Reading Wednesday
Sep. 3rd, 2014 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. In 1960s Calcutta, two brothers – almost twins – grow up and attend college. One gets involved with the Naxalites (a violent, rural/peasant-focused Marxist movement that continues to be a force in India today); the other goes away to graduate school in the US, never to return. The Naxalite gets married and is killed by the police. When his wife finds out that she's pregnant, she and the other brother agree to marry and raise the child as their own. All of this happens at the very beginning of the book; most of the story is actually taken up with the tense, difficult relationship between these three people throughout their lives (and the always-present shadow of the dead brother).
Lahiri cites a lot of Naxalite research in her author's notes, and a lot of reviews focus on that, but it's not really what the book's about (Unfortunately. I would totally read a book about students caught up in the Naxalite movement). There are several times more words devoted to the exact way Rhode Island's beaches look than to anything to do with politics. The story is mostly – like all of Lahiri's books – about relationships between people who don't talk to each other and keep their many emotions beneath the surface. That sort of literary fiction isn't really my thing, but I still liked this book much better than the other ones of Lahiri's I've read: it almost had an actual plot.
The Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly. James Asher, former spy; his wife Lydia, a medical researcher; their new baby Miranda; and James's former teacher, Rabbi Solomon Karlebach from Prague, all travel to Peking, China in 1912, on the trail of vampires. Or, actually, not!vampires – the main bad guys in this book are more zombie-like, mindless and breeding uncontrollably. As always, James's main goal is to try and keep the various governments of the world from using the vampires as weapons in the lead-up to WWI. Once in Peking, they're caught up in a mystery surrounding a murdered English woman, one of the British diplomat's horrible back-story, and Chinese politics, as well as the unexpected appearance of their old friend, the Spanish vampire Ysidro.
This book is more iddy than previous ones in the series, not that I mind. James has to fake his own death! Ysidro is trapped by the not!vampires! Lydia is taken hostage! Ysidro gets shot! Meaningful dreams! Telepathy! Huge swarms of rats! Explosions! Poison gas! A fun, quick read, and man, this series just keeps getting closer and closer to canon threesome. For example:
As Ysidro, deny it though he would, was drawn to Lydia – a friendship that filled Asher with foreboding. It was not jealousy, nor yet fear for his wife’s immortal soul: Lydia was mildly disinclined to believe in anything she couldn’t locate in the dissecting rooms, and she would have greeted the idea that she might one day run away with the vampire with a whoop of laughter and a question about the sleeping arrangements.
Yet he feared for her, nevertheless.
Unraveled by Courtney Milan. The last of the Turner series, and by far my favorite. Smite Turner is a magistrate in Bristol in 1843; Miranda is a poor woman involved with the Patron (a sort of underworld mob-boss/dispenser-of-justice); they fall in love, surprise. I liked so much about this – the characters actually talk to one another to solve problems! They set reasonable boundaries and respect them! True Love does not solve all trauma! They have a sentimentality quota! They show their affection through actions rather than words (including hot sex at the Opera, which I highly approve of)! I have a few quibbles (if you're going to have a cross-class romance, actually have one. Don't wimp out by having the poor person randomly have a childhood tutor from Oxford who taught them table manners and upper-class accents and Sophocles), but overall I really enjoyed this book. I especially loved the whole plot with the Patron – the reveal of their real identity, why the Patron wanted Miranda, and the ultimate resolution. The background characters were also great, and included several gay men; I kind of really want the Jeremy/George novel now.
What are you currently reading?
Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly. Continuing the Ben January reread on the fourth book! If y'all read it by Monday, you can participate in the FFA discussion.
Travelers' Tales India: True Stories edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger. Short essays and excerpts, both from tourists and Indians, about India. I like the premise (it's sold as a guidebook, but instead of giving hotel recs or train schedules, it tries to give a sense of culture and history) but the execution isn't really succeeding for me. I was particularly annoyed by this person (speculating on why she's been invited to a wedding while her traveling companion wasn't):
"I never did get quite clear on his reasoning. It might have been that he was unmarried, and, therefore, mustn't go to a wedding; or that he, a Pakistani, was in India somewhat illegally, and, therefore, musn't be seen at anything so public as a wedding; or that it was unseemly for a strange man to go to a wedding, but not for a strange woman; or that he, as a Muslim, musn't look upon a woman who was a bride."
OH MY GOD IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE COME ON THIS ISN'T THAT HARD. Look, I, as a white woman, have also been invited to random Indian weddings by strangers, but I'm not under the delusion that it's because people were so overwhelmed by my sparkling personality that they really wanted my individual, personal attendance so we could stare at each other and fail to speak the same language. This author (Jan Haag, whoever she is) is later surprised when she comes across an archaeological excavation by literally wandering in off of the street and for some unknowable reason they don't want her to volunteer to work with them.
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. In 1960s Calcutta, two brothers – almost twins – grow up and attend college. One gets involved with the Naxalites (a violent, rural/peasant-focused Marxist movement that continues to be a force in India today); the other goes away to graduate school in the US, never to return. The Naxalite gets married and is killed by the police. When his wife finds out that she's pregnant, she and the other brother agree to marry and raise the child as their own. All of this happens at the very beginning of the book; most of the story is actually taken up with the tense, difficult relationship between these three people throughout their lives (and the always-present shadow of the dead brother).
Lahiri cites a lot of Naxalite research in her author's notes, and a lot of reviews focus on that, but it's not really what the book's about (Unfortunately. I would totally read a book about students caught up in the Naxalite movement). There are several times more words devoted to the exact way Rhode Island's beaches look than to anything to do with politics. The story is mostly – like all of Lahiri's books – about relationships between people who don't talk to each other and keep their many emotions beneath the surface. That sort of literary fiction isn't really my thing, but I still liked this book much better than the other ones of Lahiri's I've read: it almost had an actual plot.
The Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly. James Asher, former spy; his wife Lydia, a medical researcher; their new baby Miranda; and James's former teacher, Rabbi Solomon Karlebach from Prague, all travel to Peking, China in 1912, on the trail of vampires. Or, actually, not!vampires – the main bad guys in this book are more zombie-like, mindless and breeding uncontrollably. As always, James's main goal is to try and keep the various governments of the world from using the vampires as weapons in the lead-up to WWI. Once in Peking, they're caught up in a mystery surrounding a murdered English woman, one of the British diplomat's horrible back-story, and Chinese politics, as well as the unexpected appearance of their old friend, the Spanish vampire Ysidro.
This book is more iddy than previous ones in the series, not that I mind. James has to fake his own death! Ysidro is trapped by the not!vampires! Lydia is taken hostage! Ysidro gets shot! Meaningful dreams! Telepathy! Huge swarms of rats! Explosions! Poison gas! A fun, quick read, and man, this series just keeps getting closer and closer to canon threesome. For example:
As Ysidro, deny it though he would, was drawn to Lydia – a friendship that filled Asher with foreboding. It was not jealousy, nor yet fear for his wife’s immortal soul: Lydia was mildly disinclined to believe in anything she couldn’t locate in the dissecting rooms, and she would have greeted the idea that she might one day run away with the vampire with a whoop of laughter and a question about the sleeping arrangements.
Yet he feared for her, nevertheless.
Unraveled by Courtney Milan. The last of the Turner series, and by far my favorite. Smite Turner is a magistrate in Bristol in 1843; Miranda is a poor woman involved with the Patron (a sort of underworld mob-boss/dispenser-of-justice); they fall in love, surprise. I liked so much about this – the characters actually talk to one another to solve problems! They set reasonable boundaries and respect them! True Love does not solve all trauma! They have a sentimentality quota! They show their affection through actions rather than words (including hot sex at the Opera, which I highly approve of)! I have a few quibbles (if you're going to have a cross-class romance, actually have one. Don't wimp out by having the poor person randomly have a childhood tutor from Oxford who taught them table manners and upper-class accents and Sophocles), but overall I really enjoyed this book. I especially loved the whole plot with the Patron – the reveal of their real identity, why the Patron wanted Miranda, and the ultimate resolution. The background characters were also great, and included several gay men; I kind of really want the Jeremy/George novel now.
What are you currently reading?
Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly. Continuing the Ben January reread on the fourth book! If y'all read it by Monday, you can participate in the FFA discussion.
Travelers' Tales India: True Stories edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger. Short essays and excerpts, both from tourists and Indians, about India. I like the premise (it's sold as a guidebook, but instead of giving hotel recs or train schedules, it tries to give a sense of culture and history) but the execution isn't really succeeding for me. I was particularly annoyed by this person (speculating on why she's been invited to a wedding while her traveling companion wasn't):
"I never did get quite clear on his reasoning. It might have been that he was unmarried, and, therefore, mustn't go to a wedding; or that he, a Pakistani, was in India somewhat illegally, and, therefore, musn't be seen at anything so public as a wedding; or that it was unseemly for a strange man to go to a wedding, but not for a strange woman; or that he, as a Muslim, musn't look upon a woman who was a bride."
OH MY GOD IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE COME ON THIS ISN'T THAT HARD. Look, I, as a white woman, have also been invited to random Indian weddings by strangers, but I'm not under the delusion that it's because people were so overwhelmed by my sparkling personality that they really wanted my individual, personal attendance so we could stare at each other and fail to speak the same language. This author (Jan Haag, whoever she is) is later surprised when she comes across an archaeological excavation by literally wandering in off of the street and for some unknowable reason they don't want her to volunteer to work with them.
