![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, 295pp
This is not a sci-fi book. It has a sci-fi premise, of a woman from current time (70s when the book was written) getting pulled back into the slave holding plantation of one of her white ancestors when he needs rescuing. How or why this is happening is never explained. It is really just a premise to show life in antebellum South and what it is like to be a slave.
I liked the book to an extent. It started really well and strongly but as it moved on, I grew neutral toward it. Rufus, one of the main characters and the son of the plantation owner, and Dana's ancestor is not a likable man as he grows up and I didn't understand why she still was so connected to him even when it was clear he was raping the woman who would give birth to Dana's great-great-grandmother. She also doesn't ever really acknowledge that Rufus' parents are her ancestors too. That was really weird. I did like Dana's relationship with her husband, who is white and gets pulled into the past at one point too. He gets to experience the past as well, in a different way, of course.
I can see why this book is acclaimed and I can see why it would made a good book to read in school and analyse. But overall for me, it was just ok. I am glad that I finally read it but it is not a book I would come back to.
Случайные Жизни [Accidental Lives] by Oleg Radzinsky [in Russian], 514pp
The author is the son of a famous Russian writer and playwright. His whole family worked in theater or television so he had a certain privileged childhood. He was the kind of kid that preferred to live in books though as he read avidly. When he was in his early 20s, in the 1980s, he was arrested for being a dissident since he was distributing copies of forbidden books and he spent 1 year in prison until his trial and 4 year in Siberia. He also describes the journey to Siberia which was its own long ordeal. After his exile, he was pardoned on the condition he would immigrate. He spend some time in New York, working on Wall Street and we have some descriptions of that as well. I believe he lives in England now and is a writer himself, like his father.
Earlier in the year I read a fiction book about a woman sent to Siberia in 1930s, so in some ways it felt like a continuation.
It was certainly an interesting read. The writer approached his time in prison and Siberia as if he was living in the book, like he was an outside observer learning a new culture, which I think really helped him psychologically. I liked his as a writer too; I thought there was good humor in his writing. Some parts were more interesting than others thought. Overall, it was a good book. Good choice from my Dad - it was my birthday present.
Circe by Madeline Miller, 333pp
I know I should pronounce it with a K but I can't help myself and want to read it with a S. I believe both are acceptable but K is the Greek way. But I can't retrain my brain.
Some parts of the book flowed really well and I was really into it and others were dragging for me. This book ended up being just OK after it started very promisingly. I did like learning more about Cicre's background and the political battles between titans and olympian gods. And she did grow from a naive girl to a grown woman. Still, I think the author tried to touch on a lot of greek myths all at once and the pacing was a little weird. Maybe it read that way to me because I already am so familiar with all the myths, and it would read different to someone with less knowledge on the subject. My favorite part was probably with Deadalus. And it did make finally want to reread the Iliad, which I was planning on for a while. Next year I also want to reread the Odyssey.
Provenance by Ann Leckie, 437pp
This book is like a cozy sweater. I just want to wrap myself in it and just hang out with the characters. Leckie has this ability to convey the ordinary thoughts and events and have plot too. Characters seem to move slowly, thinking about eating, drinking, every day things among the regular plot. Ingray's fear and nervousness is what a regular person would be feeling at the critical moment. Her inner state is so well described. I don't know if this makes sense. I just love that. I end up falling in love with Leckie's books, even though I don't think I will when I start reading them. I just loved Ingray. And I just wanted to hang out with her and all the others.
I liked the references to AI and the Treaty for all who read the trilogy and all the Ambassadors, both the Geck and the Radchai ambassadors. I liked the various civilizations have different cultures that makes it hard for one planet to truly understand each other. Having "she", "he" and "e" didn't bother me since I got used to that quickly and various language nuance surrounding it but I couldn't help thinking of "e" as male. It was hard to picture the actual differences - were they physical, just linguistic. But it didn't matter since overall it was felt like a complete universe, well thought out. I also liked that there was romance but it was in the background. Characters were not defined by that. I just really enjoyed this book and I have a feeling that this is book I would want to reread too.
The Iliad by Homer, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 297pp (Reread)
I read The Iliad in high school, in 10th grade for my English class. I read this version, the prose version, which I reread, since I own this book already. I haven't read it in poetry form but I do not think it matters here since it is the translation and the prose one tries to be colloquial enough for it to feel like people who would be listening to it in Ancient Greece. There are occasional times when the translator is trying to rhyme in a silly way to made the "sayings"; I mostly rolled my eyes at that. Mostly I just like reading it as prose.
I wanted to reread the Iliad for a while now and after I read Circe I figured it was really time. So I grabbed it off the shelf of my parents house.
I'm not a big fan of war but the action here has really good pacing. I think it helps that we go from gods, who are such assholes of course, to men. I really enjoyed revisiting this book. I completely forgot that Helen gets to speak here and is not just a prize ready to be won. Lines about her are conflicting though. When we first meet her she is all about going back to Menelaus and missing her home yet when Paris comes back from the first battle she is all over him. Can't really pin her down. Overall, it was really fun to reread this book as an adult and not a teenager. I think I got more out of it.
The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman, 375pp
Wonderful YA book. It is a story of a black girl who was adopted as a baby into a white family and is trying to cope with wanting to know about her birth family while not hurting her parents in the process. She is studying for her Bat Mitzvah as well. (I thought you had to be 12 for girls but apparently in Reform Judaism you can be 13, like for a boy). Her great-grandmother Anna dies and the girl, Imani, finds her journal from when Anna was 12 and had to come to US from Luxembourg by herself out of all her family to escape the Nazis. Imani finds a connection to Anna and the narrative follows these two stories.
From almost the start of the book I kind of knew what the surprise ending was going to be. But the point was not that ending; it's the journey Imani takes and how she grows into herself and how she makes sense of herself. Her whole family is pretty great but of course not perfect. I cried at several points by the end of the book (in a good way) - it tugged well on emotions.
Talking to Strangers: What we should know about the people we don't know by Malcolm Gladwell, 346pp
This is the latest Gladwell book and it reads like a Gladwell book. I sailed through it in a few days. I do like how he upends what we think is true. There are three main points in this book about why we are terrible in understanding stangers and in talking to them: we default to the truth and we really need too many doubts to start to believe that someone is lying; we believe in transparency that people's internal states are reflected on their face when that is not true at all; and we don't understand that sometimes things are coupled like suicide is coupled to a place (for example if you block a bridge from easy jumping, those people won't just go jump somewhere else - context does matter. And he also makes a point of how alcohol really affects us - not revealing our inner self but actually masking it - just making us myopic and influenced by our environment.
I liked some of his other books more but this book was enjoyable. And we are really terrible in talking to strangers.
Reading now: Margaret Atwood The Testaments - so very good.
This is not a sci-fi book. It has a sci-fi premise, of a woman from current time (70s when the book was written) getting pulled back into the slave holding plantation of one of her white ancestors when he needs rescuing. How or why this is happening is never explained. It is really just a premise to show life in antebellum South and what it is like to be a slave.
I liked the book to an extent. It started really well and strongly but as it moved on, I grew neutral toward it. Rufus, one of the main characters and the son of the plantation owner, and Dana's ancestor is not a likable man as he grows up and I didn't understand why she still was so connected to him even when it was clear he was raping the woman who would give birth to Dana's great-great-grandmother. She also doesn't ever really acknowledge that Rufus' parents are her ancestors too. That was really weird. I did like Dana's relationship with her husband, who is white and gets pulled into the past at one point too. He gets to experience the past as well, in a different way, of course.
I can see why this book is acclaimed and I can see why it would made a good book to read in school and analyse. But overall for me, it was just ok. I am glad that I finally read it but it is not a book I would come back to.
Случайные Жизни [Accidental Lives] by Oleg Radzinsky [in Russian], 514pp
The author is the son of a famous Russian writer and playwright. His whole family worked in theater or television so he had a certain privileged childhood. He was the kind of kid that preferred to live in books though as he read avidly. When he was in his early 20s, in the 1980s, he was arrested for being a dissident since he was distributing copies of forbidden books and he spent 1 year in prison until his trial and 4 year in Siberia. He also describes the journey to Siberia which was its own long ordeal. After his exile, he was pardoned on the condition he would immigrate. He spend some time in New York, working on Wall Street and we have some descriptions of that as well. I believe he lives in England now and is a writer himself, like his father.
Earlier in the year I read a fiction book about a woman sent to Siberia in 1930s, so in some ways it felt like a continuation.
It was certainly an interesting read. The writer approached his time in prison and Siberia as if he was living in the book, like he was an outside observer learning a new culture, which I think really helped him psychologically. I liked his as a writer too; I thought there was good humor in his writing. Some parts were more interesting than others thought. Overall, it was a good book. Good choice from my Dad - it was my birthday present.
Circe by Madeline Miller, 333pp
I know I should pronounce it with a K but I can't help myself and want to read it with a S. I believe both are acceptable but K is the Greek way. But I can't retrain my brain.
Some parts of the book flowed really well and I was really into it and others were dragging for me. This book ended up being just OK after it started very promisingly. I did like learning more about Cicre's background and the political battles between titans and olympian gods. And she did grow from a naive girl to a grown woman. Still, I think the author tried to touch on a lot of greek myths all at once and the pacing was a little weird. Maybe it read that way to me because I already am so familiar with all the myths, and it would read different to someone with less knowledge on the subject. My favorite part was probably with Deadalus. And it did make finally want to reread the Iliad, which I was planning on for a while. Next year I also want to reread the Odyssey.
Provenance by Ann Leckie, 437pp
This book is like a cozy sweater. I just want to wrap myself in it and just hang out with the characters. Leckie has this ability to convey the ordinary thoughts and events and have plot too. Characters seem to move slowly, thinking about eating, drinking, every day things among the regular plot. Ingray's fear and nervousness is what a regular person would be feeling at the critical moment. Her inner state is so well described. I don't know if this makes sense. I just love that. I end up falling in love with Leckie's books, even though I don't think I will when I start reading them. I just loved Ingray. And I just wanted to hang out with her and all the others.
I liked the references to AI and the Treaty for all who read the trilogy and all the Ambassadors, both the Geck and the Radchai ambassadors. I liked the various civilizations have different cultures that makes it hard for one planet to truly understand each other. Having "she", "he" and "e" didn't bother me since I got used to that quickly and various language nuance surrounding it but I couldn't help thinking of "e" as male. It was hard to picture the actual differences - were they physical, just linguistic. But it didn't matter since overall it was felt like a complete universe, well thought out. I also liked that there was romance but it was in the background. Characters were not defined by that. I just really enjoyed this book and I have a feeling that this is book I would want to reread too.
The Iliad by Homer, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 297pp (Reread)
I read The Iliad in high school, in 10th grade for my English class. I read this version, the prose version, which I reread, since I own this book already. I haven't read it in poetry form but I do not think it matters here since it is the translation and the prose one tries to be colloquial enough for it to feel like people who would be listening to it in Ancient Greece. There are occasional times when the translator is trying to rhyme in a silly way to made the "sayings"; I mostly rolled my eyes at that. Mostly I just like reading it as prose.
I wanted to reread the Iliad for a while now and after I read Circe I figured it was really time. So I grabbed it off the shelf of my parents house.
I'm not a big fan of war but the action here has really good pacing. I think it helps that we go from gods, who are such assholes of course, to men. I really enjoyed revisiting this book. I completely forgot that Helen gets to speak here and is not just a prize ready to be won. Lines about her are conflicting though. When we first meet her she is all about going back to Menelaus and missing her home yet when Paris comes back from the first battle she is all over him. Can't really pin her down. Overall, it was really fun to reread this book as an adult and not a teenager. I think I got more out of it.
The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman, 375pp
Wonderful YA book. It is a story of a black girl who was adopted as a baby into a white family and is trying to cope with wanting to know about her birth family while not hurting her parents in the process. She is studying for her Bat Mitzvah as well. (I thought you had to be 12 for girls but apparently in Reform Judaism you can be 13, like for a boy). Her great-grandmother Anna dies and the girl, Imani, finds her journal from when Anna was 12 and had to come to US from Luxembourg by herself out of all her family to escape the Nazis. Imani finds a connection to Anna and the narrative follows these two stories.
From almost the start of the book I kind of knew what the surprise ending was going to be. But the point was not that ending; it's the journey Imani takes and how she grows into herself and how she makes sense of herself. Her whole family is pretty great but of course not perfect. I cried at several points by the end of the book (in a good way) - it tugged well on emotions.
Talking to Strangers: What we should know about the people we don't know by Malcolm Gladwell, 346pp
This is the latest Gladwell book and it reads like a Gladwell book. I sailed through it in a few days. I do like how he upends what we think is true. There are three main points in this book about why we are terrible in understanding stangers and in talking to them: we default to the truth and we really need too many doubts to start to believe that someone is lying; we believe in transparency that people's internal states are reflected on their face when that is not true at all; and we don't understand that sometimes things are coupled like suicide is coupled to a place (for example if you block a bridge from easy jumping, those people won't just go jump somewhere else - context does matter. And he also makes a point of how alcohol really affects us - not revealing our inner self but actually masking it - just making us myopic and influenced by our environment.
I liked some of his other books more but this book was enjoyable. And we are really terrible in talking to strangers.
Reading now: Margaret Atwood The Testaments - so very good.
