Recent reading
Nov. 30th, 2023 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI have a cold (or so I assume; I tested negative for covid, at least), and so am endeavouring to rest in bed and do some comfort reading. But before that, I finished these:
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782)
I like to feed my brain on 18th century prose regularly, and two people had told me this was page-turney. Indeed it was, though I can only reconcile myself to the characters if I consider that soon the French revolution will arrive and hopefully force them all to work for a living (and I would not mourn if some of them faced the guillotine). I do enjoy epistolary books, and the collaborative Librivox audiobook was very good, perhaps with the exception of Valmont, who is read in a moustache-twirling-villain fashion which makes it difficult to understand why Madame de Tourvel falls for him. But after all the reader has to act out Valmont raping a young woman with great self-satisfaction, so I guess I can understand the choice. I guess I am surprised at how much the villains get their punishment, though? I had the impression this would be a more amoral sort of book. But I guess several of the more virtuous characters also end badly. I do wonder at Valmont dying by Danceny's hand, though--I had thought Valmont much more able to manipulate the more inexperienced Danceny such that he would avoid being challenged by him. (ETA: Note: comments contain spoilers.)
How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human, by Melanie Challenger (2020)
Non-fiction; I got this after listening to an interesting podcast interview with the author. The theme is, by the author's own summation, "that humans are animals, that we struggle with that fact, and that this matters to us immensely". It ranges widely within that topic, from AI to psychological research to animal research to the author's personal musings. I found it worthwhile, though sometimes it summed up scientific studies in a single sentence in a way that made me wonder what got lost in the compression.
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782)
I like to feed my brain on 18th century prose regularly, and two people had told me this was page-turney. Indeed it was, though I can only reconcile myself to the characters if I consider that soon the French revolution will arrive and hopefully force them all to work for a living (and I would not mourn if some of them faced the guillotine). I do enjoy epistolary books, and the collaborative Librivox audiobook was very good, perhaps with the exception of Valmont, who is read in a moustache-twirling-villain fashion which makes it difficult to understand why Madame de Tourvel falls for him. But after all the reader has to act out Valmont raping a young woman with great self-satisfaction, so I guess I can understand the choice. I guess I am surprised at how much the villains get their punishment, though? I had the impression this would be a more amoral sort of book. But I guess several of the more virtuous characters also end badly. I do wonder at Valmont dying by Danceny's hand, though--I had thought Valmont much more able to manipulate the more inexperienced Danceny such that he would avoid being challenged by him. (ETA: Note: comments contain spoilers.)
How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human, by Melanie Challenger (2020)
Non-fiction; I got this after listening to an interesting podcast interview with the author. The theme is, by the author's own summation, "that humans are animals, that we struggle with that fact, and that this matters to us immensely". It ranges widely within that topic, from AI to psychological research to animal research to the author's personal musings. I found it worthwhile, though sometimes it summed up scientific studies in a single sentence in a way that made me wonder what got lost in the compression.
