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A productive reading week! And I haven't even started King of Shadows, but I got it from the library today, so it's next. I read some Serious Literature this week, so my quick book blogging probably won't do it justice.
The House of Always, Jenn Lyons. That was good. It ends at a strange place, probably because it is book 4 out of 5 of a series. A conceit of this series is that the books are all actual documents written in-universe, and in previous books it's been generally clear by the end of the book when and why it was written -- but it's a bit less clear here. I will be curious to see if this series sticks the landing!
Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers. First time rereading, which was fun because I had a sense this time around of what the book was going to be. Lovely spending time with all the women scholars -- this book feels in some ways like a mirror image of The Nine Tailors, which is a very male book. Very meta how Harriet is growing as a writer, going from writing formulaic mystery plots to more psychologically complex books, and also makes me think about what Sayers is doing in these later novels, where the book is structured as a mystery, but the point of it is to be something more, which sometimes leads to weird pacing on the standard mystery beats.
A's complaint about the Harriet books is that Harriet never gets to be the one to solve the mystery, even when she is doing important groundwork. It was interesting this time to think about why she doesn't figure things out in this book, even though, as Peter says, she is smart enough. I appreciate that Sayers isn't just making Harriet a female Peter, she's herself -- she doesn't have to prove herself worthy of Peter by solving mysteries, she is already equally valuable. But well, thinking about how detective stories have helped build the gendered cultural construct of genius, I do also appreciate wanting a female Peter.
One spoiler: ( Read more... )
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1831 edition, with intro). I had never read this before, and now I have! It is well done and clearly part of the Great Intellectual Conversation, so I'm glad to have read it. On the other hand, horror is not really my thing, and tragedy of the sort where people are making psychologically realistic bad decisions, tends to frustrate me, so I spent half the book being like "Victor, have you possibly considered talking to your friends about your problems rather than marinating in guilt and climbing a mountain?" I thought the monster POV bits were the most interesting.
The House of Always, Jenn Lyons. That was good. It ends at a strange place, probably because it is book 4 out of 5 of a series. A conceit of this series is that the books are all actual documents written in-universe, and in previous books it's been generally clear by the end of the book when and why it was written -- but it's a bit less clear here. I will be curious to see if this series sticks the landing!
Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers. First time rereading, which was fun because I had a sense this time around of what the book was going to be. Lovely spending time with all the women scholars -- this book feels in some ways like a mirror image of The Nine Tailors, which is a very male book. Very meta how Harriet is growing as a writer, going from writing formulaic mystery plots to more psychologically complex books, and also makes me think about what Sayers is doing in these later novels, where the book is structured as a mystery, but the point of it is to be something more, which sometimes leads to weird pacing on the standard mystery beats.
A's complaint about the Harriet books is that Harriet never gets to be the one to solve the mystery, even when she is doing important groundwork. It was interesting this time to think about why she doesn't figure things out in this book, even though, as Peter says, she is smart enough. I appreciate that Sayers isn't just making Harriet a female Peter, she's herself -- she doesn't have to prove herself worthy of Peter by solving mysteries, she is already equally valuable. But well, thinking about how detective stories have helped build the gendered cultural construct of genius, I do also appreciate wanting a female Peter.
One spoiler: ( Read more... )
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1831 edition, with intro). I had never read this before, and now I have! It is well done and clearly part of the Great Intellectual Conversation, so I'm glad to have read it. On the other hand, horror is not really my thing, and tragedy of the sort where people are making psychologically realistic bad decisions, tends to frustrate me, so I spent half the book being like "Victor, have you possibly considered talking to your friends about your problems rather than marinating in guilt and climbing a mountain?" I thought the monster POV bits were the most interesting.