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What I Just Finished Reading
Moving during COVID: One star. Do not recommend.
And so I find myself behind on many other things, including this entry, although I managed to do a ton of reading with all the random down time. Hopefully (she says, with caution) things will calm down somewhat from here on out.
Silver On The Tree – Susan Cooper
This final volume is easily the weakest in the Dark is Rising sequence. Cooper writes fantasy in the pre-modern mold: characters travel through a series of dreamlike landscapes while fantastical things occur around them. Because everything that happens occurs in accordance with some ancient poem or piece of lore or somesuch, the protagonists don’t matter as individuals—their only job is to show up at the right place to hear the next cryptic verse or take possession of the next quest item. This worked well in The Dark is Rising. But four volumes and and 814 pages later, it’s grown stale.
One gets the sense that Cooper really just wants to write atmospheric set pieces, and there are plenty of those here, alongside frequent nods to Celtic mythology (which Cooper thankfully trusts readers to recognize sans authorial guidance): the excavation of a Romano-Celtic ruin, Cantref y Gwaelod, multiple jumps back in, and entirely out of, time. These—and her beautiful descriptive language—are easily my favorite parts of the book.
In contrast, the plot is an afterthought that hinges on ( cut for spoilers. )
TL;DR: anyone who’s not a completionist may be better served by just reading The Dark Is Rising and The Grey King and giving this one a pass.
The Graces – Lauren Eve
The Graces opens with a standard YA high school fantasy set-up: socially awkward, working class protagonist moves to a new town, yearns to catch the eye of the handsome, athletic, super popular boy, befriend his beautiful, super popular yet eternally aloof sisters, and earn the approval of their rich, sophisticated parents (all rumored to be witches!). But there the similarities end.
Eve’s protagonist, while claiming to be “the quiet one who stuck to the back corners of places and tried not to draw attention,” is openly ambitious: no Bella Swan-esque false modesty to be had here. She weighs her standing in the social hierarchy and deliberately calibrates her actions to ascend it. Why? Because she knows she deserves to be at the top. It’s a breath of fresh air in a genre littered with protagonists waiting around in long-suffering, passive silence for someone else to recognize the inner goodness they're too pure to acknowledge themselves.
Eve has an excellent eye for description and adolescent social dynamics, which she depicts without resorting to pop culture or brand name references that would quickly date the novel. It’s not even clear where The Graces takes place, aside from “coastal Britain” (although there are some indications that it’s Cornwall or Wales). Add to this some deeply amoral magic, deeply moving depictions of familial love and estrangement, some intriguing mysteries, and sly riffs on genre romance and horror tropes, and you have a novel that punches well above its weight. I am eager to read the sequel.
Marked – Sarah Fine
Every sentence started with a capital letter and ended with a punctuation mark, which is more than one can say about many amazon first reads offerings.
Insight Meditation – Joseph Goldstein
Excellent from start to finish. In my opinion, this is one of the top three books on Buddhism.
A Handbook of the Cornish Language – Henry Jenner
The linguistic information in A Handbook of the Cornish Language is top notch, but the rest of the content is very much an artefact of its time. My favorite example is the chapter “Swear Words And Expletives,” in which Jenner states that unlike “Anglo-Saxons,” “Cornishmen and Celts generally, even of the lowest position, are not, and never have been, foul-mouthed” before informing readers that he's aware of “very distressing expressions, now better forgotten” of Cornish obscenities, but is declining to include them (thereby begging the question as to how such expressions could exist if the Cornish weren’t foul-mouthed). At the opposite end of the spectrum, the chapter on Cornish personal and place names alone is worth the price of admission. Despite its flaws, this book is still well worth reading for anyone interested in its (admittedly niche) subject.
The Eye Never Sleeps - Dennis Genpo Merzel
This book transcribes a series of lectures Merzel delivered on the Shinjinmei in the 1980s. Parts of the text—particularly Merzel’s antiquated social commentary—hold up less well than others, and the talks are definitely not geared to newcomers. But for readers already familiar with the topic, it’s a generally solid commentary.
The Mountains Sing – Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The Mountains Sing tells the story of three generations of Vietnamese women from the Japanese occupation during World War II to the present day. Nguyen seems to have been trying to pen a Vietnamese Wild Swans but stumbles by focusing on breadth over depth. The novel often reads as though Nguyen is systematically incorporating a list of every atrocity known to have occurred to anyone, anywhere, in Vietnam between 1930 and 2017, before neatly—and sometimes improbably—tying everything up in the concluding chapters. In many cases, this reduces real tragedies to plot points and weakens passages that should have delivered gut punches. Indeed, the novel’s strongest and most affecting elements are the ones Nguyen develops across chapters, illustrating how their aftereffects reverberate across generations. Luckily, there’s enough of this that The Mountains Sing is often very moving despite its flaws.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Good Hawk – Joseph Elliott
So far, so good.
The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls – Ursala Hegi
I'm set to wrap this one up this week.
Rat Queens vol. 4 – Wiebe, Gieni, & Ferrier
This one too.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up Elliott's The Good Hawk and The Broken Raven, Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy, and the dated second edition of W.D. Hutton’s Teach Yourself Bengali.
これで以上です。
Moving during COVID: One star. Do not recommend.
And so I find myself behind on many other things, including this entry, although I managed to do a ton of reading with all the random down time. Hopefully (she says, with caution) things will calm down somewhat from here on out.
Silver On The Tree – Susan Cooper
This final volume is easily the weakest in the Dark is Rising sequence. Cooper writes fantasy in the pre-modern mold: characters travel through a series of dreamlike landscapes while fantastical things occur around them. Because everything that happens occurs in accordance with some ancient poem or piece of lore or somesuch, the protagonists don’t matter as individuals—their only job is to show up at the right place to hear the next cryptic verse or take possession of the next quest item. This worked well in The Dark is Rising. But four volumes and and 814 pages later, it’s grown stale.
One gets the sense that Cooper really just wants to write atmospheric set pieces, and there are plenty of those here, alongside frequent nods to Celtic mythology (which Cooper thankfully trusts readers to recognize sans authorial guidance): the excavation of a Romano-Celtic ruin, Cantref y Gwaelod, multiple jumps back in, and entirely out of, time. These—and her beautiful descriptive language—are easily my favorite parts of the book.
In contrast, the plot is an afterthought that hinges on ( cut for spoilers. )
TL;DR: anyone who’s not a completionist may be better served by just reading The Dark Is Rising and The Grey King and giving this one a pass.
The Graces – Lauren Eve
The Graces opens with a standard YA high school fantasy set-up: socially awkward, working class protagonist moves to a new town, yearns to catch the eye of the handsome, athletic, super popular boy, befriend his beautiful, super popular yet eternally aloof sisters, and earn the approval of their rich, sophisticated parents (all rumored to be witches!). But there the similarities end.
Eve’s protagonist, while claiming to be “the quiet one who stuck to the back corners of places and tried not to draw attention,” is openly ambitious: no Bella Swan-esque false modesty to be had here. She weighs her standing in the social hierarchy and deliberately calibrates her actions to ascend it. Why? Because she knows she deserves to be at the top. It’s a breath of fresh air in a genre littered with protagonists waiting around in long-suffering, passive silence for someone else to recognize the inner goodness they're too pure to acknowledge themselves.
Eve has an excellent eye for description and adolescent social dynamics, which she depicts without resorting to pop culture or brand name references that would quickly date the novel. It’s not even clear where The Graces takes place, aside from “coastal Britain” (although there are some indications that it’s Cornwall or Wales). Add to this some deeply amoral magic, deeply moving depictions of familial love and estrangement, some intriguing mysteries, and sly riffs on genre romance and horror tropes, and you have a novel that punches well above its weight. I am eager to read the sequel.
Marked – Sarah Fine
Every sentence started with a capital letter and ended with a punctuation mark, which is more than one can say about many amazon first reads offerings.
Insight Meditation – Joseph Goldstein
Excellent from start to finish. In my opinion, this is one of the top three books on Buddhism.
A Handbook of the Cornish Language – Henry Jenner
The linguistic information in A Handbook of the Cornish Language is top notch, but the rest of the content is very much an artefact of its time. My favorite example is the chapter “Swear Words And Expletives,” in which Jenner states that unlike “Anglo-Saxons,” “Cornishmen and Celts generally, even of the lowest position, are not, and never have been, foul-mouthed” before informing readers that he's aware of “very distressing expressions, now better forgotten” of Cornish obscenities, but is declining to include them (thereby begging the question as to how such expressions could exist if the Cornish weren’t foul-mouthed). At the opposite end of the spectrum, the chapter on Cornish personal and place names alone is worth the price of admission. Despite its flaws, this book is still well worth reading for anyone interested in its (admittedly niche) subject.
The Eye Never Sleeps - Dennis Genpo Merzel
This book transcribes a series of lectures Merzel delivered on the Shinjinmei in the 1980s. Parts of the text—particularly Merzel’s antiquated social commentary—hold up less well than others, and the talks are definitely not geared to newcomers. But for readers already familiar with the topic, it’s a generally solid commentary.
The Mountains Sing – Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The Mountains Sing tells the story of three generations of Vietnamese women from the Japanese occupation during World War II to the present day. Nguyen seems to have been trying to pen a Vietnamese Wild Swans but stumbles by focusing on breadth over depth. The novel often reads as though Nguyen is systematically incorporating a list of every atrocity known to have occurred to anyone, anywhere, in Vietnam between 1930 and 2017, before neatly—and sometimes improbably—tying everything up in the concluding chapters. In many cases, this reduces real tragedies to plot points and weakens passages that should have delivered gut punches. Indeed, the novel’s strongest and most affecting elements are the ones Nguyen develops across chapters, illustrating how their aftereffects reverberate across generations. Luckily, there’s enough of this that The Mountains Sing is often very moving despite its flaws.
What I Am Currently Reading
The Good Hawk – Joseph Elliott
So far, so good.
The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls – Ursala Hegi
I'm set to wrap this one up this week.
Rat Queens vol. 4 – Wiebe, Gieni, & Ferrier
This one too.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up Elliott's The Good Hawk and The Broken Raven, Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Ships Before Troy, and the dated second edition of W.D. Hutton’s Teach Yourself Bengali.
これで以上です。
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