Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius #21
Aug. 19th, 2025 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
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Recent Reading: Welcome to Night Vale
Aug. 18th, 2025 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Now that I don’t have a commute, I really had to create time to finish my latest audiobook, but it was worth it. Today I finished Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel, the first book put out by the team behind the Welcome to Night Vale fiction podcast and set in the same universe (as is likely apparent by the title). This book was written by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink.
First, I don’t believe you need familiarity with the podcast to enjoy the novel. Nor do you need to read the novel if you’re a podcast listener; it builds on what listeners may know, but also centers incredibly peripheral characters from the show (local PTA mom Diane Crayton and pawn shop owner Jackie Fierro), so if you’re a podcast only fan, you’re not missing any crucial story information by forgoing the book. If you’re not a listener of the podcast, I think as long as you go in understanding that the core of Night Vale is the absurd and the surreal, you’ll be okay.
This was a fun book! I was curious to see how the Night Vale Presents team would manage a longform story in the world of Night Vale (podcast episodes are about 25 minutes and almost always self-contained), and I think they did a solid job! The book can be a bit slow, especially in the beginning; the drip of information it feeds you about the mysteries at the center of the story is indeed a drip. But it wasn’t so slow I found it tiresome, and the typical Night Vale weirdness and eccentricity kept me listening even where I wasn’t sure where this story was going (if anywhere).
Recent Reading: Concerning My Daughter
Aug. 15th, 2025 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The Proving Trail
Aug. 15th, 2025 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The young narrator of this tale leaves his job herding cattle to find his father, and learns that his father was murdered after a night of successful gambling.
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Add me??
Aug. 14th, 2025 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Age:30's
I mostly post about:A little of everything I guess.
My hobbies are:Writing, Reading
My posting schedule tends to be: Pretty sporadic.
When I add people, my deal breaker is:If you're only reaching out when you need something, and never reciprocating support or interest in what's going on with me.
Before adding me, you should know: Nothing really. I like to think I'm a pretty laid back person. I'm a good listener and I'd be happy to meet some new people here.
Sanders' Union Fourth Reader
Aug. 13th, 2025 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Despite the titles, this is more recent than his New Fourth Reader. It repeats three or four readings from the earlier works, not all of them from the fourth reader.
Interesting nowadays chiefly for the views of edifying works and science of the time.
To Tame a Land
Aug. 12th, 2025 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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You can do a lot of things in Westerns. This one is a bildungsroman.
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The School Reader. Third Book
Aug. 11th, 2025 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The third book is still focused on reading. Very few of the pieces come with bylines. Still, it's taking on the aspect of the later readers, with the focus on good readings, edifying and instruction.
May be chiefly of interest in view of what they selected in the era.
The Bone Harp by Victoria Goddard Review
Aug. 10th, 2025 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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But in retrospect, it had to be self-published because it’s a Silmarillion fan fic with the names changed, and a traditional publisher wouldn’t take it for fear of being sued. (Not really spoilery: this is clear quite early.) Its premise (I’ll just render this in Tolkien terms) is one of the exiled Noldor returns to the Undying Lands after dying (?) in Middle-earth. That’s a fantastic premise for a fic! With some alterations, it’s a great premise for an original story. That’s why I bought it! I don’t think it fully exploits this premise, though. It’s a goldmine for psychological and philosophical development, and it has fairly little of either, in my opinion.
It does have a great original addition in the idea of a male and female elf who are well-matched “professional/vocational” rivals to such a degree they can be almost interchanged with each other. That concept may be the story’s strongest, and again, I felt it wasn’t fully exploited.
But some of my discontents are discontents with the source material (The Silmarillion): 1) the style is, for my taste, too expository—too much “telling,” not enough “showing”; 2) I just don’t get the concept of the Undying Lands on any deep level, because my cosmology is very different from Tolkien’s. Goddard is, I think, trying to follow Tolkien here, and part of my difficulty suspending disbelief may come from my just not getting it. I give her marks, on the whole, for showing respect for Tolkien’s work and not altering his Elves in any bizarre ways.
One the whole, I find the book conceptually fascinating but not developed deeply enough to fully engage me.
Spoilery review at my DW.