i just got this giant tome from the library but then it was my turn for the audio book of Menewood. so I guess this one's gonna be put on hold.
Reviews and Comments
a veeery... slooow... reeeeader...
(he/him)
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quaad commented on The Books of Jacob
quaad commented on Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
I was today years old when I learned that in Victorian England, a life-preserver was not a floatation device, but rather a small club to be carried (typically with a small leather strap) and used to beat off attackers.
quaad reviewed The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
This book infuriated me but i still finished it.
2 stars
Content warning maybe spoilers or not but just in case
I gave up on this once but decided to finish it because of supposed easter eggs that connected this to Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility. It turns out there were common elements, but they seemed more like recycled incidental characters and situations than some kind of connective thread. we get a quick peek at the author of the Station Eleven graphic novel, working on it, maybe.
I think Mandel is a very good writer; her descriptions are compelling and she creates characters that have the potential to become interesting. but they don't. She tries to give minor events dramatic significance that doesn't really play but the central event of the story falls flat. Pages and pages are devoted to bland, amoral mediocrities while the few sympathetic characters get a few short passages. oh, and ghosts ()?
nice to revisit a familiar place.
4 stars
This made me think of fan fiction, but with writing as good as the original. I really like the way Clarke approximates the style of 19th Century English literature. It doesn't have the scope of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but to me that's a good thing. it's like a purer distillation of that world.
quaad reviewed The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
quaad reviewed Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
I liked the series better
3 stars
a fairly good read in parts, kind of tedious in others. The character that links together all the other pivotal characters was mediocre and pathetic and so much of the book is devoted to the most banal aspects of contemporary life. I think I would rather have read the graphic novel that's at the center of the story but remains mostly undeveloped.
quaad reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
an enjoyable read.
4 stars
I liked the intertwined storylines and i thought the characters were well drawn and sympathetic. The only problem I had was the idea of the continuation of culture over hundreds of years. it rang false to me.
quaad commented on Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Content warning possible spoilers from Mountain in the Sea and Some Desperate Glory
Piranesi has a lot to say about memory and forgetting and also about identity and I feel like these are themes that are present in a lot of my recent reading. The Mountain in the Sea talks about artificial intelligence and the inability to forget, what that means to the identity of the AI. Forgetting is a function of consciousness and seems important to survival, or at least sanity. In Piranesi, forgetting is considered a symptom of madness by some of the characters but not by Piranesi himself. In Some Desparate Glory the main character, Kyr deals with a fragmented identity due to having lived in multiple timelines. Piranesi deals with this as well, having lived in another version of multiple timelines. i'm not sure why these are sticking with me, maybe it's a reflection of contemporary life, where people may navigate online identities and irl identities and the possible contradictions.