still reading

The read­ing chal­lenge continues.

This one has bor­rowed and ac­quired a phe­nom­e­nal amount of books to read over the next few months and should be con­tent to tuck them­selves into a qui­et corner.

:    c  o  n  t  e  n  t  e  d   s  i  g  h    :

Here’s what is finished:
Mr Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Isherwood
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
This book was ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly pleas­ant to read, and quick. I rev­eled in the ban­ter be­tween char­ac­ters – got caught up in their lives and gen­er­al­ly en­joyed how the main char­ac­ter William was not a flat, bor­ing de­pic­tion. He had op­tions and de­sires for him­self. Read­ing this re­mind­ed me a lot of Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil, and I very much pre­ferred this nov­el to that of Good­bye to Berlin. The style this au­thor uses for writ­ing these books also seems so jour­na­lesque.

The Dream-Quest of Vel­litt Boe by Kij Johnson
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ³⁄₅
I ap­pre­ci­at­ed the nar­ra­tive of a strong fe­male pro­tag­o­nist jour­ney­ing through har­row­ing dark­ness. This was a pleas­ant, quick read that felt more like a short sto­ry than a nov­el. It was great to see Love­craft re­vis­it­ed with a mod­ern, more in­clu­sive adap­ta­tion. I give it ³⁄₅ be­cause some of the pas­sages in­volv­ing fight­ing were con­fus­ing to read.

Mag­i­cal Think­ing: True Sto­ries by Au­gusten Burroughs
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ³⁄₅
This book was pret­ty amus­ing. It was also hard to put down, be­cause read­ing from Au­gusten’s strange per­spec­tive was rather in­ter­est­ing. I com­pared this strong­ly to Love Notes to Men who Don’t Read but found I liked this bet­ter be­cause it was, though only slight­ly, less nar­cis­sis­tic. This man has an amaz­ing abil­i­ty for sit­u­a­tion­al re­call, and I ad­mire how much time he spends writ­ing things down.

Look­ing for Jake by Chi­na Miéville
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
**SPOIL­ER ALERT**   So this book was bloody excellent.
I re­mem­ber sev­er­al of the sto­ries fond­ly. One was about a for­tune teller who stared at a wall too long un­til some­thing evil in the de­tails looked back at her and spent a long time stalk­ing her through shapes, pat­terns and lines. There was also a witch­es fa­mil­iar made from his own flesh who only knew cu­rios­i­ty, and we went around up­grad­ing him­self and dis­cov­er­ing. Then there was also a great, ter­ri­fy­ing sto­ry about a ball pit where a child goes miss­ing – and the chil­dren fer­vent­ly want to vis­it be­cause of some mys­te­ri­ous rit­u­al which has been per­formed on it, oh! There was also a great sto­ry about the crea­tures who ex­ist be­hind the mir­ror. Miéville is as­tound­ing and im­pres­sive with his cre­ative hor­ror and I seek to de­vour all of his books these days.

Hawai­ian Leg­ends of Dreams by Caren Loebel-Fried
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
Love­ly com­pi­la­tion of folk tales and sto­ries – with many well drawn il­lus­tra­tions. Easy to read and accessible.

Oth­er Minds: The Oc­to­pus, the Sea, and the Deep Ori­gins of Con­scious­ness by Pe­ter Godfrey-Smith
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
This book was pleas­ant. It took a philo­soph­i­cal ap­proach to the cephalopods per­cep­tion of re­al­i­ty. It taught about their de­vel­op­ment and gave a some in­sight into their short life span and col­or shift­ing. It was some­what sim­i­lar to The Soul of an Oc­to­pus by Sy Mont­gomery but a lit­tle more an­a­lyt­i­cal. This book felt like one ex­tend­ed es­say, be­cause it of­ten ref­er­enced back to ear­li­er points – and read like a re­search paper.
One of the most in­ter­est­ing parts of this book was a ref­er­ence to a en­to­mol­o­gist who want­ed his body left in a spe­cif­ic for­est so a par­tic­u­lar bee­tle could de­vour his body and burst out of his chest cavity.

Am­at­ka by Karin Tidbeck
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    ⁴⁄₅
**SPOIL­ER ALERT**   This book prompt­ed a lot of thought for me. It was cu­ri­ous be­cause the end seemed slight­ly HP Love­craft, when re­al­i­ty start­ed warp­ing. Also rem­i­nis­cent to „Bladerun­ner“ when the „kip­ple“ start­ed to break down and de­scend into chaos. That ma­te­r­i­al need­ed to be named and marked was my fa­vorite part. The most hor­ri­fy­ing piece of this sto­ry was the scene where the main char­ac­ter went out and found her fa­ther … just walk­ing around af­ter he’d been lo­bot­o­mized. That stuck with me. I thought the au­thor did a great job killing their dar­lings and not be­ing too pre­cious with the char­ac­ters that they weren’t al­lowed an un­for­tu­nate fate. It felt be­fit­ting of the sto­ry that they would end up a part of this pri­mor­dial chaos. The last few scenes con­trast­ed the struc­ture of the rest of the book quite well. It was also nice to see a pla­ton­ic friend­ship in the main part of her nar­ra­tive, also how none of the char­ac­ters were per­fect or beau­ti­ful in any way made the sto­ry quite believable.

1984 by George Orwell
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    5/5
**SPOIL­ER ALERT**   This book was in­deed the sem­i­nal text I kept hear­ing about. It was also dis­gust­ing­ly rel­e­vant to the mod­ern po­lit­i­cal for­ay of ‘false news.’ It seems like Trump is ask­ing Amer­i­cans to par­tic­i­pate in dou­ble­think on a dai­ly ba­sis when he fab­ri­cates reality.
This book was re­al­ly hor­ri­fy­ing at times. To think of the idea of be­ing in a place where you must kill any man­i­fes­ta­tion of self and how men­tal slav­ery was done through such a sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach. It was in­deed a cau­tion­ary tale.
I read this while in Wolfs­berg, the city that was fund­ed by the Nazis in or­der to pro­duce VW bee­tles. It was sur­re­al to be sur­round­ed by a city that was built on the pro­ceeds of sim­i­lar meth­ods while read­ing, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause I had it on au­dio books and would run through the city – see the huge smoke stacks of the fac­to­ry as I heard the nar­ra­tive play out.
What struck me was the nar­ra­tive of the love af­fair be­tween Ju­lia and Smith. Nor­mal­ly I’m quite ro­mance re­pulsed, but I adored it when he said “The more men you’ve had, the more I love you … I want every­one to be cor­rupt to the bones.” Their tryst, the furtive looks and the in­abil­i­ty to speak to one an­oth­er, was a com­pelling part of the nar­ra­tive. It was also great how they had thought of an out­let for the frus­tra­tions of the Par­ty mem­bers in the 2 min­utes of hate thing each day.
Over­all this nov­el was clever and horrifying.

Geek Love by Kather­ine Dunn
FIND IN LI­BRARY    BUY    AU­THOR    5/5
This book was re­al­ly en­joy­able. Sec­tions of it were ut­ter­ly hor­ri­fy­ing, but I was re­al­ly im­pressed with how well they pushed forth the nar­ra­tive. That Kather­ine Dunn would al­ways be will­ing to kill her dar­lings, and clever enough to come up with the most twist­ed way pos­si­ble for her char­ac­ters to suf­fer re­minds me a lot of Chuck Palah­niuk. What hap­pened to the twins and the woman with long white hair was re­al­ly in­tense.. Also I loved how the main char­ac­ter of this sto­ry stayed so neu­tral through­out and nev­er thought of her­self as a good per­son or a hero. Her un­end­ing love for her broth­er even though he was a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac cult leader was re­al­ly well writ­ten. It did­n’t feel false or con­trived in any­way, and was quite believable.
This was a sto­ry about mon­strous peo­ple and their hu­man­i­ty. The read­er is privy to the strug­gles of the char­ac­ters in a re­al­ly per­son­al way, and I love how it fol­lowed them through their en­tire lives. The end­ing also was pret­ty great- I thought it could have gone on and I was cu­ri­ous how her daugh­ter would re­act, but I was sat­is­fied liv­ing with that curiosity.

Have you read any of these?

Clear­ly by the pho­to I’m the most hyped about When Ni­et­zsche Wept, but I’ve start­ed Think­ing Fast and Slow and it’s interesting.

The Hand­maid­’s Tale stream­ing se­ries was in­cred­i­ble, as was the movie based on The Pi­anist so I have hope for these –

Feel­ing bookish.

—car­nelian king

Flom­mist Car­nelian King is a per­form­ing artist, prod­uct de­sign­er, toy mak­er and non­bi­na­ry clown cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Berlin. Copy­right © 2018 Car­nelian King.

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