A Power Unbound by Freya Marske
Ah, the first of the many, many books that I was going to read on vacation. Which I finished on December 13th, with my vacation having start on (checks) November 18th. Excellent, excellent, I am SO glad to be moving to a new job that respects the idea of holidays…
The final and largely satisfying end to the The Last Binding triology set in a regency(?) England which is so very queer, the pieces that have been slowly moving into place since the first book way the ways back play out in semi-dramatic fashion, with a denouement that you could probably see coming from a mile off but which delivers anyhow.
I admit that I am not the best about remembering what happened in prior book series unless they go onto my re-read idly lists (and even then not always) but this time around, I can reassure you that there are enough subtle callbacks for all but the most amnesia-prone reader to remember what’s happened. This time around, our main romantic pairing is a class-conscious one, as our favorite irascible bisexual disaster Lord Hawthorn is paired up with Alan Ross, thief and talented journalist from our prior outing. It’s a common enough and welcome trope these days, for lordly types to have to confront the real life subjects of their progressive views, and it’s handled well without my usual ick factor for power imbalances in relationships.
All in all, the first in the series is still my favorite for the sense of world building. That being said, can’t wait to see what Marske comes out with next!
Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli
This book, I think, skips over my usually YA biases because the feelings of sexuality confusion (and bisexuality confusion) are super universal. One can be 13, or 31 (hollah) to examine what types of people one is attracted to, and honestly there’s a part of me that loves to see younger characters figuring out that mess ahead of time. And I think it helps that this all takes place in a end-of-high-school just getting into college timeframe, which is definitely the time to be confused about everything and as dramatic as possible.
Here, we have Imogen, our token super SUPER straight SUPER ally. Like straights do, she likes boys sort of but doesn’t have time to look at them and finds certain women sort of sexy AS YOU DO. When her best friend uses their platonic relationship to forge a queer history to fit in with her new queer friends at college (a sentiment I 100% could empathize with, having been there and not done that per se but definitely tried to come close), she’s forced to a) live the lie and b) figure out what to do with some newfound bisexual panic as well.
I don’t quite follow what Albertalli writes but I think I will do so after this novel! I’d love to see her write an adult work, too, a la Rachel Lynn Solomon.
System Collapse by Martha Wells
Wow, December was a really high calibre month wasn’t it? As with the finale of The Last Binding, I admit that I didn’t really remember what happened in the last full-length Murderbot outing but was unwilling to wait even another minute to dive into new Murderbot. And so, while it did take some time for me to get back into the groove and remember, vaguely, what happened (and then remember more specifically). However, I can assure you that a) no harm was done and b) re-reading earlier Murderbot will also be enjoyable and c) re-reading this Murderbot will also be fun!
This time around, there are humans getting into typical human issues, but also Murderbot is having [redacted]. I mean to say once or twice Murderbot has been [redacted] by [redacted]. Which is to say, Murderbot is forced to admit that it, maybe, is influenced by its human bits and its continued interaction with humans. Who like it? And who it…maybe…likesback? BUT NOT LIKE THAT, THAT’S A SEXBOT.
Welcome to Murderbot’s fun confusing teenager puberty and/or adult mental heath revelation phase, exacerbated by the fact that it also has a whole host of humans now who aren’t just subjects or targets or clients but actually…something like found family? It’s all very confusing and feels, mentally, the way that oozing human bits used to feel physically.
Like everyone else I’m super skeptical of this celebrity casting of Alexander Skarsgård, but it’s fun to try and imagine now what these novels could look like on the small screen. Which is to say, I will retain judgement as hard as that might be…
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans
So while at my friend Lydia’s house I caught glimpse of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, a seminal work of ~1,300 pages that charts (as the title suggests) the rise and fall of the Nazis. I’d tried reading it back in high school, but didn’t finish and thought hey maybe it’s more relevant to read about the rise in fascism than the decline of the Roman Empire to get some parallels with our modern day world? That put me into a fascinating wormhole of what is The Definitive Nazi History book, which I of course shouldn’t be surprised to find is a genital measuring contest with many adamant participants, why yes I am stereotyping the typical audience of Nazi (really WW2 era) history tomes.
Enough people seemed to find Shirer passe and Evans the new torchbearer that I was like sure, I see your 1,300 pages and raise you 3 books of 1,000 apiece (minus all the sources and footnotes, of course)! Here in this first volume, you start with a loose overview of Bismarck and Weimar (where my knowledge excels) and then, seemingly overnight, are in Nazi-land. And I think that’s the point! The Nazis were nowhere, the centrist political parties in Germany were splitting the vote, and then Nazis were everywhere. By the end of the book people went from ahahaha National Socialism to wait a second…? But as we know, by that point (roughly 1933-1935) the march of Hugo Boss was already well underway.
Ergo I can’t say this was the most engrossing historical work I’ve read—partially because Evans writes in a quite conversational style, and the conversation around this point should really be WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON???? instead of the sort of calm “and then massive, sanctioned street violence eliminated somewhere between 50 and 500 Social Democrats.” That’s probably also the most interesting takeaway, that all the Jewish/Traveller/LGBTQ hate that characterizes the Nazis wasn’t really a main focus until they took on the remaining wings of the political right.
Once again for those in the back: FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE RIGHT WING POLITICAL GROUPS, CENTRIST AND FRINGE, AND THEN THEY CAME FOR EVERYONE ELSE.
The Gentleman’s Gambit by Evie Dunmore
Oh, wait, is this title a homage to The Queen’s Gambit?? Haha I just get that (they do play a lot of chess here). In any case, the title isn’t the point it’s the last (!) foray into the world of our lady suffragettes + overall agitators. Plus this time we have a HEIST involved!
I can see why this novel probably didn’t get the same high reviews as other installments, because it does take a while for Catriona’s set of very relatable flaws to be fleshed out and then addressed by her adventures. Also, the remaining challenges facing our extraordinary women are going to be addressed in a while, so there’s not a clear and present obstacle that they will overcome. Plus, we’ve moved beyond the immediate challenges of being a lady in society with Catriona’s beau, who introduces the idea of colonialism and appropriation of goods and is immediately met with approval and support. AND now our other three women have the unwavering support of three very powerful, very wealthy men who can make a lot of issues just…vanish. So the stakes are also not as high?
But whatever, I like this novel and was really pleased by Dunmore’s inclusion of a tidy Epilogue, x years in the future, where we can see how our four women have ended up in their old age and retirements!
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
I have a checkered history with the Man Booker Prize, which seems to reward works based on their incomprehensibility (The Luminaries comes to mind). That being said, I enjoy any list that helps to narrow down the vast landscape of fiction out there to a manageable number. And this book in particular seemed like it would be a lot more readable? Which it was!
Evaristo is yet ANOTHER British novelist with name recognition (unrecognized by Campbell and Stewart in their popular year-end roundup podcast for The Rest is Politics), and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work. This novel is a relative to the multigenerational novel—the multi-cast novel, sometimes with flashbacks to make it multigenerational, but above all with interwoven plots. Sort of like if Love, Actually was a book with less problematic bits?
Here, we have a series of vignettes of women in and around London—mostly women of color, whether they know it or not, and experience how they’ve experienced their lives. The book alternates between hilarity and emotional punches with ease, and truly makes for an enjoyable reading experience even though Evaristo has chosen to use spoken-poetry-like line breaks, an affectation that usually bothers me visually.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy
The first book I read after finally finishing the second monster tome about the Nazis I thought to start at year!
This novel seemed like it was everywhere, not in the least because it has such a memorable name. I don’t read very many memoirs, for sure, but they all do so seem to be in this vein of slow moving emotional abuse train wrecks written by people post-their awareness of the issue. But in this case, I feel like we were a bit too voyeuristic in McCurdy’s life—the percentage of time spent overviewing her terrible life in show biz versus her time spent in recovery is a bit lopsided, and I’d have appreciated more of the latter.
Although she is clearly still midway through recovery, and so maybe we’ve got another installment due in x years?
As someone who didn’t actually watch iCarly or any of that era of Nickelodeon shows, I don’t actually know who McCurdy is (and can’t recognize her at first glance). Ergo this book was more a look into the still-rampant physical, emotional, and workplace abuse that marks the lives of child performers, even in a world where there are ostensibly regulations to protect against all of that. McCurdy has a very visible, obvious eating disorder that took place in front of millions on a weekly(?) basis and yet there’s no one, not a doctor or a fellow parent or a producer who can ever step in and help her until a partner of hers gives her an ultimatum and she finally goes to therapy on his insistence. She’s got a mother with clearly psychotic tendencies, but no friends to help her see that she deserves better. All in all I’m so glad we’re reading her words from her as opposed to her obituary from Miranda Cosgrove.
Belladonna by Adalyn Grace
A recommendation from the broader Cannonball group! (can’t remember who named it first, but it was from the last virtual bookclub–yay for sharing books). As a first pass, though, I’ll note that while this book ends up a bit of a dramatic cliffhanger it’s not one that immediately necessitates reading onwards if you, like me, enjoyed this book but aren’t ready to take the plunge into the following novels. Although inevitably that means I’ll end up reading the second novel in a while and won’t remember all the eldritch, gothic-y bits from this novel.
My eventual view here is that while I enjoyed this book, and really appreciated the atmosphere, there were some pacing issues that distracted me throughout. Signa goes from one guardian to another in a few pages, and then happily shuffles off to what she supposes is her last without any indication of what that change might do to her (we get a sense of it later, by which point it’s less of a reveal). Her relationship with Death also seems oddly paced—she seems to forgive him very quickly for having continually murdered those around her (or so she thinks) partially because it feels like Grace wants to get to the vibes of a girl marked by Death also being courted by him.
Heartstopper #5 by Alice Oseman
I thought this was supposed to be the last in this series! But apparently it was, and then Oseman decided she needed one more installment to wrap up the story of Nick and Charlie and the Paris Gang.
My biggest takeaway from this iteration is that it feels like Oseman has been heavily influenced by the Netflix adaptation of her work, in particular the second season, and has moved away a bit from the tone of Heartstoppers #2-4, which were moderately darker in tone and substance than Season 1 of the show—which, admittedly, was essentially cotton candy. The plot from season 2 is clearly reflected in this book, which means that the Netflix series definitely skipped right over a lot of the drama from issues #2-4 (namely, Charlie’s spiraling mental health and anorexia, and Nick’s realization that he can’t be the only support pillar for Charlie as a…16 year old boy).
Why is it that I’m more willing to excuse the implausibility of a bunch of 15- and 16- and 17-year olds talking about life decisions that take into account their secondary school boyfriends/girlfriends? Maybe because, as with Imogen, Obviously, there’s a precociousness to sexuality and gender expression that seemed earnt (am I…heterophobic? Or at least heterodismissive?) and so relevant. There is genuinely not a single primary or secondary relationship in this series that is cisgender heteronormative, and while it amuses me it’s never played for laughs and always seen as perfectly reasonable.
I’m curious to see on what sort of note Oseman will wrap up this series, and where the show will go as well!
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Just felt incomplete that I hadn’t read this book about 21-year old disaffected Irish students/grad students written by a (checks) 21-ish-year old disaffected seeming Irish student/grad student-mindset writer.
Kudos to Rooney for doing a fictional Ernaux and writing what I can only imagine are vignette from her own life, disguised in some way by the veneer of fiction. Even better if she can get her agency to pay for her current life under the guise of literary research?
This is clearly the least polished of her works, and I think that’s only reasonable given that it was her first major novel. There are a lot of Big Ideas here, and Big Feelings and characters who are so very young and painfully unhatched thinking that they know everything. Is it meant to be funny that Bobbi and Frances give their opinions so unflinchingly without a shred of experience to back them up? Maybe not at the time but standing here a decade or so removed from them…let’s just say if I were Melissa and Nick, I’d have gone to one (1) reading and then gone home and laughed myself silly.
A friend pointed out to be an interesting framework for understanding Rooney, and now I can’t not see it…namely that in Rooney’s hyper progressive leftish world, there is an inherent morality to wealth in that wealthier characters have to earn their moral high ground and can never reach the same pedestal as the deserving poor who populate her world. Normal People, in this lens, is the story of a boy who is good because he is poor (Colin) and a girl who can never get there of her own merits (Marianne) and so has to do something typically disassociated with her class (physical abuse at home) to be seen as semi-equal to him. I can’t say that this novel so neatly falls into that structure, but it is true that Frances is the only character not to come from wealth and holds herself at a bit of a remove as a result—no one can be as cool or aloof as her, and her yearning for Bobbi comes at a bit of a distance as well.
Now to Rooney’s next, whenever she has enough life experience to pull from 😉
The Third Reich in Power by Richard J Evans
And here, the reason why I didn’t read as much during Twixtmas (I think I’ve heard this week between Christmas and NYE described this way, i.e. the time ‘twixt)…because I had ~700 odd pages of Nazi rise to power that I kept getting pulled back into (and, honestly, I was falling asleep while reading it multiple times out of my deep deep exhaustion).
My assumption was that since we’d seen the Nazi rise to power in volume 1, that volume 2 would get us into the war years and all of that, but once I started reading it I realized very quickly how mistaken I was. As noted, we’re basically at 1933-1935 at the start of this tome, and obviously there is a LOT of nonsense to get through before the invasion of Poland in September 1939 that precipitates the second war to end all wars. While we’ve basically dispatched of the bulk of the political opposition, there’s a lot of antisemitism to get through as well as all that appeasement and bloodless conquering to see. And underpinning all of this is a steady, inexorable march towards rearmament in full view of Europe, who are too busy dealing with domestic economic issues to notice that Hitler is being, well, a bit of a Hitler.
Evans once again switches narratively between first person documentation, semi-dry statistics, and historical anecdotes to illustrate the move from “well, the Nazis are in charge I guess” to “heil Hitler I mean HEIL HITLER HEIL HITLER!!!!” It’s a tale of a population taken down by a state apparatchik that started out small and shadowy before eventually growing to be that which people thought it always was—omnipresent, omnipowerful, and always, always brutal.
A separate, equally detailed history of the Jewish community in Germany would, I think, make for a good addendum after I finish the third “wartime and fall” volume. There’s glimpses of answers to the age old question—why didn’t the entire population of Germany’s Jews leave the first or second or third time their communities were viciously and extrajudicially attacked—but a more thorough history would be interesting.