2015 book meme
2014 meme was here: http://sevenswells.livejournal.com/144719.html
How many books read in 2015?
About 15.
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
One non-fiction (En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule by Edouard Louis, an autobiography), all the rest is fiction
Male/Female authors?
7 female authors (Susanna Clarke, Mary Robinette Kowal, C.S. Pacat, Jean Webster, Berylia, Naomi Novik, Michèle Barrière), 3 male (Ben Aaronovitch, Terry Pratchett, Edouard Louis)
Favorite books read?
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke, amazing, enchanting atmosphere, excellent writing, and fascinating 'verse. Even though I love JS&MN with a burning passion I think I might have preferred Ladies because I'm not one for short stories but I very much enjoyed these, and I think Clarke's style has even more impact in short story form.
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule was so good too, very well-written, illuminating and politically sound (the author is a disciple of Pierre Bourdieu and it shows)
Least favorite?
Meurtres au Potager du Roy by Michèle Barrière: I had to read it for work, and I just hate this author. She infodumps constantly, her characters are all irritating and lifeless and her stories are shit. But she's well-documented, which is why I read her shit in the first place =____=
The PC Grant series started really well with the first book, Rivers of London, but I really didn't like the second and third book -- a shame. I don't think I'll read the rest even though I think the worldbuilding is cool and I really like the narrator.
Oldest book read?
Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster (a re-read, actually, and it was as charming as I remembered. I read it when I was sick and it was just perfect)
Newest?
Prince Captif by C.S. Pacat I think
Longest book title?
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule (26 letters)
Shortest title?
Prince Captif ("Captive Prince") -- and it's such an incredibly clever title too. I mean, everything you need to know is contained in it, it's the story summed up in two words. I wish I could find clever titles like that (I'm not good with them)
How many re-reads?
Two, La Huitième Fille by Terry Pratchett and Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The first being less good than I remember at first reading, unfortunately.
Captive Prince was half-a reread since I had read a lot of it online but not most of the second book, I think
Most books read by one author this year?
PC Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (three in total)
Any in translation?
Captive Prince was translated (good enough translation), La Huitième Fille as well (Terry Pratchett's official French translator is one of our best), and I read my copy of JS&MN in French because I was afraid the language would be a bit too complex for me; the French translation of that book is absolutely superb, it was a delicious reading, one of the best translations I've read (and since I received Ladies in English for my birthday I was forced to try and read it in its original language, turns out I understood everything just fine, so a re-read of JS&MN in English is in order -- and I want to buy a proper nice edition of it too, a nice hardcover mmmh yes
How many of this year's books were from the library?
One, La Huitième Fille
Book that most changed my perspective:
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule; the book explained very well how toxic masculinity is developped and maintained in certain parts of French society, how it's a whole system and the ones maintaining it are not exactly the ones at fault (I actually found it very forgiving, almost tender with its characters, even the most horrid ones). It was a harrowing portrait of popular classes in the years 2000-2010 and I've no doubt there is a lot of truth in it.
Favorite character:
Jonathan Strange, who else? He is me and he is my son. I love him.
Favorite scene:
All of them have to be from JS&MN and there are too many to choose from. I think the one with Napoleon, the goose and the wardrobe just made me die laughing; Jonathan meeting lord Byron was a good one too, but my favourite scene is not a very funny one; it's from a letter written by Jonathan to Sir Walter Pole describing how he first arrived in Venice. My heart just broke for him; it's a very poignant, gothic and somehow existential scene, I really like it.
Favorite quote:
Here's the scene in question:
"Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice
Jonathan Strange to Sir Walter Pole, Oct. 16th, 1816.
We left terra firma at Mestre. There were two gondolas. Miss Greysteel and her aunt were to go in one, and the doctor and I were to go in the other. But whether there was some obscurity in my Italian when I explained it to the gondolieri or whether the distribution of Miss Greysteel’s boxes and trunks dictated another arrangement I do not know, but matters did not fall out as we had planned.
The first gondola glided out across the lagoon with all the Greysteels inside it, while I still stood upon the shore. Dr Greysteel stuck his head out and roared his apologies, like the good fellow that he is, before his sister - who I think is a little nervous of the water - pulled him back in again.
It was the most trivial incident yet somehow it unnerved me and for some moments afterwards I was prey to the most morbid fears and imaginings. I looked at my gondola.
Much has been said, I know, about the funereal appearance of these contraptions - which are something between a coffin and a boat. But I was struck by quite another idea. I thought how much they resembled the black-painted, black-curtained conjuring boxes of my childhood - the sort of boxes into which quack-sorcerers would put country people’s handkerchiefs and coins and lockets. Sometimes these articles could never be got back - for which the sorcerer was always very sorry - « but fairy-spirits, Sir, is very giddy, wexatious creatures. » And all the nursemaids and kitchemaids I ever knew when I was a child, always had an aunt, who knew a woman, whose first cousin’s boy had been put into such a box, and had never been seen again.
Standing on the quayside at Mestre I had a horrible notion that when the Greysteels got to Venice they would open up the gondola that should have conveyed me there and find nothing inside.
This idea took hold of me so strongly that for some minutes I forgot to think of any thing else and there were actual tears standing in my eyes - which I think may serve to shew how nervous I have become. It is quite ridiculous for a man to begin to be afraid that he is about to disappear. It was towards evening and our two gondolas were as black as night and quite as melancholy. Yet the sky was the coldest, palest blue imaginable. There was no wind or hardly any, and the sea was nothing but the sky’s mirror. There were immeasurable spaces of still cold light above us and immeasurable spaces of still cold light beneath. But the city ahead of us received no illumination either from sky or lagoon, and appeared like a vast collection of shadow-towers and shadow-pinnacles, all pierced with tiny lights and set upon the shining water.
As we entered Venice the water became crowded with scraps and rubbish - splinters of wood and hay, orange peels and cabbage stalks. I looked down and saw a ghostly hand for a moment - it was only a moment - but I quite believed that there was a woman beneath the dirty water, trying to find her way back to the light. Of course it was only a white glove, but the fright, while it lasted, was very great."
Another quote that I like, a small poem:
“The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by”
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Susanna Clarke is now definitely a role model in terms of writing for me, and I'm very inspired to write my own stuff after reading such good books. It took guts to write something as peculiar as JS&MN, and I want to be just as brave, no matter how peculiar my novel is.
How many you'd actually read again?
Like I said, I will probably re-read JS&MN in English, for science (and also because I'm obsessive as fuck). Not right now though.
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule might deserve a re-read as well.
How many books read in 2015?
About 15.
Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
One non-fiction (En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule by Edouard Louis, an autobiography), all the rest is fiction
Male/Female authors?
7 female authors (Susanna Clarke, Mary Robinette Kowal, C.S. Pacat, Jean Webster, Berylia, Naomi Novik, Michèle Barrière), 3 male (Ben Aaronovitch, Terry Pratchett, Edouard Louis)
Favorite books read?
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke, amazing, enchanting atmosphere, excellent writing, and fascinating 'verse. Even though I love JS&MN with a burning passion I think I might have preferred Ladies because I'm not one for short stories but I very much enjoyed these, and I think Clarke's style has even more impact in short story form.
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule was so good too, very well-written, illuminating and politically sound (the author is a disciple of Pierre Bourdieu and it shows)
Least favorite?
Meurtres au Potager du Roy by Michèle Barrière: I had to read it for work, and I just hate this author. She infodumps constantly, her characters are all irritating and lifeless and her stories are shit. But she's well-documented, which is why I read her shit in the first place =____=
The PC Grant series started really well with the first book, Rivers of London, but I really didn't like the second and third book -- a shame. I don't think I'll read the rest even though I think the worldbuilding is cool and I really like the narrator.
Oldest book read?
Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster (a re-read, actually, and it was as charming as I remembered. I read it when I was sick and it was just perfect)
Newest?
Prince Captif by C.S. Pacat I think
Longest book title?
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule (26 letters)
Shortest title?
Prince Captif ("Captive Prince") -- and it's such an incredibly clever title too. I mean, everything you need to know is contained in it, it's the story summed up in two words. I wish I could find clever titles like that (I'm not good with them)
How many re-reads?
Two, La Huitième Fille by Terry Pratchett and Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The first being less good than I remember at first reading, unfortunately.
Captive Prince was half-a reread since I had read a lot of it online but not most of the second book, I think
Most books read by one author this year?
PC Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (three in total)
Any in translation?
Captive Prince was translated (good enough translation), La Huitième Fille as well (Terry Pratchett's official French translator is one of our best), and I read my copy of JS&MN in French because I was afraid the language would be a bit too complex for me; the French translation of that book is absolutely superb, it was a delicious reading, one of the best translations I've read (and since I received Ladies in English for my birthday I was forced to try and read it in its original language, turns out I understood everything just fine, so a re-read of JS&MN in English is in order -- and I want to buy a proper nice edition of it too, a nice hardcover mmmh yes
How many of this year's books were from the library?
One, La Huitième Fille
Book that most changed my perspective:
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule; the book explained very well how toxic masculinity is developped and maintained in certain parts of French society, how it's a whole system and the ones maintaining it are not exactly the ones at fault (I actually found it very forgiving, almost tender with its characters, even the most horrid ones). It was a harrowing portrait of popular classes in the years 2000-2010 and I've no doubt there is a lot of truth in it.
Favorite character:
Jonathan Strange, who else? He is me and he is my son. I love him.
Favorite scene:
All of them have to be from JS&MN and there are too many to choose from. I think the one with Napoleon, the goose and the wardrobe just made me die laughing; Jonathan meeting lord Byron was a good one too, but my favourite scene is not a very funny one; it's from a letter written by Jonathan to Sir Walter Pole describing how he first arrived in Venice. My heart just broke for him; it's a very poignant, gothic and somehow existential scene, I really like it.
Favorite quote:
Here's the scene in question:
"Campo Santa Maria Zobenigo, Venice
Jonathan Strange to Sir Walter Pole, Oct. 16th, 1816.
We left terra firma at Mestre. There were two gondolas. Miss Greysteel and her aunt were to go in one, and the doctor and I were to go in the other. But whether there was some obscurity in my Italian when I explained it to the gondolieri or whether the distribution of Miss Greysteel’s boxes and trunks dictated another arrangement I do not know, but matters did not fall out as we had planned.
The first gondola glided out across the lagoon with all the Greysteels inside it, while I still stood upon the shore. Dr Greysteel stuck his head out and roared his apologies, like the good fellow that he is, before his sister - who I think is a little nervous of the water - pulled him back in again.
It was the most trivial incident yet somehow it unnerved me and for some moments afterwards I was prey to the most morbid fears and imaginings. I looked at my gondola.
Much has been said, I know, about the funereal appearance of these contraptions - which are something between a coffin and a boat. But I was struck by quite another idea. I thought how much they resembled the black-painted, black-curtained conjuring boxes of my childhood - the sort of boxes into which quack-sorcerers would put country people’s handkerchiefs and coins and lockets. Sometimes these articles could never be got back - for which the sorcerer was always very sorry - « but fairy-spirits, Sir, is very giddy, wexatious creatures. » And all the nursemaids and kitchemaids I ever knew when I was a child, always had an aunt, who knew a woman, whose first cousin’s boy had been put into such a box, and had never been seen again.
Standing on the quayside at Mestre I had a horrible notion that when the Greysteels got to Venice they would open up the gondola that should have conveyed me there and find nothing inside.
This idea took hold of me so strongly that for some minutes I forgot to think of any thing else and there were actual tears standing in my eyes - which I think may serve to shew how nervous I have become. It is quite ridiculous for a man to begin to be afraid that he is about to disappear. It was towards evening and our two gondolas were as black as night and quite as melancholy. Yet the sky was the coldest, palest blue imaginable. There was no wind or hardly any, and the sea was nothing but the sky’s mirror. There were immeasurable spaces of still cold light above us and immeasurable spaces of still cold light beneath. But the city ahead of us received no illumination either from sky or lagoon, and appeared like a vast collection of shadow-towers and shadow-pinnacles, all pierced with tiny lights and set upon the shining water.
As we entered Venice the water became crowded with scraps and rubbish - splinters of wood and hay, orange peels and cabbage stalks. I looked down and saw a ghostly hand for a moment - it was only a moment - but I quite believed that there was a woman beneath the dirty water, trying to find her way back to the light. Of course it was only a white glove, but the fright, while it lasted, was very great."
Another quote that I like, a small poem:
“The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by”
Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Susanna Clarke is now definitely a role model in terms of writing for me, and I'm very inspired to write my own stuff after reading such good books. It took guts to write something as peculiar as JS&MN, and I want to be just as brave, no matter how peculiar my novel is.
How many you'd actually read again?
Like I said, I will probably re-read JS&MN in English, for science (and also because I'm obsessive as fuck). Not right now though.
En Finir Avec Eddy Bellegueule might deserve a re-read as well.