Wednesday Reading on the Run

[evelyn_b]

What I've Finished Reading

I've lost a lot of spare time lately, hence the late and rushed posting. However, I finally got around to reading We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I don't ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don't ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails. I don't ever want to forget, even with whatever personal victories I achieve, even in the victories we achieve as a people of a nation, that the larger story of America and the world probably does not end well. Our story is a tragedy. I know it sounds odd, but that belief does not depress me. It focuses me. After all, I am an atheist and thus do not believe anything, even a strongly held belief, is destiny.

What I've Been Reading

Murder in the Mews - four novellas by Agatha Christie. The first begins with a suspicious suicide on Guy Fawkes Night, the second is about a mysterious burglary, allegedly of national importance, and the third, which I've just started, has a surprise appearance by Mr. Satterthwaite, whom I'm always happy to see.

Sign of the Unicorn is the third Amber novel by Roger Zelazny, and it's pretty good so far. I'll let you know more one of these days.

I'm not as far along in The Three Musketeers as I ought to be - I just finished Chapter 36. Constance is still missing. D'Artagnan has been doing some very tiresome intriguing against the beautiful English spy and I wish he would get over it and do something else. Athos, whom I still haven't totally forgiven for the throwaway line in which he thrashed his valet, has related a "tragic" story about a "friend" that made me like him even less, and revealed that he has a tragic and important secret identity that must never be revealed, like Albert Campion only tragic and important. Athos to me is only meta-amusing due to all his tragic self-importance and jaw-setting, and to D'Artagnan's youthful conviction that he is the bee's knees, but Porthos and Aramis are still delightful assholes in real time. I'm still hoping for the triumphant reappearance (in dramatic costume change) of George "Legs" Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, the Alcibiades of the North.

Dumas reminds us that it was A Different Time:

This note was in the first place a forgery; it was likewise an indelicacy. It was even, according to our present manners, something like an infamous action; but at that period people did not manage affairs as they do to-day.

All right, Dumas! I like these asides: If you want a swashbuckling romance from the age of the cavalier, you are going to have to put up with a certain amount of douchebaggery, so deal with it, readers!


What I Plan to Read Next

I'm not sure! I've got a lot of books lined up, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get to them.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

... You don't like Milady? (Milady isn't English, btw, she just happened to marry an Englishman. It could happen to anyone.) Aww, that is terribly sad, because Milady is the best/worst! (I love an all-out evil lady on occasions, and I think the only one who could beat Milady that I've seen is Servalan from Blake's 7, but it's no shame to lose to Servalan. Most people do.)

Athos is so noble! He can drink a landlord's cellar dry, a true sign of nobility! Clearly this is the case.

[evelyn_b]

Milady is almost certainly the best worst! I have no objections to her so far, and I hope she has many opportunities for all-out evil ahead. It's only D'Artagnan's love-hate shenanigans that I find tiresome. I want him to quit trying to be calculating and go back to being a ridiculously earnest youth earnestly stabbing people in the chest. Stick with what you know!

(Of course, if D'Artagnan's shenanigans turn out to be All A Part of Her Evil Plan, all will be forgiven) (or almost all) (he's being kind of a douche to Kitty).

I'm sorry I called her English! I know she's not because the book said so - or at least, it said that D'Artagnan felt sure she wasn't English, which is probably the same thing for purposes of this book.

Ok, I lied when I said Athos was only meta-entertaining because he did prove his extreme nobility by drinking many times more wine than a normal person and that is not nothing.

[thisbluespirit]

Milady is almost certainly the best worst! I have no objections to her so far, and I hope she has many opportunities for all-out evil ahead.

Hurrah! D'Artagnan is growing up and developing not-very-good Sneakery, but he will always love enthusiastically stabbing things the best. He is not great at all to Kitty, but the thing I like about Three Musketeers is that it is totally aware of the Musketeers' bad behaviour. Poor Kitty!

Ok, I lied when I said Athos was only meta-entertaining because he did prove his extreme nobility by drinking many times more wine than a normal person and that is not nothing.

So noble! No one else could drink the entire wine cellar and be the despair of the landlord! Certainly not D'Artagnan.

[liadt]

Get over it Athos! I am probably having sympathy for the wrong people.

[evelyn_b]

Centuries of inbreeding have left Athos incapable of getting over anything, alas. But he can glower with the best of them!

[brigdh]

I've really been wanting to read We Were Eight Years in Power, but the constant alarm of politics and news is so draining that I keep putting it off and reading escapist fluff instead. That quote is amazing though, and reinforces my determination to get around to it eventually.