Reading Wednesday
Feb. 17th, 2016 03:05 pmJust fyi, the "t" and "g" keys aren't working on my keyboard right now. I've been trying to add them in as I go along, but I'm sure I'm going to miss some, so if this post is full of typos, sorry about that. (Also I think I have to buy a new computer, this sucksssssss.)
What did you just finish?
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: A Story of Marriage and Money in the Early Republic by Margaret A. Oppenheimer. A nonfiction book about Eliza Jumel (1775-1865), a woman of extremely poor origins who managed to become a wealthy socialite, important early art collector, successful businesswoman, frequent traveler to France, and, oh yeah, Aaron Burr's second wife. That last accomplishment was extremely brief, and culminated in divorce - she filed the papers on the 30th anniversary of the Burr/Hamilton duel, because Mrs. Jumel was badass. After she died, her heirs spent decades fighting over her enormous fortune, spreading stories that she had been a child prostitute, that she had had an illegitimate child with George Washington, that she had tricked her first husband into marrying her by faking death, that she had murdered him, and that she had gone mad in her old age. As you might guess, none of these rumors were true.
This book is an attempt to set the record straight, which probably would have been more effective if I had ever heard of Eliza Jumel before reading it. On its own, stripped of the fantastic accretions, it's less interesting. The writing does a great job of communicating dense historical research in a readable fashion, and I found myself turning the pages quickly, but ultimately there's just not much here to hold your attention, unless you happen to be particularly into Eliza Jumel for your own, previous reasons.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Another one of those early Discworld novels that I'd only read once, years and years ago, because I remembered not liking it much. Well, that was totally a WRONG OPINION, LET ME TELL YOU.
In this, the 10th book in the Discworld series, the idea of movies arrives in Ankh-Morpork, and is quickly taken over by the Discworld's usual cast of money-grubbing characters (so, not that different from actual Hollywood, ha!). Unfortunately - or unsurprisingly - it does not go well, and soon Cthulu-esque creatures are using the movies to break through into reality and destroy everything.
Victor and Ginger are the main characters, as the first two film stars, but the real joy of this book is in the secondary characters, many of whom are some of my favorite people in the whole series, mostly making their first appearances here: Ridcully! Head of the Wizard College, he's more interested in hunting and making terrible dad jokes than the traditional wizard occupations of studying indoors and trying to assassinate each another. He is firmly oblivious to any suggestion that he didn't come up with himself. Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler! The oiliest, most shameless, most oddly successful salesman in the whole multiverse, the only person who could possibly convince someone to buy one of his "sausages inna bun" more than once. Gaspode the Wonder Dog! He talks! For real! But he's not interested in doing tricks, and don't call him a "good boy". Detritus the Troll! He's incredibly dumb but so good-hearted, and his romance with Ruby in this book is so sweet. Ponder Stibbons! Here he's not quite yet become the tech nerd of wizards, but he's got potential!
The book is, as you might have guessed, mostly a parody of early Hollywood, particularly the silent days. Which may have been why I didn't enjoy it the first time I read it - I doubt I knew enough about Samuel Goldwyn or Fred Astaire to get many of the allusions. Though there's plenty of jokes about King Kong and Gone with the Wind and the Oscars that I certainly should have known.
Anyway. This is one of the books where Pratchett shows off his skill at mixing silly humor with surprisingly moving passages of different tones, whether horror or grandeur or longing. I was particularly struck by this description:
There’s a bar like it in every town. It’s dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don’t address their words to one another and they don’t listen, either. They just talk to the hurt inside. It’s a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.
It always does a brisk trade.
Which, okay, probably doesn't seem all that impressive excerpted like this, but trust me, when it comes as part of a passage in which one of the drinkers is a talking dog jealous that he's not as pretty as Lassie, it really packs a punch. And that sudden, unexpected shift in tone is Pratchett's greatest skill, I think. Other people can do comedy, other people can do pathos, but who else does both so seamlessly?
What are you currently reading?
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva. A book recommended to me by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
egelantier ages ago, but I suck and so am only now getting around to reading it.
What did you just finish?
The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel: A Story of Marriage and Money in the Early Republic by Margaret A. Oppenheimer. A nonfiction book about Eliza Jumel (1775-1865), a woman of extremely poor origins who managed to become a wealthy socialite, important early art collector, successful businesswoman, frequent traveler to France, and, oh yeah, Aaron Burr's second wife. That last accomplishment was extremely brief, and culminated in divorce - she filed the papers on the 30th anniversary of the Burr/Hamilton duel, because Mrs. Jumel was badass. After she died, her heirs spent decades fighting over her enormous fortune, spreading stories that she had been a child prostitute, that she had had an illegitimate child with George Washington, that she had tricked her first husband into marrying her by faking death, that she had murdered him, and that she had gone mad in her old age. As you might guess, none of these rumors were true.
This book is an attempt to set the record straight, which probably would have been more effective if I had ever heard of Eliza Jumel before reading it. On its own, stripped of the fantastic accretions, it's less interesting. The writing does a great job of communicating dense historical research in a readable fashion, and I found myself turning the pages quickly, but ultimately there's just not much here to hold your attention, unless you happen to be particularly into Eliza Jumel for your own, previous reasons.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Another one of those early Discworld novels that I'd only read once, years and years ago, because I remembered not liking it much. Well, that was totally a WRONG OPINION, LET ME TELL YOU.
In this, the 10th book in the Discworld series, the idea of movies arrives in Ankh-Morpork, and is quickly taken over by the Discworld's usual cast of money-grubbing characters (so, not that different from actual Hollywood, ha!). Unfortunately - or unsurprisingly - it does not go well, and soon Cthulu-esque creatures are using the movies to break through into reality and destroy everything.
Victor and Ginger are the main characters, as the first two film stars, but the real joy of this book is in the secondary characters, many of whom are some of my favorite people in the whole series, mostly making their first appearances here: Ridcully! Head of the Wizard College, he's more interested in hunting and making terrible dad jokes than the traditional wizard occupations of studying indoors and trying to assassinate each another. He is firmly oblivious to any suggestion that he didn't come up with himself. Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler! The oiliest, most shameless, most oddly successful salesman in the whole multiverse, the only person who could possibly convince someone to buy one of his "sausages inna bun" more than once. Gaspode the Wonder Dog! He talks! For real! But he's not interested in doing tricks, and don't call him a "good boy". Detritus the Troll! He's incredibly dumb but so good-hearted, and his romance with Ruby in this book is so sweet. Ponder Stibbons! Here he's not quite yet become the tech nerd of wizards, but he's got potential!
The book is, as you might have guessed, mostly a parody of early Hollywood, particularly the silent days. Which may have been why I didn't enjoy it the first time I read it - I doubt I knew enough about Samuel Goldwyn or Fred Astaire to get many of the allusions. Though there's plenty of jokes about King Kong and Gone with the Wind and the Oscars that I certainly should have known.
Anyway. This is one of the books where Pratchett shows off his skill at mixing silly humor with surprisingly moving passages of different tones, whether horror or grandeur or longing. I was particularly struck by this description:
There’s a bar like it in every town. It’s dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don’t address their words to one another and they don’t listen, either. They just talk to the hurt inside. It’s a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.
It always does a brisk trade.
Which, okay, probably doesn't seem all that impressive excerpted like this, but trust me, when it comes as part of a passage in which one of the drinkers is a talking dog jealous that he's not as pretty as Lassie, it really packs a punch. And that sudden, unexpected shift in tone is Pratchett's greatest skill, I think. Other people can do comedy, other people can do pathos, but who else does both so seamlessly?
What are you currently reading?
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva. A book recommended to me by
egelantier ages ago, but I suck and so am only now getting around to reading it.
