Reading Wednesday
May. 29th, 2013 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Englishman's Cameo by Madhulika Liddle. This is the first in a mystery series about a minor nobleman in 1600s Delhi. The setting is fantastic: the imperial court has just moved from Agra to Delhi (or, well, Shahjahanabad, I should say, but Delhi is easier to spell) and so there are fantastic gardens and mosques and havelis and forts to set scenes in; the Taj Mahal is being built; Aurangzeb is beginning the first grumblings of rebellion; Dara Shikoh wants to write philosophical poetry and Jahangir wants to take opium and waste money; there are courtesans and Europeans and Persians and Hindus and Muslims and basically it is just an amazing place to put a book. Alas, the writing does not live up to the idea, and the characters are all fairly shallow. I'm still going to read the sequels.
Also, the mystery part was good, I guess? I don't know. I'm never really concerned with trying to figure out the whodunit of mysteries.
Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly. The one in which Hannibal's opium addiction plays a pivotal part in defeating the bad guys! This is probably the darkest of the Benjamin January books, since it revolves around Ben disguised as a field hand on a plantation during sugar harvesting season. As though slavery is not a depressing enough topic, he also spends a significant part of the plot cut off from all of his family and friends, and half-convinced that it's not so much "they're busy" as "they've forgotten about me". There's also some disconcertingly detailed descriptions of people dying of poisoning. Uh, all that said, I love this book, particularly Ben's rediscovery of his father. I also find Hannibal and Ben's continual failure to be at all convincing as master and slave way more amusing than I should.
What are you currently reading?
Die Upon a Kiss by Barbara Hambly: Ben, Hannibal, and Rose (yay Rose!) get involved in backstage opera shenanigans and 1830s Italian politics are super confusing!
Swami and Friends by R. K. Narayan: schoolboy shenanigans in small-town South India!
(Okay, so one set of shenanigans involves assault and murder and the other involves cricket bats and khadi cloth, but otherwise remarkably similar.)
The Englishman's Cameo by Madhulika Liddle. This is the first in a mystery series about a minor nobleman in 1600s Delhi. The setting is fantastic: the imperial court has just moved from Agra to Delhi (or, well, Shahjahanabad, I should say, but Delhi is easier to spell) and so there are fantastic gardens and mosques and havelis and forts to set scenes in; the Taj Mahal is being built; Aurangzeb is beginning the first grumblings of rebellion; Dara Shikoh wants to write philosophical poetry and Jahangir wants to take opium and waste money; there are courtesans and Europeans and Persians and Hindus and Muslims and basically it is just an amazing place to put a book. Alas, the writing does not live up to the idea, and the characters are all fairly shallow. I'm still going to read the sequels.
Also, the mystery part was good, I guess? I don't know. I'm never really concerned with trying to figure out the whodunit of mysteries.
Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly. The one in which Hannibal's opium addiction plays a pivotal part in defeating the bad guys! This is probably the darkest of the Benjamin January books, since it revolves around Ben disguised as a field hand on a plantation during sugar harvesting season. As though slavery is not a depressing enough topic, he also spends a significant part of the plot cut off from all of his family and friends, and half-convinced that it's not so much "they're busy" as "they've forgotten about me". There's also some disconcertingly detailed descriptions of people dying of poisoning. Uh, all that said, I love this book, particularly Ben's rediscovery of his father. I also find Hannibal and Ben's continual failure to be at all convincing as master and slave way more amusing than I should.
What are you currently reading?
Die Upon a Kiss by Barbara Hambly: Ben, Hannibal, and Rose (yay Rose!) get involved in backstage opera shenanigans and 1830s Italian politics are super confusing!
Swami and Friends by R. K. Narayan: schoolboy shenanigans in small-town South India!
(Okay, so one set of shenanigans involves assault and murder and the other involves cricket bats and khadi cloth, but otherwise remarkably similar.)
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Date: 2013-05-29 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 01:10 am (UTC)(also, Ben giving Hannibal instructions in Latin is <3)
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Date: 2013-05-30 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 01:52 am (UTC)The Latin instructions were hilarious! While I've been rereading it, I've been stopping to find translations for all the various Latin/Italian/French/whatever quotations (all except the Greek, since unfortunately Google doesn't seem able to handle letters in other alphabets), and it is occasionally deeply awesome.