Reading Wednesday

[oyceter]

What I've read: I haven't actually finished anything this week, alas.

What I'm reading: Of course, I have not progressed in anything I was reading last week! Instead, I have started Tenea D. Johnson's Smoketown, and how have I not heard of her? (Okay, possibly because I have been out of the loop for years.) This is one of those books that feels like it was written JUST FOR ME: a city with layers and layers of history still mourning the plague that struck it decades ago, a city that has outlawed birds and now has callers in the dawn to add an approximation of birdsong back into the city soundscape, a man locked away in a tower living through the full-immersion experiences of others via virtu reals, an artist who can bring things to life via drawing and chemistry. It feels so much like Kari Sparring's Living with Ghosts, only much, much kinder to its women. And! Not only does it have all the gorgeous cityscapes that I love, it is populated with brown people! I am only about a third of the way in, and it's a relatively short book, but I fell for the prose from paragraph one and the book has only gotten better since.

What I'm reading next: Hopefully finishing the books I was in the middle of last week, along with this book, and then maybe continuing on to Johnson's R/evolution.

Comments

[coffeeandink]

Ooo, now I am more interested in Smoketown than ever.

[oyceter]

Read it and let me know what you think! I love the atmosphere of it.

[coffeeandink]

Maybe? I keep bouncing off everything. :( I might try going back to Regency romances.

[umadoshi]

Smoketown sounds really neat. *_* My library doesn't have it, though, so I'll have to try to remember to make a purchase request.

[oyceter]

\o/! Yay more book publicity!

[rachelmanija]

I never heard of that, but it sounds great! Though I did have a moment of "Birds are banned and the government controls birdsong."

[oyceter]

HEE! It is a post-apocalyptic landscape in ways; there are mentions of the climate change that made Leiodare (the city, set in Kentucky I think) into a tropical paradise, and then the plague that changes all that, and the government does sound oppressive. It's just... a very different feel from the usual YA dystopia. So far, stories of at least three people in the city living their lives, which is what I like a lot about it.

I'm behind in reading too.

[(Anonymous)]

I actually have not read the two books I got last January! What a nerd!!! Now, I'm getting interested in some other titles and know I should read the one's I got last. oh well. time waits for no page turner!