let's swash that buckle.

Less, Andrew Sean Greer. I liked this a lot, perhaps more than I was expecting to. It was just very genuinely an enjoyable read, easy and compelling without sacrificing complexity or bittersweetness. And I loved and appreciated the incidental musings on gay fiction as a genre. I was not big on the ending--I thought it was overwrought and sort of boring--but to say that I didn't think it lived up to the rest of the book is more a comment on how much I liked the book rather than on how little I liked the ending.

Romance in Marseille, Claude McKay. I was very intrigued by the press for this--finally-published decades-old manuscript! LGBT rep in a book by a Harlem Renaissance luminary!--but I found the novel itself a bit of a slog, even at its very low pagecount. That said, the gay characters were interesting, especially in a novel originally written in the 1920s; they were very much side characters, but also nothing bad happens to them. It was interesting historically, but perhaps not, for me, literarily.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert. I've been meaning to read this for a while, and I liked it (though "enjoy" is maybe not a word that applies here). I liked her journalistic approach, as someone often bewildered by big-s Science; she explained things vividly and interestingly. I actually understand what ocean acidification means now! And as a former child obsessed with extinct and and endangered animals, this was right in my wheelhouse. I liked less the way she chose to end the book, with dire and typical warnings about humanity overtaking/killing the earth; while not untrue, it felt enormously unuseful and fatalistic after the book she had just written. I'm not necessarily saying she had a duty to be optimistic, but I do feel that in a popular science book that you are aiming at the general public you might feel some responsibility to point a way forward, even if that way forward seems unlikely or difficult. In addition, perhaps differentiating your generalized mass of humans into levels of responsibility wrt the environmental degradation you chronicle might be of some use. 

Our Riches, Kaouther Adimi (trans. Chris Andrews). I loved this. A novel about the bookstore Les Vraies Richesses in Algeria, chronicling its history from the mid-20th century to the present; not uplifting, exactly, but somehow still hopeful. Adimi uses several different formats and narrative voices to tell the story, including a use of the first-person plural which I thought was incredibly effective and well-done. Short but with a lot of depth; I would highly recommend it.

Sowing Seeds in the Desert: Natural Farming, Global Restoration, and Ultimate Food Security, Masanobu Fukuoka (translated and edited by Larry Korn). Extremely interesting--and, now that I think of it, perhaps an antidote to the Kolbert. I ordered it from the library solely on the virtue of this quote from it that I saw on tumblr, and I'm glad that I did. Fukuoka's ideas are very simple--or at least he explains them very simply--but fascinating, and the examples he gives of areas where he's tried and succeeded in his reverse-desertification strategies ground the concepts he discusses. A short, easy little read, but full of big and interesting ideas.

I haven't posted here in a while, though luckily for only the best of reasons: namely that I am free of academia for the summer and wolfing down as many books as I can get my hands on, in between eating a lot of Twin Cities-specific food and doing a lot of Twin Cities-specific things that I cannot get and do in the Southern hellhole to which I've consigned myself. (It's really not that bad, but sometimes it is, actually, that bad.) Nonetheless, I do miss posting about what I've been reading, so I'm hoping to use this as a kind of reset and then start in on Reading Wednesdays again next week. We will, however, see how long that resolution lasts. 

( books books books )

As I'm slightly daunted by summarizing the whole of my reading life this past month, I'll start this week with fiction, which is the significantly more manageable category.

The Pure and the Impure, Colette. Odd, French, but I did enjoy it. The chapter on the Ladies of Llangollen was unexpected and entirely delightful, and is certainly the section I've continued to think about the most. There was something very--"seductive" seems a little trite, but I always wanted to keep reading it, without being able to quite put my finger on why.

The Edwardians, Vita Sackville-West. The back cover of this was extremely enticing, and when it lived up to it the book was wonderful; unfortunately, it lived up to it only minimally. Lots of English aristocrats feeling sorry for themselves, which is really not my speed: there was certainly a satiric air to it all, but honestly I'm not much for (gentle) mockery of English aristocrats feeling sorry for themselves, either. The two most interesting characters were Leonard Anquetil, a lower-class explorer of modest celebrity who is introduced to the aristocratic world of Edwardian England and hates it while simultaneously feeling somewhat seduced by it (this is also, incidentally, his relationship with Sebastian, a diffident, unhappy young man who is also a duke) and Viola, Sebastian's sister (not a subtle reference), who is similarly but more quietly dissatisfied with her life than her brother, and who ends up leaving home to join the Bring Young Things of London. Unfortunately, Anquetil is in little of the book, and Viola in less; nonetheless, the sections that included them were certainly the best. The relationship between Sebastian and Anquetil is also blatantly homoerotic, and the book ends (spoiler?) with Anquetil promising to take Sebastian off exploring him, which was delightful.

When Katie Met Cassidy, Camille Perri. This looked liked it might be the upmarket lesbian romance we all deserve, but in the end really was not. There was some interesting stuff, but it was all in the characters' individual thoughts and working through of their identities: the book never quite sold me on their relationship (or, beyond those brief moments, on them individually as characters). It was, in the end, painfully superficial; which I realize might be a gratuitous critique of a romance novel, but do I need something to hold onto.

Any Old Diamonds, by K.J. Charles. Delightful, as always, with some gripping plot twists and delicious angst. I do, however, wish there had been more of the angst, or that it had been given longer to mature. While the plot resolution was satisfying the emotional resolution felt too easy: indeed, the plot and emotional resolution became divorced at some point and never managed to cleave back together in any meaningful way, which was unfortunate. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't read romance novels for the plot: I want the plot to be solid and logical, but what it needs to be is essentially scaffolding for the emotional arc, not its own thing.

(I feel like this whole complaint explains perfectly why a) I was so excited to experiment with reading romance novels and b) why I've more or less put paid to the experiment. An entire novel genre focused on emotions should be entirely my thing, and yet it turns out that the emotions I want tend to be a lot more complicated and believably angst-ridden than what I've found romance novels will give me.)

Overall, however, it was very fun, and I loved the glancing Society of Gentlemen references and not-so-glancing Sins of the City references: that all Charles's non-paranormals take place in the same universe pleases me extremely. Despite my complaints above, Charles is obviously on my instant-read list, and is likely to remain there.

Blood of Tyrants, by Naomi Novik. All right, I was spoiled for this one, but I liked the tropey ridiculousness: it felt well-done and to a purpose, which is all I demand of my tropes. I do think she could've done more with it, in the end, especially emotionally on Laurence and Temeraire's parts, but in the end this is a series that very much avoids wallowing in its emotions--indeed, perhaps the opposite--so it didn't feel horridly out-of-character. The second section did, however, drag a bit: it seemed like Novik herself wasn't having much fun with it, and so the reader (or at least this reader) didn't much, either. I did like the glimpses of the North American dragons, and I liked that Tharkay was back, for as little as he seemed to show up in the text itself. I'm excited to move on, however, despite my instinct to save the last book for as long as possible.

Tongues of Serpents, by Naomi Novik. Kulingile! Kulingile and Demane! Probably other things happened in this book but this is what I walked away with; they broke my heart and then put it back together again in the most wonderful way.

I'll admit overall though that this was not one of my favorites of the series; I spent significant stretches of it fairly bored, which is not an emotion I usually feel reading these books. There wasn't the excitement or interest of another dragon culture, I think, and while the sea serpent smugglers could've been great they came out rather flat, which again I think was tied to the fact that the creatures didn't have personalities of their own and there was no real dynamic between them and the dragons, or various human group and dragon group combinations; the same was obviously true of the bunyips. There was none of the intrigue of meeting the Chinese or Tswana dragons (or the Inca; I am most of the way through Crucible of Gold at the moment and loving it).

The Fantasy of Feminist History, by Joan Scott. Ah, Joan Scott. It has the disjointed feel of a collection of talks and essays, which it is, though there's plenty of interesting stuff. The psychoanalytic side is surprisingly (though thankfully) downplayed, and her better points seem largely absent of any Freudian (or more appropriately Lacanian) influence.

It's only barely Thursday, so hopefully this still counts. The last book of 2018 and the first of 2019.

The Mermaid & Mrs. Hancock, by Imogen Hermes Gowar. I wanted to love this one, and I. . .suppose I liked it. I saw it compared to The Essex Serpent a lot, which I would agree with, up to and including the fact that my feelings about it ran very hot-and-cold--parts of it I loved, parts of it were extremely dull to me. Its two primary characters are Angelica Neal, a kept woman whose benefactor has just died, and Jonah Hancock, a merchant who receives, instead of the shipment of goods he expects, a withered mummy of a mermaid his captain has procured for him at great price. Jonah could have been an interesting character in all his staid tradition, but never quite made it; Angelica could've been wonderful and mostly I only found her annoying. (Which is something I don't enjoy, and try to avoid, saying about female characters--I do think the character type she inhabits could be wonderful, and, again, she was very nearly there.) The most interesting characters in the book--Polly, a mixed-race girl under the care (dubiously defined) of Angelica's former madam, her friend also under the madam's care, and Simeon, the black footman who works for the madam--were given all too little time, and little to no resolution of their storylines; I would've happily read the novel Gowar seemed to want to write about them.

All of which makes it sound like I disliked it, but I'm not sure that's true--it had many virtues, including lots of absolutely wonderful historical detail that I ate up with a spoon. There were parts of it I enjoyed intensely. But overall, it felt very almost--it was almost significantly better than I thought it ended up being.

Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton, by Tilar J. Mazzeo. Oh, this book. I'm thrilled that someone wrote a biography of Eliza; I just wish it hadn't been this biography. My first criticism should be obvious after reading the title, though that may have very well been publisher-mandated. But this book has the foundational flaw that it can't seem to decide whether it's fact or fiction: it provides plenty of direct quotes from letters and the kind of factual information you would expect from a biography, but mixes this frequently with a brand of editorializing that goes well beyond the kind of interpretation that is a biographer's stock in trade; Mazzeo apparently has no compunctions about stating as fact emotions and actions which we have no way of knowing anything about. This unsurprisingly becomes grating, and significantly dilutes the power of what is otherwise a fairly solid collection of information on Eliza's life.

Despite that, it was a fast and enjoyable enough read (though much of my enjoyment came from my general obsession with these people, so ymmv). Mazzeo presents a theory that Hamilton and Maria Reynolds never had an affair, but that the whole story was a cover-up for some shady financial business of Hamilton's (which was, incidentally, the prevailing theory at the time); I'm not wholly convinced (though to be fair I'm convinced of little surrounding that whole episode), but it's an interesting theory and Mazzeo provides intriguing justification for it. She also combats the idea that the Hamiltons for certain, 100% never owned slaves, which I appreciate, though she never actually discusses this at length or backs it up with any of the available evidence.

In general it just felt very slight; partly that was the fault of the fictionalization, partly the fault of the very real lack of evidence about Eliza's thoughts and emotions; partly, it was the fault of Mazzeo's structural choices, most glaringly in relegating Eliza's life post-Alexander to the last 54 pages of a 289-page biography. Clearly to get it out this fast Mazzeo must have worked around the clock, and I'm willing to forgive the occasional slight error (though will correct them in the margins, as I'm, well, me); what I'm less willing to forgive are basic underlying structural and content choices that make this a lesser book that it could and should have been.

I am finally free of the semester, after grading all of my undergrads' final exams. They were generally wonderful and mostly knew what they were talking about, but the process was occasionally somewhat harrowing, in alternately a funny way (multiple students tried to tell me that Daniel Shays raided an arsenal in Harper's Ferry) or a horrifying one (one student wrote point-blank that Andrew Jackson's--Andrew Jackson's!!--presidency was the end of white supremacy in America). And then there was this:

my mom: So how's it going?
me: Well, I just had a student inform me that Andrew Jackson elected George Washington CEO of the Revolutionary Army
me: so you could say it's
me: not great

But I'm free! And I don't have to look at a Blue Book again for at least a month, so really, all is well.

And the real point of this post is that I wanted to share a smattering of links that improved my life for one reason or another over the past week-and-change of end-of-semester hell:

Archiving two book recommendations I made on tumblr over the past year, plus a new one for Life Mask by Emma Donoghue, which I read over the summer and have been meaning to make a rec post for for a good six months now.

( Life Mask, by Emma Donogue )

( The Lord John series, by Diana Gabaldon )