Wednesday book meme thing - unexpected holiday job edition

Hello, book-friends! Much of the past week and a half, in amidst classes and work and social engagements and massage bookings, has been spent trying to set up our Christmas tree. Short version, it's a quite-well-made and also huge (nine feet tall, five across at the base) artificial tree that came pre-lit with incandescent bulbs; sadly, the bulbs were nowhere near as well made as the tree, and in addition to being obscenely expensive to light, after ten years of use over half the strings weren't lighting. We spent a few days trying everything we could think of (replacing bulbs, replacing fuses, even rewiring a few parts) to fix the built-in lights, with no luck...so it was either time to buy a new tree, or strip the old lights off and re-wire it with new lights. Since we're hoping to buy a place in the spring, we decided the latter made more sense - it'd kind of suck to have a brand-new tree and discover it didn't fit in the new home. Advantages: we can put on LED lights, so no more three-figure power bills in December; we can continue to use the tree for the next ten years instead of giving it away/throwing it out. (Most of the 'needles' are made of PVC, which is fantastically toxic in landfills.) Disadvantages: I'm pretty sure we're spending as much as a new tree would cost for the lights (no one ever said being environmentally friendly was cheap); I vastly underestimated how many lights it would take and had to run to multiple Home Depots all over Chicago yesterday trying to find enough to finish the job; the amount of time it's taking has basically turned it into a second (or third, in my case) job. But! It's over half lit now (insert holiday booze joke here) and with any luck, by Saturday we'll have a properly-decorated tree!

What I've just finished reading

Too Like The Lightning, by Ada Palmer. (Stripping lights off a nine-foot tree gives one a lot of time to listen to audiobooks, heh.) I have mixed feelings on this story. It's certainly one of the most ambitious and intelligent books I've read lately, but I'm hesitant to call it a novel; it's clearly meant in the style of its Enlightenment forebears, where the worldbuilding and the plot (such as it is) serves entirely to set up numerous philosophical debates. Once I realized that and stopped trying to follow the thread of the story so closely, I enjoyed it much more; if you're looking for a ripping future-political thriller, this is not it. But if you're interested in Enlightenment-era European history, humanism, philosophy, ethics, the duality of human nature, etc., etc., and especially if you're fond of Neal Stephenson, you might give this one a go.

What I'm currently reading

The Price of Meat, by KJ Charles. Charles is branching out a bit here from her usual period/supernatural gay romance into a proper Victorian penny dreadful story, and I love the first line: "In the time of England's steep decline, when Victor II sprawled on the throne and lost colonies as carelessly as a child loses toys, there stood a number of institutions that should never have been permitted to exist." I think it was Ann Leckie who said in an interview that if every scene in a novel has to serve two purposes, every sentence in a novella has to serve at least three; I just love how Charles sets up the basics of the alternate timeline, the tone of the story, and one of the fundamental conflicts all at once. I've only read the first bit, but I'm looking forward to the rest.

Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie. Finally! I'm a little surprised to look at my bookmark and realize that I'm almost halfway through this book; I feel like I've had so little time to read this past week. But I'll be damned if I'm not finding this story just as absorbing as the first, even if it lacks the clear drive of the "REVENGE!" plot of the first book. Breq has gone from a very singleminded, action-driven quest to a very open-ended, human-based one - and, unsurprisingly, their typical direct approach is singularly unsuited for success. Brian pointed out that, in a very real way, the first book was about a shrinking of perspective - Breq going from being part of a nearly omniscient collective, the starship Justice of Toren, to being a single being bent on a single purpose - whereas this book is a re-broadening, with Breq having to figure out how to connect with the people around them as well as how to engage with someone important to them who's outright hostile to their overtures.

What I plan to read next

I have the new Rat Queens and Sex Criminals trade paperbacks sitting on the coffeetable...we'll see!