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What I Just Finished Reading
The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
This extremely well-written book packs an emotional punch. Set in Norway in the 17th century, it’s based on historical events in an isolated fishing village where almost every male inhabitant is drowned in a freak storm. Told from the perspective of Maren—a village woman who’s skeptical of church authorities and willing to do what must be done, including taking on men’s work, to survive—and Ursa, the trophy bride of a fundamentalist Scotsman dispatched by King Christian IV to root out sorcery in the region, it depicts with chilling realism the individual psychologies and political and interpersonal dynamics that enable atrocities like the Scandinavian witch hunts. Unfortunately, it also ( cut for spoilers. ) That disappointment aside, this is an excellent book that is well worth reading.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom – Rachel Pollack
The chapters on the Minor Arcana are still some of the best to be found in any Tarot volume, and the book is worth reading on the strength of that alone. Pollack’s “work” layout is far more useful than the standard Celtic Cross, although I could have done without the intuitive sample readings she provides that ignore the very card meanings just she spent the preceding 117 pages laying out. Those issues aside, readers willing to wade through the frequent typos will find a lot to absorb in this book.
Deadpool vol. 1 – Daniel Way et al.
This was thoroughly enjoyable and one of the better Marvel collections in its completeness and cohesiveness. Way’s wisecracking, spastic Deadpool is everything I want from the character, and the visual and prose sections that conclude the volume are a useful (and surprisingly tolerable) summary of Deadpool runs through the ages.
蟲師 5 – 漆原 友紀 (Mushishi vol. 5 – Urushihara Yuki)
The artwork is beautiful and atmospheric as always, but I still can’t help but wish for a plot to tie together all the standalone stories.
おまけのこ – 畠中 恵 (Omake no Ko – Hatakenaka Megumi)
In the eponymous final chapter, a yanari (i.e., a house sprite whose speech humans perceive as the sounds of a house settling) is enchanted by a pearl, which he mistakes for the moon, that the protagonist’s wholesale business has sourced for a customer’s wedding gift. The yanari witnesses an unknown person bludgeon the customer to try to steal the pearl and manages to escape with it. He’s blown away on the wind, saved from drowning by a river god, and hunted by a crow, among other adventures, before he’s finally reunited with the household. Meanwhile, Ichitaro and the humans embark on their own adventures to determine who among those present at the wholesaler that day is the mysterious assailant. It’s a lighthearted and whimsical chapter, and a delightful conclusion to the book.
What I Am Currently Reading
Herbal – Deni Brown
This week I read the chapter on herbal aromatics and tackled half of the entries in herbal balsams, gums, and resins.
The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner – Terry Pratchett
As with Kurt Vonnegut, I imagine publishers will continue to put out collections of everything they can find by Pratchett, no matter how short, incomplete, or unpolished. That said, this book was 49 cents on Amazon, which is a pretty good price to read an author’s output as he was just starting to develop his craft.
神様 – 川上 弘美 (Kamisama – Kawakami Hiromi)
Kawakami’s Hebi ni Fumu is an eternal favorite of mine for its deeply weird storytelling. Kawakami continues in that vein in this volume of short stories. I think many of them were originally published in Japan Marie Claire, which may account for the fact that they’re still weird, but less ominous than her other work. So far, I’ve read the chapters in which the narrator goes on a day trip to a river park with a bear, a day laborer adopts the mysterious creatures that inhabit the pear trees in the orchard where he works, a woman takes walks with the ghost of her grandfather who died in a car accident, and a man and his friend are taken beneath the lake of a Buddhist temple to give love advice to a warren of kappa. So far, all the stories are good; the ghost and orchard stories are personal favorites.
What I'm Reading Next
No new books this week, although I've got my eye on a few.
これで以上です。
The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
This extremely well-written book packs an emotional punch. Set in Norway in the 17th century, it’s based on historical events in an isolated fishing village where almost every male inhabitant is drowned in a freak storm. Told from the perspective of Maren—a village woman who’s skeptical of church authorities and willing to do what must be done, including taking on men’s work, to survive—and Ursa, the trophy bride of a fundamentalist Scotsman dispatched by King Christian IV to root out sorcery in the region, it depicts with chilling realism the individual psychologies and political and interpersonal dynamics that enable atrocities like the Scandinavian witch hunts. Unfortunately, it also ( cut for spoilers. ) That disappointment aside, this is an excellent book that is well worth reading.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom – Rachel Pollack
The chapters on the Minor Arcana are still some of the best to be found in any Tarot volume, and the book is worth reading on the strength of that alone. Pollack’s “work” layout is far more useful than the standard Celtic Cross, although I could have done without the intuitive sample readings she provides that ignore the very card meanings just she spent the preceding 117 pages laying out. Those issues aside, readers willing to wade through the frequent typos will find a lot to absorb in this book.
Deadpool vol. 1 – Daniel Way et al.
This was thoroughly enjoyable and one of the better Marvel collections in its completeness and cohesiveness. Way’s wisecracking, spastic Deadpool is everything I want from the character, and the visual and prose sections that conclude the volume are a useful (and surprisingly tolerable) summary of Deadpool runs through the ages.
蟲師 5 – 漆原 友紀 (Mushishi vol. 5 – Urushihara Yuki)
The artwork is beautiful and atmospheric as always, but I still can’t help but wish for a plot to tie together all the standalone stories.
おまけのこ – 畠中 恵 (Omake no Ko – Hatakenaka Megumi)
In the eponymous final chapter, a yanari (i.e., a house sprite whose speech humans perceive as the sounds of a house settling) is enchanted by a pearl, which he mistakes for the moon, that the protagonist’s wholesale business has sourced for a customer’s wedding gift. The yanari witnesses an unknown person bludgeon the customer to try to steal the pearl and manages to escape with it. He’s blown away on the wind, saved from drowning by a river god, and hunted by a crow, among other adventures, before he’s finally reunited with the household. Meanwhile, Ichitaro and the humans embark on their own adventures to determine who among those present at the wholesaler that day is the mysterious assailant. It’s a lighthearted and whimsical chapter, and a delightful conclusion to the book.
What I Am Currently Reading
Herbal – Deni Brown
This week I read the chapter on herbal aromatics and tackled half of the entries in herbal balsams, gums, and resins.
The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner – Terry Pratchett
As with Kurt Vonnegut, I imagine publishers will continue to put out collections of everything they can find by Pratchett, no matter how short, incomplete, or unpolished. That said, this book was 49 cents on Amazon, which is a pretty good price to read an author’s output as he was just starting to develop his craft.
神様 – 川上 弘美 (Kamisama – Kawakami Hiromi)
Kawakami’s Hebi ni Fumu is an eternal favorite of mine for its deeply weird storytelling. Kawakami continues in that vein in this volume of short stories. I think many of them were originally published in Japan Marie Claire, which may account for the fact that they’re still weird, but less ominous than her other work. So far, I’ve read the chapters in which the narrator goes on a day trip to a river park with a bear, a day laborer adopts the mysterious creatures that inhabit the pear trees in the orchard where he works, a woman takes walks with the ghost of her grandfather who died in a car accident, and a man and his friend are taken beneath the lake of a Buddhist temple to give love advice to a warren of kappa. So far, all the stories are good; the ghost and orchard stories are personal favorites.
What I'm Reading Next
No new books this week, although I've got my eye on a few.
これで以上です。