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This month I read Mammoth, by Chris Flynn. This was a Secret Santa gift from the lovely NTRabbit, who assured me it was "weird Astralian fiction", and it is exactly that. The premise won me over to begin with: the spirit of a mammoth skeleton tells the story of his life and "fossilife" to an assortment of other museum pieces as they wait to be sold at auction. Thirteen thousand years of storytelling? In 256 pages, that's ambitious. But of course it's actually thick snippets of life and fossilife, mostly from the mammoth, but also from his companions. I don't think Flynn quite delivers on the promise of the premise (say that five times fast), but there are some great parts to this. I enjoyed the mammoth (Mammut)'s life story, his community and culture, and the skirmishes and rivalries with the incipient Clovis culture of hominids. The mammoth's narrative style is melancholic and occasionally florid, which seems to fit the idea of an immense, ancient, wise species. The voices of the other characters are less enjoyable, unfortunately. There's a Tyrannosaurus bataar, whose impatience and pop culture references get old quickly, despite his pleasant, enthusiastic carnivore mindset. His own story is fun, and then he serves mostly to interrupt the main narrative from Mammut. And others who appear later are even more thinly sketched: an ancient penguin, what might be Hapshetsut, and a pterodactyl. They might have more going on but beyond introductions and a sense of mutual respect/tolerance they end up crowding things. An occasionally bickering chorus that serve as joke delivery mechanisms in what becomes a sadly unfunny book. It's a shame, as the story constantly hits little traffic jams of "There's no way you could have known that!" which get tiresome fast. Mammut's story itself starts again with his being unearthed in 18th-Century America, and follows two pairs of unlikely heroes: the first, sons and amateur archaeologists intent on bringing the mammoth skeleton to France to demonstrate the young nation's prowess and rich history; the second, an Irish brother and sister who want to use the stolen bones to sell and support the nationalist cause against the British. The aforementioned interruptions mean that even the more interesting passages keep stopping and starting in ways that took me right out of the experience. Twice I left the book just sitting for a week before delving back in, a very slow experience. Again, there are some really good moments, like an encounter with Georges Cuvier or a disastrous trail into the American West, but none of it was allowed to grab me. The tone, as a result, is strange. There are so many moments of sadness, hopelessness, determination in the face of failure. Humanity en masse is portrayed as cruel, stupid, ignorant, callous, selfish, which are all fine of course, but it takes on a level of sarcastic resignation...until the end. The last parts of the book, the end of Mammut's story and an intercession by the author himself, are properly good, interesting, bizarre and hopeful in ways that the rest of the novel fails to be. I was left puzzled as to why Flynn would sabotage the rest of the book with so many irritating moments and failed comedy. Maybe it was to add levity to a series of sad narratives that end in violence and destruction, or maybe it was to give the sincerity of the ending more weight by contrast. I wish this book had let me enjoy it more. I feel disappointed, but also I know a lot of people who might totally love it. So maybe if it becomes BOTM everyone else will like it, and I will be the fool.
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Jan 30, 2024 09:05
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 I read An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Oof, this is a difficult read. I thought I already had a decent grasp of how brutal the treatment of indigenous people was, but boy was I wrong. The historical narrative is put together really well, with a lot of analysis of colonialist attitudes and the violence inherent in US expansionist policies not just during the founding of the United States but in US policy abroad. Despite covering ~400 years of history, it is really focused and does a great job of explaining how deliberate political choices, government and military structures and systematic policy led to so much violence and the elimination of entire peoples (and set the foundation for American foreign policy). She includes a lot of primary sources concerning specific events. Her description of what the North American continent was like before colonisation and the web of different societies and cultures was eye-opening, and her deconstruction of a lot of dearly held US mythology is sharp and damning. Not a light read, but a great one.
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Jan 30, 2024 14:09
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I haven’t finished Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov yet because it’s too long and dense for me to finish in a month. I’ll finish it eventually, which is an endorsement because I’m not hesitant to give up reading a book. But still, of the three books I’ve read by Nabokov, I’d rank this behind Pale Fire then Lolita. It’s the story of the romantic relationship of young Van and his even younger cousin (actually sister due to infidelity) Ada. Unlike Lolita, where Humbert Humbert is a wreck of a man who if I remember right opens the novel in prison, Van skates through life (at least as far as I’ve read) based on his wealth, looks, and charm. He strongly reminds me of George MacDonald’s Flashman. I don’t expect him to get any comeuppance either based on the tone of the notes that Van and Ada leave each other in the manuscript. Unlike Pale Fire, where the footnotes to the poem told the story, the notes don’t seem to vary anything. Ultimately I wouldn’t recommend it as a book of the month, because while Nabokov can certainly write (one chapter is just a description of the code that Van and Ada used to send letters to each other, and I actually read it), it’s not his best work. If people wanted to read Nabokov, I’d recommend Pale Fire because it’s complex and intriguing, or Lolita because it’s his best known.
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Feb 1, 2024 03:24
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The book for February will be Orlando, by Virginia Woolfquote:Virginia Woolf's Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women. quote:The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies. Orlando is also now in the public domain, so you can download as an epub or PDF around the internet. I got my copy here: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/orlando-a-biography-ebook.html (I will process the reviews from January and post some polls later in the month)
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Feb 1, 2024 22:38
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Orlando is great, folks, read it read it read it
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Feb 1, 2024 22:50
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I've never read any Virginia Woolf, guess it's time to remedy that.
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Feb 1, 2024 23:41
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I'm going to finish the splatter western in reading and then signed out a David Sedaris for a little palette cleanser, but Orlando is next on the ticket
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Feb 2, 2024 02:06
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AngusPodgorny posted:I've never read any Virginia Woolf, guess it's time to remedy that. Be not afraid!
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Feb 2, 2024 06:28
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I myself picked up the Standard eBooks copy. Comes with pictures, and that please me as a visual appreciator. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/virginia-woolf/orlando
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Feb 3, 2024 07:27
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Orlando is great, folks, and I may reread it for this
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Feb 3, 2024 18:42
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I read Orlando years and years ago so I’m looking forward to a reread. In the first chapter now and it’s much more playful and funny than I remembered. I also enjoyed the sarcastic acknowledgment in the preface to an unknown American reader who kept writing Woolf to correct her grammar and nitpick details in her novels 
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Feb 4, 2024 01:25
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Started Orlando today and it is Woolf and it is good! Also, if your only experience of Woolf to date was a lit class that made you read To The Lighthouse and you felt lost in the stream of consciousness of time passing, fear not! this is a fairly straight ahead narrative
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Feb 5, 2024 02:36
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I've started Orlando and am really, really enjoying it. Pretty sure my only experience of Virginia Woolf was indeed To the Lighthouse in school, so this is a treat
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Feb 5, 2024 16:57
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Bought a copy this weekend with some other books, and the guy at the bookshop lingered over it while scanning, saying "Oh, I love Orlando so much", which I'm taking to mean only good things.
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Feb 5, 2024 19:55
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Orlando is one of my favorite books. I always binge through the entire second half in one sitting it's so good. Definitely recommend everyone read it!
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Feb 13, 2024 15:45
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I'm still fairly early into it (he has just read Nicholas Greene's work), and I hadn't expected it to be so funny 
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Feb 14, 2024 00:08
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I just picked this up from the library today and finished the first chapter already. It's wonderful and I can't wait to see where things go, besides out to sea on the ice floes.
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Feb 18, 2024 23:31
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I'm approaching finished with Orlando, and am really enjoying the heck out of it, but I have also been distracted lately by a vidya game so its not actually done yet. However, this very short month is approaching its end, so please review the reviews from last month and pick a winner for March!
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Feb 26, 2024 03:41
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What, you don't want to make everyone read a heavy philosophy book? Coward! I'm enjoying Orlando but I'm finding the style to be a bit of a struggle, I wish Woolf would put a few more breaks in there from one idea to the next
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Feb 26, 2024 03:54
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Opopanax posted:What, you don't want to make everyone read a heavy philosophy book? Coward! Sorry, perhaps I was discouraged from including it by the fact I am so tired right now it seemed too much, and being a philosophy dumbass too? Also your words to the effect it probably wouldn't make a good BotM. No offense intended 
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Feb 26, 2024 04:49
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No hard feelings, it was pretty dense
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Feb 26, 2024 04:53
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I finished the book this morning. Really loved the ending, it was a very sweet note to end on. One thing I noted while reading was that there seemed to be a big tonal shift during the final chapter, it seemed to get a lot more earnest about Orlando's situation at that point in her life and lacked much of the levity that made the book up to that point such an easy read. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but the book got really heavy and contemplative all of a sudden as it came to a close.
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Feb 26, 2024 06:25
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Yeah, there's quite a few shifts in tone throughout the book but the last chapter has the most noticeable one. It actually reminded me a lot of To the Lighthouse (though maybe that's just because I read it recently); besides the tone it's much narrower in scope, covering a single day of Orlando's life whereas the rest of the book is very freewheeling about the passage of time
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Feb 26, 2024 14:58
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Just finished it, and I have to say it's probably the most beautifully written book I've ever read, Woolfs imagery and prose are truly remarkable. I've gotta be honest though I have no idea what it was about, or what the larger point (if any) she's trying to pull out is. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for high literature.
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Feb 28, 2024 14:01
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It seemed to shift dramatically with each chapter. First the wealthy rogue, then the tortured poet, then something out of Metamorphosis or The Nose where everyone blithely accepts a reality-shattering event. And in the final chapter I really didn't know what was going on, other than so many exclamation marks. I wish more books used the technique of having the narrator insert herself with commentary like "For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing." It seems like much of Orlando wasn't story, but commentary and extended descriptions tied together with semi-colons.
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Mar 1, 2024 03:31
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McSpankWich posted:Just finished it, and I have to say it's probably the most beautifully written book I've ever read, Woolfs imagery and prose are truly remarkable. Very much agree with this. I'm definitely going to reread it because there were parts that I just didn't understand at all, and parts that were so stunningly beautiful that I want to read them over again and again and again. There were a lot of parts of the last chapter where I wasn't entirely sure what was happening.
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Mar 1, 2024 11:19
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New BotM for March will be This Is How You Lose The Time War by El-Mohtar and Gladstone. The winning review is copied below for posterity.McSpankWich posted:This month I read This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I found it fascinating and gripping. At its core, it's a love story between two special ops soldiers on opposite sides of a war through time and space. from its Goodreads page.. quote:Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.
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Mar 1, 2024 22:32
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Ooh, I was thinking of taking a break from here to catch up on my list, but I really liked Last Exit, Gladstone's other book.
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Mar 1, 2024 23:55
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I love, love, love This Is How You Lose The Time War. Highly recommend the audio book - it's not very long (a little over 4 hours), and the narration adds a little something special to an already special story.
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Mar 2, 2024 06:23
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Yeah it’s a super quick read. Good stuff. Very creative!
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Mar 2, 2024 07:46
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What a good book! Great choice, voters!
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Mar 2, 2024 09:22
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SlothBear posted:Yeah it’s a super quick read. Good stuff. Very creative! I hope that's true! I put a hold on Libby after reading the review, and am 64th in line now (started 80th). Estimates I'll have it in 22 weeks if nobody returns it early, so hope they all tear through it! I did manage to get The Son from the review list pretty quickly, would recommend that as maybe next month's book (so I end up doing BOTM in reverse order!)
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Mar 2, 2024 16:50
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corker2k posted:I hope that's true! I put a hold on Libby after reading the review, and am 64th in line now (started 80th). Estimates I'll have it in 22 weeks if nobody returns it early, so hope they all tear through it! I was going to vote for The Son, but I saw that it's described as "loosely" the second in a "thematic trilogy" that starts with American Rust (which I have in my TBR pile). Can it be read as a standalone or should you read American Rust first? e: I am also waiting for my Libby hold on this month's book, though mine should be available soon 
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Mar 2, 2024 20:10
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I had missed the part about being a trilogy - it was a fantastic read without having read any others! if there were any links to other stories, I obviously breezed straight over them. Maybe some other Goons can weigh in if they have read the previous books?
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Mar 2, 2024 21:03
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Well I started American Rust while waiting for my hold on This Is How You Lose The Time War to be available, so I'll find out (also it's pretty amazing so far, so I'd second The Son being a future book of the month if it's anything like this)
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Mar 3, 2024 12:25
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^^We'll get to The Son eventually, I am sure. If I hadn't been such an ADHD-riddled mofo, I would've written a better review and campaigned for it. BTW Would love to hear your thoughts on American Rust in another thread, I read that immediately after The Son. theysayheygreg posted:I love, love, love This Is How You Lose The Time War. Highly recommend the audio book - it's not very long (a little over 4 hours), and the narration adds a little something special to an already special story. That's enough of an endorsement for me. I get four hours into books all the time and then DNF them. Enfys posted:I was going to vote for The Son, but I saw that it's described as "loosely" the second in a "thematic trilogy" that starts with American Rust (which I have in my TBR pile). Can it be read as a standalone or should you read American Rust first? I read The Son. Loved it, and then read American Rust as a result. They might be thematically related but they are completely different stories.
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Mar 4, 2024 02:07
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Just wrapped up Orlando. Count me in with the "I have no idea what she was trying to say most of the time" crowd, but it was beautifully written. I appreciate how progressive it was for the time, and I like how all the fantastical elements are played perfectly straight, like the gender swap or the nigh-immortality, I like that Wolff doesn't try and give some reason for any of that, it just is. I'm 26th in line for Time War but I have some stuff I want to catch up on anyways, so I doubt I'll get to it by end of March, but it's definitely on the list.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:45
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I've started the audiobook for This Is How You Lose The Time War as it was available first from the library, though I'm loving it so much that I'm definitely going to read the physical book as well for a reread. The narration is great. I'm not too far in, but the part where Blue spends a century writing a letter using the rings of a tree just floored me so much that I had to stop for a bit to process all my feelings. Mr. Enfys also overheard the start of the book and became so interested in it that we've been listening to it together, which is extra special 
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Mar 6, 2024 12:24
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Just finished the book for this month, and it's an all-timer for me. Got everything I like in a book - weird, convoluted, unabashedly sincere, and no longer than it has to be. I ended up listening to the audiobook but I do wonder if the format would've clicked with me sooner if I had read the book instead, still ended up being fine. I first went to check if my library had it, only to discover 23 holds. Usually this means a book is brand spanking new or about to release as a movie, but it isn't new and I couldn't find any mention of anything like a screen adaptation, but I did find this on the wiki page for it: quote:In May 2023, three years after its release, This Is How You Lose the Time War received an unexpected boost in popularity, ascending Amazon's bestseller rankings to number three overall and number one in science fiction.[17] This was because of a viral tweet by a fan of the manga and anime series Trigun with the display name "bigolas dickolas wolfwood" who recommended the book to their followers.[18][19] "I do not understand what is happening but I am incomprehensibly grateful to bigolas dickolas", El-Mohtar wrote in response.[20]
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Mar 6, 2024 15:46
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I'm really drawing this one out because it's so good it hurts and I don't want to finish it
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Mar 9, 2024 17:58
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