Last reading roundup for September
Sep. 28th, 2020 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12This is just a brief post to log the final handful of books I've read in September, but not written about elsewhere. One is a reread, one is a long-awaited follow-up to one of my favourite books of 2019, and the third is a nonfiction book which I suspect will make me grumpy.
The reread is Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones's beloved retelling of the Tam Lin (and to a certain extent, Thomas the Rhymer) folk tales. I adore book the original tales, I adore most Diana Wynne Jones books I've read, but this one didn't work for me the first time I tried it. I was irritated with myself for not enjoying it, I know a lot of my friends absolutely adore this book, and so I reread it mainly to check that I hadn't missed anything, and that my original impression was correct. I'm sad to say that it still mostly didn't work. I loved the setting of twentieth-century suburban England, I thought the portrait of a family trying to work through an acrimonious divorce was brilliantly done, and I adored the grandmother character ... and yet the final reveal at the end still remains such a huge squick for me that it taints everything that comes before it. (Those who've read this book will know what I mean; those who haven't feel free to ask me about it in the comments.)
The follow-up is Roshani Chokshi's The Silvered Serpents, which continues the adventures of her pack of damaged, dangerous, magical teenage treasure hunters in Belle Époque Paris. Like The Gilded Wolves before it, the book is both a fabulously twisty heist novel, and a deftly written condemnation of the iniquities of empire — the damage colonisation does to both the colonisers and colonised. The book never lets readers forget that the glittering beauty of this opulent period of European history is built on exploitation and bones. The quintet of characters at the heart of this series each represent (in terms of both their identities and experiences) the interplay of privileged colonising empires, and the peoples such empires exploited and harmed. None of this is heavy handed — but it's impossible to miss. Like all the best middle novels in trilogies, The Silvered Serpents ends on a cliffhanger, with multiple questions unanswered (and asking new questions of its own). I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this plays out in the concluding novel.
The nonfiction work is something I've just picked up, Caroline Criado-Perez's Invisible Women, which looks at the ways women (or rather all those assigned female at birth) have been systematically excluded from providing data that underpins medical research, and justifies everything from the design of safety features in cars to the temperature settings in offices. I was aware of a lot of this beforehand (I knew that a lot of clinical trials, for example, will automatically exclude anyone who has the potential to become pregnant; there are similar problems in medicine with racial biases — most dermatalogical textbooks give examples of what a skin condition would look like on white skin, meaning most healthcare professionals aren't trained to detect such conditions on darker skin), but I think there is value in bringing all this evidence together, to demonstrate the patterns it forms, and the damage that has been done in consequence.
Have any of you read interesting books in September?
The reread is Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones's beloved retelling of the Tam Lin (and to a certain extent, Thomas the Rhymer) folk tales. I adore book the original tales, I adore most Diana Wynne Jones books I've read, but this one didn't work for me the first time I tried it. I was irritated with myself for not enjoying it, I know a lot of my friends absolutely adore this book, and so I reread it mainly to check that I hadn't missed anything, and that my original impression was correct. I'm sad to say that it still mostly didn't work. I loved the setting of twentieth-century suburban England, I thought the portrait of a family trying to work through an acrimonious divorce was brilliantly done, and I adored the grandmother character ... and yet the final reveal at the end still remains such a huge squick for me that it taints everything that comes before it. (Those who've read this book will know what I mean; those who haven't feel free to ask me about it in the comments.)
The follow-up is Roshani Chokshi's The Silvered Serpents, which continues the adventures of her pack of damaged, dangerous, magical teenage treasure hunters in Belle Époque Paris. Like The Gilded Wolves before it, the book is both a fabulously twisty heist novel, and a deftly written condemnation of the iniquities of empire — the damage colonisation does to both the colonisers and colonised. The book never lets readers forget that the glittering beauty of this opulent period of European history is built on exploitation and bones. The quintet of characters at the heart of this series each represent (in terms of both their identities and experiences) the interplay of privileged colonising empires, and the peoples such empires exploited and harmed. None of this is heavy handed — but it's impossible to miss. Like all the best middle novels in trilogies, The Silvered Serpents ends on a cliffhanger, with multiple questions unanswered (and asking new questions of its own). I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this plays out in the concluding novel.
The nonfiction work is something I've just picked up, Caroline Criado-Perez's Invisible Women, which looks at the ways women (or rather all those assigned female at birth) have been systematically excluded from providing data that underpins medical research, and justifies everything from the design of safety features in cars to the temperature settings in offices. I was aware of a lot of this beforehand (I knew that a lot of clinical trials, for example, will automatically exclude anyone who has the potential to become pregnant; there are similar problems in medicine with racial biases — most dermatalogical textbooks give examples of what a skin condition would look like on white skin, meaning most healthcare professionals aren't trained to detect such conditions on darker skin), but I think there is value in bringing all this evidence together, to demonstrate the patterns it forms, and the damage that has been done in consequence.
Have any of you read interesting books in September?
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 05:14 pm (UTC)I read a lot of great books in September, like "Middlegame", recent Toby Daye books, and most recently "Raybearer", which was great. (reviews here and here.) Currently I'm reading "Starless" (after I saw it on a Yuletide nomination list) and I enjoy it so far.
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Date: 2020-09-28 06:15 pm (UTC)I hope you enjoy The Gilded Wolves!
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Date: 2020-09-28 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 06:22 pm (UTC)Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer — the folk tales — are pretty messed up, dark and creepy, so the book certainly is no darker than its source material. I don't mind dark children's fiction (and I don't think it's something that children need to be protected from; I think they need interested and engaged parents/caregivers who give them a sense of safety so that the children feel comfortable discussing things that unnerved them in fiction with their parents, should they require it), and my issues with the book don't really lie in its darkness. It's just never going to work for me, and I'm glad to have confirmed that on the reread.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-10-01 06:27 am (UTC)That said, the thing about the ending of Tam Lin that squicked me as an adult was also a huge squick to me when I was a teenager, so I still think I would have found the ending awful at that age too.
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Date: 2020-09-29 01:32 am (UTC)Just finished Good Man Friday and I've started Mexican Gothic! So it's a good reading week for me so far.
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Date: 2020-10-01 06:37 am (UTC)By the look of things, we're almost at the same point in the Benjamin January books — I'm one book ahead of you.
I want to read Mexican Gothic, but I'm waiting until the ebook becomes a bit cheaper.
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Date: 2020-09-29 02:50 am (UTC)I also read 'The Diviners' and 'Lair of Dreams' by Libba Bray, the first two books in a series, which has great characters and shows a really dazzling level of research into early the 20th century US that the author manages to weave into the story in a way that feels effortless but obviously shows a lot of work and skill.
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Date: 2020-10-01 06:35 am (UTC)I kept wanting her to condemn her family more strongly, or state more explicitly that what they did to her was damaging and abusive, and being frustrated when she didn't, but once I finished the book, I understood that it was stronger because it wasn't a polemic. She just soberly explained what they did, and let their actions speak for themselves.
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Date: 2020-10-04 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-09-29 08:37 am (UTC)I really need to check out Roshani Chokshi's work!
I loved Fire and Hemlock as a child, but a) I was mostly into Polly getting so into reading and writing and stories, b) I never understood (het) romances in books anyway, so going "eww, I don't get it, grown-ups are weird, I'll focus on the parts I like" was the way I approached most books that featured a character growing into adulthood. If I reread it now, I have no idea if I'd be able to get past... what I assume is the thing that squicked you. So I totally understand not being into it when you read it for the first time in adulthood.
A few weeks ago I finished Harbors of the Sun, the fifth and final novel of Martha Wells's Raksura series (there are still some short stories / novellas I haven't read yet, though). It was fabulous. I've loved the entire series, but I feel the final duology of novels was even better than the previous books.
Sadly, after that I've been in a bit of a rut reading-wise. I was trying to read Annalee Newitz's Autonomous for a book club, didn't finish it on time because I was dragging my feet with it, not being into the dystopia setting that was like "standard American future dystopia because they can't imagine the future being defined by anything but what their country is like now"; and since none of the other book club members were enthused by it either and we spent a lot of time talking about its flaws, I haven't been eager to pick it up again. I've tried to read A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, which is a lot more light-hearted and should be right up my alley with the blend of pseudo-historical setting and dragons, but so far I haven't been that into it either. Trying to decide whether to go on with either of them or pick up something new.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-01 06:44 am (UTC)That's a really interesting perspective on Fire and Hemlock!
the dystopia setting that was like "standard American future dystopia because they can't imagine the future being defined by anything but what their country is like now"
It's so funny you should say this, because most of the time I get annoyed that American dystopias seem to bear no resemblance to any dystopia that could possibly arise in the current US. (They always seem to think the dystopia will be an oppressive and controlling centralised government, whereas I think a more believable US dystopia is something like The Handmaid's Tale, but with libertarianism and a huge quantity of guns.)
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