Soft books, sharp books
Oct. 20th, 2021 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It's full-blown autumn, and the world has suddenly become laden with falling leaves, rosehips, and the sharp smell of woodsmoke. We picked the last of the pears from the pear tree, and today's storm seems to have dislodged the remaining apples, so I think that's it for the fruit harvest until next year. Everything feels very much as if it is simultaneously winding down (I want to lounge around in the house in oversized woollen jumpers in front of the woodburning stove) and building up (the inevitable chaos and busyness that the start of the academic year brings). I've just now signed up for Yuletide, although I need to watch the letters app and signup summary carefully to make sure that my offers go the way I expect.
In less good news, everyone around me keeps getting COVID — my coworker and one of her daughters, friends in other UK cities, family members of colleagues and so on. They're all getting it relatively mildly due to being vaccinated, but it is worrying and frustrating, particularly since the people who are mixing with the greatest variety of others — secondary school and university students — seem to be the most averse to wearing masks in public indoor spaces. I had to teach my first in-person class since March 2020 and my students were thankfully all masked up, but Matthias taught two back-to-back inductions in which all the students removed their masks and coughed the whole time. It's all very frustrating.
In even less good but inevitable news, Al-Jazeera has just published an investigative journalism piece revealing the appalling behaviour of one of the most senior academics in my former field. This person's behaviour has been an open secret in the field for decades, there's always been an active whisper network among female students and academics warning each other about him, to the extent that when this article was published I — and everyone in my social circles who is a medievalist — knew exactly who the expose was going to be about before we'd even clicked on the link to the article.
I remember back when I was a PhD student that some of the other postgrads raised concerns about the binge-drinking culture in medieval studies, the centrality of boozy post-seminar drinks and getting roaringly drunk in the pub to the academic and social life of our department, and I just thought they were being American and prudish, but I now think they possibly had the right idea. (I'm not saying that removing alcohol from the equation would have stopped this person's predatory behaviour, but it certainly did exacerbate the problem.)
Let's move on to more pleasant things — a Reading Wednesday roundup on an actual Wednesday. My reading this month has very much been a mixture of soft and gentle rereads, and sharp, thorny stuff.
The former definitely includes my reread of Felicia Davin's Gardener's Hand trilogy — a fantasy adventure series set on a tidally-locked planet subject to unpredictable natural disasters, in which certain people possess supernatural abilities, and are feared, pitied, or valued for these powers, depending on the culture in which they live. But what it's really about is found family, in recovering from trauma and saving the world and building something beautiful in the process. The main trio of characters are all bisexual, and all in love with each other, and the resolution to this somewhat love triangle is extremely satisfying. I'm only annoyed that I didn't remember this series in time for Yuletide nominations, but there's always next year! I wrote about the series in more detail the first time I read it.
Sadly, my next book read — The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake — was less satisfying. This is the first book in a new series set in a magical secret society, and it's definitely part of the growing trend in dark academia/campus novels that's sweeping through fantasy literature publishing at the moment. Some of my favourite books are campus novels/dark academia (Possession, The Secret History), and I'm looking forward to some forthcoming publications in this subgenre (A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid), but I think I'm just a bit too picky when it comes to most dark academia. This one had unsympathetic characters, a badly telegraphed twist, and just in general felt like it was trying too hard to be mean and edgy, and the overall effect was something I struggled to connect with.
I'm now working my way through a reread of the first three Terra Ignota books. The fourth and final volume in the series was published yesterday, and Matthias and I had preordered it, but our copy hasn't arrived yet, so thankfully I have some time yet to get myself up to speed. (I normally buy ebooks or borrow from the library, but Terra Ignota is a series I would find impossible to read in any format other than a printed book.) It's definitely a series that rewards slow and careful rereading, and I'm picking up on so much stuff this second time around. Terra Ignota is also a series that asks uncomfortable questions of its readers, and I'm not always proud of my answers, but I'm always in awe of how ambitious Ada Palmer was with this — her first published fiction — and the degree to which her ability is worthy of that ambition.
In less good news, everyone around me keeps getting COVID — my coworker and one of her daughters, friends in other UK cities, family members of colleagues and so on. They're all getting it relatively mildly due to being vaccinated, but it is worrying and frustrating, particularly since the people who are mixing with the greatest variety of others — secondary school and university students — seem to be the most averse to wearing masks in public indoor spaces. I had to teach my first in-person class since March 2020 and my students were thankfully all masked up, but Matthias taught two back-to-back inductions in which all the students removed their masks and coughed the whole time. It's all very frustrating.
In even less good but inevitable news, Al-Jazeera has just published an investigative journalism piece revealing the appalling behaviour of one of the most senior academics in my former field. This person's behaviour has been an open secret in the field for decades, there's always been an active whisper network among female students and academics warning each other about him, to the extent that when this article was published I — and everyone in my social circles who is a medievalist — knew exactly who the expose was going to be about before we'd even clicked on the link to the article.
I remember back when I was a PhD student that some of the other postgrads raised concerns about the binge-drinking culture in medieval studies, the centrality of boozy post-seminar drinks and getting roaringly drunk in the pub to the academic and social life of our department, and I just thought they were being American and prudish, but I now think they possibly had the right idea. (I'm not saying that removing alcohol from the equation would have stopped this person's predatory behaviour, but it certainly did exacerbate the problem.)
Let's move on to more pleasant things — a Reading Wednesday roundup on an actual Wednesday. My reading this month has very much been a mixture of soft and gentle rereads, and sharp, thorny stuff.
The former definitely includes my reread of Felicia Davin's Gardener's Hand trilogy — a fantasy adventure series set on a tidally-locked planet subject to unpredictable natural disasters, in which certain people possess supernatural abilities, and are feared, pitied, or valued for these powers, depending on the culture in which they live. But what it's really about is found family, in recovering from trauma and saving the world and building something beautiful in the process. The main trio of characters are all bisexual, and all in love with each other, and the resolution to this somewhat love triangle is extremely satisfying. I'm only annoyed that I didn't remember this series in time for Yuletide nominations, but there's always next year! I wrote about the series in more detail the first time I read it.
Sadly, my next book read — The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake — was less satisfying. This is the first book in a new series set in a magical secret society, and it's definitely part of the growing trend in dark academia/campus novels that's sweeping through fantasy literature publishing at the moment. Some of my favourite books are campus novels/dark academia (Possession, The Secret History), and I'm looking forward to some forthcoming publications in this subgenre (A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid), but I think I'm just a bit too picky when it comes to most dark academia. This one had unsympathetic characters, a badly telegraphed twist, and just in general felt like it was trying too hard to be mean and edgy, and the overall effect was something I struggled to connect with.
I'm now working my way through a reread of the first three Terra Ignota books. The fourth and final volume in the series was published yesterday, and Matthias and I had preordered it, but our copy hasn't arrived yet, so thankfully I have some time yet to get myself up to speed. (I normally buy ebooks or borrow from the library, but Terra Ignota is a series I would find impossible to read in any format other than a printed book.) It's definitely a series that rewards slow and careful rereading, and I'm picking up on so much stuff this second time around. Terra Ignota is also a series that asks uncomfortable questions of its readers, and I'm not always proud of my answers, but I'm always in awe of how ambitious Ada Palmer was with this — her first published fiction — and the degree to which her ability is worthy of that ambition.