July Reads, 2024

[sunlit_stone]

Finished

Early Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay (editor Holly Peppe)

I'm pretty sure I'd read all of these before, but many only once, and many years ago, and I'd forgotten them entirely. Some were more familiar, due to being more widely reprinted and available online. Regardless, I enjoyed them.

I read this as an ebook, and I wouldn't recommend this edition for that purpose due to formatting issues. Often there was absolutely no marking where one poem ended and another began; I had to figure it out due to sudden change of subject.

The introduction by Peppe was interesting; I suspect there's not much new if you know about Millay's life, but I didn't, and I learned a lot. However--despite the discussion of Millay's various lovers, despite the discussion of Millay's gendered approach to love poetry and the comparison to the tradition of love poetry written about women by male authors--not a word was mentioned of Millay being bisexual. Actually, since it would have been quite relevant to some of the discussions of gender and desire in poetry in the introduction, and since I couldn't remember where or when I learned it, only having known it, for a bit I wondered if I'd made it up, and was very embarrassed in myself. Then I checked Wikipedia: "While in New York City, Millay was openly bisexual, developing passing relationships with men and women." Well! I'm pretty annoyed, since it really is relevant to some of the proposed analysis in the introduction--when there's a poem about desiring a woman, should we interpret it as being about one of Millay's usual personas, or by one of them...? Of course there's not one answer to that, but if you're going to talk about how women are usually positioned in love poetry vs how Millay positions herself and men it seems pretty relevant!

Some extracts:

In "Not in this chamber only at my birth", "Never shall one room contain me quite/Who in so many rooms first saw the light", vs in "Bluebeard": "Look yet again--/An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless./Yet this alone out of my life I kept/Unto myself, lest any know me quite".

"Grown-Up": "Was it for this I uttered prayers,/And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,/That now, domestic as a plate,/I should retire at half-past eight?" As I'm being very domestic lately, I was pretty amused.

"Elegy Before Death": "Oh there will pass with your great passing/Little beauty not your own,--/Only the light from common water,/Only the grace from simple stone!"

"Passer Mortuus Est": "After all, my erstwhile dear,/My no longer cherished,/Need we say it was not love,/Just because it perished?"

"Assault" is two short stanzas, but still too long to post here in its entirety, and I'd only want to post the thing entire.

I say that but I am going to post "Inland" in its entirety--

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
One salt taste of the sea once more?

I love this one: though I do live inland, and long for the sea, which I've visited but never lived by... But at least I live near water, verily, on an island, surrounded by the beautiful fleuve St Laurent!

The Duke At Hazard, The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune, KJ Charles

I read this on about three hours of sleep (I was having a month), so take this with a grain of salt. That said: definitely not my favourite KJ Charles. The love interest feels insufficiently fleshed-out. I enjoyed her previous book, Death in the Spires, a lot more. It's possible that I just don't love this series in particular, since I didn't love the first novel either (though I did like the novella). But the plot didn't quite feel like it came together properly, the ending with the witness wasn't exactly a deus ex machina but didn't quite feel properly foreshadowed... eh. I did love the episode where the Duke got kidnapped and then escaped, at least! I managed to miss that this was another take on Heyer's The Foundling until I saw it on Charles' BlueSky (I'm blaming the sleep deprivation), and I think the stuff modelled on there does feel more solid; perhaps she had trouble weaving the new material into the existing base.

The Sharing Knife

Beguilement, The Sharing Knife #1, Lois McMaster Bujold
Legacy, The Sharing Knife #2, Lois McMaster Bujold
Passage, The Sharing Knife #3, Lois McMaster Bujold
Horizon, The Sharing Knife #4, Lois McMaster Bujold
Knife Children, The Sharing Knife #4.5, Lois McMaster Bujold

I read this in part because of a conversation with hamsterwoman, on Bujold's annoying tendency of having her very interesting female characters vanish from the narrative after being married. Cordelia's an exception, obviously, but there's Ekaterin and there's Nikys in the Penric stories--it's possible that the situation improves there, I haven't caught up on the latest Penric, but in the ones I had read it's really marriage then vanish. Augh. Part of me wonders if Bujold knows how to write a happy marriage where the wife doesn't disappear--she does a fantastic job of Ekaterin's miserable marriage, surely--but of course there's Cordelia; on the other hand, Barrayar isn't I think principally about Cordelia's marriage, though it certainly contains it, and Aral is never himself protagonist...

The other part was coming across a Bujold AMA, also through hamsterwoman, which said something like 'The Sharing Knife is a romance, and people who approach it expecting a romance seem to have no trouble with it.' Approaching it through that lens did indeed help--you can ask yourself, "okay, what's Bujold doing with the ridiculous age-gap trope? How's she approaching it?" instead of just getting totally stuck on the age gap, or at least I can. That said, I still find the age gap incredibly annoying.

In terms of the books themselves... I have a lot of complaints but there is a lot of good stuff! The world felt very richly textured; I liked all the details of the Lake Walker and farmer culture we see, especially the material culture-- Fawn spends a lot of time in the second book, when they're initially setting up their household, just making things for the household and for Dag. I like how much the Lake Walker and farmer cultures differ from place to place, and how much a sense of progress there is--their cultures are very much growing and changing, we see recently-developed new technology mentioned several times, and the protagonists themselves drive change and progress. I very much appreciate that Dag is disabled. I like how much of the world and backstories we only glimpse: we're never given a full understanding of Dag's family, for example, and we never learn what causes the malices, or if they'll ever stop, or or etc.

The negatives, however... Good fucking god, the age difference. If I'm remembering right, Fawn's eighteen when the books start, and Dag's fifty-five. Why, Bujold! Then there's the magic difference: Dag has it, Fawn doesn't. (In addition to the power of age and authority...) As a result, Dag tends to get a lot more of the narrative focus in books three and four. Honestly, for a long stretch in book three I was thinking that I'd been too optimistic to think that Bujold wouldn't be able to make the wife disappear from the narrative just because she was a central character in the quartet--Fawn still had pov chapters, but it was very much just a supporting-Dag-sideshow. In the fourth, however, she does start driving things more again, which I appreciated. Honestly... I've heard repeated that one reason Bujold made the age gap so extensive was because she wanted the modern reader to experience some flinch from Fawn and Dag's love, as the other characters in-universe do because Fawn is a farmer and Dag's a Lake Walker; I can sort of appreciate this reasoning, but of course, if you really wanted to make that happen, I think the best option would be a much older woman with a much younger man... and I admit, I would be absolutely fascinated to read a genderswapped Sharing Knife series. Of course, you'd have to change quite a lot, because it's very relevant at various points that Fawn can get pregnant--her initial pregnancy, by some fuckwit in her village, is what interests the malice in her to begin with, and her miscarriage and its relation to the sharing knife kickstart her and Dag's entanglement--but damn. I do think I'd have enjoyed that version a lot more.

And while this is less of a complaint, I don't think I found either Fag or Dawn as compelling as Ista, Iselle, Cazaril, Miles, Mark, Aral, Cordelia--name a Vorkosigan character here--perhaps more so than Ingrey kin Wolfcliff in The Hallowed Hunt, because I do think they're more developed than he is, but I still prefer The Hallowed Hunt at least for the beauty of its ending, so. I think the character work overall is, maybe not quite up to the heights I've seen from Bujold in other works, but still something I'd be delighted to encounter in an author unknown to me, so take that as you will.

The Heyers

False Colours, Georgette Heyer

My favourite of the four Heyers I read this month! I loved basically all the characters: Kit, Evelyn, their mother, Cressy, Cressy's grandmother... I also adored the ending with Lady Denville getting Sir Bonamy to propose to her. I had a lot of fun with this one!

April Lady, Georgette Heyer

Basically fine! Don't think I'd be particularly inclined to reread this one. I admit, though, I think I have to infer that the two protagonists were having sex given that Nell is worried about not having gotten pregnant yet but not in a way that suggests that they haven't had sex, but I feel like everything about their dynamic makes way way more sense if they haven't had sex yet. Is Nell... managing to be demure and restrained throughout the entire sexual encounter, but in a way that doesn't result in her feeling deeply miserable and terrible about sex and Cardross...?

Sprig Muslin, Georgette Heyer

This one was a lot of fun! I love the stories Amanda comes up with (albeit I do not love her relationship with her love interest, but, sigh, Heyer). I love her and Hildebrand and Sir Gareth and Hester all together at the end--when she told Sir Gareth's old friend that Hester was their NATURAL SISTER--oh my god. I liked the way Hester and Sir Gareth came together! Overall one of the more enjoyable.

The Nonesuch, Georgette Heyer

By contrast this was my least favourite of the bunch. Things, well, they happen. I feel like it could have used a lot more plot. I think the most interesting relationship in the bunch was between Sir Waldo and Laurence, and there was potential for an interesting relationship between Ancilla and Tiffany but it didn't quite get there. The relationship between the two romantic leads was frankly boring.

Wimsey

The Five Red Herrings, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers
Have His Carcase, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers
Murder Must Advertise, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers
The Nine Tailors, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers
Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers
Busman's Honeymoon, Lord Peter Wimsey #6, Dorothy L. Sayers

I think I have to discuss these as a group.

For The Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, and The Nine Tailors, my main reaction was increasing irritation with Sayers' conservatism. I suspect The Five Red Herrings of being racist against the Scottish, but I admit I don't actually know enough to say, and could be wildly off base. In Murder Must Advertise--it was well-constructed, I enjoyed a lot of the setup in the advertising agency, but good fucking god. There's a guy with a wife and child who fools around with another woman, gets her pregnant, and seems to want to have nothing to do with the result and avoid all responsibility. Then there's the woman he got pregnant. I don't object to sympathy for the man in question, but if you're going to treat one of these as repugnant and one of these as brave and worthy of sympathy it is NOT THE ONES THE NARRATIVE TREAT THAT WAY, HOLY SHIT. I think this is where I really wanted to throw the book against the wall, only I was reading on my tablet.

"If you were so annoyed, why keep reading?" For one thing, he's given most sympathy at the end of the story, otherwise I'm honestly not sure I'd have finished. For another, I was having a really terrible time that month and coping with it by reading. And for another thing, I really did want to get through to Gaudy Night, and Harriet's story--

And I don't think I'm going to come back to any of the others any time soon, but I am really, truly glad to have read the Harriet stories.

I liked Have His Carcase, mostly for her presence and their interplay. This is the first book we get a solid picture of Harriet, since she's not much present in Strong Poison. I like her focus on commercial success. I like what we see of her developing relationship with Wimsey. She's a fantastic character.

And Gaudy Night is brilliant, with real depth. (If extremely uncomfortable in places; in works published today you would be hard-pressed to find a character who is supposed to be both sympathetic and wrong, who says "what this country needs is a Hitler..." And uncomfortable for more than one reason, given the increasing prevalence these days of the outright pro-Hitler sentiment...) I really appreciated that Peter was absent for a good chunk of the novel. I liked the variety of female scholars, and the relationships between them, Harriet of course confronting the various, usually unequal, relationships between women and men that she sees, working through the possibilities, the reveal of the actual villain... Dear god: I am so profoundly grateful for everyone who ever fought for my rights; I am grateful for having a feminist mother, I am grateful for living in the twenty-first century, I am grateful that it is possible for me to have a boyfriend who is entirely comfortable with the fact that I make more than he does, and with having that known... The development of the relationship between Harriet and Peter is done extremely well.

There is, of course, a section in Gaudy Night where Peter and Harriet are discussing her latest manuscript, and where Harriet is thinking that she usually writes very shallow characters, but if she incorporates Peter's suggestions she'd have to have real depth, write something which frightens her, which challenges her--the applicability to Gaudy Night is obvious, since this itself is a book much deeper than any previous in the series. It's well worth the read.

Busman's Honeymoon isn't as deep as Gaudy Night, but I still appreciated seeing the beginning and development of Harriet and Peter's marriage.

Percentage Reads

The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition, trans. Edward Pettit, 0->3%

How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, editor Zong-Qi Cai 7->12%

The Iliad, trans. Caroline Alexander, 48->52%

Programming In Scala, Fourth Edition, 18->28%

Bath Tangle, Georgette Heyer, 0->59%

Comments

[leatherbookmark]

THAT'S A LOT OF BOOKS WOAH. and you've read them all in july! i'm in awe.

i don't usually read poetry, but i have to say you made me sort of interested in edna st vincent millay! especially the part about gendered approach to love poems, and, of course, the excerpts! "inland" is beautiful, and the "passer mortuus est" made me go oh! the xiyao fanfic! haha. and yeah, it kind of sucks that her bisexuality wasn't mentioned if it would've been an interesting lens to look at her poems!

and ooh, kj charles! i've only read the secret lives of country gentlemen and quite enjoyed it. i know there's a fairly fresh sequel-of-sorts of this book, but do you perhaps have a favourite of hers?

okay, when you first mentioned the age difference, i was NOT expecting it to be this large! i haven't read any of the books you talk about in this post, so i'm probably lacking a whole metric ton of context, but all imbalances and such aside, whenever i see such a big age gap, i can't help but wonder what pulls those characters together, aside from, yknow, the narrative. in one of my favourite BL mangas, hana wa saku ka/does the flower know?, the mains have 18 years between them, but they see past each other's facades, have common (artistic) interests, and sometimes the older guy has those immature moments the 19yo guy cutely frowns about, so at least there's that... your idea of a genderbent version sounds more interesting, haha!

i've had a vague feeling that i've heard the name georgette heyer somewhere, and i finally remembered that it was in the context of the, uh, edits to the grand sophy (that's not... how you deal with that... and in 2023... god), but false colours and sprig muslin sound very interesting! and they have been translated to polish, so i might add them to the already long list of books i want to check out at once of the libraries i have access to, lol.

[sunlit_stone]

and you've read them all in july! thank you but honestly this is "not cute behaviour, Suns only do this when they're distressed" territory 😩 When I'm less stressed I tend to spend less time reading... by the time I am reading, god, fifteen romance + detective novels inside a month that's solidly "I was extremely stressed and dealing with it by avoiding everything and reading", lol.

Oh man Edna St Vincent Millay is so great!!! She's one of my favourite poets. I love "Inland"... I'm trying to resist linking every Millay poem but let me link you a few short ones anyway--okay, "I being born a woman and distressed" perhaps illuminates some of her gendered approach here 👀 "Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word" is relevant to some of our discussion of feminism and relationships elsewhere. And if you want some xiyao vibes--"Time does not bring relief". And okay, one last one--this was one of the first poems I really loved: "What lips my lips have kissed".

KJ Charles!! I've read most of her stuff by this point... man it's definitely more #problematic than her earlier work, and less polished, but I really do enjoy Think of England, and the prequel, Proper English, is one of her rarer f/f works. Separately The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal I think benefits a lot from being differently structured than her other works, a series of cases more than a novel. But The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen!!! That one was great, I liked it too :D I like Gareth and Joss' disagreements and growing together. And I know you said aside from the sequel but hear me out--I liked it a lot, and I was describing the premise to a friend and midway through I started going OH NO, OH NO, because it's literally fanon Nieyao. Like actually, I swear to god. I mean there are a bunch of different flavours of fanon Nieyao but this is unironically one of them. And IIRC you like fanon nieyao, so you might like this too? :D

okay, when you first mentioned the age difference, i was NOT expecting it to be this large! If it were smaller I wouldn't mind so much! 😩 THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS. But no, I do have to say, I am convinced they love each other, and for features the other person does like actually have. Dag admires Fawn's cleverness, bravery, determination, and curiosity; Fawn loves Dag's bravery, capableness (in both physical and leadership forms), the way he treats her with respect, etc. And they both genuinely have a lot of values in common. And they're both definitely REALLY attracted to each other. (There's a hilarious incident in the first book where because she was recently injured he's literally carrying her while riding a horse... he's getting hard and trying to ignore it, and she accidentally brushes her hand down against his erection without realizing, and he STARTLES SO BAD THEY BOTH FALL OFF THE HORSE. It's hilarious.)

Oh no The Grand Sophy. yeahhhhhh 😬 Okay, one of the things about Heyer... she's a great writer, and she was deeply knowledgeable about the Regency period and basically invented the regency romance, but she was also very conservative and the books can reflect that and for the most part she interrogates basically none of it. Which obviously doesn't keep me from enjoying them!! But I wanted to give you a heads up. If you do want to start with Heyer I'd probably recommend Venetia, at first, it's one of my favourites and I think it has a bit more...space...? for the female protagonist to go off and do her own thing than many of the others.

[leatherbookmark]

OH NO :((( i hope your next book posts are way shorter, then!!

Ya Hoo!!!! *snatching the links and carrying them to my lair for later careful perusal*

making 👀 eyes at the #problematic part!! lol and oh, a series of cases!? that sounds right up my alley! and fkjhgskfjghs you got me with that fanon nieyao, i guess i have to check it out now!! (the list of things i have to check out is seemingly endless LOL)

ahh, that sounds lovely then!! and fjghsf gotta love boner-related near-death experiences;;;

i gotta say the period accurate details i've read were present in her books were what intrigued me first! i've also read that there seems to be two kinds of male and female protagonists, those with a more intense personality and those more gentle, and ngl it reminded me of a yt short i've once seen where a contemporary romance writer showcased a shelf full of her books, color-coded for spiciness LOL. i am very interested as to what would a "tall and dashing, mannish" female protagonist look like 👀 (though i guess it's more like a protagonist who insists on doing things her own way, like venetia, from what i've read in the synopsis, rather than a cool tomboy haha)

[sunlit_stone]

Thank you! Apparently I only finished four books in August, damn XD Gotta aim for something more in the middle for September!

I hope you like the Millay!!

I really do like The Secret Casebook!! It's one of my favourite Charles, I think in part because the different structure allows her more space to move in than her usual (since she's written so many romance novels I mean, not because it's inherently got more freedom). As to fanon nieyao, I was like, "Okay, so he's got a temper and he can be a bit yelly but he's fundamentally really decent and devoted to the people in his care!! And the other guy is, you know, he's cunning and clever and good at social manoeuvring, he kind of manipulates this guy into giving him a chance but he ends up really liking and caring about him and OH GOD SHIT WAIT ABORT ABORT" But actually it's honestly a lot of fun!!

I think they're more like Venetia yeah... I'm trying to think if there's any real tomboys in Heyer. I don't think so from what I've read, though there is a crossdressing plot in The Masqueraders, featuring a woman who disguises herself as a man...? I didn't love the romance in that one though, it's very much one of the commanding-man-says-things-let's-obey-him ones, and in some ways I think the crossdressing can tend to foreground the gender differences that the novel actually believes in, lol.

[philomytha]

The Sharing Knife! I loved those books. I found I was happy to accept the age difference romance as one of those things that I have totally different opinions about IRL and in fiction, and the worldbuilding was full of interest for me - as you say, the material culture, the technology changes, it really tapped into the same vein of satisfyingness as playing house did when I was six. And I also loved all the Tolkien echoes, how it was so much an anti-LotR and at the same time a really loving homage of it.

Five Red Herrings is very weird about Scotland. Though what I find intensely aggravating about that book is the 'here is a clue but I'm not telling you what it is' thing, but I am not the sort of person who reads murder mysteries like I'm trying to solve a crossword.

And none of those are on my list of top favourite Heyers - completely agree that April Lady is kind of forgettable - though I would rate The Nonesuch higher than you did because I like Ancilla as a character and I like the way the setting's done. And Hester and Sir Gareth are a delight!

[sunlit_stone]

I found I was happy to accept the age difference romance as one of those things that I have totally different opinions about IRL and in fiction That's very reasonable! I think it didn't work for me in part because I find the shape of the resulting romance itself to not quite be my thing, but I can definitely see how someone could like it a lot. And yes, the Tolkien!! The obvious comparison the Lake Walkers draw is the First Nations, of course, which is something I'm really not qualified to comment on, but I came across an essay pointing out the parallels to the Dúnedain, and once you think to look for it they're all over the place. Fawn's is definitely a case of "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door." And just thinking about it now, there's definitely some very interesting contrasts in the way the two series look at progress...

Though what I find intensely aggravating about that book is the 'here is a clue but I'm not telling you what it is' thing Honestly that was very weird, especially since I think it's pretty guessable it's some kind of painting supply. Not that I'm complaining about it being guessable exactly, but in that case why try and keep it a mystery...? Tedious.

I would rate The Nonesuch higher than you did because I like Ancilla as a character Honestly Ancilla is a great character, and just in herself I like her a lot; but I guess the novel didn't quite give her enough scope for me. And Hester and Sir Gareth are great! I do love at the end where he's like, "you are clear that what your brother's saying is completely ridiculous--because I don't want you to think I'm asking you to marry me because of that"!

[larryhammer]

I've tried to read the Sharing Knife three times, and all three times I've bounced off it less than a quarter into the third book. It just ... completely looses my interest. Very frustrating. (The more so since last week I just bounded through catching up on Penric & Desdemona.)

In addition to being weird about Scotland, Five Red Herrings doesn't play fair as a well-constructed mystery -- as philomytha notes.

[sunlit_stone]

Honestly I found the fourth book a lot more enjoyable than the third. If you don't mind having to work out some of what happened, I'd recommend just skipping to the fourth; I can't say you won't miss anything, but I don't think so much happens so weirdly that you can't mostly put together what you need, and I think the fourth book is genuinely more gripping.

Having read the Wimsey, I think I am now content to only go back to reread the Harriet ones, and maybe Whose Body, and otherwise leave the ones I've already read alone.

[larryhammer]

I rarely reread any but the Harriet books, plus sometimes Clouds of Witness and Bellona Club. I admire a lot about Nine Tailors but it's hardly something I'd call a comfort read.

[hamsterwoman]

not a word was mentioned of Millay being bisexual.

Huh! That's an odd choice... is it an old book?

Very interesting to read your thoughts on the Sharing Knife books. Maybe i will give them a shot after all, once I've completely run out of all other Bujold...

P.S. I really enjoyed reading all your Person of Interest comments from about a month ago XD That was just as I was leaving on holiday, so I didn't have a chance to reply and not sure when I will, but it was lovely to "talk" about this show with you, even very asynchronously.

[sunlit_stone]

Huh! That's an odd choice... is it an old book? Not that old! I think it was from the 90s, maybe the 80s? --yep, I just checked and it's the late '90s, 1998. That's part of why I find it so weird! If it had been in the '50s or something, I'd get it...

once I've completely run out of all other Bujold... That might be the best approach XP I'm glad I read them, and like I said they do have a lot of good qualities, but I still like everything else from her better--even The Hallowed Hunt, which definitely has a very weak beginning-to-middle.

it was lovely to "talk" about this show with you, even very asynchronously Extremely asynchronously! But that's one of the joys of DW XD I had a great time reading your old posts! And I saw you replied to my comment, I'm looking forward to reading those too :D