{"id":4407,"date":"2026-07-01T14:27:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=4407"},"modified":"2026-07-01T14:27:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:27:02","slug":"books-read-late-june-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=4407","title":{"rendered":"Books read, late June"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jorge Aguirre and Andres Vera Martinez, Monster Locker<\/em>. A cute, fun middle-grade graphic novel in the same sort of shape of “young person deals with the legends of his personal ancestors as well as his individual self and contemporary aspects of culture” that the Rick Riordan Presents line of (prose) novels have done so well. If the library gets the sequel I will probably keep reading this series–it’s very charming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.K. Johnston, Pretty Furious<\/em>. Oh geez can Johnston write small towns. Can she ever<\/em>. The eye for detail and social dynamics just blew me away. This is not the kind of small town fantastika that she started with, it’s mimetic fiction, but that’s okay, I did not need dragons, a group of teenage girls supporting each other and hell-bent on justice was entirely enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabel J. Kim, Sublimation<\/em>. I really liked this science fiction novel about doubling of selfhood and immigration, and I felt like she walked a very difficult line very successfully, of being aware of some of the really<\/em> worse outcomes for immigrants right now without making them the focus of a book where she clearly wanted to talk about a different but also at times difficult shape of immigrant experience. It’s vividly written, and I recommend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fonda Lee, The Last Contract of Isako<\/em>. Fonda Lee thinks about the applications and consequences of violence so well<\/em>. The action scenes in her books are never tacked on, they’re always very much to the point and illuminating the thoughts she’s having about violence in systems and individuals, and I think it’s just so beautifully done. This is a science fiction hired goon book, more or less, and I had a lot of fun with it but it was not the “oh you rogue with your clever quip” trope that the speculative genres sometimes see with hired violence, and that was all to the good too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.C.R. Lorac, Bats in the Belfry<\/em>. Kindle. This sure is another Golden Age mystery that I enjoyed for what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yotam Marom, For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness<\/em>. This book walks the line between activist call to arms and personal memoir. I think Marom’s personal experience in activism and organizing can be extremely useful, but there are times when the type of personal discussion involved muddies the waters a bit and makes it harder for me to recommend this to as many people as might have benefitted from the other side of it. Ah well, still interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freya Marske, Bodies of Magic<\/em>. Discussed elsewhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David M. Perry, The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook<\/em>. David (who is a friend) is not kidding with this subtitle. If you’re an academic looking for straightforward, concrete advice about writing for the broader public, he’s got your back, clearly from experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters<\/em>. Reread. Gosh this is simultaneously not-Shakespeare and all-Shakespeare-in-a-blender. He got better with time but I still enjoyed rereading this, even though it turned out not to apply to a potential project at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Price, A Prospect of Vengeance<\/em> and The Memory Trap<\/em>. Rereads. Finishing up the series reread, I feel like these last two sort of…illuminate the line between “ramifications and consequences” (one of my favorite series elements ever) and “rehash of previous events,” which I sort of felt like these were. Poor Price, the world he was writing about had fallen apart while he was writing it. I still like the early part of the series, but I think the later ones are unlikely to draw me on a reread, which is fine, knowing where to stop is good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon<\/em>. A linked-story novel about settling a planet and its environmental-social relations for the humans doing it. Really liked this, even though I wanted it to be a bit more of a unit than it turned out to be. I’ll enjoy the reread more knowing to expect what it actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs<\/em>. Kindle. Light-hearted and humorous stories doing the thing his plots do basically all the time. If you’re in the mood for the thing he does, he sure is doing it here. (For me this made it a great thing to read in my hotel room during Fourth Street, a break from the intense kind of thinking that convention produces.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jorge Aguirre and Andres Vera Martinez, Monster Locker. A cute, fun middle-grade graphic novel in the same sort of shape of “young person deals with the legends of his personal ancestors as well as his individual self and contemporary aspects of culture” that the Rick Riordan Presents line of (prose) novels have done so well. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-4407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4408,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions\/4408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}