What are you reading?

[Jubal]

Books 10-12 have been read!

I read The Whalebone Theatre, a slightly sad tale of people, theatrics, and the impact of the Second World War, wherein multiple members of a family start a little theatrical company and, later, end up doing undercover operations in France. It's an interesting and complex piece of historical fiction, one that felt a lot less heavy than The Glass Palace but still very interesting. It's also beautifully written which helps a lot.

Then my Christmas reading consisted firstly of a much lighter read, Death at the Sign of the Rook, a rather silly but neat detective story featuring weary down-to-earth detective Jackson Brodie, a lot of stolen art, and a couple of murders, but generally in a very light read sort of way that works out for most of the characters in the end.

Finally, a year of mostly rather grim reading was rounded out with The Love-Girl and the Innocent, by Solzhenitsin. It's a short play set in a gulag, and has got that very slice-of-life realism thing of mid C20th Russian literature, though it's unsparing in picking at the moral and social decay of the prison camp systems. I found the portrayal of the system as a whole really interesting, and it ends on an uncertain albeit sorrowful note rather than as a grand tragedy, which felt appropriate.

Perhaps that's been the theme of this year's books: endings are imperfect, from Nemo to Nemov, we don't really know what happens next. And there's something in that which is a pity, especially for those of us who want everything to be a story, want our climaxes and victories and defeats rather than just slow slides into more or less rest, joy, or pain. On the other hand, there's also hope inherent in uncertainty - dum anima est, spes esse. Onto the next turn of the year.

[Jubal]

2026's first reading - Baudolino, by Umberto Eco. It's very very good, especially if you like frame narratives, unreliable narrators, Byzantium and imaginaries of the medieval east. Niketas Choniates as a major character is an inspired choice. Honestly it's really really weird that I hadn't read this book before, I'd been given it years ago and it's effectively tailor-made to my interests. Genuinely one of those that's going to be part of my favourite books I've ever read canon. Not really sure what else to say that isn't spoilery - there's a certain tragedy to it all, but the mix of playing with truth and hope along with it makes it a bearable sort of tragedy. And whilst there's something indulgent about storytelling about storytelling, it's also very very good if one likes that sort of thing. Which I very much do.

[psyanojim]

2026's first reading - Baudolino, by Umberto Eco.

Hmm, interesting choice. I love Umberto Eco but haven't read that one, its sitting on my bookshelf staring at me right now in an accusatory fashion.

Maybe it's time to promote it from my bookshelf to the giant pile of unread books sitting next to me.

[Jubal]

Maybe it's time to promote it from my bookshelf to the giant pile of unread books sitting next to me.

Would very much recommend this course of action. I've read remarkably little Eco (of his fiction at least, I've read some of his essays and other works) but I should remedy that.

I've got too many options for the next book, we'll see what ends up getting to the coveted top of the pile position!

[psyanojim]

Would very much recommend this course of action. I've read remarkably little Eco (of his fiction at least, I've read some of his essays and other works) but I should remedy that.

Fun fact, looks like I bought my copy of the book in Hong Kong.

So it has followed me all around the planet, and I still haven't got around to reading it!

Yeah, maybe the time has finally come.

[Phoenixguard09]

I don't have time to read all that much these days, but I have been enjoying re-reading Tigana, by one of my all-time favourite authors, Guy Gavriel Kay.

[Jubal]

I read the Wolf and His King, by Finn Longman. I partly picked this book up out of surprise at seeing the name of someone I at least sort of know on a book in a random Viennese bookshop - I mean, it's not like I didn't know Finn was a writer, we overlapped at university so I've met them a few times, but seeing the actual book and going "huh I know that name" still made me stop, pause, and pick it up.

Picking it up was absolutely the right call: it's spectacularly well written. There are some genuinely beautiful turns of phrase, and the whole text has a poetry to it that is (for me) far too often lacking in more modern writing. The book is a modern retelling of the tale of Bisclavret, a werewolf legend from Brittany. It's a very explicitly queer retelling with some of the male characters' devotions to one another recast as much more explicitly sexual and romantic, and manages to achieve this well without dramatically modernising how the characters think in any other ways: in their faith, their interactions, and so on, the characters remain well rooted in medieval courtly romance traditions.

The writing about transformation and the 'wolf brain' segments felt very well written too: the whole book, despite having a very sparse, fairytale quality to its narrative, has an enormous physicality to it and its character descriptions which is extremely important for getting across the sense of who Bisclavret is and how deeply embedded in him that struggle has to be. Chronic illness was explicitly part of the inspiration for Longman's portrayal of Bisclavret, and whilst my own joint problems are rather the opposite of these - I'd have to find a legend about someone painfully turning to stone to get my own muscular-skeletal issues across - I nonetheless found that part of the writing profoundly compelling.

Things I particularly like also include the small, sparse character palette and almost stock-like character writing, wherein only the book's central character even has a name. This took me a little while to get used to, but actually helps it retain a certain fairytale feeling. That's juxtaposed with a bunch of very un-fairytale concerns: as the king grapples with war, sex, or baronial politics, one of the things the book emphasises is the sense that this both is and is not a fairytale. It is from that tension that the book manages to elevate Bisclavret's condition and transformations: they are in a world too real and too brutal for the cosiness and assurance of a simple children's story of black-and-white morals, but they also break through that world, creating a window of awe and emotional truth that tests the world around it and finds it - too often - wanting. Bisclavret's story thus becomes not a fantasy story, but more accurately a miracle story: it is difficult to make such a story work but this is a genuinely masterful example.

If I had some very small nitpicks, they're mostly bits I'd have like us to have seen but didn't: the book does a very, very good job of writing antagonists whose fears and character arcs are largely understandable, and who are quite sympathetic in their initial outlooks and motivations (to the point where if you'd have stopped me after the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the book and gone "which character do you like and empathise with most here" I'd have picked one of the antagonists). I'd have liked to have seen a bit more of them, both interactions before their major crime takes place and a bit more vignette at the end as they leave. I'd have also liked to spend a bit more time with all the things the King does outside his infatuation: it's a difficult line to write a romantic infatuation that drives and dominates a character without the wallowing dragging on the reader, and that's mostly done very well here but there were one or two places where I'd like it to have been broken up with a bit more.

Anyway, I enormously enjoyed it and I would hugely recommend it to anyone: it's a very good medieval story that feels much more like a rich retelling of a medieval story than the average modern "medieval" tale (most of which owe much, much less to medieval literature than this does). The rootedness in the medieval doesn't prevent it being its own thing, though, in part due to the use of character persepectives and development and in part because Finn is a genuinely brilliant prose stylist. I hope they write more of this sort of thing in future!

Tigana, by one of my all-time favourite authors, Guy Gavriel Kay

GGK is another of those authors I'd probably really enjoy but have never read much of!

[Phoenixguard09]

I'm going to try and get my hands on The Wolf And His King based on this recommendation.

GGK is fantastic. Lions of Al-Rassan is one of my top 5 books of all time. Incredibly influential for me.