helpless to the bass and the fading light

I have been reading a lot lately owing to Long Commute + Audiobooks. I have been trying to get around to this post for a long time and the backlog keeps getting longer. So:

Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, by Janna Levin. Short-ish nonfiction that's been on my shelf in print form for a long time, telling the story of the development of LIGO, an astronomical observing project that listens for the sound of gravitational waves. The book covers about 50 years, starting from "well we don't even have proof gravitational waves are real, but if they were, how would we notice them?" to "no one does messy breakups like middle-aged scientists firing each other for bad project management practices" to LIGO's first successful detection in 2015. Very approachable for laypeople, if you're curious about astronomy/astrophysics/Extremely Reputable Scientists Being Drama Llamas check it out.

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. Short novella about a man who lives alone in a labyrinthine house made of endless halls, filled with waves and statues. Picked this up upon seeing that LAIKA Studios is considering adapting it as a movie. I really liked it! Grabbed the ebook because the wait for the audiobook was super long, so this is one that I got through despite the commute instead of because of it. Gotta love a book with really unique narrative voice, and a book where the POV character has no frame of reference for the puzzle that is clearly unfolding around them.

Mob Psycho 100, volumes 1-3. Shonen manga about a teenager who's repressing his psychic powers in favor of getting swole. Found this on a list of "comic books we can check out infinitely" at my local library, picked it up because I like shonen OK and I was curious. It's pretty decent so far (I have checked out volume 4, so it's clearly doing something right) but it hasn't totally hooked me. I think Mob is so repressed and so good at ninja-dodging the plot that that he's eluding my grasp as a protagonist. (The only thing I knew about MP100 going in was that Reigen is a Tumblr sexyman, but... he's done sweet fuck-all so far, he's basically a non-entity. ...???)

Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws, by Adrienne Major. Nonfiction collection of essays from a historian who specializes in antiquity, myths, and archaeology. The first NF book I had finished in a long time. A collection of any kind will always be a mixed bag, but I would say the ratio was ~90% good, 3% boring or bad, and 7% standout hits. It felt very self indulgent of the author, but not in a bad way -- it's a collection of "I thought this was cool enough to write an essay about" topics, of course it's going to be self indulgent. It's fun to read stuff where the author is clearly having a great time. And she had a rich tapestry of topics! Mad honey, griffin claws from dinosaurs, Spartan tourist attractions, Ancient Roman foot fetishes, anti-weasel stereotypes and pro-weasel anecdotes... Made me think much more extensively about worldbuilding and creative ideas for my own stories. I have holds on her other essay collections already.

I said like a week ago I would post about recent stuff I've been reading! This isn't a full rundown but it's a start!

The Circle of Magic series, by Tamora Pierce

This past month I listened to all of the audiobooks in the first series in the Emelan universe. They're full cast audio, so Tamora Pierce reads the narration and each character has their own voice actor, and I was very skeptical of it going in but it turned out really good.

I always have a hard time explaining Circle of Magic in a way that captures all of its charms, but for me it comes down to the uniqueness of the setting. Pierce has said that, after writing several series set in a more typical western-European fantasy world and centering a lot of the plots on knights and warriors, she wanted to write something inspired by her research on medieval Mediterranean melting-pot cities and the Islamic Golden Age. She also wanted to write a sort of magic based on the care and expertise that goes into handcrafted art like textiles and metalwork. There's also a lot of emphasis on prioritizing volunteer work over combat: the monks in the temple where the stories take place are consistently doing humanitarian aid and disaster rescue, and combat magic is an absolute last resort.

As a kid they were absolutely foundational to my understanding of fantasy, which meant I was deeply confused when I started encountering more mainstream stuff. "Why are there knights everywhere? Where are the monks and the artisans? Why is everyone white? Why does the setting look like England? What's with all the swords???" With twenty years of hindsight, I stand by these questions.

And if you were wondering, these books still absolutely slap. They're really good at being novels for kids without feeling young, in a way that means they're still entertaining as an adult. They're also very respectful of their audience's maturity level -- good at bringing up or referencing dark topics in ways that kids can understand, without assuming that mentioning them would be too scary for the reader.