That Which We Are Reading

Shiri is reading:

Infidel by Kameron Hurley (2011).  This book has been sitting on my desk for at least a month, not because I wasn’t jumping-up-and-down excited about it (I am), but because I had a ginormo library stack (in which there were several winners, including The Martian and The Flight of the Silvers, as well as a couple of things that… did not win for me personally.  Also three or four schedule-sensitive, pod-cast enforced reads (and by enforced, I mean forced.  And by a couple I mean you, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus and also you, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.  Plus a few others I shan’t, for the sake of propriety, mention here).

It’s been ages since I felt this excited diving back in into a series (Sharp by Alex Hughes and The Dresden Files prior to the last two, both of which killed a little bit of my heart) and I am not disappointed.  Meeting Nix again is as awesome as a visit with your favorite, crochety but awesome aunt, the one who gives you a metric fuckton of shit every time you see her but who does it because she loves you and because the two of you have a special bond.  The fact we join Nyx mid-action doesn’t hurt — the last few books I’ve read had slow builds, one of which was worth working through and a second which definitely wasn’t because nothing every fucking happened.  And something fucking happening is one of my criteria for a book that’s “worth it.”  *Scratches hair and shakes finger at self for nerdy-writer plot rage.*  Anyway.  I’ve been craving some straight-up, straight-off ass kickery and it was right here waiting for me.  The world building comes in to play immediately as well and, as I’ve already covered in detail on the blog and in a forthcoming Last Chance Pod episode, it’s awesome.

So happy to be back! *time for geek squee!*

No comic this week.  The book I read previous to Infidel was really good; it was also nearly 600 pages and I wanted to finish it before my little writing retreat so I didn’t have to haul it (yes.  An actual book, I know, I know).  Kill Shakespeare is waiting in the… (hold… hold…) WINGS, however, and I’m looking forward to cracking it.

Luke’s List:

Re-reading The King in Yellow. After all the reference to it in True Detective, I had to revisit it. The stories have nothing really to do with the series other than adding an element of really creepy details. There is something pretty special about the stories, in that they are really effective at drawing you in and then leaving you in an awkward off-kilter place. Best described as the connecting tissue between Poe and Lovecraft. Worth reading, even if you are not watching the show.

On the comics end I reached Morning Glories in the stack. Oh, how to describe this series. A group of kids all start at a prestigious boarding school, that something is seriously wrong with. All of the kids have quirky back stories, and the school is even more odd. The story really gets going and there are some twists that put Lost to shame. Lost is an apt comparison, the series has some really strange things that happen, but focuses on the stories of the teachers and the kids as often as the weirdness. But, where Lost lost the plot, so to say, Morning Glories completely runs with the strange elements and embraces them. It has payoffs that don’t feel cheap and one of the more complex plot-lines around (in fact instead of a letters column it has a fictitious professor who does a recap and surmises about what might be happening in the story). A bit of a commitment, but worth it.

<addendum by Shiri: interesting.  I tried Morning Glories a couple of years ago.  Got through the first trade paperback and it never hooked me.  My podcast topic senses are tingling…)