Reading Wednesday

[yuuago]

I reached my goal for the year (50 books), so I've upped it to 75. ;V We'll see how this goes.

Just Finished: Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. This one is a novel about tradition, comfort, resolution, and stories. More than anything else I was struck by how beautiful the writing is - this author has quite a way with words. I might need to seek out her other work.

Currently Reading: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. This novel comes up every time somebody mentions alternate history, and it's been kind of on the to-read list for a while, but I've only managed to get around to it now. One thing that I failed to osmose about it was the reincarnation trope; I had no idea until very recently that it was an important part of the novel. Anyway, I'm about halfway through it, and I'm finding it difficult to put down. I don't read this particular speculative subgenre very often, but this is making me wonder if I should look up some others; it's a pretty good read. :)

Reading Next: Prrrobably Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I went to the library looking for Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita, but they didn't have it (I'll have to ILL it), so I decided to go for this one instead, which I've been meaning to read for a while.

Comments

[zeest]

If we were in the same town, I'll throw my copy of The Master and the Margarita over to you :D I'm not sure why I have it, probably picked it up at a sale years ago, and I have absolutely no clue what the story or writing is like haha. It's one of those books that I've been meaning to get to but I keep getting distracted by other things.

[torachan]

Congrats on reaching your goal!

I had a goal of 120 and I'm set to meet that by the end of this month, so in my head I'm going to aim for double that, but I don't think I'm going to adjust the number on Goodreads (which I did several times last year as I kept approaching and passing my goal).

[(Anonymous)]

Hm, I kinda want to start tracking how much i read a year. 50 books sounds like A LOT.

I heard so much about The Master and Margarita before reading it that I walked in with big expectations and ended up disappointed. You obviously need some knowledge of Russian history and specifically the political context during which it was written to get part of the appeal, so the political satire went right over my head. There are also apparently nods to literature classics I haven't read, so basically I was left with a mostly okay fantasy/magical realism book to enjoy. I wonder what your impressions will be!

LK

[laufeyknits]

Holy shit, M&M. You might know already because I rant about it so often, but what a fukken RIDE. Like LK says above it helps to know some Soviet history, because I kinda grew up with it - right next door you can't really not see what's going on - and like... Soviet Union was so bizarre. You won't ever understand Soviet people's capacity of surviving both horrifying and just plain weird ridiculous situations if you haven't read M&M, rest assured that the USSR reality could be even stranger than that book.

And yeah, there's plenty of political darts being thrown around, and it does help to know some literary classics, but even without them it's still a nice window to Moscow Back Then, I mean, if the literal Satan had decided to pay them a visit. He's not the worst evil you'll encounter in that book - that should say something. Best option is if you can get a book where the originally censored parts are marked, because that's another, very real time window to things you could not say in the USSR.

(One of those things is "she smiled, showing her teeth".)