Special Wednesday Late Edition
Aug. 22nd, 2019 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bSo late that it's Thursday! Oh, well.
What I've Finished Reading
Kristin Lavransdatter! I think on the whole I loved it. I wasn't expecting the plague to show up at the end and change everything, but neither was anyone else in this book. Erlend dies (Erlend to the end); Kristin's son Gaute takes a wife by unorthodox Erlendesque means but it's basically ok in the end, Kristin goes on pilgrimage and decides to take holy orders, and finds a measure of peace. Then the plague comes through and all consolations are erased. The society we've been intimately embedded in for the past thousand pages is probably about to collapse; at any rate her sons and whole villages have gone by the time Kristin falls ill (after saving an outcast little boy and foolishly or bravely hauling his dead mother out of her cottage for a Christian burial) and when she does, there's no time left to find out how it ends or if it ends or what kind of world comes after. It was tougher than I expected, but I'm no longer sure what I expected.
I was wary of The French Lieutenant's Woman at first because the opening chapter lays it on very thick with the self-aware Victorian scene-setting. I thought, "Oh no, here comes another heaping helping of the author's cleverness." But it grew on me very quickly and so much that I was pulling it out of my bag to read at crosswalks. It is clever and so relentlessly self-aware that it was impossible (even for me, an inveterate sobber over trash) to form an emotional connection to any of the characters. At one point the author flips a coin to determine the course of the plot at a crucial moment, and in the very last chapter he steps onto the scene and turns back his watch in order to replace a guardedly happy ending with a sadder one. Still, I had a good time and resented nothing. I don't know if I'll remember anything about it in three months, but it was highly readable while it lasted. This book also features deliberately bad poetry written by the author on behalf of a protagonist, one of my favorite simple pleasures.
What I'm Reading Now
I just started Gravity's Rainbow, which arrived in the mail the other day. The mass-market paperback edition is VERY EXCITED about Gravity's Rainbow, which is "The most important work of fiction yet produced by any living writer," according to the front cover. That's a lot of blurb to live up to! I'm not sure yet where it's going but there will certainly be lots of wacky details along the way (also bombs and acronyms).
What I Plan to Read Next
Still Lanark, eventually - and I don't know how I got a copy of The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, but apparently I have one, so I'll probably read it.
What I've Finished Reading
Kristin Lavransdatter! I think on the whole I loved it. I wasn't expecting the plague to show up at the end and change everything, but neither was anyone else in this book. Erlend dies (Erlend to the end); Kristin's son Gaute takes a wife by unorthodox Erlendesque means but it's basically ok in the end, Kristin goes on pilgrimage and decides to take holy orders, and finds a measure of peace. Then the plague comes through and all consolations are erased. The society we've been intimately embedded in for the past thousand pages is probably about to collapse; at any rate her sons and whole villages have gone by the time Kristin falls ill (after saving an outcast little boy and foolishly or bravely hauling his dead mother out of her cottage for a Christian burial) and when she does, there's no time left to find out how it ends or if it ends or what kind of world comes after. It was tougher than I expected, but I'm no longer sure what I expected.
I was wary of The French Lieutenant's Woman at first because the opening chapter lays it on very thick with the self-aware Victorian scene-setting. I thought, "Oh no, here comes another heaping helping of the author's cleverness." But it grew on me very quickly and so much that I was pulling it out of my bag to read at crosswalks. It is clever and so relentlessly self-aware that it was impossible (even for me, an inveterate sobber over trash) to form an emotional connection to any of the characters. At one point the author flips a coin to determine the course of the plot at a crucial moment, and in the very last chapter he steps onto the scene and turns back his watch in order to replace a guardedly happy ending with a sadder one. Still, I had a good time and resented nothing. I don't know if I'll remember anything about it in three months, but it was highly readable while it lasted. This book also features deliberately bad poetry written by the author on behalf of a protagonist, one of my favorite simple pleasures.
What I'm Reading Now
I just started Gravity's Rainbow, which arrived in the mail the other day. The mass-market paperback edition is VERY EXCITED about Gravity's Rainbow, which is "The most important work of fiction yet produced by any living writer," according to the front cover. That's a lot of blurb to live up to! I'm not sure yet where it's going but there will certainly be lots of wacky details along the way (also bombs and acronyms).
What I Plan to Read Next
Still Lanark, eventually - and I don't know how I got a copy of The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, but apparently I have one, so I'll probably read it.
