I don’t think I’m going to finish my current book before the end of spring, so here’s a roundup of what I’ve read this season.
Sound: Science fiction, I wouldn’t really recommend it, it relies on very wooly concepts of the science it fictionalizes and the characters aren’t self-consistent or compelling. It does have a decent plot if you overlook that.
Trees in the Kopeshai: Guerilla warfare during the Asatsan conflict. If you really want to know about this in particular, it’s a serviceable explanation, but it didn’t do a very good job of making the topic interesting and I didn’t finish it.
Best in Show: A History of Dog Breeding: What it sounds like. I wouldn’t read this all in one sitting but it was fun to read a chapter at a time. Apparently today’s herd hounds aren’t directly related to thirtieth century herd hounds - the breed went extinct when the region’s grazing areas were turned over to the production of cereal grains and then was later reinvented.
Knowing Things: Very green book. It’s about “epistemology” and different groups’ relationships to it - mostly castes but also age groups and a few countries are covered in simultaneously the most nitpicky yet cursory form possible. Surprisingly engaging despite that.
collected Poems of sasa moa volume Two: Read it if you like sasa moa. I do, so I loved it; I’ve been a fan since one of her poems turned up in Swift’s weekly readings when he was in school.
My Understanding: Biography of Suta Ohampei. It’s the one the musical about her is based on; I went to see it last winter and put the book on my to-read list. The book isn’t as much fun as the musical, of course, but it’s much more in-depth and I thought it was a great read.
Generation 4: The Mark: I continue to be a sucker for Generation books. But it seems like she puts them out slower every time. This one was better than book three but not as good as book two, which is still the best in the series. Tohan deserves thirty grandchildren and if he doesn’t have them when Generation 6 rolls around I will be annoyed.
...and I seem to have logged a whopping 783 different variants of output from the Little Stories Generator on top of Itty-bitty’s collection of 68 conventionally written board books. I really recommend the Little Stories Generator - it’s a series of templates that can mix up names and details to make lots of reading to a very small child less repetitive. Babies up to a year old often like stories that are just very simple repeatable templates, so I’ve read a lot of them that are basically “[so and so] went to the store for [ingredients, materials, or tools] and met [someone] and then used the things to make a [food or project]”, or “[character] went through the [obstacle] and around the [obstacle] and under the [obstacle] until finally they were at [relative or friend’s place]”, but one day it’s Cat and Rabbit making soup and a small witch going through a forest to her grandma’s, and the next day it’s an orange buying yarn to make socks and a sea alien going through a cave to see her schoolmate.
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