Reading updates
May. 8th, 2019 10:55 pmGUESS WHO’S OFFICIALLY DONE WITH COLLEGE!!!!
Recently finished
Finished The Raven King, the last novel in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series! I have a note full of thoughts on my phone which I’ll write up as a separate post later, but the short version is that I enjoyed it.
I also finished Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I found... very, very sad. Like, obviously it’s sad, it’s a true* crime novel about the 1959 murder of an entire family in rural Kansas, but there’s something especially senseless about the murder of four people in a robbery for a safe full of money that didn’t exist, by someone who apparently didn’t want to murder them in the first place. There’s no emotional relief once the killers are caught, either, because the narrative follows them from the beginning, alternating between their attempt to flee cross-country and the detectives working to catch them, so there’s not so much a sense of will they? but when, and then it’s just about two people sitting in prison cells waiting to be executed, which I found terribly sad.
( Musings. )
*Although apparently dubiously so— Capote apparently took artistic liberties with the timeline of the detective work and some of the local color.
Currently reading
I’ve just started Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe: another true crime nonfiction, this time about the previously-unsolved kidnapping and murder of a widowed mother of ten in the 1970s, at the height of the the Troubles, in Northern Ireland. Actually, so far, it’s more broadly about the Northern Ireland conflict than the specific case of Jean McConville, which I appreciate because although it’s an area of history that’s come up with surprising frequency over the past year, compared to the preceding 21, I’ve never actually sat down and learned about it. I’ve read/watched a few fictional works set during the Troubles (Milkman, Derry Girls) and as part of a class I took last fall, I attended a lecture by a pastor who was involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, on the recivilianization of paramilitaries and the reconciliation process, and what lessons can be learned to address other conflicts; reading an actual non-fiction, historical perspective on it, there’s been a few “ohhh, that’s what X was referring to” moments so far.
Next on list
• The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, thanks to this review by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants. (Short version: it’s a fantasy retelling of Hamlet ft. musings on linguistics, a hypercompetent trans Horatio, and a very sulky rock.)
• Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, about the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal. I listened to an excellent podcast about it recently and it’s truly wild.
Recently finished
Finished The Raven King, the last novel in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series! I have a note full of thoughts on my phone which I’ll write up as a separate post later, but the short version is that I enjoyed it.
I also finished Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I found... very, very sad. Like, obviously it’s sad, it’s a true* crime novel about the 1959 murder of an entire family in rural Kansas, but there’s something especially senseless about the murder of four people in a robbery for a safe full of money that didn’t exist, by someone who apparently didn’t want to murder them in the first place. There’s no emotional relief once the killers are caught, either, because the narrative follows them from the beginning, alternating between their attempt to flee cross-country and the detectives working to catch them, so there’s not so much a sense of will they? but when, and then it’s just about two people sitting in prison cells waiting to be executed, which I found terribly sad.
( Musings. )
*Although apparently dubiously so— Capote apparently took artistic liberties with the timeline of the detective work and some of the local color.
Currently reading
I’ve just started Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe: another true crime nonfiction, this time about the previously-unsolved kidnapping and murder of a widowed mother of ten in the 1970s, at the height of the the Troubles, in Northern Ireland. Actually, so far, it’s more broadly about the Northern Ireland conflict than the specific case of Jean McConville, which I appreciate because although it’s an area of history that’s come up with surprising frequency over the past year, compared to the preceding 21, I’ve never actually sat down and learned about it. I’ve read/watched a few fictional works set during the Troubles (Milkman, Derry Girls) and as part of a class I took last fall, I attended a lecture by a pastor who was involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, on the recivilianization of paramilitaries and the reconciliation process, and what lessons can be learned to address other conflicts; reading an actual non-fiction, historical perspective on it, there’s been a few “ohhh, that’s what X was referring to” moments so far.
Next on list
• The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, thanks to this review by
skygiants. (Short version: it’s a fantasy retelling of Hamlet ft. musings on linguistics, a hypercompetent trans Horatio, and a very sulky rock.)• Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, about the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal. I listened to an excellent podcast about it recently and it’s truly wild.
