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The national guard made it up to my neighborhood last night; that, alongside the arctic maelstrom winds howling outside will hopefully keep the nutcases off the streets.
What I Finished Reading Last Week
Secret Agent 666 – Richard Spence
This is a fun but not particularly believable read, as evidenced by the parade of may have’s, could be that’s, seemingly’s, may indicate’s, possibly suggests’s, and so forth that qualify almost every sentence Spencer writes. Aleister Crowley was a narcissist, congenital liar, and provocateur who loved agitating people, and Spence’s innuendo doesn't really make a convincing case that Crowley’s statements and actions should be taken at anything like face value. None of this is helped by the citation system, which does little to help readers pursue Spencer’s sources. I don’t regret having read this one, but neither would I recommend it to anyone with only a moderate interest in its subject.
Having said that, I was tickled to learn that Henry Jenner, acquaintance of Crowley and political radical who sought to overthrow the Windsors was indeed the same Henry Jenner, erudite scholar of Cornish whose seminal work on the language I read and reviewed last year, in what is one of the most unanticipated and delightful convergences of my niche interests in recent memory.
Black Ships Before Troy – Rosemary Sutcliff
I love Sutcliff’s high fantasy narrative voice; this book is beautifully written. That said, I tend to interrogate premodern heroic epics from the wrong perspective, and ( this text was no exception. )
What I Finished Reading This Week
Thief Of Thieves vol. 1 – Robert Kirkman
In volume one, our male protagonist painstakingly mansplains a female thief’s ignorance of her profession to her face. In response, shetells him to where to shove it declares herself his apprentice; in the months and years after he rebuffs her repeated offers to sleep with him. He does, however, knock up the younger sister of his male partner, whose disbelieving and betrayed “Way to go, my dude!” response extends to laying down his own life to save the protagonist during a job gone bad. This loyalty seems misplaced, as we’ve already learned that younger sister is divorcing protagonist after years of neglect while he chased one big heist after the next, despite his 11th hour declarations of undying love and teary-eyed appeals for a second chance.
Fast forward several years, to protagonist's conversation with the sexy POC FBI agent who can’t help expressing admiration for protagonist’s sexual allure even as she’s determined to take him down. This she accomplishes by arresting his son to force dad to confess. Although son followed dad into the family business it seems dad never mainsplained the works to him, because the FBI nets him with ease. This forces dad to Put Together A CrewTM for One Last JobTM to spring son from jail. There are seven people in The Crew. Six of them are men, and skilled at what they do. The seventh is a woman. She is, predictably, a stripper. The Crew pulls off the heist with flying colors, destroying the FBI’s evidence of the son's crimes in the process. “Gee,” I said to the GC, as I closed the book. “Do you think protagonist bones the apprentice before finally reuniting with his suitably chastised and repentant wife, and that sexy POC FBI agent destroys her career and reputation in her increasingly obsessive but ultimately doomed quest to Take Protagonist DownTM? The GC just laughed.
As Samantha Bee might put it, Thief of Thieves is for boys.
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London – Garth Nix
I love Garth Nix, but his novels are something of a mixed bag. I’m happy to say The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is in the top half of everything he’s written. It tells the story of Susan Arkshaw and her adventures with the secretive left- and right-handed London booksellers whose job it is to protect 1983 Britain from supernatural creatures of myth and legend, and her search for the mysterious father she’s never met.
Here’s what I like about the book. In a world of “trilogies,” “chronicles,” “cycles,” and their ilk, Booksellers is a standalone volume. Nix’s worldbuilding is fabulous, and the passages that explain it never read like exposition. The pacing is good, the adventure is fun, the characters are quirky, and although there’s romance, action, mystery, and drama are the focus here. Nix's descriptive language is stellar: “Here, even only in the beginning of her power, she could see the shape of his words and when they came straight or twisted from his mouth.” Dialogue and narration both are snappy, and at several points made me laugh out loud.
As one might expect from a novel set in a “slightly alternative London in 1983”, there’s a lot of name- and cultural reference dropping: “A Kexa is a hemlock cat. And you could look it up in The Golden Bough…no, wait…you’re right, it’s not in the version that made it to print.”
But where Erin Morgenstern or Ernest Cline would have immediately had a second character explain the reference to make sure readers don’t miss how hip and in-the-know they’re being (“You mean Sir George Frazer’s seminal work of comparative mythology that’s informed countless fantasy novels and shaped the development of modern paganism in the years since its original publication in 1890?”), Nix leaves it up to the reader to catch his references—or not—resulting in a far smoother read. That said, he still goes overboard at times: “Forty seconds later, they were back on the A50, now in a silver Ford Capri 3.0 MK 11 with a black vinyl roof, exactly like the one in the ITV series The Professionals."
“Ford Capri 3.0 MK 11 with a black vinyl roof”? A normal person's internal dialogue would have just said “car.”
There are a few other stumbles: the book’s first person limited POV suddenly starts to jump from character to character halfway through, a jarring transition Nix could have avoided with a little more effort. And Nix probably should have checked that that bit of American Midwestern dialogue was something a speaker of the dialect would actually say before premising a punchline on it. (Oops.)
TL;DR - great worldbuilding, good action, frequently humorous, and an all-around enjoyable read despite some minor stumbles.
欲しがりな君と不束な僕 – 直野儚羅 (Hoshigarina Kimi to Fusokuna Boku – Naona Bohra)
I finished the remaining yomikiri in this volume: ( cut )
What I Am Currently Reading
In A Dark Wood – Michael Cadnum
In contrast to Sutcliff, Cadnum doesn’t gloss over the ways in which premodern social structures sucked for elites and commoners alike. I am such a fan of this book.
Secrets of Tarot – Amanda Hall
This one is a real honker.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I’m glad I set this one aside for so long; it’s emphatically not a book I would have enjoyed reading over the holiday season, but a rollicking ride now that season is over.
片づける 禅の作法 – 枡野俊明 (Katazukeru Zen no Houhou – Makino Shunmyo)
This week’s chapters discussed cleaning protocols in Zen temples, and are far more interesting than that phrase would suggest.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Hall this week, last week I picked up Joy Williams’ The Changeling, which I've been eying for the past few years, 最遊記ＲＥＬＯＡＤ ＢＬＡＳＴ vols. 1-3 by 峰倉かずや, and 終点unknown 5, and 終点unknown 外伝, by my future bride, 杉浦志保.
これで以上です。
What I Finished Reading Last Week
Secret Agent 666 – Richard Spence
This is a fun but not particularly believable read, as evidenced by the parade of may have’s, could be that’s, seemingly’s, may indicate’s, possibly suggests’s, and so forth that qualify almost every sentence Spencer writes. Aleister Crowley was a narcissist, congenital liar, and provocateur who loved agitating people, and Spence’s innuendo doesn't really make a convincing case that Crowley’s statements and actions should be taken at anything like face value. None of this is helped by the citation system, which does little to help readers pursue Spencer’s sources. I don’t regret having read this one, but neither would I recommend it to anyone with only a moderate interest in its subject.
Having said that, I was tickled to learn that Henry Jenner, acquaintance of Crowley and political radical who sought to overthrow the Windsors was indeed the same Henry Jenner, erudite scholar of Cornish whose seminal work on the language I read and reviewed last year, in what is one of the most unanticipated and delightful convergences of my niche interests in recent memory.
Black Ships Before Troy – Rosemary Sutcliff
I love Sutcliff’s high fantasy narrative voice; this book is beautifully written. That said, I tend to interrogate premodern heroic epics from the wrong perspective, and ( this text was no exception. )
What I Finished Reading This Week
Thief Of Thieves vol. 1 – Robert Kirkman
In volume one, our male protagonist painstakingly mansplains a female thief’s ignorance of her profession to her face. In response, she
Fast forward several years, to protagonist's conversation with the sexy POC FBI agent who can’t help expressing admiration for protagonist’s sexual allure even as she’s determined to take him down. This she accomplishes by arresting his son to force dad to confess. Although son followed dad into the family business it seems dad never mainsplained the works to him, because the FBI nets him with ease. This forces dad to Put Together A CrewTM for One Last JobTM to spring son from jail. There are seven people in The Crew. Six of them are men, and skilled at what they do. The seventh is a woman. She is, predictably, a stripper. The Crew pulls off the heist with flying colors, destroying the FBI’s evidence of the son's crimes in the process. “Gee,” I said to the GC, as I closed the book. “Do you think protagonist bones the apprentice before finally reuniting with his suitably chastised and repentant wife, and that sexy POC FBI agent destroys her career and reputation in her increasingly obsessive but ultimately doomed quest to Take Protagonist DownTM? The GC just laughed.
As Samantha Bee might put it, Thief of Thieves is for boys.
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London – Garth Nix
I love Garth Nix, but his novels are something of a mixed bag. I’m happy to say The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is in the top half of everything he’s written. It tells the story of Susan Arkshaw and her adventures with the secretive left- and right-handed London booksellers whose job it is to protect 1983 Britain from supernatural creatures of myth and legend, and her search for the mysterious father she’s never met.
Here’s what I like about the book. In a world of “trilogies,” “chronicles,” “cycles,” and their ilk, Booksellers is a standalone volume. Nix’s worldbuilding is fabulous, and the passages that explain it never read like exposition. The pacing is good, the adventure is fun, the characters are quirky, and although there’s romance, action, mystery, and drama are the focus here. Nix's descriptive language is stellar: “Here, even only in the beginning of her power, she could see the shape of his words and when they came straight or twisted from his mouth.” Dialogue and narration both are snappy, and at several points made me laugh out loud.
As one might expect from a novel set in a “slightly alternative London in 1983”, there’s a lot of name- and cultural reference dropping: “A Kexa is a hemlock cat. And you could look it up in The Golden Bough…no, wait…you’re right, it’s not in the version that made it to print.”
But where Erin Morgenstern or Ernest Cline would have immediately had a second character explain the reference to make sure readers don’t miss how hip and in-the-know they’re being (“You mean Sir George Frazer’s seminal work of comparative mythology that’s informed countless fantasy novels and shaped the development of modern paganism in the years since its original publication in 1890?”), Nix leaves it up to the reader to catch his references—or not—resulting in a far smoother read. That said, he still goes overboard at times: “Forty seconds later, they were back on the A50, now in a silver Ford Capri 3.0 MK 11 with a black vinyl roof, exactly like the one in the ITV series The Professionals."
“Ford Capri 3.0 MK 11 with a black vinyl roof”? A normal person's internal dialogue would have just said “car.”
There are a few other stumbles: the book’s first person limited POV suddenly starts to jump from character to character halfway through, a jarring transition Nix could have avoided with a little more effort. And Nix probably should have checked that that bit of American Midwestern dialogue was something a speaker of the dialect would actually say before premising a punchline on it. (Oops.)
TL;DR - great worldbuilding, good action, frequently humorous, and an all-around enjoyable read despite some minor stumbles.
欲しがりな君と不束な僕 – 直野儚羅 (Hoshigarina Kimi to Fusokuna Boku – Naona Bohra)
I finished the remaining yomikiri in this volume: ( cut )
What I Am Currently Reading
In A Dark Wood – Michael Cadnum
In contrast to Sutcliff, Cadnum doesn’t gloss over the ways in which premodern social structures sucked for elites and commoners alike. I am such a fan of this book.
Secrets of Tarot – Amanda Hall
This one is a real honker.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I’m glad I set this one aside for so long; it’s emphatically not a book I would have enjoyed reading over the holiday season, but a rollicking ride now that season is over.
片づける 禅の作法 – 枡野俊明 (Katazukeru Zen no Houhou – Makino Shunmyo)
This week’s chapters discussed cleaning protocols in Zen temples, and are far more interesting than that phrase would suggest.
What I'm Reading Next
Aside from the Hall this week, last week I picked up Joy Williams’ The Changeling, which I've been eying for the past few years, 最遊記ＲＥＬＯＡＤ ＢＬＡＳＴ vols. 1-3 by 峰倉かずや, and 終点unknown 5, and 終点unknown 外伝, by my future bride, 杉浦志保.
これで以上です。
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