What Am I Reading Wednesday - February 22

Maybe its because the past week of "four distinct seasons in the span of ten hours" weather has made going outside seem like more trouble than it's worth, but my reading really took off this week.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Orlam – P.J. Harvey
Orlam is a collection of narrative poems about an adolescent girl in an imaginary farming village in Dorset. She’s watched over by the omniscient eye of a dead lamb and is drawn to the ghost of a soldier who died in a (possibly fictional) rebellion who haunts the woods where she goes to escape the various, oft creepy, residents of her village. It’s atmospheric and brooding and when the poems are at their best it’s very well done indeed. Its fusion of history and folklore reminds me a lot of the cunning man arc from Warren Ellis’ Injection.

Orlam is written in the Dorset dialect, with facing page “translations” in modern standard English. Honestly, these weren’t really necessary. I didn’t find the unfamiliar terms any more difficult to figure out than dialogue in a Discworld novel, whereas the press surrounding the book would have you believe it’s impenetrable. The dialect also seemed to be unevenly applied, and I’m not sure whether that’s due to authorial inconsistency or different characters narrating individual poems—it’s something I’ll keep an eye out for the next time I read the book. I also get the sense that Harvey may have written the book in standard English and then converted it to Dorset dialect because many of the poems scan better in the former...or maybe it’s because I don’t have a real sense of how the latter sounds when spoken.

Final verdict: I liked the atmosphere, I liked the interweaving of folklore, pop and rock lyrics, and biblical references, and the narrative's ambiguous time period and overall gothic sensibility, and I will certainly read it again.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System vol. 4 – Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
I liked 90 percent of this one a lot and 10 percent of this one not at all. ( Cut for spoilers. )

TL;DR: volumes two and three will remain my favorites but there was still a ton of good stuff in this volume, and it offers a lot of intriguing entry points for follow-on or fix it fic.

Ariadne – Jennifer Saint
This is a solid YA retelling of Greek mythology. Which isn’t a dig; it’s better written than some other recent Greek mythology adaptations I’ve read (to say nothing of other recent YA offerings I’ve tried). Saint’s retelling ably questions the injustices the original Minotaur myths visited as a matter of course on the women who populated them. But Saint’s narrative does so through characters who exhibit thoroughly modern thoughts, speech, and actions. As a novel, Ariadne cosplays ancient Greece versus actually portraying it. At times it’s downright jarring, such as when Ariadne’s “ears were tuned in to what other mothers around me talked of” (in a time before TV or radio) or when she describes characters' "steely resolve" (in a time before steel). But there are some particularly deft touches, such as the beautifully shown-not-told tension Saint depicts between women who take to motherhood easily versus those who struggle to bond with their children, or how Dionysus’s divinity inexorably opens a rift between him and Ariadne. And Saint’s handling of the end of Phaedra’s story is far more probable than what the original claims happened.

At the end of the day, I will always prefer a retelling of Greek myth that takes the time and effort to avoid anachronism more than one that doesn’t, but if you’re going to read a something in the latter mode, you could do far worse than Ariadne.

We Have Been Harmonized – Kai Strittmaier
This book is a very good top-level summary of recent developments, which Strittmaier often encapsulates in a biting, pithy phrase. That said, he's prone to cherry picking his facts in places, contradicts himself in others (e.g., "the Chinese people" are often whatever trait he needs them to be based on the point he wants to make in the moment), and you have to be on the lookout for weasel words ("might," "could," "seems" and the ilk). The final chapters were very obviously thrown together in a rush right before publication, given how sloppily they're argued and edited compared to the rest of the book. All of this makes it sound like I liked the book less than I did: it's very good, and I'm glad I read it.


What I Am Currently Reading

Blackheart Knights – laure Eve
So far this is a very different book than The Graces or The Curses, but I'm enjoying it a great deal.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System vol. 1 – Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
I'll probably wrap up this reread this week.

Elektra – Jennifer Saint
Ariadne was decent enough that I’m willing to see if Saint's chops have improved in her second novel.

The Cuckoo’s Egg – Clifford Stoll
I’m only on chapter four, but so far Stoll has excelled at using comparisons to more familiar subject matter to explain how hacking works.

Imbibe – David Wondrich
I started reading this one last fall, then put it down and never picked it up again. I did so this week, to see what it had to say about Jack Rose cocktails, and ended up reading quite a bit more besides.


What I’m Reading Next

This week I acquired Elizabeth Economy’s The Third Revolution, Desmond Shum’s Red Roulette, and The Logic of Governance in China by Xueguang Zhou.

これで以上です。