2021 Reading -- April
May. 5th, 2021 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morganminstrelAnd here's April's reading! Not quite as much as March, but lots of good stuff!
1. Superboy: A Celebration of 75 years, Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: Superhero/Comics. FINISHED: Apr 2. REVIEW: The interesting thing about this collection is I have maybe a bit more than half of the stories in either other reprints or in the original comics, but seeing them collected here together was a lot of fun. It's stories of Clark, Connor, and Jonathan Kent, as well as the Superboy of Earth-Prime (both the DC Comics Presents issue--yay!--and an issue of Infinite Crisis--sigh), and I enjoyed the heck out of it. (And yes, a few of the 70s LSH stories were part of my big reread last year.)
2. The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. GENRE/MEDIUM: Poetry/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 9. REVIEW: Yes, I got the little book of the Inaugural Poem. It does lose a little somehting in not hearing Gorman read it, but it's still an honestly great and inspiring work. I absolutely love her aliteration as well as her changing up rhyming schemes. It's just...a really good poem.
3. The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity by Jon Peterson. GENRE/MEDIUM: RPG History/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 11. REVIEW: This book is SO GOOD. It's a worthy companion to Peterson's larger history, "Playing at the World," but, unlike that book, this is focused on the period between (about) 1971 and 1981, from just before D&D's creation/publication to it's ear;y 80s popularization. The book is about the development of both role-playing as a concept, and role-playing games as a genre, dealing both with their emergence from, and connection to wargaming and their link to SF fandom's history as well. Peterson has access to a huge number of fanzines and prozines from the time, and his coverage is excellent. My only critisicm is that the book could have used a better copy editor; as I got further in, I noticed more and more tiny errors, words dropped or added in sentences. In one egregious case, the name "Ralph" was subsituted for the earlier cited "Randy"! Even taking that into account, this book is an absolute necessity if you're interested in TTRPGs, in theory and practice.
4. True Crime by Max Allan Collins. GENRE/MEDIUM: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 15. REVIEW: Yep, I bought the second Nate Heller book, and I enjoyed it immensely, though maybe not as much as the first one. This book is essentially two connected halves. The first half, I loved, loved, loved. The second half felt so suspenseful to me to be, at times, almost too much! (Nate is essentially undercover with very dangerous people.) I still really enjoyed it, but not as much as the first part. That said, I loved the setting of 1934 Chicago, I loved seeing the historical figures and seeing Nate wind his way through it all. Will I get the third book? Chances point to yes!
5. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2021 by Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: SFF/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 21. REVIEW: A good issue, though at least one of the stories had me very unsatisfied/unhappy. It's the first issue for new editor Sheree Renée Thomas, who contributed a Letter to the Editor at the beginning. Most of these tend to be a statement of editorial intent, but this was more an odd stream of consciousness thing that ended with the message (essentially) that she'd continue doing what the magazine had been doing already. Not exactly a clarion call from a new editor. (As for the story I had issues with, it presented ideas and then did nothing with them. It felt like something that would have been published, as is, 15 years ago. The rest of the issue was excellent with some fine stories though!)
6. Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson. GENRE/MEDIUM: Memoir/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 23. REVIEW: Richard Thompson's memoir, covering the Fairport days, the early years with Linda, and his conversion to Sufi Islam. But there's so much more. Richard was very much in the right place at the right time--late 60s London. He encountered a lot of people (he even had an invite to Paul McCartney's birthday party in 1968--which he didn't attend due to social anxiety), and played gigs with all kinds of bands. (Including the infamous Fairport/Led Zep unplanned jam session, the tapes for which allegedly are in either Joe Boyd's or Island Record's archives.) It was a fun book, and he didn't shy away from the hard subjects--the 1968 car accident that killed 2 people, for example. Richard has said he doesn't plan to write anymore, since the wounds are still a bit raw (he does, briefly, discuss his and Linda's problems, but very briefly), but I'm hopeful for another volume someday.
That's it for this month! A good variety, I think. Questions? Comments? Anyone want a mint?
1. Superboy: A Celebration of 75 years, Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: Superhero/Comics. FINISHED: Apr 2. REVIEW: The interesting thing about this collection is I have maybe a bit more than half of the stories in either other reprints or in the original comics, but seeing them collected here together was a lot of fun. It's stories of Clark, Connor, and Jonathan Kent, as well as the Superboy of Earth-Prime (both the DC Comics Presents issue--yay!--and an issue of Infinite Crisis--sigh), and I enjoyed the heck out of it. (And yes, a few of the 70s LSH stories were part of my big reread last year.)
2. The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. GENRE/MEDIUM: Poetry/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 9. REVIEW: Yes, I got the little book of the Inaugural Poem. It does lose a little somehting in not hearing Gorman read it, but it's still an honestly great and inspiring work. I absolutely love her aliteration as well as her changing up rhyming schemes. It's just...a really good poem.
3. The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity by Jon Peterson. GENRE/MEDIUM: RPG History/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 11. REVIEW: This book is SO GOOD. It's a worthy companion to Peterson's larger history, "Playing at the World," but, unlike that book, this is focused on the period between (about) 1971 and 1981, from just before D&D's creation/publication to it's ear;y 80s popularization. The book is about the development of both role-playing as a concept, and role-playing games as a genre, dealing both with their emergence from, and connection to wargaming and their link to SF fandom's history as well. Peterson has access to a huge number of fanzines and prozines from the time, and his coverage is excellent. My only critisicm is that the book could have used a better copy editor; as I got further in, I noticed more and more tiny errors, words dropped or added in sentences. In one egregious case, the name "Ralph" was subsituted for the earlier cited "Randy"! Even taking that into account, this book is an absolute necessity if you're interested in TTRPGs, in theory and practice.
4. True Crime by Max Allan Collins. GENRE/MEDIUM: Mystery/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 15. REVIEW: Yep, I bought the second Nate Heller book, and I enjoyed it immensely, though maybe not as much as the first one. This book is essentially two connected halves. The first half, I loved, loved, loved. The second half felt so suspenseful to me to be, at times, almost too much! (Nate is essentially undercover with very dangerous people.) I still really enjoyed it, but not as much as the first part. That said, I loved the setting of 1934 Chicago, I loved seeing the historical figures and seeing Nate wind his way through it all. Will I get the third book? Chances point to yes!
5. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2021 by Various. GENRE/MEDIUM: SFF/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 21. REVIEW: A good issue, though at least one of the stories had me very unsatisfied/unhappy. It's the first issue for new editor Sheree Renée Thomas, who contributed a Letter to the Editor at the beginning. Most of these tend to be a statement of editorial intent, but this was more an odd stream of consciousness thing that ended with the message (essentially) that she'd continue doing what the magazine had been doing already. Not exactly a clarion call from a new editor. (As for the story I had issues with, it presented ideas and then did nothing with them. It felt like something that would have been published, as is, 15 years ago. The rest of the issue was excellent with some fine stories though!)
6. Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson. GENRE/MEDIUM: Memoir/Prose. FINISHED: Apr 23. REVIEW: Richard Thompson's memoir, covering the Fairport days, the early years with Linda, and his conversion to Sufi Islam. But there's so much more. Richard was very much in the right place at the right time--late 60s London. He encountered a lot of people (he even had an invite to Paul McCartney's birthday party in 1968--which he didn't attend due to social anxiety), and played gigs with all kinds of bands. (Including the infamous Fairport/Led Zep unplanned jam session, the tapes for which allegedly are in either Joe Boyd's or Island Record's archives.) It was a fun book, and he didn't shy away from the hard subjects--the 1968 car accident that killed 2 people, for example. Richard has said he doesn't plan to write anymore, since the wounds are still a bit raw (he does, briefly, discuss his and Linda's problems, but very briefly), but I'm hopeful for another volume someday.
That's it for this month! A good variety, I think. Questions? Comments? Anyone want a mint?
