Readsday

Readsday! Been forgetting about this for a while now apparently, holy shit WHOOPS. Got distracted by xposting GR reviews, I think.


What did you just finish reading?
Life after Life, Kate Atkinson, which was pretty amazing, even if she let the whole Hitler thread just kinda.....fizzle out. (Can threads fizzle?) A dud. A little reminiscent of Night Watch by Sarah Waters, and even Woolfian -- I don't think this is at all a coincidence, given the (terrific) character actually named "Miss Woolf." The characters were great and the pre-War, WWII and post-War settings were beautifully done. There is the problem of where to end a story of eternal recurrence, which she doesn't quite fix, but it was very good. It reminded me a bit of the pageant of English history at the end of Between the Acts, too. The breathless "What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?" blurb is really quite misleading, it's not Groundhog Day. More like a kaleidoscope - same material, unending patterns - or something like the Mandelbrot.

What are you reading now?
Not quite sure yet - I might go back to Anne Carson, whose work I am carefully rationing out to myself so I won't gobble it all and then be immediately bereft. I can't say much about her except "gorgeous" and "holy shit WOW" and "brain being rewired," especially by "The Glass Essay" and "Gender of Sound."  So far I have Nox, Plainwater, Red Doc, Eros the Bittersweet, Grief Lessons, Decreation, If Not, Winter, and Economy of the Unlost. Hoarding.

What do you expect to read next?
See above (why am I always writing these when I am between books? arrrgh). Maybe another Ian Rankin, for fun.


ETA: I wound up reading Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, by Maia Szalavitz, no real idea why, except I needed to read it at some point for research and it bobbed to the top of my Kindle. It's really fucking depressing. Just came across this gem, tho: "She and her best friend found identical black pleather vests at the mall. Lulu also bought black pleather pants to match, her friend purchased a skirt of the same material, and they planned to wear Capezio shoes, skinny ties, and white shirts to complete their look." Insta-flashback to 1984. However, Lulu Corter wound up being "held in a New Jersey program called KIDS for thirteen years: from age thirteen to age twenty-six." That is going to be horrifying reading.

ETA 2: Finished that (a shattering but quick read) and am now on to The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen by Susan Bordo, the gift of a friend, which is very well-written and witty and completely enjoyable.