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hawkwing_lbAnd ne'er a word I spoke, tumbling down
Lately, I've been reading for comfort - Procrustean reading, to borrow![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truepenny's terminology. Which means Air and Spin and A Dead Man in Deptford, among others, are staring down at me from my TBR shelf while I devour space opera and character-heavy fantasy. With one exception: Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
I don't read horror, normally. Or ghost stories, or anything in that vein. When I do read them, I don't enjoy them - I really don't enjoy having the shit creeped out of me.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds is eerie as all hell in places, but it never crosses the line into 'Not reading this after dark. Hell, not reading this in daylight, either,' territory. Largely because the heroine, Eden Moore, comes across as so genuinely capable that I couldn't help believing that when she found out what was going on, she was going to deal it.
I can like a character like that. In fact, I can like a book like that, too.
The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley. Never read anything of hers before, but whoa, this one is good. Lyrical language, dragons, heroic quests, a believably screwed-up and determined protagonist. Complexity and simplicity. Liked. Muchly.
Catherine Asaro, Primary Inversion. Probably the best of the Ruby Dynasty/Skolian Empire books I've read so far. And while it may be space opera, the better part of the action is emotional. Also, as a character? Soz Valdoria is probably the most interesting and well-realised one Asaro's written.
Naomi Kritzer (naomikritzer), the Dead Rivers Trilogy: Freedom's Gate, Freedom's Apprentice, and Freedom's Sisters.
I have a feeling that this trilogy is going to be part of my comfort re-reading for months, if not years, to come. Partly because I'm studying ancient history, and to have a set of books with their worldbuilding based on the what-if of Alexander living to old age, and set in an alternate Central-Asian steppes makes me feel all warm and geeky inside. And partly because --
Well. The main character, Lauria, a half-blood Greek, tracked and brought back escaped slaves for her employer, a Greek border commander by the name of Kyros, until he sends her to infiltrate and spy on the nomadic Alashi by posing as an escaped slave. The short time she spends posing as a slave, and her friendship with another former slave by the name of Tamar, coupled with the time she spends with the Alashi, wreaks a profound change on how she views the world she used to belong to.
The trilogy's about freedom and betrayal and friendship and injustice. And I have to say, I really, really liked it.
...I've just realised something about my reading preferences. The books I really like, the ones I like best - they either have female main characters, or they're by female authors (or female co-authors). The ones I fall head-over-heels for, usually both.
Head-over-heels fallen for:
Elizabeth Bear, the Jenny Casey books, Blood and Iron.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the Liaden universe books, The Tomorrow Log.
Lois McMaster Bujold, with particular attention to Paladin of Souls, Shards of Honor, and Komarr.
To a lesser extent, Sarah Monette, Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon books, Naomi Novik, Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History and the White Crow and Orthe collections, Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance books, Karen Traviss' City of Pearl and Crossing the Line and now, Naomi Kritzer.*
Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora and David Drake's Lord of the Isles sequence mark the exceptions to the rule.
Which sort of helps explain why seven out of ten of the books on my yet-to-be-read shelf are written by men. But not really, since I have no real idea why I go back to the guys less frequently and with less great enthusiasm, in general, than the women.
And now, the non-fiction:
Outwitting the Gestapo, Lucie Aubrac. Aubrac's account of her Resistance activity during the nine months of her second pregnancy, where she met 'Max' (the alias of Jean Moulin, DeGaulle's envoy to and negotiator with the various resistance réseaux, who was arrested, tortured and killed by the Germans in France), assisted with the running of the local resistance, organised an attack to break her husband out of prison after his arrest (his third and most serious, as he was arrested in the company of Moulin), taught classes at the local lycée, and keep her family fed and together. Fascinating read.
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. A memoir of the gulag. Ginzburg recounts her arrest in the thirties (February 1937) during Stalin's purges, her initial interrogation, trial and sentencing (ten years under section 8 of Article 58 - the then maximum, it changed to twenty-five years with the year, short of death - the statute under which, ludicrously, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people were charged with terrorism or counter-revolutionary activity); her time in the Butyrki and the Lefortovo, and, after her sentence was pronounced, her two years in solitary in Yaroslavl until her transfer to the Magadan and Elgen hard labour camps in the Kolyma region.
Ginzburg was and remained a committed Communist. Journey ends in or around the early 1940s, when she escaped death by starvation and overwork by getting a 'trusty' job as medical attendant to the children of inmates at Elgen. In the (very short) epilogue, she says she spent eighteen years in the Gulag, making this remarkably incomplete as an autobiography, and remarkably unsatisfying as either history or memoir.
It is, however, quite fascinating as both.
Next up... Hmm. Plutarch, I suppose. Roman Lives. Or maybe McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies, or Rediker's pirate history, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Or A History of the Ancient Near East, if I'm feeling virtuous, or maybe Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.
Or Harvey's American War of Independence history, A Few Bloody Noses. Or the one about Byzantine empresses, Herrin's Women in Purple. Or The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Or Ancient Mesopotamia. Or or or or --
-- Which to choose? So many books, so many. How am I supposed to pick just one (or two, rather, since the Plutarch is Designated Scholarly Reading Material, which really should be read for college)?
Um. Suggestions? Are solicited?
----
*Not all of these are precisely comfort reading, I must admit.
----
Oh, I'm reminded. The Admissions Office is pleased to inform me that the Senior Lecturer is permitting me to make the course transfer I applied for last May.
Last May. Oh, wheels of bureaucracy, who grindeth slow and exceedingly fine - thanks so much for letting me spend the last three months (three months!) worrying about this.
Lately, I've been reading for comfort - Procrustean reading, to borrow
truepenny's terminology. Which means Air and Spin and A Dead Man in Deptford, among others, are staring down at me from my TBR shelf while I devour space opera and character-heavy fantasy. With one exception: Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds.I don't read horror, normally. Or ghost stories, or anything in that vein. When I do read them, I don't enjoy them - I really don't enjoy having the shit creeped out of me.
Four and Twenty Blackbirds is eerie as all hell in places, but it never crosses the line into 'Not reading this after dark. Hell, not reading this in daylight, either,' territory. Largely because the heroine, Eden Moore, comes across as so genuinely capable that I couldn't help believing that when she found out what was going on, she was going to deal it.
I can like a character like that. In fact, I can like a book like that, too.
The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley. Never read anything of hers before, but whoa, this one is good. Lyrical language, dragons, heroic quests, a believably screwed-up and determined protagonist. Complexity and simplicity. Liked. Muchly.
Catherine Asaro, Primary Inversion. Probably the best of the Ruby Dynasty/Skolian Empire books I've read so far. And while it may be space opera, the better part of the action is emotional. Also, as a character? Soz Valdoria is probably the most interesting and well-realised one Asaro's written.
Naomi Kritzer (
naomikritzer), the Dead Rivers Trilogy: Freedom's Gate, Freedom's Apprentice, and Freedom's Sisters.I have a feeling that this trilogy is going to be part of my comfort re-reading for months, if not years, to come. Partly because I'm studying ancient history, and to have a set of books with their worldbuilding based on the what-if of Alexander living to old age, and set in an alternate Central-Asian steppes makes me feel all warm and geeky inside. And partly because --
Well. The main character, Lauria, a half-blood Greek, tracked and brought back escaped slaves for her employer, a Greek border commander by the name of Kyros, until he sends her to infiltrate and spy on the nomadic Alashi by posing as an escaped slave. The short time she spends posing as a slave, and her friendship with another former slave by the name of Tamar, coupled with the time she spends with the Alashi, wreaks a profound change on how she views the world she used to belong to.
The trilogy's about freedom and betrayal and friendship and injustice. And I have to say, I really, really liked it.
...I've just realised something about my reading preferences. The books I really like, the ones I like best - they either have female main characters, or they're by female authors (or female co-authors). The ones I fall head-over-heels for, usually both.
Head-over-heels fallen for:
Elizabeth Bear, the Jenny Casey books, Blood and Iron.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the Liaden universe books, The Tomorrow Log.
Lois McMaster Bujold, with particular attention to Paladin of Souls, Shards of Honor, and Komarr.
To a lesser extent, Sarah Monette, Wen Spencer's Ukiah Oregon books, Naomi Novik, Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History and the White Crow and Orthe collections, Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance books, Karen Traviss' City of Pearl and Crossing the Line and now, Naomi Kritzer.*
Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora and David Drake's Lord of the Isles sequence mark the exceptions to the rule.
Which sort of helps explain why seven out of ten of the books on my yet-to-be-read shelf are written by men. But not really, since I have no real idea why I go back to the guys less frequently and with less great enthusiasm, in general, than the women.
And now, the non-fiction:
Outwitting the Gestapo, Lucie Aubrac. Aubrac's account of her Resistance activity during the nine months of her second pregnancy, where she met 'Max' (the alias of Jean Moulin, DeGaulle's envoy to and negotiator with the various resistance réseaux, who was arrested, tortured and killed by the Germans in France), assisted with the running of the local resistance, organised an attack to break her husband out of prison after his arrest (his third and most serious, as he was arrested in the company of Moulin), taught classes at the local lycée, and keep her family fed and together. Fascinating read.
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. A memoir of the gulag. Ginzburg recounts her arrest in the thirties (February 1937) during Stalin's purges, her initial interrogation, trial and sentencing (ten years under section 8 of Article 58 - the then maximum, it changed to twenty-five years with the year, short of death - the statute under which, ludicrously, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people were charged with terrorism or counter-revolutionary activity); her time in the Butyrki and the Lefortovo, and, after her sentence was pronounced, her two years in solitary in Yaroslavl until her transfer to the Magadan and Elgen hard labour camps in the Kolyma region.
Ginzburg was and remained a committed Communist. Journey ends in or around the early 1940s, when she escaped death by starvation and overwork by getting a 'trusty' job as medical attendant to the children of inmates at Elgen. In the (very short) epilogue, she says she spent eighteen years in the Gulag, making this remarkably incomplete as an autobiography, and remarkably unsatisfying as either history or memoir.
It is, however, quite fascinating as both.
Next up... Hmm. Plutarch, I suppose. Roman Lives. Or maybe McIntosh's Sisterhood of Spies, or Rediker's pirate history, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Or A History of the Ancient Near East, if I'm feeling virtuous, or maybe Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.
Or Harvey's American War of Independence history, A Few Bloody Noses. Or the one about Byzantine empresses, Herrin's Women in Purple. Or The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Or Ancient Mesopotamia. Or or or or --
-- Which to choose? So many books, so many. How am I supposed to pick just one (or two, rather, since the Plutarch is Designated Scholarly Reading Material, which really should be read for college)?
Um. Suggestions? Are solicited?
----
*Not all of these are precisely comfort reading, I must admit.
----
Oh, I'm reminded. The Admissions Office is pleased to inform me that the Senior Lecturer is permitting me to make the course transfer I applied for last May.
Last May. Oh, wheels of bureaucracy, who grindeth slow and exceedingly fine - thanks so much for letting me spend the last three months (three months!) worrying about this.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 02:44 pm (UTC)Her son, Vasily Aksyonov, grew up to be a novelist himself, in the tradition of Russian comic novels; He emigrated to the US and was writing still, the last I saw. Nice guy.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 03:37 pm (UTC)That explains... much. My edition gives no hint that there is a further volume.
The more I read about the Gulag, the more amazed and appalled I get at the extent, the scope, and the sheer horror of it. Soviet Russia's greatest legacy: half a century of imprisonment at a scale and severity - and insanity; people arrested and sentenced at random in order to fill quotas - never before seen.
Which is why I keep being drawn to its history, I suppose.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 05:30 pm (UTC)Within the Whirlwind is harder to find; it took me several years and a good used bookseller online.
Yes, it is rather a compelling historical period, partly (or perhaps even completely) because of its likeness to an automobile accident. We humans are attracted to disasters and wrecks and such.
Now, have you read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?
(gleefully rubs hands together..wait, I didn't say that out loud, did I?)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-24 08:53 pm (UTC)I haven't read Denisovich, but I did read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in its abridged form. I think Applebaum's book, though, is probably the most comprehensive history available in English - it was the one that initially got me interested in Russian history.
Alas, for now I must be virtuous and read classical history. Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Antiquity is next on my list. And after that, I really need to finish Thucydides :).
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 02:32 pm (UTC)After that you can finish off Thucydides. ;-) Will you be stabbing him or administering hemlock?
Or you can send Xena after him. One classical character after another!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 07:35 pm (UTC)Thank you kindly for the offer, but that's not a thing I can let you do. :) I have... *counts* ... er, ten or so college course books to work through before October. I am on strict rationing of the pleasure reading.
(I have a cunning plan: I will read college books and practice college assignments in September, and then I will have a leg up for Michaelmas Term.)
Besides, by the time I've worked through the college books (I will be virtuous, yes, I will), the local library ought to have moved back to refurbished premises and updated its catalogue. If they do not have Ginzburg -well, I'll be most disappointed. They have Sozhenitsyn and Applebaum, so I have hopes. :)
Thucydides. Alas, that most comprehensive of Greek historians. I can't stab him, sadly. It must be reading, to the end, the bitter end. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-25 08:38 pm (UTC)It's not just about the gulag, it's also a love story. She meets a doctor of german ancestry and he woos her in Latin. "Amor mea, mea vita, mea spes". How could one not love that?
You can donate it to the library after you're done with it, so it will be a public service. Even if they already have one copy; every library should have at least two copies of this book. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 07:50 pm (UTC)(Okay, Latin isn't one of my strong points. 'My love, my life, my hope' ?) (https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/5VRWR1O505XO/ref=cm_reg_rd-upd/104-9906588-7093532?ie=UTF8&msgid=updated)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-29 07:52 pm (UTC)Um. Pardon my language.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 02:59 pm (UTC)(and LJ ought to have its head cut off for not giving us editing options. Many of us have used similar language in similar situations.)
I'll store that address away for use later on. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 07:38 pm (UTC)Now that just sounds ominous :-).
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 12:21 am (UTC)::slinks away::
P.S. Drat that Amazon! There's no way to slow down the delivery -- only speed it up. I can't order it now and have it delivered in December; I'll just have to remember to order it then.
::hunts for cold chisel to make sure::
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 08:47 pm (UTC)Drat them.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 08:50 pm (UTC)Linky coming up in next comment, I hope.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 08:59 pm (UTC)a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/36RKRHQP45CKJ/ref=wl_web/">
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 12:45 am (UTC)If it's still in your wishlist, then maybe just tell me which one. When you first gave me the linky thing, back in August, all it showed was Within the Whirlwind, and now you've got so much more. I didn't want to wander around without permission.
You'd think Amazon could make this easier on us, but it's been frustrating and to top it off, their website's been agonizingly slow all day.
So much for sneakily ordering and surprising you. Le sigh. Tomorrow ought to be a better day, if it knows what's good for it.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 09:19 am (UTC)And you don't have to do this, you know.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 08:58 pm (UTC)Yes, you're right, I don't need to do this. However, Evgenia Semyonovna deserves to have people reading her books. It's one of my deepest regrets that she died before her son emigrated, or she might have had the chance to come to the US, and I might have had a chance to meet her.
Very few biographies have ever struck me so deeply; Fania Fénelon's book on surviving Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen (Playing For Time was another. Even though I later learned that there were differences of opinion with other survivors, it was still a compelling and well-written book.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 09:56 pm (UTC)Interestingly enough (or surprisingly enough) the first book - first historical book, I should say - I ever read that impressed upon me the extent of how horrifying humanity can be, and how unpretty history really is, was Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History (http://www.amazon.com/Gulag-History-Anne-Applebaum/dp/1400034094/sr=1-1/qid=1163714164/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1730682-3837637?ie=UTF8&s=books). Have you read it?
no subject
Date: 2006-11-17 04:29 pm (UTC)I haven't read Anne Applebaum's book -- I do know about it, as she is a columnist for the Washington Post -- because I've already read Solzhenitsyn's tome, and hadn't kept up with the field in the past 15 years. I should get that one just to see what she has to say.
Holocaust history was an interest of mine for many years. One of my cousins survived Auschwitz; she was just a few years younger than my grandmother (the benefit of large families). If she's still alive she's far gone in Alzheimer's, but I did find her entries in the Shoah database.
The branching off to Soviet history was a natural outgrowth of the Holocaust period. Lately I've actually been reading more WWII history based on Band of Brothers, which was a very well-made series on HBO, later re-broadcast on A&E and the History channel. It's the same period of time and a completely different perspective.
Easy Company actually liberated a concentration camp, so there's the overlap.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-16 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-17 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-17 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 04:57 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked my trilogy.
(I love "The Hero and the Crown." I read it for the first time when I was 13, and have re-read it so many times the cover is starting to disintegrate. Definitely comfort reading. I like "The Blue Sword," too, but haven't re-read it nearly as compulsively, probably because I identified with Aerin more than with Harry.)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 12:22 pm (UTC)(Upon finishing Freedom's Sisters, I immediately hied myself to Amazon and ordered Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm, too, in the hope of finding more books to reread into creased nothingness. :-))
The Hero and the Crown is, I think, one of those books I've come to too late to appreciate as it deserves to be appreciated. I can enjoy it, but I'll never fall in love with it. Though I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to articulate the reasons I end up loving one book and merely enjoying another. :-)