Wednesday Book Meme...
Sep. 25th, 2024 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBooks
Smartbitches informed me of two Kindle Daily Deals that I couldn't pass up.
*
The Honjin Murders (Detective Kindaichi Mysteries Book 28)
by Seishi Yokomizo (Author), Louise Heal Kawai (Translator) - for about $1.99 at Amazon.
"This was originally published in the 1940s and is a Japanese police procedural and murder mystery. I also mentioned this one in a previous edition of Get Rec’d.
One of Japan’s greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time."
And...
*The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang is $2.99!
"Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.
In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.
Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.
Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.
Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.
Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire."
***
In other news, making my way through "Experimental Films" by the Canadian author, which is combination ghost story/folklore horror novel. It's about a former film professor/critic who becomes obsessed with historical footage of a series of experimental films by long dead filmmaker in the early part of the 20th Century. The story takes place in the 21st Century or sometime in the 2000s. (It feels so odd writing that paragraph.) The first part of the book - she's living in Toronto with her husband and autistic son. (I keep thinking it's NYC, so there must be similarities between the two that I'm unaware of?) Then she finally convinces people to take her seriously in regards to her thesis that Lady Whitcombs films are connected to Wendish folk tales, and there's a connection between her films and found footage in another filmmaker's films (he basically stole them and incorporated them into his own). Gets a grant, and convinces a former student to accompany her to a Quarry up in Ontario near the Whitcomb's former estate, to uncover information on the origin of the films, the rest of Whitcomb's notebooks, and additional footage.
That's when things get interesting, the protagonist/narrator can't remember anything past the point in which they landed. And has to rely on her associate's notes and footage to figure out what happened. The associate is no longer with her - so something happened to the associate, and the narrator is recuperating in the hospital.
Prior to this she'd been warned off from going multiple times by a ghost or hallucinations of one - who literally begged her not to go. It's kind of creepy, except there's way too much esoteric information about experimental filmmaking and Yedzi culture - which unfortunately bogged down the narrative, and I kind of got lost. Plus we have the protagonist's migraines, her problems with her autistic son and mother, and her long-suffering husband in the mix, and a jealous and somewhat vindictive rival filmmaker who wants her to include him or give him credit for it. So the creepy moments get a bit lost in the midst of all of that?
I think it needed a good editor. Which unfortunately is true of most books nowadays. Editing seems to be a dying art form? Writers do not always make the best editors of their own work.
Finally, before going to bed...
Almost done with the audio book "On the Edge" - the Illona Andrews books work really well as audio books. I can't say that about all books.
This one is an urban fantasy tale about a world that is Split between the Weird (total fantasy), the Edge (magical/non-magical) and The Broken (no magic). It has a lot of interesting world building. Different than most of the books in this genre. But it is a bit long, and I can tell this was among the author's earlier efforts.
Smartbitches informed me of two Kindle Daily Deals that I couldn't pass up.
*
The Honjin Murders (Detective Kindaichi Mysteries Book 28)
by Seishi Yokomizo (Author), Louise Heal Kawai (Translator) - for about $1.99 at Amazon.
"This was originally published in the 1940s and is a Japanese police procedural and murder mystery. I also mentioned this one in a previous edition of Get Rec’d.
One of Japan’s greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time."
And...
*The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang is $2.99!
"Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.
In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.
Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.
Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.
Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.
Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire."
***
In other news, making my way through "Experimental Films" by the Canadian author, which is combination ghost story/folklore horror novel. It's about a former film professor/critic who becomes obsessed with historical footage of a series of experimental films by long dead filmmaker in the early part of the 20th Century. The story takes place in the 21st Century or sometime in the 2000s. (It feels so odd writing that paragraph.) The first part of the book - she's living in Toronto with her husband and autistic son. (I keep thinking it's NYC, so there must be similarities between the two that I'm unaware of?) Then she finally convinces people to take her seriously in regards to her thesis that Lady Whitcombs films are connected to Wendish folk tales, and there's a connection between her films and found footage in another filmmaker's films (he basically stole them and incorporated them into his own). Gets a grant, and convinces a former student to accompany her to a Quarry up in Ontario near the Whitcomb's former estate, to uncover information on the origin of the films, the rest of Whitcomb's notebooks, and additional footage.
That's when things get interesting, the protagonist/narrator can't remember anything past the point in which they landed. And has to rely on her associate's notes and footage to figure out what happened. The associate is no longer with her - so something happened to the associate, and the narrator is recuperating in the hospital.
Prior to this she'd been warned off from going multiple times by a ghost or hallucinations of one - who literally begged her not to go. It's kind of creepy, except there's way too much esoteric information about experimental filmmaking and Yedzi culture - which unfortunately bogged down the narrative, and I kind of got lost. Plus we have the protagonist's migraines, her problems with her autistic son and mother, and her long-suffering husband in the mix, and a jealous and somewhat vindictive rival filmmaker who wants her to include him or give him credit for it. So the creepy moments get a bit lost in the midst of all of that?
I think it needed a good editor. Which unfortunately is true of most books nowadays. Editing seems to be a dying art form? Writers do not always make the best editors of their own work.
Finally, before going to bed...
Almost done with the audio book "On the Edge" - the Illona Andrews books work really well as audio books. I can't say that about all books.
This one is an urban fantasy tale about a world that is Split between the Weird (total fantasy), the Edge (magical/non-magical) and The Broken (no magic). It has a lot of interesting world building. Different than most of the books in this genre. But it is a bit long, and I can tell this was among the author's earlier efforts.