Monthly Archives: September 2019

Library Loot Wednesday

by

1

Three books this week that I’ve had my eye on for quite some time now! Shatter the Sky was billed as “angry bisexual dragon riders” which – yes, that’s relevant to my interests. A Memory Called Empire is apparently Aztecs in Space? Which sounds fascinating. It’s also by a local author, or rather, was. She’s moving to New Mexico very soon, according to her website! I kept seeing her name on local author events, but hadn’t read the book yet. Of course this is how the timing works out. Ah, well. The last book, amusingly picked up on the same day I turned Hollow Kingdom back in, is The Storm Crow – fantasy with crow riders. Turn a crow book in, check a crow book out. I’m happy with that!

TTT – Books I Enjoyed That Are Outside My Comfort Zone

by

5

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is, as the title says, Books I Enjoyed That Are Outside My Comfort Zone.

So right off the bat, we have the book I reviewed yesterday, Hollow Kingdom. Joining it, for many of the same reasons, are World War Z and I Am Legend. Though those last two gave me nightmares, and Hollow Kingdom did not. All three are excellent zombie apocalypse books, but Hollow Kingdom has enough eccentricities to make it stand out from the pack. (To begin with, it’s narrated by a crow!)

Also outside my comfort zone, because they brought up things I’d rather forget about my childhood, are Educated, a memoir, and The Book of Essie, which is fiction but felt all-too-familiar.

Tears We Cannot Stop, Eloquent Rage, and This Will Be My Undoing are all about racism in America. I’m not sure “Outside my Comfort Zone” is exactly the right term, but “made me uncomfortable” is. I read them on purpose, knowing they would. It’s hard to read about racism as a white person without being profoundly uncomfortable at what we’ve done in America. It’s some pretty abhorrent stuff. All the more reason to read it.

astroI read An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth as part of the Read Canadian challenge. Commander Hadfield is a Canadian and wrote the book after his stint on the International Space Station. I’m not usually interested in nonfiction about space, but I really enjoyed Hadfield’s voice.

Last on my list is an entire series, actually. I haven’t read a lot of translated books, though I’d like to read more, and I also don’t usually read murder mysteries. So a series of historical murder mysteries originally written in German? Definitely out of my comfort zone. But The Hangman’s Daughter series is one of my favorite series ever. I’ve featured it in a few Top Ten Tuesdays now, because it’s just that good.

This was actually a really hard Top Ten to write, because I don’t consider many subjects “outside of my comfort zone.”  I read so eclectically in general! I’m looking forward to reading what other people post today.

Book Review: Hollow Kingdom

by

1

Hollow KingdomHollow Kingdom
by Kira Jane Buxton
Apocalyptic Fiction
308 pages
Published August 2019

As a rule, I prefer my apocalypse fiction sans zombies. Which is a little odd, given how much I love my lady necromancer books. But something about uncontrolled hordes of zombies gives me nightmares, almost every time.

Hollow Kingdom is a rare exception. In a way, that’s logical; this is NOT your average zombie apocalypse story! For one, it’s told from the viewpoint of a crow. While it’s possible he could be killed by a zombie, he’s not going to get turned into one. As they explain in the book, this is an evolutionary change, not a contagious virus-like change. Which is another way in which it’s different than normal zombies. The book also focuses on S.T. (it’s short for Shit Turd!) and his bloodhound companion, Dennis, trying to survive in the new world, rather than your average survivors-fighting-off-zombies and trying not to get turned themselves.

It also might just be the sardonic humor with which S.T. views the world. He calls humans “MoFos” because that’s what his owner called other humans. Most other animals call them Hollows because they can’t access the Aura – a kind of communication network that animals can tap into to talk to one another.

S.T. is an incredible character, straddling the human and animal worlds and not quite belonging in either. He flits across Seattle, searching for answers to what has befallen the MoFos, hitting various popular landmarks (my Friday 56 addresses his visit to Pike Place Market!) and encountering a huge variety of animals in his journey. Every animal has their own personality; it’s incredibly well done.

The author attempts world-building; there are a couple of seemingly random, very brief chapters detailing the experiences of other animals in wildly different locations, but the book is mostly based in Seattle with S.T. and his friends. It only detracts from the story a very minor amount; the characterization of S.T., Dennis, Kraai, Ghubari, and many others are where the story shines.

I honestly loved this book. I picked it up despite the plotline, because it was told from the viewpoint of a crow, and I love crows. I’m so glad I did, because this is really, really excellent, and there are so few zombie stories I will say that about!

From the cover of Hollow Kingdom:

S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures. He spends his days hanging out with his owner, Big Jim; avoiding the slobbering affection of Big Jim’s loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis; trading insults with Seattle’s wild crows; binge-watching nature documentaries; and binge-eating the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos®.

Then, on a beautiful summer evening, Big Jim’s eyeball falls out of his head, and S.T. starts to feel like something isn’t quite right. When his tried-and-true remedies – from beak-delivered beer to an inventive cocktail of stolen pharmacy drugs – fail to bring Big Jim back to health, S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out with his trusty steed, Dennis, to find a cure.

Outside the safety of his home, the city of Seattle is a wild and frightening new world. Big Jim’s neighbors, victims of the same mysterious malady, are now devouring everything warm-blooded in their path, and the once orderly suburbs have become feral jungles. Meanwhile, local wildlife is abuzz with cryptic rumors, which the cowardly S.T. has no choice but to follow if he wants to rescue the only world he knows from certain destruction.

Brimming with hope and heart, this irrepressible debut introduces humanity’s improbable hero in the form of a foulmouthed crow with a moderate-to-severe junk food addiction, who believes that – despite all its flaws – the world is worth saving.

Survival Sunday

by

11

So I’ve talked about this project in passing a few times, but I thought I’d go a little more in depth on what I’m doing with my Survival Library. (So when you see it mentioned, you’ll know what I mean. I’ll probably link back to this post in the future.) Today is going to be quite the departure from my usual fantasy, young adult, and minority-driven reading, so – hold on to your hats!

hold onto your hat

I’ve got some very low-grade general anxiety. Like most millennials, I suppose. I worry about the future. Between climate change, economic uncertainty, political stupidity, and my own chronic health issues (that necessitate a certain diet and medications) – the future is bleak.

end is near

My friends and I often spend time speculating what we’ll do if society collapses. We have some friends with a large house and a few acres, who is next door to 30-some vacant acres of farmland; we’ve mostly decided we’ll all be flocking to their house and setting up a co-op. So then we start cataloging all the skills of our friends. We have leatherworkers, potters, weavers – we know one person who knows how to take wool from “sheep to shirt” AND has a lot of canning and food preserving knowledge, so we’ll be nabbing him immediately! My husband can brew, distill, shoot, cook, bake, as well as just be an able-bodied person.

So what do I bring to the table? I’m a chronically ill introvert who reads a lot.

i have no skills

We’ve decided that’s my role. I’m the librarian and keeper of knowledge. Because if society collapses, we have to assume the internet does too. Books will be important.

books best weapons

To bring all these bits together, planning and collecting a “Survival Library” of books about useful skills keeps my general anxiety in check so I don’t wind up with three pallets of MREs in my basement. I’ve made some book lists, though I’m still adding to them, and I’ve decided buying one book a month for the survival library will build it up fairly quickly but also cheaply. I have the lists on both Goodreads and Riffle – but Riffle lets me add notes about the books right in the list, so that will probably be where I’ll have the most information about them. As I pick up books, I’ll write a few sentences about each book and why it’s on the list. (Riffle also currently has my Polyamory Book List, my Activism/Civil Rights list, and my LGBTQIA+ list) It’s a big project, but it’s a simple way to keep my mental health up, and it could someday be useful.

maybe someday

So when I say Survival Library, that’s what I mean! I have several categories.

  • Homemaking involves things like making soap and candles and home goods, sewing, and pottery.
  • Gardening is the obvious, plus some aquaponics.
  • Construction includes building things from fences to sheds to houses to kilns.
  • Utilities are books on clean water, electricity from sources like windmills and solar, heat, refrigeration, and plumbing.
  • Cooking Skills and Recipes is what it says, plus canning, preserving, brewing, distilling, and foraging.
  • Animal Husbandry is the obvious. Mostly normal farm animals, but also books on dogs and cats, since I’m sure there will be pets too. Also beekeeping.
  • Medical Books are just that. If society collapses, we can’t just go see a doctor. We’ll need some medical knowledge, and we don’t actually have any doctors, veterinarians, or dentists in our immediate friend circle. That’s one big skill we’re lacking. It’s also not a very big list yet, because I don’t know what would be good books for it!
  • General Books are books that cover such a wide range of topics they’re hard to otherwise categorize.
  • Background skills are books on big topics. Biology. Geology. Meteorology. Geography. I have a lot of local interest books in this category as well. History of the area will help to know what to expect in the future.

I may create more categories in the future, or separate out lists into micro-categories if they get too big, but this is what I have so far. I only own about twenty of these books so far, and those are mostly in the gardening and cooking categories, which is why the lists are currently in just list mode, with no notes. Once I have enough knowledge about the individual books, I’ll go through and add notes about them. I’m sure I will be adding books, too!

more books

This is basically a giant expansion of my Homesteading Book List. I’m not sure if I’ll incorporate these book lists into the blog itself eventually or if I’ll keep them externally hosted, but Riffle is definitely their main home for now.

Does anyone else discuss with their friends what they’ll do when society collapses, whether that be from climate change, politics, or zombies? (Hope it’s not the last one – I’m too slow!) Have any suggestions or feedback for my lists?