I revisited a few old favourites in February and fell for a pretty cover that didn't quite deliver. I also listened to the 2024 Booker Prize winner.
Sorcery & Cecelia is a regency romp with magic. Lines upon the Skin I have reread now and then since my first reading in 1993. A group of young women work and travel together as cartographers, seeing the world and its marvels. It was the first fiction book I had read then (in 1993) where she/her were the dominant pronouns and true gender equality had been reached. The House of the Witch has a pretty cover and I listened to it on Spotify while working. I'm glad I didn't pay for it. So it was entertaining in some ways. One timeline focused on some of the 16th-century witch trials in England, and it reminded me of witch marks - fascinating! However, some elements kept niggling at me and in the end shattered my suspension of disbelief. I had a bit of a Katherine Kerr reread with Polar City Blues (fun science fiction thriller) and Snare (the adventure takes place generations after humans and cloned soldiers have a forced landing on a planet and make a treaty with the indigenous race and all the 'lies' start to unravel). My last read of February was 2024 Booker prize winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey. I listened to this while working because I left it too late to sit and read it. While skimming through the reviews on Goodreads, I can agree with the people who hated it and those who loved it. The prose is mostly lovely and languid, but perhaps the literary devices are not so smooth. Interesting prize choice.
P.s. Story graph seems to think I read some non-fiction - see piechart???
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