Paige's Lit Blog 🔥

     Out of all the spheres of fantasy, sci-fi was nothing I was ever interested in. The cold and metallic suave of what sci-fi media I did know felt impersonal, that the only exciting things would be exploration and war. Those aspects have never been something that I wanted to experience. I don’t think either are avoidable in the medium, but Ninefox Gamble made them feel at least palatable. From what I can tell, the world that Yoon Ha Lee creates is a fascinating balance between the science of classic sci-fi and the magics of classic fantasy to make something engaging and enigmatic.      I never thought about how people living in space so long would have no need to stick to earth measures of time, but the way the calendar plays a keystone role in the magitech-like computers system is genuinely eye-opening. The fact that the minutes, days, and holidays can be coded into an operating system based on both computing and human belief is the most interesting pi...

 Wow! Midterm already! AAAAAA      I have attended all eight classes since the beginning of the year, missing none. Tallying up all of the books I have read, based on the Featured and Queer Pathways pages, I have sixty four points. As well, there were a couple of books I did not have a point total for as well as my Lord of the Rings marathon, so I guessed as follows. My stunted reading of Kwaidan I guessed two points, Nimona three points, and the marathon three points.   In totality, I got 80 points. (8 attendance, 64 books, 8 guessed) I hope I was accurate in my math, it has been a hot minute since I had to add that much. 

     I really wanted to get into Anansi boys, truely, but Niel Gaiman did not make it easy for me. It took until about half-way through the book to get interesting for me. I tried to get attached to the plot and characters but Fat Charlie, Spider, and Rosie were really unlikable basically until the end. I get that they are supposed to grow as people over the course of the plot, but there was nothing for me to hold onto as likable. Fat Charlie was both the straight man and the coward, which made me want to see him fail and get better more than anything, but I felt like the time it took for Gaiman to build up to that payoff was tiresome. I only stayed engaged for Grahame Coats who was the best part of the book.      In all of the build-up that Gaiman does in the first half, the parts from Graham Coats’s perspective are so camp in it’s villany that it was super enjoyable. Daisy’s perspective was a close second, though, because of her no-nonsense attitude. It ...

     Leigh Bardugo is the closest author I can say that I am an active fan of. I read the Six of Crows duology back when it first came out, and I am really fascinated by her other book The Language of Thorns. When I was younger, it was because of the cover art more than the actual text of the book. This week was definitely a break for me, so I wanted to revisit a childhood favorite, and it was honestly better the second time.      When I would try to convince my friends to read the book, I would always say that it was a fantasy heist book with teenagers who honestly are more mature than they should actually be. After re-reading it, I am honestly dumbfounded how Bardugo managed to write a mystery novel under the guise of a heist plot. I have a novice appreciation of story structure and have always loved how mystery novels are written. Going back through the book made me realize that the group of six deplorable teenagers could have been doing anything and th...

     The moment I said that I wanted to do a LOTR marathon for this class in my friend’s house it became an event. We thought about baking fun food and dressing up, marathoning them all in a day, and having a really good time. Then, my grandfather passed away the Sunday before we were going to start, plans changed to a two-day event because of the funeral, and I had no time to dress up let alone have time to actually do my school work. So to say mortality was on my mind was kind of an understatement. Knowing that JRR Tolkien served in WW1, definitely made me think that he had mortality on his mind a lot too. I ended up focusing a lot on the way Tolkien viewed death while watching the movie, silently though as to not alarm my friend and her family who I was watching with.      The three movies have definitely blended together in my mind, so I am just going to talk about the story as a whole instead of dividing it by installment. Since I had just finished Th...

     I honestly feel ashamed that I call myself a nerd and haven't read or watched anything by JRR Tolkien until this week. After reading The Hobbit, though, I really do understand what all the hype is about. The story feels like the backbone for so many high fantasy stories that have come after, both the good and bad parts. The book felt way shorter than it actually was because the sense of immersion was so strong. Now, that may have been because I was listening to a fan-made audiobook with music and sound effects, but I think it also has to do with how well thought out the actual world of Middle Earth is. What knowledge I have acquired of Tolkien has been from cultural osmosis, but I definitely know how much time he put into the worldbuilding shows in The Hobbit. Because Tolkien’s worldbuilding was such an enchanting part of his writing, I know there is a pressure for other fantasy authors to worldbuild as much as he did to even be thought of as a good writer.  ...

     Nimona had been on my “to read” list for an embarrassingly long time, and I am extremely happy that this class gave me an excuse to finally read it because it was an immense joy to read. I have been following Noelle Stevenson for a while on her socials and am a fan of the work she has been doing with She-Ra in terms introducing more queer representation into animated shows. Reading Nimona felt like I was transported back into 2015, when Adventure Time and Gravity Falls were the most influential shows of my tweenage self. It’s short length left a big mark on me, like a hug from a friend you don’t know if you’ll ever see again.      Even in publishing her book, in 2015 no less, Noelle Stevenson’s push for queer literature is there. She knows what a good enemies to lovers arc looks like and isn’t afraid to make it such a prominent part of her story. Now of course this is Harper Collins in 2015, so nothing explicit is shown, but the hints of love between B...

     I was really excited to read Redlands because I heard good things about it from my illustration professor. There is a lot to like in the artistic side of the comics, but I really did not like the actual writing that much. It didn’t really help that the subject matter did not match my tastes at all. Yes, I can stand sex and the stuff that comes with it, but I don’t really feel comfortable delving into underage sex work and actual graphic sex scenes. I can get that Redlands was using it to push the taboo themes of witches, but I feel like the more extreme examples were meant to be there for shock value with little to no payoff for it. That may be because there were only 5 issues of the comic available, but I think it went a little too far with the descriptions of Nancy’s diary entries about being sold to the sex trade.       I know a big part of witch stories are about embracing the taboo as a way defying social norms and encouraging self-empowermen...