Buffy: How was school today? Dawn: The usual. A big square building filled with boredom and despair. Buffy: Just how I remember it.

'The Killer In Me'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


-t - Feb 17, 2025 3:30:55 pm PST #28184 of 28195
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I should do that.

Meanwhile - I just came across The Orb of Caraido, a new novella? novelette? Shorter work of some kind set in the Goblin Emperor world. The mc seems to be a new character, a historian. I’m only a couple of pages into it, but I’m liking it so far


Consuela - Feb 17, 2025 10:38:05 pm PST #28185 of 28195
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

-t, I read that last week, it was nice. Not as emotional as TGE or the other novels, but a nice bit of world-building and characterization. Maybe the character will show up in one of the other novels.


-t - Feb 18, 2025 8:28:51 am PST #28186 of 28195
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I have totally forgotten anything I ever knew about how names and titles work but I'm just rolling with it hoping I'm not missing too much nuance.


JenP - Feb 18, 2025 9:50:28 am PST #28187 of 28195

I just finished Alien Clay by Adrian T, and I liked it. I generally have liked his books; they're inventive. Then I read a short, fun romp called Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke about a guy who gets stuck in Slack. Cute.

Now I want to find my next read, but I don't know what I'm in the market for. I mean, I'll always read sci-fi, but I'm feeling like I should branch out. Maybe I should browse my own damn shelves. I have a few audio books on hold from Libby, but I'm way far back in the queues.


-t - Feb 18, 2025 10:12:08 am PST #28188 of 28195
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

I really liked Alien Clay, both for the alien stuff and the strictly human bits. Very thinky.


JenP - Feb 18, 2025 12:41:35 pm PST #28189 of 28195

I agree. And interesting how he kept me rooting for the home team even after the effects of the long march home -- you know, normally that's be "Oh, no! How do we fix our heroes!" But they... didn't actually need fixing. I mean, I guess maybe we're supposed to feel a bit ambivalent... maybe reading it in the current state of the world pushes me to the side of Kiln biology!

Point of order: What's the whitefont rule of thumb up in here? I mean, obviously, Moby Dick, I don't need to WF, but is there a...dare I say the word... consensus? General vibe? Preference?


-t - Feb 18, 2025 12:48:14 pm PST #28190 of 28195
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

The current state of the world certainly makes the human politics (and effects on scientific inquiry) seem extremely relevant! Kiln biology and what usually gets explored in transhumanism make an interesting dialog, for sure.


JenP - Feb 18, 2025 1:09:02 pm PST #28191 of 28195

The current state of the world certainly makes the human politics (and effects on scientific inquiry) seem extremely relevant!

Eerily and frighteningly so.


Calli - Feb 19, 2025 5:41:32 pm PST #28192 of 28195
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs

I’m now in two book groups, one in NC and one in MI. For the MI one we read “When Women Became Dragons,” and for the NC one we read The Fourth Wing, about people who ride dragons. So there’s a bit of a theme for February. I liked the latter better. The former seemed to me to use a bit of fantasy to tell a non-fantastical story of women’s repression in mid-20th century US. It had pacing problems and the symbolism was rather heavy handed, but the protagonist was interesting.

The latter is much more of a classic fantasy, complete with a map of The Continent in the front. It had some YA tropes and vibes, but I enjoyed the characters, their relationships, and the overall writing better.

It was kinda fun to compare and contrast them, though.


meara - Feb 19, 2025 8:48:41 pm PST #28193 of 28195

I have read Fourth Wing but not the sequels. It was entertaining but not super more so than other similar books I've read, so I don't quite get why it's getting SOOO much love? But whatever.

I spent part of the afternoon downloading about 5 years worth of books from my amazon account--I didn't bother with most of the trashy romances I'll never re-read, and the last couple years I've bought relatively little because I read more from Kindle Unlimited and the library, but it was still a lot of books. And apparently I hadn't done it in 5 years. And then I made sure Calibre was up to date and de-DRMd them all. Had a random bunch that wouldn't, but when I added my kindle serial number to the de-DRM plugin, it worked. Yay! It's stupid, because it's not even like I'm doing anything other than making it easier to load these onto my iPad or future reading devices if I want? (yes, I can read in the kindle app on my iPad but sometimes I want to just download a series and not see all the other many books, so I side load from Calibre and read from iBooks). I'm not out here pirating my book hoard. The most I've done is let my sister read some of them. I don't even know how to pirate books these days! (Let's not talk about years ago, what I may have known or done). But it annoys me and makes me WANT to give copies of more of these books to friends. Hrmph. I feel curmudgeonly, but it did help distract me from the burning of our republic!