Madeline Ashby, Glass Houses. Discussed elsewhere.
Sanora Babb, Whose Names Are Unknown. This is the Dust Bowl novel that wasn’t published at the time because Steinbeck took her research and The Grapes of Wrath made it to press first, startling both Babb and her publisher. Tastes vary, and it’s trying to do something very different from the Steinbeck, but for my money it’s such a better book. Babb is writing from life experience, trying to write naturalistic character rather than symbolic theories in vaguely human form, and her eye for human detail is excellent. I wept at more than one spot–and not just over death, but over life circumstances, which is a greater achievement than melodrama. Highly recommended if you care at all about the Dust Bowl or the Great Depression–and frankly, these days, we all should.
Terry J. Benton-Walker, Blood Justice. Sequel to Blood Debt, a fun, fast-paced YA fantasy novel with racial justice considerations and New Orleans worldbuilding that is not stereotypes of Mardi Gras. A fun read, interested to see where the next one goes.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, Diplomatic Immunity, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Cryoburn, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Falling Free, and Ethan of Athos. Rereads. This is the first time I’ve read the late series books in their chronological rather than publication order, and the first time I’ve reread Falling Free in this millennium. It’s also the first time I’ve reread Cryoburn since my father died of an aneurism. So–well. If you know, you know. In any case, my favorites come earlier in the series, but it’s a fun project I’m glad I’m doing.
Sylvie Cathrall, A Letter to the Luminous Deep. Epistolary and abyssopelagic, this is not quite like anything else. It’s also the first in its series, leaving me interested about where it’s going rather than fully satisfied with where it’s been.
Z. Z. Claybourne, The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan. Fast contemporary adventure fantasy that’s doing all the things at once, with a jaunty hat on. Once you know that the protagonists are Ramses Jetstream and Milo Jetstream, you’ve got the vibe. Probably still fun even if you don’t have a fever, but reading it with a fever was like, yeah, I’m just gonna…go with whatever ten things are happening on this page, and we’ll see what’s on the next page, cool, cool.
Paul M. Cobb, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Absolutely lovely and I would like more things that were both trying at this and succeeding. It really does do a thorough flip of POV, giving what events look important to the Islamic perspective of this era, what the records we have focus on and what they definitely do not focus on, and the Christian Crusader kings’ internal politics have about the same percentage of the text as Islamic rulers’ do in most of the texts I’ve read before. Great perspective shift, much needed, it doesn’t even start and end in the same places, of course it wouldn’t, yeah, wow, very cool.
E.M. Forster, Howards End. Kindle. This is the last of the Forsters for me to read as an adult–it’s technically a reread, because I read it when I was 14? I retained nothing of it from then, though I vividly remember some other things I read at 14. I’m glad I saved this for last, because this is one of the times when “one of the most famous ones he did” and “one of the best ones he did” absolutely are the same. I think Forster sometimes gets grouped with other people of a similar vintage who are also writing about class and society, but he’s doing so much more with at least people who are trying, people who actually want things to be better, for others and not just for themselves and possibly their immediate family, that it stands out so thoroughly.
Margaret Frazer, The Boy’s Tale. Kindle. Very much more into the “these really are tangled with historical politics” than some of the other volumes, but still in the basically gentle medieval murder mystery genre–and still with the structure where no one is dead at the halfway mark and the book is over the minute Dame Frevisse finds out whodunnit. Huh.
Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution. I have run into so many people complaining that nothing happens in mainstream novels and read so many mainstream novels in which a great many things happen (often even adding up to a plot!) that I had started to forget why people were saying it. This is why. This is a mid-century novel of observation, quite witty in spots, in which nothing happens, quite aggressively. Several times something thinks about happening, and then there’s another trenchant personal observation of a higher educational figure (that’s the institution in question) and nothing does happen after all. I did not regret the time spent reading these trenchant and witty sketches, especially since some of the characters turn out to be worthwhile, generally decent people, but I don’t think I’ll want it again.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. Reread, for the first time this millennium. What I said to my online book club is that I don’t feel like this was intended to hold up so much as it was to break ground, and that’s a different kind of construction. Lots of politics here that didn’t work as well for me as some of what she did later with scenes of politics, and the climactic bit about fleeing across the glacier is shorter than anybody remembered it. Still not sorry I read it (again), but also of course it’s not a perfect shining work of eternity, it wasn’t supposed to be, it’s a thought experiment from a very specific time.
Ian MacLeod, Song of Time. Kindle. The prose in this near-future science fiction thing is very readable, and so I was happy to keep seeing where he was going through all the catastrophes, personal and global: what’s going on with this old-young musician’s life that we are having retold to us? The answer at the end is boringly cliched in a number of demographic directions (gender! race! oh dear) in ways that I think were probably unawareness rather than malice, but still it was enough for me not to recommend the experience at large. “And then her Black husband turned out to be abusive of both her and substances, and things unfold from that late twist”: oh, did they, huh, yeah, no thanks.
Ekaterina Sedia, Moscow But Dreaming. Reread. These vivid fantastical stories, largely set in Russia but some not, held up and were still enjoyable to read a decade later, which is always a relief.
Katie Siegel, Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective. A light, fun murder mystery about a Former Kid Detective dipping her toe reluctantly into the waters of adult crime-solving. Solid relationships with her friends and family, generally a good time and definitely what I wanted to read while sick in bed.
D.E. Stevenson, Winter and Rough Weather. Kindle. A disappointing end to its trilogy, it continued the second book’s tendency to make things the most socially cliched option possible. Stevenson can write sentences, she sometimes can write things that don’t go on rails, ideally the next thing I try of hers will be more in that line.
Elizabeth von Arnim, The Pastor’s Wife. Kindle. I am not opposed to people working things out in their fiction, truly I am not. I’ve read more than one lovely book that made me think, “right, you’ll feel better having said that then.” This, however, was a grim and horrific slog through the second half. Various ideas suggest themselves for the theme of the book, which could be “iron supplements and birth control for all!” or it could be “what these people need is something like zeroth wave feminism” or perhaps “seriously she’s HOW naive after six children, WHAT” but mostly you just…don’t want to be there with her, I don’t think. Let her work through it herself, you don’t have to stay for the horrifying conclusion.
Izzy Wasserstein, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart. Some of the most interesting cyberpunk-ish stuff I’ve read in recent years, at novella length and with trans themes.
P. G. Wodehouse, The Clicking of Cuthbert. Kindle. I have all sorts of things on my Kindle for random perusal, which mostly happens when I’m sick or traveling (or, as in this interval, both), and I don’t keep track of what they are and why I have them. So that leads to me opening this collection and finding that it was Wodehouse golf stories. They ranged from mildly ridiculous to notably ludicrous, but there were funny bits, and the racism-nationalism wasn’t on the bad end of his fare (I discarded another that was, alas), so: okay, golf jokes! Golf jokes from the old days when the clubs had funnier names! Sure, why not.
Don J. Wyatt, Slavery in East Asia. Kindle. A brief monograph about the range and legal roots of slavery across East Asia in what we consider the medieval period. Not an in-depth or vivid work but extremely useful for the facts of the matter and who was doing what to whom where.