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Wednesday Reading
Mar. 27th, 2019 01:25 pmActually upon a Wednesday! Will wonders never cease?
Recently Finished
The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett -- There was a lot that I enjoyed about this, but in the end I found myself irritated that the heroine did not have any friends (so that the plot rotated entirely around the love interest), and even more irritated that there was a character with schizophrenia used as plot furniture, especially since I did not recognise Bennett's take on schizophrenia as accurate. I would still try another of hers, but grrr.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson -- A mostly successful modern middlebrow, although I would have liked to see an actual conversation between our middle-aged romantic leads (one of whom is of Pakistani descent) about the overt racism they are encountering in the course of their romance. On the other hand, Simonson clearly knows it is there and has the female lead speak to it, and a direct conversation about it would be out of character for both of them, so all in all I would say it is promising and I am looking forward to her second novel, although based solely on the title (The Summer Before the War) I think it must be historical rather than contemporary, so I am wondering if she will introduce period issues around race, gender and class, or will it be purely cosy?
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse -- I appreciate so much that Roanhorse is writing from her own cultural traditions, but this type of urban fantasy is not at all my genre. I am glad I finished it so that I may talk with people about it, but I do not think I will read the next.
On the Go
A Gilded Vanity by Richard Dehan -- The various rich people continue to scheme and marry for money and figure out how to compromise young titled Scotsmen so that rich marriages can occur and there's at least one secret marriage waiting until the woman reaches 21 so they can announce it to the world, and the various older women are as clueless as Emma in the titular film about who is actually involved with whom, and the prose continues to be so purple it is nearly ultraviolet. I am still enjoying it very much because I do not have to take a single word seriously.
The March North by Graydon Saunders -- This will be on the go for a while, I hope, because I am reading this two or three pages at a time each night before bed, and it is marvelous. It falls into the same category as Karr's At Amberleaf Fair despite being a different sort of book on most every axis, so now I am reconsidering what category that is -- I used to call it 'books in which nothing happens' but now I think it is 'books with something interesting on every page'. I foresee a post about this category sometime in my future.
What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan -- Mullan is asking small & deliberate questions of Austen's books, such as "which characters are seen and never allowed to speak?", and I am finding the results interesting. He does not have an overarching thesis, all of this is not done in support of a central goal, but that is part of what I am enjoying in it, because the individual questions yield their own small fruits.
Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley -- I finally started on this after having it about to go for months and am delighted to discover that it is (at least in part) about Wallis Simpson! I am only 100 pages in thus far but feeling enthusiastic about it; the combination of layered levels of story and historical fiction about the 1930s containing people I previously researched at length is wonderful, and Findley is a remarkable writer on the sentence level for me.
Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper is absolute cotton candy from the late 1960s and thus has bizarre gender and sexual assumptions on every page; I am reading it like speculative fiction, alternately intrigued and appalled by the world-building.
Upcoming
I have a few books of Leonard Cohen's poetry, from early in his career before he had settled into life as a songwriter, and I am looking forward to them.
Villain by Yoshida Shuuichi is a mystery translated from the Japanese and has also been on my TBR forever, so it is definitely coming next unless the stress takes such a turn that I cannot read any novels in which bad things happen to anyone.
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie! Except it is going to be another 'something interesting on every page' book so I might wait until I finish the Saunders above, except when I do finish the Saunders I will want to read the second and third of them, so... I am not sure. I want to read this so that I can join in the conversation but also I want to savor it, decisions decisions.
There are any number of other possibilities but they will not coalesce until I move through some of the ones I am working on right now. How delightful it is to think I will never run out of books!
Recently Finished
The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett -- There was a lot that I enjoyed about this, but in the end I found myself irritated that the heroine did not have any friends (so that the plot rotated entirely around the love interest), and even more irritated that there was a character with schizophrenia used as plot furniture, especially since I did not recognise Bennett's take on schizophrenia as accurate. I would still try another of hers, but grrr.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson -- A mostly successful modern middlebrow, although I would have liked to see an actual conversation between our middle-aged romantic leads (one of whom is of Pakistani descent) about the overt racism they are encountering in the course of their romance. On the other hand, Simonson clearly knows it is there and has the female lead speak to it, and a direct conversation about it would be out of character for both of them, so all in all I would say it is promising and I am looking forward to her second novel, although based solely on the title (The Summer Before the War) I think it must be historical rather than contemporary, so I am wondering if she will introduce period issues around race, gender and class, or will it be purely cosy?
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse -- I appreciate so much that Roanhorse is writing from her own cultural traditions, but this type of urban fantasy is not at all my genre. I am glad I finished it so that I may talk with people about it, but I do not think I will read the next.
On the Go
A Gilded Vanity by Richard Dehan -- The various rich people continue to scheme and marry for money and figure out how to compromise young titled Scotsmen so that rich marriages can occur and there's at least one secret marriage waiting until the woman reaches 21 so they can announce it to the world, and the various older women are as clueless as Emma in the titular film about who is actually involved with whom, and the prose continues to be so purple it is nearly ultraviolet. I am still enjoying it very much because I do not have to take a single word seriously.
The March North by Graydon Saunders -- This will be on the go for a while, I hope, because I am reading this two or three pages at a time each night before bed, and it is marvelous. It falls into the same category as Karr's At Amberleaf Fair despite being a different sort of book on most every axis, so now I am reconsidering what category that is -- I used to call it 'books in which nothing happens' but now I think it is 'books with something interesting on every page'. I foresee a post about this category sometime in my future.
What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan -- Mullan is asking small & deliberate questions of Austen's books, such as "which characters are seen and never allowed to speak?", and I am finding the results interesting. He does not have an overarching thesis, all of this is not done in support of a central goal, but that is part of what I am enjoying in it, because the individual questions yield their own small fruits.
Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley -- I finally started on this after having it about to go for months and am delighted to discover that it is (at least in part) about Wallis Simpson! I am only 100 pages in thus far but feeling enthusiastic about it; the combination of layered levels of story and historical fiction about the 1930s containing people I previously researched at length is wonderful, and Findley is a remarkable writer on the sentence level for me.
Lisa & Co. by Jilly Cooper is absolute cotton candy from the late 1960s and thus has bizarre gender and sexual assumptions on every page; I am reading it like speculative fiction, alternately intrigued and appalled by the world-building.
Upcoming
I have a few books of Leonard Cohen's poetry, from early in his career before he had settled into life as a songwriter, and I am looking forward to them.
Villain by Yoshida Shuuichi is a mystery translated from the Japanese and has also been on my TBR forever, so it is definitely coming next unless the stress takes such a turn that I cannot read any novels in which bad things happen to anyone.
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie! Except it is going to be another 'something interesting on every page' book so I might wait until I finish the Saunders above, except when I do finish the Saunders I will want to read the second and third of them, so... I am not sure. I want to read this so that I can join in the conversation but also I want to savor it, decisions decisions.
There are any number of other possibilities but they will not coalesce until I move through some of the ones I am working on right now. How delightful it is to think I will never run out of books!
