Reviews and Comments

More Captain Eva Innocente, more new Spanish swears to learn!

Well, I wanted this for a cosy read on Christmas eve for #Jólabókaflóðið (or #bookchocfest as we've taken to calling it) and halfway through it isn't disappointing. ❤️

Recommended to me by the nice folk at the local bookshop as a nice cosy fantasy read. Looking forward to tucking into it on Christmas eve!

Lightweight and easy to read YA fantasy

Not a bad introduction so far, but does do that irritating thing that many "primers" do of assuming that some terms of art are so basic that everyone is born knowing them. "Modernism" is used frequently to compare other schools of thought to, but not defined until chapter 7. "Realism" is even more frequently used and never defined at all. It's a minor point: you have to draw the line somewhere with assumed prior knowledge and I can look these things up, but it does disrupt the flow of reading. It would be better if a little bit of the introduction was given over to expected prior knowledge, and/or a glossary given for terms considered too basic to cover in the main text.

OK, onto the next! Hopefully this will give me some useful background for both Martin Paul Eve's Digital Humanities and Literary Studies and Scott Rettberg's Electronic Literature...

I found this really accessible: it's written like a serialised magazine column with each chapter covering a single concept (e.g. metafiction, intertextuality, unreliable narrator), introduced by an extended illustrative quote from the English language literary canon and covering just enough detail in 4-6 pages. Very easy to dip into, which is good because I sometimes struggle to read nonfiction in longer sessions.

Thanks to @Siobhan_M_HQ@beta.birdsite.live for the recommendation (though she will never see this...)

This is the first decent treatment of masking in autism that I've found, made better by the fact that one of the authors is #ActuallyAutistic. It gives a good overview of the (fairly minimal) research so far and I learned a lot from it.

My biggest frustration is that it's not very actionable: it's hard to see how the information presented could be used to ease the burden of masking, and the explicit advice for autistic adults is a single paragraph in the whole book.

Time to start learning a bit more about the humanities side of things if I want to get a better understanding of Digital Humanities. This was recommended as a nice, accessible introduction.

Reading this as a gentle introduction to literary criticism before diving into the more theoretical aspects.

Pretty formulaic and packed full of stereotypes. Slightly regretting pushing through to the end tbh

Well that was a great read, gripping yet cosy, well developed characters and brilliant worldbuilding.

So far it's really average, unimaginative political fantasy with a very standard set of cookie-cutter Houses competing to decide who gets to be in charge for the next few years. Hoping it improves!

Excellent storytelling! The Old Drift follows three families across three generations of Zambian history from British colony to the near future. Their stories intertwine in unexpected ways and show the human effects of colonisation and its aftermath in Central Africa.