Wednesday Reading Meme (on Monday)
Oct. 31st, 2022 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’m leaving for my trip to Massachusetts tomorrow! So I’m posting my Wednesday Reading Meme today to sweep the decks clean before I go.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
littlerhymes and I finished Mary Stewart’s The Last Enchantment, the final book of the original Merlin trilogy, although Stewart went ahead and published a fourth book a few years later. The Last Enchantment nonetheless feels like a conclusion - I’d be certainly very surprised if Merlin narrates the next book - for it takes us through the end of Merlin’s story, and indeed beyond the usual end: he’s buried alive in his crystal cave, as is his usual end, but here he’s rescued and at the end of the book is living in retirement, an old man tired yet content, frequently visited by the king.
We were particularly interested in the book’s ambiguous treatment of Nimue. Is she truly in love with Merlin? Pretending to love him to steal his power? Not stealing his power at all, but learning all his skills so she can take up his mantel as Arthur’s sorcerer, just as Merlin bade her?
Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, the third book in the Regeneration trilogy, alternates between Billy Prior, who is headed back to the front now that he’s been released from Craiglockhart, and his counselor Rivers, who spends most of the book ill to the point of delirium, recollecting his fieldwork among the headhunters of Melanesia. The colonial rulers of Melanesia had forbidden headhunting, and because their entire culture had been organized around the headhunt, they were basically pining away in despair.
Rivers doesn’t draw a direct parallel, but there’s clearly a meditation here about war as a bearer of cultural meaning - whose cultural meaning is perhaps divorced from anything that a reasonable person might consider a “war aim.” The point of the headhunt is the headhunt. It’s not meant to win territory or settle a point of politics by other means or Defeat Autocracy; the point is to take heads. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.
The book ends with Billy Prior’s death - yes, Barker kills him off, which I did not expect, although I should have! It’s the only thematically appropriate end, really. But on the eve of Prior’s death, he writes, “What an utter bloody fool I would have been not to come back.”
And he means it. He’s not enjoying himself (he is, at the time of writing, stuck in a loathsome stinking dugout). He doesn't feel any particular camaraderie with his fellow soldiers. He thinks the war is pointless, and he particularly thinks it’s pointless to continue the war now that they’re on German territory and Germany is clearly lost - but still. What a fool he would have been not to come back!
Meanwhile, back in the hospital, Rivers is looking after one of Prior’s badly wounded comrades. The man has had a large portion of his face blown off, but he keeps trying to say - something - a garbled message that comes out shotvarfet, which Rivers eventually translates (correctly? For one of the ongoing themes in the book is the difficulty of translation…) to mean “It’s not worth it.”
Nghi Vo’s When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is a sequel to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, also featuring a cleric who travels the countryside collecting knowledge/stories, also very concerned with how stories change depending who tell them. In this case, Chih is telling the story of a human-tiger romance to a trio of tigers who may eat them… or might leave Chih alive to go home and correct the record with what the tigers consider the real version, although they are grumpily aware that Chih will probably just put it down as a competing version, equal in weight with the clearly incorrect human story!
Finally, there’s a new Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel out! Jessi’s Secret Language is one that I read as a kid (in general I read all the Very Special Episode books about disabilities), and it was fun to revisit it now, especially because I’ve actually seen a production of Coppelia, the ballet that Jessi stars in. In fact, I think my desire to see that ballet stems from this book! (Almost all my other ballet feelings come from Princess Tutu. Someday I WILL see Swan Lake and Giselle.)
What I’m Reading Now
In Dracula, Dracula has end-run our heroes! They have now split up to chase him, one team by land and one by waterway… Will they be able to kill him before he reaches his castle stronghold??
What I Plan to Read Next
To my distress, I have discovered that I weeded Jane Langton’s The Diamond in the Window from my collection! So I’ll only be taking The Fledgling and the recently-acquired The Astonishing Stereoscope to Massachusetts with me.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
littlerhymes and I finished Mary Stewart’s The Last Enchantment, the final book of the original Merlin trilogy, although Stewart went ahead and published a fourth book a few years later. The Last Enchantment nonetheless feels like a conclusion - I’d be certainly very surprised if Merlin narrates the next book - for it takes us through the end of Merlin’s story, and indeed beyond the usual end: he’s buried alive in his crystal cave, as is his usual end, but here he’s rescued and at the end of the book is living in retirement, an old man tired yet content, frequently visited by the king. We were particularly interested in the book’s ambiguous treatment of Nimue. Is she truly in love with Merlin? Pretending to love him to steal his power? Not stealing his power at all, but learning all his skills so she can take up his mantel as Arthur’s sorcerer, just as Merlin bade her?
Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, the third book in the Regeneration trilogy, alternates between Billy Prior, who is headed back to the front now that he’s been released from Craiglockhart, and his counselor Rivers, who spends most of the book ill to the point of delirium, recollecting his fieldwork among the headhunters of Melanesia. The colonial rulers of Melanesia had forbidden headhunting, and because their entire culture had been organized around the headhunt, they were basically pining away in despair.
Rivers doesn’t draw a direct parallel, but there’s clearly a meditation here about war as a bearer of cultural meaning - whose cultural meaning is perhaps divorced from anything that a reasonable person might consider a “war aim.” The point of the headhunt is the headhunt. It’s not meant to win territory or settle a point of politics by other means or Defeat Autocracy; the point is to take heads. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.
The book ends with Billy Prior’s death - yes, Barker kills him off, which I did not expect, although I should have! It’s the only thematically appropriate end, really. But on the eve of Prior’s death, he writes, “What an utter bloody fool I would have been not to come back.”
And he means it. He’s not enjoying himself (he is, at the time of writing, stuck in a loathsome stinking dugout). He doesn't feel any particular camaraderie with his fellow soldiers. He thinks the war is pointless, and he particularly thinks it’s pointless to continue the war now that they’re on German territory and Germany is clearly lost - but still. What a fool he would have been not to come back!
Meanwhile, back in the hospital, Rivers is looking after one of Prior’s badly wounded comrades. The man has had a large portion of his face blown off, but he keeps trying to say - something - a garbled message that comes out shotvarfet, which Rivers eventually translates (correctly? For one of the ongoing themes in the book is the difficulty of translation…) to mean “It’s not worth it.”
Nghi Vo’s When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is a sequel to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, also featuring a cleric who travels the countryside collecting knowledge/stories, also very concerned with how stories change depending who tell them. In this case, Chih is telling the story of a human-tiger romance to a trio of tigers who may eat them… or might leave Chih alive to go home and correct the record with what the tigers consider the real version, although they are grumpily aware that Chih will probably just put it down as a competing version, equal in weight with the clearly incorrect human story!
Finally, there’s a new Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel out! Jessi’s Secret Language is one that I read as a kid (in general I read all the Very Special Episode books about disabilities), and it was fun to revisit it now, especially because I’ve actually seen a production of Coppelia, the ballet that Jessi stars in. In fact, I think my desire to see that ballet stems from this book! (Almost all my other ballet feelings come from Princess Tutu. Someday I WILL see Swan Lake and Giselle.)
What I’m Reading Now
In Dracula, Dracula has end-run our heroes! They have now split up to chase him, one team by land and one by waterway… Will they be able to kill him before he reaches his castle stronghold??
What I Plan to Read Next
To my distress, I have discovered that I weeded Jane Langton’s The Diamond in the Window from my collection! So I’ll only be taking The Fledgling and the recently-acquired The Astonishing Stereoscope to Massachusetts with me.
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Date: 2022-10-31 06:38 pm (UTC)(The Wicked Day follows Mordred, though it isn’t in the first person! And is quite a bit better than TLE, imo, much more engaging.)
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Date: 2022-10-31 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 08:30 pm (UTC)I wrote her a letter once and she wrote back. Such a treasured possession. I might get it framed? Is that a weird thing to do?
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Date: 2022-10-31 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-11-01 03:34 am (UTC)PS: The Nghi Vo sounds up my alley!
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Date: 2022-11-04 12:48 pm (UTC)I usually don't buy books I haven't read (I say, thinking sadly of my shelf that is now three-quarters full of books I haven't read...) but usually I only weed them out after I've given them a try. This does mean that often they linger on and on...
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Date: 2022-11-01 07:33 am (UTC)When the Tiger was so good! loved the meta of it and it felt a lot more dynamic to me than the first story.
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Date: 2022-11-04 12:51 pm (UTC)YES, the possible imminent death by tiger definitely gives When the Tiger some extra snap.