Recent reading

[luzula]

Hild by Nicola Griffiths
Oh, what lovely lovely prose! And characterization. And worldbuilding. And nature descriptions. I just wanted to roll around in this book and never wanted it to end. Highly recommended. That said, it's not a quick and easy read--it's a dense book and took me some time to get through, but it was very rewarding. I was so invested in it emotionally, and also it was so interesting and rich. Yes, I think rich is a good word to describe this book. I could write lots more about it, but I have to go to bed now (although do talk to me in comments about it!)

Skogspraktikan - varför vi bör gå över till naturnära skogsbruk by Jentzén, Kullgren, and Hultén [a Swedish book about close-to-nature forestry]
This is a great book, although probably of little interest to the readers of this journal. I'm used to seeing forestry from the environmentalist's POV, and this is from the small forestry owner's POV. The section on economics is particularly interesting to me, because it shows that the small forestry owner doesn't necessarily have the same interests as the forest industry.

Stoner by John Williams
For my book club at work. This was...not bad, I guess, but rather bleak. And I do wish the author hadn't made the main character's wife so very shrewish and unlikeable.

Comments

[cahn]

HILD I LOVE HILD SO MUCH. Ahem. I just. Everything you said. It's definitely very dense and chewy -- there were lots of bits I had to read twice, and many times I could not read it at all because I wasn't in the right frame for dense and chewy -- and there are people I would Not Recommend It To At All because of that -- but I loved it so, so much.

That being said, I think I need to read it again because I feel like at the time I had many things I wanted to talk about, and now I don't remember any of them except that I want the next book NOW and Hild's husband is so dead in the next book...

[luzula]

Hild, yessss! It even made me ignore my usual dislike of the subplot of children growing up together who become lovers--and here they're even half-siblings.

I loved the variety of bonds between people, and how not-simple they were. Hild and Gwladus, that was really well done. And Hild and Begu--I was so rooting for them to become gemacce, and that was a pretty great emotional payoff. And Hild and her mother. Like, I thought in the middle book that Hild's mother would become a sort of bad guy, or at least bring about bad things (Osric), but no, that did not happen, and she turned out to be more complex than that.

Hild's husband is so dead in the next book...

You know this or you predict this? I mean, it would not surprise me, but I wouldn't have thought to predict it. The marriage at the end came out of the blue for me.

[cahn]

Yes!! I really loved how everyone was so complex, as you say. And Hild and Begu BEST GEMACCE FOREVER.

I predict it -- it did come out of the blue for me too, but it also seemed pretty clear to me, when it happened, that there was a lot of tension and danger associated with the marriage and with the secret that apparently everyone knows now (in particular, Edwin) except Cian himself. It seems like a very precarious position for Cian to be in.

Though I'll be extremely pleased if this turns out not to be the case!