idiosyncratic reactions to books
Last night I was washing the dishes I had been supposed to do the night before and not quite giving my full attention to the audiobook I had playing. I had a moment of intense self-centredness and, internally, wailed: WHY ISN’T THE WORLD FILLED WITH MORE BOOKS THAT APPEAL EXACTLY TO ME???
It was (and, arguably, still is) the end of a difficult week: Tuesday was disrupted by building works, Wednesday afternoon was unexpectedly stressful, and then I hardly had any sleep Thursday night. This alone could explain my tantrum -- I was not thinking very clearly and I knew it -- but I think there’s more to it than just that.
In this corner of the world, we are still under strict restrictions.
All things considered, I’m going okay. So is everyone else in the house, which helps. (We have a lot to be grateful for.) I’ve become more comfortable working from home, and even found some things I can enjoy about it, like being able to take my dog for a walk at lunchtime. I think it also helps that all of us have hobbies that we can do at home, and moreover, are happy to spend the weekend doing.
But I’m also feeling, slowly but increasingly, disconnected. From community. (From fellowship?)
Perhaps that’s not just about the reduction in face-to-face interactions. I’ve noticed I have less energy/headspace for engaging with, and sometimes even reading, internet things (definitely a side-effect of living through a pandemic, with all its accompanying restrictions). I’ve also given myself less time for internet things -- one of the reasons I’ve been coping is that I’ve become really strict about going to bed earlier.
Which brings me to the sudden, surprising and somewhat overwhelming desire for stories filled with people and things that are exactly to my tastes.
What that is is actually hard to pin down. My tastes, I can describe well enough, of course -- but it’s much harder to qualify and quantify the ways in which “things I like” need to to be present in a story for me to love it. It depends on what else is in the story, and how the “things I like” fit around those other things. I am capable of loving books in spite of the presence of things on the “not my favourite” list. Some books turn out to be unexpectedly relatable. It all just depends.
So if I cannot describe just what I am looking for, how am I to find it?
And -- perhaps this is more to the point -- there are books which are clearly to my tastes, but I am not in the mood for that sort of thing right now.
The other book-ish thought I have been mulling over lately is how personal the experience of reading can be. Sometimes a story is as much about the story itself as it is about what the reader brings to it. The way they interpret the story, the way they fill in the gaps, the circumstances in which they read it.
There are certain books where, for me, where the story was arguably only half the appeal -- the other half was having people willing to discuss the books with me. There are books where the appeal was something else, like being introduced to something new, or recognising a part of myself and feeling validated, or finding an escape at a point in time when I really needed it. (Actually, I can think of books which fall into more than one category.)
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon): Usually I don't mind the level of darkness in Kingfisher’s books. A bit of darkness can make things tense and compelling, but there's also something comforting about stories which acknowledge that the world can be sad and scary, and which show that, despite this, people can be okay -- find ways to be safe and happy, even. I think this is why, growing up, so many of my favourite comfort reads were about things like orphans or murders.
An orphaned fourteen year old apprentice baker discovers a murder, is accused and acquitted, and then has to hide when she's nearly murdered herself. It sounds like the sort of thing I'd gobble up, if it’s by an author whose writing I love and whose storytelling I trust, so I was rather surprised when I found the beginning cold and unappetising. (Something about the murdered girl's grieving younger brother, and Mona's solitary hiding place, and I don't know, the canalled city, just struck me as damp and intensely unappealing.) But I persevered, and was glad I did. I enjoyed the defensive baking, and Mona's complicated feelings about having to be a hero.I was fourteen. People had been trying to kill me. I hadn’t done anything heroic. I’d been terrified and yes, I know that line about how courage is going forward when you’re scared, except that I hadn’t even done that. I hadn’t gone forward. I’d run away and run away and the only reason I’d gone to the Duchess was because I’d run out of ways to keep running away.
Hero.
It should never have come down to me. It was miserably unfair that it had come to me and Spindle. There were grown-ups who should have stopped it. [...] Everyone had failed at every step and now Spindle and I were heroes because of it.
• Unnatural Magic by C. M. Waggoner: This was very, very compelling. I finished it within a day and immediately reread much of it. It’s a curious blend of things: there’s Onna, a teenage girl in search of a magical education; and then there’s Tsira, a troll, and Jeckran, an army deserter, who become partners and try to eke out a living in the city together. Both parts of the narrative differ in tone and, for much of the book, setting too, so it took me a while to recognise the themes they share. All of these characters -- to varying degrees -- want a life that isn’t quite what their community expects of, or their families want, for them, and are searching for their place in the world.
Waggoner successfully pulls together these two stories as the characters investigate a series of troll murders. As a murder mystery, it was a bit predictable but that didn’t matter very much at all. Of all these books, this was the one I liked the most.Somehow, a year passed, and the exam soon overshadowed everything; no dinners or dances or deliciously beribboned bonnets or even distant terrors in northern villages or Onna’s own seventeenth birthday could obscure, for more than a moment or two, the loom threat of the exam. It sat there at the gate of summer like some fearsome dragon, and she dragged her heels through the whole of the spring until, with terrible swiftness, she found herself seated beside her mother in a twelve-hour coach headed for Leiscourt, preparing herself to face the monster.
I did have an idiosyncratic, emotive reaction -- to Tsira’s swearing. I don’t swear, except sometimes in my head, but I would have said that high school trained me to be indifferent to others doing so. But it turns out that what I’m indifferent to is people using certain words in certain ways, which is different from what Tsira does.
I think Tsira’s use of swear words is meant to be indicative of her culture, as a troll. She’s blunt and earthy and this is just how she talks. I don’t think there’s meant to be anything negative about it. Yet, for me, the negative connotations were unavoidably present and I kept feeling sad that she would talk about herself and things she does in that way.
• The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark: This novella is richly imagined, an alternate-historical fantasy in which New Orleans is an independent state. It’s filled with adventure and some strong personalities -- I particularly enjoyed the thirteen year old protagonist’s attempts to convince an airship captain to take her on as crew.
I was unwell when I read some of this, which might be why I don’t feel more strongly about it. (Alternatively... it wasn’t written for me and that’s okay. I’m not sure, and that’s okay too.)
The audiobook narrator is excellent.
• Like No Other by Una LaMarche: Two teenagers meet in a New York hospital elevator during a blackout. Devorah is a Hasidic Jew, Jaxon is black. Devorah is not allowed to socialise with boys outside of her family, let alone anyone outside her community, but she and Jaxon keep finding ways to see each other.
This was fascinating, but also frustrating -- I was frustrated with Devorah’s culture for making her feel like she would be disowned if she put a foot wrong, and also frustrated, perhaps unfairly, with Jaxon for not fully appreciating the risks Devorah faces. However I liked the ending a lot.
• Beach Read by Emily Henry: January has a summer to write a new novel and sort out the beach house she unexpectedly inherited from her father. When her new neighbour turns out to be a fellow author and former classmate who is also struggling with his current book, they challenge each other to swap genres.
I liked this while I read it but ultimately it wasn’t very memorable. I think I expected a romance about two authors to appeal to me more? I also thought the genre-swapping had the potential to be funnier. Amazon calls this a “laugh-out-loud love story” but, well, humour is subjective.
But it got me thinking about the concept of a “beach read”, which Macmillan defines as: “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged but not so serious it will spoil your holiday”. I’ve also seen “page-turner” and “something you don’t mind if it gets sandy or splashed” suggested.
When I’ve gone on holidays, I take the same sorts of books I read all year round. I usually also include something that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, something that’s more serious and thicker and perhaps less of a page-turner, with the rationale that now I will have the time to tackle it. I don’t necessarily then read that book, of course, but that’s still the sort of thing I take.
I suspect that I’m more likely to read books called summer/beach reads in winter. I don’t know how much that’s because those are the books northern-hemisphere internet is promoting during my winter, and how much it’s because I feel a greater need of comfort reading during term time rather than in the holidays.I could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if I didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling me wholly into itself. That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.
• Shelter by Stephanie Fournet: Growing up, Elise believes that Cole is mean, while Cole, focused on protecting his mother and sister from his abusive father, believes he can’t afford to care about anyone else. Slowly they become closer -- until tragedy separates them. Because the story skips straight from the last time Elise saw Cole as a teenager to eight years later when they cross paths again, it feels believable that their relationship resumes so quickly and smoothly. But upon reflection, that’s not very realistic (and thus, in my eyes, very satisfying).
But nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this -- except for the part where Cole’s sister takes him to task for being overprotective. I understand why Ava says what she does, and moreover, why she needs to say it, but I was annoyed when the narrative agreed with her assessment so entirely. Cole is overprotective not just because Ava’s had struggles, but because growing up in an abusive home pushed him into taking on adult responsibilities at a very young age -- it’s no wonder if he’s got some inaccurate ideas about what a responsible older brother should be, and if he’s clung to those ideas as a way of coping in the aftermath of trauma.
• If We’re Not Married By Thirty by Anna Bell: Family friends Lydia and Danny made a pact at Lydia’s sister’s wedding to marry each other if they were both still unmarried at thirty. In the ten years since, they’ve lived in different places, dated different people and kept in touch by exchanging emails and silly presents, like Christmas decorations and fridge magnets. Then they run into each other in Spain.
I read the first half of this, enjoying its Britishness and the fluffiness, and then started skimming once the story hopped on a train speeding towards Misunderstandings and Miscommunication town. I think Bell’s humour involves embarrassing situations too often for me. Originally @ Dreamwidth.
It was (and, arguably, still is) the end of a difficult week: Tuesday was disrupted by building works, Wednesday afternoon was unexpectedly stressful, and then I hardly had any sleep Thursday night. This alone could explain my tantrum -- I was not thinking very clearly and I knew it -- but I think there’s more to it than just that.
In this corner of the world, we are still under strict restrictions.
All things considered, I’m going okay. So is everyone else in the house, which helps. (We have a lot to be grateful for.) I’ve become more comfortable working from home, and even found some things I can enjoy about it, like being able to take my dog for a walk at lunchtime. I think it also helps that all of us have hobbies that we can do at home, and moreover, are happy to spend the weekend doing.
But I’m also feeling, slowly but increasingly, disconnected. From community. (From fellowship?)
Perhaps that’s not just about the reduction in face-to-face interactions. I’ve noticed I have less energy/headspace for engaging with, and sometimes even reading, internet things (definitely a side-effect of living through a pandemic, with all its accompanying restrictions). I’ve also given myself less time for internet things -- one of the reasons I’ve been coping is that I’ve become really strict about going to bed earlier.
Which brings me to the sudden, surprising and somewhat overwhelming desire for stories filled with people and things that are exactly to my tastes.
What that is is actually hard to pin down. My tastes, I can describe well enough, of course -- but it’s much harder to qualify and quantify the ways in which “things I like” need to to be present in a story for me to love it. It depends on what else is in the story, and how the “things I like” fit around those other things. I am capable of loving books in spite of the presence of things on the “not my favourite” list. Some books turn out to be unexpectedly relatable. It all just depends.
So if I cannot describe just what I am looking for, how am I to find it?
And -- perhaps this is more to the point -- there are books which are clearly to my tastes, but I am not in the mood for that sort of thing right now.
The other book-ish thought I have been mulling over lately is how personal the experience of reading can be. Sometimes a story is as much about the story itself as it is about what the reader brings to it. The way they interpret the story, the way they fill in the gaps, the circumstances in which they read it.
There are certain books where, for me, where the story was arguably only half the appeal -- the other half was having people willing to discuss the books with me. There are books where the appeal was something else, like being introduced to something new, or recognising a part of myself and feeling validated, or finding an escape at a point in time when I really needed it. (Actually, I can think of books which fall into more than one category.)
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon): Usually I don't mind the level of darkness in Kingfisher’s books. A bit of darkness can make things tense and compelling, but there's also something comforting about stories which acknowledge that the world can be sad and scary, and which show that, despite this, people can be okay -- find ways to be safe and happy, even. I think this is why, growing up, so many of my favourite comfort reads were about things like orphans or murders.
An orphaned fourteen year old apprentice baker discovers a murder, is accused and acquitted, and then has to hide when she's nearly murdered herself. It sounds like the sort of thing I'd gobble up, if it’s by an author whose writing I love and whose storytelling I trust, so I was rather surprised when I found the beginning cold and unappetising. (Something about the murdered girl's grieving younger brother, and Mona's solitary hiding place, and I don't know, the canalled city, just struck me as damp and intensely unappealing.) But I persevered, and was glad I did. I enjoyed the defensive baking, and Mona's complicated feelings about having to be a hero.I was fourteen. People had been trying to kill me. I hadn’t done anything heroic. I’d been terrified and yes, I know that line about how courage is going forward when you’re scared, except that I hadn’t even done that. I hadn’t gone forward. I’d run away and run away and the only reason I’d gone to the Duchess was because I’d run out of ways to keep running away.
Hero.
It should never have come down to me. It was miserably unfair that it had come to me and Spindle. There were grown-ups who should have stopped it. [...] Everyone had failed at every step and now Spindle and I were heroes because of it.
• Unnatural Magic by C. M. Waggoner: This was very, very compelling. I finished it within a day and immediately reread much of it. It’s a curious blend of things: there’s Onna, a teenage girl in search of a magical education; and then there’s Tsira, a troll, and Jeckran, an army deserter, who become partners and try to eke out a living in the city together. Both parts of the narrative differ in tone and, for much of the book, setting too, so it took me a while to recognise the themes they share. All of these characters -- to varying degrees -- want a life that isn’t quite what their community expects of, or their families want, for them, and are searching for their place in the world.
Waggoner successfully pulls together these two stories as the characters investigate a series of troll murders. As a murder mystery, it was a bit predictable but that didn’t matter very much at all. Of all these books, this was the one I liked the most.Somehow, a year passed, and the exam soon overshadowed everything; no dinners or dances or deliciously beribboned bonnets or even distant terrors in northern villages or Onna’s own seventeenth birthday could obscure, for more than a moment or two, the loom threat of the exam. It sat there at the gate of summer like some fearsome dragon, and she dragged her heels through the whole of the spring until, with terrible swiftness, she found herself seated beside her mother in a twelve-hour coach headed for Leiscourt, preparing herself to face the monster.
I did have an idiosyncratic, emotive reaction -- to Tsira’s swearing. I don’t swear, except sometimes in my head, but I would have said that high school trained me to be indifferent to others doing so. But it turns out that what I’m indifferent to is people using certain words in certain ways, which is different from what Tsira does.
I think Tsira’s use of swear words is meant to be indicative of her culture, as a troll. She’s blunt and earthy and this is just how she talks. I don’t think there’s meant to be anything negative about it. Yet, for me, the negative connotations were unavoidably present and I kept feeling sad that she would talk about herself and things she does in that way.
• The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark: This novella is richly imagined, an alternate-historical fantasy in which New Orleans is an independent state. It’s filled with adventure and some strong personalities -- I particularly enjoyed the thirteen year old protagonist’s attempts to convince an airship captain to take her on as crew.
I was unwell when I read some of this, which might be why I don’t feel more strongly about it. (Alternatively... it wasn’t written for me and that’s okay. I’m not sure, and that’s okay too.)
The audiobook narrator is excellent.
• Like No Other by Una LaMarche: Two teenagers meet in a New York hospital elevator during a blackout. Devorah is a Hasidic Jew, Jaxon is black. Devorah is not allowed to socialise with boys outside of her family, let alone anyone outside her community, but she and Jaxon keep finding ways to see each other.
This was fascinating, but also frustrating -- I was frustrated with Devorah’s culture for making her feel like she would be disowned if she put a foot wrong, and also frustrated, perhaps unfairly, with Jaxon for not fully appreciating the risks Devorah faces. However I liked the ending a lot.
• Beach Read by Emily Henry: January has a summer to write a new novel and sort out the beach house she unexpectedly inherited from her father. When her new neighbour turns out to be a fellow author and former classmate who is also struggling with his current book, they challenge each other to swap genres.
I liked this while I read it but ultimately it wasn’t very memorable. I think I expected a romance about two authors to appeal to me more? I also thought the genre-swapping had the potential to be funnier. Amazon calls this a “laugh-out-loud love story” but, well, humour is subjective.
But it got me thinking about the concept of a “beach read”, which Macmillan defines as: “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged but not so serious it will spoil your holiday”. I’ve also seen “page-turner” and “something you don’t mind if it gets sandy or splashed” suggested.
When I’ve gone on holidays, I take the same sorts of books I read all year round. I usually also include something that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, something that’s more serious and thicker and perhaps less of a page-turner, with the rationale that now I will have the time to tackle it. I don’t necessarily then read that book, of course, but that’s still the sort of thing I take.
I suspect that I’m more likely to read books called summer/beach reads in winter. I don’t know how much that’s because those are the books northern-hemisphere internet is promoting during my winter, and how much it’s because I feel a greater need of comfort reading during term time rather than in the holidays.I could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if I didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling me wholly into itself. That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.
• Shelter by Stephanie Fournet: Growing up, Elise believes that Cole is mean, while Cole, focused on protecting his mother and sister from his abusive father, believes he can’t afford to care about anyone else. Slowly they become closer -- until tragedy separates them. Because the story skips straight from the last time Elise saw Cole as a teenager to eight years later when they cross paths again, it feels believable that their relationship resumes so quickly and smoothly. But upon reflection, that’s not very realistic (and thus, in my eyes, very satisfying).
But nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this -- except for the part where Cole’s sister takes him to task for being overprotective. I understand why Ava says what she does, and moreover, why she needs to say it, but I was annoyed when the narrative agreed with her assessment so entirely. Cole is overprotective not just because Ava’s had struggles, but because growing up in an abusive home pushed him into taking on adult responsibilities at a very young age -- it’s no wonder if he’s got some inaccurate ideas about what a responsible older brother should be, and if he’s clung to those ideas as a way of coping in the aftermath of trauma.
• If We’re Not Married By Thirty by Anna Bell: Family friends Lydia and Danny made a pact at Lydia’s sister’s wedding to marry each other if they were both still unmarried at thirty. In the ten years since, they’ve lived in different places, dated different people and kept in touch by exchanging emails and silly presents, like Christmas decorations and fridge magnets. Then they run into each other in Spain.
I read the first half of this, enjoying its Britishness and the fluffiness, and then started skimming once the story hopped on a train speeding towards Misunderstandings and Miscommunication town. I think Bell’s humour involves embarrassing situations too often for me. Originally @ Dreamwidth.