september 2022
Heyo!
If you’re reading this, hello again! I am still alive. Let’s start with some life updates, because a lot of stuff has happened in the last few months.
Two book reviews and an essay about one of my fave 2020 quarantine reads penned by yours truly, among other publications that I’m too lazy to link here (I have zero control over the timing or else I would have spread everything out more evenly across 2022), have made it into the world. Speaking of which, Maureen Kincaid Speller recently passed away. She was an editor at Strange Horizons for many years (for those of you who might not be familiar with it, Strange Horizons’ influence on English-language SFF for the past two decades cannot be overstated, and it has been at the forefront of defining what speculative fiction can look like and promoting diverse, global voices). She gave me my break as a reviewer early this year, and I was one tiny blip in her long, long career as a critic and an editor. May she rest in peace.
What I’ve been reading lately:
Persuasion by Jane Austen
I somehow hadn’t read Persuasion until Brandon Taylor's (author of Filthy Animals and Real Life) hilarious rant/review on his substack about the new movie convinced me I needed to read it. The plot: Anne Elliot’s ex, Captain Wentworth, shows up back in town and shakes things up. The book is 200 years old, so I don’t feel bad spoiling that Anne does get back together with Captain Wentworth. I don’t have much to say about it that hasn’t been said already by people smarter and more eloquent than me (IMO Wentworth’s love letter blows every other love letter out there out of the water), but I enjoyed Persuasion a lot. I dig that it’s a love story about mature adults with real adult life problems.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (translated by Philip Gabriel)
When I saw the gorgeous cover of the Erewhorn edition of this book and heard that Phillip Gabriel translated it (he’s translated a number of Murakami books, and whatever your opinion is on Murakami, I think we can all agree that the translations are excellent. I recommend David Karashima’s Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami if you want to know more about why Murakami is such a juggernaut internationally and more about the translations), I knew I had to get my hands on an ARC.
Some context: Tsujimura is normally a mystery writer. Lonely Castle in the Sky is fantasy—she wrote it to start a discussion about mental health in Japan, especially the mental health of preteens and teens. The premise is that a girl who has been consistently skipping school gets sucked into this weird magic castle game with other school-skipping kids from who-knows-where. This book has been slated for an anime adaptation. (Not a surprise, given the middle school protagonists and fairytale magic.) I think Lonely Castle in the Mirror works wonderfully both as a story and a conversation starter. If you don’t like YA/MG, you might not enjoy it. Tsujimura really gets the thinking of her characters and doesn’t pity their situations or make light of them, which is important for a book addressing mental health.
Other stuff
Legends & Lattes is a super fun, relaxing slice-of-life read.
Sayaka Murata strikes again in Life Ceremony, bringing back more of the weirdness I loved in Convenience Store Woman.
I said this on my Twitter already, but Sam J. Miller’s short story “Angel, Monster, Man” actually caused me to lose sleep and left me with a fear of anyone named Tom. It was an amazing story that I’ll remember for a long time, but don’t read it when you’re alone in your room in the dark like I did.
IDK when the next update will be. Fall’s the best time to read a book with a warm drink, so I’ll be back at some point haha.
Signing off,
Tina