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10 Comments
Finished:
**Cult Bride, by Liz Cameron**
**Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, by Sarah Yahm**
**Women Money Power, by Josie Cox**
**Dire Bound, by Sable Sorensen**
Finished:
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
The Honey Witch, by Sydney J Shields
Itch!, by Gemma Amor
Started:
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
Started reading:
**Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley**. My girlfriend started reading it, too, and because its been on my TBR forever, I decided to start it. The early chapters at the Hatchery remind me of Tim Burton’s Willy Wonka, lol.
Also I’m going to start leaving my comic reviews in a reply comment from now on, because I can read a lot of those very quickly, and I tend to have a lot to say in them, but I know most of the community isn’t here for that
(1/3)
**The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas**
**Buried Deep and Other Stories, by Naomi Novik**
I’ve been handed this collection of short and read a bit—mildly amusing, but I don’t care enough to finish the rest.
**Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, by Gretchen McCulloch**
Finished: **Translation State by Ann Leckie** I was happy to return to the Imperial Radch universe, and this entry was significantly more engaging for me than *Ancillary Sword.* I do think the ending seemed a little rushed and a little too ‘tidy,’ given the complex themes and political situation, but that seems to happen often in these books. It’s still a fun read.
Started: **A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang.**
Really enjoying *A Beast…* so far. Magical realism is a favorite genre of mine, and I am curious as to how all the elements are going to fit together.
Finished
**Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins, by Annie Jacobsen**
**Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), by Elizabeth Anderson**
**The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro**
**24 Hours at the Capitol: An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection, by Nora Neus**
**Twelve Months, by Jim Butcher**
Continuing
**Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, by Isaac Asimov**
**The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson**
**The Angel of Indian Lake, by Stephen Graham Jones**
Started
**The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller**
**Stone and Sky, by Ben Aaronovitch**
Finished: **The Stain, by Rikki Ducornet**
Starting Today: **Vigil, by George Saunders**
I’m curious about this one since reviews of it seem to be very hot-and-cold. I’ve enjoyed some of his past work, so I’d like to find out what side of the fence I’ll fall on.
Finished:
**Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris**, Paul Gallico ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
**The House of my Mother**, Shari Franke ⭐️⭐️⭐️
**Misery**, Stephen King ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
**The Yellow Wallpaper**, Charlotte Perkins Gilman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Started:
**Bridget Jones, Edge of Reason**, Helen Fielding ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
**Tom Lake**, Ann Patchett
DNF:
**A Wrinkle in Time**, Madeleine L’Engle
**Big Swiss**, Jen Beagin
**Wishful Drinking**, Carrie Fisher
Started:
**Columbine, by David Cullen**
Finished:
**Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, by Antonia Hylton**
**The Surfer, by Linda Cargill**
Started & Finished:
**The Wolf Den, by Elodie Harper**
**The House With The Golden Door, by Elodie Harper**
**The Temple of Fortuna, by Elodie Harper**
**A Long Night at Abu Simbel, by Penelope Lively**
**An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce**
Ongoing:
**Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor**
**The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis**
**A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini**
Finished:
**White Masks by Elias Khoury**
I read The Gate of the Sun earlier this year and wanted to explore more of Khoury’s oeuvre. White Masks, one of his earlier novels, is set in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and ostensibly centers around the mysterious murder of a post office worker.
The novel is composed of documents, information, and interviews gathered by a man who works at a travel agency but feels called to journalism. Each chapter is presented as one person’s account of the events surrounding the murder. However, the murder often seems to be an afterthought, as if the large-scale death and horror of the civil war cannot be brought to focus on just one man’s death.
What emerges instead is a cacophony of voices that overlap, compete, and accrete, without really illuminating the murder itself. Some of the chapters shift between third- and first-person narrative, sometimes even within a single paragraph, which can quite be jarring.
While not a great novel like The Gate of the Sun, White Masks is still very good. Khoury’s concern with the importance of speech and storytelling as a means of confronting tragedy is already present here. Though the book feels more like a collection of interconnected short stories than a traditional novel, this seems intentional.
If the book doesn’t fully cohere or coalesce, neither does the experience of living through a civil war. Ultimately, neither the characters nor Khoury himself find meaning, truth, or beauty in these horrific events. Yet the accumulation of their voices and stories lends humanity to their struggles.