Idiot Essays; Horse Rotters
Jan. 29th, 2012 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribouThe Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Eva Martin, nook)
Parts of this were baffling or boring and parts of it were absolutely compelling and brilliant. From reading Crime and Punishment, I'd expected more of the latter than I got, but I still found it an enjoyable slog. Added bonus amusement provided by the translator, who occasionally threw in bits of WW1-era Anglo idiom that were no doubt unremarkable at the time, but which I found highly amusing almost a century later.
(18, O5)
The Horse and His Boy, by C. S. Lewis (reread, audiobook)
Despite its flaws, and how much extra time I had to think about them in audiobook format, this is still my most favorite of the Narnia books. Reader was good, too.
(19, O6)
The Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat and Robert Atwan
Most years, I read the "Best American"s partly to expose myself to a broad range of ideas, but also mostly because they are fun. I was sort of puzzled about how I kept putting this one down and reading something else, until I thought about the year's topics: the cultural effects of queerness, the earthquake in Haiti, getting one's father's pacemaker turned off (a brilliant essay but since it made me cry last time I read it, I forbore this time through), auscultation (subtopics: trapped miners, heart disease, fatherhood), the murder of a young nephew, the aftermath of surviving childhood abuse, a spouse's failed tenure bid & the appeal process thereof, airplane crashes, the experience of having cancer, the author's need for chapels, chatline phone sex, the accidental cop homicide of a young girl in the roughest part of Detroit, the difficulty of someone's mother's immigration experience, visiting the murderer of a dear friend in jail, Othello's experience of being an out of place immigrant as it relates to that of the author's father, illegal abortions, the history & current ecological poverty of an area covered in big box shops which used to be an air force training base, being run over by a bus and the rehab process afterward, the dream & disappointment of moving to Chicago and having the baby of a no-good man, how Facebook might be impoverishing people's sense of self, being stopped for "driving while black" and its intrusion on a biracial family's birthday celebration, a weird little meta-essay on how personal essays seem to vie for attention based on quantity of suffering & self-centeredness, serial killers and prejudice, and a ritual corpse-washing. Superb writing, in all cases, but not exactly a light afternoon's diversion!!!! Oof.
(20)
Rotters, by Daniel Kraus
This was marvelously, unrelentingly creepy without ever being outright supernatural - plenty implausible, but in the good way. I *think* maybe when people like Faulkner, they like the sorts of things about him that I liked about this book: the language, the vision, the unrelenting grim absurdity that nevertheless both rings true and grants hope. Or I could be completely off in my comparison - I've never made it through a Faulkner novel. Anyway, this is wonderful, if you like horrific tinges to your coming-of-age tales.
(21)
Parts of this were baffling or boring and parts of it were absolutely compelling and brilliant. From reading Crime and Punishment, I'd expected more of the latter than I got, but I still found it an enjoyable slog. Added bonus amusement provided by the translator, who occasionally threw in bits of WW1-era Anglo idiom that were no doubt unremarkable at the time, but which I found highly amusing almost a century later.
(18, O5)
The Horse and His Boy, by C. S. Lewis (reread, audiobook)
Despite its flaws, and how much extra time I had to think about them in audiobook format, this is still my most favorite of the Narnia books. Reader was good, too.
(19, O6)
The Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat and Robert Atwan
Most years, I read the "Best American"s partly to expose myself to a broad range of ideas, but also mostly because they are fun. I was sort of puzzled about how I kept putting this one down and reading something else, until I thought about the year's topics: the cultural effects of queerness, the earthquake in Haiti, getting one's father's pacemaker turned off (a brilliant essay but since it made me cry last time I read it, I forbore this time through), auscultation (subtopics: trapped miners, heart disease, fatherhood), the murder of a young nephew, the aftermath of surviving childhood abuse, a spouse's failed tenure bid & the appeal process thereof, airplane crashes, the experience of having cancer, the author's need for chapels, chatline phone sex, the accidental cop homicide of a young girl in the roughest part of Detroit, the difficulty of someone's mother's immigration experience, visiting the murderer of a dear friend in jail, Othello's experience of being an out of place immigrant as it relates to that of the author's father, illegal abortions, the history & current ecological poverty of an area covered in big box shops which used to be an air force training base, being run over by a bus and the rehab process afterward, the dream & disappointment of moving to Chicago and having the baby of a no-good man, how Facebook might be impoverishing people's sense of self, being stopped for "driving while black" and its intrusion on a biracial family's birthday celebration, a weird little meta-essay on how personal essays seem to vie for attention based on quantity of suffering & self-centeredness, serial killers and prejudice, and a ritual corpse-washing. Superb writing, in all cases, but not exactly a light afternoon's diversion!!!! Oof.
(20)
Rotters, by Daniel Kraus
This was marvelously, unrelentingly creepy without ever being outright supernatural - plenty implausible, but in the good way. I *think* maybe when people like Faulkner, they like the sorts of things about him that I liked about this book: the language, the vision, the unrelenting grim absurdity that nevertheless both rings true and grants hope. Or I could be completely off in my comparison - I've never made it through a Faulkner novel. Anyway, this is wonderful, if you like horrific tinges to your coming-of-age tales.
(21)
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