[book post] January books
Feb. 3rd, 2022 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaThe Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Wow. Absolutely incredible; it's a must-read. What a hell of a life. What a hell of a guy.
Faithful Place by Tana French
I got rec'd this via some random tweet that was like "if you like any combination of Sylvain Gautier and/or Roy Mustang have I got a book for you." Last time I followed a random tweet recommendation along those lines, it was to the effect of, "hey did you always want post-canon Zutara where the two of them have to rebuild their countries and deal with The Legacy Of Conquest and shit, and also there's Pokémon," and I was like hell yes. That book was Steel Crow Saga, and it was exactly as advertised, and it was excellent.
Similarly, Tana French's Faithful Place indeed delivers on the tweet's premise.
Our hero, Frank Mackey, has all of Roy's grim devotion to his job and haunted-by-his-past-ness, plus all of Sylvain's poor coping mechanisms and thinly-disguised self-loathing. But the book as a whole is even more laser-targeted at my tastes than that. There's an awful dinner party! There's an even awfuler night at the bar! The main character is divorced and there is so much Divorce Energy TM between him and his ex! There's a long-lost first love that he's never ever ever going to get over! There is a superbly fucked-up family! What's not to love.
What really elevates this, though, above mere "well-plotted thing that is weirdly targeted at Lua," is its incredible language and sense of place. Tana French really knows how to turn a phrase, and her ear for dialogue is impeccable—she made this dumpy working-class Dublin neighborhood feel so viscerally real that I half-expected the next bar I walked into to be peppered with Irish slang. And the setting, my god; it's been a long time since I've seen a neighborhood rendered this lovingly and painfully and vividly in fiction. (I can't get over how evocative the title is all on its own: Faithful Place. Which is the name of the neighborhood, but resonates so beautifully with the story as a whole.)
The mystery, in terms of whodunnit, did not feel all that mysterious to me, but that's beside the point anyway. This is a book about Frank Mackey Being Forced To Go Back To His Hated Childhood Home And Deal With Some Shit; the murder is fine but incidental.
What a good read. I've gotta check out the rest of French's stuff.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
This was a delightful brisk lil' goofball of a novel. Also: it's apparently a Newbery medal winner??? Which surprised me; I feel like most modern Newbery winners are Serious TM and have a Message TM or at least something kinda profound, whereas this book's plot is much more in the vein of "what if a really weird guy showed up [and demanded that some randos in an apartment building solve a murder]." But oh what a fun time they have with that. I found the mystery a little thin, but the ensemble cast was thoroughly delightful; between the weirdly-precocious day-trading elementary schooler, the fantastically vain and ridiculous Ms. Wexler, the obsessed-with-diagnosing-everyone doctor-in-training, and the delightfully crotchety restaurant owner, I think I was laughing every other page. It felt a lot like the 1985 Clue movie, actually, just a bit more kid-friendly. Worth a shot if you need a very fast read and you're into that kind of thing.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
I see why this book was popular: it's warm-hearted, it's cute (if never quite laugh-out-loud funny), and it's pleasantly readable. But I was a little surprised to see that it got a... Pulitzer?
Not that I know much about book prize committees or the like, but I'd always vaguely assumed that if a novel wins the Pulitzer, it must be Ambitious TM or Serious TM in some way, and this felt more beach-read-y on the whole.
Beach-read-y, and, on the twee side, which may mean I'm judging it more harshly than I ought—my allergy to twee is well-documented. The whole schtick is that Arthur Less is a gay middle-aged has-been of a writer, living in San Francisco, and moping over his much-younger hookup-buddy-slash-kinda-boyfriend's recent departure to go get married to some other guy. In an effort to avoid attending his ex's wedding, he decides to accept every speaking/teaching/etc invitation he's every gotten, and departs on a round-the-world trip for a few months.
At times, the book is remarkably deft, in its many transient observations about the pains and embarrassments and foibles of age, particularly as they apply to Arthur—he's irritated at (Gay) Kids These Days getting all amped up about marriage (and definitely not just making himself sour thinking about his ex); he's at some puffed-up literary awards show and picking out the personalities among his fellow contenders; he has An Impressively Pathetic Fiftieth Birthday Party with a bunch of fellow westerners who have paid way too much to ride camels through Morocco, and mostly succeed in becoming violently ill instead.
And at times, it hints at darker and deeper things. I thought the most interesting thread was Arthur's relationship with Robert, an internationally-famous genius poet some twenty years his senior, and also his partner when Arthur was about age 20 to age 40. Robert's the kind of man who, even with the breakup years in the past, still casts a long shadow over Arthur's life:
But mostly it leans on the comfort-food side of things; the fact that there's an entire standalone paragraph that baldly states "Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.", should give you a sense of the overall vibe. It's not trivial, right—I greatly enjoyed its choice of subject; Arthur's well- and lovingly-rendered, and it is talking about some real shit, but it was just a little too twee for my tastes overall.
Wow. Absolutely incredible; it's a must-read. What a hell of a life. What a hell of a guy.
Faithful Place by Tana French
I got rec'd this via some random tweet that was like "if you like any combination of Sylvain Gautier and/or Roy Mustang have I got a book for you." Last time I followed a random tweet recommendation along those lines, it was to the effect of, "hey did you always want post-canon Zutara where the two of them have to rebuild their countries and deal with The Legacy Of Conquest and shit, and also there's Pokémon," and I was like hell yes. That book was Steel Crow Saga, and it was exactly as advertised, and it was excellent.
Similarly, Tana French's Faithful Place indeed delivers on the tweet's premise.
Our hero, Frank Mackey, has all of Roy's grim devotion to his job and haunted-by-his-past-ness, plus all of Sylvain's poor coping mechanisms and thinly-disguised self-loathing. But the book as a whole is even more laser-targeted at my tastes than that. There's an awful dinner party! There's an even awfuler night at the bar! The main character is divorced and there is so much Divorce Energy TM between him and his ex! There's a long-lost first love that he's never ever ever going to get over! There is a superbly fucked-up family! What's not to love.
What really elevates this, though, above mere "well-plotted thing that is weirdly targeted at Lua," is its incredible language and sense of place. Tana French really knows how to turn a phrase, and her ear for dialogue is impeccable—she made this dumpy working-class Dublin neighborhood feel so viscerally real that I half-expected the next bar I walked into to be peppered with Irish slang. And the setting, my god; it's been a long time since I've seen a neighborhood rendered this lovingly and painfully and vividly in fiction. (I can't get over how evocative the title is all on its own: Faithful Place. Which is the name of the neighborhood, but resonates so beautifully with the story as a whole.)
The mystery, in terms of whodunnit, did not feel all that mysterious to me, but that's beside the point anyway. This is a book about Frank Mackey Being Forced To Go Back To His Hated Childhood Home And Deal With Some Shit; the murder is fine but incidental.
What a good read. I've gotta check out the rest of French's stuff.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
This was a delightful brisk lil' goofball of a novel. Also: it's apparently a Newbery medal winner??? Which surprised me; I feel like most modern Newbery winners are Serious TM and have a Message TM or at least something kinda profound, whereas this book's plot is much more in the vein of "what if a really weird guy showed up [and demanded that some randos in an apartment building solve a murder]." But oh what a fun time they have with that. I found the mystery a little thin, but the ensemble cast was thoroughly delightful; between the weirdly-precocious day-trading elementary schooler, the fantastically vain and ridiculous Ms. Wexler, the obsessed-with-diagnosing-everyone doctor-in-training, and the delightfully crotchety restaurant owner, I think I was laughing every other page. It felt a lot like the 1985 Clue movie, actually, just a bit more kid-friendly. Worth a shot if you need a very fast read and you're into that kind of thing.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
I see why this book was popular: it's warm-hearted, it's cute (if never quite laugh-out-loud funny), and it's pleasantly readable. But I was a little surprised to see that it got a... Pulitzer?
Not that I know much about book prize committees or the like, but I'd always vaguely assumed that if a novel wins the Pulitzer, it must be Ambitious TM or Serious TM in some way, and this felt more beach-read-y on the whole.
Beach-read-y, and, on the twee side, which may mean I'm judging it more harshly than I ought—my allergy to twee is well-documented. The whole schtick is that Arthur Less is a gay middle-aged has-been of a writer, living in San Francisco, and moping over his much-younger hookup-buddy-slash-kinda-boyfriend's recent departure to go get married to some other guy. In an effort to avoid attending his ex's wedding, he decides to accept every speaking/teaching/etc invitation he's every gotten, and departs on a round-the-world trip for a few months.
At times, the book is remarkably deft, in its many transient observations about the pains and embarrassments and foibles of age, particularly as they apply to Arthur—he's irritated at (Gay) Kids These Days getting all amped up about marriage (and definitely not just making himself sour thinking about his ex); he's at some puffed-up literary awards show and picking out the personalities among his fellow contenders; he has An Impressively Pathetic Fiftieth Birthday Party with a bunch of fellow westerners who have paid way too much to ride camels through Morocco, and mostly succeed in becoming violently ill instead.
And at times, it hints at darker and deeper things. I thought the most interesting thread was Arthur's relationship with Robert, an internationally-famous genius poet some twenty years his senior, and also his partner when Arthur was about age 20 to age 40. Robert's the kind of man who, even with the breakup years in the past, still casts a long shadow over Arthur's life:
What was it like to live with genius?So those bits are great, and interesting, and if he'd pushed harder with the satire or the knotted bits I think I would've liked the final product more.
Like living alone.
Like living alone with a tiger.
Everything had to be sacrificed for the work. Plans had to be canceled, meals had to be delayed; liquor had to be bought, as soon as possible, or else all poured into the sink. Money had to be rationed or spent lavishly, changing daily. The sleep schedule was the poet's to make, and it was as often late nights as it was early mornings. The habit was the demon pet in the house; the habit, the habit, the habit; the morning coffee and books and poetry, the silence until noon. could he be tempted by a morning stroll? He could, he always could; it was the only addiction where the sufferer longed for anything but the desired; but a morning walk meant work undone, and suffering, suffering, suffering. Keep the habit, help the habit; lay out the coffee and poetry; keep the silence; smile when he walked sulkily out of his office to the bathroom. Taking nothing personally. And did you sometimes put on music that might unlock the doubt and fear? Did you love it, the rain dance every day? Only when it rained.
Where did the genius come from? Where did it go?
Like allowing another lover into the house to live with you, someone you'd never met but whom you knew he loved more than you [. . .]
But mostly it leans on the comfort-food side of things; the fact that there's an entire standalone paragraph that baldly states "Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit.", should give you a sense of the overall vibe. It's not trivial, right—I greatly enjoyed its choice of subject; Arthur's well- and lovingly-rendered, and it is talking about some real shit, but it was just a little too twee for my tastes overall.
addendum: misc thoughts on the autobiography of malcolm x
Date: 2022-02-03 11:52 pm (UTC)* I picked this one up on a stray recommendation from a friend, and because Malcolm X seemed like an Important Person TM who I should know more about. What I wasn't expecting was for it to also be a rollicking, breathtaking page-turner. From the moment I finished the first chapter I could barely put the thing down for how much I desperately needed to know what was going to happen next. And like, of course I knew how the story ended, but like with all good suspense, that's not the point—the pleasure is in watching the unfolding of this dude's mind, and the tension between what he's like in his childhood (then teenage years, young adult years, prison years, etc), and what he becomes.
* Also: I had no idea how much of a drug-slinging-illegal-lottery-running-generally-hustling-badass this guy was in his Harlem youth, haha. At one point he's recounting "oh here's all the musicians I sold weed to all up and down the east coast", and you can compare it to the Wikipedia list of "famous popular musicians at that time," and it's like... all of them, lol. I also had no idea how big a deal "the numbers" were, back before state lotteries were a thing; Malcolm damn near gets himself shot by a guy just because the guy thinks Malcolm tried to trick him with his numbers entry. Also, it's impressive to me just how many drugs you could get all messed-up on in the 40s—when Malcolm's in the middle of a rough spot, he decides to cope by doing All The Drugs, and there's a whole bit where he's like "so i did some cocaine, but then i'd done too much so I was feeling edgy, but that's fine, I just popped some benzos to balance it out, and then I was still feeling funny so I smoked a lot of weed, and then I tried some [insert crazy new drug slang word you've never heard of]," and you're like OH NO MALCOLM THAT IS A RATHER LARGE AMOUNT OF DRUGS I HOPE YOU'RE GONNA BE OK
* also, special props to Malcolm X's absolute genius scheme for dodging the draft, lmao. he shows up in a draft office, acts all gung-ho about joining the military, leans in to whisper at the draft officer and says "hey, you're a yankee, so you'll feel me on this—you're gonna be sure to send me south, right? cause i am ready to win the Civil War properly this time, we'll really show those whities what's what." malcolm is disqualified for psychological reasons like 3 seconds later. #gottem
* I'd be really curious for a concise accounting of the changes in US prisons between Malcolm's time and present times. Mal basically spends his whole time in prison reading nonstop, interspersed with rounds in the prison's debate team, and between those two things he gives himself an impressive education, which sets him up to become such a powerful leader once he's out. It's depressing to think about all the restrictions on prison libraries nowadays, and wonder if something like that is even possible anymore.
* I profoundly admire this guy's combination of curiosity and willingness to change his mind. Not on things that matter—he remains deeply critical/cynical of liberal/incremental reform as a means for justice, and he remains deeply committed to justice for his people, throughout—but the way he's always talking to people, reading more books, trying to understand better? and how he finally ending up all the way in Mecca, because he needs to understand stuff, and he lets his whole world get rocked by what he learns there? Not many people are willing to stare down their beliefs and face them honestly. Malcolm X is. What a dude.
Re: addendum: misc thoughts on the autobiography of malcolm x
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From:Re: addendum: misc thoughts on the autobiography of malcolm x
From:Re: addendum: misc thoughts on the autobiography of malcolm x
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-04 02:07 am (UTC)Less was also on my radar but in light of this post I will perhaps not go out of my way for it, lol.
Thanks for the reviews, informative as always!
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-04 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-04 02:44 am (UTC)300% what struck me the most about his book, too, still does. You get a handful of people who are wickedly good ... preachers ("speaker" doesn't seem to cover his magical magnetic quality), and you might have a handful who are ferociously brilliant intellectuals, but those at the same time *with* that flexibility is...... I honestly can't really think of any other biography that's left that effect, you know?
"The Playboy Interviews" written by Alex Haley are neat too, by the way - that dude's also lived one hell of a life and it shows in the writing imo.
For the other ones - any book recommendation that involves a comparison with Sylvain has *got* to be fun on a number of levels, all messy - so that one might be the rare fiction book i'll put on the list heh. also extremely digging it based off of your description, thanku~
(PS, speaking of Lua's Favorite Tropes and FE? just got a delicious Tellius fill for a fic i think you'd like for one of those listed tropes. ;> https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/91938337 )
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-04 02:58 pm (UTC)The mystery, in terms of whodunnit, did not feel all that mysterious to me, but that's beside the point anyway.
lmao yes that really is this series in a nutshell. Whenever I recommend it to people I'm like, "Well, technically they're murder mysteries, but that's not actually the important or even really the most interesting part!" And then I gush about character studies and lush prose and probably turn them off completely lol.
All that is to say, if you read more from her and like it, come find me :D
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-04 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2022-02-05 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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