index

This 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

Poetry: 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.

A 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.

I think this makes an excellent pairing with A Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek. The one, a bright-eyed celebration of the beauty and majesty of being alive and able to experience nature, the other (A Sand County Almanac), a reflection with an older voice but many of the same goals - and importantly, a moral imprecation, an explicit proposal not merely to look at things with new eyes but to act on what you see. The challenge to work towards a governance and guardianship that grants moral weight to the land and the ecosystem is of course more important than ever, is aptly and intelligently put, and demands to be read.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this, and I was quite pleasantly surprised. A clean and compelling novel of a somewhat experimental structure falls in and out of history, giving us brief moments in interconnected lives spanning some centuries into the future. Definitely reminiscent and perhaps directly inspired by the structure of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (and his earlier Ghostwritten) - except Mitchell's project in structuring those stories was to study interrelationships throughout characters reincarnating in different times, identities, and genres. Sudbanthad's project, examined from the same light, must be to study the reincarnation of the city of Bangkok itself, and how it relates to different characters (or maybe the reincarnation of a haunted structural beam? Part of the issue with audiobooks is that subtle clues breeze by and are difficult to reconstruct). The strength here is the slices of life, the compassionate and interesting stories that get me invested in particular characters...just for them to be swept away in time, and me be reintroduced to them as not the main character, but the aged swim teacher of the aunt of the protagonist.

I think I spend too much time trying to solve for the author of a book, in general, when I read. Really I suppose I should kill the author, that is the cool thing to do. But I think here that is my criticism of this book - while aesthetically, technically quite sound (impressive even? great maybe? approaching greatness, at the least), I'm just not that much of a fan of how the author drips through the cracks. The author is someone who read that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, who admires the stoic farmer and romanticizes the farmer poet. Which, like, fair! The farmer-poet is romantic, and there is a lot of desperation around. And I have enjoyed or at least gotten something out of sad or depressing or hopeless books before - they can provide solace, or validation, or a call to action, they can contain a new way of looking at things whose impact shatters against your soul, or a new way to empathize with people. Not to be like comprehensive about it, but those are what I have gotten.

Excellently written compassionate treatment, love the murder, its funny

I mean, a personal predilection for just a little bit of pretension, for the fluency with literature and the literati, definitely does have an impact on my opinion of Sergio Pitol - lists of names and works and influences and times that are not known to me make me a bit jealous and admiring. I think without a little bit of that, you could get a bit fed up with this book and likely the whole of his Trilogy of Memory - although how you have gotten past The Art of Flight to this sequel is a bit beyond me.

I am a cat is a delight! I guess just an old-timey I-can-haz-cheezeburger meme, but written by an author who I adore for the beauty and elegance of his prose and the delicacy of the relationships he portrays...which does feel a bit of a strange setup, but I guess that is what comes of reading a bibliography in reverse-chronological order, and skipping the other humorous one (I'll get to Botchan eventually). I am a Cat is a delight in the lines of Archy and Mehitable, although it focuses more on the satire and less on the satirical premise - Soseki performs an interesting balancing act of making the funny cat jokes and commenting on the foibles of the Meiji intelligentsia, where the former are more relatable to me and the latter I guess more relatable to him. He is insightful and illustrative and is full of entertaining tidbits, although admittedly I would not say that it has necessarily aged and traveled entirely well; some bits of the book fall flat or are a bit of a chore. Also the ending? Was a bit strong? The introduction suggested Soseki had gotten bored with his characters or ran out of things he wanted to satirize, which I guess makes it the canonical explanation - I would have been inclined to mince my words about the matter a bit otherwise. Anyways, worth a read if you like cats and the Meiji intelligentsia.

Good fun! Pirates and mushrooms and sci-fi murder-mystery-leads-to-worldending-political-mystery, and they kiss in the end. Didn't really like the bit where I have to wait a while for the next book to come around, but if you do not find those things anathema to your reading experience, I think you would find this enjoyable.