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Reading Wednesday
Jun. 30th, 2021 07:00 amRead How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, a "multi-generational saga of one small village's battle not just against one corporation and the dictator who profits from its avarice, but against neocolonialism itself." (x) At the center of the novel - the connection between its cycle of narrators, and the force behind much of its plot - is Thula, who is ten years old in 1980, when her village first tries to fight back against the American oil company poisoning its land and water and children, and dedicates the rest of her life to carrying on that fight.
This was interesting to read after Ge Fei's Peach Blossom Paradise— both novels follow the rise and fall of female revolutionaries, and the lives of women in patriarchal societies, but are definitely different stories. Ge's is effectively an alternate history of turn-of-the-20th century China - "its invented characters commit deeds that parallel those of real revolutionaries in the late 1890s and early 1900s" (x) - while Mbue's, set in an unnamed, fictional African country, doesn't parallel the history of any particular country - insofar as "post-colonial dictatorship, devastated by foreign-backed resource extraction and rampant government corruption" hardly narrows the list down - but its horrors are all too believable.
( Spoilers )
Read In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan, a deeply charming take on the "ordinary human schoolchild finds themselves in a magical land and/or accepted to a secret school for wizards/demigods/spies/etc." genre. (In this case, both, and for warriors, mostly; protagonist Elliot is in the minority in choosing the diplomacy track. Think Percy Jackson's Camp Half-Blood meets Middle-Earth, kind of?) Highlights include a prickly narrator being dragged kicking and screaming into that weird feeling called ""friendship""; elf culture based on genderswapped regency-esque gender roles - women are rakes and warriors, men demure and waiting to be asked for their hand in marriage - in a way that both cracked me up and Makes A Point; and adorable illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, showing how Elliot and his friends Serene and Luke change as they grow up.
Read The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay, a non-fiction book about the codebreakers of Bletchley Park during WWII. I have yet to find a non-fiction book about codebreaking/espionage during WWII I didn't enjoy— this one was more of a surface skim than a deep dive, but I liked the peek into the (surprisingly active!) social life of Bletchley Park as well as the work done there, and I ended up with a longer to-read list than I started with. Cried a little about Alan Turing, as one does.
This was interesting to read after Ge Fei's Peach Blossom Paradise— both novels follow the rise and fall of female revolutionaries, and the lives of women in patriarchal societies, but are definitely different stories. Ge's is effectively an alternate history of turn-of-the-20th century China - "its invented characters commit deeds that parallel those of real revolutionaries in the late 1890s and early 1900s" (x) - while Mbue's, set in an unnamed, fictional African country, doesn't parallel the history of any particular country - insofar as "post-colonial dictatorship, devastated by foreign-backed resource extraction and rampant government corruption" hardly narrows the list down - but its horrors are all too believable.
( Spoilers )
Read In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan, a deeply charming take on the "ordinary human schoolchild finds themselves in a magical land and/or accepted to a secret school for wizards/demigods/spies/etc." genre. (In this case, both, and for warriors, mostly; protagonist Elliot is in the minority in choosing the diplomacy track. Think Percy Jackson's Camp Half-Blood meets Middle-Earth, kind of?) Highlights include a prickly narrator being dragged kicking and screaming into that weird feeling called ""friendship""; elf culture based on genderswapped regency-esque gender roles - women are rakes and warriors, men demure and waiting to be asked for their hand in marriage - in a way that both cracked me up and Makes A Point; and adorable illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, showing how Elliot and his friends Serene and Luke change as they grow up.
Read The Secret Lives of Codebreakers by Sinclair McKay, a non-fiction book about the codebreakers of Bletchley Park during WWII. I have yet to find a non-fiction book about codebreaking/espionage during WWII I didn't enjoy— this one was more of a surface skim than a deep dive, but I liked the peek into the (surprisingly active!) social life of Bletchley Park as well as the work done there, and I ended up with a longer to-read list than I started with. Cried a little about Alan Turing, as one does.
