Recent Reads

[firstroad]

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Much wittier people than me have said it better, so frankly I'll just say that Kuang needs to grow up and stop buying into her own excellence. It was a fun book! 3/5. Compulsively readable. Wants to make some points but realises to Make Points you would first have to, like, look at the publishing industry from a lens that isn't "tiktok and my wealthy family helped me get fame" and that's a little too hard to do, it seems.


Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
YESSSSSSS YES you know when you read something by someone you can just tell was made to be a writer? It's nonfiction, it's nothing ornate, but he KNOWS how to use LANGUAGE. Also I love reading about mountaineers and other sports people who are doing this for nothing other than a personal sense of accomplishment and short-lived glory. For something published in 1996 it was better about acknowledging the more... hm... I do not want to say colonial but also yes colonial nature of the expeditions to Climb Mount Everest.

I hadn't before heard of the issues between Krakauer and Boukreev, but, also, frankly, I do not get them. If someone described ME with this passage:

The underlying problem was that Boukreev’s notion of his responsibilities differed substantially from Fischer’s. As a Russian, Boukreev came from a tough, proud, hardscrabble climbing culture that did not believe in coddling the weak. In Eastern Europe guides were trained to act more like Sherpas—hauling loads, fixing ropes, establishing the route—and less like caretakers.

I'd be flattered.

Anyway I think it was pretty good at not making anyone out to be responsible and not making the event a big sensation. Enjoyed the fact that it pointed out that at ~3%, the death toll of that year is, in fact, below the amount of people Everest kills on average.


Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Annual reread <3 Knocks my socks off every time. More people should consider being repressed mean cheerleaders with selective memory. The true villain of this book is lesbianism............. it would've all been so much easier if Addy just got good and moved out :P


Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, edited by Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik
Ehm I don't know what to say, honestly -- it was exactly what it promised. It dedicated a chapter to various theorists (Barthes, obviously, and Derrida, Foucault, blah blah all the usual suspects) and then analysed their talking points in ~25 pages each. I had fun reading! As fun as this kind of text can be.


The Vegetarian by Kang Han
BRUTAL. Absolutely brutal. Full of violence while never describing violence in a way that, you know, makes you feel like you're supposed to be paying attention to the violence. I hated the 2nd part but in a way that anyone would hate Yeonghye's brother-in-law. Found the fact that we never get her POV interesting. It's apparently not meant to be a commentary on society but I can't not see it as that, on some level, especially with the desire to escape it, especially by how much it escalates.


Nervous System by Lina Meruane
Ehm perhaps not my best pick, I admit, in the sense that I don't do a lot of reading about illness so when it's that but TWO HUNDRED PAGES it hits a little harder. I'd rec it for anyone looking for a well-written work in vignettes :3


Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Do you want to read about SPACE except from the perspective of an OLD SPACESHIP which used to be MANY MANY PEOPLE AT ONCE? Yeah okay I'm several years late to the party so you've probably already read this. I get why it's so widely loved! I liked it too :D Fun with perspective, fun with discussing empire (lol, "fun"), fun with forming cultures and interaction between those. And language implications!

That being said, reading this took me like 2 solid months. Opposite of a page turner... no fun writing style :(

??? I know I've read more books but I didn't log them anywhere and now I have no idea what they were. Oops.

Comments

[sushiflop]

There were like BITS AND PIECES of Ancillary Justice that I loved so , so much (the description of hooking a new Ancillary up in Breq's system!) but so much of it was just kind of alright. :( Also I do feel like Leckie enjoys some loyalty kink in this book (looking at Seivarden... also I found the lava tube rescue just very silly), and as you know, that's just not rlly what I and you are about

[firstroad]

OHHH YOU'VE READ IT. WHAT DID YOU THINK. Beyond what you've already said, lol, because I agree!! So much!!!!!!! I liked the bits that were weirder and further removed from our culture & humans in general and I liked how Breq talked to Seivarden for most of the book (it was, at times, genuinely mean! Not "yeah I'm trying to write something mean but what if seeing minor conflict will hurt the reader's feelings" kind of mean! Okay admittedly not that many books go for that second option, but I DNFed way too many formulaic fantasy books so :') ), but the rest of it was just kind of... there? Like, I see what it's doing, but it's not keeping my attention while doing it.

[sushiflop]

I wrote up a giant mclargehuge response to it here, but without going and rereading that, I think my main takeaway is that the book I really wanted to read was the book that happened before Ancillary Justice about Breq's life as Breq with many Ancillaries of which Breq was only one. The book we got was... fine? But it sort of paled in comparison to what we could've had. It's interesting that you remark on how genuinely mean Breq was to Seivarden because I think this is a hint I just did not care for Seivarden much, because that did not make a dent on me at all. I probably will read the next two books regardless but I'm not in like... a hurry, you know?

I did read Leckie's The Raven Tower and LOVED that one. Notably, we are in a bizarre and inhuman pov the whole time. I thought it was fantastic and is one of my favorite books I've read this summer.