Reading roundup: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Auri novella, Stranger
46. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell -- I tried reading this book ~10 years ago, shortly after it was published (I think as soon as it showed up with a glowing review on Neil Gaiman's blog, and then showed up at the library right away). I don't actually remember how far I got -- I think about page 350, or a third of the way in, before I ran out of book renewals at the library. It was a huge doorstopper and I couldn't drag it along with me on my commute, so I only read it in snatches at home, which wasn't conducive to progress. I've also read a number of short stories set in this universe, so other things seemed familiar to me as well, and I kept second-guessing how far I actually got. But that's neither here nor there. I started it, it didn't grab me although I enjoyed it whenever I was reading it, but I always meant to go back at some point. So when I saw a paperback on sale at Oxford for 99p, I grabbed it, of course. And then it sat on my shelf for the next 3.5 years, untouched. Then the show came out, and people started writing about it on my flist, and reading and rereading the book as a result, and it felt like the best possible time to pick it up again. So I did, and this time finished it in less than two weeks. I think part of it was just that the paperback, while still really thick, was something I could still bring along on my commute. But I think maybe I'm just in the right space for a Regency-style book like this, having read Temeraire meanwhile, and going through a highly-unusual-for-me historical (contemporary and classics) phase. In any case, I finished it and really liked it this time around.
I'm not really sure how to talk about this book. Usually I'm all about characters, but in this case... well, I really like what the book does with both Norrell and Strange, but I don't love either of them the way I normally love characters. I think Norrell ended up being my favorite, much to my surprise -- I'd started out liking Childermass best, and many of the reviews on my flist *despise* Norrell. And he isn't even the sort of "bad guy" character I normally gravitate towards, somebody ruthless and commanding. He is really rather pathetic! Spoilers from here! But pathetic in a way I sympathize with -- the way he sits in the corner at his first London party, baffled to hear people talking about him in completely unrecognizable terms, the way he hoards and hides his books, his fussiness about everything, the way he goes off on long lectures that absolutely everyone finds boring and cannot commit anything to publishing because he's constantly revising, the way he makes ridiculous demands of people in power and cannot even understand why he is being ridiculous -- and especially the way he feels about Strange. That he is truly devoted to Strange in his bizarre, myopic way, which ignores everything Strange cares about (like Arabella) which Norrell himself doesn't understand, the way he is torn between wanting to teach Strange and share all his knowledge with him and keeping his books just for his own eyes. It's a really unusual, nuanced relationship, funny and even unexpectedly poignant: I actually teared up in the chapter where Strange and Norrell have their quarrel and take leave of each other, and found myself oddly touched when Norrell ends up trapped in the Eternal Darkness with Strange at the end and actually quite likes it, because he never cared much for the outside world, and as long as he has his books and Jonathan's company, that's really all he needs. It's... kind of sweet, actually, in an emotionally constipated way. I love that Strange and Norrell continue to surprise everyone, including each other, by how smoothly they fall into partnership despite everything between them. (None of which, of course, excuses the things Norrell has done out of ambition, his own dogma, cowardice, or willingness to be led by the likes of Lascelles and Drawlight, like selling (mostly unknowingly, but still) Lady Pole into the miserable half-life, destroying Strange's book (but not his own copy!), hounding all other magicians, etc.
I like Strange, too, because he is also not without faults -- his arrogance and obliviousness are fairly charming compared to Norrell's dried-up fussiness, but he's kind of a not-great husband, and while mostly he does better than Norrell in terms of his ethics, pride seems to be as much his motivation as doing the right thing. But I liked him, too, and especially enjoyed his relationship with Arabella (who seems to know him very well and be fondly tolerant of him) and his interaction with Wellington (and, as a result of prompting qwentoozla to do JSMN for the meme that was going around, now kind of want to read Strange/Wellington slash wherein Wellington calls him "Merlin" at key points. Moving on!). I like poor Stephen, too (who I'm not convinced gets a happy ending either, but it seems a fitting one, putting Lost-hope in order with his butler-y inclinations), especially the way he is always prepared to sacrifice himself to the gentleman's attention but tries to convince him to free Lady Pole, spare assorted innocents, from Vinculus to the mad King.
Besides those, mostly everybody else, even my initial favorite, Childermass, ended up being just part of the background masses for me, except for the odious Drawlight and Lascelles. Actually, Drawlight I did feel sorry for in the end, which surprised me -- he is so pathetic, post debtor's prison, it's kind of a Grima-in-the-Shire thing, and his ending is even sadder. But Lascelles I feel did not get punished enough; sure, the empty-eyed enchantment doesn't seem like a fun fate, and the person he defeated certainly preferred death to it, as we saw, but this doesn't feel like sufficient suffering for Lascelles. (Also, I didn't quite buy his motivation for going into Faerie in the first place.)
But, really, the worldbuilding, the history of English Magic, is as much a protagonist of this book as anybody else, and it worked splendidly, with the layered alternate history, with real history and personages braided in, the footnotes and the magical libraries and revisionism and glosses. I really like the way the magic here is a mix of fiddly and profound, alien and human, academic and organic, the way all those things are layered and interleaved. And the fairies are neat, or at least the gentleman, as he's the only one we get to see at length: the way he is mercurial and generous and staggeringly cruel without a second thought and vain and totally self-centered, and utterly, utterly mad. That is, his actions are all perfectly consistent with his priorities and worldview, it's just that that worldview is insane by mortal standards. I really liked the chapter where the gentleman explains how he found Stephen's true name, because it showcases all of those things at once. And I adore Strange's battlefield magic, especially things like whisking geography here and there and sending dispatches remotely via cupcakes with pink icing. But also there is truly horrible magic wrought with the best intentions, like Strange's dead Neapolitans.
The narration is so genteel, it's really interesting the contrast this creates with the darker moments -- the frozen instant at Waterloo when Strange contemplates killing a man who is attacking him by magic (and later, the tableau when he and Hadley-Bright run into each other after the battle ("There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away on all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive seemed at that moment, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly."), the description of Drawlight being shot, Stephen dropping rocks on the gentleman.
What else? The ending? It's very open-ended and bittersweet, but feels fitting. There's mention of a possible sequel, or at least a book set in the same world, in the endnotes to my edition, but I don't suppose we're getting that at this point?
Quotes:
"His [Mr Norrell's] blue eyes looked out at the world with a curious mixture of fearfulness and arrogance that put Sir Walter Pole in mind of his valet's cat."
I think my favorite footnote might be the one about Francis Pevensey, 16th century magician and student of Martin Pale, who apparently had been a woman and Pale's lover.
"You think that I'm angry," said Mr Norrell [about Strange's article], "but I am not. You think I do not know why you have done what you have done, but I do. You think you have put all your heart into that writing and that every one in England now understands you. What do they understand? Nothing. I understood you before you wrote a word." He paused and his face worked as if he were struggling to say something that lay very deep inside him. "What you wrote, you wrote for me. For me alone."
[...]
"The books..." He swallowed slightly. "The books which I ought to have lent you and which I kept from you, you shall read them! We will go to Yorkshire, you and I together -- tonight, if you wish! And I will give you the key to the library and you shall read whatever you desire. I..." Mr Norrell passed his hand across his brow, as if in surprise at his own words. "I shall not even ask for a retraction of the review. Let it stand. Let it stand. And in time, you and I, together, will answer all the questions you raise in it."
"The farmer had never seen a black man before and was quite astonished to find such an otherlandish creature in his yard. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he could not bring himself to believe that Stephen was speaking English. The carrier, who sympathtized with the farmer in his confusion, stood beside Stephen, kindly repeating everything he said for the farmer's better understanding."
"Inside, rooms of damp, unhappy gentlemen were producing a kind of gloomy, domesticated fog, which the waiters were attempting to dispell by putting extra shovelsful of coals on the fire and getting extra glassesful of hot spiced wine into the gentlemen."
"William Hadley-Bright and Henry Purfois were all for calling Mr Norrell out, until it was represented to them that Mr Norrell was an elderly gentleman who never took exercise and had never been seen with a sword or a pistol in his hand. There were no circumstances under which it would be fair or honorable for two men in the prime of life (one of them a soldier) to challenge him to a duel. Hadley-Bright and Purfois accepted this with a good grace, but Pufois could not help looking hopefully about the room for a person of equal decrepitude to Mr Norrell. He gazed speculatively at Shackleton."
"For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another."
Strange, in his madness, about himself: "He has come hundreds of miles to the most luxurious city in the world and all he cares about is what some old man in London thinks!"
"I wish Mr Strange were here," said Mr Norrell, miserably. "He would know what to say to them. He would know what to do."
Lucas touched his master's arm as if trying to rouse him. "Mr Norrell? We are trying to prevent Mr Strange from coming here -- if you remember, sir?"
Mr Norrell looked at him in some irritation. "Yes, yes! I know that! But still."
"Stephen thought rapidly. 'But his [Strange's] return may have nothing to do with you at alfl, sir,' he offered. [...]
The gentleman looked doubtful. Any reasoning that did not contain a reference to himself was always difficult for him to follow. 'I do not think that very likely,' he said.
Strange and Norrell meet in Norrell's library:
"There is a long description of his magic in Belais's Instructions..." He paused. "...which you have never seen. The only copy is here. It is on the third shelf by the window." He pointed and discovered that the shelf had been emptied. "Or it might be on the floor," he offered. "In that pile."
bingo: book I once started but didn't finish (CHALLENGE MODE of "book from farthest shelf") -- it's not the book I've owned longest without reading, but it has been sitting on my shelf since I bought it in Oxford in Jan 2012, and I first started reading it long before that, when it had first come out in hardcover.
I want to watch the show, when I can track it down, now that I have the canon firmly in my mind.
47. Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things -- the Auri novella. I was excited when Pat first mentioned the novella (because, new Kingkiller canon), then skeptical the more I heard about whe it actually was like. Jim, my manager, told me he hated it and quit after about 20 pages, even though he loves the Kvothe books. And Rothfuss himself plasters the book with warnings that it might not be a book that will work for everyone. And, yeah, I can definitely see why, though I enjoyed it myself. It took me a really long time to get through it, though, given how short it is.
Auri has never been a favorite character of mine (the way Bast or Devi are; I need to read the Bast story in "Rogues", and I wish he'd write something about Devi's past, because that must be really interesting). But this is an interesting character study, and it's interesting to spend all this time in her head, with no external explanation, living by her tilted but very rigid rules and interacting with a cast of "characters" that consists almost completely of inanimate objects. I'm not sure that it really needed to be this length for me to enjoy it fully, but OK... Spoilers from here! I don't know that we really learn anything new about Auri, except that there is additional evidence that she was a student of the University (Alchemy, apparently, with great lines like "It was prickle-rich with mystery. It was full of musk and whispers and tetradecanoic acid"), and an implication that what caused her break with reality was something like rape or at least assault ("Like a wrist pinned hard beneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want and wine..."). (I actually kind of wish it had been something else, because I think we have enough of those stories in Kingkiller already, and I didn't think Rothfuss handled it that great the first time...)
The writing is... neat, although fairly one-note. I tend to prefer Rothfuss's dialogue to his more descriptive passages, although Kvothe definitely knows how to turn a phrase when he's the one doing the narrating -- actually, I tend to prefer dialogue to description in general -- and there was no dialogue in this story at all. But there are neat similes ("lonely as a button", "patient as three stones") and some associative worldplay that really works for Auri's POV. The passages signaling the unraveling of Auri's emotions and perceptions are pretty well done. The OCD-ness was very well conveyed, I thought, through repetition of the actual sentences -- the cadence felt just right. And towards the end there's some descent into poetic meter and the occasional rhyme ("She gathered up the amber byne, all prickling quick and petal kind. She poured it in the kettle too, and all the room was filled with musk and mystery and bear. She stirred and selas filled the air" or "She went to Clinks. She washed herself. She brushed her hair. She laughed and leapt. She hurried home. She went to bed. And all alone, she smiled and slept"), which Rothfuss seems to like doing, but it felt less hokey and more fitting than the Felurian bits in Wise Man's Fear which tried the same thing.
One thing about the writing I *didn't* like: the constant repetition of "tiny" -- Auri being tiny, her tiny hands and face, etc. It kept throwing me out of the POV because I have a hard time accepting "tiny" as a word one can apply to ONESELF. Auri wants to make herself small, I get that, but, IDK, "tiny" somehow requires a referent outside of one's own parameters, so every use of "tiny" kept making me think somebody else was observing Auri, which felt at odds with the rest of the story.
There are also illustrations, which are very fitting, especially the ones where Auri is outlined white-on-gray in the gloom of the Underthing or against the darkness of night.
bingo: female protagonist, protagonist with psychological/emotional disability (OCD at minimum, but there's obviously lots more than that going on)
48. Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, Stranger -- this is the book that you may remember from the 2011 story about an agent pressuring the authors to 'straighten' a gay POV character. The book is actually way more diverse than just having one of its (five) protagonists gay -- there are multiple secondary and background gay characters, a prominent poly relationship, and I think almost everyone, and all five protagonists for sure, are POC. So, yes, a very diverse YA book set in an oddly cozy post-apocalyptic world with occasional superpowers and interesting mutant wildlife. I liked the mutant wildlife best, I think: the telepathic glass trees are really creepy in the best tradition of creepy trees, and the other critters, intelligent raccoons and telekinetic squirrels and [spoiler] fluffy kitty-things that spawn pitmouths. And of course the trained rats :D
I think ultimately I more approve of what the book is trying to do than enjoy the way it's doing it, although it did start growing on me more when the action kicked in towards the end, and I finished it having enjoyed it rather than being meh about it like at the start. Early on especially, I was somewhat disappointed because I found it so much shallower than the Inda books (which is not a fair point of comparison, but I'm still reading Inda 3 intermittently, so it's a natural one for me) and a lot less engaging than the books I read (under a pen name) by the other author. I mean, it was a fine YA book with some interesting aspects, but I'd been hoping for more. It continued to improve, though, and I hope that the rest of the series, now that the heavy lifting of setting up the world and introducing the characters is done, will be even more to my liking.
The five rotating POVs thing didn't really work for me. I think in order for me to enjoy that, it needs to feel justified, and I didn't feel that here -- the voices were not different enough (the book employed different fonts for each POV, but that just distracted me; the actual POVs still felt too similar, except maybe for Felicite's, who was, perhaps not coincidentally, my favorite), the chapters were usually too short for me to settle in in anybody's head, and I felt like the POVs were largely interchangeable -- the protagonists were usually in the same basic place and witnessing similar things, so I didn't feel like the multiple POVs were adding much (again, with the possible exception of Felicite, who was kind of on the other side, at least at first). I mean, yes, Yuki and Ross get off on the wrong foot, but I didn't really feel like this book needed so many narrators -- it's not that complex a book. I will say that the effectiveness of this improved for me as the book went on -- during the chapters when they were fighting Voske, the multiple POVs did feel more useful, the short chapters made more sense. But I think the first part of the book would've had to be quite different for the five-POV thing to be really effective for me throughout.
All the jumping around from character to character also made it harder for me to connect with the lot of them. (The huge cast of background characters -- the entire town of Las Anclas -- probably contributed to that as well; I like what the book is going for, the way the community does everything as a community, the way the same people and their families keep showing up in different roles in different contexts -- joking around at a party, leading a squad on patrol, visiting their friends at a tough time, making things or growing food. I got a good sense of the interconnectedness of it, but not of any of the secondary individuals. Well, maybe Doctor Lee, and even that was a fairly shallow acquaintance. spoilers from here The early domestic scenes, parties and patrols and school, all that does make the deaths at the end more impactful, because all these people have touched everybody else's lives in different ways, but I didn't feel the loss of anyone except Sera as people.)
Until about the 75% mark, the only person I felt invested in was Felicite -- she starts out as a nominal (low-level) antagonist, but I found her interesting from the start, and when we got to learn her secret (which caught me entirely by surprise even though it's well set up!) she became even more so. I also like the relationship Felicite has with her parents -- her father is a bigot and her mother is, well, a politician, but they clearly love and respect and value her and are a happy family. And while Felicite and her parents may be spying or conspiring against the other protagonists, when the real bad guy, Voske, attacks Las Anclas, they work for the common good and are quite good at it. It's a nice nuance, more than normally shows up in YA. I'm intrigued by Tom Preston especially (I wonder if there's more to his prejudice against the Changed than simple bigotry) and, on a similar shades-of-gray note, Furio the bounty hunter.
Once the fighting started, I grew invested in Jennie, too, and by the end her POV was the one I was most looking forward to. The fighting chapters were the ones where the multiple POVs worked best for me in general, like Mia trying not to think in the heat of battle, Jennie feeling the weight of command, Felicite with her priorities still firmly on herself.
I was also quite lukewarm on the relationships. For all the wonderful diversity, only Yuki and Paco felt like any kind of real connection to me (so I guess I'm really glad the authors stood their ground and insisted on keeping that one in). I didn't feel any chemistry from any side of the Mia/Ross/Jennie triad, nor did either relationship there feel interesting to me (actually, I thought Mia's lack of interest in romance at first was an indicator she was going to be an asexual character; I think I would've found that more interesting). What I did like, a lot, was the relationship between Jennie and Indra after they broke up -- the way they are still partners, still fellow Rangers and friends, and deal with the end of their romance very maturely. I'm looking forward to more of that.
The diversity I mentioned above is handled very well, I thought, because everything is intermixed and normalized; it's kind of utopian, but given that it's a post-apocalyptic community and the tension is now across the Norms vs Changed divide, I found it believable. I liked the blending of cultures present in several families -- that Felicite Wolfe has a Chinese grandmother, that Yuki's (adopted) family is Jewish and celebrates Shabbat, the Sherrif Crow's mothers are Native American and Russian, and all of it is the most normal thing in the world. The protagonists are, of course, a nice ethnic mix, too (I assume Mia is at least partly Korean, given her dad's cooking; Jennie is black, Yuki is Japanese, Ross is Native American and/or Latino, and Felicite, as mentioned, part Chinese with other ethnicities mixed in). There are at least two lesbian couples, of different ages, Yuki's relationship with Paco, and the Mia/Ross/Jennie poly arrangement. And it looks like Ross ends up disabled, since it doesn't look like he is going to regain use of his left hand (and I really liked the scene where Mia presents him with a design for a prosthetic so he can continue to use his left hand in a fight).
Random note: Mia's dress at the dance, the pink ruffles, instantly made me think of "Shindig". Given that Kaylee is also a girl genius mechanic, I wonder if that's an intentional homage.
It looks like, from skimming reviews, I should like Hostage more than Stranger, except for the lack of Felicite POV. So, I will probably read that soon, before I've forgotten who all these people are and how they relate to each other. :P
bingo: book with more than two protagonists (5 alternating POVs), book with queer protagonist (Yuki), book with POC protagonist (all five)
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Thus, a bingo update, as this brings several new bingos: [cards and lists]
Random: BINGO x2 (5 bingos, 21/25 squares, 5/7 challenges)
Book with more than two protagonists: Stranger
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Book your parent/child loves: Looking for Alaska
Book heavily featuring food -- Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book with a plant in the title: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Book without magical creatures: The Duchess War
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book heavily featuring kids (CHALLENGE MODE: from a child's POV): Wonder
Book set on a continent you've never been to: Akata Witch (Africa)
Book from friends or media: Mistborn
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Mix'n'Match: BINGO x2 (10 bingos, 24/25 squares, 3/6 challenges)
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Author's first language isn't English: Gromyko, God Krysy: Putnitsa
Non-fiction book: Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Collection of short stories: Love is Hell
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a disability: Wonder
Rec from friend or media: Mistborn
Book with a female protagonist: Akata Witch
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Funny book: A Blink of the Screen
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Serious: (3 bingos, 20/25 squares, 2/7 challenges)
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
Rec from friend or media (CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list): Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book by an author you've never read before: Jennifer Lee, Fortune Cookie chronicles
Book not in English: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War (Courtney Milan)
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a physical disability: Wonder
Book by an author of color: Akata Witch
Book with a protagonist with a mental/social disability: Prisoner
Book with a female protagonist: Guardian of the Dead
Short story collection: A Blink of the Screen
Non-fiction book: Musicophilia
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Book by a queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
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This means I'm one square away from blackout on my mix'n'match card, and it should be an easy enough square to fill: reread of childhood favorite. But I can't decide which childhood favorite I want to reread, so I'm looking for inputs. (I reserve the right to read whatever ultimately strikes my fancy or is easiest to get my hands on, but want to see what flist consensus is, if anything.)
1) Tri tolstyaka [three fat men] -- was probably my first favorite book. I remember crushing on Tibul the gymnast and being terrified of the palace and finding the whole life-sized wind-up doll thing really creepy. I have a hard copy of the book, bought in Israel on our first visit with the rodents. I even started reading it to the rodents at one point, but it wasn't keeping their interest. Cons: I'm not sure how the political message would work for me today, and I'd hate to tarnish my memory of a childhood favorite...
2) Alya, Klyaksich i bukva Ya [Alya, Inkblot, and the letter ~Z] -- this is kind of the Russian Phantom Tollbooth, girl ends up in the land of letters and numbers and has educational adventures there. I have a copy, also from Israel, and tried reading it to the rodents. They're too old for it at this point, but I might enjoy it still?
3) Do svidaniya, ovrag [goodbuy, ditch] -- this is a children's book narrated by a feral dog which I read one summer and really loved. I have not read it in about 30 years, and remember very little of it, but I remembered enough to want to track it down. It seems out of print (or at least I couldn't find it in Israel) but I have an electronic copy.
4) I could read some Sherlock Holmes! I went on a reread at some point, but I'm pretty sure there are still stories I have only read in Russian... and I should probably read them in the original, by this point. I don't remember what my specific favorites were. Sign of the Four, maybe? (Similar options could apply to Asimov (Caves of Steel?) and Gerrald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals?). Oh, and London's Call of the Wild, too, but I don't think I want to read London.)
5) Piknik na obochine [Roadside Picnic] -- this was my obsession when I was 10, but it left such a huge mark on me, I haven't reread it since. Cons: Martyshka's (the protagonist's daughter, affected by the Zone) condition scared me as a kid; I'm not sure I want to put myself through it as a parent, even though it wouldn't be as bad now as it would've been when the rodents were little.
6) Master i Margarita -- I was a weird kid, OK, and when I was ten or eleven, this was legitimately my favorite book. I've reread chapters and passages of it plenty, and I'm pretty sure I've reread the entire Woland "thread", but I actually haven't sat down and reread the whole thing start to finish I think ever, and I probably should, one of these days.
7) Zheltyj tuman [yellow fog] -- one of the later Volkov books, which took the premise of a loose translation of Wizard of Oz and ran with it in a totally different direction. I read this book already in the US, but it became one of my favorites, despite the mixing of fairy-tale and aliens. And I have a copy, which ended up in my house after my mother and aunt M cleaned out DG's apartment. (Or I guess I could also track down one of my other favorites in the series, 7 podzemnyh korolej or Ognennyj bog maranov.)
8) Konduit i Shvambraniya -- a recent conversation with pax_athena reminded me of this. I wasn't as obsessed with this book as with many of the others on the list, but it was very near to my heart because of the boys making up imaginary worlds -- I think that's why my father recommended it to me in the first place. It would probably be interesting to reread as a grown-up and a parent. (Also, the author's -- this is autobiographical -- younger brother shares O's name, and that would be an added source of amusement for me at this point, I think...) Cons: depressing, I expect...
9) I could finish my reread of Monday Starts on Saturday in the good English translation? But I've reread "Monday" many, many times, so this feels against the spirit of the square.
So, poll:
Poll
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Two book news of note!
1) Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen has a cover, and it's even not-terrible.
2) Rivers of London GN story #2 will be called Night Witch, and set between book 5 and upcoming book 6. I'm hoping this will be the Nightingale and Varvara roadtrip we didn't get in book 5. It sounds like it should be Varvara-centric, at any rate? (BTW, anybody on my flist read Body Work issue 1 yet?)
I'm not really sure how to talk about this book. Usually I'm all about characters, but in this case... well, I really like what the book does with both Norrell and Strange, but I don't love either of them the way I normally love characters. I think Norrell ended up being my favorite, much to my surprise -- I'd started out liking Childermass best, and many of the reviews on my flist *despise* Norrell. And he isn't even the sort of "bad guy" character I normally gravitate towards, somebody ruthless and commanding. He is really rather pathetic! Spoilers from here! But pathetic in a way I sympathize with -- the way he sits in the corner at his first London party, baffled to hear people talking about him in completely unrecognizable terms, the way he hoards and hides his books, his fussiness about everything, the way he goes off on long lectures that absolutely everyone finds boring and cannot commit anything to publishing because he's constantly revising, the way he makes ridiculous demands of people in power and cannot even understand why he is being ridiculous -- and especially the way he feels about Strange. That he is truly devoted to Strange in his bizarre, myopic way, which ignores everything Strange cares about (like Arabella) which Norrell himself doesn't understand, the way he is torn between wanting to teach Strange and share all his knowledge with him and keeping his books just for his own eyes. It's a really unusual, nuanced relationship, funny and even unexpectedly poignant: I actually teared up in the chapter where Strange and Norrell have their quarrel and take leave of each other, and found myself oddly touched when Norrell ends up trapped in the Eternal Darkness with Strange at the end and actually quite likes it, because he never cared much for the outside world, and as long as he has his books and Jonathan's company, that's really all he needs. It's... kind of sweet, actually, in an emotionally constipated way. I love that Strange and Norrell continue to surprise everyone, including each other, by how smoothly they fall into partnership despite everything between them. (None of which, of course, excuses the things Norrell has done out of ambition, his own dogma, cowardice, or willingness to be led by the likes of Lascelles and Drawlight, like selling (mostly unknowingly, but still) Lady Pole into the miserable half-life, destroying Strange's book (but not his own copy!), hounding all other magicians, etc.
I like Strange, too, because he is also not without faults -- his arrogance and obliviousness are fairly charming compared to Norrell's dried-up fussiness, but he's kind of a not-great husband, and while mostly he does better than Norrell in terms of his ethics, pride seems to be as much his motivation as doing the right thing. But I liked him, too, and especially enjoyed his relationship with Arabella (who seems to know him very well and be fondly tolerant of him) and his interaction with Wellington (and, as a result of prompting qwentoozla to do JSMN for the meme that was going around, now kind of want to read Strange/Wellington slash wherein Wellington calls him "Merlin" at key points. Moving on!). I like poor Stephen, too (who I'm not convinced gets a happy ending either, but it seems a fitting one, putting Lost-hope in order with his butler-y inclinations), especially the way he is always prepared to sacrifice himself to the gentleman's attention but tries to convince him to free Lady Pole, spare assorted innocents, from Vinculus to the mad King.
Besides those, mostly everybody else, even my initial favorite, Childermass, ended up being just part of the background masses for me, except for the odious Drawlight and Lascelles. Actually, Drawlight I did feel sorry for in the end, which surprised me -- he is so pathetic, post debtor's prison, it's kind of a Grima-in-the-Shire thing, and his ending is even sadder. But Lascelles I feel did not get punished enough; sure, the empty-eyed enchantment doesn't seem like a fun fate, and the person he defeated certainly preferred death to it, as we saw, but this doesn't feel like sufficient suffering for Lascelles. (Also, I didn't quite buy his motivation for going into Faerie in the first place.)
But, really, the worldbuilding, the history of English Magic, is as much a protagonist of this book as anybody else, and it worked splendidly, with the layered alternate history, with real history and personages braided in, the footnotes and the magical libraries and revisionism and glosses. I really like the way the magic here is a mix of fiddly and profound, alien and human, academic and organic, the way all those things are layered and interleaved. And the fairies are neat, or at least the gentleman, as he's the only one we get to see at length: the way he is mercurial and generous and staggeringly cruel without a second thought and vain and totally self-centered, and utterly, utterly mad. That is, his actions are all perfectly consistent with his priorities and worldview, it's just that that worldview is insane by mortal standards. I really liked the chapter where the gentleman explains how he found Stephen's true name, because it showcases all of those things at once. And I adore Strange's battlefield magic, especially things like whisking geography here and there and sending dispatches remotely via cupcakes with pink icing. But also there is truly horrible magic wrought with the best intentions, like Strange's dead Neapolitans.
The narration is so genteel, it's really interesting the contrast this creates with the darker moments -- the frozen instant at Waterloo when Strange contemplates killing a man who is attacking him by magic (and later, the tableau when he and Hadley-Bright run into each other after the battle ("There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away on all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive seemed at that moment, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly."), the description of Drawlight being shot, Stephen dropping rocks on the gentleman.
What else? The ending? It's very open-ended and bittersweet, but feels fitting. There's mention of a possible sequel, or at least a book set in the same world, in the endnotes to my edition, but I don't suppose we're getting that at this point?
Quotes:
"His [Mr Norrell's] blue eyes looked out at the world with a curious mixture of fearfulness and arrogance that put Sir Walter Pole in mind of his valet's cat."
I think my favorite footnote might be the one about Francis Pevensey, 16th century magician and student of Martin Pale, who apparently had been a woman and Pale's lover.
"You think that I'm angry," said Mr Norrell [about Strange's article], "but I am not. You think I do not know why you have done what you have done, but I do. You think you have put all your heart into that writing and that every one in England now understands you. What do they understand? Nothing. I understood you before you wrote a word." He paused and his face worked as if he were struggling to say something that lay very deep inside him. "What you wrote, you wrote for me. For me alone."
[...]
"The books..." He swallowed slightly. "The books which I ought to have lent you and which I kept from you, you shall read them! We will go to Yorkshire, you and I together -- tonight, if you wish! And I will give you the key to the library and you shall read whatever you desire. I..." Mr Norrell passed his hand across his brow, as if in surprise at his own words. "I shall not even ask for a retraction of the review. Let it stand. Let it stand. And in time, you and I, together, will answer all the questions you raise in it."
"The farmer had never seen a black man before and was quite astonished to find such an otherlandish creature in his yard. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he could not bring himself to believe that Stephen was speaking English. The carrier, who sympathtized with the farmer in his confusion, stood beside Stephen, kindly repeating everything he said for the farmer's better understanding."
"Inside, rooms of damp, unhappy gentlemen were producing a kind of gloomy, domesticated fog, which the waiters were attempting to dispell by putting extra shovelsful of coals on the fire and getting extra glassesful of hot spiced wine into the gentlemen."
"William Hadley-Bright and Henry Purfois were all for calling Mr Norrell out, until it was represented to them that Mr Norrell was an elderly gentleman who never took exercise and had never been seen with a sword or a pistol in his hand. There were no circumstances under which it would be fair or honorable for two men in the prime of life (one of them a soldier) to challenge him to a duel. Hadley-Bright and Purfois accepted this with a good grace, but Pufois could not help looking hopefully about the room for a person of equal decrepitude to Mr Norrell. He gazed speculatively at Shackleton."
"For, though the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a peculiar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another."
Strange, in his madness, about himself: "He has come hundreds of miles to the most luxurious city in the world and all he cares about is what some old man in London thinks!"
"I wish Mr Strange were here," said Mr Norrell, miserably. "He would know what to say to them. He would know what to do."
Lucas touched his master's arm as if trying to rouse him. "Mr Norrell? We are trying to prevent Mr Strange from coming here -- if you remember, sir?"
Mr Norrell looked at him in some irritation. "Yes, yes! I know that! But still."
"Stephen thought rapidly. 'But his [Strange's] return may have nothing to do with you at alfl, sir,' he offered. [...]
The gentleman looked doubtful. Any reasoning that did not contain a reference to himself was always difficult for him to follow. 'I do not think that very likely,' he said.
Strange and Norrell meet in Norrell's library:
"There is a long description of his magic in Belais's Instructions..." He paused. "...which you have never seen. The only copy is here. It is on the third shelf by the window." He pointed and discovered that the shelf had been emptied. "Or it might be on the floor," he offered. "In that pile."
bingo: book I once started but didn't finish (CHALLENGE MODE of "book from farthest shelf") -- it's not the book I've owned longest without reading, but it has been sitting on my shelf since I bought it in Oxford in Jan 2012, and I first started reading it long before that, when it had first come out in hardcover.
I want to watch the show, when I can track it down, now that I have the canon firmly in my mind.
47. Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things -- the Auri novella. I was excited when Pat first mentioned the novella (because, new Kingkiller canon), then skeptical the more I heard about whe it actually was like. Jim, my manager, told me he hated it and quit after about 20 pages, even though he loves the Kvothe books. And Rothfuss himself plasters the book with warnings that it might not be a book that will work for everyone. And, yeah, I can definitely see why, though I enjoyed it myself. It took me a really long time to get through it, though, given how short it is.
Auri has never been a favorite character of mine (the way Bast or Devi are; I need to read the Bast story in "Rogues", and I wish he'd write something about Devi's past, because that must be really interesting). But this is an interesting character study, and it's interesting to spend all this time in her head, with no external explanation, living by her tilted but very rigid rules and interacting with a cast of "characters" that consists almost completely of inanimate objects. I'm not sure that it really needed to be this length for me to enjoy it fully, but OK... Spoilers from here! I don't know that we really learn anything new about Auri, except that there is additional evidence that she was a student of the University (Alchemy, apparently, with great lines like "It was prickle-rich with mystery. It was full of musk and whispers and tetradecanoic acid"), and an implication that what caused her break with reality was something like rape or at least assault ("Like a wrist pinned hard beneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want and wine..."). (I actually kind of wish it had been something else, because I think we have enough of those stories in Kingkiller already, and I didn't think Rothfuss handled it that great the first time...)
The writing is... neat, although fairly one-note. I tend to prefer Rothfuss's dialogue to his more descriptive passages, although Kvothe definitely knows how to turn a phrase when he's the one doing the narrating -- actually, I tend to prefer dialogue to description in general -- and there was no dialogue in this story at all. But there are neat similes ("lonely as a button", "patient as three stones") and some associative worldplay that really works for Auri's POV. The passages signaling the unraveling of Auri's emotions and perceptions are pretty well done. The OCD-ness was very well conveyed, I thought, through repetition of the actual sentences -- the cadence felt just right. And towards the end there's some descent into poetic meter and the occasional rhyme ("She gathered up the amber byne, all prickling quick and petal kind. She poured it in the kettle too, and all the room was filled with musk and mystery and bear. She stirred and selas filled the air" or "She went to Clinks. She washed herself. She brushed her hair. She laughed and leapt. She hurried home. She went to bed. And all alone, she smiled and slept"), which Rothfuss seems to like doing, but it felt less hokey and more fitting than the Felurian bits in Wise Man's Fear which tried the same thing.
One thing about the writing I *didn't* like: the constant repetition of "tiny" -- Auri being tiny, her tiny hands and face, etc. It kept throwing me out of the POV because I have a hard time accepting "tiny" as a word one can apply to ONESELF. Auri wants to make herself small, I get that, but, IDK, "tiny" somehow requires a referent outside of one's own parameters, so every use of "tiny" kept making me think somebody else was observing Auri, which felt at odds with the rest of the story.
There are also illustrations, which are very fitting, especially the ones where Auri is outlined white-on-gray in the gloom of the Underthing or against the darkness of night.
bingo: female protagonist, protagonist with psychological/emotional disability (OCD at minimum, but there's obviously lots more than that going on)
48. Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown, Stranger -- this is the book that you may remember from the 2011 story about an agent pressuring the authors to 'straighten' a gay POV character. The book is actually way more diverse than just having one of its (five) protagonists gay -- there are multiple secondary and background gay characters, a prominent poly relationship, and I think almost everyone, and all five protagonists for sure, are POC. So, yes, a very diverse YA book set in an oddly cozy post-apocalyptic world with occasional superpowers and interesting mutant wildlife. I liked the mutant wildlife best, I think: the telepathic glass trees are really creepy in the best tradition of creepy trees, and the other critters, intelligent raccoons and telekinetic squirrels and [spoiler] fluffy kitty-things that spawn pitmouths. And of course the trained rats :D
I think ultimately I more approve of what the book is trying to do than enjoy the way it's doing it, although it did start growing on me more when the action kicked in towards the end, and I finished it having enjoyed it rather than being meh about it like at the start. Early on especially, I was somewhat disappointed because I found it so much shallower than the Inda books (which is not a fair point of comparison, but I'm still reading Inda 3 intermittently, so it's a natural one for me) and a lot less engaging than the books I read (under a pen name) by the other author. I mean, it was a fine YA book with some interesting aspects, but I'd been hoping for more. It continued to improve, though, and I hope that the rest of the series, now that the heavy lifting of setting up the world and introducing the characters is done, will be even more to my liking.
The five rotating POVs thing didn't really work for me. I think in order for me to enjoy that, it needs to feel justified, and I didn't feel that here -- the voices were not different enough (the book employed different fonts for each POV, but that just distracted me; the actual POVs still felt too similar, except maybe for Felicite's, who was, perhaps not coincidentally, my favorite), the chapters were usually too short for me to settle in in anybody's head, and I felt like the POVs were largely interchangeable -- the protagonists were usually in the same basic place and witnessing similar things, so I didn't feel like the multiple POVs were adding much (again, with the possible exception of Felicite, who was kind of on the other side, at least at first). I mean, yes, Yuki and Ross get off on the wrong foot, but I didn't really feel like this book needed so many narrators -- it's not that complex a book. I will say that the effectiveness of this improved for me as the book went on -- during the chapters when they were fighting Voske, the multiple POVs did feel more useful, the short chapters made more sense. But I think the first part of the book would've had to be quite different for the five-POV thing to be really effective for me throughout.
All the jumping around from character to character also made it harder for me to connect with the lot of them. (The huge cast of background characters -- the entire town of Las Anclas -- probably contributed to that as well; I like what the book is going for, the way the community does everything as a community, the way the same people and their families keep showing up in different roles in different contexts -- joking around at a party, leading a squad on patrol, visiting their friends at a tough time, making things or growing food. I got a good sense of the interconnectedness of it, but not of any of the secondary individuals. Well, maybe Doctor Lee, and even that was a fairly shallow acquaintance. spoilers from here The early domestic scenes, parties and patrols and school, all that does make the deaths at the end more impactful, because all these people have touched everybody else's lives in different ways, but I didn't feel the loss of anyone except Sera as people.)
Until about the 75% mark, the only person I felt invested in was Felicite -- she starts out as a nominal (low-level) antagonist, but I found her interesting from the start, and when we got to learn her secret (which caught me entirely by surprise even though it's well set up!) she became even more so. I also like the relationship Felicite has with her parents -- her father is a bigot and her mother is, well, a politician, but they clearly love and respect and value her and are a happy family. And while Felicite and her parents may be spying or conspiring against the other protagonists, when the real bad guy, Voske, attacks Las Anclas, they work for the common good and are quite good at it. It's a nice nuance, more than normally shows up in YA. I'm intrigued by Tom Preston especially (I wonder if there's more to his prejudice against the Changed than simple bigotry) and, on a similar shades-of-gray note, Furio the bounty hunter.
Once the fighting started, I grew invested in Jennie, too, and by the end her POV was the one I was most looking forward to. The fighting chapters were the ones where the multiple POVs worked best for me in general, like Mia trying not to think in the heat of battle, Jennie feeling the weight of command, Felicite with her priorities still firmly on herself.
I was also quite lukewarm on the relationships. For all the wonderful diversity, only Yuki and Paco felt like any kind of real connection to me (so I guess I'm really glad the authors stood their ground and insisted on keeping that one in). I didn't feel any chemistry from any side of the Mia/Ross/Jennie triad, nor did either relationship there feel interesting to me (actually, I thought Mia's lack of interest in romance at first was an indicator she was going to be an asexual character; I think I would've found that more interesting). What I did like, a lot, was the relationship between Jennie and Indra after they broke up -- the way they are still partners, still fellow Rangers and friends, and deal with the end of their romance very maturely. I'm looking forward to more of that.
The diversity I mentioned above is handled very well, I thought, because everything is intermixed and normalized; it's kind of utopian, but given that it's a post-apocalyptic community and the tension is now across the Norms vs Changed divide, I found it believable. I liked the blending of cultures present in several families -- that Felicite Wolfe has a Chinese grandmother, that Yuki's (adopted) family is Jewish and celebrates Shabbat, the Sherrif Crow's mothers are Native American and Russian, and all of it is the most normal thing in the world. The protagonists are, of course, a nice ethnic mix, too (I assume Mia is at least partly Korean, given her dad's cooking; Jennie is black, Yuki is Japanese, Ross is Native American and/or Latino, and Felicite, as mentioned, part Chinese with other ethnicities mixed in). There are at least two lesbian couples, of different ages, Yuki's relationship with Paco, and the Mia/Ross/Jennie poly arrangement. And it looks like Ross ends up disabled, since it doesn't look like he is going to regain use of his left hand (and I really liked the scene where Mia presents him with a design for a prosthetic so he can continue to use his left hand in a fight).
Random note: Mia's dress at the dance, the pink ruffles, instantly made me think of "Shindig". Given that Kaylee is also a girl genius mechanic, I wonder if that's an intentional homage.
It looks like, from skimming reviews, I should like Hostage more than Stranger, except for the lack of Felicite POV. So, I will probably read that soon, before I've forgotten who all these people are and how they relate to each other. :P
bingo: book with more than two protagonists (5 alternating POVs), book with queer protagonist (Yuki), book with POC protagonist (all five)
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Thus, a bingo update, as this brings several new bingos: [cards and lists]
Random: BINGO x2 (5 bingos, 21/25 squares, 5/7 challenges)
Book with more than two protagonists: Stranger
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Book your parent/child loves: Looking for Alaska
Book heavily featuring food -- Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book with a plant in the title: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Book without magical creatures: The Duchess War
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book heavily featuring kids (CHALLENGE MODE: from a child's POV): Wonder
Book set on a continent you've never been to: Akata Witch (Africa)
Book from friends or media: Mistborn
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Mix'n'Match: BINGO x2 (10 bingos, 24/25 squares, 3/6 challenges)
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
+ CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list: Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book where I watched movie first: Divergent
Author's first language isn't English: Gromyko, God Krysy: Putnitsa
Non-fiction book: Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War
Book heavily featuring animals: God Krysy, Gromyko (CHALLENGE MODE: book heavily featuring rodents)
Collection of short stories: Love is Hell
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a disability: Wonder
Rec from friend or media: Mistborn
Book with a female protagonist: Akata Witch
Book set in a place you've wanted to visit for a long time: Guardian of the Dead (New Zealand)
Book written by someone famous for things other than writing: Musicophilia (Oliver Sacks is a neurologist)
Funny book: A Blink of the Screen
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Serious: (3 bingos, 20/25 squares, 2/7 challenges)
Book from farthest shelf: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (CHALLENGE MODE: book you once started and didn't finish)
School requirement you missed: Ulysses
Rec from friend or media (CHALLENGE MODE: rec from supplied list): Geek Love
Book with nameless protagonist: Rebecca
Book by an author you've never read before: Jennifer Lee, Fortune Cookie chronicles
Book not in English: Tsvetok Kamalejnika, Gromyko
Book set before 1900: The Duchess War (Courtney Milan)
Graphic Novel: The Rift
Book with a protagonist with a physical disability: Wonder
Book by an author of color: Akata Witch
Book with a protagonist with a mental/social disability: Prisoner
Book with a female protagonist: Guardian of the Dead
Short story collection: A Blink of the Screen
Non-fiction book: Musicophilia
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Book by a queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
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This means I'm one square away from blackout on my mix'n'match card, and it should be an easy enough square to fill: reread of childhood favorite. But I can't decide which childhood favorite I want to reread, so I'm looking for inputs. (I reserve the right to read whatever ultimately strikes my fancy or is easiest to get my hands on, but want to see what flist consensus is, if anything.)
1) Tri tolstyaka [three fat men] -- was probably my first favorite book. I remember crushing on Tibul the gymnast and being terrified of the palace and finding the whole life-sized wind-up doll thing really creepy. I have a hard copy of the book, bought in Israel on our first visit with the rodents. I even started reading it to the rodents at one point, but it wasn't keeping their interest. Cons: I'm not sure how the political message would work for me today, and I'd hate to tarnish my memory of a childhood favorite...
2) Alya, Klyaksich i bukva Ya [Alya, Inkblot, and the letter ~Z] -- this is kind of the Russian Phantom Tollbooth, girl ends up in the land of letters and numbers and has educational adventures there. I have a copy, also from Israel, and tried reading it to the rodents. They're too old for it at this point, but I might enjoy it still?
3) Do svidaniya, ovrag [goodbuy, ditch] -- this is a children's book narrated by a feral dog which I read one summer and really loved. I have not read it in about 30 years, and remember very little of it, but I remembered enough to want to track it down. It seems out of print (or at least I couldn't find it in Israel) but I have an electronic copy.
4) I could read some Sherlock Holmes! I went on a reread at some point, but I'm pretty sure there are still stories I have only read in Russian... and I should probably read them in the original, by this point. I don't remember what my specific favorites were. Sign of the Four, maybe? (Similar options could apply to Asimov (Caves of Steel?) and Gerrald Durrell (My Family and Other Animals?). Oh, and London's Call of the Wild, too, but I don't think I want to read London.)
5) Piknik na obochine [Roadside Picnic] -- this was my obsession when I was 10, but it left such a huge mark on me, I haven't reread it since. Cons: Martyshka's (the protagonist's daughter, affected by the Zone) condition scared me as a kid; I'm not sure I want to put myself through it as a parent, even though it wouldn't be as bad now as it would've been when the rodents were little.
6) Master i Margarita -- I was a weird kid, OK, and when I was ten or eleven, this was legitimately my favorite book. I've reread chapters and passages of it plenty, and I'm pretty sure I've reread the entire Woland "thread", but I actually haven't sat down and reread the whole thing start to finish I think ever, and I probably should, one of these days.
7) Zheltyj tuman [yellow fog] -- one of the later Volkov books, which took the premise of a loose translation of Wizard of Oz and ran with it in a totally different direction. I read this book already in the US, but it became one of my favorites, despite the mixing of fairy-tale and aliens. And I have a copy, which ended up in my house after my mother and aunt M cleaned out DG's apartment. (Or I guess I could also track down one of my other favorites in the series, 7 podzemnyh korolej or Ognennyj bog maranov.)
8) Konduit i Shvambraniya -- a recent conversation with pax_athena reminded me of this. I wasn't as obsessed with this book as with many of the others on the list, but it was very near to my heart because of the boys making up imaginary worlds -- I think that's why my father recommended it to me in the first place. It would probably be interesting to reread as a grown-up and a parent. (Also, the author's -- this is autobiographical -- younger brother shares O's name, and that would be an added source of amusement for me at this point, I think...) Cons: depressing, I expect...
9) I could finish my reread of Monday Starts on Saturday in the good English translation? But I've reread "Monday" many, many times, so this feels against the spirit of the square.
So, poll:
Poll
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Two book news of note!
1) Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen has a cover, and it's even not-terrible.
2) Rivers of London GN story #2 will be called Night Witch, and set between book 5 and upcoming book 6. I'm hoping this will be the Nightingale and Varvara roadtrip we didn't get in book 5. It sounds like it should be Varvara-centric, at any rate? (BTW, anybody on my flist read Body Work issue 1 yet?)