Hello, Anchorage! I'm visiting my home state again, and currently running on five hours of sleep, a 30-minute nap I managed to catch this afternoon, and enough coffee and tea to (luckily briefly) spike my blood pressure and kick my adrenals into overdrive. The crash is coming, oh yes, and it will be hard.
But first, before I run out of Wednesday - books!
What I just finished reading
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson. I found the ending of this one almost anticlimactic. It certainly didn't feel like it added much to what I've already written about this book - things play out precisely as you would expect if you've been paying attention. But I'm beginning to suspect that's typical of Jackson's writing; she's fond of setting up the dominoes of personality and dysfunction and environment and outside circumstance and watching them tip against each other. I did like where the story ended, with our little cultist family right on the cusp of the supposed apocalypse - does the world actually end? Do the characters inherit the renewed earth as they've been promised? Does it turn out to be a metaphorical renewal rather than a literal one? Or, as the last scene hints, is it a literal renewal that turns out to be just as troubled by our cultists' inherent shortcomings and interpersonal dysfunction as the former world? It's left to the reader, and perhaps to the characters, to decide.
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. Holy Jesus, I loved this book. I had expected it to be something of an investment, if not an outright slog, to get into - I enjoy second-world fantasy and sci-fi, but find myself with less and less patience for the "And now I'm going to spend the next eighty pages describing exactly how magic works in this particular universe" style of worldbuilding these days - but I found it surprisingly engrossing; Leckie could teach a master class on "show, don't tell". I loved all the observed quirks about linguistics and translation, such as the way that the poetry/songs, even when explicitly described as rhyming, don't rhyme in transcription - because of course they wouldn't, we're reading them in English, not whatever language they're from. I loved the concept of a single consciousness split into multiple bodies, what can happen when things don't go as expected, and how that past perspective would inform a given single body cut off from the greater consciousness. (I have a whole page scribbled down in my journal on Justice as a parable for identity, and the importance of maintaining self-honesty and integrity in dealing with others so that we don't entrap them in our conflicting selves; I'm hoping to flesh it out into a blog post later, when I have more brains.) I loved the detail in the varying cultures and their respective sociology. I loved the character arcs - Breq and Seivarden, two very damaged and isolated people, both relearning who they are and where they might fit in the greater picture. I have so many thoughts and they're all kind of scattered, but I'm sure I'll write more about them - there's two more books, after all.
What I'm currently reading
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. Having graduated and gotten married despite the protestations of their families and the greater culture (in 1940s America it was still unusual for a Jew and a non-Jew to marry), Shirley Jackson and Stanley Hyman are living in bohemian poverty in Grenwich Village, scraping by as they try to get their foot in the door of the literary scene. I particularly appreciate Franklin's unsparing assessment of their relationship - you can really see the ways in which they complement each other positively (Stanley's editorial eye for Shirley's work and his constant encouragement of her to try new things artistically, as well as his ability to challenge her intellect in a way few men can) and negatively (Shirley's deep and fundamental insecurity, in part due to her mother's constant rejection of her, that leaves her open to Stanley's criticism and constant philandering). Having read a number of pieces about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald claiming that Zelda ruined Scott's life or vice versa, I find myself wondering if this was what their relationship had been like two decades earlier - at its best, intensely creative and inspiring, and at its worst, hitting each other's complementary insecurities so hard as to be mutually destructive.
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. I realize in retrospect that "just having finished a book" was maybe a rather vulnerable time to go visit one of my favorite used bookstores - I was looking for a specific book and also ended up picking this one off the shelf. In my defense, it's fascinating - an intentionally-accessibly-written history of England throughout the fifteenth century, written intentionally in present tense to give a sense of what it might have been like to live in that era. I'm only a little ways in, but so far I'm enjoying it - if nothing else, it'll give me specifics to carp about next time I'm at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Because everyone loves the period nitpicker, haha.
What I plan to read next
Ancillary Sword is high on the list for the next paper book. On the audiobook front, having read![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer's glowing reviews of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, I was tickled to see My Brilliant Friend on Audible Daily Deal for $5. Sold!
But first, before I run out of Wednesday - books!
What I just finished reading
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson. I found the ending of this one almost anticlimactic. It certainly didn't feel like it added much to what I've already written about this book - things play out precisely as you would expect if you've been paying attention. But I'm beginning to suspect that's typical of Jackson's writing; she's fond of setting up the dominoes of personality and dysfunction and environment and outside circumstance and watching them tip against each other. I did like where the story ended, with our little cultist family right on the cusp of the supposed apocalypse - does the world actually end? Do the characters inherit the renewed earth as they've been promised? Does it turn out to be a metaphorical renewal rather than a literal one? Or, as the last scene hints, is it a literal renewal that turns out to be just as troubled by our cultists' inherent shortcomings and interpersonal dysfunction as the former world? It's left to the reader, and perhaps to the characters, to decide.
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie. Holy Jesus, I loved this book. I had expected it to be something of an investment, if not an outright slog, to get into - I enjoy second-world fantasy and sci-fi, but find myself with less and less patience for the "And now I'm going to spend the next eighty pages describing exactly how magic works in this particular universe" style of worldbuilding these days - but I found it surprisingly engrossing; Leckie could teach a master class on "show, don't tell". I loved all the observed quirks about linguistics and translation, such as the way that the poetry/songs, even when explicitly described as rhyming, don't rhyme in transcription - because of course they wouldn't, we're reading them in English, not whatever language they're from. I loved the concept of a single consciousness split into multiple bodies, what can happen when things don't go as expected, and how that past perspective would inform a given single body cut off from the greater consciousness. (I have a whole page scribbled down in my journal on Justice as a parable for identity, and the importance of maintaining self-honesty and integrity in dealing with others so that we don't entrap them in our conflicting selves; I'm hoping to flesh it out into a blog post later, when I have more brains.) I loved the detail in the varying cultures and their respective sociology. I loved the character arcs - Breq and Seivarden, two very damaged and isolated people, both relearning who they are and where they might fit in the greater picture. I have so many thoughts and they're all kind of scattered, but I'm sure I'll write more about them - there's two more books, after all.
What I'm currently reading
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. Having graduated and gotten married despite the protestations of their families and the greater culture (in 1940s America it was still unusual for a Jew and a non-Jew to marry), Shirley Jackson and Stanley Hyman are living in bohemian poverty in Grenwich Village, scraping by as they try to get their foot in the door of the literary scene. I particularly appreciate Franklin's unsparing assessment of their relationship - you can really see the ways in which they complement each other positively (Stanley's editorial eye for Shirley's work and his constant encouragement of her to try new things artistically, as well as his ability to challenge her intellect in a way few men can) and negatively (Shirley's deep and fundamental insecurity, in part due to her mother's constant rejection of her, that leaves her open to Stanley's criticism and constant philandering). Having read a number of pieces about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald claiming that Zelda ruined Scott's life or vice versa, I find myself wondering if this was what their relationship had been like two decades earlier - at its best, intensely creative and inspiring, and at its worst, hitting each other's complementary insecurities so hard as to be mutually destructive.
The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. I realize in retrospect that "just having finished a book" was maybe a rather vulnerable time to go visit one of my favorite used bookstores - I was looking for a specific book and also ended up picking this one off the shelf. In my defense, it's fascinating - an intentionally-accessibly-written history of England throughout the fifteenth century, written intentionally in present tense to give a sense of what it might have been like to live in that era. I'm only a little ways in, but so far I'm enjoying it - if nothing else, it'll give me specifics to carp about next time I'm at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Because everyone loves the period nitpicker, haha.
What I plan to read next
Ancillary Sword is high on the list for the next paper book. On the audiobook front, having read
osprey_archer's glowing reviews of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, I was tickled to see My Brilliant Friend on Audible Daily Deal for $5. Sold!
