Reading Wednesday
Mar. 26th, 2014 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Raj by Gita Mehta. A novel about Jaya, born at the very end of the 1800s as the princess of an (imaginary) independent Rajput kingdom, who marries the king of another (imaginary) independent kingdom, this one near Bengal. It's a novel about the Indian independence movement, but nearly everything I've previously read (both fiction and non-fiction) about it has focused on British India, so it's really interesting to see a perspective from the Princely States. There's a lot also about changing gender customs (both Jaya's mother and several other important women in her life live in purdah, while she herself doesn't). Unfortunately, the characters aren't nearly as good as the setting, but it's still a worthwhile book.
Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson. The third in the 'Walt Longmire mystery' series. In this one, Walt and co. leave rural Wyoming to visit Philadelphia, where his daughter lives, although she is injured right before they meet up and subsequently spends nearly the entire novel in a coma, from which she may or may not recover. (Dun dun DUN!) There's a lot of description of the rural West vs the Urban East Coast, which is not a comparison I'm usually fond of. Such parallels tend to consist of stereotypes that I find not just simplistic, but completely untrue: city-dwellers are rude, callous, vain, violent; country folk are good-hearted, simple, open, and trustworthy. But I actually quite liked it in this book. It took up unusual details– the humidity of the air, the sound of a thunderstorm, street names– which felt both newer and more realistic.
I keep going back and forth on if I like the Walt/Vic romance. Mostly because I think he's way too old for her, though I can't remember what the age difference is, exactly. I think my problem is just that they had such a mentor/protegee relationship in the first book that I can't shift it to romance now. I did like how it played out in this book more than I expected to. On the other hand, a mother and daughter flirting with the same guy is a trope I HATE. So, uh, that's still up in the air.
What are you currently reading?
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. A novel about India in the late 1800s. I've been putting off reading this book– despite it being hugely famous and people constantly asking me if I've read it– because I'm pretty sure it's going to be obnoxiously pro-colonialism*. (The dedication, for instance, is to the author's husband and father-in-law, British soldiers who served in India.) But I'm not far enough into it yet to judge, so perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.
I was quite amused by this passage, describing a woman who died after giving birth in a tent:
It was not her fault that Isobel died. It was the wind that killed Isobel: that cold wind off the far, high snows beyond the passes. It stirred up the dust and the dead pine-needles and sent them swirling through the tent where the lamp guttered to the draught, and there was dirt in that dust: germs and infection and uncleanness from the camp outside, and from other camps. Dirt that would not have been found in a bedroom in Peshawar cantonment, with an English doctor to care for the young mother.
I'm pretty sure the author a) does not understand how germs work, and b) is way overestimating the value of a doctor in 1850.
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz. I've read other books by Horwitz, and quite enjoyed them; he writes non-fiction in a very lively, readable way. I've only just started this one though, so I don't have much to say about it yet.
*This reminds me of a British dude I met once at a tea-shop in India who, apparently needing someone else white to talk to, invited me to sit with him and proceeded to discourse on how much better the trains had been under British rule. It did not occur to me until later, of course, that the dude was at least thirty years too young to even REMEMBER British rule.
Raj by Gita Mehta. A novel about Jaya, born at the very end of the 1800s as the princess of an (imaginary) independent Rajput kingdom, who marries the king of another (imaginary) independent kingdom, this one near Bengal. It's a novel about the Indian independence movement, but nearly everything I've previously read (both fiction and non-fiction) about it has focused on British India, so it's really interesting to see a perspective from the Princely States. There's a lot also about changing gender customs (both Jaya's mother and several other important women in her life live in purdah, while she herself doesn't). Unfortunately, the characters aren't nearly as good as the setting, but it's still a worthwhile book.
Kindness Goes Unpunished by Craig Johnson. The third in the 'Walt Longmire mystery' series. In this one, Walt and co. leave rural Wyoming to visit Philadelphia, where his daughter lives, although she is injured right before they meet up and subsequently spends nearly the entire novel in a coma, from which she may or may not recover. (Dun dun DUN!) There's a lot of description of the rural West vs the Urban East Coast, which is not a comparison I'm usually fond of. Such parallels tend to consist of stereotypes that I find not just simplistic, but completely untrue: city-dwellers are rude, callous, vain, violent; country folk are good-hearted, simple, open, and trustworthy. But I actually quite liked it in this book. It took up unusual details– the humidity of the air, the sound of a thunderstorm, street names– which felt both newer and more realistic.
I keep going back and forth on if I like the Walt/Vic romance. Mostly because I think he's way too old for her, though I can't remember what the age difference is, exactly. I think my problem is just that they had such a mentor/protegee relationship in the first book that I can't shift it to romance now. I did like how it played out in this book more than I expected to. On the other hand, a mother and daughter flirting with the same guy is a trope I HATE. So, uh, that's still up in the air.
What are you currently reading?
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. A novel about India in the late 1800s. I've been putting off reading this book– despite it being hugely famous and people constantly asking me if I've read it– because I'm pretty sure it's going to be obnoxiously pro-colonialism*. (The dedication, for instance, is to the author's husband and father-in-law, British soldiers who served in India.) But I'm not far enough into it yet to judge, so perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.
I was quite amused by this passage, describing a woman who died after giving birth in a tent:
It was not her fault that Isobel died. It was the wind that killed Isobel: that cold wind off the far, high snows beyond the passes. It stirred up the dust and the dead pine-needles and sent them swirling through the tent where the lamp guttered to the draught, and there was dirt in that dust: germs and infection and uncleanness from the camp outside, and from other camps. Dirt that would not have been found in a bedroom in Peshawar cantonment, with an English doctor to care for the young mother.
I'm pretty sure the author a) does not understand how germs work, and b) is way overestimating the value of a doctor in 1850.
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz. I've read other books by Horwitz, and quite enjoyed them; he writes non-fiction in a very lively, readable way. I've only just started this one though, so I don't have much to say about it yet.
*This reminds me of a British dude I met once at a tea-shop in India who, apparently needing someone else white to talk to, invited me to sit with him and proceeded to discourse on how much better the trains had been under British rule. It did not occur to me until later, of course, that the dude was at least thirty years too young to even REMEMBER British rule.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-27 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 01:31 am (UTC)She also keeps misspelling Indian words, which at first I was like- whatever, there's different systems for transliteration. And then I thought, well, maybe that's how they spelled it in the 1800s. But I just came across one that under no circumstances should have a r in it, and yet somehow did. It's bothering me possibly more than it should.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-28 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-29 10:32 pm (UTC)