Books read, early March

[mrissa]

Charlie Jane Anders, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak. Discussed elsewhere.

Chaz Brenchley, Rowany Goes to Summer School. Kindle. Chaz continues with his exploration of the Mars-that-wasn't, and also genres-that-sometimes are, and this one was spy training, and if you love a good training montage, why, here we are, at novella-ish length.

Susan Cooper, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. Rereads. Okay, so I was going to keep wandering through this series as slowly as I had the previous three volumes, but when I posted about Greenwitch in my last book post, I got to talking to Sonya about it, and then there was a poem that needed writing, but I had to read the other books with Jane in them first, so these two got read much more quickly than I'd planned. I remember The Grey King being more plot-coherent than it is. There's quite a lot of "and for reasons of their own" and "and for some reason" and "the Light has its ways" and so on in this book, and even apart from that there's "and then someone happened to tell the eleven-year-old completely age-inappropriate things about how the neighbor tried to rape his friend's mom and oh there's the neighbor now." Yeah. Wow. Huh. And it leans very hard on threat and eventually carrying through with the threat to the dog. There's still the part where they teach at least one and possibly up to three generations of Anglophone nerds how to pronounce Welsh, but it's structured extremely weirdly; I have a much harder time understanding why she made the choices she did with Will's memory loss and abrupt return now that I ask questions like that. Silver on the Tree was a relief after that--it has some of the horrible gender aspects of the rest of the series (Jane is such a blank slate that she is not even allowed to look down at her clothes while time traveling--lest she have an opinion about them?), but it also does some really lovely things with the Wild Magic and the Lost Land, and it hangs together as a mythic book. I also am now old enough to notice that Stanton Drew is the location of a major stone circle, so: heh, all right, Susan. Glad I read them, despite noticing a lot more things that were off about them than I did as a kid.

Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Vita Nostra. Speaking of training montages, this is not a bit like Chaz's. It's one of those books where the universe and the authority figures in it are both hostile and violent and everything around magic is unbearably nasty--both on the macroscale (will kill you and your family!) and on the microscale (everything rather squalid, will mess with your college plans and romances). My tolerance for that kind of approach is usually fairly low, but under these circumstances I can rather see why Ukrainian authors would feel that way about the world sometimes, and the very ending was aiming for something better.

Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain. Hutton is very clear that primary source material about the druids is minimal. What he's doing is talking about what various eras have wanted to use the druids to mean, and he's very thorough and interesting about that, for good and for ill.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion. Discussed elsewhere.

Elias Lönnrot, Kalevala. Translated by Keith Bosley. People often ask me what translation of the Kalevala I recommend, and now I've read the major English translations and can say definitively: good Lord not this one. Stick with Magoun, Magoun keeps the weird in, Magoun is dated but delightful, Bosley is dated but dreary. Friberg if you can't find Magoun but ugh, not Bosley. I hate the syllabic unmetered lines he made up for himself, I hate a great many of his translation choices (g--sy is not a good choice for "transient laborer" for so many reasons, sir), cultural quirks do not need smoothing out, they're what we're here for, this is the bloody Kalevala, you wind in the back staircase. Which is an insult you will not find in Bosley. Which is part of why you should not read his translation. Where is our modern translation, where. But even Bosley can't entirely dim my delight in the source material, and anyway now I know.

Rose Macaulay, Staying With Relations. I ordered this more or less at random from mid-period Macaulay. I did not expect it to be set in Guatemala. There is a plot twist that is a plot twist only if you do not trust Macaulay to be better than the average white person of her era about whether Guatemalans are so-called savages, but that's okay because there is still how it unfolds and all the stuff after it. I don't know why it annoys me less when Macaulay writes about writers than when other people do, but it's absolutely true that it does. This is once again a book that does all sorts of things differently than other people, and even knowing that it's Rose, I don't know all of where it's going, and I love that, I love her.

Andri Snær Magnason, The Casket of Time. This disappionted me. It was an environmentalist fable, a combination fairy tale and children's science fiction novel, with very heavy-handed messaging, and there wasn't a lot to it except the messaging. There were enough charming bits that I stayed on through the end hoping for more and did not find them. I enjoyed one of his adult books and will try another, but this was not really worth the time, alas.

Thomas J. Misa, Digital State: the Story of Minnesota's Computing Industry. Wow, this is why people think they don't like nonfiction. Because it is delivering the data that it has and no more than that. There are not charming stories here, no anecdotes, no side tales--and there are opportunities for some, which I know, because I know some of the individuals involved in this. This is a reference volume. Refer to it if you want the stuff it refers to.

Alexander McCall Smith, What W.H. Auden Can Do For You. This is a slim volume, and good thing, because Alexander McCall Smith is fairly determined not to go into the ways that Auden can exasperate you and make you tear your hair, or even gently say, "Oh Uncle Wystan, oh my darling no," or the ways that Auden can make you stare at the wall and maybe go for a walk when it's too cold to go for a walk and you don't feel good but something has to clear your head after the bit of W.H. Auden you just read and anyway I begin to think that Alexander McCall Smith has only the very edges of an idea of what W.H. Auden can do for you, or possibly a limited concept of who you might be. But if you want someone to say to you in bracing tones, "isn't he neat? isn't he just keen?" then by God Sandy's your man. And you know, I actually did, for a bit; it was nice, it was like having someone I don't like very much also like my favorite aunt's paintings, it's good that he does, I'm glad I'm not the only one, and I'm glad that person has gone home now. He has, right? oh good. Whew.

Anton Van Der Lem, Revolt in the Netherlands: The Eighty Years War, 1568-1648. Did I spend this entire lavishly illustrated volume thinking of it as Panic in the Disco? I'll never tell. But it is, it is absolutely gorgeously illustrated, full color on most pages. If you want to know lots of things about the Low Countries and how they got their freedom from Spain, here you are. If you just like looking at weird old maps and pictures of people wearing ruffs, this is also a good volume for you.

Comments

[oursin]

I have never actually met Ronald Hutton, which is probably just as well, because gushing fangirl is not a good look on a woman of my advanced years.

[larryhammer]

Thanks for the Kalevala translation pointer. I have the Bosley, but mostly in default for being able to get my hand on any other verse translation at the time -- Friberg may not have been published yet. Something to remedy Real Soon Now.

I'm rather fond of Anthony Hecht's book on Auden, though it really is more of a literary study than an explainer. Auden could use a good popular explainer ...

[sovay]

I remember The Grey King being more plot-coherent than it is.

This post is technically a dozen years old, but it marks the most I have ever written about The Grey King, which seems to have emerged as the book that haunts me most in the sequence. When I was younger, my favorites were either The Dark Is Rising or Silver on the Tree, I imagine because they are the most explicitly mythic. The Grey King is the one I have re-read most as an adult.

I have a much harder time understanding why she made the choices she did with Will's memory loss and abrupt return now that I ask questions like that.

Do you think that the book would have worked without Will's illness? Real, not rhetorical question: could it have been structured otherwise? I always accepted it because it was an illustration of the ruthlessness of the Light, and if I think about it, a lot of The Grey King is a book about living with the damage of being made part of a myth. (Which may be why it sticks with me.)

[swan_tower]

the book that haunts me most in the sequence

Same. I once re-read the whole series in sequence, but I re-read that one multiple times on its own. There are so many bits about it that chill me.

[larryhammer]

Same.

[mrissa]

So...I think that the ruthlessness of the Light worked well with Will's illness, and his physical wobbliness. That part was fine, and possibly needed--although I think there's plenty of the ruthlessness of the Light in the way that it does not protect dogs, in the way that it just--leaves Bran to wonder. "And then we made Will sick" is the least of the ruthlessness of the Light, honestly. But the physical part of it worked fine for me.

It's the way that he doesn't remember he's an Old One for the first 20-ish pages and then does, and the consequences of that are completely minimal in book terms. There is almost nothing that would have been changed by Will remembering all along. I remembered it being more consequential, in fact--connections missed, in plot terms, things that Will in his right mind, with his right memories would have known to do and does not know to do. And that just isn't there. It's just: go into town, oh right, you remember now.

Or if she wanted to take his Old One learning from him, she could have had it last longer--but even then, the moment where the answer to the riddles is swimming just out of his reach but then he does have it, through no particular effort, and I thought, why not challenge him on something that is not a riddle that he learned from the book. He had already regained his memories, that half-second of "oh it's on the tip of my tongue" did not actually feel suspenseful to me, in part because his memory loss had not been consequential before. There was nothing he had lost because of it, as he had lost or failed at things in The Dark Is Rising due to his youth and inexperience. So I felt like in some sense Will's illness was an attempt to make it feel like some of the price of this book fell on Will, but it didn't. He was fine. He was supposedly weak, but that worked out; his memories all came back in time; all the stuff he needed to do, he did. He wasn't the one who had his self-concept turned upside down. He wasn't the one whose dog died. Fundamentally this is a book where the ruthlessness of the Light is on humans, and Cooper sometimes pretends that Will Stanton is one, but then she reminds us: no. He isn't. He really, really isn't. And this is one of the times.

[sovay]

"And then we made Will sick" is the least of the ruthlessness of the Light, honestly.

Agreed. I can't remember if it features in Over Sea, Under Stone—my memory-to-suspicion is not, because it's so much a younger, lower-stakes book—but the ruthlessness of the Light is established irrevocably with Hawkin in The Dark Is Rising. After how it was willing to use beloved humans, it did not surprise me that it would sacrifice beloved dogs. (Still hate the ending of the series and do not find it internally justified.)

I remembered it being more consequential, in fact--connections missed, in plot terms, things that Will in his right mind, with his right memories would have known to do and does not know to do.

That's interesting. I would also have said that it made a difference to the plot, not just that it got him to Wales. I wonder what gives that impression. Because Will worries so much about the sense of failing to remember what he needs to do?

Fundamentally this is a book where the ruthlessness of the Light is on humans, and Cooper sometimes pretends that Will Stanton is one, but then she reminds us: no. He isn't.

Is there anywhere in the series where the Light itself takes the weight in a way that cannot be recalled or restored? Beyond the le Carré-ish damage of being an Old One, which I may be reading into the text more than actually exists.

[mrissa]

The ending is the worst. The ending is my exemplar for how bad such an ending can get. I have hated it so consistently over the last nearly 35 years.

I think there is not anywhere in the series that the Light itself takes the weight, and I think this is elided by two things: 1) Merriman and Will clearly care about humans (there is some implication that the other Old Ones do too), which for me was particularly brought into focus by Cafall this time around: I adore dogs, but if I'm participating in activities that are zero risk to me and high risk to dogs and I am sad about it, that's...not the same thing, morally, than if the dogs and I are facing peril together; and 2) I think what Will's illness does here is act like it's calling into question whether Will has the invulnerability of the other Old Ones while never actually making him vulnerable. Maybe he's still on the verge of human/Old One! Maybe he's really at risk here! No. He's not. He's already basically well at the beginning of the book, he hardly even turns his ankle as a result of being wobbly from the illness, he is fundamentally fine and is going to be fine, we have never seen one of the Old Ones actually sacrificed and he is also not sacrificed.

The Lady went out of time. All that did was make sure we didn't have influential women characters and let Cooper insist that she was The Most Powerful Really Truly without being specific about her power. She was clearly around all along and back in the end.

[carbonel]

I hate the ending so much, but I also hate the casual erasure of people's memories all through. "It's better that way; it'll save them hurt" is just paternalistic rationalization. And human memories don't work that way, anyway -- erase the memory, and the associations remain.

I remember having a discussion with my junior high librarian when I first read the books. I was dissatisfied with The Grey King because of the lack of structure (though I didn't have the vocabulary to be all that coherent about my issues at that point) and wondered why it was that one that won the Newbery. Her theory was that it was the accumulation of all the other books that were the primary reason. But we both agreed that the committee should have waited for the fifth one in that case.

[mrissa]

Yeah. I have some sympathy for "but we noticed it now, and who knows what will happen when the fifth one comes out" as the counterpoint to waiting for the fifth one. But I totally agree that's why this one. Awards sometimes do go to "I like this series, and here's one of it."

(You're also very right about memories.)

[sovay]

(You're also very right about memories.)

(And when Will loses his, he gets them back.)

[themagdalen]

The dog is why I abruptly quit reading Cooper to the kid, when she was younger. She loved book one. And green witch. And then I realized about the dog and we started reading something else.

[anef]

You have made me want to read this, but there doesn't seem to be an ebook version and all the actual books are very old! (I have ordered a very old version)

[mrissa]

Which, the Macaulay? That's what I did with the Macaulay.

[anef]

Yes!