In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
The Life Of The Mind by Christine Smallwood
Despite what publicists and jacket-copy writers might have you believe, there are way more readers out there who appreciate, and even prefer, novels in which not a whole lot happens. “Page-turner” needn’t only apply to the action-filled or plot-driven. That’s not to say that things don’t happen in Christine Smallwood’s The Life Of The Mind (March 2, Hogarth), which centers on English adjunct Dorothy in the days and weeks following her miscarriage due to a blighted ovum. (The writer structured her debut novel around the prolonged, intermittent bleeding of her main character, who views her body with a matter-of-fact curiosity.) Dorothy grades papers, rides the subway, attends a literary conference. Scenes set around a karaoke party and an underwater puppet show (!) are given the kind of symbolic weight one might more likely see in short fiction. As with so many exemplary novels in which plot is not the driving force, the main attraction of The Life Of The Mind is the prose itself. Writing in a close third-person, Smallwood firmly places her story within Dorothy’s consciousness, and it’s the clarity of the character’s thinking that pulls the book swiftly along. “Dorothy liked hugging. Hugging was a way of demonstrating affection that also involved hiding your face,” Smallwood writes. Such lines are illustrative of so much of what’s enjoyable about this deceptively potent book: They’re droll, a little melancholy, and stunningly precise. [Laura Adamczyk]
Shadow And Bone by Leigh Bardugo
I grew up with HeartQuest books, which were like choose-your-own-adventure books but published by TSR Inc., the former publishers of Dungeons & Dragons. So I will always have a soft spot for stories about young women who are ripped from everything they’ve known (usually in under 10 pages) and cast into some extraordinary role or setting. Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow And Bone, the first book in her Grishaverse saga, certainly fits the bill. Young Alina finds out she has immense magical powers after surviving a gruesome attack on her regiment in the Fold, a barrier both physical and figurative in the war-torn world of Bardugo’s imagination. You know the rest: She has to train, then question her place in this war, etc. The beats are familiar, as are the locales—Ravka is a fantasy analog for Russia; Shu, for China—but the book’s nimble prose and rich detail engross as much as the unfolding adventure. Eric Heisserer’s adaptation of Shadow And Bone will be out on Netflix on April 23, which means I’ll have an added layer of (dis)satisfaction after checking out season one. [Danette Chavez]
Pale by John McCrae
I’ve been a fan of the works of John “Wildbow” McCrae for a few years now, ever since coming across his debut serialized novel, the online superhero drama Worm, during one of my regular, brain-eroding TV Tropes binges. McCrae’s works—including the supernaturally inclined Pact, the Frankenstein-riffing Twig, and his current work, Pale—all serve up serialized red meat in abundance: raw emotions, escalating bad situations, and the ever-important cliffhanger that keeps you logging on for another week. But the aspect that’s currently keeping me glued to Pale—way too late, most nights—is McCrae’s talent for devising intricate systems for his characters to exploit, or maybe just get trapped in. Worm flourished in its initial run, at least in part, because of McCrae’s talent for thinking up inventive new superpowers and finding ways to apply an ability like its protagonist’s “control over bugs” in endlessly unexpected ways. Pale protagonists Verona, Lucy, and Avery have a far more diverse power set at their disposal, but the magical world in which they exist is also far more punishing and cruel—but never capricious. For someone who likes their fantasy lit heavy on rules, dangers, and clever loopholes, it’s incredibly compelling stuff, the kind that keeps me tuning in week in and week out to discover how they’re going to get out of the next clearly inescapable problem they’ve gotten themselves into with their latest last-ditch effort to survive. [William Hughes]
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Nebula nominees. 6 of 7 are fantasy this year.Network Effect by Martha Wells was good fun.The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk was not very good. Maybe because it wasn’t my cup of tea, but I think it was more than that.I am a third through Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse and enjoying it.Piranesi by Susanna Clark, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and The City we Became by NK Jemisin are up next. I will probably read the Hugo nominees as well, they are announced tomorrow. Usually there is a good deal of overlap.
LOVE Murderbot. Can’t wait for the next- although it’s a prequal!
Piranesi’s a lot of fun, it’s fairly simplistic compared to Jonathan Strange but I found myself gripped by.
It came out last year, but currently reading “Minor Feelings” by Cathy Park Hong and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that hit so close to home in the first few pages. I’m getting copies to share with a few other Asian friends, along with “Crying in HMart” later this month. “Minor Feelings” puts words to experiences we’ve all had but felt like we couldn’t talk about or even acknowledge, lest we rock the boat or show “weakness” or otherwise disrupt the “model minority” illusion, and Michelle Zauner’s essay in the New Yorker had us all ugly crying by the end.
I’m reading Starship Titanic, the book of Douglas Adams game by Terry Jones, it’s patchy and then some but it has its moments and as it was cheap I’m not complaining.
Moby Dick! Reading a chapter or two a day as was recommended to me and it’s been good so far. Melville is just chucking whatever he wants in this thing and mostly making it work (chowder disquisition!) and Ishmael is skeptical, ominous, sweet (he and Queequegg are a fun couple), fervent and funny by turns, and the book is full of wisdom that is as true now as it was then: “In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.”In terms of fiction without a lot happening, just read Hilary Mantel’s An Experiment In Love and liked it a fair amount, although it is a catalogue of miseries — my experience here is limited but Britain in the 50s and 60s seems like an incredibly shitty place to not have a lot of money and there are definitely parallels with Mantel’s own life here. Young women go to school and university and find out new freedoms aren’t that free, it ends on a very dark note that is not fully explicated and the unease lingers. Plus a demonic appearance by Margaret Thatcher!
Currently reading Mark Kurlansky’s latest, Paper: Paging Through History. It’s not just a history of paper but of related subjects like written language and printing. It’s a fun, engaging read, as all his books have been.Also read in April:The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart TiptonHell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller. This was better than I expected and reminded me of In Cold Blood.We Run The Tides by Vendela VidaNomadland: Surviving American in the 21st Century by Jessica Bruder
I just started Birdbox, I’m only 2 chapters in, but I’m into it so far!
Currently reading Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill. I’ve never been disappointed with any of Nevill’s books and this is no exception. The Ramsey Campbell influence is strong in this one.
Essentially Q, because it’s interesting to have an insider’s view from behind the curtains, even if he’s sometimes a bit conservative. When it comes to violence advocacy, for instance. Q regrets being associated to increasing displays of violence, but that’s how culture evolved.Of course, I say Q as if it was a unambiguous identity. I’m aware that it’s been several people, but while the actual writing is done by Sandy Hernu, the source of information is Llewelyn himself. Cleese is only briefly mentioned as an assistant. The book is from 1999. He was alive, and intending to continue.So, of course, many things. Llewelyn’s life. The youth, theater, less famous roles. Pamela, his wife for sixty years. The war, the POW camp. And then of course, the invasive Q identity, and Pamela’s lasting contempt for the role and the movies, Desmond’s disinterest for gadgetry, the public (and journalists) truly expecting him to be a tech wiz, the production asking him to be one during the publicity tours. Also, Lazenby being a jerk. Moore being lovely. Maxwell being refused the role of the next M by the producers, adamant that M could never be a woman. The odd confusion with Charles Fraser-Smith (the actual ww2 gadgeteer who’s said to have inspired Fleming, and who does look a bit like Llewelyn). With age, the little difficulties and workarounds of lines memorization, but also the gut-wrenching progression of Pamela’s Alzheimer.Aging in funnier through Moore’s ever cheerful perspective, and his A Bientôt is as funny as all his other writings. But it’s a posthumous publication, so, of course it’s bittersweet. It’s also full of old man’s complains about the world (the youth that doesn’t wear ties anymore and uses internet words, such horrors), but it’s hilariously self-depreciative and optimistic to the very end, which, in this case, is the very end. Not far from me. In the same hospital as my best friend two years later, with the same nurse to testify for their ultimate class dignity and awesomeness.Surprisingly little contrast with the 007 Diaries, a day to day diary of the filming of Live and Let Die. From the start of his Bond career to his death in Switzerland, Moore had the exact same humor, the same style, the same outlook on life. Both books could have been written the same days. Whichever the epoch, Moore is always a safely soothing read. I’m soon out of material (only Last Men Standing left once I’ll have finished that one), but I savor this one. Maybe light-heartedness will be back some day.
Also, following suggestions from here, I’ve acquired Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye, but haven’t started it yet. Probably next. I expect fewer laughs from that one.