riyukco

did not expect the final book in the witcher novels series to include ciri meeting the knights of the round table and introducing the black plague but here we are i guess

nah real talk the universe hopping was fun! it took me a minute to settle into the plot of this one but once i did i loved it. the ending isn't actually all that happy - 2/3 of the main characters are dead, ciri is traumatized forever and lying about it, the aforementioned black plague situation, ethnic and political tensions - but geralt and yennefer got to be together, ciri is alive and has her dignity intact, we found out what emhyr var emreis' deal was, AND we continued to get that really fun meta construction storytelling. ciri's story is a folktale being reconstructed after the fact by students and mages and historical records. that bangs.

obviously i'm not DONE done with these books as there are still a couple of short story collections left but i feel very accomplished anyway.  

SO. earlier this month i got LAZY and decided yeah whatever i don't need to do blog posts about the books i read anymore right??? ahem. wrong. there's a tumblr year end books read ask game going around and i'm realizing ah shit it is actually useful for me to keep a catalog of this stuff. so in the intervening time i read at least one library book that i think i've totally forgotten about and that makes me mad! i didn't write down anywhere what this book was or what i thought of it so clearly it did not leave that much of an impression and it's not in any of the series i've been in the middle of so i don't have any help there. f

also the library procrastinated real bad on filling my holds so that didn't help either

i DID however read two books a little earlier on this year that, because i'd bought the books, i reasoned, oh i don't need to write these down, i can skip it! LIES AND FAIRYTALES. so here goes.

#1: The View from Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior. I was expecting this to be less individual articles that all kind of say the same thing and reference each other and more like one of those affect theory ethnographies i read in college. the author made some good points i guess but the book was less "this is the unique situation midwest americans find themselves in" and more "here are my thoughts on current events. did you know i'm from st. louis?" overall underwhelmed. 

#2: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. my roommate recommended this to me forever ago, picked it up, read most of it on Halloween in the Boston Public Library main building. really quick read, philosophically very interesting what with the "no men" and "possibly not on earth" and "kept in weird not-prison" of it all, but no actual resolution or explanation of that world, it's just... the chronicle of the life of possibly the last woman on the planet. weird weird weird. i get why people enjoy it but it is too vibes based for me

both those books i bought on two separate occasions while exploring bookstores with my bf

in other life news: i am pulling back from eurovision entirely after an assembly of broadcasters voted to keep KAN in the contest. i had a hard enough time the past two years justifying this enjoyment to myself and now i think i need to step away. sucks, but like, if the ebu ever kicks israel out i'll go back. also, i've been watching heated rivalry. i've been doing this with my straight boyfriend. it is an adventure. but i think i'm more uncomfortable with the sex scenes than he is, which is kinda funny