Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Joan G. Robinson’s Charley, also sometimes called The Girl Who Ran Away, an enchanting book about - well, a girl who runs away! Through a series of miscommunications, no one realizes that young Charley never arrived at the house of the relation with whom she was meant to spend a holiday. Instead Charley spends a week on her own, making a home for herself in an old hen house and beneath a chestnut tree, finding food and a source of water and wandering in a beautiful copse where she makes up adventures for herself and an imaginary animal companion, a beautiful fawn.

Highly recommended if you like books about runaway children, with lots of rich detail about finding food and water and just generally looking after themselves. Charley comes to the end of her resources a little more swiftly than the Boxcar Children, but she has a wonderful time while it lasts.

I also finished Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T. Tembarom! It 100% turned out just as I expected - this is not a book that you read for surprises - but there’s great pleasure in watching Burnett do a fairly realistic take on a melodramatic plot involving a wandering amnesiac, the unexpected inheritance of a vast English estate, a haughty society beauty, and a self-made fortune from an invention in which Burnett is so uninterested that she simply calls in “the invention.” What does it do? What industry is it used in? Who knows! Who cares! Burnett certainly doesn’t, and honestly it’s inspiring how she flings such trifles aside to focus on the culture clash between a New York street kid made good and the fascinated gentry who live in the county around the estate he just inherited.

And I read ND Stevenson’s Nimona, which I expected to love and ended up hating. I am just extremely over stories where the protagonist kills a bunch of redshirts, and the narrative treats this as a quirky and even adorable personality flaw (Nimona just gets kinda murdery out on heists sometimes! Lookit, she turns into a dragon to do it, so fun), and the protagonist’s friends give her a mild scolding and then continue to shower her with love and acceptance.

I also hate that this story seems completely unable to grasp that there is a difference between “persecuted for being a shapeshifter!” (insert allegory for minority of choice here) and “prosecuted for destroying a WHOLE CITY with MANY CASUALTIES!” and treats ANY attempt to stop Nimona from murdering again as an example of the first. The ONLY allowable method of stopping her is to shower her with love and acceptance until she decides maybe she wants to stop.

And of course the book expects us to root for Nimona and presents “Nimona roams free!” as a happy ending, when she’s just spent the whole book killing people and she’s clearly going to kill again as soon as she feels like it.

What I’m Reading Now

I really meant to keep going with Black Narcissus and Sensational but then my hold on Emily Henry’s Book Lovers came in and as there are 479 holds on it (sadly this is not an exaggeration) I thought that PERHAPS I ought to prioritize that. I’ve enjoyed all of Henry’s books but so far this is a strong contender for my new favorite. Love the protagonist, a literary agent so intense that her colleagues call her the Shark, love her relationship with her sister, tentatively loving her dynamic with the love interest but we’ll see how that develops over the book.

In Dracula, Jonathan Harker has crawled along a ledge outside Dracula’s castle to sneak into Dracula’s room and thereby discovered that the count sleeps in a coffin in the crypt! Fascinating information no doubt but I personally hope that Harker soon turns his attention to the life-or-death question of “How is he going to escape?”

What I Plan to Read Next

Have discovered that the library has David Sweetman’s biography of Mary Renault and I am contemplating whether to read it now or to wait until I’ve read all or at least almost all of Mary Renault’s books. (No one has anything nice to say about Funeral Games so I may… just… not read that one.)

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

I remember liking Sweetman's biography (iirc I read it after Zilboorg's, which I hated).

I'm not fond of Funeral Games, but it's been a while since I read it.

[kore]

I got Zilboorg's a while ago! I haven't read it yet, tho. I reread the Sweetman several times after it came out in paperback.

[aurumcalendula]

If you get around to Zilboorg's I'd be curious what you think of it (I mostly remember what annoyed me about it)

[osprey_archer]

What did you dislike about Zilboorg's biography? I haven't read it, and if it's bad I'll probably skip it.

[aurumcalendula]

Going from my memory (and my grumblings on tumblr), I think the main things that bothered me were that it wasn't entirely clear Zilboorg grasped the concept of bisexuality (there's a lot of using 'lesbian' as a synonym for 'queer woman' without Zilboorg saying she's doing that - which I found odd since she does use the word queer in the introduction) and that she seems to brush aside Renault’s (imho) internalized misogyny and homophobia without really examining those aspects in her works.

[sovay]

I remember liking Sweetman's biography (iirc I read it after Zilboorg's, which I hated).

What did you hate about Zilboorg's biography of Mary Renault? It's the only one I've ever encountered, but literally I used it as a concordance to her novels, therefore cannot evaluate it as biography.

[edit] I see you answered this in a previous comment, which I had left my reply window open and not seen.

[aurumcalendula]

iirc my main gripes were that Zilboorg didn't seem to grasp bisexuality and kinda brushed off Renault's treatment of women in her works.

imho David Sweetman's Mary Renault: A Biography is a much better biography. iirc, there's less jumping around in time, he's better at explaining context, and how he doesn’t shy away from criticizing her (re: how she treats women in her stories, how she was …somewhat out of touch with politics in South Africa, etc).

ETA: No worries!

[troisoiseaux]

And I read ND Stevenson’s Nimona, which I expected to love and ended up hating.

INTERESTING. I loved Nimona, although admittedly I discovered it ~8 years ago/as a teenager, so maybe I would feel differently now? (Although, wait, no— I did reread it a few years ago and still enjoyed it.)

I think I wasn't as bothered by the things you mention because it was a comic, which— my brain wants to phrase it as, comics feel like the least """real""" storytelling medium to me, but that sounds like a judgement on comics as an art form which is not my intention. Hmm. My point is that I find it easier to suspend disbelief with comics than, say, a movie/TV show/book. Or, like— yes she turns into a dragon and kills people, but the story is kind of a metaphor?? And also they're drawings??

Tl;dr it's always interesting to see how different people react to the same media!!

Ooooh Jonathan :O How will he escape?? :O

[osprey_archer]

I think I've just lost patience with "murder as a metaphor for acting out due to trauma," probably because I've lost patience in general with the idea that suffering makes it okay to hurt other people.

I think poor Jonathan will just die in the castle and the rest of the book will be about the others somehow finding his diary and avenging his death. *nods seriously* Mina and Lucy and Lucy's three husbands will work together to stop the Count!

[kore]

I would actually rec reading the Sweetman bio first -- he picks up on a lot of themes and it's well-written. Renault's life is pretty harrowing reading, though.

Funeral Games is one of those last installments that can retroactively poison all the stories befor eit, like Endgame.

Poor Jonathan! He is such a love. I always wondered if Drac put a thrall on him when he finds the Count in the coffin but can't really hurt him. Then again, if I had wandered through an extremely creepy castle and found the Count in some kind of comatose but really angry state I probably would have just shrieked and fled.

[osprey_archer]

AS BAD AS ENDGAME, wow. Funeral Games must be truly disastrous! Does it poison Persian Boy?

Yes, I think Jonathan's response to finding the Count asleep is perfectly understandable without any extra explanation. I too would probably flee screaming if I found my creepy host comatose in his coffin!

[kore]

Maybe comparing it to Endgame is a little OTT! but I read it ONCE and never again, and I can still remember it way too clearly for my liking. It doesn't poison PB exactly, which is superb, but it's so grim and fatalistic compared to the other books that it just doesn't match up with them at all. It's a very odd book.

I too would probably flee screaming if I found my creepy host comatose in his coffin!

People keep gently mocking Jonathan for not attacking Drac or scaling his way down the CLIFFS and so on, and I'm just like, I know we all like to believe we would be heroic in extremis but I find his reactions completely understandable!

[asakiyume]

I laughed and laughed reading your review of Nimona--I remember when it was all the rage, and I thought, Oh, sounds fun, but never read it. But the things you highlight about it are things that infuriate me too! "NO, I'm not persecuting you for your superpowers; I'm prosecuting you for how you keep killing people with them"--YES THAT. (I like your use of persecute/prosecute)

I think also there's something about making "I'm going to kill you!" which people use all the time as a way of saying "wow, this thing you've done is mildly frustrating, and I'm mildly frustrated" and turning it literal--and then somehow trying to design it so the reader doesn't mind (I mean I'm assuming Nimona isn't killing li'l babies and honest farmers and helpless baristas, but instead people whom the book is asking its readers not to care about, right?). That's scary and bad! Like, no, let's not have people-dead be a hilarious side-effect! Unless you're doing a really dark sort of comedy but .....

I have been following you and Sovay's reviews and thoughts on Mary Renault. That's about as close to Mary Renault as I want to get.

[osprey_archer]

Many of Nimona's victims are only implied by the text (we are told her rampage leaves many casualties, but we don't see any of them), and the ones we do see really are interchangeable redshirts. It's not so much that the book is arguing we shouldn't care about them as giving us nothing to care about? Just kind of handwaving the whole thing.

[sovay]

I have been following you and Sovay's reviews and thoughts on Mary Renault. That's about as close to Mary Renault as I want to get.

I would actually recommend at least two of her novels to you! That's not a faint praise joke: they are books I believe you would like.

[asakiyume]

I understand that it's not faint praise: you know me, and I understand what you're saying (well, this first part I gather from your and Osprey Archer's conversation on Mary Renault more generally but) is that she's a good writer and that of her works, there are two that you think I in particular would like.

Which two?

[sovay]

(No one has anything nice to say about Funeral Games so I may… just… not read that one.)

You wouldn't miss anything. It's kind of amazing that way.

[osprey_archer]

In a way that is a sort of achievement!

[kore]

I don't think I have ever met someone who has actually liked it. I'm sure there must be at least one person who does, since there's something for everyone in this wild wonderful world, but it's just odd because most Renault fans I know deeply love the Greek history books but when it comes to that one, everyone suddenly makes the Mr Yuk face.

[kore]

It is bizarre, what an awful experience reading that book is. It's not horribly written even, it's just so....grinding and bleak and depressing, and it has this very flat quality.

[sovay]

and it has this very flat quality.

That's my primary memory of it, beyond the screaming misogyny: it reads as though she had no desire to write it, her interest having died with Alexander, but felt internally-contractually obligated to chronicle every last inexorable snuffing-out of hope or light or legacy, which in some cases is grimmer in Renault's version than in reality. I read it later than the rest of her historicals, so I was able to evaluate more of its historicity than I could on first encounter with, say, The Last of the Wine in ninth grade, and I was very annoyed: it's one thing when the history is bleak in its own right, it's another to tamper with it to make it worse. I can't decide if I think it's her worst book. It is far and away the worst of the historicals. It's better-structured than Purposes of Love, but it's a very sour note to go out on.

[tei]

after reading the rest of the comments I feel the need to whisper this one, but: I liked Funeral Games! Or at least, I'm glad I read it, though I don't know if I would reread it. It was, indeed, a pretty grindingly depressing book, but I love how it kind of completes the extremely ballsy theme of the whole trilogy, which is "oh, did you like the subject/perspective/style/events of the previous book? Too bad, because the next one is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"

And I think there is a certain realignment of expectations, of what constitutes a triumphant outcome for someone, such that there is some resolution of what would, without it, be an even more depressing implied conclusion to the series: "and then it all fell apart and everyone who was friends went to war and most of them died horribly so it's not even worth writing about, bye!"

(I think one's reaction to FG also probably depends on a reader's emotional stance on Renault's particular relationship to womanhood, viz., she has taken a look around and doesn't like it one bit. Which expresses itself though a particular kind of what could accurately be called misogyny but-- to me, and I think this is a very personal kind of positioning that different people will react vastly differently to-- reads so inescapably female in perspective that it feels like a certain kind of permission, to just stop pretending that I like or enjoy womanhood and just sink into the bitterness and disaffection of it. Which is not a position I would present socially in my daily life, but it's a premise that resonates with me at least for the space occupied by the novel.)

[osprey_archer]

Ooooh, a rebel! Do you think it would be possible to read it before The Persian Boy, or is it necessary to read the trilogy in order? I definitely don't want to save it for last - it's clearly the wrong place to end a Mary Renault journey.

[tei]

hmm, maybe? But I do feel like The Persian Boy kind of sets up your investment in her particular hagiographic vision of ~the legend~ and The Great Multicultural Empire, without which there would be even less to hold onto in Funeral Games than there is already. And iirc most of the few moments of rest and okay-ness in FG are in the thread of Ptolemy and Bagoas putting things as right as they can figure out how to make them, so if you haven't met Bagoas that wouldn't really work. But I guess if you only have those two left, it's a tough choice 😅

[kore]

(AHA, I knew there would be at least one person!)