So yesterday was a typically terrible Tuesday, the type of day I wondered why I'd gotten out of bed at all, including annoying co-workers, my apparent inability to make the right decision no matter that decision, pouring rain and chilly temperatures for June, all capped off by an outage in cable and internet in my area. It still wasn't working when I got up this morning. What the hell TWC? WHAT THE HELL?

So I took to my bed with a book and then went to sleep at around 10:15, which was lovely actually.

What I've just finished
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which is fantastically written (though sometimes a little overwritten), and overall brilliantly done – tragic and darkly comic and very, very smart. Though I'm not sure the ending works (though I'm not sure if the ending doesn't work because of how far into Kafkaesque absurdity it goes and I'm not a fan of that, or because I was interrupted about eleventy million times while I was reading it and therefore could never get into the flow of it). Or if it doesn't work because I'm so tired of rape being used as a plot point for men's angst. If this had been the story of the Viet Cong agent who is brutally raped in the scene I'm talking about, maybe I would have had a less kneejerk response to it? But as it is, this woman's rape is basically the ~secret~ our narrator has been keeping (or at least it's the admission that he did nothing to help her that his interrogators are looking for), and I am not interested in sexual assaults on women being used to further men's stories. I'm tired of it. So yes, consider this a warning that in addition to terrible violence, racism, colonialism/imperialism, and torture, there is also a brutal rape depicted on the page. Additionally, there's a depiction of a fictional rape during the whole ersatz "Apocalypse Now" section, as well as more 'fake' torture. If that doesn't scare you off, I do think it's a book worth reading.

What I'm reading now
It's back to A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, which I'm enjoying, and which I'll probably finish at lunch this afternoon.

I also was rereading Blue Lily, Lily Blue in bed last night (yeah, I might have sprung for hard copies in addition to ebooks on these), and I noticed that twice it gets St. Mark's Eve wrong, referring to it as being in May, when it's in April. I hope somebody got fired for that blunder. *cough*

I also noticed that Blue has a birthday in August (and Adam's is July 2nd [or 3rd? but he kind of sleeps the clock around then], as per TDT) and now I'm wondering - she turns 17 (I think?) but Adam turns 18, so I'm guessing he started school late? Because you don't normally get pushed back to the next year unless your birthday's after September (well, December in most places, but I know it's September in some). Because generally in the US, if you have a summer birthday, as I do, you're not 18 until after high school graduation, unless you got held back. Since Adam made it into Aglionby and is aiming for Ivy League schools, I can't imagine he got held back. So he must have started late. Or, the other explanation (which I actually lean towards) is that, like JKR, Stiefvater's not so good at timelines and dates. Just something to think about.

(I also cast them as Robins when I couldn't sleep the other night: Gansey=Dick, obviously; Adam=Jason [I know you thought I was going to say Ronan, but no, Jason Peter Todd is his own man, poor kid taken up by rich folk etc. etc.]; Noah=Tim; Blue=Steph; Ronan=Damian. It's just another way to sort them once you've exhausted HP houses and I was awake for a sad number of hours while not-sleeping.)

What I'm reading next
Probably the next Lady Trent book once I finish the one I've got now.

On the upside, I just finished a ton of work-related writing that was hanging over my head, so go me!

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