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.