Reading Wednesday
Jul. 16th, 2014 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Mate. Nonfiction about a doctor's experience working with drug addicts, mixed in with the science of addiction and recovery, thoughts on public policy and the War against Drugs, and the author's own experiences with (not drug related) addictive behaviors. This book just did not work for me; it dragged endlessly and I barely managed to finish it. Perhaps part of the problem was that it couldn't quite commit to being any one thing - instead we got a few pages of the life story of one particular patient, then a chapter criticizing the use of twin studies in genetics research, then a passage written by the author's son, then someone's else life story, then a description of new research on brain development, etc, etc. None of it lasted long enough to really get into, and the structure meant that a lot of the same points got repeated over and over again. I don't actually disagree with any of the points Mate makes (which essentially boil down to "drug addicts aren't bad people and public policy shouldn't treat them as such"), and yet I wouldn't recommend the book. SO boring.
Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai. Several linked short stories about a young gay boy in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 80s. Though the cover and most of the reviews really play up the "gay South Asian!" aspect, the book isn't actually focused on that. It's much more about a general sense of love working against societal expectations (other important relationships include a married woman having an affair, and a Tamil/Sinhalese romance) and the buildup to and eventual outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war. The writing is quite lovely, but the choice to have the narrator be a very young child means there's a lot of scenes of "I didn't understand what she meant" when it's pretty obvious to the reader. Which is fine at first, but got repeated almost to the point of parody. Overall, I enjoyed it.
What are you currently reading?
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. A novel not about the god, but a random homeless dude with the same name (though obviously playing with the mythology and parallels) as he dies on the front steps of an apartment building in Bombay. Meanwhile the people who live in the building mostly entirely fail to deal with the situation, instead continuing to argue, have affairs, gossip, and so on.
Prisoner by Lia Silver. PTSD WEREWOLVES I AM SO HAPPY TO BE READING THIS. Okay, I would be happy to be reading anything after Hungry Ghosts, but this is still very delightful.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Mate. Nonfiction about a doctor's experience working with drug addicts, mixed in with the science of addiction and recovery, thoughts on public policy and the War against Drugs, and the author's own experiences with (not drug related) addictive behaviors. This book just did not work for me; it dragged endlessly and I barely managed to finish it. Perhaps part of the problem was that it couldn't quite commit to being any one thing - instead we got a few pages of the life story of one particular patient, then a chapter criticizing the use of twin studies in genetics research, then a passage written by the author's son, then someone's else life story, then a description of new research on brain development, etc, etc. None of it lasted long enough to really get into, and the structure meant that a lot of the same points got repeated over and over again. I don't actually disagree with any of the points Mate makes (which essentially boil down to "drug addicts aren't bad people and public policy shouldn't treat them as such"), and yet I wouldn't recommend the book. SO boring.
Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai. Several linked short stories about a young gay boy in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 80s. Though the cover and most of the reviews really play up the "gay South Asian!" aspect, the book isn't actually focused on that. It's much more about a general sense of love working against societal expectations (other important relationships include a married woman having an affair, and a Tamil/Sinhalese romance) and the buildup to and eventual outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war. The writing is quite lovely, but the choice to have the narrator be a very young child means there's a lot of scenes of "I didn't understand what she meant" when it's pretty obvious to the reader. Which is fine at first, but got repeated almost to the point of parody. Overall, I enjoyed it.
What are you currently reading?
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri. A novel not about the god, but a random homeless dude with the same name (though obviously playing with the mythology and parallels) as he dies on the front steps of an apartment building in Bombay. Meanwhile the people who live in the building mostly entirely fail to deal with the situation, instead continuing to argue, have affairs, gossip, and so on.
Prisoner by Lia Silver. PTSD WEREWOLVES I AM SO HAPPY TO BE READING THIS. Okay, I would be happy to be reading anything after Hungry Ghosts, but this is still very delightful.
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