Thanks for not unsubscribing after the first instalment of my text-based book waffle! This is the last chapter of my 2022 reading wrap-up (finally).
Brandon Sanderson: The Lost Metal*
(Mistborn era 2, #4)
Published 2022
This is the send-off adventure for Wax, Wayne, their assorted friends, and hangers-on (if you need a primer on who these guys are and the sorts of adventures they have, I reviewed the first of the series). Mistborn era 2 hasn't been my favourite and so I wasn't particularly sad to see the end of this series or these characters. The Lost Metal sees Wax, Wayne, et al. discover the base of the series’ Bad Guys, and off they pop to take them down. Obviously, it’s a trap, and henceforth the race against time/page count commences.
Sanderson’s style is to lay the groundwork in the first half and then all rollercoaster action to the finish. With all the characters he’s accumulated, tying up all those threads made for a long slog up the hill. That’s not even counting the extensive weaving the entire Mistborn series into the greater Cosmere Cinematic Universe - something Sanderson is becoming less reluctant to do, the more books he churns out - and while this was obviously interesting to a fan like me, it dragged down the pace.
The first chapter tells you who will be dead by the end, which really annoyed me when I read it but in hindsight is perhaps a good way to reconcile you to the death of a (potentially) beloved character by the time you’ve run out of pages. My main bullet journal note was “EH”, but this is my feels for the rest of the Wax & Wayne era; points for consistency?
3.5 stars – if you got to book four you’ll probably enjoy both the answers and the new questions.
Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber, Susan Reid (eds.): Katherine Mansfield and Literary Modernism
Published 2011
An edited academic book full of various chapters about Katherine Mansfield and Modernism. I imagine most of you are familiar with edited academic books: basically, one or more people are roped into editing a collection of essays, which means they write the introduction chapter, they ask other academics to write the essays, they follow up those people when the essays are late to be handed in because academics are overworked and underpaid, they collate the essays into vaguely related themes, and they give the book to the publishers. Who then sell all this free “exposure” work for at least one hundred bucks a pop.
Academia, man.
2.0 stars – Does what it says on the tin
Charles Dickens: Bleak House*
Published 1853
Bleak House is a story I’m acquainted with through the 2005 BBC miniseries adaptation with Gillian Anderson, but when I discovered an audio version read by Miriam Margolyes (and included in the Audible Plus catalogue, no less) I knew it was time to actually read this hefty tome. Margolyes is a superlative narrator, but I did switch between the audio and Kindle versions because that’s the way things pan out (I wanted this as my bedtime read as well). There are free versions on Kindle because the book is out of copyright, but the formatting on some of them is…not good. I ended up with the AmazonClassics Edition* (which is part of Kindle Unlimited, a service I also pay for, but can be purchased outright).
I’m putting off actually saying anything about Bleak House because where do you even begin? It was serialised in 20 episodes, it has omniscient narration but also significant parts retold in hindsight by the character Esther Summerson, it focuses on the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce in which a will is being contested, but also has so many subplots and so many characters swirling around that central focus.
This may not help explain the text any better (and only obliquely references the spontaneous combustion), but @johndalton@mastodon.cloud sent this my way and it sure made me laugh:
It’s a big ol’ book, and I had a thoroughly good time with it. Also, I only highlighted one thing (which, when I read it to my child, she accused me of making zero sense):
3.0 stars – Gillian Anderson’s Lady Dedlock is far greater than all thousand-ish pages put together.
A.J. Hackwith: The Library of the Unwritten*
Published 2019
Claire, dead author, is Head Librarian in the Library of the Unwritten, a wing of Hell where unfinished books slumber and not always peacefully. The books need tending, because the longer they remain unwritten while their authors still live, the more restless they get – and sometimes they wake up.
Obviously, a book wakes up, recoveries must be attempted, our world and afterworlds must be traversed. Claire gathers together her assistant (a failed Muse), a fresh human soul in demon skin, and the newly awakened Hero to battle for the continued existence of the library and the books housed within it, at the centre of a brewing war between Heaven and Hell. Literally.
Ultimately, this is a story about how stories work. Claire and her coterie need to step up into their story-required roles, hit all the necessary narrative beats, and come out victorious (or not). It’s great fun. It’s a trilogy, but I’m not interested in picking up the remainder.
4.0 stars. Don’t worry, I’m sure your unwritten book is sleeping soundly.
Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party and Other Stories*
Published 1922
The first few entries in this short story collection were assigned uni reading, but I ended up reading (and enjoying) the whole lot – it’s a slim little volume and most of the short stories are only a few pages long, so it was a good one for when you need easy reading goal wins.
Katherine Mansfield genuinely is one of the pioneers of modernist short fiction. She was a contemporary of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and conveniently died the year after The Garden Party and Other Stories was published. A lot of her work has been accused of ‘plotnessness’ by critics, but I think that depends on your point of view – certainly the narrative in these stories often lacks a crisis point of a tidy ending, but to my mind plot is a sequence of events and events do happen in Mansfield’s stories (events being distinct from Events, you see). In any case, the lack of plot is a feature of modernism, so it tracks, as well as existentialism and disillusionment which also feature heavily in Mansfield’s work.
The standout feature for me were the opening lines:
“And after all the weather was ideal”
“The week after was one of the busiest weeks of their lives.”
“Of course he knew - no man better - that he hadn’t a ghost of a chance, he hadn’t an earthly.”
No wonder our unfished stories are still sleeping soundly.
3.75 stars. These pack a punch.
And, here is the 2022 reads part 13 video:
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