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Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 12th, 2014 12:22 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Marie Brennan’s The Tropic of Serpents, which did indeed pick up as soon as Isabella and company arrived in the aforementioned tropics and joined a hunter-gatherer society as part of their plan to get close to the dragons of the region. I haven’t read many books set among hunter-gatherers, so I enjoyed the novelty of it: I really, really enjoy Brennan’s world-building, because all her societies feel like places where people could actually live.
In fact, Brennan seems rather better at characterizing societies than characterizing individuals: aside from Isabella herself, none of the characters in these books are all that memorable. I think it’s the reason I found the beginnings of both A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents so slow: until Isabella has a new society to interact with, there’s not much to latch onto.
I also read Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, which I bought at Persephone Books in London and hauled across the ocean… and didn’t like very much when I finally read it. It’s a little story about little, petty people: a girl who marries the wrong man because neither she nor the man she actually loves have the guts to admit that they love each other, and her relatives wander about being boring and bourgeois in the background.
It would be tragic, but I don’t think Dolly and Joseph would have been happy in the end anyway, given their lack of courage and integrity. Frankly, I suspect that the relatives are not half as bad as Dolly and Joseph believe: I think they’re projecting their own absolute dullness onto everyone around them.
What I’m Reading Now
Anya von Bremzen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, which has rather less food than I expected (although I defy anyone to read her description of pre-Revolutionary kulebiaka without salivating), but I don’t really mind.
Mostly it’s a memoir and a family history, sharing the way that the Soviet Union shaped von Bremzen and her mother (who is really the star of the book, so far). It’s excellently done, which means that sometimes I need to take a breather because it’s intense.
For instance, von Bremzen writes about the time that her mother, not long after World War II, wrote some musings about death in her diary. Unfortunately, she left the book out, and her mother read those musings, and lit into her: “We beat the Germans! Your father fought for your happiness! How dare you have such bad, silly thoughts!” And then ripped the diary to shreds.
Yes. Depression? Unhappiness? CRIMES AGAINST THE GLORIOUS SOCIALIST FUTURE.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the library to get Barbara Hambly’s Crimson Angel. COME ON, LIBRARY, IT’S BEEN LIKE A MONTH.
Marie Brennan’s The Tropic of Serpents, which did indeed pick up as soon as Isabella and company arrived in the aforementioned tropics and joined a hunter-gatherer society as part of their plan to get close to the dragons of the region. I haven’t read many books set among hunter-gatherers, so I enjoyed the novelty of it: I really, really enjoy Brennan’s world-building, because all her societies feel like places where people could actually live.
In fact, Brennan seems rather better at characterizing societies than characterizing individuals: aside from Isabella herself, none of the characters in these books are all that memorable. I think it’s the reason I found the beginnings of both A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents so slow: until Isabella has a new society to interact with, there’s not much to latch onto.
I also read Julia Strachey’s Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, which I bought at Persephone Books in London and hauled across the ocean… and didn’t like very much when I finally read it. It’s a little story about little, petty people: a girl who marries the wrong man because neither she nor the man she actually loves have the guts to admit that they love each other, and her relatives wander about being boring and bourgeois in the background.
It would be tragic, but I don’t think Dolly and Joseph would have been happy in the end anyway, given their lack of courage and integrity. Frankly, I suspect that the relatives are not half as bad as Dolly and Joseph believe: I think they’re projecting their own absolute dullness onto everyone around them.
What I’m Reading Now
Anya von Bremzen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, which has rather less food than I expected (although I defy anyone to read her description of pre-Revolutionary kulebiaka without salivating), but I don’t really mind.
Mostly it’s a memoir and a family history, sharing the way that the Soviet Union shaped von Bremzen and her mother (who is really the star of the book, so far). It’s excellently done, which means that sometimes I need to take a breather because it’s intense.
For instance, von Bremzen writes about the time that her mother, not long after World War II, wrote some musings about death in her diary. Unfortunately, she left the book out, and her mother read those musings, and lit into her: “We beat the Germans! Your father fought for your happiness! How dare you have such bad, silly thoughts!” And then ripped the diary to shreds.
Yes. Depression? Unhappiness? CRIMES AGAINST THE GLORIOUS SOCIALIST FUTURE.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the library to get Barbara Hambly’s Crimson Angel. COME ON, LIBRARY, IT’S BEEN LIKE A MONTH.
