I read an interesting discussion on Reddit yesterday morning. It started with an article suggesting that most men are really reluctant to read female authors. The article’s author commissioned a poll comparing the readers of the top 10 bestselling male literary authors, and the top 10 bestselling female literary authors. The men’s readership was close to evenly divided – 55% men and …
Earlier today I read a Reddit thread about book localisations for the US market, and while it’s not like it was all new information for me, I did come away somewhat annoyed. I just don’t think it’s necessary to change terminology all over the place, not even in children’s books.
There were people in the discussion arguing that “torch” had to be changed to …
Arkady Martine’s new book, A Desolation Called Peace (the follow-up to A Memory Called Empire) has finally come out in Australia, just two months after seemingly the entire rest of the world! I’ve slacked off on reading so much lately, but for this I need to make an exception. 📚
James Richardson, a young psychiatrist, takes up a position at a remote facility in East Anglia, where six of the patients are kept unconscious at all times under a controversial treatment regime. Inexplicable things start happening. (★★★★)
Casiopea, an impoverished relative of a wealthy family, accidentally crosses paths with a Mayan death god and embarks on a quest to restore him to his throne. (★★½)
Bookstores rarely carry the book I’m shopping for (I often read older, backlist titles and indie published books). But heck if they aren’t fun to browse!
If bookstores don’t service my needs (insert sex joke here) as a reader or as an author, what’s left? Nostalgia?
Two brothers born in Calcutta around the time of Independence take different paths in life; one is drawn to the Naxalites, and the other moves to the US. (★★★★)
The dramatic finale to an epic fantasy trilogy set during the end of the world. (★★★★)
For any other Harry Potter fans, I thought I’d share the best Hogwarts Sorting Hat quiz that I’ve ever found. It gives you a “primary” (motivations) and “secondary” (methods) house, and lets you argue back/explore further to maybe get a different result if you don’t like the one it initially gives you.
For me, it gives me a Ravenclaw primary and Hufflepuff secondary house, with a “modelled” Ravenclaw secondary (which basically means I use Ravenclaw methods of acculumating facts and knowledge too, but my instinct or fallback in times of stress is the Hufflepuff way of just putting in the work 😜). I also liked the point it made about how if a Ravenclaw’s moral code is a compassionate, people-centred one, then actually they become very difficult to tell apart from Hufflepuffs, which helps explain to me why both houses sound very relatable (although since my childhood I’ve had a preference for Ravenclaw 😆). There is actually a gargantuan amount of explanation as to the thinking behind the quiz and how it all works, which you can find on their blog here.
Carmela and Ignacio, two lovers and Cuban revolutionaries, fight to bring down Batista but find the new regime they fought for drifts away from its initial noble intentions. (★★★★)
Jessica Smith is a left-wing feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also very interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.