Staying at home is the norm... What are you reading?

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished The Bell Jar. It's not quite the misery porn I thought I was going to get from woman-in-1950s-asylum. Sylvia gets thrown into the loony bin about 100 pages before the finish line, and before that there's this whole other half to the novel that's dark and depressing but also kinda funny and whimsical. But it's all leading to the loony bin, and of course we know how that worked out for her, so there's that particular cloud hanging over the whole thing. It's honestly kinda fascinating to follow the roadmap of the character's suicidal ideation knowing you're probably looking at Sylvia's actual train of thought. And there's a particularly nasty character named Buddy Willard who I've decided is basically just Ted Hughes. Buddy's Esther's on-and-off thing who used to date this other frenemy of Esther's who offs herself after Esther tries to do the same. In a moment of self-pity Buddy asks Esther if she thinks he's the one driving women into suicide... which is probably how it went between Ted and Sylvia. A few years later, his second wife killer herself (and her daughter). And then Sylvia's kid did the same. Stay far and away from Ted!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean.

The story is framed as a distant memory, recollecting the last few fishing trips the author, Norman, ever took with his brother, Paul. The setting is the Pacific Northwest of the 1930s. If you ever had cable you saw the movie: Paul was eventually found beaten to death in an alley one night, and the murder was never solved or explained. Maclean recounts their fishing trips marveling at his brother but also kinda trying, and failing, to make sense of him. The story is quiet and contemplative, built on top of a sense of longing and emptiness. The time, the setting, the stillness, the theming, the offhanded mentions of war and thinly-veiled turbulence all make for a very Hemingway-esque read (Big Two-Hearted River especially). It's a beautiful but sad read.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished The Boats of the "Glen Carrig", by William Hope Hodgson.

Not quite as good as The House on the Borderland. The first half is the best part of the book, as the nature of the crew's plight keeps unraveling and going from typical survivalist fare to the unholiness of sea monsters passive-aggressively trying to get a bite in. Some passages escalate wonderfully and have this familiar eeriness to them, like waiting for the catch on something too good to be true. But then the second half stagnates (literally, on a rock surrounded by foul seaweed) and the text goes on lengthy seafaring tosh about hawsers and jibbooms and relatively mundane or technical problem-solving. A whole chapter is devoted to the design and make of a giant ballista that ultimately doesn't work. Another full chapter to the construction of something that I had to look up because it proved impossible to visualize.

So the story has some wonderfully evocative set pieces and truly unnerving monsters and worse-than-death stuff, but in the second half the pacing and focus are something if a moodkiller.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Reading The Venus Hunters, by James Ballard. Science fiction anthology, very grimly funny. There's a story that's basically proto Death Note; another one that's like a more hellish version of Groundhog Day (the time loop takes shorter time to restart with every cycle, and when it does it's a minute later than the previous cycle, effectively trapping the person in a shortening span). I'm enjoying it a lot.

EDIT: Finished it!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Reading Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.

This is, or used to be, a typical highschool read. It wasn't the case in my school so I never got around it, although I know pretty much everything you need to know via cultural osmosis and doubt I'll be bringing any hot takes to this one.

EDIT: Finished it! It's not just a story about bucking barley, is it?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Reading The Viceroy of Ouidah, by Bruce Chatwin.

About the progeny of slave trader Francisco Manoel da Silva, who dies in 1857 leaving behind 63 sons "and an unknown quantity of daughters". The novel opens with his grandson and family patriarch hosting the annual, exuberant celebration in Francisco's memory, halfway between a Christian requiem and voodoo goat slaughtering. The Da Silva lineage is as mulatto as it gets and proudly/fondly still remember a time when Benin was called Dahomey and Francisco was King Ghezo's bestie, trading rum and smokes for the monopoly on the slave trade and an "inexhaustible" seraglio of women, which I'm assuming is another word for harem.

Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde is based on the novel, itself inspired by the real Francisco (de Souza).

 

[Agema]

Recent reads round-up:

Paradise-1 (David Wellington)

Ho-hum SF horror about astronauts assailed by a psychic virus. Generally okay, almost never properly good, pacing leaves something to be desired as it's a bit too non-stop with the characters constantly going between frying pan and fire with too little downtime in-between.

Traitor of Redwinter (Ed McDonald)

Perfectly serviceable second entry in the Redwinter saga. Our heroine and friends continue learning magic stuff, finding out about life, and battling evil conspiracies that threaten the world. Actually, maybe that's unfair, it's something of a cut above, although has perhaps fallen for the somewhat tedious trope of... actually I'm not sure I can say without giving too much of the plot away. Anyway, the characters and setting (Scotland-ish) are interesting enough without being especially novel.

The Burning Land (David Hair)

None-too-subtle political subtext of corporate-fascist exploitation of the environment abounds in this very by-the-numbers fantasy tale, book one of three. Group of magic-enhanced elite knights get scapegoated and go on journey of discovery to find out everything they thought they knew and fought for was a lie. David Hair is particularly guilty of writing basically the same plot again and again and again - group of people pursued by implacable, more powerful, evil enemy find amazing new magic power and will at the end win. And this is just the same.

House of Open Wounds (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Book two of series, although would suffice as a standalone novel. Our sort of hero is a priest who has a box of fallen gods and ends up consripted into the army medical corps of the empire that occupies his country. With the added twist that this empire has banned religion, but perhaps might allow for some unorthodox methods if they work. His own god is a god of healing... with complications, that make Him a thoroughly useless god of healing. Very much superior fantasy from arguably the best author around currently: smart, funny, moving, interesting.

Alien Clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

SF about an academic from a fascist-run Earth sentenced to hard labour on an alien planet which has signs of intelligence life, but no apparent intelligence life. Although the life it does have is extremely... chaotic and invasive. He might not have long to live, but can he find out what's going on first? Generally very good with plenty to say and think about.

The Olympian Affair (Jim Butcher)

Very long-awaited second novel in The Cinder Spires trilogy. Seems to be a sort of USA that's through some postapocalyptic event somehow become a sort of steampunkish fantasy setting. The ground is incredibly hostile to life, so everyone tries to live on spires and go places by airship. Butcher has a particular sort of American way or writing SF/fantasy characters and stories I often find very annoying, but I tolerated this. Could have done without the parochial cat bullshit, but I guess cat lovers might appreciate it more.

Terrible Worlds: Revolutions (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Collection of short stories about shit future worlds where the arsehole rich exploit, abuse and neglect the poor. Except, maybe, change is deservedly on its way. Tchaikovsky is obviously quite left wing and strands of this run all throughout his works, but here it's a little more overt. On the downside, I found these stories significantly harder to engage with than I normally find him and much tougher going - it's not him at his best.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished The Viceroy of Ouidah!

What Chatwin has written here is a feverishly naturalistic horror story, fraught in violent determinism and the detachment of the world and its author alike. The protagonist is essentially doomed to a gruesome African limbo that wants to expel him but won't let him go, at the service of people who don't like him but need him - until they don't. There's no rise and fall so much as protracted putrefaction, with the author counting the ways with morbid fascination. It's incredibly grim and I think I'm gonna go read something lighter next, for a change.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Reading De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde.

It's a 92 page letter to Wilde's malevolent twink ex that sucked him dry (!) of money and artistic output and eventually landed him in prison, where Wilde composed his little epistolary reckoning. None of the things he accuses him of - greed, vanity, shallowness, being a hysterical little ***** - suggests he would even bother reading it, let alone wrapping his puny little mind around it, but I suppose this was more for Wilde than it was for Bosie. Get it out of your system Oscar.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Reading Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.

This is, or used to be, a typical highschool read. It wasn't the case in my school so I never got around it, although I know pretty much everything you need to know via cultural osmosis and doubt I'll be bringing any hot takes to this one.

EDIT: Finished it! It's not just a story about bucking barley, is it?

I really liked that one. It's a short book but hits harder than stories 10x as long.