Salka
Loved, loved, loved it. My university library had it on display and I picked it up because I loved the play on Stone Butch Blues. I read it in one sitting. I didn't think it would resonate with me so much and be so full of humour, and joy, and hope,and self-love and learning. I'm so glad this book exists. Visibility of this story is everything
This is a story about a very sad and ugly subject, but written with an honesty and rawness that adds some kind of deeper pathos.
This was my first time reading James Baldwin's fiction, having previously only read his essays, nonfiction, and seen interviews/speeches. He is eloquent as ever but his eloquence and insight is held up as a mirror to a protagonist who is drawn into harmful and cruel behaviours due to his dishonesty with himself and fear of his attraction to men. This is a novel about masculinity and internalised homophobia and how it can eat you from the inside. The story illustrates how the process of internalised hate prevents a person from loving and destroys the lives of the ones around them. Like I said, ugly and sad subject, but as you'd expect from Baldwin, his perspicuity and insight mean it is a nuanced portrayal.
You won't like the first person narration from our protagonist, David: he's misogynistic, transphobic, fatphobic and classist. I guess a realistic portrayal given David is a white American man of the 1950s. Prepare yourself to be exposed to these 1950s attitudes. But it's probably the best portrayal of internalised homophobia you'll ever read. And these externalised behaviours are a great illustration of how hatred of difference and desire for normalcy is at its roots, disconnection, fear, and denial of self.
There are moments of beauty in the descriptions of intimacy, and I did jot down a few very quotable phrases. It's four stars for the quality of writing, but three stars for how rotten the protagonist made me feel.
This was an engaging enough read. Appropriate for ages 8 & 9 up I'd say. I was interested to discover that it was published 4 years after the release of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle. I feel like Wynne Jones has definitely taken inspiration from the film in this follow-up to the original 2 books that pre-date (& differ from ) the film. There is a character that is somewhat like Heen, as well as Markl, and visits to the royal palace. Howl also features in disguise at the palace as a cute blonde, curly haired boy, just like in the film. I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the characters of the “kobolds” who seemed to be inspired by the houseelves from Harry Potter but without any riposte to the paternalistic/supremacist undertones of servitude. There was some surprising Alien-esque body-horror in the Lubbock's laying of eggs in bodies. With the lubbock / lubbockins too, I do get a bit antsy with the problematic plot device of characterizing a whole species as evil. And the implications of interspecies offspring as evil. That's a bit sucks teeth for me.
Solid book. I've put 4 stars here but I think it's more 3.5 for me.
Quite immersive but the plot took a long time to get going and then felt resolved too hastily.
Characters were really well drawn and the best part. Definitely worth reading!
Looking forward to reading more from Xochitl Gonzalez.
Gave me Zadie Smith vibes I think but Gonzalez could learn from Smith's pacing & nuance.
A fantastically well crafted story that blends contemporary realism (mental health, neurodiversity, grief, poverty, inequality, politics, authority) and spiritual insight, with lashings of knowing literary and philosophical references. Somehow it's fun and entertaining whilst also being heartwrenchingly real. It walks the tightrope of drama well, always hopeful and grounded, without plunging into despair, even while our charcters themselves may be wavering.
I loved the really obvious & playful allusions to Marie Kondo & Slavoj Zizek, and to writer Ruth Ozeki herself (the typing woman in the library). Just when it feels it's teetering into didactic pontification, the cleverness of the narrative device slips in. The beauty of the different narrative voices changing and challenging throughout the story is a great metaphor for Benny's auditory hallucinations, bildungsroman, and progress towards integration and wellbeing.
The insight into the nexus of the health, housing, employment, consumerism, public services was not quite gritty or revaltory but I've never read such a realistic, insider perspective in fictional form that was this accessible in communicating to readers how these systems compound to fail those struggling.
It has an earnestness to it that's simultaneously a little cringe & clumsy, but brilliant in its warmth, and poetic in its vision. A little like Annabelle, a little like The Bottleman Slavoj, a little like Aikon. I guess they're ultimately all parts of Ozeki herself.
A simple story based on a young boy's experiences navigating friendships & life. His uncle writes him letters & notebook pages of sage life advice which help him learn to act on his feelings in a way that respects himself & others.
The story explores collectivism, class, values, ethics, and what it means to be a good friend.
A little preachy at times, but always relatable & mostly down-to-earth, it's surprising this book can still feel fresh and current almost 90 years after it was written.
Think of it in the vein of Rilke's Letters to A Young Poet, with a moralistic intent of something like The Alchemist or The Little Prince but with the classroom & schoolfriends as protagonists.
I'm curious to see how Hayao Miyazaki will adapt it for a feature length animation; whether he will flesh the story out or add to it, or keep it simple. There is no magical or folkloric element to the story so I suspect it will be more in the realist interpersonal style of From Up On Poppy Hill in contrast to films like Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or Howl's Moving Castle.
Beautifully written, Latitudes of Longing is really a series of interwoven generational love stories, strongly embedded in, but simultaneously transcending, place and time. The stories traverse South Asia from the Andamans, to Yangon, to Sagaing to the Kachin border regions, Kathmandu, & Ladakh/the Karakoram. Threading through them all is a fluent & beautiful prose that evokes weather, climate, seasons, & embeds relationship in trees, earth, creatures of all kinds, rain, ice, snow and sea. You would think the characters would get lost in this vastness, but they are grounded in it and brought alive.
Newlywed lovers navigate ghosts, incessant monsoonal downpours, & earthquakes, a student is imprisoned in one of the world's most notorious gaols, a smuggler learns to tell stories, all against the backdrop of the century's South Asian narrative: colonization at the end of the crumbling empire, Japanese occupation, military junta rule, postcolonial border disputes. It sounds tedious but the brilliant thing is that these events do form just a backdrop while relationships & inimitable eternal weather & climate are the central focus.
Gorgeous writing. The only thing that keeps this from 5 stars is that the characters via Swarup's writing, skirt & elude meaningful discussion of trans & queer experiences of love. The passing comments of character Thapa hint at transphobia/homophobia as well as pedophilia but the writing does not allow the reader to see how Swarup as narrator perceives these attitudes. This apolitical/amoral approach disturbed me. I wanted to know, is she condoning these attitudes, does she as a writer excuse these attitudes? There is also some subtext that Rana is queer, but exploration of his experiences of queer love & longing are kept almost imperceptible, & are eschewed in favour of a poetic reverie whose affections are only specific for other more traditionally accepted forms of affection. I felt these choices demonstrated a lack of courage & conviction in Swarup, & broke my suspension of disbelief, uncharacteristically for Swarup's writing is otherwise all-engrossing. My favourite relationship was probably between the bidi smoking Kashmiri septugenarian Ghazala and the lovestruck octogenarian Tibetan Apo. But the first half of the book focusing on Girija Prasad & Chanda Devi is definitely the most well-wriiten, engaging, & vivid.
So worth reading. Can't wait to see what Swarup writes next. Definitely on my list of favourite reads of the year.
Simple light read well written in straight-forward accessible language. 4 starts and not 3.5 because of the personal resonance. Getting more and more into Alice Oseman. Engaging & relatable characters drive a plot that balances elements of realism while avoiding traumatic emotional manipulation or unnecessarily dark plot devices.
Szubanski is an unexpectedly fantastic writer and this memoir is about her whole family with herself as a product of that family. It holds its own even when you take it as a family story removed from celebrity. It particularly focuses on Szubanski's formative relationship with her father, who was an assassin in the Polish resistance during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw in WWII. Szubanski weaves the stories of both her parents together with the story of her own childhood and the development of her own psychological schemas, habits, sense of humour, queer idenitity, and public persona. I listened to the audiobook via the ABC Listen App where Australians can listen to Szubanski herself read it.
Swing Time is an instant literary classic. Zadie Smith writes at her finest & is in top form, bringing back the full power of her witty & nuanced storytelling evident in White Teeth. I would say that the commentary is not as fresh & revelatory as the latter (this mostly comes through in the inequality/development part of the plot), but that may just be a factor of perspective change in me in the intervening years between reading both, & my education in inequality & development. the juxtapositions of characters & their messy contadictions against layers of inequalities of race, class, gender are satisfying & relatable. What stands out is the sisterly relationship between two best friends, and I can see how the comparisons to Ferrante are relevant & accurate here.
Grief, appropriate to the cultural symbolism of the colour white, pervades the pages of The White Book. If you've read Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Han Kang's The White Book is similar in its series of riffs on a colour and its evocations for the author. I would say Hang Kang's work is more sparsely poetic & melancholy in its tone. There is beauty to be had here if you're in the right headspace & life stage.
Although I don't agree with everything Yalom advocates in his approach to practice (his approach to therapist disclosure, and touch, his habit of commenting on the “attractiveness” of female clients), I think this book is an invaluable guide for therapists starting out. It's emphasis on procedural insight & “the here and now”, transparency, and authenticity are hard to come by elsewhere so accessibly.
This book is just incredible. It's in this third book of the series that Ferrante's masterstrokes as a writer really become clear. As a reader you see how the stories and experiences of the characters in the previous two books have been illustrated to pave the way and lend an emotional gravitas, visceral realism and acuity to Ferrante's social commentary and observations in Book III without sacrificing nuance.
There's no heavyhandedness here. Instead of the emotional and personal plot elements being sacrified for clunky righteous statements, the poignant personal plot elements and character relationships enrich and in turn are elevated by meta-narratives of social and political themes; there is a balance and carefully woven realism that is utterly distinct and which I can't remember having witnesses a writer balance so deftly. This alone places Ferrante in the firmament of the a contemporary literary canon.
In this book I also really began to see Ferrante's qualities as a writer in how she preserves the consistency of the narrator Lenu's voice, but has imbued each book's a perspective and expression befitting her age and stage of life. We see Lenu's emotional intensity, acute observational skills, imagination, and simple naivete in Book I, and the pace of life is sped up and chaotic and exciting in Book II, here in Book III, Lenu begins to draw more complex inferences as she places herself within a wider world and begins to integrate and apply her theoretical and abstract knowledge to her own life (albeit blind spots and hypocrisy notwithstanding).
It was this book that also really began to resonate with my own experience as a AFAB reader in a more distinct and profound way. I couldn't believe how much of Lenu and Lila were in me and the women in my life.
Disappointing to see the second and third parts of this tale descend into a tale which unashamedly prioritised the male characters' stories & completely sidelined the women characters until their narrative roles dwindled to bit parts serving the development of male characters. Whole key aspects of plot & narratives essential to the story are just abandoned & never resolved.
The story too just became unnecessarily bogged down in the tedious & odious details of military manoeuvring & violent resolutions
Bibliotherapy at its best.
The premise and plot of this book are a simple yet unexpectedly effective literary device to reframe the experience of the protagonist and reader from despair, suicidality, and depression, to hope.
It's no literary marvel, but it is accessible and has a hugely positive message.
Really loved this. The characters are complex and written well, and it's a rollicking adventure that relishes the chaotic melting pot of the times. A little bit salacious in the way that tv series writing can be these days, in latter parts I actually felt like I was reading something designed for contemporary TV audiences of the kind that love Outlander, Vikings, and other historical adventure series. It's perfect for TV adaptation and I hope that reports of a production beginning will come to bear.
I loved the richness of the language and linguistic plays. Good mix of shock, humour, romance, drama, intrigue, whilst not compromising literary merit or stretching, too far, the bounds of historical accuracy.
That this book is a page-turner is undeniable. There is suspense, romance, coming of age. I kind of expected, given the subject material of the Iliad, for it to be sad and violent and martial, and it was. I guess that's what I found difficult and for this reason I didn't enjoy it as I did Miller's Circe. Circe was more relatable to me in that the adaptation figured a way around the extremes of patriarchy and had more hope.
I'm glad I read it but I didn't find it satisfying or hopeful.
I really enjoyed parts of this & solnit just has such a readable style so often poetic, but there were parts where relatability faded into thoughts and turns of phrase that were revealing of her age & belonging to a generation who cannot comprehend certain nuances and complexities I now take as given, especially in her understanding of sexuality, gender identity. A loose nostalgia replaced contemporary care with these. The commentary on gender & safety while potent in its personal testimony does not offer anything newly piercing or refreshing to the discourse. The vacillation between place, gender, fear, were not as beautifully or powerfully woven as they could have been. The latter half felt less qorked on and edited. While it didn't live up to the heights of my lofty expectations this was still worth reading and had moments of beauty.
