Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Barbara Hambly’s latest Benjamin January mystery, Drinking Gourd, which gave me nightmares and also the vague guilty sense that I’ve somewhere lost the thread. The series has gathered up so many secondary characters that I can no longer keep track of them all: I’m fairly sure, for instance, that I ought to remember Jubal Cain, but I had forgotten him completely. As well as Levi Christmas. I think an entire book revolved around Levi Christmas, and I don’t remember him for beans.

I actually have this problem with a lot of mystery novels - I often don’t remember whodunnit or how they done it or any of that - but in most mystery series, this doesn’t matter, because things more or less reset with every book. (I mean, the status quo does change in the Charles Lenox mysteries, but verrrrrry slowly.) In Benjamin January, the status quo changes practically every book, which was fine when I was reading the whole series all in a row but is clearly going to be a problem now.

I also read Rachel Field’s Calico Bush, which is a historical fiction novel about the early pioneers in Maine. It has lots of nice landscape description and some fun details about things like dyeing cloth (and some unfortunate stereotypes about American Indians; it was published in 1931), but the characters never really popped for me.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve been reading Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, “traditional” in this case meaning “hunter/gatherers,” agriculture being a new-fangled invention that has occupied a few paltry thousand years of human existence.

There is obviously a lot of food for thought in this book. The thing that struck me the most is Diamond’s comment that the current Western custom of having small children sleep in rooms alone is basically unique in human history, and would strike lots of hunter-gatherers as child abuse - I think just because this is such a basic fact in American culture that it never would have occurred to me to think of it that way; it’s not good or bad but just how things are done.

It was something of an “ah-ha!” moment for me, because I think it’s easy to look at the past and say, “How could these people not see that X thing is terrible and wrong?” - but of course seeing it as wrong would require seeing it in the first place, and if something is just the way a thing is done and has always been done (this is not actually the way things have “always” been done in the West, but it’s been the fashion among middle class people for ~150 years which in terms of human memory is always), then most people don’t see it at all. It’s not a custom that could be changed; it’s just there, like the air we breathe.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’m on a bit of a Ngaio Marsh kick now, so probably another one of those. Maybe Killer Dolphin? Even though there are apparently no actual murderous dolphins in the book, which I think we can all agree is a misfortune.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

there are apparently no actual murderous dolphins

THEN WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT?!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Right? There should be a book with an actual murder dolphin. Of course, that makes the whodunnit pretty obvious, but the detective could have to figure out what put the dolphin in a murderin' mood, or something.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Obviously I approve of your Ngaio Marsh kick! Killer Dolphin is pretty ok, despite its disappointing lack of killer dolphins.

I really need to give Benjamin January a try.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Someone should write a book with a murderous dolphin! Although I guess that would make the whodunnit pretty obvious. Maybe they would have to figure out how the dolphin managed to lure its human prey, and why.

Benjamin January is the Least Comfortable Man in New Orleans, I have to warn you. I often yell "JUST LET THE POOR MAN GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP" at the books, because he never does. He also gets dragged away from meals all the time, like a sad antebellum Poirot.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't actually blame you for not remembering Jubal Cain and Levi Christmas! They've both only previously appeared in Dead Water (five whole books ago!), and neither of them were major characters there. Jubal Cain is the guy who introduces Ben to the Underground Railroad, after spending most of the book as a red herring to the actual murderer, and Levi Christmas was a secondary villain who only appeared in a few scenes.

I do have this same problem with mystery series though. They seem to have a larger cast of the characters than many other genres, and particularly characters who tend to make very tiny, very far apart appearances.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends on the mystery series. In Ngaio Marsh the recurring cast is actually pretty tiny; Alleyn and his wife and his police colleagues recur, but everyone else seems to be new every book. (Which is actually a bit sad sometimes; I would love an update on the future of some of her characters, like the feckless Lampreys.)

But with more recent mysteries there does seem to be more of an effort to tie series more tightly together by having more recurring characters and referring back to old cases more often. I have some doubts whether this is a good strategy - especially given that mysteries demand large casts in the first place, given that you have to have multiple suspects and a victim and so forth, so they already make more demands on the memory than for instance romance novels.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I have some doubts whether this is a good strategy

Yeah, agreed. It works well when you're binging on a series that's new to you, but when you're reading on the publishing schedule, with at least a year between books, it's almost impossible to keep everyone straight.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes: the sleep habits thing is definitely a great insight into how it is to have a "wrong" attitude.

Actually, as a child, I always wished I could go sleep with my parents, and I was envious of friends who sometimes got to sleep with their parents if they were scared or sad. When I had my own kids, I ended up bringing them into bed with me as infants because it was so much easier to nurse them, and then they'd fall asleep curled up right beside me, and that was **bliss**. I also slept better. But at first I felt shy to let people know, because it was such a not-done thing. But then I realized that that's how my friends in Japan handled babies, and--as you say--how people in most times and places through history had handled babies, so I felt better.

Another thing like that that I've heard mentioned is braces: that people in some societies think of braces the way we think of flattening babies' heads or doing body scarification (nowadays I suspect we wouldn't mind so much about body scarification, but you now what I mean).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I asked my mom about it, and she commented that when I was little, all the baby books were very down on co-sleeping. So my brother and I both slept in cribs at night. But when we were just taking naps, she would lie down with us on her chest, and everyone went right to sleep then.

I also remember when I was a bit older that my parents spent a lot of time sitting with me because I had trouble getting to sleep in my room on my own. So I expect that getting small children to sleep in rooms all on their own is one of those cultural ideals that often gets modified in practice.