Julia Kinion

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Julia is Currently Reading

Julia Kinion is currently reading

Babel

by R.F. Kuang (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2025

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Julia Kinion said: " "How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?"

That was so brilliant!!! I loved every word of this book!!!

The world building was so incredibly creative and well-done, I can't ev "How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?"

That was so brilliant!!! I loved every word of this book!!!

The world building was so incredibly creative and well-done, I can't even imagine how this emerged from a single person's mind! The amount of research that must have gone into the creation of this book is absurd! I loved the way that Kuang blended fantasy and linguistics, while addressing colonialism and the dialect between violence and nonviolence as forces of change! I loved the way that the dialect flowed between characters, from Griffin and Robin, to Griffin and Anthony, to Robin and Victoire!

In so many works of inherently political fiction—1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 et al.—the characters exist as such non-people because the characterization is secondary to the message that the author is attempting to convey. A lot of dystopian storytelling has its characters function as animals in one of Aesop's fables—all to say, it's about the message! Kuang has a very clear message that she wishes to communicate about colonialism, exploitation, race, and identity, and I think it's genuinely refreshing how upfront her writing is about it. Babel is an inherently, inherently political novel, and one that I believe will become more relevant and enduring as time goes on, and we are forced to continually reckon with the longstanding impacts of colonialism, and of exploitation writ large. This is absolutely a modern classic, and I will hear no argument to the contrary. I appreciate that Kuang, despite being political, is not overly polemical. The debate between violence and nonviolence against the violence of the State is central to the novel, however, she does not take sides, even as all of her characters do. That's the point, I think!!! That there isn't an answer, and there never will be, in the conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor!

Anyway, I went on a massive rant about the politics of Babel when what I really meant to say was that I thought the characters were well done, which is often a rarity in this specific genre, populated with Winston Smith and company. Robin was a really well-written protagonist, and I loved his subtle but immense character development from cowardice to an immense predilection for destruction, including self-destruction, brought about by grief. You could really see the parallels between the brothers—it all goes back to Abel and Cain, doesn't it?—and how one grows into the other, including their ultimate fate. I liked Ramy a lot, and I found his tendency to play into the expectations of the Englishmen around him really interesting. Kuang is so unflinching in her discussions of race, and it's so refreshing. I also liked Victoire, but she always felt like the most neglected protagonist in the novel. I never really got a handle on her character until the last fifty pages. She always felt a little uncertain and unclear to me, and that's a shame, because I did really like her and her personality, when it did come up. Letty! Oh my, what a character! The privilege that Letty experiences because of her whiteness is so overt and present throughout the narrative and it is uncomfortable but that is expressly the point! Her character arc was heartbreaking to see, but felt completely natural given all of the characterization that she had received up to that point! I loved that Kuang was so comfortable letting the reader sit with the discomfort of privilege and the chasm of experiences that comes with being white as compared to non-white!

I also loved the setting and the atmosphere! Oxford was completely tantalizing in its academic thrall, and I loved that that was exactly the point! The charm and allure that the characters experienced was felt so poignantly by the reader, that you felt that same desire to bury your head in the sand and ignore the horrors that the instituons was perpetrating—what a brilliant metaphor for colonialism and capitalism, and its incredible that it was exactly the point!

Footnotes were such a fun addition, too. Loved this whole book! ...more "

progress:

(55%)
— 10 hours, 6 min ago

Sep 12, 2025 02:24PM · see review

Julia Kinion is currently reading

Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

bookshelves: school, currently-reading

Reading for the 4th time

read in March 2025

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Julia Kinion said: " I know that Mary Shelley loathes to see me coming—third read of Frankenstein in 2025. I think I do tend to re-read books to the point of diminishing my enjoyment of them, so I think this will be the last time I revisit Frankenstein for the foreseeabl ...more "

progress:

(page 100 of 239)
— 2 hours, 32 min ago

Aug 14, 2025 09:47AM · see review