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Late-Breaking Wednesday Reading Meme
What I've Finished Reading
In T is for Trespass, Our Kinsey accidentally rips a guy's arm off by accident, you guys, in self-defense. You can't blame a girl for defending herself! Later she accidentally allows her nemesis to fall out a window to said nemesis' death, solving several serious problems Kinsey has created for herself and any potential prosecution. In between, Kinsey's nemesis mails her a tarantula in a padded envelope, to throw her off her guard. The tarantula is gently rescued from Kinsey's apartment by a likable young tarantula breeder whose number Kinsey finds in the Yellow Pages.
As a Human Evil Spelunk, this was not an overwhelming success. The attempt to present the heartless murder nurse (not a spoiler; her POV is fairly forthcoming and present throughout) as Kinsey's dark mirror is extremely half-hearted, even if it isn't wrong. Kinsey probably has a higher body count than any of the desparados who pass through Kinsey's life. I don't mind Grafton cheating by killing off her culprits to avoid dealing with the legal system, but here the cheating is too apparent: she has to contrive a reason for the culprit, having fled the scene, to double back needlessly in order to threaten Kinsey in front of a convenient window. The contrivance puts serious strain on a minor character who was already getting the short end of the writing stick. It's not a failure, either. I'm acting all tough like I'm too cool to be riveted, but actually I read the whole thing in two evenings.
What I'm Reading Now
The Innocent Moon, book 9 of 15 in Henry Williamson's "single novel," A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Things are taking a turn - for what, I'm afraid to ask. The war is over and Phillip Maddison is keeping a diary full of bad romanticism and decent nature writing and a bunch of awkward intersections of the two. Part of the trouble with the Maddison men, father and son, seems to be that they would really like to commune with nature, but nature is just living its life and doesn't care about them. They try to blame it on the industrial revolution and other people not being sensitive enough, but maybe it's just that trees and birds and otters aren't all that into communion. Sometimes Phillip pretends he's made friends with an owl, but the owl doesn't really think of him as a friend. The owl is just an owl. This may be my reading more than Williamson's.
I've left both The Innocent Moon and Another Country (which just keeps getting better and more tortured and more hopelessly trapped in a spiral of drunken lectures) at home while I visit my family, since they're library books and I don't want to accidentally leave them at the airport. I brought some bite-sized paperbacks with me that I can take to one of the local used bookstores when I finish them. This afternoon I read part of Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin while watching a Hallmark Christmas movie about a Christmas-averse talk show host who gets sent to "The Biggest Little Christmas Town in the Country" to learn how to recover her Christmas spirit OR LOSE HER JOB. I felt even more American than usual.
What I Plan to Read Next
I feel like I should take a small break from the Alphabet of Destruction when I get home, finish reading my library books, and start the year off right by knocking out a shelf of already-owns. I also got, as a Christmas present, an enormous illustrated Earthsea omnibus, so there's that to look forward to. The illustrations (by Charles Vess) are extremely charming.
In T is for Trespass, Our Kinsey accidentally rips a guy's arm off by accident, you guys, in self-defense. You can't blame a girl for defending herself! Later she accidentally allows her nemesis to fall out a window to said nemesis' death, solving several serious problems Kinsey has created for herself and any potential prosecution. In between, Kinsey's nemesis mails her a tarantula in a padded envelope, to throw her off her guard. The tarantula is gently rescued from Kinsey's apartment by a likable young tarantula breeder whose number Kinsey finds in the Yellow Pages.
As a Human Evil Spelunk, this was not an overwhelming success. The attempt to present the heartless murder nurse (not a spoiler; her POV is fairly forthcoming and present throughout) as Kinsey's dark mirror is extremely half-hearted, even if it isn't wrong. Kinsey probably has a higher body count than any of the desparados who pass through Kinsey's life. I don't mind Grafton cheating by killing off her culprits to avoid dealing with the legal system, but here the cheating is too apparent: she has to contrive a reason for the culprit, having fled the scene, to double back needlessly in order to threaten Kinsey in front of a convenient window. The contrivance puts serious strain on a minor character who was already getting the short end of the writing stick. It's not a failure, either. I'm acting all tough like I'm too cool to be riveted, but actually I read the whole thing in two evenings.
What I'm Reading Now
The Innocent Moon, book 9 of 15 in Henry Williamson's "single novel," A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Things are taking a turn - for what, I'm afraid to ask. The war is over and Phillip Maddison is keeping a diary full of bad romanticism and decent nature writing and a bunch of awkward intersections of the two. Part of the trouble with the Maddison men, father and son, seems to be that they would really like to commune with nature, but nature is just living its life and doesn't care about them. They try to blame it on the industrial revolution and other people not being sensitive enough, but maybe it's just that trees and birds and otters aren't all that into communion. Sometimes Phillip pretends he's made friends with an owl, but the owl doesn't really think of him as a friend. The owl is just an owl. This may be my reading more than Williamson's.
I've left both The Innocent Moon and Another Country (which just keeps getting better and more tortured and more hopelessly trapped in a spiral of drunken lectures) at home while I visit my family, since they're library books and I don't want to accidentally leave them at the airport. I brought some bite-sized paperbacks with me that I can take to one of the local used bookstores when I finish them. This afternoon I read part of Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin while watching a Hallmark Christmas movie about a Christmas-averse talk show host who gets sent to "The Biggest Little Christmas Town in the Country" to learn how to recover her Christmas spirit OR LOSE HER JOB. I felt even more American than usual.
What I Plan to Read Next
I feel like I should take a small break from the Alphabet of Destruction when I get home, finish reading my library books, and start the year off right by knocking out a shelf of already-owns. I also got, as a Christmas present, an enormous illustrated Earthsea omnibus, so there's that to look forward to. The illustrations (by Charles Vess) are extremely charming.
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Is A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight the one that takes a fascist turn somewhere in there, or was that a different multi-volume novel Huxley recommended and I've been unfairly maligning it in my mind? Because it seems to be taking an awfully long time to get to the fascism if it is the one.
What do we have to look forward to on this shelf of already-owns?
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Is A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight the one that takes a fascist turn somewhere in there, or was that a different multi-volume novel
That's the one, and it's more that the author's politics become more and more evident, if I'm remembering correctly. They have probably become evident already and I don't have the background or attentiveness to pick up on it. What has been very obviously there for the past five books at least is sympathy for the Germans during and after WWI and disgust with British propaganda. Now Phillip is flirting with paganism, or in any case with lamenting the loss of it in drawing rooms, and has begun to have mushy philosophical ideas about what a nation is, and I'm beginning to worry that there's something on the wind. But not much yet - not for me, maybe for someone less deaf to dogwhistles. Or possibly also regular whistles.
Willamson joined the British Union of Fascists in 1937, long before he began the Chronicle. I don't know if his alter ego Phillip Maddison will do the same when book time reaches the thirties, but it seems likely - he is a very frank and barely-veiled alter ego. Phillip doesn't seem to have done much that Williamson didn't do first.
What do we have to look forward to on this shelf of already-owns?
So many random things! Let me see if I can remember any of them (the shelf is back at home). There's a book called Understanding Computers written for high-school students in 1965, Synners by Pat Cadigan, a murder mystery involving an Icelandic manuscript, a book of manners, Elsie's Girlhood. . . and I can't remember what else, but I know there's plenty of it. And Kristin Lavransdattar, of course!
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This shelf sounds delightful. I'm particularly looking forward to your take on Elsie's Girlhood and also this murder mystery involving an Icelandic manuscript.
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