Valkyrdeath's 2024 Reading Record Part 2

I'm way behind on updating my thread but I finally reached the end of June so it seems like a good time to start a new thread.

Currently reading:
Gliff by Ali Smith
A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories by Terry Pratchett
The Digital Antiquarian Volume 15: 1993 by Jimmy Maher

Books read:
55. Twilight of the Eastern Gods by Ismail Kadare
56. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
57. The Traitor's Niche by Ismail Kadare
58. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
59. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

60. Territorial Rights by Murial Spark
61. The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
62. The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure by Katherine Rundell
63. The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law - A Hidden History by Kate Morgan
64. Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall

65. Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis
66. Doctors of Philosophy by Muriel Spark
67. Henchgirl by Kristen Gudsnuk
68. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
69. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
70. La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
71. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds
72. Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende
73. Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

74. The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford
75. The Hunter by Richard Stark
76. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark
77. A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark
78. Adulthood is a Gift by Sarah Andersen
79. Gold, Violet, Black, Crimson, White by David Hewitt
80. The Outfit by Richard Stark
81. The Misanthrope by Moliere

82. The Mourner by Richard Stark
83. The Score by Richard Stark
84. The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
85. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
86. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
87. Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated edited by Frank Wynne

88. American Cult edited by Robyn Chapman

Books read from first half of the year:
1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
2. Bad News by Donald E. Westlake
3. Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles by Dominic Sandbrook

4. Gentian Violet by Edward Hyams
5. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
6. The Comforters by Muriel Spark
7. Thoughtcrime Experiments edited by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson
8. Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire
9. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
10. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
11. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
12. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
13. The Insider's Guide to Inside No. 9 by Mark Salisbury
14. The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis

15. Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake
16. Influenca by Jade LFT Peters
17. The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and Other Stories by Terry Pratchett
18. The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman
19. The Curse of the Pharoahs by Elizabeth Peters
20. The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
21. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene
22. Transformation and Other Stories by Mary Shelley
23. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
24. The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral by Diane Ackerman

25. We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury
26. Ivory Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown
27. The Trial by Franz Kafka
28. A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
29. Totem by Laura Perez
30. Bunbury by Tom Jacobson
31. Kafka's Other Trial by Elias Canetti
32. High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson
33. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire
34. The Time Traveller's Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

35. Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy by Benjamin Balint
36. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
37. Viscera Objectica by Yugo Limbo
38. Dark Archives by Megan Rosenbloom
39. Why Art? by Eleanor Davis
40. Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega
41. Ephemera: A Memoir by Briana Loewinsohn
42. Hellish Nell by Malcolm Gaskill
43. The Public Image by Muriel Spark
44. Doc by Mary Doria Russell

45. Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany by Katja Hoyer
46. Fight Night by Miriam Toews
47. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
48. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
49. Mutiny on the Rising Sun by Jared Ross Hardesty
50. A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
51. The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
52. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
53. Life on Paper by Kenneth Lin
54. Strong Female Protagonist Book One by Brennan Lee Mulligan, art by Molly Ostertag

>2 valkyrdeath: I enjoyed your review of Strong Female Protagonist. I've also recently discovered Game Changer, I didn't know that Mulligan had written a book. I'm looking forward to reading it.

>3 rv1988: It was a good read, but I haven't been able to get hold of the second volume and the website where the webcomic was originally hosted went down, annoyingly just after I'd finished reading the first book. I might have to resort to reading the rest of it via the Wayback Machine.

55. Twilight of the Eastern Gods by Ismail Kadare
57. The Traitor’s Niche by Ismail Kadare
Another two Kadare books that I read back in July, after reading A Dictator Calls the month before. I’d got three books by him from the library and he died while I was halfway through the second one. With the length of time since I read them and the state of my brain over the last couple of months and various stressful things I can’t remember enough about them to say much meaningful, but I can say that Twilight of the Eastern Gods paired well with A Dictator Calls, revolving around events with Boris Pasternak again. The Traitor’s Niche I think was mentioned in the first part of A Dictator Calls too, and was an interesting piece of historical fiction. Both quite different books, but both dealing with oppressive regimes.

56. Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
Book number something-or-other of the Vorkosigan Saga, it’s hard to say given that the chronology is all over the place so it depends on what reading order you’re going for. This one sees fairly major changes to the series with Miles Vorkosigan ultimately ending up with a new career. At the start of the book, his hiding of the effects of events from the previous books leads to him accidentally severing someone’s leg, and this and other reckless actions finally have consequences. While that’s going on, the plot of the book features Miles investigating a sudden mysterious memory issue of the security chief who has just fired him. It marks a maturing of Miles as a character and presumably the start of a new chapter in his life, and it’s possibly the best book in the series so far.

58. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
I really liked the writing style and the atmosphere created in this book, though once again I’ve left it far too long to go into much detail about it. I thought it was a good book though not as much as I remember it being hyped up to be a few years back, and I seem to remember finding the ending a bit unsatisfying, though I can’t remember the specifics of it now.

59. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
Another very funny book by Alexis Hall. Romance isn’t usually my genre, but anything that can make me laugh so much is going to win me over. I listened to this one on audio, which was very well read, but means I can’t refer to any quotes from it, but it was great throughout. I particularly liked the lead characters Vicar of Dibley-esque attempts to tell jokes to someone who just doesn’t get them. Good characters and the leads are believable, and I found the narrating character Luc could be very relatable, flaws and all.

60. Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark
I’ve been working through all the Muriel Spark books available at the library and this was the last one they had. Another enjoyable read, though it’s another that my review will suffer from coming a couple of months after I read it so the details are hazy. It wasn’t one of greatest works but her style is always readable and there were some great lines as usual, though I apparently failed to take any notes of any before I returned the book.

61. The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
This book was apparently originally published in Asia under the title of Analog/Virtual, which is probably a more representative title. It’s a satirical novel set in a future version of Bangalore, in a society where everyone is rated based on how well they conform to the average. Not watching the reality show everyone’s talking about, not being able to join in conversations about everyone’s favourite sports teams or generally holding different opinions are going to get you marked down, and anyone falling into the bottom 10% of society is relegated to become an analog, deprived of electronics and treated as being less than human. I loved the way it was written, with each chapter from the perspective of a completely different character. They each reveal different aspects of the society and some of them are different enough that they feel like they could work as stand-alone short stories, but when read together they piece together an overall plot and a picture of a society without having to resort to lengthy exposition. There was plenty of wit in the satire too and it was unexpectedly funny at times. I thought it was really well done and I’ll be interested to see what the author writes in the future.

>10 valkyrdeath: This sounds unusual and interesting. How did you come across it?

>5 valkyrdeath: Just saw your note on my thread about The Traitor's Niche. Good to see someone else reading Kadare.

A Dictator Calls and Twilight of the Eastern Gods are still in my future, whenever I stumble across them in some out of the way bookstore.

What a lot of reading you've been doing already this year.

>11 labfs39: I was browsing some SF award lists to see if any of the nominees sounded interesting, and it was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award this year. I've found recently that the Clarke awards often have some more unusual books that don't make it onto the likes of the Hugos and Nebulas and this is one that caught my eye.

>12 SassyLassy: I'm definitely planning on getting to more Kadare when I get hold of some. I'm struggling to put down many coherent thoughts about books at the moment but I'm trying to keep the reading up!

>13 valkyrdeath: Update. on A Dictator Calls. I was in the city yesterday, and there was a copy of it face out, just staring at me, so naturally it came home with me.

>14 SassyLassy: It was clearly meant for you to get it now! I'll be interested in how you find it. I really liked it but still have no idea why it was labelled as a novel here instead of an essay.

62. The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure by Katherine Rundell
I started the year with Rundell’s book about John Donne, but this one is quite different. It’s a series of short chapters of just a few pages, each one about a different animal that’s endangered, or with an endangered subspecies. It’s never going to be really in depth about anything, but each chapter is full of enough facts that cause wonder, and I knew very few of them before reading. She also pulls in historical stories about the animals and myths relating to them, and generally ends with details of what’s caused them to become endangered, which is usually due to purposeful actions from the creatures in the final chapter, humans. Rundell’s writing is often poetic and often funny and the book is a quick and enjoyable read, despite the obvious tragedy of what is happening to some of these animals.

63. The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law - A Hidden History by Kate Morgan
“A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they’ll be.” Taking it’s title from this horrendous proverb, Kate Morgan looks at the history of how the law in the UK has treated women and violence towards them. It’s clearly not the happiest read and is full of stories of terrible acts by husbands who mostly get away with things because their wives were basically considered to be their property. More positively, it also covers the cases that got the laws changed to start improving things. But there’s always the caveat that things still have a long way to go. The book opens with an excerpt from a 19th century newspaper article about a man who kicked his wife to death being sentenced to just 2 months in prison for manslaughter, but is followed immediately by a letter from 2021 about how lenient the sentencing for domestic abuse is and citing a case of a wife murderer getting only five years in prison, again for manslaughter. (In the 2021 case, he was deemed to have diminished responsibility simply because he’d been depressed at the time, and it wasn’t classed as domestic abuse because it was a one off incident. Hard to commit further abuse against someone who’s dead I guess.) A well written and interesting book, but depressing.

64. Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall
Another Alexis Hall book, this time a Regency era historical comedy romance, a sequel to Something Fabulous but with the focus on different characters. Another fun read.

65. Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis
The 18th book in the Falco series of historical mysteries in Ancient Rome. This time a prisoner has escaped, somebody has been decapitated where she was being kept, and Helena’s brother, who had previously had a relationship with her, has disappeared. Falco has to investigate this while as usual having to deal with his family against the background of the Saturnalia festivities. These books are always a lot of fun and this one is no exception. The plot is decent though not the best of the series, but really all the extra details and humour and the character interactions are what make these books so good.

66. Doctors of Philosophy by Muriel Spark
I stumbled onto this one having read a bunch of Muriel Spark novels recently. This is the only play she wrote. It wasn’t a huge success at the time but it was certainly an enjoyable read with some very funny dialogue and I’d be happy to see it on stage. As the title suggests, it features an array of Doctors of Philosophy and looks at their relationships and women who have had to choose between their career and marriage (this was written in the early 60s). There are six central women characters of varying names, and then four men who are all called Charlie. And it plays on conventions and the artifice of theatre in interesting ways that reminded me of how a character could hear the narrator of the book she was in in The Comforters. Here, the play moves from a seemingly normal play to one where, when entreated to be realistic, characters respond by shaking pillars and wobbling the fake walls of the set that’s been built around them. Basically, it’s classic Spark moved to the stage, and probably a bit out of step with the social realism theatre that was prevalent of the time (thanks to my Dominic Sandbrook reading earlier in the year for being able to put that in context!)

Here’s a couple of quotes that amused me from it:

DAPHNE. I wish I had normal parents.
CHARLIE. I didn’t have normal parents, why should you have normal parents? My father was a Tory and my mother believed in God. I couldn’t bring my friends home.

ANNIE. Would you try one of my pills, Leonora? It’s got something in it that lifts you up and another thing that calms you down. It won’t have any effect whatsoever. I can’t do without them.

>20 valkyrdeath: These quotes are amusing: I will check out the play! Thanks for a great review.

>20 valkyrdeath: That does sound like a fun read. Thanks for sharing the quotes.

67. Henchgirl by Kristen Gudsnuk
Another fun graphic novel that started off as a webcomic. Mary Posa is the titular henchgirl for a gang of villains, treating it like any other job as she helps out in heists, though eventually starts to realise she might be in the wrong line of work. The plot is mostly light and fun but then it’ll suddenly get into some fairly dark territory and the plot develops more than I would have expected from the concept. Sadly, my copy of the book ended with a major unresolved plot development, and I was disappointed to discover there was no second volume. I found there was an expanded edition released a few years later so I got hold of that from the library. It does wrap up the plot and gives an ending for all the characters, but it does it in just 16 extra pages so it’s all a bit rushed. Still, I really enjoyed reading it overall despite that.

>21 rv1988: Thanks! Hope you enjoy it if you read it. It was an interesting curiosity.

>22 labfs39: It was definitely a fun one.

68. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
This sci-fi classic revolved around George Orr, a man whose dreams change reality. If he dreams about something, the whole of history changes to lead up to a present where the thing he was dreaming about was real. The psychiatrist who initially is trying to help him realises instead that he can use him by making him dream certain things via hypnosis. (Le Guin rather overestimates the power of hypnosis in this book. At one point it’s stated how hypnosis has been proven to be able to make people do absolutely anything regardless of how they’d normally feel about it. Anyone who’s worked with it in any way will know how far from the truth that is.) I enjoyed the book overall and it kept me wanting to know what was going to happen. Given the themes, it felt more reminiscent of the works of Philip K. Dick than other Le Guin works I’m familiar with, but the writing is good as usual.

69. We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
Osman’s first book away from the Thursday Murder Club series and thankfully it proves that it wasn’t just a one off success. This was just as good, with really entertaining characters that seem to emerge fully formed from almost their first appearance. It has a different feel to the other books but still with the same humour. I’ve always felt there was a touch of Donald E. Westlake in the style and that comes through even more in this one. I’m looking forward to the next book in this series, though apparently he’s writing another Thursday Murder Club book first.

70. La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
I ended up reading this book almost by accident, but I’m glad I did. It’s apparently the first work by a woman from Equatorial Guinea to be translated into English. The writing and/or translation are very straight forward and to the point, and it’s a quick read, but an interesting look at a culture I didn’t know much about. But the story about a group of people that don’t fit the rigid expectations that society places on people is fairly universal regardless of the specifics. Not the most amazingly written book but a worthwhile read.

71. Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds
This was my first book by Reynolds. It’s a short sci-fi book but with plenty of ideas and an interesting plot. Scur is a soldier in a huge war. After a ceasefire has been called she is captured by a war criminal and left for dead. The next thing, she’s waking up from suspended animation on a failing unknown spaceship. The Slow Bullets of the title are devices implanted in soldiers to record their memories and history. It’s well written and the plot had a few twists and turns and kept me reading, though the ending was a bit rushed and not completely satisfying. Not a bad read and I’ll probably try more of Reynolds books at some point.

72. Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende
It feels odd to list this as a book, since it’s just a short story, but it’s released as its own ebook so on it goes. It’s a brief magical realism story with lots of humour. A cleaner at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao finds a woman in a wedding dress and a naked man asleep prior to opening, and a police inspector investigates how they managed to get in. It’s nothing deep but it was a fun read, though might have been better in a collection with some other short stories rather than presented on its own. Apparently the story is from 2001 but has only been translated into English this year.

>29 valkyrdeath: I should read this. I picked up a free e-book version at some point.

>31 valkyrdeath: I got it for free a while back during an Amazon Prime trial.

73. Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
A fun little novella, but not all that satisfying on its own. It sets up an interesting concept but given the short length it does feel more like an introduction to the world that anything. It’s a dystopian world where possession of non-approved books is a criminal offence punishable by death. Librarians travel around distributing approved propaganda, but when the main character joins a group of them she discovers it’s actually a cover for a resistance group. Not bad but like quite a few novellas I’ve read in recent years, it could have done with being longer and fleshing out the story more.

74. The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford
I found this in the classics section of the library and picked it up out of curiosity. It was written by a 9 year old girl in 1890. She rediscovered it years later and passed it around for amusement and it somehow ended up getting published in 1919, complete with spelling mistakes, with an amusing foreword by J. M. Barrie. I’m usually sceptical about books purporting to be by children but this one seems to be pretty well documented and the handwritten manuscript still exists, plus I didn’t find it particularly as funny as it seems to have a reputation for being. It does have amusing moments caused by the author imitating things that she clearly didn’t quite understand, or her focus on things that would seem important to a child. Perhaps the best scene was a party with the Prince of Wales, where everyone stands around eating ice cream. But mostly it does just read like something a child would write and only held my attention for the full book because it’s so short.

“Oh indeed I should cried Mr Salteena I am very fond of fresh air and royalties.” – A character in the book on being told he could “gallopp beside the royal baroushe”.

“I like fresh air — and royalties.” – Daisy Ashford, on buying a farm on the proceeds from sales of this book.

You’ve been reading a lot of fun stuff. The Muriel Spark play sounds really terrific.

75. The Hunter
76. The Man with the Getaway Face
80. The Outfit
82. The Mourner
83. The Score
All by Donald E Westlake writing as Richard Stark

I read these five books pretty rapidly. They’re all fairly short novels and they’re so well plotted and while they’re all stand-alone stories, in the case of the second, third and fourth books especially they follow immediately on from the previous ones in a way that makes it very easy to just want to keep going. I’ve been curious about these books for a while since I love the Dortmunder books and other Westlake books that I’ve read but was wary about the violence of the lead character, Parker. As Meredith had also decided to try them too, I thought it was the perfect time to give them a go myself.

It’s interesting to see these earlier works by Westlake and seeing how he developed. In The Hunter especially, he does nothing to try to make Parker likeable, he’s simply a cold detached murderous criminal, looking for revenge on the people who double crossed him and though they had killed him. Apparently he was supposed to be killed trying to escape the police at the end of the book, but his editors made him rewrite it since they wanted a series. In the next books, he’s still basically the same, but somehow seems to become a more rounded character anyway and as they go along seems less inclined to kill if it doesn’t seem necessary to him, though he doesn’t avoid doing it if he feels it’s the best way to get what he wants, and he never shies away from violence.

The books aren’t quite as serious as I feared they might be. They’re not comedies by a long shot, but there’s the occasional amusing scene or funny line that sneaks in there, certainly in the later of these five books, and sometimes it feels like Westlake was just waiting to be let off the leash to be as funny as he wanted to be when he moved to the Dortmunder series.

I’m glad I read these, and while the first couple of books I just thought were alright, by The Outfit I was genuinely enjoying them. That book has a sequence that’s basically a montage of different heists against the mob that was really entertaining, The Mourner lets Westlake exercise his penchant for invented histories as a background to a theft of a historical artifact, and The Score contains the heist of an entire small mining town. Another aspect of the author’s writing that was already in place is that no matter how well planned anything is, it’s usually brought down by bad luck. As John Banville says in a Foreword to one of the books: “The Parker books, however, take it as a given that if something can go wrong, it will, and that since something always can go wrong, it invariably does.

I’ll likely be reading more of these soon.

Sounds fascinating. Never heard of Richard Stark

>36 dchaikin: I've certainly enjoyed delving into the works, though I still like Westlake's other novels even more.

>33 valkyrdeath:

The book is of course incomparable, but there is a lovely, zany BBC adaptation, The Young visiters from 2003, with Jim Broadbent (Mr. Salteena), Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Sophie Thompson and Lyndsey Marshal.

>38 LolaWalser: I saw something about that when I was looking up the book and I am curious to see what it's like.

77. A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark
I thought this was a novella when I first added it to my list but it turns out it’s not even that long. It’s a longish short story, what would come under novelette in the sci-fi awards categories I think. It’s a historical fantasy mystery set in an alternate early 20th Century Egypt not long after magic and supernatural creatures have somehow emerged. The world was really intriguing but the book is so short that the actual story felt a bit rushed. The next book in the series actually is a novella and the one after that a full novel so I’m looking forward to seeing what the author can do in this setting with more space to play with.

78. Adulthood is a Gift by Sarah Andersen
Another fun collection of funny comics by Sarah Andersen, covering a lot of the same sorts of themes as her earlier books, but from her now slightly older perspective. The book also finishes with a series of brief articles looking at some previous comics and behind the scenes information now that she’s been making them for over 10 years. It’s interesting to see some of her processes and her discussions of things she would and wouldn’t do now compared to comics from a few years ago. Sadly, she also discusses a case where one of her specific comics got repeatedly edited into a meme by the far right to push forward their racist idiotologies. Aside from that reminder about the awfulness of humanity, it’s another fun book.

I had not visited your thread for quite some time so I enjoyed catching up and enjoyed the diversity of your reading.
I am making a note on the >26 valkyrdeath: Richard Osman book, as I enjoyed the two first instalment of the Thrusday Murder Club. I wonder if the characters and set up are as specific as in the initial series.
Making note as well on >27 valkyrdeath:, >29 valkyrdeath: and maybe >32 valkyrdeath:. I feel I miss good and not too gloomy short books at the moment, so there is a lot of inspiration here!

>41 valkyrdeath: Oh, I didn't know there was a new Sarah's Scribbles collection out. I love those. Onto the wishlist it goes!

>42 raton-liseur: I loved the Osman book. I've enjoyed all his books so far.
There's definitely times I just want some short fun books to read and I definitely went through that sort of mood recently.

>43 bragan: Those are always so much fun. I think it was your thread a few years ago that put me onto the first book in the first place! I quite enjoyed her Cryptid Club book last year too though I wasn't posting here at the time.

79. Gold, Violet, Black, Crimson, White by David Hewitt
This is an interesting history book about the early days of silent films in the UK, an especially on the cinemas and what it was like to go out and see a film at the time. It also focuses on the now lost film Five Nights and the court case that it caused due to its content.

I enjoyed the book, but it could have done with being a bit better organised. It’s trying to cover so much that sometimes the chapters didn’t flow. A chapter would talk about a particular person, then there’d be 100 pages without them being mentioned again before the next chapter opens referring to them by first name only and carrying on as if there’s been nothing between. There were times I had to go flicking back through the book to find out who this was I was reading about. And while the book is detailed, it seems to get carried away at times, like the author felt the need to cram every single detail he had learnt into it. He won’t just say a film toured around an area, he’ll list every single town it went to. And at one point there’s a chapter that begins:
“There had also, in that period, been films about-

Kidnap, smugglers, borrowed babies, secret earls, silly old flirts, bull-fights, masques, dancers, masked dancers, bohemians, houseboats, duels, beggars, wastrels, asylums…” and goes on for two entire pages like that. Earlier in the book there was a similar chapter listing film titles, characters and plots.

Despite that criticism, there’s a lot of really interesting information here and a lot about the wider culture of the time in general. The trial that’s the main event is also interesting to read about, though suffers from the fragmentary telling a little. I’m glad I read it and it’s not like there’s loads of other books about this stuff. I do think it’s a good book for the most part, but it could have done with a bit more editing.

84. The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
I came across this randomly in the library and decided to give it a go. It’s a Japanese murder mystery novel from the 80s that’s just been translated into English this year. It was apparently part of a wider movement away from the more modern styles of crime fiction and to write more in the golden age mystery style, which I can only approve of since those are my favourite types of mystery.

A highly respected mystery author invites a group of younger authors he knows to stay at his strange maze-like house and challenges them to all write a short story about their own murder within the house. He also invites additional people to judge the stories with the winner inheriting a fortune from him. Obviously, this being a mystery novel, it’s not long before people start actually dying.

I really enjoyed this book for the most part. Not only the house is labyrinthine, but the structure of the book itself is too. It’s presented as a book within a book written by one of the people who was invited to the house, so we get a foreword followed by a foreword (which quotes an afterword that’s actually an introduction). Within the book within the book we get fragments of the stories written by the authors in the house, and one of those is a story within a story of course, because why not. It’s a fun plot that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s not particularly believable but this sort of book is never really trying to be.

There’s a couple of aspects that I did think didn’t quite work, but earlier I found an article about it on the webpage of the person who did the translation, and it turns out the parts that I didn’t like were things that had changed from the original, and the original versions sounded like that made much more sense. They were changed because they were based on specifically Japanese things, and I’d have rather have just had an explanation in footnotes or something rather than have them changed. It’s explained that they were changed because the book had to be fair and solvable for the reader, but I’m not convinced there’s all that many people reading murder mysteries who actually put huge amounts of effort into trying to solve them themselves. I know if I want to solve something myself I’ll get a puzzle book or play a mystery computer game. I read a mystery novel to see a clever detective solve the case, and if it’s something I can solve myself when the detective is still working on it I’m more likely to be disappointed in the book frankly.

Anyway, this is part of a series, though a series where the books only vaguely connect via a character so it doesn’t feel like anything was missed from not having read the two earlier books. I will probably try and get around to reading those at some point though, since I did enjoy this one.

That’s a very interesting translation issue. How to translate cultural plot points. The book sounds fun.

>46 valkyrdeath: I'm with you, in that I would rather have a footnote, than have the translator make changes for cultural reasons. Part of the reason why I read translated novels is to get a sense of other places.

85. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
A beautifully written book about two sisters who, due to events recounted in the early pages of the book, end up being looked after by their aunt Sylvie, a slightly unstable “transient” who’d rather be travelling and riding the rails than settling down. Their close relationship is broken apart as one feels drawn to Sylvie while the other is driven away to seek a more normal life. It’s mostly a fairly quiet book without a huge amount happening in terms of plot, but it’s very well written and character focused and it does drive towards an uncomfortable but probably inevitable ending.

>49 valkyrdeath: I loved Housekeeping—it was one of those right-books-at-the-right-time during a really difficult, loss-filled period. I'm not a big rereader, but I'll definitely go back to it for a second reading at some point.

>49 valkyrdeath: lovely review. That’s a book i need to read.

>50 lisapeet: It's great when a book falls at just the right time like that. I'm not sure if I'll ever get round to rereading it myself but I definitely enjoyed it.

>51 dchaikin: It was a good one. I was glad to finally get to one of her books. I was only really aware of Gilead before reading it, and some vague preconceptions about religious content had put me off reading that.

86. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
A fun absurdist comedy play that I’ve heard a lot about over the years and finally got round to listening to a version of. It was entertaining with really sharp dialogue and lots of fun moments. It maybe felt like it copied to formula of Waiting for Godot a bit too closely but I enjoyed it.

87. Found in Translation edited by Frank Wynne
I’ve been reading this book gradually over the last few months, since it’s absolutely huge. It’s a collection of 100 short stories, ranging from a few pages to novella length. All of them are translated from other languages, by authors from the very famous to the more obscure, and they’re presented in roughly chronological order, from a Cervantes story from 1613 to a Clemens Meyer story from (I believe) 2008. I’ve attempted to check where all the stories are from and the languages and I think there’s stories from 43 different countries translated from 33 languages in here. It’s very varied in styles and themes. As with any collection like this, there’s always going to be some stories I don’t like as much, but I found it to be a pretty high standard throughout and there were some stories I really enjoyed. I remember finding The Attack on the Mill by Emile Zola to be a standout from the early part of the book. I really liked Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, something I found much better than The Trial, perhaps understandably since it was a story he actually finished and deemed worthy of publishing in his lifetime rather than something he’d abandoned being cobbled together after his death. There’s too many stories over too long a time to pick out too many specifics, but I found this to be a really good read and a good exposure to a lot of interesting authors from all over the world.

>52 valkyrdeath: Gilead is slow. That’s the only reason to avoid it. The religious aspect is warm and open minded, not dismissive of atheism, for example. It’s a fantastic book - the family history, the position the minister finds himself in at the end. Great stuff. Recommended.

Enjoyed these last two posts.

>54 valkyrdeath: This appeals to me even though I don't read much short fiction, because I do try to wide from a wide range of countries.

>54 valkyrdeath: Short story reader here and reader of fiction in translation, so you may have presented me with a find! This one sounds like a good way to not only enjoy authors already known to me, but to possibly discover some new ones to track down. Interesting.

>55 dchaikin: Maybe I should try and get to that one at some point then!

>56 labfs39: I like to read from different countries too. When I saw it in the library it seemed a good way to get to a wide range of them.

>57 SassyLassy: It's definitely a good one for discovering authors. There's famous authors here but there are also ones who I think are barely known outside their own country.

88. American Cult: A Graphic History of Religious Cults in America from the Colonial Era to Today edited by Robyn Chapman
A graphic non-fiction work telling the stories of various cults in America through history, with each chapter being by a different writer. It covers both very famous cults and ones I’d never heard of, starting with the doomsday cult of Johannes Kelpius and culminating in the deeply disturbing NXIVM. There’s a range of styles across the chapters, both in terms of art and the way the story is told, which is something I enjoy in these sorts of anthologies. Some of them just recount facts, some of them take a nuanced look at the events. Jesse Lambert recounts his own experiences growing up in the Sullivanian psychotherapy cult, while Lonnie Mann, who now describes himself as a gay atheist, talks about his childhood being raised as an Orthodox Jew and explains why he considers this to be a cult. I found this to be a really interesting book and am glad I stumbled into it while browsing library catalogues.

And with that, my thread is finally up to date for the first time in months!

So what are you reading now? 🙂

>60 dchaikin: I'm on Gliff by Ali Smith at the moment, which I'm almost finished, then I've got Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson lined up.

Ooh. I’m very interested in both! Enjoy