The pacing feels a little slack at times and it's not as plot-driven as you might expect, but it's otherwise engrossing and the writing is a pleasure to read! Have made an order online for the first book in the trilogy, The Silence of the Girls, already. Can't wait.
P.S. I also recently spied another recently published retelling called A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. If you've read it, do tell if it's any good? Thanks!
Speaking of the escapist, I've been digging back into the retelling of classic #mythology having enjoyed Madeline Miller's Circe when it first came out. (I was reminded of her recently when I read her essay about how long Covid has impacted her life and her writing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/09/madeline-miller-long-covid-post-pandemic/.)
I picked up this novel by Pat Barker not realising it's the second in her trilogy reimagining the Trojan War through the eyes of the women....
I read #Wool a loooooong time ago and realised recently that it had been adapted into an Apple TV series called #Silo. I've quite forgotten how the book went, so watching the series was itself an adventure and at the end of it I still have so many questions! So I might go back to the book, and then read the other two in the trilogy—titled Shift and Dust—even if it might spoil me for Season 2... If you're looking for something escapist away from work, this is great :)
I read #DeborahLevy's Real Estate over the pandemic—and recently completed her trilogy of memoirs: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2021/05/deborah-levy-real-estate-living-autobiography-interview
I've said before: "She’s so deft at elevating the simple details of life, which we’ve all surely come to appreciate more in this pandemic, to connect with larger themes—segueing smoothly from one memory into the next, and the next. Every detail on its own can seem insignificant, but strung together they make up a lively tapestry of meaning."
Can't recommend this book enough. Human health, animal health, and environmental health are inextricable from one another. Sonia Shah shows us the many surprising, invisible connections of our world in vivid historical detail, which will make you see the world in a whole new way—something I think we all sorely need today. I honestly feel this should be essential reading for everyone!
More about the book here: https://soniashah.com/pandemic-the-book/
It's about the compulsion to create a world of your own in a deeply imperfect one, the tricky business of collaborating with friends, the impossibility of controlling what the world thinks of you/your work, and how to live and love with some grace in the face of things we can’t change. Reading this makes me want to not give up on my ideas—and to remember to be less self-interested even as I get caught up in the anxiety of trying to make things happen ❤️
Just finished this novel and it gave me, as they say, all the feels. It deserves all the attention it’s been getting. Parts of it really moved me, and the ending actually made me cry. (Yes, I am the kind of person who cries at books 😅) Reading it, I felt like I was “growing up” along with the characters...
Attended a wedding in Indonesia recently and turned it into a holiday. This was my beach read—definitely a pageturner! Though it did feel a little like it was mostly all plot and not so much reflection...
While having a post-dinner coffee in #KualaLumpur yesterday, I came across this book (they’ve got a few piles strategically scattered in this cafe I was in)—which was #IanMcEwan’s very first: a collection of short stories of love and sex with a touch apparently of depravity and the macabre, published in 1975. As an introduction, here's an excerpt from his 2015 foreword.
![Quoted text from Ian McEwan's foreword to First Love, Last Rites:
"If they came to court today, those novels of Joyce and Lawrence would certainly be allowed into the public domain without much trouble. But I'm not so sure what would happen in the courtrooms of Twitter. For now we live uneasily with our sexual freedom. Revelations of horrific and widespread child abuse have shocked us into uncertainty. Adults, especially men, have to be careful about speaking to children in the street. Feminists were right to... "
[Text continued in next picture.]](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/110/189/134/994/293/045/original/e1bab82129c836b7.jpeg)
![Quoted text from First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan [continued from previous picture]:
"... tell us how oppressive public expressions of male desire could be. (If you doubt it, have another look at the excruciating, unfunny and embarrassing 1955 Marilyn Monroe movie The Seven Year Itch). But desire, in women as in men, is a reality, a subject. Can’t we tell it from oppression? When Craig Raine published in May 2015 a wistful, clever poem about an ageing man’s hopeless erotic thoughts, it stirred rage, hatred and fantasies of violence, of vengeful genital mutilation across the social media. When a Jilly Cooper novel was reissued recently, the original cover of thirty years ago was altered to suit modern tastes — a man’s hand was politely raised from a woman’s buttocks to her waist. Meanwhile, in books and especially on screens, sexual explicitness continues to flourish. Culturally, we are neither puritanical nor ‘liberated'. Just profoundly confused."](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/110/189/135/055/367/613/original/6a3d17d1b1718266.jpeg)
Current reads.
I had wrapped up a story on zoonotic disease that sparked my further interest on the subject, hence the Sonia Shah pick. Three chapters in and so good already.
I've also always been interested in stories about memory, history, and the legacies of conflicts—how it commemorates and how it's weaponised—and I'll admit to having thought about turning to short fiction too to explore these themes. For now, though, I'll just read them 😅
Some memories of my mother exacting her punishments on me, for wrongdoings that in hindsight were surely too benign to get so mad about, definitely resurfaced. But what I found most relatable and affecting in the book as an adult though—and I really got very emotional reading it!—was her account of how her resulting social anxieties from the trauma she experienced played into how she deals with her friendships and relationships.
Though the physical punishment her mother subjected her to as a child was way worse than anything I ever experienced (I wouldn't say I was abused, for example), reading this did make me wonder how the childhood beatings I got—both at home and in school (I went to a Chinese vernacular school, where it was permissible)—have shaped me. I never really thought that it affected me, except for maybe how I deal with authority, bosses included. But who knows?
As good as everyone says it is. I'll be honest, I don't think I would have picked it up had it not been for the three recommendations from friends, because I guess there has been some reductive writing on #trauma and too much therapy speak on the internet. There was a point in the book where it seemed like she might just cycle through all the treatments she was trying to get better, but then it became more self-exploratory, asked deeper questions.
Got this preview in the mail a couple of months back from the UK-based Emma Press of a friend's slim debut about coming of age in #Japan, struggling to find her place in a city where she worked as a tour guide and coming to terms with the mystifying loss of a close friendship. Flory is a lovely person and this is a very relatable, gracefully written book. It's also available for purchase now: https://theemmapress.com/shop/prose/essays/how-kyoto-breaks-your-heart/ ❤️
#edreads #bookstadon #readingcommunity #travelwriting #memoir
A little breather between assignments...
What I left with from the bookshop today as I think more about the subtle form differences in #nonfiction #writing.
#essays #briandillon #writingcommunity #bookstodon #edreads #edwrites
Another pilgrimage to my favourite combination of “third places” in cities. Not related to #Shakespeare & Company.
#bookshops #cafes #berlin #writingcommunity #bookstodon #edreads #edtopophilia
Love popping into #bookshops I stumble upon while walking in #Berlin (which I remember were gratifyingly considered “essential” businesses during the pandemic)—even when they’re ones like these with no English-language books.
I did buy a German copy of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral once though in rather too ambitious hopes of improving my German—you see, I'm still at baby-talk level 😅
This is Antiquariat Wiederhold near Weinberg Park.
Was staying a stone's throw from Al-Saqi Books last autumn while we were in #London for a close friend's wedding. Stumbled upon it by chance and popped in for a browse as W.C. (the "Willing Companion" 😆) is very much inspired by #Arabic history and culture. Recently tried to order him an art book he had looked at as a present for Christmas but it was already too late...
Sad news 😔 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/3/after-44-years-londons-first-arabic-bookshop-closes-down
"Established in 1978 as the first #Arabic bookstore in #London, Al-Saqi Books represented a treasure trove of literary works for Arab expatriates living in the city and across Europe. It was an essential destination for Arabs visiting London, who were buoyed by the fact that they could get their hands on books that would otherwise be censored in their own countries."
