alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
I made one of those book lists everyone is doing, though I got overwhelmed by choice until I came up with a Specific Rule on what to include (books and comics I think about/am influenced by and feel positively towards, only one book per author) that ended up with a different vibe than what most other people seem to be going for.

Some notable ones I did not include: Watership down (forgot); Anything by Neil Gaiman (nope); old childhood faves like Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, C. S. Lewis and Paul Jennings where I couldn't muster up a specific example I still have frequent and largely positive thoughts about; manga like Mob Psycho and Full Metal Alchemist where I ADORE the anime and would absolutely have devoured the manga if the anime didn't exist, but as it is never got around to it. And of course all the books I will think of after making this post ;)
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
Humble Book Bundle: A Wizard of Earthsea and More by Ursula K. Le Guin

30 books for $18USD/$27AUD, which isn't bad. But what was notable for me is that many of these books don't seem to be available in Australia as ebooks at all. Yet Australians can buy them for an Australian Kobo account from this bundle. So now I finally have an ebook of Steering the Craft, hooray, I've wanted one for ages.

Important note: You need to be logged into an existing Kobo account, and get them as Kobo ebooks, also you must select EVERY BOOK when you redeem your code, or lose them forever! Very strange way of doing things, but it is what it is.
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
I was inspired to make this while writing up a reaction posts offer at the new prompts community [community profile] promptmepromptly. They're currently taking prompts for text based fanworks, and apparently reaction posts count!

So I thought I'd write up a list of some things I've been meaning to try out that I think could be fun to write reaction posts to. If you want to prompt me, reply to my offer after the post opens in a few days.
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
These ended up dividing neatly into some specific subgenres. I really have been mostly into m/m romance lately, huh...

Non-romance Anime:
Bocci the Rock
Play it cool guys

m/f romance manga and webtoon:
Sweat and Soap
Busu ni Hanataba wo
Everyone wants to get married
Another Typical Fantasy Romance

m/m but not romance manga:
The Summer Hikaru Died

f/f romantic fantasy novel:
Earthcast
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: Teddy bear with purple details with a love heat. From Nameless: the one thing you must recall (nameless)
I am MASSIVELY behind on reviews so some of these are based on vague memories but lets go! I realised trying to remember which things I'd reviewed before was getting in the way of reviewing anything, so some may be doubles.

Live action TV: Our Flag Means Death S2

Live action movie: Semantic Error

Animated TV:
Cherry Magic
Heaven Official's Blessing S2

Manga:
Tsurumaki-sensei no Sakka Seikatsu
Haru Kakete, Uguisu (Warbler, Sing of Spring)

Books:
Evil as Humans
Married Thrice to A Salted Fish
After I married the disabled war god as my concubine
Paper Lover
A Simple Way To Give Money
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
Since there are plausibly multiple people who follow me and might be interested who don't already follow [personal profile] sanguinity.

Recent Reading: Data Feminism, Indigenous Statistics, and Du Bois's Data Portraits has some recs for books about data from a feminist, Indigenous, or black perspective.

I'm not sure my brain is up to reading any of them but maybe yours is!
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
I know the author of The Iron Children which made me put off reading it in case I didn't like it and felt awkward(*). But luckily I loved it!

It's a fantasy novella about a group of young, magic-cyborg soldiers, part of a religious military order and under the command of a well intentioned but inexperienced not-yet-cyborged commander-nun who is in vastly over her head and having complicated feelings about the fact that she can mind-control any of the soldiers under her command whenever she sees fit. The soldiers have complicated feelings about it too... especially the one who's secretly a spy for the other side.
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: the symbol pi on a pretty background (Default)
An Unauthorised Fan Treatise is a murder mystery by YA author Lauren James, written as a fictional blog by a RPF shipper digging up details of her favourite actors' lives to prove they're dating.

It's very cleverly written and captures the vibe of these kinds of fandom blogs and dramas perfectly. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way as a story, maybe the typical-of-murder-mysteries way issues of race/gender/sexuality mostly exist as fodder for drama and dramatic irony. Also I feel like the final reveals it was working towards could have been more interesting(*), but while I don't think it quite mined the full dramatic and humourous potential of the premise I'm still impressed by the way it holds together. The drily humourous unreliable narrator aspect is well done, capturing the exact experience of reading some fannish manifesto and trying to decide how much of it is real.

I skipped all the in-universe fan-fiction though, I'm sure the author had fun writing it but it didn't feel like it added to the story.

(*)But maybe I just find mundane murder mysteries boring. I'd love see a Dracula/Lovecraft etc-ish epistolory fantasy-horror story told in this format, with the dark humour and dramatic irony intact.
alias_sqbr: (up and down)
In case anyone is interested, here's the reaction posts I made when I read the first 17 chapters of Dracula a few years ago. It's in book order, covering events up to the 30th of September, so there's a LOT of spoilers.

And since a few people asked, a shorter, equally spoilery discussion of why I stopped reading:
SPOILERS )
alias_sqbr: (happy dragon)
I was offered a review copy of the LGBTQ+ paranormal romance anthology Longsummer Nights and encouraged to be entirely honest, so I'm going to write reactions as I read.

Thus far I've read the first three stories and the hit rate has been pretty good, considering that I bounce off a lot of paranormal romances and short stories. It's all felt more like AO3 original fiction than commercial (Paranormal) Romance, which for me is definitely a plus.

Heat is on a scale from 0 to 5.

SEEDS OF SOLACE by RIEN GRAY Pairing: F/NB Heat Level: 3
The love interest and relationship felt like paper-thin devices to write the (more fleshed out) protagonist having cheerfully weird, kinda vague xeno sex. I need more emotional connection even in erotica, and didn't find it very sexy, but I did enjoy the evocative fantasy Southern Gothic weirdness.

ANNIVERSARY by A.K. FEDEAU Pairing: F/M Heat Level: 3
Bittersweet noir about an established couple. A bag of slightly cheesy noir and fantasy tropes, and not a classic romance, but I enjoyed it.

VIRGIN COCKTAIL by FISHER STRUNC Pairing: M/NB Heat Level: 4
Delightful "Oh god they were roommates, and also one of them is a vampire" romance with all the standard AO3 slash tropes, except the bottom is an afab non-binary character and the sex is PIV. I tend to have Messy Gender Feelings about that sort of thing but the blood drinking made up for it >.>

Longsummer Nights was created by VOW, a collective of writers who met working for the US division of the Japanese otome company Voltage. When they unionised Voltage shut the US division down and they've been working on finding new ways to support themselves and other writers ever since. I am thus very happy to discover that I thus far like their writing as well as their politics, and hope they sell lots of books! It's $15US for 15 stories in a variety of formats.

Content note: I quote some violence. Spoilers for all three stories!
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: (bookdragon)
Tagged by [tumblr.com profile] elwing and also I think [tumblr.com profile] phlebasphoenician ages ago but I was really tired that day and forgot until now.

last song: The Devil's Part, All Our Exes Live In Texas. The problem with this band is I like their songs (so many weird breakup songs!) but I find Australians trying for a Folksy American Vibe annoying on principle (idk maybe this is unfair and that’s just what aussie folk sounds like). I have to admit this one is pretty good, though, with an enjoyably creepy, femslashy video.

last movie: Probably 'Seeing Red'. I liked it, for all the reasons mentioned previously!

currently reading: Devil Venerable Wants to Know by Cyan Wings, a Chinese m/m xianxia romcom. This question usually trips me up because I tend to either finish books in a day or so, or give up entirely. But I've been stalled halfway on this one for a while. It's a fun premise: the amoral immortal secondary romance lead of a cheesy romance novel comes across a copy before he meets and falls for the heroine, and is horrified. Both because his love leads to him dying at the hands of the heroine's dickish boyfriend and his second in command going mad with grief, and because becoming such a mushy pushover feels preposterous. He decides the best solution is to (a) get the heroine to find a different better boyfriend and/or self actualisation (b) get to know his second better and encourage his mental health. His idea of 'helping' involves a lot of like...pushing the heroine off a cliff to speed up her arc etc which is darkly funny, and there's some great amoral female characters who are enjoyably femslashy with the heroine (she just keeps being so NICE and they DON'T UNDERSTAND and also it's not like they care or anything but her boyfriend is a DICK and she can DO BETTER). And it has a lot of fun poking at genre conventions. But the romance between him and his second is VERY slow burn and the rest of the plot is a lot of amusing but repetitive silliness. It it was half as long I probably would have loved it, as it is...maybe I'll finish it one day.
alias_sqbr: the symbol pi on a pretty background (Default)
I have a large backlog of things to review so am going to break them up.

Books:
Game Programming Patterns
Snowspelled

Manga and Webtoons:
A Red Knight Does Not Blindly Follow Money
Dame na Watashi ni Koishite Kudasai/Please Love the Useless Me
The Reason Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke’s Mansion
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: A stack of turtles against stars (turtles all the way down)
Just two because they both ended up being longish reviews. And they're both things I liked set in space!

Game/Let's Play:
Star Wars: Fallen Order )

Book:
A Memory Called Empire )
alias_sqbr: (happy dragon)
Books:
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

Games:
I Love You!
One Shot
A Garden On The Sea
Doreamon Story of Seasons

Read more... )
alias_sqbr: Alien city skyline (atlantis)
Live action TV: Only Murders in the Building
Animated TV: Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2
Manga: Game-ya BL
Books: Transmigrating into the Heartthrob's Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend
Games: Melvor Idle

Read more... )
alias_sqbr: the symbol pi on a pretty background (Default)
This is a very fun Chinese fantasy m/m romance novel.

The main character is a dragon who's spent thousands of years cheerfully not really caring about anything...but then someone captured him and stole some of his bones, leaving him half paralysed and very angry. In the journey to get revenge and find his bones, he encounters an uptight amnesiac monk who he feels oddly drawn to tease. The two of them go on a mystery solving road trip, inadvertently making friends and saving innocent people along the way despite both considering themselves lone wolves above that sort of thing.
Warnings, links, other details )
alias_sqbr: A cartoon cat saying Ham! (ham!)
I just bought the low-effort cookbook Cooking is Terrible after seeing it recced a bunch on tumblr, and I feel like it was worth $5USD for me, even having to scroll past anything reliant on cheese/beans etc. I haven't actually cooked anything from it yet, but I recognised a bunch of things I already make, and got a bunch of interesting ideas I intend to try. And I was inspired to create something new and tasty(*)

Where it differs from traditional cookbooks is that it's designed for people who don't have the energy for a lot of thinking or preparation. So the easiest stuff is at the front: a list of things you can eat with no prep at all. Then come suggestions for nice sandwich fillings, moving on to general advice for making soup plus some nice combos of ingredients etc.

I can see it being useful to scroll through when I'm hungry and have enough ingredients and energy to cook something but nothing seems both attainable and appealing. I might take the text as a base for a personalised version, removing all the things I will never eat and adding in extras.
Read more... )
alias_sqbr: (happy dragon)
Live action TV: We Are Ladyparts, Ted Lasso

TV Cartoons: Owl House season 2, Amphibia, Master of the Universe

Games: The World of Art, Spiritfarer

Books: The Raven Tower

Read more... )
alias_sqbr: the symbol pi on a pretty background (Default)
Anime: Comic Girls, Blend-S, Jingai-san no Yome

Western Animation: Centaurworld

Books: They All Say I’ve Met a Ghost, Artificial Condition

Webcomic: Survive as the Hero's Wife/This Villainess Wants a Divorce!

Games: GardenPaws, Calico

Read more... )

Book news!

Aug. 5th, 2021 12:32 pm
alias_sqbr: (happy dragon)
Two bits of news about fantasy m/m novels I woke up to this morning:

All three MXTX novels have been licensed in English! That's Scum Villain's Self Saving System, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (upon which The Untamed is based), and Heaven Official's Blessing.

On the plus side this means we'll be getting better translations and can support the author. On the downside it's going to be harder to read any of them in English for the next 3 years until the official translations fully come out. I already have a copy of Heaven Official's Blessing and apparently there's PDFs of the others...around.

‘Valdemar Universe’ Fantasy Book Series In The Works For TV From Kit Williamson, Brittany Cavallaro & Radar Pictures I must admit I didn't really click with the series when I read it but I know a bunch of you are fans, and it will still be pretty cool to see an overtly gay fantasy story on tv.

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