4 DNFs and a non-DNF!
Apr. 20th, 2026 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lannamichaels- A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire by Emma Southon (2023): Did not finish, through no active fault of the book's own. The author does her absolute best to present a whole lot of misogyny with humor and clarity, but it does not hide the fact that this is all a lot of misogyny being presented. I skipped around, read a few chapters, and just couldn't stomach it. But what I read of it was good!
- The Lady With the Gun Asks the Questions: The Ultimate Miss Phryne Fisher Story Collection by Kerry Greenwood (2022): Did not finish. These are short stories, some very short. It poses an interesting question to the reader of what, precisely, makes a mystery/detective book. Should we see the process of the mystery being solved? Should we be able to solve the mystery? Do we need interiority in the solving process? This book has none of that! The stories are stories, very short, as we watch Phryne Fisher encounter a crime/confusing event (I hesitate to even call them mysteries) and then relay the solution, with a minimal amount of detectiving. Some stories have more than others. Some are just essentially lists of events. The short stories are not bad, in of themselves. And not all of them are murder mysteries! They are, however, not at all what I want in my quest for "can I please have a mystery book that isn't a murder mystery".
- The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong (2025): I have gotten this out from the library twice and had to return it before getting more than a chapter or two into it. I may have to accept the fact that I don't find it very interesting or gripping. But maybe... maybe the third time out from the library... I'll actually read it.
- The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson (2023): DNF. Speaking of acceptance of my literary tastes, I likely must also accept the fact that I don't find Brandon Sanderson books entertaining to read. I read some of it. I flipped to the end, and the ending part did not clearly follow at all from the beginning, so I am certain many many things happened in the meanwhile to get from point A to point B. However, I don't really care. I guess I was hoping for something more like the Tough Guide To Fantasyland or Discworld or something, you know... funny, based on the title. It's a shame because this is, iirc, the third Sanderson I was "meh, this is boring" on, and if I could like his stuff, there would be so many books for me to read.
- Strange Houses by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion (2025): I finished a book! I liked it! This is a "murder mystery" book told via The Author getting interested in a floor plan, talking to someone who is convinced it means the house was being used to murder people, then a bunch of interviews/discussions with people about floor plans of multiple houses and if the floor plans mean that the house must have been used to murder people. This started off as a really convoluted, very "why would they go to all that effort of hiding a child's existence" and then swerved into fantastic "wait so what actually happened" territory, including how much do you trust various sources and various documentary evidence, and ends with a great highlight on "yeah we don't actually know how much of what was presented here is true and what was fabricated and if so by whom and when". There's this hanging plot hole that the epilogue sort of jumps on top of as well, to wit: ( Read more... )
This book is pretty short, which is contributed to by when it refers back to a floor plan, it shows that part of the floor plan, which makes it really easy to follow along but also, frankly, pads the page count. Quick, zippy read, more of a puzzle-that-never-gets-solved book than a murder mystery.
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