Books, beautiful books

[labellementeuse]

I only have six more books to read this year before I'll have officially read 100 books this year (not including books I'd read before, novel-length fanfic, or comics I read as single issues; including trades and cover-to-cover poetry). I'm half-way or more than half-way through Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker, Dead People's Music by Sarah Laing, Going Bovine by Libba Bray and Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon and I've read just over half of the stories in the (admittedly giant-sized) James Tiptree, Jr anthology Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. (I think I've raved about this anthology before, but it is just fucking amazing. You need it in your life if you like any of these things: a) speculative fiction b) women c) intelligent death-plagues d) neat clean smart brilliant writing.)

Despite this, yesterday and today I binge-read Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Towers of Midnight. And I do mean binge: started it late in the evening, read til 5 am, woke up at 11, read til 5 pm. (Mini, non-spoilery review: a) Everyone's awesome again! b) Brandon Sanderson Gets Plot-Related Shit Done. Coming from the perspective of someone who no longer cares about prophecies, who killed Asmodean, or what exactly that one dream Egwene had one time means, this is basically 100% of everything I'm looking for in Wheel of Time books now: a rehabilitation of my favourite characters after they were all progressively Spikified, and to know what happens to them and ideally that they all live happily ever after. Spoiler: Nynaeve does not cry soppily in this book. It's terrible to feel that Sanderson is writing these people as more in-character than Jordan was in the last three or four books, but that is kind of how I feel.)

Anyway the problem is that now, instead of picking up the millions of books I'm part-way through, I'm instead fondling the beautiful-looking A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse as well as 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson and A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer, which frankly has a hideous cover but I could quite go for some silly epic fantasy that won't take me the rest of the year to read (Traitor's Gate by Kate Elliot is at the bottom of my to-read pile propping the rest of it up...). Also I have Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X Stork and The Edge of the Alphabet by Janet Frame out from the library.

So you guys should tell me what to read! You always give me good advice.

Poll #5323 What should Tui read next?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

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For god's sake, finish ...

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Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
0 (0.0%)

Hallucinating Foucault
1 (25.0%)

Dead People's Music
0 (0.0%)

Going Bovine
1 (25.0%)

Wonder Boys
2 (50.0%)

You have these books out of the library, prioritise them ...

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The Edge of the Alphabet
0 (0.0%)

A College of Magics
3 (100.0%)

Marcelo in the Real World
0 (0.0%)

Forget all of those, read ...

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A Novel Bookstore
0 (0.0%)

13 Little Blue Envelopes
0 (0.0%)

Actually you should read this book:

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What are you reading lately?

Comments

[china_shop]

I loved Wonder Boys. There were all these lines in it I wanted to print out and stick on the wall, etc. :-)

ETA: What are you reading lately?

I'm reading fanfic, almost exclusively.

[labellementeuse]

Oh China! Please sell me on it, because I am not enjoying it and am rather persevering only so I can hate it with authority. I despise all the protagonists but especially Grady & his whole concept of the midnight sickness - his primary problem in the novel seems to be that he can't drink to forget the fact that he knocked up his boss while cheating on his wife who can't get pregnant. And also he should have just started writing a different novel, ugh. STOP WHINING YOU IDIOT.

[china_shop]

Well, admittedly, I saw the film first (which I adored despite my hatred for Michael Douglas), and read The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, so I was primed for it, but... Can I sell you on it with quotes?

- "Turn out the light, please," he'd said, in his choked little powder-soft voice. I knew that I shouldn't have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.

- The overcoat was a trademark of his. It was an impermeable thrift-shop special with a plaid flannel lining and wide lapels, and it looked as though it had been trying for many years to keep the rain off the stooped shoulders of a long series of hard cases, drifters, and ordinary bums. It emitted an odor of bus station so desolate that just standing next to him you could feel your luck changing for the worse.

- James was busy reading the bottle of zinfandel, a concerned expression on his face, as though he'd just found out it was wine he'd been drinking all evening and were searching for the place on the label where they told you how to get it to stop.

Does that help at all?

[labellementeuse]

Aw ... kinda! They are great quotes. But the thing is I already know Michael Chabon is very talented - I adored Kavalier and Clay myself. so yeah, lovely writing, but I find Grady so objectionable. If I could be confident that Chabon was criticising him or sending him up instead of romanticising him that would be one thing, but ugh, I'm not.

[china_shop]

*nodnod* Possibly the movie helped with that, in that... *thinks* ...it was more like Grady was romanticising himself (while his life disintegrated around him) and the movie was just giving him enough rope to hang himself. I mean, he's clearly pretty awful (which is probably why I could stomach Michael Douglas in the role, because anything bar Romancing the Stone that has Douglas as a hero is going to make my brain bleed) and the author of his own misfortunes. IDK. If it doesn't work for you, well, life is short?

ETA: My favourite thing about the film (and I don't think it comes through as clearly in the book) is that there is a perfectly logical chain of events that starts out in a perfectly reasonable place and ends up just out-of-control insane. Each step makes sense, but the journey just gets crazier and crazier, and it was all understated, and I loved that.

[polarisnorth]

I am reading the Vorkosigan Saga lately (♥) as well as a lot of nonfiction I've got out from the school library, since I'm binging in fear of no longer having access to an academic library next year.

Please finish Hallucinating Foucault-- it's on my to-read list and I'd love an opinion!

[labellementeuse]

What I miss more than nonfiction is journal access. SO FRUSTRATING. (Also yesssss love for the Vorkosigans!)

I will! It's relatively slim compared to the other stuff so I decided to do it first, too.