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Entry tags:
- japan,
- meme,
- reading,
- reading_13,
- rl_13
Wednesday Reading Meme
What have you just finished?
The Agency: A Spy in the House, which has been on my shelves, a third read, since July. Finished it off last night, skimming and skipping, because I refuse to let a YA book consume several more days on top of the ones it swallowed last summer.
White is for Witching. Oyeyemi writes the kind of book that simple-minded readers like me can't read properly. She's a marvellous writer but I can't follow what she's doing. This may be because of what I normally read. Someone reviewing this said, essentially, 'If you loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle, this is for you.' Well, I did and it wasn't. Castle is a genre book; it does its genre task very neatly indeed and solves the riddle so that even the dumbest ox knows what happens. Witching is not genre, so even though there's a House, with Things in it, ummm-- there's no guarantee that actually there *is* a House rather than a house, or Things inside it; or if there are, there's no saying what the Things are. Thus literature.
What are you currently reading?
Red, still. May still be reading *that* next July.
The Plum Rain Scroll by Ruth Manley. Children's book about a mythical Japan. Discovered down in the cellar in a box of books from the 80s (put there in '96) which I never read (unlike the others, which I can't remember reading.) Has kitsune and oni and such-like, and might prove interesting, though the style so far is aiding my endeavours to learn to skim.
I was down in the cellar from a vague memory of seeing The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales in a box somewhere. That somewhere was indeed the basement, and both books have a distinct mildewy smell to them. (The 80s books, including my vanished Ishiguros, do not, fortunately.) Following![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
petronia's advice, I started reading 'Tuor and Gondolin' last night but the smell, even more than the prose style, is a distinct deterrent. Web advises leaving books in the sun, which I shall do when we get some sun, or putting them in a box inside another box filled with baking soda, which no I don't think so, or disguising smell by interleaving every ten pages with scented shelf liner, which I could do because I discovered some Front Lawn Dollar Store shelf liner down in the bunker a week ago that I'm damned if I will use in my drawers.
Or I could buy a new copy.
Or I could forget reading Tolkien.
Real World by Natsuo Kirino. Another refuse to be defeated book; started last October, can't get anywhere with, *will* finish dammit. Part of my 'Clean all thethings shelves!' campaign.
What will you read next?
*If* I ever finish any of the above, shall console myself with a random Jim Butcher.
'Clean all the shelves!' or 'Empty the kitchen table!' are merely artificial ways of ordering my reading. I could as easily do the book challenge I came across in someone's blog yesterday (a day off, finally, my first non-public holiday holiday since October: amazing how not working two hours at the daycare expands a day to infinity): 26 books, one for each letter of the alphabet. Authors' names, to get round the oddities like x.
The Agency: A Spy in the House, which has been on my shelves, a third read, since July. Finished it off last night, skimming and skipping, because I refuse to let a YA book consume several more days on top of the ones it swallowed last summer.
White is for Witching. Oyeyemi writes the kind of book that simple-minded readers like me can't read properly. She's a marvellous writer but I can't follow what she's doing. This may be because of what I normally read. Someone reviewing this said, essentially, 'If you loved We Have Always Lived in the Castle, this is for you.' Well, I did and it wasn't. Castle is a genre book; it does its genre task very neatly indeed and solves the riddle so that even the dumbest ox knows what happens. Witching is not genre, so even though there's a House, with Things in it, ummm-- there's no guarantee that actually there *is* a House rather than a house, or Things inside it; or if there are, there's no saying what the Things are. Thus literature.
What are you currently reading?
Red, still. May still be reading *that* next July.
The Plum Rain Scroll by Ruth Manley. Children's book about a mythical Japan. Discovered down in the cellar in a box of books from the 80s (put there in '96) which I never read (unlike the others, which I can't remember reading.) Has kitsune and oni and such-like, and might prove interesting, though the style so far is aiding my endeavours to learn to skim.
I was down in the cellar from a vague memory of seeing The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales in a box somewhere. That somewhere was indeed the basement, and both books have a distinct mildewy smell to them. (The 80s books, including my vanished Ishiguros, do not, fortunately.) Following
petronia's advice, I started reading 'Tuor and Gondolin' last night but the smell, even more than the prose style, is a distinct deterrent. Web advises leaving books in the sun, which I shall do when we get some sun, or putting them in a box inside another box filled with baking soda, which no I don't think so, or disguising smell by interleaving every ten pages with scented shelf liner, which I could do because I discovered some Front Lawn Dollar Store shelf liner down in the bunker a week ago that I'm damned if I will use in my drawers. Or I could buy a new copy.
Or I could forget reading Tolkien.
Real World by Natsuo Kirino. Another refuse to be defeated book; started last October, can't get anywhere with, *will* finish dammit. Part of my 'Clean all the
What will you read next?
*If* I ever finish any of the above, shall console myself with a random Jim Butcher.
'Clean all the shelves!' or 'Empty the kitchen table!' are merely artificial ways of ordering my reading. I could as easily do the book challenge I came across in someone's blog yesterday (a day off, finally, my first non-public holiday holiday since October: amazing how not working two hours at the daycare expands a day to infinity): 26 books, one for each letter of the alphabet. Authors' names, to get round the oddities like x.
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Ahhh I know about books back log... I despair of ever finishing mine. Yet I cannot resisting acquiring more. ^_^
no subject
The problem in a nutshell. One big step was the realization that acquiring books itself is, for me, a greater pleasure than reading them. But partly it's the hope that a come-by-chance book will prove to be one of those archetypal wondrous moments of reading, and so one must pick up ever more and more.
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Zan... can you believe I'm helping my son with his English homework. *facepalms some more*
it's the hope that a come-by-chance book will prove to be one of those archetypal wondrous moments of reading, and so one must pick up ever more and more. - Yes this is the same for me too!
^_^
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Now that you've found the book, my more specific advice is to skip forward to the Third Age stuff and work backward. XD Tuor isn't too bad, mind you, though one pictures it as a movie shot by Aleksandr Sokurov rather than Peter Jackson. Turin is a prat.
no subject
Shall do. Tuor and mildew make for unhappy reading, quite aside from the 'white and blond = good' oogies.
The mental landscape of the thing did indeed look more like Tolkien's line drawings than anything in NZ. Googled Turin, found him being a Christian allegory once the early versions are factored in and a total downer when not, and figure I can do without.