Reading: with and without feathers

[radiantfracture]

But first, a brief writing update. I made two submissions in one day! I submitted a poem to The Deadlands on the advice of sovay, and another to a friend's project on craft.

My short story "Four Hauntings" is still sitting on read in Submittable -- I guess I'll leave it until I get the actual decline, but I'd like to try it someplace else.

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Finished this week

Ducks, by Kate Beaton

This is comics artist Beaton's graphic memoir about her time working at the oil sands. It's very good – it's Kate Beaton – and it's very bleak. The book is well-crafted. It's sometimes almost an illustrated poem in the way it sets scenes against one another. Occasionally I did wish for a little more sign-posting about how much time was passing or when a new scene had begun. The titular ducks -- maybe you remember the famous story -- are used perfectly.

Ducks is agonizingly good on the forces -- of economics, of misogyny, of small closed communities -- that constrain our actions and our speech against our own well-being and integrity. When the protagonist does speak out, it's not quite cathartic, but it's something. Ducks is generous to those who deserve it, and even to those who don't, and it's still gut-wrenching.

Beaton writes in a few almost-easter-eggs about the origins of her career as a cartoonist; there aren't quite enough of these references to make a full thread, so I think I would have included more of that or less of it -- more, for preference, as it gives the reader hope, at least for her.

Content notes for sexual violence.

Vita Nostra, by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey

This is the best book I've read in a very long time.sabotabby called this a perfect book, and I see why: it beautifully fulfills its own concept.

[ETA]I realize that my praise below is oddly peripheral to what's actually great about this book, which is the convergence of craft, style, and subject. I don't really want to spoil any story details, but here is what I wrote to sabotabby the other day, when I was about to finish Vita Nostra:

This book is a spell. It is the thing it talks about, which in this instance is not a sane or possible thing for it to be.

Now the secondary praise:

I've never seen the pleasures and agonies of learning a new skill, akin to music or mathematics, described so well in an only slightly allegorized way. I identified painfully with the protagonist, Sasha, except that I don't work hard.

Vita Nostra gets called dark academia; I'd call it cosmological¹ horror, but maybe that's also what dark academia is.

What is a book you consider quintessential dark academia? The Secret History? Donna Tartt is a very fine writer, and I loved that book, but I liked this more for being more ambitious.

I am fascinated by the authors' control of pacing. As I read, I would reflect that a long slow passage had been allowed to unfold without being rushed, and then realized a tremendous amount had happened in only 25 pages.

The translation seems miraculous in its richness and clarity. There are one or two places where the wording made me wonder about the choices, particularly towards the end, but otherwise this felt seamless. An incredibly absorbing experience. All the stars.

elusis , have you finished this? What did you think?

New Reading

I am excited about having downloaded yhlee 's Brain Games for Blocked Writers (cover by telophase !) -- it is just the kind of thing I like, with a lot of cross-genre and playful prompts, like

"write a video game vision statement for your novel/story" (#8).
 

-- I find this much more congenial than the other craft book I've been reading, which in contrast offers prompts like

"As your hero, write for five minutes, beginning with 'you would never know this by looking at me, but'"
 

-- Which I understand, even appreciate, the purpose for, but which also immediately stumps me because (and I know this is precious) it seems so counter to the way my characters think, feel, and speak about themselves. I would first have to imagine a situation in which one of them felt called on to make such a strange declaration.

(But after all, that question is designed for earlier in the process than I am. That's probably the only real issue.)

Michio Kaku's The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything is, as hoped for, a very light, accessible review of string theory to help prime my ideas for the novel. I'm almost 1/4 through. Having refreshed myself with this, I can go on to something more in-depth if it's called for.

{rf}

1. Specifically cosmological rather than cosmic.