Books post (buying and reading)

[radiantfracture]

The small pleasure of the weekend was hurrying after the online writing session to make it to the Church Mouse Bookstore, the cheapest and best-curated bookshop in town, open only on Saturdays and only from 10 to 1 at the Anglican church down the way -- only to discover it was their yearly summer book sale and hot dog roast.

I bought a hot dog from a barbecuing gentleman chatty enough that I started flirting with him before I realized that he was the minister. (Not that it's bad to flirt with the minister; just that I was probably misreading the friendly man cues there a little.) And I made a -- let's be frank -- almost blasphemously low donation for six books. No Hemingway or Russians, which I'd come for. But there was, delightfully, a paperback of Martha Wells' All System Red. It had a note tucked into the cover as follows:

[On a folded sheet of olive-coloured lined notepaper headed "Herb garden" and decorated with little marker-style drawings of various plants]

Hi!

I hope you'll enjoy this book -- it's one of my favorites.

The main character is an antisocial android (so half human and mostly looks human) who is tasked with protecting some humans on an alien planet but all its wants to do is binge TV shows. Even if sci-fi isn't your usual choice of genre, it's a short book so give it a try. :)

Happy Holidays and all the best for next year and the future!

E.

It is dated, heartbreakingly, December 20, 2019.

So All Systems Red has happily succeeded A Moveable Feast as my breakfast reading.

The other books are Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other (I told you this was the best-curated book sale in town), which I have not read but which looks gorgeously experimental on the page; Little Reunions, by Eileen Chang (an NYRB Classic); Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (will I still like this book after twenty years without reading it? Join me in the experiment); Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, which I have read, though it was so beautiful and so unbearable that this very thin book took me a very long time to finish; and a book about the summer of 1911 in Britain, The Perfect Summer, by Juliet Nicholson, the graddaughter of Vita Sackville-West.

{rf}

Comments

[elusis]

Oh are you just encountering Murderbot for the first time? You are so lucky. :)

[cosmolinguist]

I was just thinking how enviable a moment this is in a person's life. :)

[radiantfracture]

Ha, glad to join the ragtag band. I have of course seen many posts about it on my friendslist over the years.

[elusis]

Alas, for those fonder days of yore!

[radiantfracture]

Full disclosure: I believe I tried it as an audiobook, maybe, from the library, and it did not stick. But the paperback is a delight.

[elusis]

A friend of mine had a similar issue with "Gideon the Ninth" but that was a reasonable response as the audiobook started off with a dry reading of all the houses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also: if you haven't read "Dead Collections," that should be your next delight.

[radiantfracture]

if you haven't read "Dead Collections," that should be your next delight

I've put it on hold at the library!

[sonia]

You have a tag. For flirting with the minister. Looking forward to seeing what else appears there!

[isis]

Haha, my thoughts as well!

[radiantfracture]

You have a Daniel MacIvor icon! I believe I've seen that play.

[radiantfracture]

Haha just in case

[oursin]

I loved Girl, Woman, Other.

[radiantfracture]

I wondered if the unconventional orthography would slow me down, but I started it and it moves so effortlessly.

What are some of the things you love about it?

[oursin]

I thought it was brilliant in the way everything braided together - it was a very satisfying feeling - and also very panoramic, while showing those connections. (I.e. ultimately a lot of very trad virtues of what the novel is good at!)

[sabotabby]

Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (will I still like this book after twenty years without reading it? Join me in the experiment)

I read it as a teenager—I hear it doesn't hold up, but I'm interested to know.

[radiantfracture]

That is my fear. I loved his books in my early twenties. Will he Salinger me? Stay tuned.

[oracne]

I really enjoyed The Perfect Summer - I felt I learned a lot from it.

[radiantfracture]

Oh cool! I didn't expect anyone to have read it. What stayed with you?

[oracne]

I read it because I wrote a novel (erotica!) set in the early days of WWI, so it gave me a good feel for what England was like leading up to that, and for how at least certain classes of people lived their lives. I'm working on Nicholson's second book, about the period just after WWI, now, as my June TBR Challenge book.

[yarrowkat]

would love to hear your thoughts on Murderbot! I enjoy them, but not nearly as much as I do Wells' other novels - which puts me in an odd minority; i really think her best work is the Raksura novels, which are just *stunning*; followed by the Ile-Rien books, followed by Murderbot, possibly because Murderbot feels very un-complex compared to the rest of those. they're fun! i'm glad she won awards for the series! because she deserved all the awards for the Raksura and mostly didn't get them.

[radiantfracture]

I hear you about wanting something complex and challenging -- I like books to make my brain do something new. For this particular moment, I think /Murderbot/'s simplicity was exactly what I was looking for.

[lokifan]

omgggg that note </3