Meme: Pronoun check

I did this on a friend's FB, but in case anyone is curious or wants to participate.

Meme: Pronoun/title/adjective check!
As in, "what I think of these pronouns/titles/adjectives as applied to me"

It/its: Nope
She/her: Yes
He/him: No but I find it amusing when I get mistaken for a dude on the internet, and I'm sometimes deliberately ambiguous about this.
They/them: I don't mind it but it's not me.
( more )

Reading Wednesday

Just finished: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.

Okay, so. I am an unabashed fan of The Chronicles of Narnia despite its problematic, well, everything. Fight me. Anyway the best book in the series is Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the best part in that is the bit where Lucy finds the magician's spell book and fucks up big time by magically spying on her best friend. At which point Aslan gives an Important Moral Lesson and then gives her "a spell to refresh the spirit," which consists of a beautiful story involving a cup, a sword, and a green hill. She can't remember anything about it after it ends beyond how it made me feel, but Aslan promises to tell it to her over and over again in years to come.

This novel reminds me of that. As did The Night Circus in many ways, but this one more so, because if you gave me a choice, escaping into a magical circus is not quite as awesome as escaping into a magical library that's full of cats and where a dumbwaiter keeps bringing you coffee and cupcakes. That's pretty much my ideal. There's all the symbolism and very minimal plot; the magic obeys the logic of fairy tales, and everything about this book is lush and dreamlike and gorgeous. It's composed of the framing story (boy finds a magical door, boy convinces himself that the magical door can't be real, the Call To Adventure eventually drags him into the magical library anyway, but far later than planned) and the stories that are in the various mysterious books, all of which eventually come together. I found the characters a bit more intriguing, and definitely more diverse, than in The Night Circus, even if the story was less structured and more sprawling.

Also, it contains massive shoutouts to The Magicians (books, not show). It had me at the bees.

It's not a perfect novel by any means. For one thing, I would have preferred more Kat; she's in the beginning and at the end but disappears for about 300 pages, which is a shame because she's one of the more interesting characters, and I would read an entire book about her. But it's tonally perfect, if that makes sense. I wanted to inhabit the world in a way that doesn't usually happen when I read portal fantasy as an adult. And in terms of pandemic reading, it is the perfect story to lose yourself inside.

Currently reading: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. This is another perfect pandemic read, although obviously a lot more topical. It's about how our impression of civilian behaviour after a catastrophe—honed by the media and pop culture—is almost always wrong, and people's impulse in disaster tends to be one of solidarity and altruism rather than selfishness and violence. At least until the authorities dive in and screw everything up for everyone. Solnit, who as I'm sure you all know is a fantastic writer and researcher, does a deep dive into case studies from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to Hurricane Katrina, with an emphasis on the experiences of ordinary people. I thought I knew a fair bit about the San Francisco earthquake—at least, I knew about the mutual aid stuff—but I had no idea that, for example, the chief firefighter died in the quake and the army came in and started making the fires worse because they had no coordination and didn't know how to fight fires. And also just shot people in the streets. Anyway, it's impeccably detailed and researched and very relevant to all of our interests right now.