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Why yes, I am posting last Wednesday's reading roundup on a Sunday. No gods, no masters.
What I Finished Reading This Week
Complete Book of Ceremonial Magic – Lon Milo DuQuette & David Shoemaker, eds.
This week I read the chapter "Magician's Tables" by David Allen Hulse, an extremely information-rich and highly useful list of correspondences between the major systems that informed the development of the modern tarot, ceremonial magic, and new age movements. I wish I'd had access to something like this lo, those many years ago when I was first playing around with such things; along with the first five chapters, it largely justifies the cost of the entire book.
I also finished the final chapter, "The Future of Ceremonial Magic," by Brandy Williams, which is a sort of modern day "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkruetz." I liked about a third of it for its own sake, liked the quotations from other authors about Futurism in the second third, and was irritated by the final third, which indulges in "premodern cultures were egalitarian utopias" and related fallacies.
Binti – Nnedi Okorafor
Binti landed better for me that Who Fears Death, which left me pretty cold. In some ways, that made it more disappointing, because there was so much that I liked about it that never quite coalesced into a satisfying whole. What I really liked about it:
What didn’t work for me:
Binti: Sacred Fire – Nnedi Okorafor
This second installment in the Binti series was written last chronologically, and I suspect Okorafor penned it to address some of the shortcomings of the other works. In this, it does not wholly succeed.
There’s a self-centeredness to Binti that’s common to all Okorafor’s protagonists. On the one hand, cool: writing center-of-the-universe savior protagonists shouldn’t be the sole purview of male authors. But it rubbed me the wrong way when Binti bitched that the grieving relatives of a man whose final moments she was the sole surviving witness wanted to talk to her about him (what a bunch of assholes, amirite?), or when a female classmate assured Binti that as tough as it was for her to transition, Binti had it much worse (a clumsy flat note in a scene that otherwise does a good job of illustrating how everyone in the novella has to adjust to and accommodate different cultures and ways of being).
On the whole, the novella is heavy on telling, but I appreciated its focus on homesickness, post-traumatic stress, and culture shock.
Binti: Home – Nnedi Okorafor
Definitely my favorite of the series thus far. Thematically, Home is focused on questions of family, identity, belonging, and the tension between tradition and modernization. How do you cope when your family opposes your decision to get an education, or study abroad, or choose something other than taking over the family business when that's all everybody's done for as long as anyone can remember? How do you deal with needing to win back acceptance from a family you left behind and returned to changed? How do you weather friends’ and loved ones’ disapproval for learning about—and befriending—people they consider age-old enemies?
Alas, all of this is somewhat tempered by Binti becoming progressively overpowered, and the series’ first cliffhanger ending.
(PS: Hey DAW/Tor: Correctly spelling a word =/= correctly using that word. You might want to bother proofreading for such things.)
A Woman Is No Man – Etaf Rum
This book is phenomenally good, the sort of thing you cannot put down once you’ve started. I devoured it in under 24 hours. It is also incredibly realistic and incredibly heavy, so be prepared for a major emotional lift. A Woman Is No Man tells the stories of Isra, a Palestinian woman who emigrates to the US immediately after an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law Fareeda, and her daughter Deya, and is unflinching in its indictment of how demands for female subservience, ignorance, and pleasantness serve no one—not women, not men—and how everyone is complicit in upholding them and the damage they cause.
Pretty much all of the criticism of the book on LibraryThing falls into two main categories: that its depictions of domestic drudgery are repetitive and boring, and that its depictions of domestic violence are frequent and horrific. And, yes. That is the point. If you think reading about endless housework is claustrophobic and grinding, if you dread encountering depictions of violence that can happen at any time, for any reason, imagine living that experience every day of your life. It’s a brilliant piece of structural metafiction. Also brilliant is the way in which Rum’s narrative demonstrates that nobody wants this, how slowly things change despite that, and how and why they do change, in the end.
TL;DR: I am not doing this book justice; just trust me on this and read it.
What I Am Currently Reading
Spellbreaker – Charlie Holmberg
I’m very much enjoying the opening chapters, but everything Holmberg’s written since Followed By Frost has been hit-or-miss for me, so we’ll have to wait and see how this one turns out.
Tarot: Beyond The Basics – Anthony Louis
I’ll have this one wrapped up by next week.
What I Am No Longer Reading
Tyr vols. 3 & 4 – var.
Hoo boy, this is some white terrorism-adjacent claptrap. Immediate DNF and discard.
What I'm Reading Next
Did I get any new books this week? I don't believe I did.
これで以上です。
What I Finished Reading This Week
Complete Book of Ceremonial Magic – Lon Milo DuQuette & David Shoemaker, eds.
This week I read the chapter "Magician's Tables" by David Allen Hulse, an extremely information-rich and highly useful list of correspondences between the major systems that informed the development of the modern tarot, ceremonial magic, and new age movements. I wish I'd had access to something like this lo, those many years ago when I was first playing around with such things; along with the first five chapters, it largely justifies the cost of the entire book.
I also finished the final chapter, "The Future of Ceremonial Magic," by Brandy Williams, which is a sort of modern day "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkruetz." I liked about a third of it for its own sake, liked the quotations from other authors about Futurism in the second third, and was irritated by the final third, which indulges in "premodern cultures were egalitarian utopias" and related fallacies.
Binti – Nnedi Okorafor
Binti landed better for me that Who Fears Death, which left me pretty cold. In some ways, that made it more disappointing, because there was so much that I liked about it that never quite coalesced into a satisfying whole. What I really liked about it:
- the depictions of Binti’s family and culture, and the fact that someone other than Bog Standard White Space DudeTM gets to be the protagonist and save the day.
- Binti’s courage and eagerness to step into the unknown, despite her family’s objections.
- Binti’s love for her family.
- That Binti is a female protagonist for whom mathematics are intuitive, relaxing, and fun.
- The imaginative settings and species, which put me in mind of Farscape. (Technically, this element doesn’t come to the fore until Binti: Sacred Fire, but as I read these two novellas back to back, I’m including it here.)
- That the main conflict is solved through diplomacy and compromise versus killing the Bad Guys harder than they can kill you.
- The lack of a major romantic subplot.
What didn’t work for me:
- Telling, not showing.
- Five hundred of the most promising youths of multiple species are massacred and… *collective shrug from everyone*
- Hey, Tor and DAW: how about bothering to edit your award-winning publications? How can anything that’s been published in at least three separate formats still contain so many obvious errors?
Binti: Sacred Fire – Nnedi Okorafor
This second installment in the Binti series was written last chronologically, and I suspect Okorafor penned it to address some of the shortcomings of the other works. In this, it does not wholly succeed.
There’s a self-centeredness to Binti that’s common to all Okorafor’s protagonists. On the one hand, cool: writing center-of-the-universe savior protagonists shouldn’t be the sole purview of male authors. But it rubbed me the wrong way when Binti bitched that the grieving relatives of a man whose final moments she was the sole surviving witness wanted to talk to her about him (what a bunch of assholes, amirite?), or when a female classmate assured Binti that as tough as it was for her to transition, Binti had it much worse (a clumsy flat note in a scene that otherwise does a good job of illustrating how everyone in the novella has to adjust to and accommodate different cultures and ways of being).
On the whole, the novella is heavy on telling, but I appreciated its focus on homesickness, post-traumatic stress, and culture shock.
Binti: Home – Nnedi Okorafor
Definitely my favorite of the series thus far. Thematically, Home is focused on questions of family, identity, belonging, and the tension between tradition and modernization. How do you cope when your family opposes your decision to get an education, or study abroad, or choose something other than taking over the family business when that's all everybody's done for as long as anyone can remember? How do you deal with needing to win back acceptance from a family you left behind and returned to changed? How do you weather friends’ and loved ones’ disapproval for learning about—and befriending—people they consider age-old enemies?
Alas, all of this is somewhat tempered by Binti becoming progressively overpowered, and the series’ first cliffhanger ending.
(PS: Hey DAW/Tor: Correctly spelling a word =/= correctly using that word. You might want to bother proofreading for such things.)
A Woman Is No Man – Etaf Rum
This book is phenomenally good, the sort of thing you cannot put down once you’ve started. I devoured it in under 24 hours. It is also incredibly realistic and incredibly heavy, so be prepared for a major emotional lift. A Woman Is No Man tells the stories of Isra, a Palestinian woman who emigrates to the US immediately after an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law Fareeda, and her daughter Deya, and is unflinching in its indictment of how demands for female subservience, ignorance, and pleasantness serve no one—not women, not men—and how everyone is complicit in upholding them and the damage they cause.
Pretty much all of the criticism of the book on LibraryThing falls into two main categories: that its depictions of domestic drudgery are repetitive and boring, and that its depictions of domestic violence are frequent and horrific. And, yes. That is the point. If you think reading about endless housework is claustrophobic and grinding, if you dread encountering depictions of violence that can happen at any time, for any reason, imagine living that experience every day of your life. It’s a brilliant piece of structural metafiction. Also brilliant is the way in which Rum’s narrative demonstrates that nobody wants this, how slowly things change despite that, and how and why they do change, in the end.
TL;DR: I am not doing this book justice; just trust me on this and read it.
What I Am Currently Reading
Spellbreaker – Charlie Holmberg
I’m very much enjoying the opening chapters, but everything Holmberg’s written since Followed By Frost has been hit-or-miss for me, so we’ll have to wait and see how this one turns out.
Tarot: Beyond The Basics – Anthony Louis
I’ll have this one wrapped up by next week.
What I Am No Longer Reading
Tyr vols. 3 & 4 – var.
Hoo boy, this is some white terrorism-adjacent claptrap. Immediate DNF and discard.
What I'm Reading Next
Did I get any new books this week? I don't believe I did.
これで以上です。
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