Recent reading

[luzula]

Okay, let's see if I can dash off some booklogging before Yuletide opens...

Network Effect by Martha Wells (2020)
I was wondering if I'd enjoy Murderbot as much at novel length--maybe all that action would grow too much for me? But no, I still enjoyed it a lot. Good entertainment at a time when I needed some braincandy!

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)
Okay, yes, I liked this a lot. I read some reviews afterwards and saw that some people saw it as being a metaphor for trauma or disability, but I suppose I am too literal a reader, because I just took the House as it was. : ) The gradual reveal definitely kept me reading, but I think my main feeling about the book was that I just liked the main character a lot and felt sort of...protective of him? I mean, it was obvious that most of the people he met did not really wish him well (until the end). I liked his intellectual curiosity, his resourcefulness in surviving, his trust in the world and in other people, and his love and appreciation of where he was. I am relieved that the ending did not betray those qualities in him. In conclusion, would love to visit the House with him; maybe there are lichens and mosses growing on the stones of the House which I can help him catalogue! Although only visit--the ecosystem seems a little too impoverished for me. : )

...and now Yuletide has opened. *goes to check it out*

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Congrats, hope your throat is fine and you're carousing with your folks.

[luzula]

I did go to my folks, my throat was still just that barely noticeable tickle and my mom insisted that she wanted me to come given that I had quarantined beforehand. I'm fine now (at least so far!) Hope you're doing well, too.

[regshoe]

Aww, you liked Piranesi, I am glad :D

Yes, I like that the House kind of works as a metaphor but that it's also very much its own thing, comprehensible only as what it is—and that Piranesi-Matthew accepts and understands it so well. And he is a sweetheart, isn't he—I love his intellectual curiosity as well, and the quiet wisdom of his love for the House.

would love to visit the House with him; maybe there are lichens and mosses growing on the stones of the House which I can help him catalogue!

:D Oh, I'm sure there are! Haha, I did appreciate all those birds, too—the image of a starling murmuration in those vast halls is an amazing one...

[luzula]

I did like it! It was a very quick and easy read, too, but I'm sure there are depths in it that I would appreciate on a reread. Would be interesting to read more about the process of him becoming the beloved child of the House--I mean, I'm sure he was angry and bitter at first, and with good reason, but when/how did he first begin to find comfort in the House? I've checked out some of the Yuletide fic, but none of the ones I read have explored that.

I do hope the birds can get out again; I mean, I'm sure the gulls can survive there long-term, what with the marine fauna, but I'm not so sure that starlings could. No worms for them! Well, I shall make it my head-canon that they can slip easily in and out again. : )

[regshoe]

Yes—for a short book, there's an awful lot in there, but there's also a lot of intriguing stuff left unexplored. I agree that the process of Matthew losing his memories and becoming Piranesi would be very interesting to see in more detail—such intriguing hints we get in the book. (and and and, more about Sarah Raphael, and academic backstory about Laurence Arne-Sayles, and Sylvia D'Agostino and... etc. :D)

I admire your ecological concern for the birds :) On the subject of them getting out again—I'm also working my way through the Yuletide fics, and I believe one of them actually addresses that! There are certainly two tagged 'Birds', which pleases me.

[luzula]

Hee, I was actually suspicious about those, and wondered whether you'd written any of them!