Eleanor > Recent Status Updates

I wish I could be more excited about the #BookerPrize2023 shortlist. As it is, most of them sound actively dull to me. The only one I'm seeking out (from pre-shortlisting, to be fair) is Prophet Song. Vexed that In Ascension has fallen off.

This is my first foray into audiobooks, via Audible (sorry), and Elisabeth Moss is reading it incredibly well. Also, I first read this at fifteen and remember being mildly disturbed by it, if not much more - but now, twelve years later, either I have more life experience or the novel is more relevant (or both), because its upsettingness is both subtle and visceral.

It took me the first few chapters to get into this, but now I'm invested, I'm REALLY invested. It's high epic fantasy with dragons and polysyllabic names, but the vast majority of the major political players are women. Also, Shannon can write! So far, so excited to send this to all the Tolkien bros when it comes out in February.

Well, this has picked up! The opening chapters are only one perspective of three, which are told in reverse chronological order, until the thread of the first section is revisited in the final part. I’m still uncertain about the levels of graphic violence - there had better be an extremely compelling reason for some of these characters to do the things they do - but my god, the pages are turning themselves.

I want to like this just a little bit more than I actually do. Perhaps the present tense narration isn't helping (it doesn't necessarily create an effect of immediacy!) And why must there always be a brothel of unusual perversity frequented by the rich, powerful, and nameless?!

Covered lots of ground last night. Part 2 deals with present-day consumption issues, using historical examples to contextualise: the current chapter is on fair-trade movements. Interestingly, Trentmann's analysis of the effects of state spending merely glances at contemporary austerity policies. He implies they only really affect the already-poor and disadvantaged, which is demonstrably untrue, at least in the UK.

I've a better handle on the focus and structure now: part one is basically a chronological overview of global consumption trends (fun!!) Almost finished that section now and especially impressed with the analysis of consumption in the GDR and Soviet Russia. (Socialism doesn't stop people wanting stuff. It's not news, but the details on things like car ownership and food shopping are interesting and engaging.)

So far, I'm impressed by Trentmann's scope: he deals with consumerism in Ming China and in East African kingdoms, as well as in Britain, France, the Netherlands, etc. (There were big differences. Ming elites wanted antiques with provenance, not the new and shiny.) The focus of any given section is often unclear, though I'm willing to believe that this is the fault of a reader unaccustomed to reading economic history.

Cheever's writing is terrific, and his worldview is much more humane than I was anticipating, but bloody HELL this is a long book. And sometimes it gets wearing, you know, to go from one story about suburban ennui to another story about suburban ennui. On the other hand, reading them all together makes his stories seem like a novel in themselves - the recurrence of Shady Hill and people like the Farquarsons, &c.

Very much enjoying the structure of this - the flashbacks to David Reece's life after being demobilised are just as important as any emphasis on what happened to him in Burma.

So far, very reminiscent of Pat Barker's Regeneration, in the best possible way. Fans of Linda Grant's The Dark Circle will probably like this, too.

The plot strands are collapsing together now in a way that is slightly harder to follow, but I'm still on the ride. Pretty sure Harkaway's a genius.

This is bonkers and I keep underlining bits and I love it. More as developments arise.

This is striking me a bit as Shelter did, in that it's an incredible premise wrapped in deeply average prose. Okorafor is doing more interesting things than Franklin, though (as Abigail Nussbaum notes, our (anti)heroine is an angry black woman in a burka who wants to blow up the US Capitol; that's pretty damn bold). I'm realising, however, just how much I want prose to be—at minimum—smooth and fluid.

So far, this is disappointing me—I'm used to thinking of St. Aubyn as an effortless prose stylist, but the dialogue (with the sole exception of his Fool character, alcoholic ex-comedian Peter Walker) is painfully plodding, and the two evil Dunbar sisters are caricatures of lecherousness and stupidity. However, Dunbar has just set out alone on the fells; perhaps things will improve.

I was initially very dubious of this because it looked a lot like Cormac McCarthy Does Yorkshire, and indeed it sort of is, but it's gripping in its own right. Mozley also writes a better unconventional (femme) boy character than, e.g., Sarah Franklin's Seppe in Shelter.

The only other Harris book I've read is Conclave - which I enjoyed greatly - but I think this is better. Maybe his best. More to follow.

Quite impressed with this so far - McGrath's writing is lucid and almost affectless, and his evocation of post-war London (freezing cold, still rationed, clothes and food scarce) and its theatre scene (hard work, long hours, greasepaint, bright lights) is second to none.

So far, bonkers and brilliant. I'm a little alarmed by how no one seems to have mentioned that the main character Bekim's primary romantic relationship (with a talking cat) is profoundly abusive; maybe it seems too obvious to state, but I wouldn't want to gloss over it. The sections narrated by his mother, Emine, as a teen bride are maybe even better.

This is like a mashup of Frenchman's Creek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Les Mis and Neal Stephenson's Baroque trilogy. Needless to say, I'm loving it. From a structural point of view there are several things to criticise, but on another level, who cares?

Apart from A Tale of Two Cities this past January, it's been genuinely years since I've read 19th-century prose, and Hardy's in particular is highly enjoyable - I hadn't noticed how dryly funny he is, when I was reading for uni. Perhaps I'll read nothing but Victorians for a while. (Not possible, really, but a nice thought.)

Really enjoying this. Superb on urban alienation, and on circumstances that might, today, lead to divorce (two people who want fundamentally different things from life), but which in the 1940s led only to misery (mostly for the woman). I've never read anything this good about the effects of WWII and industrialisation on the poor white rural population of America.

This is going to be impossible to read all at once—not because it's long, but because it cuts pretty near the bone—but that, of course, is an accolade. If you liked First Love, pick this up.

I really suck at Goodreads updates. Anyway, I'm almost done with this and am impressed by its dedication to its central idea, including its willingness to introduce chaos and human error into the Infinite Family Project it describes. Not quite as impressed w/Wilson's prose, which is often awkward and authorially didactic (though still very readable).

Pretty obvious now that I'm just going to have to make this my primary reading book until I've finished it. It's so addictive that the length isn't really registering. And King can construct a sentence, which elevates him in my estimation - his name shouldn't be used as a byword for second-tier genre, in the way it sometimes is.