I think David Foster Wallace (as played by Jason Segal) just called me nerdy and lonely. I’d say that’s apt.

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@sothisisbabelbooks
I think David Foster Wallace (as played by Jason Segal) just called me nerdy and lonely. I’d say that’s apt.
Almost forgot this zine. I read it one night and liked it a little more than the other, but still was mostly disappointed. I think these two zines might be helpful to other people but they just really weren’t my thing.
★☆☆☆☆
—Summer, 2015
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Okay, now this was a total surprise. I’d had an e-edition of this on hold at the library, thinking that though I really didn’t like the first book in the series, I was still interested in the world/character/set-up. And boy! Was I happy I decided to press on!
I really loved this book. I thought it towered over the former, perhaps not as weighed down by the CS Lewis/Harry Potter framing. Then again, I did always love the Voyage of the Dawn Treader! I kid, I kid! The real reason I think this drew me in was that there were alternating perspectives (surprise! gets me every time!) and I loved learning more about Julia’s untraditional path into hedge witchery. I just found this novel so gripping and I’m really looking forward to finishing up with the last book.
Anyways, to those who might be on the fence about the series, I would definitely say it’s worth sticking out. Perhaps there really is a satisfying arc for Quentin? Or perhaps there is a world within a world that will suit you too?
I’m sort of hoping Penny will figure more in the last book. I’ve got a soft-spot for that guy, maybe because of his fallen mohawk and hand-less persistence. And he’s a true lover of magic. I guess I am too if I can admit anything to myself.
★★★★☆
—Sept 13, 2015
This was the first book I read as an e-book. I’ve been resistant. I thought it would be weird and I love the heft and weight of real novels. But this series was one I wasn’t in love with, and I’d bought the second used, so I thought I could borrow the third in the series from the Library when I discovered they had it. And I’m glad I tested it out because it turns out reading on my tablet works out just fine, saves me some money, and let’s me indulge in some of the more disposable works of fiction that I still like to read.
I whizzed through this and thought it was pretty decent as these YA epics go. I didn’t feel particularly close to the characters, but I was concerned for them, and I thought the construction of the worlds and Society were really well done. As I thought in the second, the romance between the main characters was over-wrought... at the same time, it made more sense in this book, and didn’t quite through me out of the story the same way. There was a sense of urgency to this book, and also a nice lesson about change sometimes just being more of the same, wrapped up in more palatable dressing. I sort of wish there were more in the series. I’m curious about what’s beyond the Outer Lands. I feel there’s more to tell about this world, and perhaps someday Condie will return.
★★★☆☆
—Summer, 2015
This was a fantastic book. I’ve thought about it a lot since I finished it (quite awhile ago, but my logging has fallen behind). It’s the first book in a long while that I’ve wanted to reread almost as soon as I finished—Infinite Jest being another. This book just felt like a gem I’d been waiting for, a special note in the universe just for me. It made me believe in something and was the perfect anti-dote to whatever reading doldrums I’d fallen into. I really hope to read more of Coelho’s books.
★★★★★
—Summer 2015
hello! i saw the ask about fantasy writing and it reminded me to recommend the work of n.k. jemisin to everyone who follows this blog, specifically her inheritance trilogy. the first book in the series has a woc protagonist who is mixed. her struggle to identify with her mixed heritage is central to the story and very relatable. the series also has prominent lgbt+ representation. jemisin is a powerful storyteller and i cannot recommend her work enough.
... and I started this already. It’s so refreshingly well-written and beautiful compared to The Magicians. A beautiful story so far and I’m looking forward to where the tale takes me.
—August 20, 2015
I finished this book a few days ago with mixed feelings. I started with much excitement and enthusiasm, and immediately thought, “oh my goodness, this is going to be such a great book!” I thought it a homage of sorts to Narnia and C.S. Lewis and I was thrilled. Those are books I have read and reread, in good times and in times when I’ve needed a friendly fantasy. But my hopes were soon stomped on and mid-way through the book, I started to get angry. I guess one of the selling points of this book, at least according to blurbs, is that it’s an “adult” Harry Potter. I completely beg to differ. Alcohol and sex and nasty cynicism do not an adult tale make. This actually reminded me of The Glory of It All—a memoir I absolutely detested, and the final book to drive me away from memoirs forever. I just don’t care about your debauchery and your navel-gazing, dear. But I digress:
The Magicians is a hash of CS Lewis and English prep school tales. But it’s as if the main character is Edmund Pevensie or Eustace Scrubb in their most reprehensible states. And rather than evolve, the protagonist just muddles on, unhappy and unlikeable. The book really isn’t as well-written as it purports to be, and I thought it failed to develop the characters adequately. The deaths, in particular, felt inadequately plotted. I should grieve when characters hurt or die, and I felt that I couldn’t, because they were so pitifully drawn. I absolutely hated the way the women were written, in particular. “Heavy breast,” and all that. Give me something good! Give me something powerful!
At the same time, I couldn’t quell my curiosity about the plot, especially when the book took to Fillory (the Narnia-like land)... I just wanted to see how Narnian things could get, and how badly Grossman was going to bastardize the story and the characters. By the end of the book, I was completely gripped again (enough to want to continue the series), but nonetheless this book is not something I’d recommend to anyone else.
★★☆☆☆
—August 20, 2015
I did not like this very much. A few good ideas but the writing was terrible. Not for me.
★☆☆☆☆
—August 8, 2015
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
With the bad taste of The Room still in my mouth, I’m turning to a book that I’ve been wanting to read for awhile (I’m working my ways through a shelf of books I’ve stockpiled, and this is one of the ones I have been most looking forward to.)
—August 5, 2015
I hated this book. SO MUCH. But sometimes it’s good to feel absolutely repulsed by a book because, at least for me, it makes the good books just that much better. I actually read this in two sittings, and I forced myself to finish it during the second session because there was no way I wanted to continue reading this turkey. It was a stinker of a book—from the narration, to the plot, to the character development. Blecch.
I really, really did not like the narration. The affected speech, the mature vocabulary mixed with the convoluted affections and mangled verbiage, it was just so horrible. Add in the monotony of the daily routine in the first half of the book, and I was reminded: this is why I HATE kids. I am completely bored by babies, toddlers and children. The idea of having to play with kids—and apparently, reading about playing with kids—makes me feel ill. The book did make me feel claustrophobic, which might have been its intent. I was sort of hoping the kidnapper was going to kill Jack or Ma because they were so irritating. Life in the second part wasn’t much better, though I did somewhat enjoy the commentary on the media. Somewhat, because it felt simplistic, and underdeveloped, and preachy. Anyways, if you’d like to feel tortured yourself while you read about people being held captive, this here is your book.
★☆☆☆☆
—August 5, 2015
The Room by Emma Donoghue
Selected for my next book. I (re)started reading last night, and remembered why we stopped reading last time. This was a joint read for me and him—when we used to do that sort of thing— and he has a real penchant for books written from the perspective of children. They are, he claims and I agree, the most fun to read aloud. But this one... well, we made it not very far and then we stopped our joint reading sessions. That’s how much of a stop sign it was.
The other day I saw a trailer for the movie adaptation so I decided I should try to read it after all. It’s been sitting on the nightstand. I definitely prefer to read books before seeing movie adaptations, so the rush is on. Unfortunately, I’m feeling like this book will be quite a drag. Usually a child’s voice can offer something fresh or interesting, but Jack’s five-year-old voice is—and maybe it’s supposed to be?—super, super annoying. And the cutie-pie-ness of his experience which the reader immediately recognizes as tragic and twisted, just leaves a terrible taste in my mouth. On top of that, it’s boring.
I am terribly afraid of this book, since it seems the entire story is written in this child’s egregious voice. And it feels heartless to dislike someone who one should be empathizing with, or at least feel concern about. Uck, he’s just so dislikable. And I am apparently a horrible person.
—August 3, 2015
This is now the third book in a row that I’ve read with alternating character perspectives and I think I’m getting a wee bit tired of the format, though to be honest, I also thought it made this book more gripping than it otherwise might have been. Color me a little conflicted!
I had low expectations for Crossed (book #2 in this series) but found myself quickly gripped again by interest in the characters’ world. One of the things I most appreciate about the series is that there’s quite a lot about Society and The Rising that the reader needs to infer, quite a lot is left out of the story or only sketched out very lightly, and that actually makes me more interested in sussing out the details and understanding how the different communities function and are connected. I could do without the super sappy romance (so beyond badly written and moony, even for a YA title) though.
BUT! I found myself halfway through the book surprised by how much I was enjoying the adventure. A lot of the more dramatic plot points seem only superficially developed (deaths in particular seem hollow partially because there’s an underdeveloped gravitas bestowed on them), but some of the larger arcs are super interesting. I suppose I’m also keen on the series because of how cool archivists are in the world, and I just like dystopian fantasies in general. There was a real urgency to this book, and that helped keep me interested.
Anyways, I’m going to seek out the third and final book. It’s definitely not my favorite series, and I find Cassia pretty irritating (Ky is a billion times more interesting), but I want to finish out the plot and see whether some of my guesses are correct.
I usually can’t stop reading a series once I start, even if I don’t like it or am ambivalent, so now you know why I need to be careful of what I pick up.
—August 1, 2015
This is not my favorite series but I’ve had this sitting on my desk for awhile and want to get closure on the plot.
The story is pretty good, though I’m not a fan of the romantic triangle aspect or the writing. I think the imagined world is pretty creative though, which is why I’m continuing. After the All the Light We Cannot See, I think it’s probably good to cleanse the reading palette with something a little lighter. And continue my work to read all the outstanding books I have lying around before I start to acquire more or return to the Dickens project.
—July 27, 2015
I finished this over the weekend. It was by far one of the best books I’ve read in a while (and I’ve been reading some good ones of late). Like many others, I suspect (especially based on the book’s PR campaign), I thought I’d read enough books about World War II. This book taught me that there can always be more stories, more reminders. I am shocked by how much this book taught me, and how moved I was by the story. I felt the losses of life in the book in my bones, and I wonder how Europe has managed to heal itself. I wonder at the resilience of the human spirit, and wonder if perhaps the healing hasn’t happened at the cost of memory. The scars of the World Wars must still lie so close to the surface. And to think of all that was lost...
Such an epic, beautiful book. I’ve been recommending it to everyone I know.
★★★★★
—July 27, 2015
Next on the docket: Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.
Not starting on the projects mentioned before quite yet—still finishing my hardcover presents for 2015. Eventually I will begin anew, but I have some backlog to go through.
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (2014)
I was properly skeptical about this book to begin with, but the story—and I think the historical fact of it all—ultimately won me over. I saw this book referred to as “suburban Mom novel” (maybe it is with that Oprah stamp on the cover) which I thought was an unfair slight for a book I think could illuminate so much about life in the South in the 19th century, and about abolitionist and women’s right’s history. It also makes me realize my own prejudices about reading “women’s books” (snobby snob snob) which I fear will be overly gushy or thin or poorly written. Let’s face it. Women’s (and others) stories are just as legitimate as men’s, but I’m buying into a cultural bias that is stupid and demeaning. And when I do, I miss out on my sister’s and other people’s stories, stories that help me feel life as I haven’t lived it and broaden my idea of what it is to be a female/or other/ in this time, or another.
Okay, with that laid out, I wanted to share some thoughts:
Especially as I neared the end of the book, I began to feel frustrated with the seeming thinness of Handful/Hetty's story and character development compared to Sarah Grimke’s. The book is split between their two perspectives (Handful's account as a slave and Sarah's narrative as a wealthy white Southern belle), swapping back and forth throughout. However, this made complete sense when I read Kidd's wonderfully thorough historical notes, where she outlined the fictions and delineates her source material. Of course Grimké is graced with a more rich history—there are a wealth of accounts, a rich historical account, her own correspondence and writing, and a truly outstanding life story to contend with, while “Handful” is a construction, written into a narrative for symmetry and authorial purpose.
What I found so telling is that Kidd based the characters on an interaction she discovered where Sarah was given a slave girl on her eleventh birthday (that sentence pains me to relate, and it’s a feeling I had when I started this book, that I just didn’t want to read about this subject matter, why put myself through this tale of pain, repression, tragedy, etc.). Sarah taught the girl to read, they were both punished for the offense, and then it seems that the young slave girl passed away. Writing that breaks my heart again. Because that is the real story, and not the nice neat narrative that Kidd creates.
I did like that Sarah was not the white savior in the book, that the ending shows Handful’s agency instead, and her realization of her own destiny. But it also felt hollow and a little empty, and the details above relate why. I imagined if the book had been written simply with long silences and empty pages where Handful’s voice should have been, but I understand Kidd’s attempt to build out her experience, the urgency to try and give a revolutionary experience to this brave little girl. Because there were brave girls, boys, women and men who withstood the travesty, indignity, brutal injustice of slavery, and like Handful, claimed their self-hood, resisted in different ways, and Handful’s story stands in for theirs.
I loved how the book made me more interested in abolitionist history, and in learning more about pioneering women like the Grimké’s. I also became really interested in the Quaker faith, oddly enough, and definitely want to explore quilting and storytelling through piecework. And I like how this book pressed against some of my own intellectual blind spots. Sometimes I just don’t want to read certain books—they feel like medicine—but then, ironically, those same books are the ones I return to over and over (What is the What? comes to mind as an example). I’m glad to say that this book didn’t taste like medicine going down—it was compelling, and moving, and oh how I cried when reading the passage about the A.M.E. Church, understanding anew the deep, brutal wound that occurred this year (hearts with those families who suffered loss). [I guess I will admit here that I cry when I read, I laugh when I read, and I can deeply feel the highs and lows of (well-written) books.]
★★★★★
—July 17, 2015