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What I Just Finished Reading
The Widows of Malabar Hill – Sujata Massey
I really enjoyed this one. As with pretty much every novel I’ve read in the genre, the mystery was the most predictable and least compelling part of the story. It was clear who the perpetrators were the moment they were introduced, and equally obvious which characters Massey meant for readers to suspect instead.
But! What great characters Massey writes. They are an excellent study in intersectionality—their cultural assumptions, religious beliefs, races, genders, ages, and positions in the social hierarchy all play major—and believable—roles in their actions throughout the narrative, and Massey incorporates these elements fluidly without resorting to the preachiness and hand-holding that rubs me the wrong way in a lot of recent fiction. The chips don’t necessarily fall where you’d expect, either. The Parsi protagonist, who is the first female lawyer in 1920s Bombay, has her own prejudices about Muslim women and blind spots about her own religious community. There are feminist men, bigoted women, radical English peers...and all this on top of a fascinating, expertly depicted setting, with humor and drama and warm family moments. I am really not doing the nuance or storytelling justice here, so I suggest giving the book a try.
The Little Book of Hindu Deities – Sanjay Patel
This one will ultimately go to the GC’s mother, but I’m pleased we own it in the interim. Patel’s illustrations are colorful and engaging—sort of a Powerpuff Girls-meets-South Park-meets-Teen Titans hybrid—and his prose strikes the tricky balance between being appropriate for young readers and interesting to adult ones. This is good stuff, and has further convinced me to go buy that copy of Ramayana on the shelves at the bookstore across the street.
What I Am Currently Reading
All The Birds in the Sky – Charlie Jane Anders
I’m maintaining a seven pages per day read rate to get through this thing by the end of summer, and it is just not doing that much for me.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom – Rachel Pollack
Pollack’s Jungian deconstruction of the Rider Smith tarot is an interesting contrast to the Golden Dawn methodology of last week’s Harris Thoth read. I think this is one of the best guides out there for people who don’t want to go into the crazy degree of circumstances, to borrow Lev Grossman’s term, that govern reading the Thoth deck. And on an academic level, it’s fascinating to see how much Pollack’s exposition on Smith’s imagery contributed to mid-20th century interpretations of the cards’ meanings.
Colloquial Bengali - Mithun Nasrin & W.A.M. van der Wurff
I’ve gone back to revise the second chapter on the bornomala alongside some PDF’ed textbooks for native speakers I found online, and it’s amazing what a difference a high-quality brush tip pen makes in making my attempts at writing the script look like the exemplars in the book. It’s fun but hard: the proportions and stroke order (for lack of a better term) are dissimilar to English and any of the East Asian scripts I know.
The Bird King – G. Willow Wilson
Wilson’s writing is so good, but oh, for all that its cover art and dust jacket quality are lovely, the novel itself is printed on stuff that’s one grade above fast food joint toilet paper, and my skin just crawls when I touch it. I may have to try reading with gloves or get this one in ebook format to continue reading, because based on the little I've got through so far, I very much want to.
What I'm Reading Next
The Sanjay Patel book was the only new volume I picked up this week, and I’ve already read it.
これで以上です。
The Widows of Malabar Hill – Sujata Massey
I really enjoyed this one. As with pretty much every novel I’ve read in the genre, the mystery was the most predictable and least compelling part of the story. It was clear who the perpetrators were the moment they were introduced, and equally obvious which characters Massey meant for readers to suspect instead.
But! What great characters Massey writes. They are an excellent study in intersectionality—their cultural assumptions, religious beliefs, races, genders, ages, and positions in the social hierarchy all play major—and believable—roles in their actions throughout the narrative, and Massey incorporates these elements fluidly without resorting to the preachiness and hand-holding that rubs me the wrong way in a lot of recent fiction. The chips don’t necessarily fall where you’d expect, either. The Parsi protagonist, who is the first female lawyer in 1920s Bombay, has her own prejudices about Muslim women and blind spots about her own religious community. There are feminist men, bigoted women, radical English peers...and all this on top of a fascinating, expertly depicted setting, with humor and drama and warm family moments. I am really not doing the nuance or storytelling justice here, so I suggest giving the book a try.
The Little Book of Hindu Deities – Sanjay Patel
This one will ultimately go to the GC’s mother, but I’m pleased we own it in the interim. Patel’s illustrations are colorful and engaging—sort of a Powerpuff Girls-meets-South Park-meets-Teen Titans hybrid—and his prose strikes the tricky balance between being appropriate for young readers and interesting to adult ones. This is good stuff, and has further convinced me to go buy that copy of Ramayana on the shelves at the bookstore across the street.
What I Am Currently Reading
All The Birds in the Sky – Charlie Jane Anders
I’m maintaining a seven pages per day read rate to get through this thing by the end of summer, and it is just not doing that much for me.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom – Rachel Pollack
Pollack’s Jungian deconstruction of the Rider Smith tarot is an interesting contrast to the Golden Dawn methodology of last week’s Harris Thoth read. I think this is one of the best guides out there for people who don’t want to go into the crazy degree of circumstances, to borrow Lev Grossman’s term, that govern reading the Thoth deck. And on an academic level, it’s fascinating to see how much Pollack’s exposition on Smith’s imagery contributed to mid-20th century interpretations of the cards’ meanings.
Colloquial Bengali - Mithun Nasrin & W.A.M. van der Wurff
I’ve gone back to revise the second chapter on the bornomala alongside some PDF’ed textbooks for native speakers I found online, and it’s amazing what a difference a high-quality brush tip pen makes in making my attempts at writing the script look like the exemplars in the book. It’s fun but hard: the proportions and stroke order (for lack of a better term) are dissimilar to English and any of the East Asian scripts I know.
The Bird King – G. Willow Wilson
Wilson’s writing is so good, but oh, for all that its cover art and dust jacket quality are lovely, the novel itself is printed on stuff that’s one grade above fast food joint toilet paper, and my skin just crawls when I touch it. I may have to try reading with gloves or get this one in ebook format to continue reading, because based on the little I've got through so far, I very much want to.
What I'm Reading Next
The Sanjay Patel book was the only new volume I picked up this week, and I’ve already read it.
これで以上です。
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