Reading Wednesday
Nov. 20th, 2019 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxI missed Reading Wednesday last week because Unfortunately, Real Life, so you get two weeks’ worth of Book Thoughts today.
The Governesses – Anne Serre
A strange, dreamy, surreal little novella that can only be described as a fairy tale— a “semi-deranged, erotic fairy tale,” according to the GoodReads blurb, which, yeah, about sums it up. I am... not generally a fan of things described as ‘erotic’; there was one sex scene described in a level of detail I suspect had to be intentionally unpleasant/disconcerting, but other than that, the weirdness of sexual stuff just sort of blended into the surreality of everything else. Like Happy Moscow, I enjoyed reading this for the flow of the words and imagery without grasping the capital-M Meaning of it, if Meaning there was to grasp. It was very French.
Three Act Tragedy – Agatha Christie
A small-town clergyman is poisoned at a dinner party held by a recently retired actor; months later, a doctor who was present at the first party dies in similar circumstances, at a dinner party held at his own home. Who will be next, and - more importantly - whodunnit? Hercule Poirot is on the case!
Liked it! I’d thought I had quite cleverly deduced who the murderer was, because they were one of the few characters not under suspicion, but was proven incorrect.
The Ladies of Grace Adieu & Other Stories – Susanna Clarke
A book of short stories by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell author Susanna Clarke, some of which feature characters from JSaMN, real historical figures (the Duke of Wellington – who technically is also a character from JSaMN, come to think of it – and Mary, Queen of Scots), and a crossover with Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. Others are stand-alone fairy tales written in a pastiche of 19th-century novels or, in one case, the 17th century a la Agnes Nutter: “Sir John went to London to seek out Ingeniose Gentleman to cure his Melancholie. In this he waz shortly successful for nothing is so agreeable to a Scholar than to goe and stay in a rich man’s howse and to live at his expense.” I mostly preferred the stand-alone stories, but overall, it’s a delightful collection of dryly funny, bite-sized stories of magical shenanigans.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
I picked this one up because I’d read and loved Morgenstern’s The Night Circus when I was in high school; I enjoyed this one, too, but I suspect that may be a divisive opinion. The main complaint I can foresee is that it’s a bit twee and Morgenstern kind of gets lost in the sauce of her cool magical imagery, although I found that more of a feature than a bug. Masquerade balls? Magical hotel rooms filled with books you can read despite being in languages you don’t speak and you’ve lost your glasses, AND a closet full of cozy sweaters just your size, AND a dumbwaiter that conjures whatever food you want? Candies that taste like stories and wine that tastes like myth and gumball machines that spit out little metal balls with a story on the strip of paper rolled up inside? Sign me UP! Even the attempts to ground the real-world parts of the story through pop culture references came across as slightly less embarrassing than in China Mieville’s Kraken.
Things this book reminded me of: Ghost Quartet (characters from one story showing up in another, in different forms, including but not exclusive to literal reincarnation); Doctor Who (the cross-temporal love story); Fallen London (the imagery of an underground city of honey and bone rang a bell); Alice in Wonderland (the most obvious/intended homage— rabbits were a reoccurring image); the type of fantasy vignettes that go viral on Tumblr (specifically, one that’s been making the rounds again recently, about a fantasy world that’s so used to kids stumbling into it for magical quests they have a whole bureaucracy in place to deal with it).
I wasn’t a huge fan of the framing device for the last section of the book - all of the novel’s four (iirc?) sections are structured so that the plot is sliced up & excerpts from a plot-relevant, fictional book are interspersed in-between; the ‘book’ in the last section was the diary of a minor character from the beginning of the novel, a friend of the main character who digs into his disappearance (into a magical underground world) and stumbles across the same conspiracy the novel has already rolled out for us, albeit from (literally) another direction; the tone just felt off compared to the rest of the book, and it didn’t seem totally necessary? Overall, I really enjoyed it, though. Main romantic storyline is a m/m relationship that gets a happy ending!
A Pocket Full of Rye – Agatha Christie
A wealthy, unscrupulous financier is the first in a series of murders that echo a childhood nursery rhyme, and Miss Marple is on the case! This was not one of Agatha Christie’s better novels, I’m afraid. Just a bit... meh.
The Governesses – Anne Serre
A strange, dreamy, surreal little novella that can only be described as a fairy tale— a “semi-deranged, erotic fairy tale,” according to the GoodReads blurb, which, yeah, about sums it up. I am... not generally a fan of things described as ‘erotic’; there was one sex scene described in a level of detail I suspect had to be intentionally unpleasant/disconcerting, but other than that, the weirdness of sexual stuff just sort of blended into the surreality of everything else. Like Happy Moscow, I enjoyed reading this for the flow of the words and imagery without grasping the capital-M Meaning of it, if Meaning there was to grasp. It was very French.
Three Act Tragedy – Agatha Christie
A small-town clergyman is poisoned at a dinner party held by a recently retired actor; months later, a doctor who was present at the first party dies in similar circumstances, at a dinner party held at his own home. Who will be next, and - more importantly - whodunnit? Hercule Poirot is on the case!
Liked it! I’d thought I had quite cleverly deduced who the murderer was, because they were one of the few characters not under suspicion, but was proven incorrect.
The Ladies of Grace Adieu & Other Stories – Susanna Clarke
A book of short stories by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell author Susanna Clarke, some of which feature characters from JSaMN, real historical figures (the Duke of Wellington – who technically is also a character from JSaMN, come to think of it – and Mary, Queen of Scots), and a crossover with Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. Others are stand-alone fairy tales written in a pastiche of 19th-century novels or, in one case, the 17th century a la Agnes Nutter: “Sir John went to London to seek out Ingeniose Gentleman to cure his Melancholie. In this he waz shortly successful for nothing is so agreeable to a Scholar than to goe and stay in a rich man’s howse and to live at his expense.” I mostly preferred the stand-alone stories, but overall, it’s a delightful collection of dryly funny, bite-sized stories of magical shenanigans.
The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues [...] that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians— it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
I picked this one up because I’d read and loved Morgenstern’s The Night Circus when I was in high school; I enjoyed this one, too, but I suspect that may be a divisive opinion. The main complaint I can foresee is that it’s a bit twee and Morgenstern kind of gets lost in the sauce of her cool magical imagery, although I found that more of a feature than a bug. Masquerade balls? Magical hotel rooms filled with books you can read despite being in languages you don’t speak and you’ve lost your glasses, AND a closet full of cozy sweaters just your size, AND a dumbwaiter that conjures whatever food you want? Candies that taste like stories and wine that tastes like myth and gumball machines that spit out little metal balls with a story on the strip of paper rolled up inside? Sign me UP! Even the attempts to ground the real-world parts of the story through pop culture references came across as slightly less embarrassing than in China Mieville’s Kraken.
Things this book reminded me of: Ghost Quartet (characters from one story showing up in another, in different forms, including but not exclusive to literal reincarnation); Doctor Who (the cross-temporal love story); Fallen London (the imagery of an underground city of honey and bone rang a bell); Alice in Wonderland (the most obvious/intended homage— rabbits were a reoccurring image); the type of fantasy vignettes that go viral on Tumblr (specifically, one that’s been making the rounds again recently, about a fantasy world that’s so used to kids stumbling into it for magical quests they have a whole bureaucracy in place to deal with it).
I wasn’t a huge fan of the framing device for the last section of the book - all of the novel’s four (iirc?) sections are structured so that the plot is sliced up & excerpts from a plot-relevant, fictional book are interspersed in-between; the ‘book’ in the last section was the diary of a minor character from the beginning of the novel, a friend of the main character who digs into his disappearance (into a magical underground world) and stumbles across the same conspiracy the novel has already rolled out for us, albeit from (literally) another direction; the tone just felt off compared to the rest of the book, and it didn’t seem totally necessary? Overall, I really enjoyed it, though. Main romantic storyline is a m/m relationship that gets a happy ending!
A Pocket Full of Rye – Agatha Christie
A wealthy, unscrupulous financier is the first in a series of murders that echo a childhood nursery rhyme, and Miss Marple is on the case! This was not one of Agatha Christie’s better novels, I’m afraid. Just a bit... meh.
