Every Wednesday dies, baby that's a fact
Nov. 27th, 2019 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bThe End of the Rainbow
I finished Gravity's Rainbow on Monday night, over a couple of glasses of wine. The last thirty pages would have been breathtaking, if I hadn't been so exhausted by the first 850. Oh, well!
What I've Finished Reading
Dawn, first book in a series of (so far) beautifully upsetting tentacle tales by Octavia Butler. The people of Earth went and destroyed the world like they always seem to do, and a handful of survivors are put into suspended animation by a group of painfully earnest sapioculturists who are going to use the humans to enrich their own genetic diversity, and give them back their planet, more or less, in return. The catch is that they've controlled human fertility so that now the humans can only have part-alien children with alien assistance. Lilith, formerly of Earth, tries to resist for a while but there's only so much resisting to be done. The Oankali, the alien savior/captors, call what they're doing a Trade (with capital letters) and are convinced it's a biological imperative that they can't help; the humans feel rather that they're being tamed, and resent it without much efficacy.
What I'm Reading Now
I was hugely disappointed in the Library's section on Chinese Literature. The editorial essay by Robert K. Douglas can't refrain from ruminating about the virtues and defects of "the Chinese mind." National minds are one of the running themes of the anthology and of 1902 in general, to be fair, but here the editor's ideas seem to have prevented him from making any effort at all. He frets about the defects of Chinese poetry and dismisses all of Chinese fiction as creaky wooden morality tales that no Westerner could possibly enjoy, but provides no examples: instead, the entire literature selection following the essay consists of four pages of "selected maxims" because the editor thinks that "the Chinese mind" does maxims that much better than it does anything else. By contrast, [Ancient] Egyptian Literature gets over 120 pages of multiple genres of writing in multiple eras. Japanese Literature is not quite as long, but includes novel excerpts, drama, and several kinds of poetry. For the most part, I've been pleasantly surprised by the Library's attempt to cast a wide net - this laziness is maybe not totally unexpected, but still an unfortunate exception to the rule.
Finally finishing Gravity's Rainbow means I get to reward myself with William Dean Howells' My Literary Passions, the simple story of a man who loves books and would be delighted to tell you about some of the books he has loved in his life. I got it from the library yesterday and took it to the arboretum to read a couple of chapters next to a giant oak tree. Then, when it got too dark to read, I went inside and read a couple more. It's even pleasanter than I expected.
I've barely begun The Mosquito Coast, one of four remaining 99 Novels but it, too, has been love at first sight. On the very first page there's a wary child narrator and a mad dad who took his kids out of school and keeps yelling about how he's THE LAST MAN because the toxic combination of civiization and (especially) Japanese electronics are killing all the brute virtues, oh dear. And there are woodcuts! It's nice to open a book and feel happy and excited to be reading it, instead of concrete-overshod and obscurely crawled-on.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'd completely forgotten, until it arrived at my door on Friday, that I'd pre-ordered Blood Heir by Amelie Wen Zhao, back when Zhao was for some reason getting bombarded by negative reviews all beginning "I haven't read this book, but. . ." So now I've got this big pseudo-Russian-looking YA fantasy book on my hands. Will it be good? Will it be bad? I'll probably find out reasonably soon.
There is also plenty more deeply uncomfortable tentacle action coming my way from Octavia Butler.
I finished Gravity's Rainbow on Monday night, over a couple of glasses of wine. The last thirty pages would have been breathtaking, if I hadn't been so exhausted by the first 850. Oh, well!
What I've Finished Reading
Dawn, first book in a series of (so far) beautifully upsetting tentacle tales by Octavia Butler. The people of Earth went and destroyed the world like they always seem to do, and a handful of survivors are put into suspended animation by a group of painfully earnest sapioculturists who are going to use the humans to enrich their own genetic diversity, and give them back their planet, more or less, in return. The catch is that they've controlled human fertility so that now the humans can only have part-alien children with alien assistance. Lilith, formerly of Earth, tries to resist for a while but there's only so much resisting to be done. The Oankali, the alien savior/captors, call what they're doing a Trade (with capital letters) and are convinced it's a biological imperative that they can't help; the humans feel rather that they're being tamed, and resent it without much efficacy.
What I'm Reading Now
I was hugely disappointed in the Library's section on Chinese Literature. The editorial essay by Robert K. Douglas can't refrain from ruminating about the virtues and defects of "the Chinese mind." National minds are one of the running themes of the anthology and of 1902 in general, to be fair, but here the editor's ideas seem to have prevented him from making any effort at all. He frets about the defects of Chinese poetry and dismisses all of Chinese fiction as creaky wooden morality tales that no Westerner could possibly enjoy, but provides no examples: instead, the entire literature selection following the essay consists of four pages of "selected maxims" because the editor thinks that "the Chinese mind" does maxims that much better than it does anything else. By contrast, [Ancient] Egyptian Literature gets over 120 pages of multiple genres of writing in multiple eras. Japanese Literature is not quite as long, but includes novel excerpts, drama, and several kinds of poetry. For the most part, I've been pleasantly surprised by the Library's attempt to cast a wide net - this laziness is maybe not totally unexpected, but still an unfortunate exception to the rule.
Finally finishing Gravity's Rainbow means I get to reward myself with William Dean Howells' My Literary Passions, the simple story of a man who loves books and would be delighted to tell you about some of the books he has loved in his life. I got it from the library yesterday and took it to the arboretum to read a couple of chapters next to a giant oak tree. Then, when it got too dark to read, I went inside and read a couple more. It's even pleasanter than I expected.
I shall try not to use authority, however, and I do not expect to speak here of all my reading, whether it has been much or little, but only of those books, or of those authors that I have felt a genuine passion for. I have known such passions at every period of my life, but it is mainly of the loves of my youth that I shall write, and I shall write all the more frankly because my own youth now seems to me rather more alien than that of any other person
I've barely begun The Mosquito Coast, one of four remaining 99 Novels but it, too, has been love at first sight. On the very first page there's a wary child narrator and a mad dad who took his kids out of school and keeps yelling about how he's THE LAST MAN because the toxic combination of civiization and (especially) Japanese electronics are killing all the brute virtues, oh dear. And there are woodcuts! It's nice to open a book and feel happy and excited to be reading it, instead of concrete-overshod and obscurely crawled-on.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'd completely forgotten, until it arrived at my door on Friday, that I'd pre-ordered Blood Heir by Amelie Wen Zhao, back when Zhao was for some reason getting bombarded by negative reviews all beginning "I haven't read this book, but. . ." So now I've got this big pseudo-Russian-looking YA fantasy book on my hands. Will it be good? Will it be bad? I'll probably find out reasonably soon.
There is also plenty more deeply uncomfortable tentacle action coming my way from Octavia Butler.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 07:31 pm (UTC)Also DELIGHTED to hear that you're enjoying Howells. By the end of that book I had collected a short but select list of books to read, simply because Howells spoke about them with such glowing enthusiasm. Don Quixote really ought to have headed that list, because he's SO excited about it, but it's SO long that it intimidates me... But after 850 pages of Gravity's Rainbow probably you are beyond this kind of intimidation.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 07:43 pm (UTC)Don Quixote is (iirc) such a big thorny rotten-wisteria tangle of a book, and Howells is so bothered and loving about it that I've been thinking about re-reading it myself! Read-along in 2020??
Howells is everything I could have hoped for and more. Even the typeface is soothing!
no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 07:50 pm (UTC)Maybe! After my struggle with Kristin Lavransdatter, I should probably get a hold of the book and read a couple of chapters before I commit myself to anything.
But on the other hand, maybe Don Quixote is one of those books that one never reads if one wiffles and waffles and wades about in the shallows about it; maybe it's better just to dive right in and go for it. Don Quixote himself would surely advise the latter course.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-27 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-28 09:14 am (UTC)first book in a series of (so far) beautifully upsetting tentacle tales
I do love your reading posts. Even if possibly I wouldn't really want upsetting tentacles in my own life, or not at the moment anyway. (Never rule anything out!)
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 08:25 pm (UTC)The tentacles are more upsetting in slow motion, inside your mind, than they are suspenseful or frightening when you're actually reading the book. But maybe that makes it worse! I'd recommend Butler's Kindred, a straightforward time-travel story with no tentacles at all, but it's extremely upsetting and maybe the closest thing I can think of to a heart attack in book form. So maybe not!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-03 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-28 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 08:20 pm (UTC)it's such a good feeling, to know I'm alive
such a special feeling, this feeling inside
when I wake up, ready to say
"I think I'll read ANYTHING BUT PYNCHON today!"
no subject
Date: 2019-12-03 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-30 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 01:31 am (UTC)I feel like I need to read more Octavia Butler at some point. I think the cover, with the alien giving a creepy backrub, distracted me. Also, if I'm remembering correctly, the aliens spend a lot of time smugly lecturing humans and we don't get to see what they do in their off hours. Maybe with all their tentacles they could knit some fantastic and complicated sweaters? What do tentacle aliens do for fun?
no subject
Date: 2019-12-02 08:15 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if it's a flaw in the book or not that the aliens don't seem to have many hobbies. Maybe a little. The first book is entirely from the perspective of a single human captive, so it makes sense that the Oankali come off as having nothing to do all day but lecture and give creepy backrubs. The second follows Lilith's hybrid son, whose hobbies so far are identity crises, sex with (tragically sterilized) humans, and pro-human advocacy. He's also learining to enjoy fiction, which the Oankali don't seem to get. They explicitly don't work with non-living material - if they want clothes or houses or transportation, they just genetically engineer plants and animals to provide whatever they want and love them for it (and incidentally become part of their galaxy-spanning no-boundaries gene jaccuzi). So they wouldn't think to knit a sweater on their own, though they might knit a sweater to please their ~seductively exotic~ human mates.
I'd been meaning to read more Octavia Butler for ages and I kept not doing it, because I'd read a description and go "ugh." But I'm enjoying this awful tentacle party a lot.