nnozomi | the essence and quintessence

Huge long book post! All the new books I’ve acquired after three years of a no-new-books hiatus, a glory of reading. (With bonus photos, unrelated to the books, below.) Details may or may not contain spoilers, poke me in comments if wanting to know more while remaining unspoiled. (Also, a gold star for anyone who can identify the post title quotation.)

Ben Aaronovitch, Amongst Our Weapons and What Abigail Did That Summer (novels)

The Rivers of London series have always been in the “fun to read, good to reread” category for me rather than on my “fantastic, don’t reread too often so as not to spoil” list; the first two books in particular had too much violence and too much weird stuff with women to make me happy, but unlike a lot of people, I’ve liked them more and more as the series goes on. Part of this is that I was never much of a Peter/Nightingale fan (although I’ve read some damn good fics with that pairing); I love them both individually, but Peter just seems to me like someone who is essentially attracted to women (I’m okay with Peter/Beverley, especially given my thoughts on Peter’s future, based on maybe two throwaway lines), and Nightingale I imagine as technically bisexual, capable of sleeping with both men and women and enjoying it, but both by nature and nurture intensely homosocial, so that his meaningful relationships, especially but not only sexual/romantic ones, are with men (and after Lesley’s defection he did some soul-searching over this)—but that said, unlikely to be attracted seriously to someone who didn’t share at least some version of his long troubled history. Varvara Sidorovna if she’d been a man, for instance.
I also really love the ensemble cast, and I enjoy murder mysteries which are basically “go around and talk to a lot of people and get little glimpses of different lives and personalities and dialogue” (see also Cynthia Harrod-Eagles).
The two new books are probably my favorites so far. Abigail’s book is amazing—I was thinking based on the previous books that Aaronovitch had made her rather over-powered, having her turn out to be a genius all of a sudden, but her narration really feels like a very bright, driven teenager who is also coping with a lot. (I have no clue whether it comes off as authentic for a gifted mixed-race teenage girl at a London comprehensive, but it works for me.) I love her and I want more of her, and also the way the foxes talk is fantastic. Peter’s new book also worked well for me—it’s more leisurely than some (although I could still do without the one or two extended action scenes) and, on the whole, about new chances and people being kind to each other, not without Peter’s usual extended digressions on architecture. (I usually don’t do audiobooks etc., but I’ve heard good things about these and am wondering if I should get myself one, what’s the verdict?)

Seth Berkman, A Team of Their Own (nonfiction)

An account of the formation of the mixed South-North Korea women’s hockey team at the Pyeongchang Olympics. This was just a much sadder book than I expected—even before North Korea comes anywhere near the story, it’s a recounting of poverty (teenagers turning down overseas study because their sports stipends are helping keep their families fed…), injuries (hockey is brutal on the body), racism (much of the book focuses on the Korean-American and Korean-Canadian players who joined the team and their experiences in both countries, as well as those of the South Korean women overseas), and the personal disappointments and institutionalized sexism almost ubiquitous to women’s sports stories. And then you get the situation of the North Korean players, and the adverse effects of their entry into the team, and man, this is a painful book. It’s also a happy one—even at one or two removes, the joyful camaraderie that develops among the players is lovely to read about. I kind of wonder if they would have had more intimate stories to tell if the author had been a woman, or fully fluent in Korean, but I can’t complain about his handling of his material.

Zen Cho, Black Water Sister (novel)

A lot of fun, with the Zen Cho trademark of zany/funny and serious/painful in interwoven layers, all going on at once. Apart from the supernatural plot, I really liked the way we gradually see Jess’ parents more and more clearly, as Jess does, and I got so invested in a happy ending for all three of them. I almost wished the pace of events would slow down a while and let me bask in the language and setting and people more. Also, for me all the Hokkien and Malay involved in the text were a delight; more power to the author for not deliberately glossing all the phrases and making them work in context. (Irrelevant to the novel itself, I had fun figuring out the Mandarin equivalents for some of the Hokkien phrases and bringing to mind Malay words from the technical catalogs my former firm used to handle—like, I knew air hitam! I remembered it when it was pointed out! The things we learn.)

Alice Degan, From All False Doctrine (novel)

Given that, based on plot structure alone, this novel could accurately be described as a Christian romance, it is surprising how much I enjoyed it! It starts out VERY Sayers-y, although the wrong character is named Harriet, and ends up with generous dashes of Madeleine L’Engle and C.S. Lewis as well. I liked Elsa and Kit and Harriet and Peachy a lot, although I have to say that if this were a major fic fandom the number of Kit/Peachy fics would vastly outnumber anything else, their relationship is the core of the book in some ways and is more intense and interesting than either of the romances. One thing I think Degan does very well is to make it clear that Peachy is annoying and hard to put up with in some ways, while simultaneously lovable and worth knowing—the Kim Dokja conundrum, as it were. And his music sounds wonderful. Kit is a little bit too perfect, but the way his religious practice and belief are portrayed is genuinely moving and appealing—if only all of Christianity were like that. (Also, I’m TRYING to remember what other novel involves the Devil disguised as a woman and eventually driven out, but it’s not coming.)

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (novel)

Throughout this I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading a novel, not a brilliantly edited collection of oral histories (that’s a compliment), even though most of the sections are in third person. Some of it is brutal, and some very funny, and some satirical. As a onetime teacher, I think Shirley’s section struck me the most, chanting the names of her students, and struggling with changing times (also, among the small details, I loved Winsome’s book club).

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Headlong, Cruel as the Grave, Dying Fall (novels)

The latest installments in a super-long police procedural series set in London. A little repetitive in some ways but still very readable and satisfying—they tend to consist mostly of conversations with a wide variety of people involved with whatever crime it is this time, and the result is a lot of tiny slices of life, with the personal lives of the detectives on the side (Slider’s family life is constantly, gradually evolving, and Joanna is wonderful). This means that I can reread them repeatedly even when I know who the murderer was, which can’t be said for a lot of mysteries. (Also, although still with a long ways to go compared to Aaronovitch, somewhat less white-default than they used to be. And still with a large quantity of terrible puns.)

Higuchi Asa, 大きく振りかぶって vol. 36 (manga)

Un-melodramatic, as above, is one of my higher compliments, and it’s one of the things I really love about this manga, how un-melodramatic and un-sentimental it is—I think it’s very different from a lot of sports manga/anime that way. It’s very high on the realism, also almost totally gen, there are the gentle hints of Chiyo’s crush on Abe (and also the author knows exactly what she’s doing when she teases Abe/Mihashi) but it’s not about that either, it’s about the ten boys and Chiyo who make up the team and the adults around them, just small-scale, careful, detailed, affectionate characterization (and A LOT of baseball facts).

Ren Hutchings, Under Fortunate Stars (novel)

This was a disappointment, even though the summary sounded fascinating. I like ensemble casts, but somehow the effect here is to make all the characters feel like secondary characters, with no strong lead character throughline, and two-dimensional in their emotions and relationships—all the backstories and character beats felt predictable and expected. (I will give credit for the alien who could kill Jereth and doesn’t, that was powerful.) With the possible exceptions of the captain and the little engineering boyfriends, all the non-POV characters were just barely sketched in—Keila and Charyne are so important to the future I expected to get to know them better, but they had about two lines apiece, what’s-his-face who dies bravely likewise, and so on. The POV characters likewise seem to be characterized mostly by their respective traumatic pasts and present coping mechanisms, and Shaan and Uma in particular both come off as very young, even though they must be, what, thirties and early forties respectively at least? Everything feels very barren and stripped down to the bare essentials for the plot, without the surrounding characterization that would make them feel real. I kept reading it to find out how the plot worked out, and it was an interesting concept, but I’m not likely to go back to it. (Also, it leaves some questions weirdly unanswered. How did the Navigator die?)

L.D. Inman, Household Lights (novel)

A gentle interlude of struggling for harmony: Speir’s with her own body, Speir and Douglas in their friendship-or-whatever-it-is, Douglas in the tense postwar academy environment he has to handle without falling victim to or denying the past. I like “aftermath” stories, and this is a very good one, although I suppose it’s really the middlemath (not a word, but it should be).

C.L.R. James, Beyond A Boundary (memoir)

Even if, like me, your only real exposure to cricket is via Antonia Forest, this is immensely readable, James is a raconteur, with humor, passion, and grace. (Also he doesn’t explain anything if he doesn’t feel like it, you just keep up and follow along; it’s just the same as beginning an SF novel set in a culture you have to figure out as you go along.) I also now know a lot more about early 20th-century Trinidad and being black in prewar England than I did. (And I had to go back and listen to “Cricket, lovely cricket” just because.)

Freya Marske, A Marvellous Light (novel)

The magic system feels interesting and original, the plot seems to hang together (I’m never very good at reading for plot), and the writing is lovely at a sentence level. But, having read and liked the author’s fics, I’m surprised at how unsubtle the characterization feels—almost everyone is signposted as either Good Character, to be liked, or Bad Character, to be disliked, and the bad characters in particular are extremely two-dimensional, which makes them boring to read about. As with Natasha Pulley, only in a sense even more so, I feel I’m being manipulated to care about the main characters, and it’s not working very much. (For all her protagonist-centered characterization Pulley does write interesting and likeable minor characters here and there, which I haven’t seen Marske doing yet—I think the only examples are Miss Morrissey and her sister, who are sort of Good POC Rep Ex Machina.)
There are certain overall similarities to the original thing I’m working on, but the stories Marske wants to tell are very different from the ones I do (which is fine! Good even!). It’s an interesting parallax view.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, To the Diamond Mountains (nonfiction)

Traveling through China and both Koreas, Morris-Suzuki writes and observes really beautifully and knows the hell out of her subject; my only complaint is that the framing story, as it were, of Emily Kemp’s travels a century earlier remains very briefly sketched in, probably through necessity. Not a big book but a vivid one.

Janet Neel, I Meant To Be A Lawyer (memoir)

An autobiography written in very much the same dry, elegant style as her mystery novels, a lot of fun (and sometimes painful) to read. Striking in how straightforwardly she writes about family struggles, and how she seems to have liked and been liked by the vast majority of the (very wide range of) people she worked with (a notable exception being Margaret Thatcher). Francesca Wilson and her surroundings turn out to have been considerably more autobiographical than I knew, making it clear that Neel has managed the difficult task of blending autobiographical material seamlessly into good fiction writing. I wish this book talked more about her writing indeed—how and why she began, how she felt about using her own experiences, specific issues with individual books—but it’s still very good. (Incidentally, my mother recently sent Neel a fan email re her mysteries, and got a response saying "You have started me off on a new Francesca Wilson book…I am most grateful to you – it is going to be some time before Francesca or her closest associates need to rest in the afternoons or any other time,” so if a new volume comes out soon, please thank my mom!)

Nina Mingya Powles, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai (memoir)

A gorgeous slim book—it is clear the author is a poet, although this is prose—about family and China and food (don’t read it when hungry). I’d like to read more expanded versions of many of the little jewel essays, but they’re for savoring as individual little bites, like the dumplings she describes so richly.

Huma Qureshi, How We Met (memoir)

I confess to having chosen this autobiography in part as research for one of my original characters; it didn’t tell me much of what I wanted to know in that sense but it’s a moving read, at least as much about the author grieving for her father as it is about finding her husband. Interesting about her interactions with her religion.

S. E. Robertson, The Healers’ Purpose (novel)

As mentioned in an earlier post, this is the third in (so far) a trilogy of secondary-world fantasy, and one I had a chance to beta-read, although I don’t know the author personally. The world-building is fabulous, a world that feels totally lived in, and it’s also a thoughtful meditation on learning to be who you are and take pride in it.

Jing Tsu, Kingdom of Characters (nonfiction)

Entirely down to me, because the book is straightforward about what it does: I would have liked, say, 90% stories about people and 10% technical information, rather than the roughly 50-50 split the book actually is. Tsu does a wonderful job of making these abstruse topics clear, but I just want to find out more about the people who worked on them. (The book does mention my adored Chao Yuen Ren, here Zhao Yuanren, in passing!)

Cynthia Zhang, After the Dragons (novel)

A short, sweet, sad urban fantasy? eco-fantasy? novel set in Beijing with dragons. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the author is in fandom somewhere—it felt vaguely fic-like to me, maybe because of the present tense and the way the m/m relationship is the main story arc—but it stands up as original work.

Phew! Photos: mostly from a day in Kyoto after the heaviest snowfall in a decade, we didn’t time our trip that way but it really doesn’t usually look like this. (No, those are not cherry blossoms. Really.) Also, just for fun, the results of my plot work for the second half of book 2 (next time I’ll use more different-colored post-its…) and me in lunarriviera's excellent Guardian T-shirt, with authentic Haixing pseudo-English as well.

Be safe and well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

laireshi

unlike a lot of people, I’ve liked them more and more as the series goes on. Part of this is that I was never much of a Peter/Nightingale fan
This is interesting, because I definitely prefer the early books (though I'm there with you re: violence and women), but I also really don't ship them. I wish there was more Nightingale later on though, "traumatised mage" is where I live ;)

After the Dragons sounds nice. By "sad" do you mean the ending or the overall mood?

Those snowy trees look beautiful. Way too cold for me, but beautiful. Thanks for sharing ❤

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