Book log & side note about movies and tv.
Right now I'm working with a client on his 350,000-word novel, so there's not a whole ton of time for reading for fun. But I've fit a bit in!
I finally finished Ancillary Justice. I can completely see how other people love this book, but I just didn't ~get it~. I will likely pick up the next one anyway, but I wish it had hit me as hard as it hit others.
After that, I read Smoke Gets in your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty. It's a memoir about a year spent working at a crematorium. Sadly, it is not as interesting as it sounds. It's written in a style that I loathe -- that of the Jezebel/Mary Sue article. The author, who is actually a pretty famous mortician (as morticians go) unsurprisingly has written a bunch of articles for Jezebel. She's also really judgy about the people she meets in the course of her life and the way they deal with death. On the other hand, going by what she says about her own thoughts about death and the way current US culture deals with death, she's probably a super great mortician who would do a really good job handling someone's death. And I definitely know people who would love this book. (They also read Jezebel regularly! To each their own!)
Then I finished With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. It's a memoir about the Pacific theater during WWII. I am pretty obsessed with WWII (as y'all know), but I don't actually know anything about the fighting. This might actually be the first book I've ever read about the actual fighting during WWII. It was very informative. Also about the Marines!
(Once when I was ten, I wanted to join the Marines or be a Navy SEAL. Then I learned women weren't allowed to join the SEAL teams, and lost all interest in the armed forces.)
It is, of course, really upsetting, and full of graphic details of death and war, and there is a ton of racism. And there was nothing about Jews or Nazis at all -- it was all about hating Japanese people, which is not a part of WWII I have spent a ton of time focused on. Very depressing. I don't mind hating Nazis at all, but the author's fierce dedication to hating Japanese people (and it's not even like there was any kind of reason -- just "we're at war with these people therefore I hate them"; what.) was unnerving and upsetting. Not recommended, unless you're doing research or something.
After that, I was ready for something a little lighter, so I moved on to what I thought would be, like, a kind of easy murder mystery procedural: Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman. It starts out with, like, thirty pages of detailed, horrible rape and rape aftermath. The rest of the book is about a woman realizing the man she's prosecuting for murder is the guy who raped her.
I think the big thing with this book was that there's supposed to be a "trick" of the plot, but since I saw it coming from, like, 1/3 of the way through, it didn't work for me. But I did kind of enjoy the writing, so I also read its sequel, The Last Witness, which is pretty much a direct sequel about the same characters and the same rapist.
Figuring out plots and then being disappointed when what I'm reading/watching doesn't have anything going for it besides its plot is a big theme in my life. I am the person who guessed in the middle of Scream that there were two killers. I am the person who turned to my girlfriend in the theatre and said, "Oh, he's dead," about a third of the way through The Sixth Sense, not realizing that was going to be the big reveal at the end, because it seemed so obvious at the beginning.
(I have a prediction about what the season-long plot of How to Get Away with Murder is going to be -- I got through the first episode's plot really quickly.)
To be fair, sometimes getting the plot out of the way is what I love about a show. For example, Elementary: once I've figured out the plot, I can focus on enjoying the characters!
In WWII news, I am finally reading Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem. I've read other Arendt before (my college girlfriend was obsessssssssssed with her), but this is the first time I'm reading the controversial Eichmann book. Except... you know, fifty years later, it's actually not really super controversial. Fifty years later, the idea that evil can be banal is hugely... normal. The knowledge that there were Jewish officials who collaborated with Nazis... well, that's what happened. In 1963, the scandal of the articles and book -- I mean, she got death threats for what I now can't imagine being unknown much less radical or scandalous.
I'm only halfway through, but I'm loving it. Of course I am, it's Arendt, who doesn't love Arendt?
Anyway, upcoming for me is two conferences back to back -- one here in MD and one in TN. So I will be reading The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao over those days. And I am so excited because Tuesday is the day when we get Gillian Anderson's book A Vision of Fire AND Alan Cummings's Not My Father's Son! Bisexual Actor Book Tuesday!
This entry is cross-posted from alg@dreamwidth.org, where it has
comments.
I finally finished Ancillary Justice. I can completely see how other people love this book, but I just didn't ~get it~. I will likely pick up the next one anyway, but I wish it had hit me as hard as it hit others.
After that, I read Smoke Gets in your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty. It's a memoir about a year spent working at a crematorium. Sadly, it is not as interesting as it sounds. It's written in a style that I loathe -- that of the Jezebel/Mary Sue article. The author, who is actually a pretty famous mortician (as morticians go) unsurprisingly has written a bunch of articles for Jezebel. She's also really judgy about the people she meets in the course of her life and the way they deal with death. On the other hand, going by what she says about her own thoughts about death and the way current US culture deals with death, she's probably a super great mortician who would do a really good job handling someone's death. And I definitely know people who would love this book. (They also read Jezebel regularly! To each their own!)
Then I finished With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. It's a memoir about the Pacific theater during WWII. I am pretty obsessed with WWII (as y'all know), but I don't actually know anything about the fighting. This might actually be the first book I've ever read about the actual fighting during WWII. It was very informative. Also about the Marines!
(Once when I was ten, I wanted to join the Marines or be a Navy SEAL. Then I learned women weren't allowed to join the SEAL teams, and lost all interest in the armed forces.)
It is, of course, really upsetting, and full of graphic details of death and war, and there is a ton of racism. And there was nothing about Jews or Nazis at all -- it was all about hating Japanese people, which is not a part of WWII I have spent a ton of time focused on. Very depressing. I don't mind hating Nazis at all, but the author's fierce dedication to hating Japanese people (and it's not even like there was any kind of reason -- just "we're at war with these people therefore I hate them"; what.) was unnerving and upsetting. Not recommended, unless you're doing research or something.
After that, I was ready for something a little lighter, so I moved on to what I thought would be, like, a kind of easy murder mystery procedural: Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman. It starts out with, like, thirty pages of detailed, horrible rape and rape aftermath. The rest of the book is about a woman realizing the man she's prosecuting for murder is the guy who raped her.
I think the big thing with this book was that there's supposed to be a "trick" of the plot, but since I saw it coming from, like, 1/3 of the way through, it didn't work for me. But I did kind of enjoy the writing, so I also read its sequel, The Last Witness, which is pretty much a direct sequel about the same characters and the same rapist.
Figuring out plots and then being disappointed when what I'm reading/watching doesn't have anything going for it besides its plot is a big theme in my life. I am the person who guessed in the middle of Scream that there were two killers. I am the person who turned to my girlfriend in the theatre and said, "Oh, he's dead," about a third of the way through The Sixth Sense, not realizing that was going to be the big reveal at the end, because it seemed so obvious at the beginning.
(I have a prediction about what the season-long plot of How to Get Away with Murder is going to be -- I got through the first episode's plot really quickly.)
To be fair, sometimes getting the plot out of the way is what I love about a show. For example, Elementary: once I've figured out the plot, I can focus on enjoying the characters!
In WWII news, I am finally reading Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem. I've read other Arendt before (my college girlfriend was obsessssssssssed with her), but this is the first time I'm reading the controversial Eichmann book. Except... you know, fifty years later, it's actually not really super controversial. Fifty years later, the idea that evil can be banal is hugely... normal. The knowledge that there were Jewish officials who collaborated with Nazis... well, that's what happened. In 1963, the scandal of the articles and book -- I mean, she got death threats for what I now can't imagine being unknown much less radical or scandalous.
I'm only halfway through, but I'm loving it. Of course I am, it's Arendt, who doesn't love Arendt?
Anyway, upcoming for me is two conferences back to back -- one here in MD and one in TN. So I will be reading The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao over those days. And I am so excited because Tuesday is the day when we get Gillian Anderson's book A Vision of Fire AND Alan Cummings's Not My Father's Son! Bisexual Actor Book Tuesday!
This entry is cross-posted from alg@dreamwidth.org, where it has
comments.