Sep 1, 2023And Then There Were None
By Agatha ChristieReading Christie I am frequently struck with the thought: why isn't Christie more popular? And then I remember that she is the best selling novelist of all time - Wikipedia currently has her tied with the bard, but he was hardly a novelist. So I guess maybe the fault is with me, or with my cultural bubble, for not reading her earlier. Probably blame the bubble.
Sep 1, 2023The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd
By Agatha ChristieUpon the completion of And Then There Were None, I was a mere 20 minutes into my walk and eager for more, so I fired up the old Libby app, tried to borrow this book, failed, fired up Hoopla, borrowed this book, and spent the next 5 hours in literary satisfaction (also finished the walk, mowed the lawn, did the dishes, played fetch with the dog, and lay in the hammock - a successful morning by every account).
Aug 29, 2023The Memoirs Of Stockholm Sven
By Nathaniel Ian MillerThere is, for me, an undeniable allure in Svalbard and the Arctic (and Antarctic). Austere, windswept desolation, wide vistas, creatures eking out a living amongst the snow and ice - it is romantic. It feels so alien, so antithetical to my existence like no other place I can imagine. I have, of course, looked into visiting, living, being an IT person at a research station at the south pole or working as remotely in Svalbard (you hear good things, although finding housing is tricky). The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven captures that attraction, the peril, the loneliness and the scurvy. It is, for all the hardships and pain, for my eyes a pleasant novel of a man finding a place that works for him and a community (small and maybe including some puppetized animal corpses) of kind and caring characters, well-written and compelling.
Aug 27, 2023Debt
By David GraeberI was, to be frank, prepared to be bored by this - "debt" is a dry, intuitive concept which seemed little deserving of 500 pages of exegesis. The book seemed vaguely Important and not a bit hip, but not...interesting. Then he got me, in the first chapter arguing with some woman in a garden party. She said "surely, one has to pay one's debts" in response to learning about the IMF enforcing loan repayment from impoverished third world countries; he has half a dozen arguments as to why morally, economically, historically that just doesn't make sense. As a one who generally has probably trended towards the mindset of having to pay one's debts, it was a bit, revelatory? Not judt that he presented persuasive arguments, I was not far from being persuaded, but it was an incredibly clear, efficient encapsulation of a point of view, incredibly easy to digest.
Aug 17, 2023The Brothers Karamazov
By Fyodor DostoevskyI got into, started studying and eventually made a career out of computer programming because first I wanted to make clouds. The wispy vortices, plastic and mutable at a timescale just longer than that which is immediately perceptible, seemed the height of beauty and therefore the height of art.
Jul 27, 2023The Honjin Murders
By Seishi YokomizoI was curious what a classic Japanese murder mystery would be and I think actually it is not entirely my cup of tea. There is a sparsity of prose that I recognize and value in other contexts as somewhat emblematic of modern Japanese writing (or what I see in my limited experience as such) - a direct, logical simplicity that I find incredibly satisfying when painting windswept metaphors, but which feels a bit sluggish and awkward when it comes to bloody murder. I guess its got the classic setup and misdirection and a bit of characters that are characters. But its lacking the charm of say Christie. And I think I have discovered that I like my bloody murders charming.
Jul 24, 2023Ema The Captive
By Cesar AiraThis book is a bit difficult to describe. I think the author's note said something about it being an "inverted gothic romance," which, like, fair, I guess. Ema, the captive, experiences the inverse of gothic romance, experiences the worst that colonial Europe has to offer, and grows into her own while a "captive" of a vibrant indigenous society, obsessed with printing money and breeding peacocks. It is, at times, horrible and horrifying, which always makes for a rough read, but also empowering and wild? I felt like I was just barely holding on the entire time
Jul 19, 2023Frank Sonnets
By Dianne SeussPoetry: hard to judge? I don't know how intrinsic that is, or how ignorant I am. I read through this because someone I know said it was important to them, and I wanted to see why. I think I can tell, think I can see the way the beauty represents itself and her and builds her in fragments throughout the sonnets, I can hear the (a) story she is telling and feel the things that I think she wants me to feel. But it is hard to tell, I think I need to read more bad poetry first.
Jul 18, 2023A Passage To India
By E. M. ForsterA Passage to India is a moral story of a friendship, and I want to be able to say that the moral story that it tells is of course completely obvious these days and is in fact full of its own failings - but the way that the Trial is held does I suppose still technically have something to say about how casual privilege. But like, its mostly obsolete and while definitely insightful for its time, does still make some mistakes of its own as a project of orientalism. And it was like a pretty good story, in general, and always love a story of a Friendship, and misunderstandings always tragic. So I don't think this is like a necessary or important read, but it is a worthy read.