In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 42/52

26th May to 2nd June.  Four books this week!

The Virgin Gardener is a fabulous and silly guide to growing various plants in tiny spaces.  Mostly focused on flowers and presentation rather than crops.

Sleeping Beauty is the 5th novel in the 500 Kingdoms series.

Harvest Moon is a collection of three novellas set in the world of established series.  The only one I was familiar with before was 500 kingdoms.  I'm not planning on looking up the others.

Something Untoward is a collection of six short stories by Sophie Hannah.  Very short, very creepy.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 41/52

From 19th May to 26th May - 8 books this week.  A longer commute and no internet will do that.

Fortune's Fool is the 3rd book in the 500 Kingdoms series.  It mixes the little mermaid with some traditional Japanese fairytales.

The Undomestic Goddess I listened to as an audiobook while putting my new bed together.  It's like all Sophie Kinsella's - funny, slightly scatty heroines who come through when necessary.

The Outskirter's Secret is the second in Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series.  It's the kind of eighties fantasy-but-really-sci-fi that I adore.

Growing Veg & Fruit  is a very nice little guide.

The Heir is Kiera Cass's fourth Selection novel.  As a series it's something of a cross between Cinderella and The Bachelorette.  This wasn't as strong as the earlier novels.

The Last Enchantment is the final part of Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy.  I'm pretty sure I first read it fifteen years ago; I've certainly owned it for that long.

Ready Player One is a book I first read almost a year ago.  It's somewhat excellent.  It's also the book I read at the bookclub where I met the guy I now live with.

Finally, The Snow Queen.  The fourth part of the 500 Kingdom's series.  Not my favourite, but a passably entry.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 26th Year, Week 38/52

I read the first two 500 Kingdoms books last week, The Fairy Godmother and One Good Knight.  I love this series.  They're set in a world that runs on narrativium.  The first one is about Elena Kovis - who would have been a Cinderella if her prince hadn't been too young - becoming a Fairy Godmother and rehabilitating a spoiled failed-quester, second-son Prince.

The sequel, One Good Knight is about a princess in a Kingdom invaded by a Dragon.  I don't find it as gripping, but it's a pretty solid sequel.

I'd be carrying on with this series, but I'm moving in two weeks.  This means I should really finish my friend's copy of NOS4R2 so I can return it and not risk it going missing.  I'm also trying to finish Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep for a bookclub I'm hosting next week.

In Which We Discuss Eating Animals You Can Talk To

There are quite a few stories out there with characters who can speak to animals, but very few then go to deal with the dilemma of eating them.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three.

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is an excellent, novel-length Harry Potter fanfic which imagines that Lily was kind to Petunia, and as a direct result, Petunia married a scientist and was more loving towards Harry.  Harry Potter-Evans-Verres is a scientifically-minded rationalist who does lots and lots of interesting things at Hogwarts, and I very highly recommend giving it a read.  However, what we are concerned with here is what he does when he finds out about Parselmouth, and hears of other spells that can give animals cognisance.  He diligently researches exactly which foods are likely to have come from sentient creatures and avoids those he isn't sure of.

In Jinian Footseer, Jinian, who can talk to animals, doesn't eat anything explicitly mentioned as not being vegetarian in the first book.  In the second and third, she does explicitly eat meat.

In The Fairy Godmother, part of Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series, Elaina drinks dragon blood and begins to understand all animal speech.  After listening to the chickens for five minutes she decides it's okay to eat them because they're stupid.