Streets are filled with --

Backreading my DW is like looking into a manic portal of incoherence, goodness. I suppose I rarely show up when life is normal, only when Yuletide is happening or something is on fire. So in an attempt to attempt something less on-fire, my started-but-incomplete reading list that I'm trying to get through before 2020 arrives:

Non-fiction...y

Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan - Yulia Frumer

Hugely, hugely interesting; I picked it up two? years ago and somehow just stalled out, so it's at the top of my list to just be polished off. I want to do so much art or graphical representation of the things I learned in this book.

King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild

tl;dr Leopold was a bad man. This one falls into the category of a sort of rah-rah non-fiction writing style that I dislike, but I am attempting to power through.

Six Memos for The Next Millennium - Italo Calvino, trans. forgot-because-not-on-hand

Can't help but feel this would read better in the original Italian, and if I were a touch more the literary type, but I'm enjoying reading essays again. Sort of remind me of Eco's essays, but not as keenly translated. The translator's notes are in themselves interesting; tldr "this was a group project across a few translation teams, but at the end I just threw the collective work out the window and did it myself for consistency, lol".

The Arthashastra - Kautilya, trans. L.N. Rangarajan

Talk about interesting but awful translation, omg. This one. This one! I feel like I'm reading at once this awesome manual on statecraft, and then on the other hand an insane copy-pasta-rearrange-a by the translator. I have to read the foot- and endnotes, of which there are many, just to get ahead of why things seem to suddenly stop making argumentative sense. EDITIORIALISING OF ORIGINAL TEXTS IS NOT FUN.

Fiction...y

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine

Picked it up because I knew it would be big for Yuletide; enjoying it so far. About 40% through, probably will finish before assignments are due.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

Catching up on all the things I'm dreadfully uneducated in. I've been pecking at this for a few years (!) now, but have to do it in small pieces because it's good but hurts so badly.

The Iliad - Homer, trans. Caroline Alexander

Been very excited about the new female translators, but then ten pages in and I sort of drift away...

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Written out like this, there isn't much! I just finished Exhalation: Stories - Ted Chiang and Calvino's Invisible Cities, which have been on my to-read list for a long time. I have a copy of Li He on my shelf from a year or two ago, but I don't think one ever "finishes" poetry collections, right? Right? I should persevere!

Just wrapped up Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem and that was a bloody fine read. Some really good, thought-provoking bits and baubles of physics – theoretical and applied! – and some of the finest damned description of multi-dimensional thinking I've ever read packed into delicious historical context with lots of sideways look at the progression of science as a social phenomenon. In a sci-fi book! In a sci-fi book! I haven't enjoyed myself this much in ages.

Going to pick up the second book now, and just unwind. It's been a long-ass 2016 already, but... Not bad. Busy, but not bad. Not doing too good on my original/fic writing resolutions, but work is going – well. I can't really internet anymore because I'm so tired coming back from the job, but I think it'll start to... burn in.

I still want to get more social goals fulfilled, but for now? This is... all right. It's been a while since life was... all right.