Finished The Bell Jar a few weeks ago. I have a number of family members and close friends living with serious mental health issues, but was still not quite ready for how unflinching and unsentimental it is. That said, it helped me cultivate additional empathy for people in that situation, which I value so much and speaks to the power of the prose. The way it seamlessly transitions from a series of sardonic observations (many of which are funny) to a harrowing unraveling (and back again, sort of?) is unshakably effective.
Then I read GraceLand by Chris Abani. It’s set in Nigeria, a place I knew next to nothing about, so it was interesting to be exposed to it through a novel. (In addition to elements of the country’s late 70s / early 80s history being part of the plot, it incorporates recipes and descriptions of Igbo traditions as interstices.) I liked it more in the beginning as a series of vignettes about the main character than towards the end when a Plot emerged and resolved. I got a “check back in with this guy in a novel or two and he’ll probably have something great” vibe. (And he’s already published several since then, so I guess I can do this whenever I want, woo.)
Another note on Vance is that he tries to sell the town he lived in in Ohio as some totally rural small town when it is basically a suburb of Cinci. Oh and yeah, he’s 100% a conservative who thinks if he just doesn’t mention that, he will be fine. It’s not surprising now that he is a VC in Columbus, Ohio’s city of desperately trying to be other places, which has shifted in the past few years to really wanting to be Silicon Valley.
began to read karl ove knausgaard and fredrik ekelund’s book of letters written during the brazil world cup. I’ve been reading one letter a night from each writer before I sleep—they wrote back-and-forth to each other throughout the tournament—it makes me feel nostalgiac for the time of life when football was something I really cared about and thoughts of it took up most of the time I wasn’t actually playing. also stops me from reading the third part of knausgaard’s my struggle before time; I gave myself a limit of one every six months, desirous of a life of tradition where none really exists
I absolutely cannot get enough of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I’m about halfway through and every page has been a joy. This is one I am in no rush whatsoever to finish, as reading it is so wonderfully pleasant.
I’ve been reading the Three Body Problem Trilogy by Cixin Liu. I’m about to finish the third book. These are like the most popular sci-fi novels in China, and for good reason. They’re all over the place, throwing together big weird ideas, unlikeable characters, history textbook passages describing hundreds of years of future history at a time, and odd out-of-place but well executed vignettes from various random genres. The writing style is totally unfamiliar to me, probably because I’ve never before read very much prose that’s been translated from Chinese to English.
Reading them all together was a bad idea. All three of them are good, but they’re TOO MUCH taken all at once. The final quarter of the last book has devolved into a series of almost self-contained episodes that are essentially monster-of-the-week format, except the monster is always a totally weird space-time anomaly based on extrapolating from weird actual theoretical physics ideas. A man gets eternally trapped in the event horizon of a black hole, a space crew discovers bubbles of 4th dimensional space they can use to warp around, an alien race uses a weapon to collapse part of the universe into 2D space, killing an entire civilization.
I went back to this big anthology of Pablo Neruda poetry (translated into English) that I’ve had for a number years and have been working through slowly. I did Canto General. It was good. Some of the leftist stuff is very cool, and there’s a section called “The Great Ocean” that was jaw-dropping. I can only imagine how good it was in Spanish. I remember liking what came before quite a bit, but I last read something from it three years ago, so I’m not sure how I’d rank Canto compared to the other stuff I’ve read.
Notes From Underground is so weird, I loved it. (I think!) Hadn’t read Dostoyevsky before, but was impressed by how well-rendered the narrator is (especially given the length of the book) - at turns totally off-putting and unnervingly relatable. Also, seriously funny (e.g., the narrator pacing back and forth in the restaurant for three hours to not lose face, the relationship between the narrator and his servant, etc.)
working a job for the short while before corporate threw me out gave me time to get into a rhythm of regularly reading, so I’ve been burning through a few books. I feel slightly more like a person now.
Finally finished High Rise. That gets weird and disgusting but it sure stayed interesting!
Read through The Last Wish, which is turns out is the second Witcher book written, though chronologically first. I consider this to be a thing that worked out for the best. The stories and writing in this are really good, and consistently surprisingly self aware. There’s a chapter that starts out a goofy cryptid hunt and does a 180 turn and becomes about how the sins of colonialism can never be absolved. My favorite chapter, though, is an interlude that is entirely one “dialogue” between Geralt and a silent nun. He overshares and even mansplains meteorites and it felt very tongue in cheek to me.
I’m currently on The Sword of Destiny, which is the first written Witcher book, and it’s…not really pleasing me so far. Doesn’t feel like it has the self awareness of Last Wish so far, though I’m only some 100 pages in out of ~380. Female characters in both books have their fair share of sexual peril, but Last Wish tried either to validate them or make commentary on them being unable to achieve validation and the society that causes that. So far Sword of Destiny just kind of has it, or even tries to joke about it. Pretty weird! Bad taste in my mouth.
I also read through Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, which is extremely good speculative fiction/fantasy. Very informed by Black American experience, to the point that a few chapters in I found myself baffled at the oppression of the characters not being called out before realizing, uh, duh, that cognitive dissonance is integral to the experience it was conveying. Also, transness and polyamory and trauma/mental illness just played straight with no attempt at contextual justification, which was a welcome change of pace. Essun is a 40 something darkskinned woman who can control the planet with her brainstem and she has no interest in anyone’s bullshit.
I’m almost halfway through Authority, and I’m tempted to abandon it. But, since I almost never quit reading a book I start and because I still see potential in the story, I’ve been kind of forcing myself to read a little more occasionally. I hope it pays off in the end, though unless developments change my mind I can see myself not bothering with the third book.
Somehow VanderMeer is managing to mimic and expand upon the premise of Roadside Picnic–one of my favorite books–while making me unsure whether I care enough about the strange happenings to slog through the other elements of the story.
I’m like halfway through the last book in the Three Body Problem trilogy. These books sure do get dry and characterless! Seems like Liu has so many ideas that cramming them all in means losing the human element. Kind of thing you could read it on Wikipedia and get 90% of the effect. There’s a consistent cycle of setup > twist > quasi-deus-ex-machina that was entertaining, then predictable, then hilarious and back to entertaining again. Given how interesting the ideas are, I’m still having fun reading it.
I felt this way about the first book in the trilogy, haven’t bothered picking up the sequels because I found myself really disappointed with the… shallowness and total lack of uniqueness in Annihilation
Its a story I’ve read dozens of times before, and all of those times were significantly better and more novel.
Reading warmed over JG Ballard meets Strugatsky but this time Mushrooms instead of Crystals or Aliens is far more dull than I expected.