{"id":20982,"date":"2023-07-06T14:28:26","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T19:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20982"},"modified":"2023-07-06T14:28:26","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T19:28:26","slug":"my-half-year-in-books-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2023\/07\/06\/my-half-year-in-books-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"My Half-Year in Books, 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Your Humble Blogger\u2019s Half-Year in Books:\r\n<ul><li><i>The Mitford Affair<\/i>, by Marie Benedict (Historical)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Jhereg<\/i>, by Steven Brust (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Snug<\/i>, by Catana Chetwynd (Graphic)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Finna<\/i>, by Nino Cipri (SF novella)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Seesaw Log<\/i>, by William Gibson (Theater)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Unraveller<\/i>, by Frances Hardinge (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday<\/i>, by Saad Z. Hossain (SF novella)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Glove Shop in Vienna<\/i>, by Eva Ibbotsen (Stories)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Rust in the Root<\/i>, by Justina Ireland (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida<\/i>, by Shehan Karunatilaka (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Illuminations<\/i>, by T. Kingfisher (YASF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>In the Lives of Puppets<\/i>, by TJ Klune (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Imaginary Plays (Spain, Saltimbanques, Green Man)<\/i>, by Jim Knable (Play)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Babel<\/i>, by R. F. Kuang (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>When the Angels Left the Old Country<\/i>, by Sacha Lamb (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Six Crimson Cranes<\/i>, by Elizabeth Lim (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Gd of Vengeance<\/i>, by Sholom Asch, Donald Margulies (Play)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Prologue to \"King Lear\"<\/i>, by Ferenc Molnar (Play)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix<\/i>, by Bethany C. Morrow (Historical)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Lia and Beckett's Abracadabra<\/i>, by Amy Noelle Parks (Romance\/YA)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Unprotected<\/i>, by Billy Porter (Theater)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Dead Romantics<\/i>, by Ashley Poston (Romance\/SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Princess and the Fangirl<\/i>, by Ashley Poston (Romance)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Killers of a Certain Age<\/i>, by Deanna Raybourn (Thriller)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>After the War Is Over<\/i>, by Jennifer Robson (Romance\/Historical)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Evening at the Talk House<\/i>, by Wallace Shawn (Play)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Dangerous Business<\/i>, by Jane Smiley (Historical)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Pandora<\/i>, by Susan Stokes-Chapman (SF)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Hellion's Waltz<\/i>, by Olivia Waite (Romance\/Historical)<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Code Name Verity<\/i>, by Elizabeth Wein (Historical)<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>Thirty books by thirty-one authors, including one adapter\/translator of the original work who I\u2019ve sort of counted as a co-author. Of those, 24 are White, 7 are not. 11 are male, 17 are female, and 3 identify in some other way (I am aggregating here). 7 are both White and male (22.5%). However, it\u2019s more interesting (again, only to me) to look at the writers whose work I hadn\u2019t previously read\u2014of those 15 writers, 10 are White and 5 are not; 4 are male and 8 are female and 3 neither; and one is both White and male. It has been several years that I have deliberately avoided reading books by White Men whose work I haven\u2019t previously known. In the absence of such a practice, I was reading mostly books by White Men; with such a practice I am still reading plenty of books by White Men, and also I am enjoying at least as high a percentage of new books as I ever did. So that\u2019s all right.\r\n<p>My favorite books in that list are <i>When the Angels Left the Old Country<\/i> and\u2026 umm, that one was so far in the lead that I\u2019m not sure I want to put anything else alongside it. Not that I disliked all the others\u2014<i>Finna<\/i> was very good, and I enjoyed <i>After the War Is Over<\/i> quite a lot, and while <i>Unraveller<\/i> wasn\u2019t, I think, as good as I wanted it to be, it was still very good. But the <i>Old Country Angels<\/i> was so wonderful that I think I\u2019ll just leave it on its own.\r\n<p>As always, If y\u2019all have any questions to ask about any of these, or opinions to vent, I\u2019d enjoy chatting about them.\r\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I><br>-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger read some book over six months or so.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20984,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982\/revisions\/20984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}