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What I Finished Reading This Week
Secrets of Tarot – Amanda Hall
Hoo boy, the glorified LWB for this was horrendous. That said, I’ll save my thoughts on the book and deck for a Tarot Tuesday.
More Than A Woman – Caitlin Moran
The opening chapters are hands down some of the funniest writing I’ve read in memory. We are “talking tears streaming down my face” funny. More Than A Woman is the best nonfiction Moran’s written since How To Be A Woman on the strength of the humor alone.
But this book is so much more than that. For one, Moran is unafraid to revisit her earlier views and openly admit that they’ve changed in the face of a decade of additional life experience. It’s a breath of fresh air given how altering one’s stance, let alone openly acknowledging it, is often treated as a deadly sin in modern media.
Moran’s humor is so enticing, you won’t immediately realize that she has serious things to say. And they are heavy. The chapter on her daughter’s eating disorder was a gut punch: literally physically difficult to read in its unflinching recounting of events. Moran tackles a host of other difficult topics: aging, watching your parents age, divorce, society’s unwillingness to tackle the work/family care burden that falls disproportionately on women, and more, with unstinting intelligence and a gimlet eye. This is just an all around fabulous book.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I enjoyed reading A Deadly Education, but whether I’ll ultimately love or dislike it hinges on whether Novik intends readers to take her protagonist’s perspective on certain plot points at face value, and I’m not sure we’ll know whether she does until the second volume.
A Deadly Education functions on multiple levels and it’s clear Novik intends one of them to be a criticism of social and economic privilege (and pretty much spells that out on pages 156-157). The book does this very well. Novik also makes clear that iniquitous systems are unfair even to the people who benefit from them most. This complexity enhances the novel, because these kids are in an impossible situation, and I wouldn’t have liked the book nearly so much if all it took to right it was a Charismatic Main Character to Rally The Masses Against Injustice.
But I hope Novik preserves that nuance when resolving plot points in the next book that remained ambiguous at the end of this one. Right now, the characters view these plot points in black-and-white terms, but it’s not clear to me whether that’s due to their narrative blinders, or if it extends to Novik’s view of those characters as well. I’ll be disappointed if it’s the latter and thrilled if it’s the former.
Todd: Pretty much every character considers Todd to be a capital-v villain. But to me, he’s one of the most sympathetic characters in the novel, because he’s presented with an impossible situation—kill someone else pretty much right now to save yourself—and has to live with the horrific consequences. It’s unclear to me why poaching is an unforgivable sin when killing people through inaction or leaving a wounded, crying classmate to die alone isn’t. Yes, social mores are arbitrary and unfair, but right now it’s unclear whether Novik intends Todd to illustrate that, or if she means him to be irredeemable. In which case I’ll like the books less, because I don’t think a bright line divides his behavior from that of the other characters. And more cynically: since Todd calculated that he could get away with poaching because of his family connections, wouldn't you expect every student with similar connections to band together and poach their way to the best rooms every year? Winner takes all is how abusive privilege works, and acting as a group provides more cover to everyone who engages in it. That's how murderous mobs work.
Gwen Higgins: It’s clear El’s mom is meant to serve as a contrast to elite enclave wizards, but not whether she’s meant to be a role model or an example of how holier-than-thou-ism is just as bad as the enclave wizards’ narrow pursuit of their own self-interest. Because sure, Higgins doesn’t accept money from wizards for her spells and treats mundanes for a pittance, but she also chooses to be so poor that she can’t provide enough to protect her child from known and predictable dangers. That isn’t noble, that’s neglect. Higgins can’t even forego her self-abnegation long enough to earn enough money—or call in enough favors—to send her daughter one letter a year while said child is imprisoned in a murderschool where she could die at any moment. That’s despicable. And my high or low opinion of this series hinges in part on whether Novik means Higgin’s self-imposed saintliness to be admirable or as injurious in its way as the enclave wizards’ blatant disregard for the common welfare.
More broadly, fair pay, for lack of a better term, is something of a vexed issue in this book. The narrative is very clear on the immorality of looking out solely for one’s own welfare, narrowly defined, but then there’s a scene where El criticizes her classmates for letting Orion protect them without compensating him. “If you can’t pay for something or provide it for yourself, you don’t deserve (to have) it” is fundamentally libertarian. I'm guessing the line was meant to demonstrate El's righteous disgust for the system, but it would be cool if the series does grapple with the challenges and tensions societies face in determining who should contribute what to the common good. And drawing on the pooled mana of his enclave buddies as he was, Todd wasn’t exactly doing something for nothing in the first place.
And I thought Novik focused just a little too much on how the existential threats the students face forced them to resort to cutthroat behavior—and only cutthroat behavior. Yes, they often have to be vicious to survive, but surely not to the extent that no one forms friendships, or acts out of anything but pure self-interest. After all, altruism, empathy, and sacrificing some personal benefit to act in the interest of the group are survival strategies too. But you'd never know it from the book.
On a personal level, there was the Language Issue. The protagonist sits down with a dictionary, copies out the alphabet of a completely unfamiliar language, and within an hour she’s translating passages from an advanced text. And.
And.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no. Just, NO. That is not how the process works. It’s also a huge narrative missed opportunity, because language acquisition is precisely the sort of painstaking, high-effort work that should generate a lot of mana in the protagonist’s world, but the worldbuilding overlooks that possibility.
I think the big reveal will be that the school was either designed from the outset or subsequently retrofitted to harness the students’ deaths to generate malia for either one or more enclaves or some very highly placed wizards, and that uncovering this and fighting back will be a large part of the second book.
But all that said, I was really invested in this read and a lot of that had to do with the awesome main character. Like Novik’s best female protagonists, El is not "nice," which is precisely why I like her. She is determined and prickly—even bitchy—and her foremost concern is not being liked or likeable. Her calculation and world-weariness were appealing, and this is someone with the nascent strategizing chops to rally enough people to stand a chance of beating the system. I like that the narrative's emphasis is on that side of El's character; although the "oops, no we actually are dating, I guess" revelation was clear from the first page, that heavy-handedness made it easy to ignore and I liked that it wasn't the main focus of the plot. I really want her to bring together not just friends, but allies, to dismantle the Scholomance system in the second volume.
So yeah, a lot of thoughts.
Cul De Sac – Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson’s Cul De Sac is a national treasure and my love for this strip is entire and undying. Petey and his neurosis (and oboe). Mr. Danders’ pompous cluelessness. Alice’s everything. Dill. It is a consistent delight in every respect.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Angel Of The Crows – Katherine Addison
It took me about a year and 100 pages to get into this one, but I'm full speed ahead now and should finish it tonight.
[Title] – [Author]
For reasons.
片づける 禅の作法 – 枡野俊明 (Katazukeru Zen no Houhou – Makino Shunmyo)
This week, I read the chapters on how to clean various areas of the home, and how to retrofit them with traditional Japanese elements such as a toko no ma.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Moran, I picked up Robert Jones’ The Prophets and Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon The Ninth, which I am a bit skeptical of, but which a trusted bookfriend assures me is excellent.
これで以上です。
Secrets of Tarot – Amanda Hall
Hoo boy, the glorified LWB for this was horrendous. That said, I’ll save my thoughts on the book and deck for a Tarot Tuesday.
More Than A Woman – Caitlin Moran
The opening chapters are hands down some of the funniest writing I’ve read in memory. We are “talking tears streaming down my face” funny. More Than A Woman is the best nonfiction Moran’s written since How To Be A Woman on the strength of the humor alone.
But this book is so much more than that. For one, Moran is unafraid to revisit her earlier views and openly admit that they’ve changed in the face of a decade of additional life experience. It’s a breath of fresh air given how altering one’s stance, let alone openly acknowledging it, is often treated as a deadly sin in modern media.
Moran’s humor is so enticing, you won’t immediately realize that she has serious things to say. And they are heavy. The chapter on her daughter’s eating disorder was a gut punch: literally physically difficult to read in its unflinching recounting of events. Moran tackles a host of other difficult topics: aging, watching your parents age, divorce, society’s unwillingness to tackle the work/family care burden that falls disproportionately on women, and more, with unstinting intelligence and a gimlet eye. This is just an all around fabulous book.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I enjoyed reading A Deadly Education, but whether I’ll ultimately love or dislike it hinges on whether Novik intends readers to take her protagonist’s perspective on certain plot points at face value, and I’m not sure we’ll know whether she does until the second volume.
A Deadly Education functions on multiple levels and it’s clear Novik intends one of them to be a criticism of social and economic privilege (and pretty much spells that out on pages 156-157). The book does this very well. Novik also makes clear that iniquitous systems are unfair even to the people who benefit from them most. This complexity enhances the novel, because these kids are in an impossible situation, and I wouldn’t have liked the book nearly so much if all it took to right it was a Charismatic Main Character to Rally The Masses Against Injustice.
But I hope Novik preserves that nuance when resolving plot points in the next book that remained ambiguous at the end of this one. Right now, the characters view these plot points in black-and-white terms, but it’s not clear to me whether that’s due to their narrative blinders, or if it extends to Novik’s view of those characters as well. I’ll be disappointed if it’s the latter and thrilled if it’s the former.
Todd: Pretty much every character considers Todd to be a capital-v villain. But to me, he’s one of the most sympathetic characters in the novel, because he’s presented with an impossible situation—kill someone else pretty much right now to save yourself—and has to live with the horrific consequences. It’s unclear to me why poaching is an unforgivable sin when killing people through inaction or leaving a wounded, crying classmate to die alone isn’t. Yes, social mores are arbitrary and unfair, but right now it’s unclear whether Novik intends Todd to illustrate that, or if she means him to be irredeemable. In which case I’ll like the books less, because I don’t think a bright line divides his behavior from that of the other characters. And more cynically: since Todd calculated that he could get away with poaching because of his family connections, wouldn't you expect every student with similar connections to band together and poach their way to the best rooms every year? Winner takes all is how abusive privilege works, and acting as a group provides more cover to everyone who engages in it. That's how murderous mobs work.
Gwen Higgins: It’s clear El’s mom is meant to serve as a contrast to elite enclave wizards, but not whether she’s meant to be a role model or an example of how holier-than-thou-ism is just as bad as the enclave wizards’ narrow pursuit of their own self-interest. Because sure, Higgins doesn’t accept money from wizards for her spells and treats mundanes for a pittance, but she also chooses to be so poor that she can’t provide enough to protect her child from known and predictable dangers. That isn’t noble, that’s neglect. Higgins can’t even forego her self-abnegation long enough to earn enough money—or call in enough favors—to send her daughter one letter a year while said child is imprisoned in a murderschool where she could die at any moment. That’s despicable. And my high or low opinion of this series hinges in part on whether Novik means Higgin’s self-imposed saintliness to be admirable or as injurious in its way as the enclave wizards’ blatant disregard for the common welfare.
More broadly, fair pay, for lack of a better term, is something of a vexed issue in this book. The narrative is very clear on the immorality of looking out solely for one’s own welfare, narrowly defined, but then there’s a scene where El criticizes her classmates for letting Orion protect them without compensating him. “If you can’t pay for something or provide it for yourself, you don’t deserve (to have) it” is fundamentally libertarian. I'm guessing the line was meant to demonstrate El's righteous disgust for the system, but it would be cool if the series does grapple with the challenges and tensions societies face in determining who should contribute what to the common good. And drawing on the pooled mana of his enclave buddies as he was, Todd wasn’t exactly doing something for nothing in the first place.
And I thought Novik focused just a little too much on how the existential threats the students face forced them to resort to cutthroat behavior—and only cutthroat behavior. Yes, they often have to be vicious to survive, but surely not to the extent that no one forms friendships, or acts out of anything but pure self-interest. After all, altruism, empathy, and sacrificing some personal benefit to act in the interest of the group are survival strategies too. But you'd never know it from the book.
On a personal level, there was the Language Issue. The protagonist sits down with a dictionary, copies out the alphabet of a completely unfamiliar language, and within an hour she’s translating passages from an advanced text. And.
And.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no. Just, NO. That is not how the process works. It’s also a huge narrative missed opportunity, because language acquisition is precisely the sort of painstaking, high-effort work that should generate a lot of mana in the protagonist’s world, but the worldbuilding overlooks that possibility.
I think the big reveal will be that the school was either designed from the outset or subsequently retrofitted to harness the students’ deaths to generate malia for either one or more enclaves or some very highly placed wizards, and that uncovering this and fighting back will be a large part of the second book.
But all that said, I was really invested in this read and a lot of that had to do with the awesome main character. Like Novik’s best female protagonists, El is not "nice," which is precisely why I like her. She is determined and prickly—even bitchy—and her foremost concern is not being liked or likeable. Her calculation and world-weariness were appealing, and this is someone with the nascent strategizing chops to rally enough people to stand a chance of beating the system. I like that the narrative's emphasis is on that side of El's character; although the "oops, no we actually are dating, I guess" revelation was clear from the first page, that heavy-handedness made it easy to ignore and I liked that it wasn't the main focus of the plot. I really want her to bring together not just friends, but allies, to dismantle the Scholomance system in the second volume.
So yeah, a lot of thoughts.
Cul De Sac – Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson’s Cul De Sac is a national treasure and my love for this strip is entire and undying. Petey and his neurosis (and oboe). Mr. Danders’ pompous cluelessness. Alice’s everything. Dill. It is a consistent delight in every respect.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Angel Of The Crows – Katherine Addison
It took me about a year and 100 pages to get into this one, but I'm full speed ahead now and should finish it tonight.
[Title] – [Author]
For reasons.
片づける 禅の作法 – 枡野俊明 (Katazukeru Zen no Houhou – Makino Shunmyo)
This week, I read the chapters on how to clean various areas of the home, and how to retrofit them with traditional Japanese elements such as a toko no ma.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Moran, I picked up Robert Jones’ The Prophets and Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon The Ninth, which I am a bit skeptical of, but which a trusted bookfriend assures me is excellent.
これで以上です。
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I have an odd relationship with it: I liked it more than Spinning Silver in some respects because it's a much more streamlined book, whereas while I loved the plot and characters in Silver it definitely dragged in places. The pacing in A Deadly Education is far more consistent.
And once I got into it, I got into it and devoured it in about half a day. I'm really invested in the characters and want the sequel to come out yesterday. 😅 But like I said in the post, I feel I'll either be elated or let down depending on how certain plot points are developed. If nothing else, I think this one will generate a lot of involved discussions among readers.
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