Reading Wedn- Thursday
Aug. 22nd, 2013 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Tales From Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry. A book of short stories about the interconnected lives of a community of Parsi Mumbaikars who live in the same apartment building. I liked this book better than the other one of Mistry's I've read (Such a Long Journey), I think because these characters were much more sympathetic. It's hard to say what this book is about, because there's not really any sort of over-arching plot; it's just various snippets of daily life and small dramas and long-term relationships. I do like Mistry's writing– he's very good at subtlety and understatement– but I often finished the stories feeling like I was missing something. Maybe I am not a deep enough reader to understand whatever point he was trying to make, or maybe it's just that there wasn't a point deeper than "daily life: I have portrayed it", but I kept feeling like I didn't know why any of these stories existed. I mean, they weren't bad! But I just felt like there was supposed to be more, and I couldn't see it.
Aaaand that's the only thing I finished this week. I've been reading a novel-length fanfiction instead: Bel Canto, BBC Sherlock, but an AU set in a turn-of-the-century opera house, mashed up with Phantom of the Opera. It's very well-written, but the fact that none of the characters can figure out some of the obvious mysteries is driving me crazy.
What are you currently reading?
Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum. This book is going so slowly because I am TERRIFIED of it. But, uh, it's also very interesting and well-written?
Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar. A novel about the interconnected lives of a community of Parsi Mumbaikars who live in the same apartment building. I did not do that on purpose.
Tales From Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry. A book of short stories about the interconnected lives of a community of Parsi Mumbaikars who live in the same apartment building. I liked this book better than the other one of Mistry's I've read (Such a Long Journey), I think because these characters were much more sympathetic. It's hard to say what this book is about, because there's not really any sort of over-arching plot; it's just various snippets of daily life and small dramas and long-term relationships. I do like Mistry's writing– he's very good at subtlety and understatement– but I often finished the stories feeling like I was missing something. Maybe I am not a deep enough reader to understand whatever point he was trying to make, or maybe it's just that there wasn't a point deeper than "daily life: I have portrayed it", but I kept feeling like I didn't know why any of these stories existed. I mean, they weren't bad! But I just felt like there was supposed to be more, and I couldn't see it.
Aaaand that's the only thing I finished this week. I've been reading a novel-length fanfiction instead: Bel Canto, BBC Sherlock, but an AU set in a turn-of-the-century opera house, mashed up with Phantom of the Opera. It's very well-written, but the fact that none of the characters can figure out some of the obvious mysteries is driving me crazy.
What are you currently reading?
Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum. This book is going so slowly because I am TERRIFIED of it. But, uh, it's also very interesting and well-written?
Bombay Time by Thrity Umrigar. A novel about the interconnected lives of a community of Parsi Mumbaikars who live in the same apartment building. I did not do that on purpose.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 08:50 pm (UTC)I have the hardest time trying to like the snippets of vaguely interconnected lives books. (Especially when they're about the mundanity of life or are deliberately cynical; my preferences run towards sword and sorcery or space and history.) I always feel like I'm missing the meat of the story--the part that makes me want to know more about the characters and care about them, and that frustrates me. I like stories with defining arcs, I think. I'm similarly not the biggest fan of 5 things fic; I've definitely read some really great ones, and those are the ones with an overarching theme and resolve at the end, but the format isn't a draw for me.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-23 06:12 pm (UTC)I'm a big fan of fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction... anything that has a "world building" element to it. Stuff that's just set in the modern day, when the entire point is the drama and angst of an average life (which is more or less the entire 'literary fiction' genre, as far as I can tell) tends to really bore me. And yes, I really need characters that I care about.
I like most of the 5 Things fic I've read, but my fandoms have never been overrun with it the way I see in some of the larger fandoms, so perhaps I just haven't had a chance to get tired of it yet. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-08-29 12:50 am (UTC)YES exactly. Like 5 things, I do enjoy works that are set in modern day whatever. But in that case, it's the writing or the plot or something special that makes me like it--the genre itself isn't a why. Whereas certain things and tropes *cough arrangedmarriage cough* are a draw, in and of themselves, and I'll even read terrible things just for them.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-29 06:18 pm (UTC)*grins* Yeah, I definitely have my favorite tropes also. I have read some terrible, terrible books for the sake of them.