Book round-up: May 2024

[sixthlight]

May 2024

Starting to conclude I am reading too many books by men this year; luckily this is a solvable problem. So concluding because many of the men this month were a bit disappointing (and in one case flatly infuriating).

The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman)

A modern murder mystery which is frankly not very well written (like, ‘averagely good fanfic that’s had an edit’ level) but rattles along entertainingly enough that you shouldn’t mind (see also: averagely good fanfic). Its gimmick is that it is set in an old folks’ home, and it is very clearly written by someone who’s watched a lot of TV murder mysteries (the PoV choices/structure are clearly informed by TV and you can easily name the British actors who would play each character) but hasn’t read a lot of detective novels. I really needed a good light read and I had fun but I shan’t be motivated to hunt out the sequels until I really need a light read again.

Starling House (Alix E Harrow)

Romance/fairytale/horror Southern Gothic novel riffing very strongly off Beauty and the Beast but about a lot more than that, deeply grounded in a specific place and in the reality of poverty. Probably the first het romance I’ve read in quite some time (though one of the leads is bisexual). I really, really liked it, much more than the novellas I’ve read by the same author - it’s not as good as Some Desperate Glory (what is) but probably the same level of step up for the author; it made a lot of old things fresh. Big recommend.

Starter Villain (John Scalzi)

I only read this for Hugo nominee completionism and what a crash to earth; I have enjoyed Scalzi’s blog and social media but his fiction leaves me so cold. This one is a sort of action-comedy about the most boring nice white man in the entire Midwest inheriting his uncle’s supervillain empire. It’s composed of a lot of Very Cool Ideas which totally fail to cohere into a satisfying story because the book absolutely refuses to commit to the bit, too busy making snide jokes about how such a situation would ‘really work’. Nobody has anything resembling a character arc, especially the main character/PoV. The sole upside is that it’s bad in the kind of way that can make you a better writer if you spend time thinking about why it’s bad.

The Butcher of the Forest (Premee Mohamed)

A taut, brutal, tense novella about a woman sent into a magical forest to rescue the children of the tyrant who has conquered her homeland, which reveals its secrets only gradually, with no wasted words. Part horror, part fairytale, part something else - kind of an older, harder cousin to Starling House in that way, though there’s no romance element. I wouldn’t read this if you’re in need of a light pick-me-up but it’s very, very good.

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Malka Older)

Follow-up novella to The Mimicking of Known Successes with a different narrator, the academic Pleiti, as she and Inspector Mossa investigate another mystery on the human colonies wreathing Jupiter in a sort of faux-steampunk setting. I find these enjoyable but not quite cozy in the way some other people seem to.

Non-fiction

Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (Richard Feynman)

I read this for book club under protest because I vaguely remembered Feynman was kind of an asshole. Having read it, I can assure you that he’s a complete asshole; the entire book is composed of amusing anecdotes carefully designed to portray him as just a cool fun little guy who just happens to end up making all his friends look stupid, as well as constantly hook up with beautiful women. He must have been an absolute nightmare of a colleague. I made it through by gritting my teeth and trying to view it as a period piece but there are so many better, funnier, more interesting science memoirs out there.

Becoming Pākehā (John Bluck)

Half memoir, half contemplation of what it means to be Pākehā (and whether Pākehā is even a useful term) in modern Aotearoa New Zealand. The writer is a now-elderly former Anglican bishop and the target audience is very clearly older Pākehā men who don’t necessarily identify with the term; I found it a bit 101 but to be fair to the author, he’s very careful to constrain the bounds of his own ability to discuss the subject, including noting that Pākehā women have different experiences and identities again. A very good Christmas present for dads around the motu, I reckon.

Conspirituality (Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, & Julian Walker)

Based on a podcast I’ve never listened to, this is billed as a deep-dive into the links between new-age spirituality and conspiracy theories. It’s pretty tightly focused on yoga culture in America (the milieu the writers have personal experience with), which is fine, but to be honest a lot of it came across as being pretty lightly re-written podcast episodes. There were a lot of turns of phrase and pacing of information that would work as a spoken piece, but don’t work well in writing. Ultimately I don’t feel like I learned a lot. I think the main failing of the book is that it presents a lot of information but fails to draw many if any higher-level connections in an insightful way, and I’m not sure if it’s because the authors aren’t capable of it or just weren’t supported or guided to do so.

Sorcery and Cecilia (Patricia C Wrede & Caroline Stevermer)

A now fairly old but still excellent epistolary YA novel, set in Regency-England-with-magic, about two cousins - one having her first season in London, one who has stayed in the country - independently encountering two ends of a magical mystery. There are a couple of sequels which are fine, but this is a classic that holds up well to re-reads.

Comments

[birdylion]

You mention having read other books by Alex E. Harrow. Have you read "The Once and Future Witches"? I've had it recommended to me in terms of its queer representation, but don't know much about the writing, and would appreciate a short evaluation if you can give one.

[sixthlight]

I haven't but if I do, I'll definitely review it here! The books by her I have read are The Ten Thousand Doors of January, A Spindle Splintered, and A Mirror Mended.