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thehanniecorner · 5 years ago

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Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right? Hopefully, things have calmed down enough in my life that I can get back to writing semi-regularly, but no promises yet! Regardless, I read a lot in January and am eager to share my thoughts with you. Let’s get started!

I hope this reaches her in time – r.h. Sin

Rating – 1 Star

Unfortunately, I started off my year with what may turn out to be my least favorite title of 2020. I hope this reaches her in time is a poetry collection, and while I like to pick up poetry once in a while, I didn’t connect with this collection at all. First of all, it felt like there should have been a little more editing, as I found a number of sentences and word choices that I think might have just been typos. Beyond that, the poetry itself reminded me of the “Tumblr style” where poets just break a normal sentence into multiple lines to make the words feel deeper than they really are, which is not a style I enjoy at all. The good news is, however, that my reading can only get better from here, right?

Emergency Skin – N.K. Jemisin

Rating – 5 Stars

After reading an incredibly underwhelming title, I decided to give N.K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin from Amazon’s Forward collection a try, figuring that an author this popular couldn’t possibly let me down. Thankfully, my instincts were right and I loved this short story so much. Given how short this experience is, I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that this is a phenomenal science fiction story with the best usage of second person narration that I have ever seen in literature. This was my first title by Jemisin and I can’t wait to read more of her work in the future.

Randomize – Andy Weir

Rating – 3 Stars

Since I loved Emergency Skin so much, I wanted to give another short story from the same collection a try, which led me to Andy Weir’s Randomize. This wasn’t bad at all, but I didn’t love it to nearly the same degree as Jemisin’s work. The hardest part for me is that the central premise, involving the security of gambling machines and whether they can be hacked or not, felt both flimsy and info-dumping in its setup. The ending was pretty satisfying and I had fun reading this, but I came away from the story feeling like not enough had really been done with the universe. I’m hoping to get to more of the Forward short story collection a try in the coming months, so I hope I enjoy the others more than I enjoyed this one.

Interview with the Robot – Lee Bacon

Rating – 4 Stars

I decided to pick up an Audible subscription recently in order to read more audiobooks, and Interview with the Robot was one of the Audible Original productions available one month, so I decided to pick it up. This short audiobook with a full cast follows a robot who looks like a young child. She gets apprehended by the police and has to tell her strange life story to a social worker in charge of her case.

While listening to this story, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end because it was just so charming and adorable. That said, however, there were a few pretty good twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and definitely made me feel a lot of empathy towards the protagonist. Overall, my main complaint is that it was just too short, at around three hours of listening. I want more from this world in the future, so I hope some sort of sequel comes out eventually.

The Last Wish – Andrzej Sapkowski

Rating – 3 Stars

2020 is the year that I work my way into adult fantasy, and other than reading Game of Thrones last year, reading The Last Wish is one of the first titles that I have ever picked up in the genre. This series follows Geralt, a witcher, which is a type of mutated human that fights monsters, as well as the many people that surround him. This specific book is a short story collection that follows, for the most part, Geralt as he goes from contract to contract, killing monsters.

I love the lore and world of the Witcher universe, but I’m not totally convinced that I appreciate the writing style. It’s hard to tell if this is because of the translation or this is the intention of the original author, but there was a lot of distance between the narrator and the events happening, which made me feel disconnected from the story. I still intend to continue on, especially after I completely fell in love with the TV series, so I hope that I will connect more with future books and get used to the writing style.

The Outsider – Stephen King

Rating – 4 Stars

Stephen King is an author that I should read way more than I do, because I only pick up one or two of his books in a year, but I almost always enjoy them. As it turns out, The Outsider is no exception. This horror novel follows a group of detectives as they investigate the death of a young boy in a small town. The obvious suspect is the town’s little league coach, as the evidence is quickly mounting up against him. As the case opens up, however, conflicting details emerge and the truth becomes more difficult to grasp.

Overall, I really enjoyed the mystery and couldn’t stop reading for the entirety of this 600-page tome. Stephen King has a way of making long books feel like they go by in an instant. Unsurprisingly, however, the ending was incredibly underwhelming. Additionally, The Outsider is connected to the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, which I didn’t know, and I got pretty spoiled for the events of that series, which is unfortunate. On top of all of this, I would like to take a moment and point out that the graphic depictions of the child’s death did not really need to be so detailed, much less have those horrific details brought up at least a dozen more times over the course of the book. It just felt gratuitous after a while. I enjoyed this book immensely, but the details I mentioned above kept it just barely out of five-star territory.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

Rating – 4 Stars

Since The Outsider was quite a lengthy read, I wanted to pick up some shorter titles again, leading me to finally pick up the start to a fantasy series that has been on my radar for a long time: Every Heart a Doorway. This series follows a group of children that found doorways to their own personal versions of Narnia and Wonderland. At some point, however, their newfound homes kicked them back into the normal world and they have to learn how to cope with returning to their own life. A halfway home of sorts was founded for children struggling with this task, and as it turns out, bringing a bunch of children together who have all gone to vastly different worlds can cause some pretty crazy antics and disagreements.

I love the characters, but didn’t find the plot of this overly engaging. Given that my rating is still high, it’s clear that my disinterest in the plot wasn’t a deal-breaker by any means, but I just struggled to stay interested, especially given that I guessed the big plot twist almost immediately. Since these books are so short, I will definitely be reading the sequels. In fact, given how late this wrap-up is, I can say with great certainty that my February wrap-up will have a lot of news regarding my progress on this series.

Outer Order, Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin

Rating – 3 Stars

I like to try reading books that push me out of my comfort zone, and it has been a long time since I read anything that might be considered a part of the self-improvement genre. Therefore, as a chronically messy person, I thought reading Outer Order, Inner Calm might be an interesting adventure, given that the whole book is dedicated to getting rid of unwanted junk to keep life peaceful.

This was an incredibly easy read. The writing style was simple and easy to digest. Reading it was actually a pretty pleasant and relaxing experience. That said, however, I’m not sure how useful I actually found the book, as the advice felt like it was playing it pretty safe. For the most part, the tips went like “Get rid of things you don’t use anymore” and “Clean your house” with about 75 different variations, each. I’m glad I read it, but I don’t think I got much out of it.

Everything My Mother Taught Me – Alice Hoffman

Rating – 4 Stars

My final read for the month of January was another short story from an Amazon collection like the Forward collection. This is Everything My Mother Taught Me, and it’s my first attempt at reading Alice Hoffman. This follows a young girl who is living at a lighthouse and trying to navigate coming of age with her dysfunctional mother around her. I can’t say much more than that given how short the story is, but I did really enjoy this. This is a common complaint for me with short stories, but the main reason it didn’t get five stars is because it just didn’t feel fully fleshed out. When I read Emergency Skin, I felt like Jemisin did a phenomenal job of packing a full story into a short amount of pages, and Everything My Mother Taught Me didn’t manage this as successfully. I’m still quite eager to pick up more books by Hoffman, however, as I enjoyed her writing style.

Well, now that it’s almost March, I have finally shared what I read in January. What did you read in the first month of the year? Let me know in the comments below!

January 2020 Reading Wrap-Up! Yes, I realize that this post is coming out nowhere near January, but I have been finding it difficult to keep up with blogging lately, so it is what it is, right?

#books #reading #tbr #wrap-up

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hanzajesthanza · 2 years ago

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today was a really slow and rainy-grey saturday... i could find only the energy to go on a short grocery run, as well as... my copy of tower of fools (narrenturm) arrived in the afternoon, so... if you wanted my thoughts on the first half of the book, it's here:

no spoilers, just a lot of jumbled first reactions and some thoughts

i was going to refrain from posting that i had bought this book, because it opens up a bunch of questions to which i don't really have good answers for. so here's just a little "mind unplugged" from me

part 1 - why i decided to read the book

honestly, i kind of just got kind of frustrated that everyone knows the hussite trilogy is sapkowski's magnum opus, but i never see any discussion of it online. it's like saying that a food is widely known to be the most tasty, well, okay, but if i have never tasted it, what do i know of its taste? it just became a kind of thing that people know of and reference, but that they don't talk about beyond that.

and it occurred to me that that's really how the witcher books are treated in the wider witcher fandom. they're talked of as this thing that exists and is good, but people don't always talk about them. and thus, forming an opinion about this thing is impossible if you have not actually read it, so it's pointless to throw around opinions without any knowledge to back them up.

but i put off reading it for a variety of reasons.

the most obvious being that the witcher is "enough" and i don't need more to fulfill me. that's still the case, but i think the point here is not fulfillment, but curiosity? i think obviously i'm still obsessed with the witcher, but hearing about the hussite trilogy and how much better it is than the witcher, i have to say i was intrigued. also, because there's such little discussion of it online? interesting.

i also put off reading this because i was like: "I'm not gonna understand a lick of what's being said, i don't know anything about the history or the events referenced in this series." and yeah, that's true. but then it occurred to me that when i began the witcher, i didn't know anything about it either, and i just kind of went along for the ride, and that was pleasurable enough. so i just thought to myself, well, let me just embrace the fact that i don't know anything, and i can drift through the first book just following the story. i don't have to understand every single part of it, if i can just take pleasure from reading a story, that's okay - there's no wrong way to read, after all... and if i don't like it or don't understand anything, then i just won't post about it. and if i don't catch much, but later want to understand, i'll just read it again armed with more knowledge... plus i think i had to reread the witcher like at least three times (collectively, i read out of order) before i understood its more complex workings like politics and geography and timelines

and then, it was available. okay, we can hate on the english translations all we like, and i agree with all the criticisms, and even more, i love to find out about errors and point out typos and redactions and things like that. but for all the issues with the official translations, hey, they at least exist. and if i can buy a book for like seven bucks online, have it delivered to my doorstep and start reading, that makes my job easy. i don't have to scour, i can just open the book and read. even if some parts bring up questions for me...?

i was also reminded to read this because lux perpetua (the third book in the trilogy) got an official translation released last year october (a few months ago now) and david french also brought it up that he did the translation for the trilogy in that interview he did which was published last month... so it was just on my brain, and i didn't want to be reminded a third time

part 2 - hussite trilogy and the witcher saga

whenever someone comments about this series, people just go "it's not the witcher" and that's the only thing they have to say about it...? i think that it's not the witcher is why i'm reading it. though the witcher is also a key element in my decisions here (could you ever expect any differently from me, haha)

i want to see sapkowski's development as an author, especially with the novel format?? and a trilogy, too, that's different than a five-book saga with already established characters from short stories... anyways.

i think i wanted to see him start from the ground-up with a different (pre-established) setting and (new) cast of characters, to see how he works... as i go through a lot of the witcher, i often find myself asking if this is just a fantasy thing, a sapkowski thing, or just a coincidence that i'm reading too much into.

so i won't lie, i wanted to see what the similarities and differences are between the series. especially owing to the dynamic they have as series... that the witcher is like, a phenomenon, both nationally and internationally, it's spawned a "franchise" although i LOATHE to call it that, it's true, the name has become household one. whereas it seems, at least internationally, the hussite trilogy, despite being the better series (!!), rides on the witcher's coattails of fame, as all the publishers and reviewers say: "this is a series by sapkowski, the author of the witcher." i feel like that's the classic artist predicament, though, right - the work you kind of belt out is the one everyone flocks to, and the work that you pour your entire soul into is the one that gets less attention?

part 3 - okay actual opinions time

apologies some of these opinions are comparing-contrasting it with the witcher so you're just gonna have to deal with that

let's address if it's better than the witcher. okay, i can't really say for sure right now, because i'm only, again, almost halfway through the first book. so i'm just going from what i've seen so far. and what i can say is........ it depends.

the hussite trilogy is indeed more complex than the witcher. right now, it's making the witcher look like a YA series, or even a children's series. LOL. at least, that's how it's feeling for me at the moment, that this is like definitely an "adult fiction" in terms of its complexity... and what do i mean by complexity... it's kind of the result of many things. it's not that it's "harder" to read, though yes, it is also harder to read, being harder to read is not really the same thing as being "complex."

i think sapkowski is benefitting greatly from having the pre-established historical setting, history, and context. it's kind of like... you know in the movie ratatouille, when remy gets to the restaurant kitchen in paris and is able to fucking Cook because all the ingredients are there, prepped, fresh... it's like that.

in the witcher, i feel like sapkowski had to slowly and sometimes painstakingly build everything out, piece by piece, informing us as we go, and though he does not hold the reader's hand, there is a certain sense that the author is laying a foundation. here, i think sapkowski is still laying a foundation, there are a lot of expositional elements, but they're often conveyed through dialogue, and it's rarely, if ever, done with thoughts of the characters in their mind/narration. which has its benefits and downsides.

i honestly miss a lot of that expositional quality that the short stories have, like the first part of sword of destiny where geralt considers how the dryads shoot all humans, young and old, "get out of brokilon!" and the kind of straightforwardness of it all, like in the beginning of edge of the world where dhun and nettly explain that there are elves in the blue mountains "and we nae mix with one another"...

but i think how he's doing it here in narrenturm is also interesting, as it's kind of letting the reader come to their own conclusions about the world and the characters? like, the characters will discuss what's going on, but they will not reflect on expositional points as much. so, i think you have to already be clued-into the history to be able to judge what's going on for yourself. which is something i find very mature about it... what i find most enigmatic about this is that sapkowski seems to be so hands-off, even though this is unmistakably writing that is so hands-on. it feels like the reader is really given the freedom to feel things out for themselves, but at the same time, it's a deliberately planned work of fiction...

the only way i can put it is that the witcher feels like a fairy tale, and narrenturm is feeling like a diary. in the witcher, even though it's fairytales inverted and stood on their head, there are a lot of ways to go about understanding situations and characters as if they are from a fairy tale or an epic, there's a lot of tropes and laws that you can see being played with, and i feel like i can "trust" the characters to act in a certain way...? (though maybe that's just because i'm familiar with it by now?) the story kind of shows itself as being a story, and by the end, of course, everything is just a legend.

maybe it really is just the difference in genre (fantasy v. historical fantasy) but in narrenturm, i feel like the characters are even more realistic-to-life? (which sounds insane considering how realistic the witcher's characters are). something that people have said in forum posts is that reynevan is an idiot who always makes stupid decisions, and ok yeah, but in that sense he seems to me like any other twenty-three year old guy.

you know, there's like a stark difference between reynevan and say, cahir, another twenty-something knight of sapkowski's who's been "separated from his lady" (haha no. imo, ew. but in sapkowski's pov, right?). cahir's idealism of ciri is treated like this tragically idealistic destiny thing, whereas reynevan going after adele is just stupid and hormonal, lmao. (speaking of, okay, i'm tbh just waiting for nicolette to return right now, i like her just for the split moment she turned up and then disappeared...)

i mean, one could also say that dandelion acts like this, but you also have to admit that dandelion's womanizing is a joke for the most part and he's a comic character in this regard, and his character motivations are never really plot-relevant until they deeply involve geralt. whereas with reynevan, it's like his one serious character goal (one of two, along with avenging his (cut due to SPOILERS) but ykwim).

the characters feel like real Guys which is weird considering that i already thought the characters of the witcher to feel like real Guys. but this is just showing me how fairytale like they are...

related to this, maybe it is just me, maybe it it just because this is the beginning of my first read, but while i would say the hussite trilogy is shaping up to be a better show of technical skill than the witcher saga, i feel like personally i'm not deriving as much comfort from it. i kind of realized from reading just how significant the witcher is to me because of its very specific traits of dealing with themes of parenthood and you know, all of geralt's struggles with losing his daughter and getting her back... narrenturm isn't (yet) hitting these emotional highs and lows for me, but i think that's okay, because not every series has to do that and this story isn't about that.

reynevan as the main character so far is alright. again, i feel like he's a lot like a real person... he has some degree of self-awareness, that he is a novice in magic and doesn't have a lot of power, and also that he's enticed towards foolish (and hormonal) decisions, and also when things turn sour... but he isn't seeking to really get wise to the way of the world and is just trying to get what's personally important to him at the moment ... he has some morals, but isn't grandly risking himself to act on them...

so in this respect, reynevan feels a lot more realistic than geralt, who is like, mister tragic hero who leaps into action and then goes through terrible self-flagellating regret when he's fucked up... i mean, they both fuck around and find out (in reynevan's case, literally) but it feels different with reynevan than it does with geralt and maybe i just have to spend more time with him to put my finger on it... i will say that geralt is more relatable with or identifiable with, in most regards, which doesn't necessarily make either one of them "better," it's just different.

if you like the witcher the best way i can describe reynevan so far is like, the womanizing and stupidity of dandelion, the knightliness and youth and feelings of cahir, erm, the alchemy and ~cool hidden powers~ of regis? and also, he reminds me of jarre, but in a good way... yes, there are some similarities to lady of the lake ch. 6, i think...

other notable characters to me thus far (mild spoilers? eh?)

sterzendorf castle potentially being run by the fucking Girls is like one of the coolest concepts ive encountered, and even if this is never returned to, i love it just for the uncertainty at the end of that passage

i think zawisza the black's appearance is funny, being a real historical figure renowned for his reliability and loyalty, and in sapkowski's writing, he's introduced as like. an old man that farts. classic sapko. but he was interesting as he appeared and gave advice about battle...

hans mein igel, i was like okay... wtf when he showed up. i literally reread it five times to make sure i was understanding correctly (reading version of doing a double take, i guess). but also i was like um why is his name Literally the story duny is parodied from...

i've mentioned i'm waiting for nicolette (nikolette) to return, i feel like i'll really like her once she comes back aahhh... why do i feel like adele will turn out to be unfaithful to reynevan just like she was to her husband lol... i mean, she's already denounced him to try and save her own skin. but yeah i feel like our guy is totally deluding himself with these ideas of love and that's gonna be his fatal flaw...

anyways i'm kind of waiting for a well-developed female character to appear and have more page-time? so that brings me to dzierżka de wirsing OMG... hello... i love her, and in an odd way she reminds me of if angouleme was not as fucked up as she is... i hope she comes back soon??

scharley (szarlej) stands out to me as a unique character because he's one of the only priests in sapkowski's books that is not a total fool or powerful or corrupt cunt... yeah he's a bastard, but despite spurring the comic moments, he honestly seems like a stabilizer for reynevan and a good person for him to learn from?

and i'm kind of, as always, dissatisfied and a bit repulsed with the way sapkowski treats disabled people, but...

and finally

i have never been so scared of a guy that looks like this ^

my favorite thing so far has been the supernatural elements that just seem to fucking Pop Up out of nowhere. my jaw has actually dropped multiple times, i went back and reread to make sure i was understanding that this shit was actually going down. i said no spoilers so i won't spoil, but i'll just say there's some apparitions, some magic, and in particular, a vision scene (which reminded me of ciri's visions in time of contempt and lady of the lake!!) and i LOVE me a CRAZY VISION SCENE that blends into the real world... wow, i think that's one of the best uses of the writing medium to convey such a presence. i think every time i am just about to forget that this is a historical FANTASY, some crazy fantastical shit happens and i'm like ohhhhh shit what the fuck lmao.

as for humor, there's been a few hits and a few misses. i actually laughed at the sex scene which kicks off the whole thing (reminded me of geralt and fringilla in the library lmao), some referential history-relevant humor, and of course, the famed exorcism scene is a laugh. but there's also like some toilet/fart humor (which i'm never really a fan of, just too gross for me) and ~random rape joke~ of course, so... you know, there's some wins and some loses.

as for pacing and storytelling, it's like... if season of storms was actually good. hear me out. i thought season of storms having twenty chapters was fucking annoying and didn't fit with the rest of the witcher saga at all, etc. i've complained about it enough already. but this book has similar pacing, BUT.... it's actually working well, not against it. the quick chapters also make it feel like more of diary entries and less of 'fairytale storytelling', like i mentioned before.

what i think happened was that sapkowski got comfortable applying this style of chapters to his novels and then did another witcher novel and it did not work as well for that witcher novel because the witcher novels (of that size) were seven chapters.... and those styles of long chapters really work for the witcher (imo).

another thing i'll mention, but don't hate me or laugh at me for it. okay. ready...?

this is the series that should have gotten a TV adaptation.

seriously! it seems to me so much better to adapt to an episodic TV format than the witcher, which has both short stories and novels, and spends a longer time (relatively) explaining its characters and its world and letting the reader meditate on what it supposes. i am NOT saying netflix should pick it up, helllll no. but rather that this would be really good as a TV series.

#personal #hussite trilogy #book: narrenturm #txt

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