Reading Wedn- Thursday
Sep. 26th, 2013 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Lotus Palace by Jeannie Lin. A romance set in Tang dynasty China between the maid of a courtesan and a playboy scholar. I wanted to like this so much more than I did. So many of the ideas were exactly the sort of thing I like: people pretending to be less than they are! Troubled relationships between sisters! Sex that does not make anyone's emotions clearer or less complicated! People trying to be self-sacrificial! But I think the writing just didn't work for me. I never felt emotionally engaged with any of the characters or their problems.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. A poor but very smart little girl grows up in 1900s and 1910s Williamsburg. I read this in order to participate in a new book-club in my neighborhood, which only sort of worked out in that three whole people showed up to discuss it, of whom one other had read the book. But I did like the book! I'd never read it before, and was under the misconception that it was a children's book. It is about childhood, partly, but there is also sex and abortions and alcoholism (and people dying of consumption, oddly) and various other things that were not what I expected. I liked it a great deal; the writing is very evocative, and had lots of little details about Brooklyn that are true but rarely seen in literature.
What are you currently reading?
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle. I know, still. But I have finally gotten around to actively reading this again.
Gora by Rabindranath Tagore. Extremely orthodox and caste-conscious Hindu dude in late 1800s Calcutta is unaware he is actually a white man adopted as an infant.
The Lotus Palace by Jeannie Lin. A romance set in Tang dynasty China between the maid of a courtesan and a playboy scholar. I wanted to like this so much more than I did. So many of the ideas were exactly the sort of thing I like: people pretending to be less than they are! Troubled relationships between sisters! Sex that does not make anyone's emotions clearer or less complicated! People trying to be self-sacrificial! But I think the writing just didn't work for me. I never felt emotionally engaged with any of the characters or their problems.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. A poor but very smart little girl grows up in 1900s and 1910s Williamsburg. I read this in order to participate in a new book-club in my neighborhood, which only sort of worked out in that three whole people showed up to discuss it, of whom one other had read the book. But I did like the book! I'd never read it before, and was under the misconception that it was a children's book. It is about childhood, partly, but there is also sex and abortions and alcoholism (and people dying of consumption, oddly) and various other things that were not what I expected. I liked it a great deal; the writing is very evocative, and had lots of little details about Brooklyn that are true but rarely seen in literature.
What are you currently reading?
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle. I know, still. But I have finally gotten around to actively reading this again.
Gora by Rabindranath Tagore. Extremely orthodox and caste-conscious Hindu dude in late 1800s Calcutta is unaware he is actually a white man adopted as an infant.
