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Recent reading
Jan. 8th, 2023 03:29 pmRead The King Must Die by Mary Renault, the first book in a duology retelling the myth of the Greek hero Theseus; this one covers the story up through his return to Athens after slaying the Minotaur. I enjoyed it! It had the feel of a fantasy adventure novel, although it was less fantastic than the original myth— ( basically, the Minotaur is a metaphor? ) There was a certain amount of *waves at Mary Renault*-ness, but for long stretches of the book, I honestly forgot that she was the author; the climax features one of the best action scenes I can remember reading.
Read Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O'Reilly, a heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland as the ninth of eleven (!) children, raised by a single father after his mother's death when he was five. Best family memoir I've read since Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy.
I've decided that my reading goal for 2023 is to re-read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, which is probably my all-time favorite book and certainly the most influential; I genuinely don't know who I'd be if I hadn't read this book when I was 13. Having started on January 1st, I'm still on the introduction to Bishop Myriel. Three sentences into Les Mis, Hugo warns that the subsequent multiple chapters dedicated to Myriel "in no way concerns our story," and I feel like people tend to believe him, so I find myself newly struck by the significance of starting his book about the myriad cruelties of society with a portrait of one man living a life of almost ineffable kindness. It also occurs to me that Hugo uses gardening as a shorthand for goodness— off the top of my head, I can think of Myriel, Valjean as a gardener at the convent, and Mabeuf?
Read Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O'Reilly, a heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland as the ninth of eleven (!) children, raised by a single father after his mother's death when he was five. Best family memoir I've read since Patricia Lockwood's Priestdaddy.
I've decided that my reading goal for 2023 is to re-read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, which is probably my all-time favorite book and certainly the most influential; I genuinely don't know who I'd be if I hadn't read this book when I was 13. Having started on January 1st, I'm still on the introduction to Bishop Myriel. Three sentences into Les Mis, Hugo warns that the subsequent multiple chapters dedicated to Myriel "in no way concerns our story," and I feel like people tend to believe him, so I find myself newly struck by the significance of starting his book about the myriad cruelties of society with a portrait of one man living a life of almost ineffable kindness. It also occurs to me that Hugo uses gardening as a shorthand for goodness— off the top of my head, I can think of Myriel, Valjean as a gardener at the convent, and Mabeuf?
