From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Edit: This quote was actually from another book I’m reading. See the quote from In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado for proper context. Sorry!
There was an idea somewhere in this book (early on perhaps?) that talked about the etymology of archive or archivist, how it’s an act of policy, governance, power. Even though I can’t recall the quote since I didn’t get a chance to write it down, it’s been a recurring haunting; sometimes insidious, other times ethereal and fascinating. The idea isn’t new, but peering under the hood into the history of the word and then filtering that through real historical context gives it more verisimilitude (more than this even, but words fail me) in my mind. #SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Historical note: Jardine & Matheson were real people and played very much the same role in real history that they are playing when they show up in this book. Their company, now just "Jardine Matheson", still exists, still has a large footprint in Hong Kong, and did very well out of Britain's abuse of China. If you don't know the history and don't want spoilers then I'd wait until a couple of chapters after they're introduced to look them up. Though I'm also assuming that somewhere after where I've reached, the book must diverge from the real history.
Karl Gützlaff was also a real person whose attitudes seem to be faithfully represented in the book, though I don't know enough about him to know how historically accurate his actions in the book are. #SFFBookClub
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.
1828. Robin Swift, …
By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive.
@eldang@outside.ofa.dog I felt very similar about this scene. It was deeply uncomfortable in a very real sense. I felt that it was so well done and a perfect example of the fine distinction between caricature villains commonly found in books and an unrelentingly cruel and self-absorbed character that mirrors reality. In isolation they both look similar, but with context it’s a world of difference.
#SFFBookClub
@eldang@outside.ofa.dog I felt very similar about this scene. It was deeply uncomfortable in a very real sense. I felt that it was so well done and a perfect example of the fine distinction between caricature villains commonly found in books and an unrelentingly cruel and self-absorbed character that mirrors reality. In isolation they both look similar, but with context it’s a world of difference.
#SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning
ch15 spoiler
Yesterday I read the scene in which Professor Lovell browbeats Robin into pretending contrition and giving up a scrap of information about Hermes. A different part of it is haunting me: the way Lovell never engages with a single moral claim Robin makes, just mocks and dismisses them out of hand. That part of the conversation, I've had personally with so many relatives and the occasional coworker / fellow student. And I keep reading reports of political and media figures doing the same - Lovell might as well have just said "woke" with that sneer they all do.
None of which is a criticism of the book! It was a painfully well-observed scene. #SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning
ch12, non spoiler
I'm enjoying how much Kuang ties the fantasy world of the book to the real world unrest that was happening at the same time, and how timeless the attitudes of the people fully bought into the system are. #SFFBookClub
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History …
Content warning
minor spoilers for book 1 / the first 4 chapters
I'm thoroughly enjoying this book so far, including among other things the descriptions of Oxford through the eyes of some new students. It's clear that Kuang has a lot of affection for the place even as she's setting the story up to be very sharply critical of it in important ways. And that's striking a very personal chord with me.
I interviewed at Oxford as a potential undergrad, and didn't get in. It was the one university I applied to that required an interview, and even though the interview itself was frustrating [I seemed to be evaluated on prior subject knowledge, for a subject they advertised as not needing prior background to study], the 3 days in Oxford in an autumnal fog around it were lovely. Looking back I'm reasonably confident that I was better off studying elsewhere, but every now and then I do get some longing for the place because it is so beautiful, and it is possible to fall for the illusion it has of itself as a town-sized temple of pure learning.
I think Robin and Rami's 3 days of freedom before term starts managed to capture a lot of that feeling. It's already clear the place isn't going to be as good for Robin as he thinks, but oh it's such a beautiful place it's easy to be charmed by it.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
How High We Go in the Dark
4 stars
A very emotional and structurally interesting book - somewhere between a set of short stories and a set of chapters with very varied styles and points of view.
I loved the ways the stories were connected to each other, and the best of them were absolutely heartrending pictures of grief, fear, and mourning. Many of them did live on in my mind for some time afterwards. But towards the end I felt like some of the broader attempts to pull it all together in one arc didn't quite land for me.
@calor It's open to anyone, but it's a bit confusing at the moment because hashtags don't quite sync right between Bookwyrm and Mastodon (probably true for Misskey, Pleroma, etc too, Mastodon's just the one I have experience with). All you have to do to participate is to post about the book with the tag. But:
1) We all really appreciate it if anything at all spoilery is behind a warning that says how far into the book you are, so people can wait until they've reached the same place to read it.
2) If you also have a Mastodon account, you'll see more traffic on the #SFFBookClub tag over there, and you'll get more replies if you use that one.
Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.
In a tent …
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands
3 stars
This is a belated #SFFBookClub read for me, as I finally was able to get my library's only copy of this book.
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands reads like a set of short stories in a travelogue, where each chapter in this book felt like its own self-contained adventure. Most loose ends for each story get (almost too) neatly tied off before the next, and Qamar felt to me emotionally as almost a different character each time around. All of this together made the book feel a little shallow to me, as most of what I got out of it thematically was just a desire for travel.
The in-world "Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands" book connects both Qamar's parents as well as Qamar with other characters, especially given that we find out that there's only a half-dozen copies of it made, but it felt underused. By the end, it seemed …
This is a belated #SFFBookClub read for me, as I finally was able to get my library's only copy of this book.
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands reads like a set of short stories in a travelogue, where each chapter in this book felt like its own self-contained adventure. Most loose ends for each story get (almost too) neatly tied off before the next, and Qamar felt to me emotionally as almost a different character each time around. All of this together made the book feel a little shallow to me, as most of what I got out of it thematically was just a desire for travel.
The in-world "Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands" book connects both Qamar's parents as well as Qamar with other characters, especially given that we find out that there's only a half-dozen copies of it made, but it felt underused. By the end, it seemed to be more of an easter egg to have the book appear in itself; at best, it's an overt symbol of the spirit of travel, and I wanted a little bit more oomph to it.
This all sounds very negative, but I enjoyed a lot of the short stories. They just don't stand as a whole together, and I think the book is weaker for it.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …
How High We Go in the Dark
5 stars
I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.
It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.
It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background …
I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.
It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.
It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background characters narrate their own chapters added quite a bit of emotional nuance. Pig Son especially would have hit differently without the background from a few chapters earlier. Some of the stories were quite full of knives, but my one complaint is that some stories in the back half felt like retreading similar grounds of grief and remembrance; they just didn't have the same level of impact for me. Both the final chapter and the title-generating chapter were thematically strong, but didn't quite carry the same level of emotional weight or closure that I wanted. I am not sure subjectively why I felt this way, but I think this is some of the flipside of its short story nature--that there's only a consistent emotional thread running through the book rather than a character or plot arc.
I'm really glad to have read this, and feel like a lot of these stories and feelings are going to stick with me for a long while.
