It's Only A Paper Rose

What I've just finished reading

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I enjoyed the heck out of this one - the heroine's bravery, resourcefulness, and agency even as circumstances conspire to rob her of it are all delightful. That said, Ella's great strength as a character also becomes a significant handicap in the third act. Forced by her obedience-curse into the Cinderella role of servant, she spends a good amount of time chafing at her own passivity - and not much else happens. It feels like a missed opportunity; she could have spent some time learning more emotional maturity and alternate coping strategies to deal with her powerlessness, which would have given the finale more punch. But even as written, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for a fun lighthearted read.

What I'm currently reading

Yoga Sequencing, by Mark Stephens. I had a bit of a rocky start with this one, but the second part of the first chapter was much more interesting. I particularly liked what it had to say about how we often think of poses as static, something we hold (an impression reinforced by photos in Yoga Journal or Instagram), when in fact our bodies are always moving - we breathe, our heart beats, electric signals travel along our nerves. I've been building my classes this week around the theme of dynamic stillness; finding the place in a pose where we feel the shape in our body and feel how it changes as we breathe and adjust to keep our balance.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore. I have something of a love/hate relationship with Moore's work; like many humorists, he has a lot of sharply drawn observations on human nature and entertaining takes on our hypocrisy and foibles. However, I'm less of a fan of his attitude towards his characters; rather than evoking a sense of compassion for their shortcomings, he more often seems to be jabbing pointy things in their soft places and mocking them for their inability to live up to their ideals. (Maybe it's not surprising that many of my friends who share my perfectionist streak are big fans of his.) I'm a couple of chapters in and so far this one feels less condescending than some of his other books; maybe it's just that this is a story so often- and self-seriously-told that it's ripe for a little satire. Regardless, I'm enjoying his portrayal of Christ and Biff as Twain-esque boyhood troublemakers.

Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dimitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by M.T. Anderson. Oh man. If I didn't have a massage booking coming up fast I would go on about this book for paragraphs (and indeed already have, to several people). It's a good follow-up to Winter Garden, dealing with a lot of the same events from a more historical perspective, and it's turned out to be precisely the kind of survey of 20th-century Russian/Soviet history that I was hoping to find (and even better, through the lens of the art of the period, possibly my favorite type of history). I also love that Anderson spends some time critically examining his sources, and explaining why any given anecdote is suspect; the combination of the unreliability of Stalinist-era accounts (when saying the wrong thing could mean arrest, torture, and execution) and Shostakovich's global fame (which meant lots of people wanted to be associated with him) means that a lot of what we 'know' about his life has to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, his music speaks for him - and one of Anderson's great strengths as a writer is his ability to describe precisely what it is about the music that makes it so resonant. (I'm listening to the audiobook, which includes short clips of some of the pieces discussed, which is great - but I wish they were longer and that there were more of them!)

Moscow But Dreaming, by Ekaterina Sedia. Continuing my current reading kick, this is a series of short stories by a contemporary Russian author, many of which include fantastical elements. Even though they deal mostly with recent history and present-day Russia, there's a strong streak of sadness and pathos that runs through them. (It's almost like spending decades trapped between an insane and paranoid dictator bent on maintaining control at all costs and an insane dictator bent on the genocide of your people at all costs leaves a cultural mark, heh.) Many of them feel more like vignettes than traditional stories, portraits of people processing the emotions left by a traumatic past; but they're certainly evocative and haunting.

What I plan to read next

Pretty sure I have enough on my plate for now, but you never know...

What I've just finished reading

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. A couple of years ago, Brian and I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation via Netflix, and it occurred to me how fundamentally different it was from anything I'd seen on television over the past couple of decades; specifically, the way the Enterprise crew fundamentally assumed from the get-go that any aliens it encountered, no matter how powerful or strange, could be reasoned with - they might or might not hold the same values humanity did, but that there was always some common ground. Several of the best episodes ("Darmok" comes to mind, though there are others) centered on this idea, in fact. (I'm far from the first person to observe this about the show, but growing up watching primarily Star Trek spinoffs and very little other television, it never really struck me until then exactly how unusual that was. I remember, in fact, watching the new Battlestar Galactica in my twenties and thinking how much more appropriate it was, in a post-9/11 landscape, to have a sci-fi show that addressed the more distrustful aspects of humanity...and only realized some seasons later how depressing it got because it almost continually refused to acknowledge the flip side, perhaps because it was afraid of being compared to Star Trek.)

I bring this up because this series is one of the first that I've seen that does something different with the space opera formula. Even my beloved Vorkosigan series, delightful as it is, tends to have easily-identifiable characters and follow fairly standard plot arcs; this is hardly surprising, as tropes and archetypes are integral to our storytelling traditions. But the Ancillary books could almost entirely be summed up in this one line, from a recent installment of a different space opera franchise: "This is not going to go the way you think." And while lots of stories attempt to do what Leckie does here - subvert expectations, zig when you think it's going to zag, create fascinating characters and a meaty conflict with a satisfying resolution without a single Giant Space Battle - I've rarely seen it pulled off with such aplomb. It's not Star Wars-style space opera, about myth or the expectations that myth generates; it's not Star Trek either (the one alien race we have even tangential contact with, the Presger, are notable for precisely how alien they are - threatening not due to their desire for power or territory or resources, but because we can't even conceptualize of what they want). It's something completely its own, and refreshing, and so well-built that I can't quite believe it's over - the characters and their world still exist vividly in my head, long after I've put the book down.

What I'm currently reading

Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. I feel like this book started about ten chapters too early - I'm seven hours in to the audiobook and it's only just starting to really pique my interest. While I get what the author was doing - Nina and Meredith's mother is so completely closed-off that it takes their father's death, the frustration of Nina's career prospects, and the dissolution of Meredith's marriage in order to get them to the point where they're finally in a place to make the effort to get her to open up - it basically translated to six and a half hours of listening to "hey, these people have problems, and hey look, those problems are getting worse!" Which, now that I think about it, may well be preparing me to dive into some Russian history and literature, although perhaps not how I was intending it to. :P Still, I'm enjoying their mother's 'fairy tale', even if the contrivance feels--well--contrived; how is it not plainly obvious to both of these women that this is their mother's life story, thinly veiled?

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've only read the first chapter or so, and I already like Ella - cursed with the 'virtue' of forced obedience, she develops a rebellious streak and finds creative ways to subvert it. I'm looking forward to this one, despite my general dislike of Clumsy Heroine Syndrome.

What I plan to read next

Might as well get a start on Yoga Sequencing, since I made it one of my New Year's goals. I haven't been journaling as much as I'd like to, either, so I think I'm going to go with the idea I had before - set aside the time to read a chapter each week, and journal about how I might apply it in my work.

Hello, book-friends! Yesterday I went to Sculpt and then went out to karaoke with a friend who's in town for the holidays. It's been way too long since I karaoke'd, and last night I was reminded why - run-down bar, crappy sound system, loud drunk crowd. Not having many local karaoke-minded friends, I've just not had the motivation to hunt down a non-awful spot; still, the two of us had fun. And now I'm spending today recuperating...and also making arrangements for my brother-in-law's wedding in February, and coordinating family plans, and looking for coverage for my yoga classes while I'm gone, and responding to a prompt from the NYTimes Interpreter columnists, and hopefully making a playlist for class next week. I feel awfully busy for someone who's barely gotten off the couch!

What I've just finished reading

Bad Astronomy, by Philip Plait. The final section deals with debunking a lot of common conspiracy theories, generally by offering a point-by-point refutation of their arguments. Given that most of these are pretty ludicrous to anyone with basic scientific and astronomical knowledge (Velikovsky's wandering Venus theory was especially jaw-dropping to me), I find myself wondering if Plait isn't perpetuating precisely the problem he's trying to fight. Not that he doesn't do a good job refuting these points, but the issue isn't just that people believe one or the other of these theories, it's the whole mindset of "it's easier to believe what someone persuasive tells you than it is to think critically about it". I wonder if it wouldn't have been more effective if, rather than writing in an adversarial tone that comes off very much as "you should listen to what *I* say, not what *they* say", Plait had used these theories as examples and guided the reader through the various steps of critical consideration.

What I'm currently reading

Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. This is really turning into one of my favorite kinds of space operas, where there's lots of speculation about new technology and the effects it has on society, but that speculation is placed firmly in the context of immediate, identifiable characters who have to deal with the fallout on a personal level. Specifically, I found Breq's mulling on how they'd (unintentionally) treated the AIs in their life with the same disregard that they so strongly disliked when they were an AI themselves particularly poignant; it's so dang easy to fall into that kind of hypocrisy, especially when you're trying to change a social norm that's so firmly entrenched as to not even be questioned by most poeple. And it's a long and tough bit of processing to acknowledge that behavior, resist the temptation to rationalize and justify, and resolve to do better. The fact that Breq does it while pulling off a particularly 80s-lone-hero bit of long-shot sci-fi action makes it especially entertaining to me. Way to multitask, there, Breq!

Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. This is not at all my usual jam (contemporary family drama novel), but it popped up as a sale on Audible and the premise (grown women trying to reconnect with their emotionally-distant mother who grew up in Stalinist Russia through fairy tales that seem to be pretty obvious metaphors for her experinces) sounded moderately interesting; perhaps slightly more so now because I've been haphazardly trying to fill in the gaps of my knowledge of 20th-century Russian history. So far there's been little of that, but I'm still only really in the setup; the author's depictions of a family dealing with the death of their one universally-beloved member have so far been...prosaic. Not ineffective, but nothing that's really hooked my emotions or made me pause the audiobook and go back. We'll see how the next bit goes.

What I plan to read next

Still up in the air, although Goodreads helpfully sent me several emails this week highlighting Kindle deals on books that I've been meaning to read; I now have Ella Enchanted, Hidden Figures, and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal waiting for me there. Whooo knows which one I'll read first? *waggly mysterious fingers*

Hello, book friends! I have presents to wrap and cards to write, as soon as I'm back from teaching this morning's class. So let's get this done!

What I've just finished reading

The Price of Meat, by K.J. Charles. Absolutely what it says on the tin - a Victorian style penny dreadful/horror story. I get the feeling Charles is playing with a setting that may feature in some of her future work - the liberty of Alsatia, a lawless area in the midst of London where criminals flee as a last resort, ruled by iron-fisted blackguards who dole out food from positively Swiftian sources, certainly holds a lot of potential for horror. (Point of note for anyone who hadn't figured as much from the clear Sweeney Todd references: this is definitely not a novella to read while you're having lunch.) If this particular story has a weakness it's that Johanna seems largely unchanged by her experience; she's a pretty pragmatic and levelheaded sort to begin with, so her katabasis into this criminal underworld and subsequent shock and horror is definitely effective, but I feel like we could've used another scene between her and Bella to really see how it's haunted her. That said, the detective inspector's arc was surprisingly touching and effective.

What I'm currently reading

Ancillary Sword, by Ann Leckie. For all of Breq's broadening of experience, the scope of this volume is turning out to be somewhat more limited than I expected; the relatively domestic issues with Citizen Fosyf and her daughter Raughd and their systemic mistreatment of plantation workers, while certainly handled well, seems a little more like a filler Star Trek episode. Not a bad one! There's definitely a lot of good points here about social inequality, appearance vs. reality of social mobility, and what happens when a culture is conquered by a larger/more powerful one but refuses to be absorbed. (asakiyume, I can see why you liked this one so much.) Just, from where I'm at now (roughly 2/3rds through), it feels like we're going to have a Lesson of the Week and then wrap this up with a more or less reset to the status quo. I suspect it'll be a little more than that, at least; we still have the major arc of Anaander Mianaai and her feuding selves to resolve. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if Leckie manages to make this (relative) microcosm of a story symbolic of the greater conflict; the personal *is* political, etc.

Also, I want to extend special props to Leckie's cleverness with Raughd in particular. Given that 90% of the book is written as a translation of a language where gender isn't specified, we've gotten used at this point to looking for clues either in-text (some characters are referred to as having facial hair, for instance) or in behavioral coding (Awn, while never set as a specific gender, codes heavily female through her caring for her crew and the people of the planet she's assigned to occupy). I was entertained at how Raughd's effete behavior, abuse of power, and utilization of social advantage to cover up cruelty all coded heavily as masculine...only to find out later, with characters speaking a different language, that Raughd was in fact female. Women can be just as abusive as men, provided the right proclivities, socialization, and opportunities!

What I plan to read next

Completely unsure! But then, I'm not sure if I'm going to have any time to read over the next few weeks, haha.

What I've just finished reading

Zer0es, by Chuck Wendig. This is categorized as a thriller, and that's not inaccurate, but I'll be damned if Wendig's background as a supernatural horror writer doesn't show through in spades - once Typhon is out of the box and running wild, there are some horrific sequences involving body horror and computer-assisted zombifying. (ivy, in retrospect, our discussion about whether it'd drive you nuts due to the tech issues is sort of beside the point - the tech is pretty solid right up until it hits supernatural-horror land, but the latter is vivid enough that I'd recommend you skip it.) Story-wise, it clips along pretty well, but (also true to the author's horror background) the ending feels more than a little ragged and unfinished. A couple of the main characters feel like they got shortchanged on their arcs, and more than a few plot threads seem to just get...left dangling. It's kind of a bummer, because (supernatural horror aside) I really enjoyed a lot of this, but it doesn't quite stick the landing like it should.

Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman. I was...both satisfied and not by this recounting. It's a high-quality reweaving of the scattered myths that have survived to the present day, and it does a good job setting them in sequence and giving an idea of what might be missing. But in a very real way, all that effort only highlights how much is missing. Gaiman does his best to acknowledge these gaps in the narrative and smooth them over ("Kvasir, wisest of the gods, walked in through the first door. Once he had been dead, and mead had been brewed from his blood, but now he was alive once more"), and it works well enough, but the part of me that values narrative rebels at feeling like it's been handed a book with two-thirds of the pages missing. Some part of me wonders if it wouldn't have been a better book if he hadn't woven the myths in together with inventions of his own - he's certainly familiar enough with the stories and the culture to create a convincing return of Kvasir, or a story or two of Freya. I'm sure people would've complained that he was adding his own material, but frankly, that feels more in the oral tradition of these stories than leaving them so patchy and incomplete; one of the first things I learned about public speaking is that if you forget what you were going to say, make something up. It's the flow that matters as much as the content.

What I'm currently reading

Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. I'm beginning to feel like audiobook was either exactly the wrong format for this book, or exactly the right one. I'm mostly following along with the characters and the worldbuilding, but there's just so much of it, sometimes in fairly info-dump-y segments; additionally, it reads very much like the author's depending on the reader's knowledge of history to help connect the dots. I'm not historically illiterate by any means, but like most autodidacts, I have significant gaps in my knowledge, so there are times I'm flailing a bit. On the other hand, the worldbuilding and even the narrative seem to exist entirely for the purpose of philosophical and ethical discussion, something I'm very much at my ease in, so I'm not entirely lost...still, much as with the lone Neal Stephenson book I've read, I'm glad I have it in audiobook so I'm not sitting there wondering when the plot's going to pick up again.

What I plan to read next

Finally, I can pick up Ancillary Sword! As soon as I have a spare moment in the Sculpt-biking-yoga-cleaning-decorating-socializing-music-shows-bookings whirl, heh.

It's been a week. Not as physically intense as last week, but I've been feeling even more tired; I suspect I'm fighting off another cold. Hurrah, wintertime in a cold damp crowded city. :P Given how many moving parts my schedule has, I'll take "tired but still functioning" over "full-blown sick for a week and out of it for another week" any day...which doesn't mean I don't hope I'm feeling better tomorrow. It'd be nice to be able to clean the house properly without running out of steam halfway through.

What I've just finished reading

My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier. I'm a little torn on the ending (er, spoiler warning? It was written in the 1920s...and it's a gothic novel, so it's pretty heavily foreshadowed); read one way, it comes across very much as "uppity womenfolk who refuse to adhere to social norms get what's coming to them", but I think there's an equal argument to be made for the "overly restrictive societies are toxic to those who would transcend them, and therefore the tragedy isn't that she didn't fit in but that Philip couldn't grow out of his narrow-minded upbringing and appreciate her for who she was - and since this culture gives men all the power, she was ultimately the one who suffered" view. Appropriately enough for the genre, the intent is left ambiguous, although I suspect my preferred reading is somewhat less so.

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Much as with the movie, I admired parts of this story very much, but the whole just...didn't quite gel. The whole thing felt scattered, with individual scenes working quite well but not really quite hanging together. I've been thinking about it on and off for weeks, and ultimately I think what's missing is any kind of emotional anchor. To paraphrase Desire, ever story ever told is about somebody wanting something, and here I just don't feel that wanting from...any of the characters, really. Even after her transformation and undertaking her quest, Sophie seems mostly complacent, and Howl of course has made a career out of not facing his feelings. Some of he worldbuilding is similarly patchy, but that's frankly small potatoes compared to the lack of clarity in character motivation; without it, we're left with a couple of people who...do various things, because maybe they think they'd like to, or maybe it's better than whatever else they could do, but there's not really any urgency or particularly high stakes involved.

Norse Mythology, by Robert Carlson. Somehow this ended up on my Kindle - I probably picked it up on the cheap because I was looking for an overview - and it turned out to be a quick read, basically a longish blog post. I did appreciate that it included links to further reading, including the Poetic and Prose Eddas (our sole source for many of these myths, as they were transmitted almost entirely in the oral tradition for much of their lifespan and only written down piecemeal, by people dedicated to preserving them when Christianity had mostly overtaken the culture). It doesn't get into a lot of the individual myths, but the background is useful; I'd wondered for a while why most of the Norse myths seem to be about Odin/Loki/Thor (answer: we know there were stories about the other gods because the Eddas refer to them, but they've been lost over the centuries).

What I'm currently reading

Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman. Creation myths fascinate me. The cultures that tell them are so diverse, but there are so many parallels - flood myths, the melding of elements, the creation of people out of earthly materials by divine beings who may or may not have known what they were doing. You really start to see where Jung got his ideas about archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Zer0es, by Chuck Wendig. Our titular hackers - a social engineer and rabble-rouser, an Arab Spring hacktivist, a hardcore libertarian Vietnam vet cipherpunk, and a full-on troll - have been accosted by a Shadowy Government Agent and deposited at The Lodge, there to perform unspecified acts of computer wizardry for the government in exchange for clean records. Said Government Agent has mentioned to his boss that they seem of...less than stellar quality, to which the boss has replied that they were hand-picked (so to speak) by a computer algorithm referred to as Typhon. Given that Typhon was the name of one of the scariest and most deadly monsters in Greek literature, I'm sure this is going to go just fine and our (not-quite-) heroes will do their jobs and get to go home with no trouble at all.

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. I'm not enjoying this story as much as I'd like to, and it took me a while to figure out why. There's a strong streak of crab mentality amongst the characters; the two main characters are both extremely gifted, but when they display their gifts they're mocked and belittled for it by their peers. Even social climbing of a more acceptable sort - Lila, at seventeen, works out a marriage arrangement that lifts her family out of poverty and provides opportunities for her father and brother to start their own business - is disparaged, with several of her friends referring to her 'selling herself'. (Which, okay, that's not an unfair assessment, but what alternative do you propose?) The narrator continues to study in school with some effort (and to Lila's envy), but sees no real future for herself and her knowledge; neither of them seem to have much in the way of long-term goals. While this certainly feels like an accurate portrayal of how poverty affects your mentality, it's honestly kind of depressing to listen to.

What I plan to read next

Ancillary Sword. I really want to find out what Breq does next.

Hello, book-friends! Yesterday my schedule was booked back-to-back from eleven to ten - massage trade, massage client, then two classes, with just enough time in between to grab a bite or a break. It all went beautifully, but with the requisite house cleaning for hosting clients I had time to either write my book blog or practice piano, and piano won. (Still a little shaky on the body mechanics, but I managed to work out the entire opening of "Let It Be" from the music, rather than by ear! I'm super proud of myself. Also, much as with Beatles songs on guitar, there are a lot of octave-long reaches. Oh, John Lennon and your beautiful elegant piano-player hands.)

What I've just finished reading

Nothing this week - partly due to busy-ness, partly to splitting my reading time between three formats. I usually have a paper book, and ebook, and an audiobook going at any given time, and this week my schedule's been scattered enough that I've been doing some of each.

What I'm currently reading

My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier. I'm maybe a fifth of the way through, but this is shaping up to be just as excellent a fall read as promised - properly gothic, with an atmosphere of melancholy and dread that hints at a lack of reliability in the narrator. Something that occurs to me - while "gothic fiction" brings up a lot of associations, including rainy English moors and haunted manor houses, one of the most pervasive expectations is that the prose will be overwrought and flowery. du Maurier is something of an exception on that front; she does use the longish sentences and occasional archaic construction of gothic fiction (not inappropriate to the way people, especially people from her narrator's background, tend to think), but her word choices are fairly workaday - which in itself sets up a certain tension. For instance:

My first instinct, on climbing from the coach in Florence, as the dusty baggage was unloaded and carried within the hostelry, was to cross the cobbled street and stand beside the river. I was travel-stained and weary, covered from head to foot with dust. For the past two days I had sat beside the driver rather than die from suffocation within, and like the poor beasts upon the road I longed for water. There it was before me. Not the blue estuary of home, rippling, and salty fresh, whipped with sea spray, but a slow-moving turgid stream, brown like the river bed beneath it, oozing and sucking its way under the arches of the bridge, and ever and again its flat smooth surface breaking into bubbles. Waste matter was borne away upon this river, wisps of straw, and vegetation, yet to my imagination, fevered almost with fatigue and thirst, it was something to be tasted, swallowed, poured down the throat as one might pour a draught of poison.

Guilty pleasure reading, maybe, but I'm finding it thoroughly pleasurable.

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Really enjoying how this book makes explicit the character relationships that're hinted at in the film but never really explored. Arguably they don't need to be - show don't tell, etc. - but something about the film's portrayal never quite meshed for me; we never get any idea why Howl is so immature and incapable of confrontation, or why Michael puts up with him, or why Sophie has such a complacent streak. The book doesn't spend a lot of time on it, but it does give you enough that the characters feel far more fully developed. Although I'm happy to have Miyazaki's beautiful visuals in my head as I read it.

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Lila and Elena have hit puberty, and oh! the drama! Elena, with Lila's help, has turned out to be a dedicated student and is studying Greek and Latin in high school with the rich children, but Lila (not having the family resources to attend school even with the help of the teacher) is educating herself through library books and working in her parents' shoe shop. Furthermore, Lila developed later but is clearly going to be a great beauty, leaving poor Elena (whose sole consolation for the past couple of years has been her possession of breasts) feeling even more inadequate. What's probably most heartbreaking is that it's clear that Lila is just as jealous of Elena as Elena is of her, but of course could never acknowledge it and risk her sense of superiority. It's always tragic when our insecurities get in the way of actually connecting with the people we profess to care about.

What I'm planning to read next

After three days of Googling, I finally found the illustrated ballet storybook I had in childhood, and ordered a copy - somewhat battered (it is from 1962) but intact, and with the lovely illustrations I remember. Perhaps I'll pass it on to my goddaughter if she turns out to be interested in ballet.

Hello, book-friends! The Joffrey is putting on Giselle, which I've wanted to see literally since I was in the single digits. I inherited my mother's beautiful oversized book of illustrated ballet stories, with the most gorgeous art, done (I think?) in oils and in a sort of half-classical, half-Impressionist fashion; I remember the characters were portrayed in more naturalistic settings than they would have been onstage but still were always dancing, and the artist had a real gift for getting across that sense of movement, as well as heightened realism. (I remember wishing I could visit these places where dance seemed to be as natural a part of life as eating and sleeping. This probably also explains my love of musicals, heh.) It told the stories of several famous ballets, such as Petrushka and Swan Lake and Coppelia, but I always loved the fierce romanticism of Giselle. This is the last weekend for it, and between now and next Tuesday I have exactly one night - Thursday - when I'm not teaching or massaging or picking Brian up from the airport or something.

Guess who just bought a ticket for Thursday night? I may be tired this week, but dammit, I'll have my art.

What I've just finished reading

The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Finally finished this book, and I continue to have mixed feelings about it. I'd say the second half is far stronger than the first; there's more of a feeling of cause and effect, less of "things are happening because stuff just arbitrarily happens because it's God's will and/or we're all at the mercy of life/chance/politics/the elements/the universe and we just have to suffer through and get on with it". (That is pretty much the philosophy of Teresita's people, and while that's maybe not surprising - being a subjugated class living in squalor is unlikely to give anyone much sense of agency - it's more than a bit depressing to read about.) I really liked Don Tomás' arc, how he goes from being basically an overgrown boy playing at macho-ness into a man who cares for his family and his ranch; it reminded me of Steinbeck's Flight, in the scene where Pepé Torres' mother tells him he's not a man yet, because "a boy grows into a man when a man is needed." I could've done without the (luckily mostly implied) sexual assault on Teresita that causes her death (and eventual resurrection with healing superpowers); I don't know whether that was part of the historical record or artistic license, but seriously, isn't there another way for women in fiction to come into their powers? That said, I enjoyed the rising political tension in the last section, and the payoff - where Teresita defeats the distant President Díaz by forestalling the bloody battle he'd set her up to incite, purely by the power of her charisma and the belief of her people in her message of peace - was genuinely satisfying. I see that there's a sequel telling the story of her subsequent banishment to America; I'm tempted (you see so few stories of saints and holy people who actually get to have lives outside of their callings, especially with women!) but not sure I'm down for another four-hundred-plus pages right now.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. This is a satisfyingly in-depth look at Jackson's life and works; I particularly like how the author ties together the themes that haunt her life and her stories and show how the effectiveness of her seemingly contradictory genre work (both psychological horror and lighthearted domestic humor, much to the puzzlement of many critics) came from the same wellspring of love, frustration, ambivalence, and repression. It's a little odd, then, that after hundreds of pages arguing that her abilities were far more varied than most critics seemed to grasp, Franklin walks it all back in the last couple of pages, putting Jackson precisely into the "horror writer" pigeonhole that Jackson herself loathed. Did she feel that Jackson's dual-classing made her ineligible for literary canonization? Similarly, while I realize a biography's going to end pretty soon after the subject's death, I would've liked a little more retrospective as to her effects on future writers, as well as maybe some more input from her children. The evidence Franklin presents heavily implies that she'd finally decided to leave her dysfunctional marriage when she died of a heart attack; it's more than a little tragic, but also strangely satisfying, as her children report she seemed oddly happy and at peace during her last few months. Still, after spending a lifetime under constant criticism from her mother and then her husband, I'm sad she never quite got the opportunity to see whom she would grow into on her own, without it. Perhaps the prospect was just too terrifying.

What I'm currently reading

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. I've seen the Miyazaki adaptation of this story a couple of times and quite enjoyed it, and although I've just started the book it's already cleared up a lot of questions I had about Sophie's state of mind at the start. In the film she comes across as weirdly complacent and unemotional, almost depressed - she talks about how she doesn't think she's pretty and how she's content to just sew hats in her shop, but that doesn't seem to account for her passivity. In the book, we learn that she's the eldest of three children in a fairytale land, and everyone knows it's unlucky to be born first of three - when you and your sisters set out to seek your fortune, you're bound to be rude to an old lady, or to miss the tinker's advice, or insult a wizard in disguise or make one of any number of other mistakes that can lead to all kinds of nasty outcomes. Given that weight of expectation, it's far less surprising that she'd prefer to meekly take the path laid out for her, sitting in her parents' shop sewing hats.

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. Elena and Lila are friends growing up on the outskirts of Naples in the 1950s (I think? the year isn't mentioned but at the start, when the women are grown, it mentions that Lila had become a computer whiz who started in the days of punch cards). They're pretty clearly underprivileged, Lila a little more so than Elena, but haven't quite figured that out yet; everyone around them (with the possible exception of the mysterious and menacing Don Achille) is poor, so they have no real basis for comparison. Elena is smart, but Lila is, as the title implies, brilliant; also rebellious, angry, and brash, but with flashes of compassion at the strangest times. Their relationship is an odd one; I dislike the trendy-teen-ness of "frenemy", but it does fit the way they seem to simultaneously bring out the best and the worst in each other. I'm not terribly far in but I am enjoying how skilled Ferrante is at evoking the heightened emotions of childhood, the acute pain of every small betrayal, and the lessons we have to learn surprisingly quickly.

What I plan to read next

Still eyeing Gaiman's Norse Mythology, although I'm eager to get to Ancillary Sword too - in my copious spare time (hah).

Hello, book friends! Today I went to Sculpt for the first time since traveling and recovering from a cold. (I hit a class last Saturday but realized ten minutes in that I was not recovered, and ended up sitting a good chunk of it out.) I was pleased to discover I could make it all the way through with minimal modifications; it's definitely tougher than it was three weeks ago but getting back to where I was shouldn't be too difficult of a climb. For the moment, though, I'm rather glad I don't need to raise my arms over my head anytime in the next several hours.


What I've just finished reading

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. Not a bad little trip, on the whole, although the criticisms about its sexist outlook are not without merit. Still, I learned a few things and laughed a few times, so on the whole I'll take it. I appreciated the picture sections with tapestries and manuscripts from the era; many of them I'd seen before, but it was cool to examine the fashions and art styles and whatnot just after reading about them.

The Ruin of a Rake, by Cat Sebastian. I've read a few of Sebastian's romances now, and unfortunately, all three have come up basically...not-quite. The dialogue feels not-quite-natural, the characters don't quite spring off the page, the chemistry never quite clicks. Which is a shame, because her setting and her plot both work beautifully. But especially with romance and especially-especially with sex, the interest is in how the characters get from civilized-and-guarded-with-defenses-firmly-in-place to primal-and-intimate-and-terrifyingly-open. And I don't think she's quite mastered that segue yet.

What I'm currently reading

The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. I'm having an interesting relationship with this one. When I think about it objectively, I feel like not a lot is happening, so I end up drifting off to this or that new book...but then I finish that book, pick this one back up again, and am immediately absorbed in its colorful depiction of late-nineteenth-century Mexican life. So I can't say I'm not enjoying it, but I'm really wondering where it's all going, or if it's actually just a 528-page vignette.

What I plan to read next

I'm thinking it's time I pulled up Google Translate and Bara roligt i Bullerbyn - I got bogged down about 2/3rds through and never got around to finishing it. But man, it's hard to read in a second language - I'm so used to being able to look at a paragraph and pick up its meaning almost effortlessly, so having to work it out word by word is humbling. I know learning to read English was hard, because my mother tells me that I struggled with it, but I wanted to be able to read books for myself so badly that I was strongly motivated. But I don't remember any of that - I literally can't remember a time when I couldn't read. So the exercise in humility is probably good for me, heh.

I'm back from Alaska, and managed to meet my goal of making it through an entire visit with my mother without getting into a flaming row. Hooray for active listening!  Or perhaps we just got the row out of the way beforehand, heh.  On the less-good side, someone in my home state was kind enough to share a cold with me, which I'm still fighting off...and I have two classes to teach tonight. I suspect tonight's focus will be self-directed practice, heh.


What I've just finished reading

An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. What makes a long flight home with a cold bearable? Pseudoephedrine and a new KJ Charles romance. The former sort of tunnels my awareness, making me tend to hyper-focus on one thing rather than be aware of my surroundings, but in coach class that's not necessarily a bad thing (although I did almost miss the beverage cart a couple of times). And the story of Pen and Mark - a nonbinary Victorian era circus performer suddenly heir to an unwanted earldom, and a one-armed private investigator with a pragmatic outlook and catholic tastes - was a delightful thing to focus upon. The book also finishes the Sins of the Cities plot arc, which is pure Victorian serial melodrama, but elevated by Charles' usual excellent characterization, and given some interesting twists by Pen's nonstandard self-image. I also loved Pen's relationship with twin sister Greta; there are really too few supportive sibling relationships in the fiction I read.


What I'm currently reading

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. This book continues to be a fascinating refinement of my perceptions of fourteenth-century England. There haven't been many outright revelations - I've read a fair amount of fiction set in the period, beginning with Karen Cushman's work in elementary school (Catherine, Called Birdy was always a favorite). But there are some minor details I hadn't realized - for instance, while personal cleanliness is more difficult prospect than it is now and standards for cleanliness are somewhat different (a healthy body odor is thought to be a sign of virility, at least among the lower classes), people still wash their hands and face when they get up in the morning, and handwashing is mandatory before and after meals. Most personal washing is done in basins, and thus somewhat more sporadically than we'd consider ideal (especially in the freezing winters), but especially among the more prosperous tradesmen and the nobility, it's considered bad form to go around stinking up the place, so people make do. Household cleanliness is made difficult both by the lack of good detergents and of labor-saving devices, but that doesn't mean it's neglected; cleanliness (or the appearance thereof) is closely linked to purity of spirit, and is thus highly valued in religious medieval England. So perhaps my grousing about how everyone in Galavant looks a little too clean is somewhat misguided.

Another point brought up that I found interesting was that of ignorance vs. misinformation, specifically as regards the medical profession of the time. Physicians were not ignorant; medieval medical texts were chock-full of 'knowledge' on treating illness. Unfortunately, since much of that knowledge came from flawed sources (astrology, humoral theory, superstition, hearsay, a little practical experience with no scientific method applied), it tended to be less-than-helpful at best. It does give you an idea of why Enlightenment principles had something of an uphill battle before them; it's much harder to convince people to change their outlook when there's already an established worldview.

Also, I'm quoting this passage in full, because it made me laugh. From the end of chapter 8, on the perils of taking hospitality in monasteries:

There is an old traveling minstrels' trick which you might want to keep up your sleeve. How guests are treated in a monastery is the decision of the almoner {man in charge of distributing alms}. If he treats you badly, or serves you the most miserly portions of food, or if you get given "a vile and hard bed", go to the abbot and praise him to the skies for the generosity of his house, and emphasize the large amount of money which the almoner must have laid out on your behalf.

As an aside, one of the interesting things about learning Swedish has been the ways in which the construction sometimes resembles medieval speech - the verb is nearly always placed second in the sentence (Hur mår du i kväll?, translates most directly to "How fare you this evening?"); and certain words such as passande (which translates to "suitable" or "appropriate") were used in nearly the same form in medieval English (such as here, in "passing good", which to modern ears sounds like "mediocre" but in fact means "quite excellent").  The language tree is passing fascinating!


What I plan to read next

I need to finish The Hummingbird's Daughter, even though Cat Sebastian's Ruin of a Rake is beckoning me on my Kindle - reformed bad-boy enemies-to-lovers gay Regency romance that won numerous awards?  Did somebody say "catnip"?