my children, though...

My 6 months teaching English in China are unfortunately over, but I must look on the bright side... I have the internet again!

Imagine my surprise when I settled down into an armchair with a nice book (Robert van Gulik's The Chinese Gold Murders, which I haven't read for years) and discovered that the book was set in the very town in which I taught English for 4 months! Yes, The Chinese Gold Murders is set in the port city of Peng-lai, in "Shantung" province (the old transliteration of Shandong), in the year 663. There's a map and everything.