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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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.
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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.