Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I never really gelled with Bruce Brooks’ What Hearts, a 1993 Newbery Honor winner. It’s telling you about the characters rather than telling you a story about them, and this has the counterintuitive effect of making you feel that you don’t know the characters at all, like how suddenly in part three we discover out of the blue that Asa’s mother suffers depressions so deep that they sometimes result in month-long hospitalizations. I feel that this should have been hinted at in parts one and two.

I also never gelled with Gregory Manchess’s Above the Timberline, which was too bad because I’ve been intending to read this book for years. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous - think Dinotopia meets the tundra - but the story just never caught fire for me. Maybe if I had struck while the iron was hot (or ice-cold, as it were) and read it a few years ago when I first heard about it? There is something to be said for following one’s whims in the reading life.

In support of this theory, I picked up Anne Blankman’s The Blackbird Girls on a whim: “That looks Soviet!” I said, catching sight of the cover across the library, and indeed, it’s a children’s book set during the aftermath of Chernobyl. When anti-Semitic schoolyard bully Oksana and her frequent victim Valentina are accidentally evacuated from Pripyat together, they become unlikely friends.

I could have done with a shorter Overcoming Prejudice plotline (do you KNOW how many historical fiction children’s books I’ve read about a character Overcoming Prejudice? DO YOU KNOW?), but once we got to the unlikely friends part (which takes place in Leningrad! There’s a whole chapter of sightseeing in Leningrad!!!!), I was sold. And it was so great to read a children’s book set in the Soviet Union, partly because this aligns so spectacularly with my interests, but also because it’s a little off the beaten path for American historical fiction and it’s just nice to see variety.

What I’m Reading Now

Another quote from Nadezhda Mandelstam, set off by a reminiscence about a kind landlady she and her husband stayed with while in exile in the mid-1930s:

There were once many kind people, and even unkind ones pretended to be good because that was the thing to do. Such pretense was the source of the hypocrisy and dishonesty so much exposed in the realist literature at the end of the last century. The unexpected result of this kind of critical writing was that kind people disappeared. Kindness is not, after all, an inborn quality - it has to be cultivated, and this only happens when it is in demand. For our generation, kindness was an old-fashioned, vanished quality, and its exponents were as extinct as the mammoth.

In a way this is a paraphrase of La Rochefoucauld: “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” I think the idea of this sort of realist literature is that exposing hypocrites might encourage honest and sincere kindness, but perhaps this aim is fundamentally flawed; maybe most humans can only offer forth so much sincerity.

Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun is a chonk of a book, and I’m only about halfway through. I’m enjoying the world-building of the land of the fae (Arcadia, as the book calls it), but wow, this is going in a more incestuous direction than I anticipated.

And I’ve begun Mary Renault’s The Charioteer! Fairly sure that I am going to drown in feelings.

What I Plan to Read Next

Waiting to continue my hobo journey with Nels Anderson’s On Hobos and Homelessness. Come on, interlibrary loan!

Comments

[asakiyume]

The quote and your thoughts on it--I agree, and with this corollary: people do what they're encouraged to do by social cues. If social cues are telling you that kindness is hypocritical bullshit, that only your meanness and your hidden dark thoughts are valid, then those are what you'll show. Whereas if people vocally and visibly support good behavior and praise it, (more) people will behave, because they want that sweet sweet praise and approval.

My sister described a clear example of that on FB the other day. People in her town forum were on a downward spiral of criticizing teens for not being on-board enough with mask wearing, and this was leading to criticizing the parents and general sniping back and forth, and she apparently wrote a thing talking about how she was such an excellent parent before she had kids, and still a good parent when she could physically lift the kids out of a situation, but that once her boys got big enough and independent enough to act on their own, she became a humble parent, because though she tried to set a good example and teach them good values, they didn't always act in ways that she was proud of. She said it really does take a village, and that she's grateful for people who correct bad behavior but in a kindly way. ---And then her tone reset led to bunches of people chiming in saying yeah, it's a good community; yes, parenting is hard; yes, we need to work on these things together.

The people hadn't changed, and the mix of things they felt hadn't changed, but with everyone liking the post, etc., it suddenly became important to be taking a positive tone.

... This comes across like I'm boasting about my sister, which embarrasses me, but I use the example because it literally happened yesterday, and because FB can be such a caustic, toxic place.

[ancientreader]

It sounds like your sister is well worth bragging about!

I think kindness in response to social cues isn't just about wanting approval, though that's important -- I think also, when the public atmosphere is full of contempt for kindness, people become afraid to act or speak kindly because in that context kindness is equated with weakness, and overtly kind people are mocked and belittled. Case in point, of course, the Mango Mussolini and his admirers, who have made it impossible even to advocate for civil discourse because civil discourse can't get a purchase anymore.

Gosh, did I just watch "debate" highlights? Yes, I did. Ignore me.

[asakiyume]

You're so right! After leaving the comment I realized how tainted with cynicism **I** am, that I cast it all in terms of seeking approval. But I agree: it's also that kindness is equated with weakness, and events have become so polarizing that mildness can be seen as collaboration.

[kore]

Your sister sounds pretty fucking awesome, getting the napalm-filled landscape of FB to calm down is up there with loaves and little fishes.

[asakiyume]

She's pretty amazing ^_^

[osprey_archer]

If you can't boast about your sister for taming the wild beasts of Facebook (usually an impossible task!), then when CAN you boast about your sister? And TBH it's actually nice to hear about something good happening on Facebook, like a ray of hope in the darkness.

[troisoiseaux]

And I’ve begun Mary Renault’s The Charioteer!

//SCREAMS//

I can't wait to hear what you think!!! I had A Lot of feelings about that book when I read it a few years ago and have been meaning to re-read it since.

[kore]

LOL all us Charioteer fangirls are going to DESCEND on that reading post no doubt!

[osprey_archer]

I now have Charioteer post anxiety. I've gotten all of you all excited about it! What if my post doesn't live up to that?

[ancientreader]

Oh my God oh my God have you really never read The Charioteer before? *rubs hands together* Pretend it's not misogynistic and revel in the period self-loathing and UST! Four hundred years ago when I was a Young Homosexual (rather than a late-middle-aged queer) this was one of the few readily available gay/lesbian/etc. books, and one of the even fewer that didn't end with a dead protagonist or three. I can't count the number of times I've read it.

[kore]

Four hundred years ago when I was a Young Homosexual (rather than a late-middle-aged queer) this was one of the few readily available gay/lesbian/etc. books, and one of the even fewer that didn't end with a dead protagonist or three

The book of hers ALL my queer friends in college had read was The Persian Boy, and Charioteer was less well-known -- it's so neat Charioteer got popular too. And nobody dies! !! Someone should make a list (I'm sure somebody already has) of queer books where Nobody Dies At the End.

[ancientreader]

Oh, yes, The Persian Boy. I read it in high school and that first kiss set the template for, basically, my entire erotic life. Mary Renault has to answer for most of the porn I've written.

[osprey_archer]

I've meant to read Mary Renault for LITERAL YEARS (although for a long time I put it off because the LJ comm was famously batshit), so I guess now is just finally the time. It will be interesting to compare it to Giovanni's Room; they were published in the same decade.

[kore]

THE CHARIOTEER OH BOY

I really love a lot of that book (the hero is great, the language is beautiful) but parts of it also drive me crazy because I think Renault's modern novels highlight her flaws in a way the historical novels let her gloss over. It's interesting to me now that Charioteer is like a queer classic! In my day The Persian Boy was definitely in that slot.

[osprey_archer]

I've definitely heard that I ought to read The Persian Boy, too, in fact all her ancient Greek novels. (For a long time I thought The Charioteer WAS an ancient Greek novel because - well, charioteers... but apparently it's metaphorical.)

I also intend to read The Friendly Young Ladies, but I'm not sure that Mary Renault is an author one ought to read all at once.

[skygiants]

I also did not expect the incest in Pendulum Sun! I do think the rules-lawyering around it is very funny. However.

[osprey_archer]

My current theory is that Cathy is in fact a changeling (some things that Ariel Davenport said have hinted at it) and THEREFORE technically not Laon's blood sister, but... we shall see! Will report back next week/later today depending on how fast I read.

[evelyn_b]

I'm excited for you to read The Charioteer! I expect you'll have some feelings.

[osprey_archer]

I'm about halfway through and I'm already having FEELINGS. Really it's astonishing that it took me this long to read this book.