December Booklog

 
I received some excellent books as Christmas gifts. I usually ask for things I've been wanting to read  but don't quite desire enough to buy myself and are too popular still to be checked out of the library. So, this year I received The Night Circus, The Magician King, and A Discovery of Witches. I'm particularly excited about the latter, since I have heard it is basically Lady Historian porn and my adviser is BFFs with the woman who wrote it. Who is actually in real life a big name Lady Historian of Early Modern Europe and coincidentally, a lesbian. We'll see if that makes the het romance in the book more or less believable.

In other news, I gave my BFF of 26 years Kushiel's Dart for Christmas. A few months ago, she asked me "Have you read Fifty Shades of Gray?" Should I read it?" And I was like "HELL to the NO." Friends don't let friends read bad porn, amirite? I told her that if she wanted to read a book about S&M, she could do better. And I meant to send it to her ages ago, but forgot. I have a feeling she'll enjoy it- she's gotten into ASOIAF (though more so, the tv series) so she's no stranger to fantasy epics. Prediction: she will love Phedre/Joscelin and the religious aspects because of our messed up strict Catholic upbringing. She will approach Phedre/Melisande with the same disapproval and lack of comprehension she displayed every time I pursued an inappropriate relationship with a mercurial older woman. (i have a TYPE, ok? and her name is Queen Bitch) I seem to remember she went through an angel phase during high school. If she can make it through the first 300 pages of ornate prose and intrigue, I think I might have a convert.

( The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Dark Wife, Doctrine of Labyrinths )