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Oh, hi, is it Thursday? I have spent all week convinced that it's a day earlier than it is, with the silver lining that this was one of the most low key wind downs to a long weekend I can remember, by virtue of the fact that I thought I had an extra day to do everything and thus did not waste time panicking over Getting All The Things Done by this afternoon.
As for this week's books:
What I Just Finished Reading
The Wicked and the Just – J. Andersen Coats
Set in 13th century Britain, The Wicked and the Just is the story of the adolescent daughter of minor nobleman who moves to Caernavon to help colonize Wales, and the adolescent daughter of a Welshman executed for opposing the English, who now serves in the first protagonist’s home. Coats’ prose is as lacking in frills as prose can get, but she makes up for it in spades through brave narrative choices. Her main characters’ thoughts, motivations, and actions are utterly realistic and believable, which makes for a deeply compelling story. But it also makes for a deeply nontraditional story that flouts many of the narrative conventions readers will expect. It doesn’t offer an unrealistically uplifting ending where the two protagonists become best friends. It doesn’t end with their setting aside their prejudices, acknowledging their shared humanity with The Other, and committing to Making A Better World through positive social change. It doesn’t even end with the characters becoming aware of their prejudices. People die and justice is never served. The conquerors don’t bother to learn the language or respect the culture of the conquered. In that sense, it is a bleakly realistic book, and yet it is a compelling, thought-provoking, and satisfying read precisely for that realism.
What I Am Currently Reading
Death In The East – Abir Mukherjee
Ahaha, the trials of actually getting my copy of this book, which came out in May, from somewhere other than Amazon in the Age of Social Distancing. But acquire it I did, and with a quarter of the novel left to go I’m calling it as Emily Carter, in the bedrooms, with the brass bedstands with coil-sprung mattresses, and perhaps electricity from an auto battery.
Making Friends With Alice Dyson – Poppy Nwosu
Nwosu continues to have an excellent eye for capturing teenage interpersonal dynamics.
The Drunken Botanist – Amy Stewart
This week I continued working through the section “Herbs and Spices”.
What I Am No Longer Reading
The Vorrh – Brian Caitling
I gave an hour’s worth of effort to this one, and…NOPE! It is a rare, rare, thing when I DNF a book, but I have no regrets here. The majority of the online reviews I’ve read mentioned difficulties with the non-linear storytelling but praised Caitling’s “beautiful” language, and if your definition of “beautiful” is “five-dollar words crammed into needlessly complex sentences” then it’s probably for you, but definitely not for me. And the pretention doesn’t stop there: the book opens with four epigrams, followed by a fifth epigram to kick off the prologue. In which a drug addicted, middle-aged dude contemplates the horrors of being a middle-aged dude to whom drugs and young prostitutes no longer provide the jollies that they once did.
There’s a perspective that’s been sorely lacking in the annals of Western literature.
It’s disappointing, because The Vorrh’s copy made it sound like something I should have loved: “a sprawling, omnivorous novel that gobbles up history, geography, mythology and fantasy, then delicately chews it into a rarified pulp,” according to NPR; Alan Moore and Jeff VanderMeer praised it for pioneering new ground for the way it plays with chronology, narrative structure, and surrealism. Except, Mark Doten, Mark Danielewski, and China Mieville have already pioneered that ground, and in more effective and affecting books than The Vorrh.
Which is apparently is only the first book in a trilogy. Because of course it has to be a trilogy.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up several classics: Emma, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, and also The Angel of Crows.
これで以上です。
As for this week's books:
What I Just Finished Reading
The Wicked and the Just – J. Andersen Coats
Set in 13th century Britain, The Wicked and the Just is the story of the adolescent daughter of minor nobleman who moves to Caernavon to help colonize Wales, and the adolescent daughter of a Welshman executed for opposing the English, who now serves in the first protagonist’s home. Coats’ prose is as lacking in frills as prose can get, but she makes up for it in spades through brave narrative choices. Her main characters’ thoughts, motivations, and actions are utterly realistic and believable, which makes for a deeply compelling story. But it also makes for a deeply nontraditional story that flouts many of the narrative conventions readers will expect. It doesn’t offer an unrealistically uplifting ending where the two protagonists become best friends. It doesn’t end with their setting aside their prejudices, acknowledging their shared humanity with The Other, and committing to Making A Better World through positive social change. It doesn’t even end with the characters becoming aware of their prejudices. People die and justice is never served. The conquerors don’t bother to learn the language or respect the culture of the conquered. In that sense, it is a bleakly realistic book, and yet it is a compelling, thought-provoking, and satisfying read precisely for that realism.
What I Am Currently Reading
Death In The East – Abir Mukherjee
Ahaha, the trials of actually getting my copy of this book, which came out in May, from somewhere other than Amazon in the Age of Social Distancing. But acquire it I did, and with a quarter of the novel left to go I’m calling it as Emily Carter, in the bedrooms, with the brass bedstands with coil-sprung mattresses, and perhaps electricity from an auto battery.
Making Friends With Alice Dyson – Poppy Nwosu
Nwosu continues to have an excellent eye for capturing teenage interpersonal dynamics.
The Drunken Botanist – Amy Stewart
This week I continued working through the section “Herbs and Spices”.
What I Am No Longer Reading
The Vorrh – Brian Caitling
I gave an hour’s worth of effort to this one, and…NOPE! It is a rare, rare, thing when I DNF a book, but I have no regrets here. The majority of the online reviews I’ve read mentioned difficulties with the non-linear storytelling but praised Caitling’s “beautiful” language, and if your definition of “beautiful” is “five-dollar words crammed into needlessly complex sentences” then it’s probably for you, but definitely not for me. And the pretention doesn’t stop there: the book opens with four epigrams, followed by a fifth epigram to kick off the prologue. In which a drug addicted, middle-aged dude contemplates the horrors of being a middle-aged dude to whom drugs and young prostitutes no longer provide the jollies that they once did.
There’s a perspective that’s been sorely lacking in the annals of Western literature.
It’s disappointing, because The Vorrh’s copy made it sound like something I should have loved: “a sprawling, omnivorous novel that gobbles up history, geography, mythology and fantasy, then delicately chews it into a rarified pulp,” according to NPR; Alan Moore and Jeff VanderMeer praised it for pioneering new ground for the way it plays with chronology, narrative structure, and surrealism. Except, Mark Doten, Mark Danielewski, and China Mieville have already pioneered that ground, and in more effective and affecting books than The Vorrh.
Which is apparently is only the first book in a trilogy. Because of course it has to be a trilogy.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up several classics: Emma, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, and also The Angel of Crows.
これで以上です。
From:
no subject
Read the book, seen the movie and said no to the t-shirt.
From:
no subject
YES! Exactly this.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
For instance, Coats. I very much bounced off her no-frills prose the first time I tried reading one of her novels, but by sticking with it, I found a new favorite.