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Finished last week:
Carrie, by Stephen King
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Books of Blood, Volumes 1-3, by Clive Barker
A House with Good Bones, by T. Kingfisher
Finished
**The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen**
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
**Fate of the Fallen, by Kel Kade**
**The Lady of the Camellias, by Alexandre Dumas**
Finished. I wasn’t sure if I cared enough to read another old romance at first, and about 19th century 1%-er lifestyle no less, buuut the ending is actually quite powerful. Interestingly, it was also controversial for *redeeming* a prostitute.
**Power of the Powerless, by Václav Havel**
Slowly continued.
**Ukraine: Scale 1:1, by Oleh Kryshtopa**
A collection of short reportages from across Ukraine, written around 2010. Some quite interesting tidbits in there.
Continuing:
**This Inevitable Ruin, by Matt Dinniman**
Finished reading: **Brave New World, by Alduos Huxley**. 3.5/5
I’ve read the three other foundational dystopias in my highschool days (Nineteen Eighty Four, The Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451) but somehow never read this one, outside of a single chapter for a writing exercise. I’d always heard big things about this book, but I somehow felt the least attached to it while reading it.
Like, I could see it was making smart observations and reasoning over human behaviour and nature throughout, in fact my favourite part of this book was the debate between John and Mustapha Mond, but I didn’t enjoy the process of reading it for the most part, and I felt it didn’t come together as I would have hoped it to.
Also, sometimes I found its satire effective, and sometimes not. Like comparing the propaganda/slogans they’ve been tought on London throughout life to either Shakespeare or religious passages, is one example that can go either way. Like Bernard not knowing the difference is a clever thought, even Lenina’s singing “Hug me till you drug me” is fittingly sinister, to show her disconnect between the words she says and her understanding of those words, but John singing the Vitamin C advert while >! his mother dies in front of him !< took away from one of the books few dramatic scenes, from one of its more serious characters.
Also, on John, as the child of two English citizens, yet raised on the outskirts of Malpais, I didn’t like that he was the POV character for the Indigenous communities/cultural perspective. Like, I get that he’s supposed to show a type of marginalisation that exists even in his community, as is also experienced by Bernard in his, and it’s probably not surprising to say a book from the 1930s didn’t handle race all that well, but I still didn’t enjoy it. Especially when he spent half his time quoting Shakespeare, and the other half miming Jesus’ crucifixion.
Overall, it had some smarts to it, some parts are less graceful with time, but overall I wasn’t sold on it as a whole package.
Started reading: **Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury**. Wasn’t expecting each chapter to be so short. I feel I’ll easily be done with this by the end of the week.