Books read and/or finished in June:
I finished up Mary Stewart's entire "romantic suspense" bibliography (having read the rest the previous month): Madam, Will You Talk?, Stormy Petrel, Thornyhold, The Wind Off the Small Isles and The Lost One, The Moon-Spinners. I'm not sure I'd recommend them. The thing is, they're racist and sexist and ableist (Nine Coaches Waiting, read in May, features a very sinister wheelchair user) and, om top of all that, antisemitic. In a kind of interesting wayâone of the interesting things about these books is that they're written post-WWII, and set then-contemporaneously, so they're kind of fascinating sociologically. And the thing about the antisemitism is, the stories are quite clear on the Holocaust being bad! They definitely don't treat the mass-murder of Jews as a good thing. The motive of the villain in one of the books is, spoilers, to kill the male lead because the male lead witnessed the villain personally killing a Jew during the war. But... man. It is also quite quite clear that the story doesn't think of them (Jews) as fully equal, fully human. I considered extracting the scene where that murder is described but it's long enough, and then I thought maybe not everyone needs to see that; if you want to see what I mean I can tell you where to find it. The racism isâwell, it's not usually literally saying in so many words "we're better than them because of the colour of our skin", though at least once it comes pretty close, but it's extremely present in anything where non-white people are around or mentioned, and also fairly present in anything with Greek people, which goes to show that racial categories are really not something that exist a priori outside of a given culture. (Though they're certainly nicer about Greeks than they are about Turkish people, say, or Arabs). It's therefore strongest I think in The Gabriel Hounds. Ugh. There's also a use of the n word in Touch Not the Cat, which would otherwise be my favourite, in the context of an old woman grumbling about how you're not supposed to use the term n-word brown anymore. I don't think we're supposed to agree with her, she's definitely supposed to be old-fashioned, but she's also not supposed to be unsympathetic generally. So. The sexism is a little more interesting; all of the narrators of these books are women. So the culture around them is sexist, and the narrators themselves are sexistâin Stormy Petrel the narrator goes on a brief rant about the word Ms.âand they often invoke sexist ideas; but nevertheless the narrators take actions and have thoughts and so forth, which makes it a little easier to take, as well as being an interesting viewpoint into female protagonists who are themselves sexist.
You might with justice say, All right Sun, if these books are so horrible, why did you read all of them? And it's because they're well-written, engaging, enjoyable with the long list of caveats above (plus the caveats that the romances are all more or less of the same type and also sexist), and require absolutely no brainpower to read. This is the opening paragraph of The Moonspinners:
It was the egret, flying out of the lemon grove, that started it. I wonât pretend I saw it straight away as the conventional herald of adventure, the white stag of the fairy-tale, which, bounding from the enchanted thicket, entices the prince away from his followers, and loses him in the forest where danger threatens with the dusk. But, when the big white bird flew suddenly up among the glossy leaves and the lemon flowers, and wheeled into the mountain, I followed it. What else is there to do when such a thing happens on a brilliant April noonday at the foot of the White Mountains of Crete; when the road is hot and dusty, but the gorge is green, and full of the sound of water, and the white wings, flying ahead, flicker in and out of deep shadow, and the air is full of the scent of lemon blossom?
Which paragraph grabbed me straight away. When I read the books, I was working quite late for multiple nights in a row, and I often had to wait for various things to finish running along the way, and I was pretty thoroughly exhausted. I needed something I could enjoy readingâparticularly on the prose levelâand which, again, required absolutely no brainpower to read, and these fit the bill. If you too like the prose, and are looking for something similar, and can handle all the various stupidities, I do recommend them, or if you're interested in the perspective provided into attitudes in post-war Britain. Otherwise not.
(If you're wondering: this is indeed the same Mary Stewart that wrote that Arthurian series, that starts with The Crystal Cave.)
After having read Stewart's entire romantic suspense backlog, I needed something else to fill a similar purpose; so I caught up on some K.J. Parker. (I don't know that I'd recommend starting out on his work in such a state of exhaustion, but by now I've read enough of his work that more doesn't really require that much thinking.) I read: "The Devil You Know" (reread), "The Last Witness", "Making History", "Set in Stone", Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead, and Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead (these last two are of different series despite the name similarities). I was excited about Sister Svangerd, because I'm not sure if he's done a female narrator before? At least not that I've read?, but then it turned out that despite featuring in the title Svangerd is neither narrator nor protagonist (and in fact our narrator is in addition to being male more sophisticated, less violent, and less (religiously) faithful than Sister Svangerd, and also hopelessly in love with her; so that's fairly Parker). Oh well. Of these, I think "The Last Witness" was the strongest, and I enjoyed the conceit of "Making History". Mostly it's all more Parker, which is exactly what I was looking for. I still like his Siege series the best, despite the extremely weird racial dynamics in the first book, but that was my first Parker so that may have something to do with it. (I don't love the Scavenger series, but it's definitely trying to do something.) Mind you, I haven't read more of the novels in either of the series I started here; maybe if I did I'd like them better.
The last book actually completed in June is non-fiction: The Word-Hord: Daily Life in Old English, by Hana Videen. I'm reading it as a sort of mini-book-club thing with my bff; because I am unfortunately extremely picky, the way we pick is that I give them a shortlist and they pick from the shortlist. It was interesting, and the presentation could be funâthe author wrote a rune-poem of her own name at one point!âbut I think I'd have preferred a deeper look with stricter organization. I would recommend the book, though, if you think it's up your alley; I did learn a lot of fun things about Old English and the world it came from, plus sometimes additional fun things about Middle English and Modern English.
The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, 48% -> 49%. (This one's a quick read but I am rereading it very slowly.)
The Silmarillion, 20% -> 34%.
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, 3% -> 4% (I read more slowly in French than English, and it is very long).
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