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What I read -- February 2019


LHC #27: A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James. It was the next thing on the library list. The library website did a neat thing when I walked in and pulled this off the shelf: it recognized that this was on my holds list and deleted it. The title is kind of a lie because this book is 688 pages long, and a lot of it is in some kind of Jamaican vernacular, making it kind of slow reading. Not sure why I requested this. Probably someone described it as a master-class in voice or some such thing. And that it was! I didn’t really connect with any character, alas. Maybe not all books are written just for me? WHAT?!?

I read another book by MJ before and it was quite good. This was good too, but… long.  I actually started it last month but then finished two other things first, and without all the pressure to finish, this was much more enjoyable. While I was reading this his next  book came out, so there was an interview with MJ that mentioned a Reddit thread that said one doesn’t need to worry so much about understanding the plot, and compared it to “Infinite Jest” which I’ve read and “Gravity’s Rainbow” which I have not. This certainly was easier than Infinite Jest. I had to renew it at the library, but then the last 250 pages just whipped along. 

LHC #28: “A Perfect Machine” by Brett Savory. I meant to leave this at the bottom of my list (72 books long, don’t judge) but I forgot to set the hold to inactive, so here we are. It was on a list of Asian-inspired horror, and I’ve met the author, so that’s why I added it. I must say, it’s nice to occasionally read a book while I still remember what made me choose it.

Somehow at some point someone convinced me that I wasn’t allowed to end stories with everyone dying or the world ending or anything like that. In retrospect this was a cruel thing to do. 

LHC #29: “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert. I need to read more classics? The introduction about translating was really interesting. I desperately want to know a language well enough to translate out of it. I empathized with Emma a lot, not sure if that’s a bad thing. 

LHC #30: “The Empathy Exams” by Leslie Jamison.  I read this one at the same time as the previous because one of the blurbs at the front said I should read these essays one at a time rather than in a single sitting. So it was very amusing when I got to the one that was about Madame Bovary. “Fog Check” was my favorite.Her themes seemed a little repetitive at times, even reading these spaced out.

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