#laura reads

[kashilascorner]

been three days of me being obsessed with this guy and his poltergeist girlfriend

[shiveringsoldier]

I haven’t read much new (or, technically, new to me) fantasy/science fiction in quite a while, and reading A Wizard of Earthsea and Dune back to back has reminded me of the excitement and the feeling of getting a little overwhelmed that comes with discovering a new world

[goldencherriess]

Reading "Ship of magic" and seeing Wintrow entering his badass era like:

[moonlight-frittata]

Trying out Storygraph as a book tracker/recommendation app (along with goodreads). I do like how you can setup the preferences profile and the conclusion it has for me atm is:  “Mainly reads fiction books that are dark, emotional, and reflective”

which feels pretty in line for me haha

--

initial impressions: I think goodreads has a better UI for navigating adding books and quickly seeing reviews, but storygraph makes it easier to add stuff to multiple lists. Also like the storygraph breakdown of the percentage people rate an attribute (like 67% people said character driven, 50% people said book is challenging, etc) and other stats is pretty neat. It has a bunch of graphs and stats of your reading that is available the more you add, like genres, pace, word length, and I guess you can see your moods or what you’re looking for as recommendations just off that. 

I also really liked the preferences questionnaire for recommendations, you can list the quick points of what you’re looking for and you can also explicitly say what you don’t want either in content (so all your typical things that may fall in a trigger warning for example) or just general genres (no young adult, etc). 

There’s also and option to fill in a more in-depth list you can fill out as a comma separated list of everything you’re interested in that you can fill in to your heart’s content.

Cons: Still getting used to the navigation, but feels a little clunky compared to goodreads. Also wish you could see the book summary on the recommendations page without having to click away to the individual page.

I like that you can import your goodreads info whenever, but it is a very manual process of uploading a csv, so it doesn’t happen automatically and you can’t as far as I can see do the reverse of uploading your storygraph info back to goodreads (i haven’t looked into if you can but if anyone already knows feel free to let me know!)

I use my kindle to checkout library books a lot so that also has the edge for goodreads of more easily seeing that info on the goodreads side of things.

Both have a year list challenge, and looks like storygraph you can get it to ping you with reminders if you want them to try and keep up a certain pace. 

Both have community social features, follow people. If anyone wants to add me on either just let me know 

[crowley1990]

It’s December so everyone put in the tags what your favourite book(s) you read this year is (are)

[exhaustedalien]

here's a couple of sketchy Laura's!! 2 me she is short and beefy and hairy and dresses butch just like her dad!!

[lessthanimpressedlesbian]

I feel so vindicated knowing that we all read those many microexpressions correctly. Laura was really playing an anxious queer woman in love with her best friend so accurately that we couldn't help but pick up on all the little nuances.

[leafspiritz]

sometimes a family is you, your scary girlfriend, her rat-bird-son, and her terrible mangled hell-hound that comes from the depths of her soul 💜

[gatheringbones]

[“I told my mother I thought I might be trans in a lengthy and overly apologetic email, which she didn’t quite know how to respond to. From her perspective, my transition had popped up out of nowhere, with no prior warning signs. She was convinced I had been brainwashed into transitioning, and agreed to meet my counsellor for a joint meeting with me, primarily to meet the person she felt had brainwashed her child into transitioning.

My mother describes her first meeting with me presenting as Laura as very difficult for her, due in no small part to her inability to see me as anything but her very traditionally masculine son in a dress. For a while she knew but did not talk to my father, which she found very difficult. She told me years later that she went through a period of mourning, feeling like her child had died, and that she was left with a stranger she did not know. It put a lot of strain on her, and on our relationship as parent and child.

Why the assumption I was brainwashed? Because of autism infantilisation.

Before we talk more about my journey coming out as transgender, we have to rewind a little bit to something else that went on at around the same point in my life: my diagnosis of Asperger’s. By the time my mother attended that appointment and met me as Laura for the first time, I had already been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which was part of the reason she was so worried about me. She was not aware of any statistical link between autism and gender dysphoria, and in her eyes I was a vulnerable young person with an autism spectrum condition who was being manipulated into transition because I was easily swayed, or lacking in ability to assess my feelings on the matter properly for myself. This is depressingly common: an adult’s assumption that having an autism spectrum condition means you’re incapable of proper self-understanding, or that you’re susceptible to being manipulated into believing things about yourself that you did not previously. You’re not trusted as being of sound mind to make choices about your own life, out of fear you’ve been manipulated.

Speaking to my mother years later, now she has somewhat settled down and got used to me going by Laura and female pronouns, she told me that her biggest fear, and the primary reason she agreed to attend that first joint session together, was that, as a youth with Asperger’s, my therapist was influencing me into believing that I was trans. She feared it was some kind of brainwashing that my gullible mind could not resist the allure of, rather than believing my own account of what I was experiencing.

I also faced this same issue with doctors when trying to access medical support through the NHS. I would have general practitioners, mental health doctors and gender specialists alike raise an eyebrow when I acknowledged my Asperger’s diagnosis, and then proceed to take plenty of extra time asking me lengthy questions about how my autism symptoms manifested, to ensure I was of sound enough mind to make permanent choices about my body. Apart from the obvious infantilisation of people with conditions like Asperger’s on display there, I always just explained it as being like the decision to get a tattoo. I am an adult, over the age of 18, who has been deemed sober and mentally sound, and as such I have every right to permanently inject colours into my skin that may never go away. Why should I not be trusted to take slow-acting meds that are somewhat easier to reverse? Still, the fact I had to fight to be believed that I was mentally sound enough to make that choice says a lot about misunderstandings about autism spectrum conditions, but highlights that to assert that transition is unique in the permanent nature of its change to the body is completely inaccurate.”]

laura kate dale, from uncomfortable labels: my life as a gay autistic trans woman

[kashilascorner]

Today in your daily dose of Unico: Unico visits his family for a day

[shiveringsoldier]

if I had a nickel for every time a character in a fantasy book suffered a shoulder wound inflicted by an undead force that causes lingering pain and psychological trauma afterwards, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice

[goldencherriess]

Book review || "Ship of magic" by Robin Hobb

"No man becomes a pirate because he wants to be ruled by another."

A pirate triology with ships that are alive? Sign me up!

This might be the best fantasy book I have read so far. Robin Hobb entangles you in a vivid world, in which ships are made from Wizardwood, thus receiving magical properties. But the cost of making such a ship is huge, the debt going on more generations.

The Vestrit family has Vivacia, a liveship. But when Captain Kennit, a mysterious pirate who has high ambitions, puts his mind to capturing a liveship, the fate of the family is in danger, as well as Vivacia's.

It's hard to say what I liked most about this book, because there are so many aspects of it, which deserve great attention. Robin Hobb is a master with a pen, she creates this detailed world from scratch. The world building is immersive and so well thought. It's magical, but realistic.

"Ship of magic" is a book which centers, mostly, on its characters. Each character is strongly outlined, with flaws and qualities, with fears and demons. Each one has a fate, and when push comes to shove, there might be consequences.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, I do. Even if you, maybe, aren't a fantasy reader? Absolutely! This is the perfect book to start your fantasy reading, because it's realistic and it talks about multiple aspects of life, such as how lovely and difficult having a family can be, greed, loss and slavery. But that's just the summary of it :)

5 stars ✨

[awsok]

Do you push deeper? Yeah.

[tenderflint]

i listened to transgender dysphoria blues religiously in high school just like everyone but it's really only now dawning on me how fucking huge it was for laura jane grace to come out very publicly as a trans woman in a male dominated punk scene in 2012 in fucking florida. she did that!! and now she's gay married

[abyssalzones]

who killed stanford pines?

[lesbianlotties]

it's fun to say Nat laughed too much at a joke that wasn't all that funny because she has a crush on Lottie... but consider: Nat knows Lottie is not doing well after losing Laura Lee and she's desperately trying to cheer her up somehow