OS Book Club Pt II

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I'm intrigued...reviews are rough, I heard they changed the Hound into a drone lol. Should be interesting for sure.

A drone? It's hard to find that more intimidating than the Hound. That ****er was demonic and terrifying in the book. Sniffing, hunting, and killing with mechanized efficiency.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Currently I'm reading Mistborn - The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. So far it's an intriguing read with imaginative world building. I'm nearly halfway through with it. I haven't decided what I want to read next - if I want to jump into the second book of the Mistborn trilogy or something else. Either way I don't know what that something else would be. I feel like I need a little break from the traditional novel. Perhaps it's time to pick back up with Maya Angelou's memoir series? Or perhaps some kind of non-fiction - maybe DuBois' Reconstruction text. Or for something completely different the poetry book The Princess Saves Herself In This One.

I read the first 2 of the series, and I agree that the world building is really good. The 2nd book is worth a read, but I also can't say that you're missing much if you skip it. Kind of contradictory I know, but it's hard to explain without going into spoilers.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I read the first 2 of the series, and I agree that the world building is really good. The 2nd book is worth a read, but I also can't say that you're missing much if you skip it. Kind of contradictory I know, but it's hard to explain without going into spoilers.

I went ahead and bought it.

I'll do my "write-up" tonight or tomorrow, but I enjoyed the book greatly. Sanderson's writing is basic. There's no fluff or augmentation nor a whole lot of nuance, but I never felt the story suffered from it. By the final 1/3 of the book I felt I was on an incredible ride. The world is interesting as it generally feels like a mix of England Industrial and American Plantation (Steam-Punk I guess?) with the stratified classes and locations. The base is built solidly on the "magic" system Sanderson creates. It's an intriguing system that makes the action mesmerizing and I like how he weaves some nuance into the characters story via Allomancy.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I went ahead and bought it.

I'll do my "write-up" tonight or tomorrow, but I enjoyed the book greatly. Sanderson's writing is basic. There's no fluff or augmentation nor a whole lot of nuance, but I never felt the story suffered from it. By the final 1/3 of the book I felt I was on an incredible ride. The world is interesting as it generally feels like a mix of England Industrial and American Plantation (Steam-Punk I guess?) with the stratified classes and locations. The base is built solidly on the "magic" system Sanderson creates. It's an intriguing system that makes the action mesmerizing and I like how he weaves some nuance into the characters story via Allomancy.

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

There's really not a whole lot to add to this. The story itself follows an orphan who discovers they are a wizard of sorts (Allomancer in Sanderson's world) and is recruited into an underground rebellion that is masked, organized, and functions as a normal heist. The world feels like equals parts London/Industrial Age Europe and Plantation-America. A functioning world of steam-punk I suppose, but it's a stylistic world that isn't aggressive in it's presentation. Sanderson builds a world that simply wraps around and encompasses the reader by the end of the last page.

At the center of this world Sanderson builds a caste system with his world's economy which rests and is built upon the free labor of the skaa - a repressed people who have lived generations and generations in subjugation. It is an obvious connection to American slavery as plantation imagery, failed rebellions, and harsh punishments act as common connectors to American history. From this Sanderson creates a stratified economy where the high classes host balls while secretively politicking and occasionally waging outright wars upon one another.

Somehow Sanderson manages to create another system within his universe that is even more interesting and draws the reader into his world even more. He creates and superbly introduces a system of magic based around the use of certain metals. It's an imaginative system that is balanced between powers and pushes the reader along through action that is fresh and races along with an adrenaline pace.

Sanderson's writing style is fairly basic and streamlined. Even though the book is nearly 600 pages in length there's nothing much in the way of fluff. Some may find this satisfying, but I was usually left without a sense of identity from the writing. Some parts felt like I was reading a script to a movie. The narrative itself is strong and the cast of characters are all intriguing in a myriad of ways that reflect various aspects of the protagonists' traits and motivations.

Overall Sanderson creates a world that feels wholly imaginative and fresh. A world that rests on an interesting economy and an even more interesting system of magic. His cast of characters feel organic and shape the events of the book accordingly. The final third of the book is a rush of action as the strings of Sanderson's narrative begin to draw taunt and collect themselves. He lulls you along with his basic style, but by the end you're feeling connected to everything that is happening to your surprise. Despite the basic writing it's a strong, entertaining read.

Spoiler

New tastes are like new ideas, young man - the older you get, the more difficult they are for you to stomach.

Reen had always told her that a girl need to be tough - tougher, even, than a man - if she wanted to survive.

The only reason to be subservient to those with power is so that you can learn to someday take what they have.

"My dear friend", Breeze replied, "the entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don't you know anything about basic economics?"

The right belief is like a good cloak, I think. If it fits you well, it keeps you warm and safe. The wrong fit, however, can suffocate.

I've always been very confident in my immaturity.

There's always another secret.

Anyone can believe in someone, or something, that always succeeds, Mistress. But failure...ah, now that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Difficult enough to have value, I think.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

This is a tremendous read. At times a strange sense of whimsy nostalgia ran through my head similar to how Something Wicked This Way Comes made me feel. Unlike Bradbury's fantastical coming of age story McCarthy connects those times of nostalgia with a vast dried, desert of carnage. McCarthy establishes a vivid setting that stretches beyond time as the ever-stretching desert is simultaneously past, present, and future. Bones lay scattered from beasts slain by others or beaten by the landscape itself. Sands erode carcasses and predators pick meat off of fresh decaying bodies. There's a continuing cycle throughout of man's savagery in a timeless, untamed wilderness.

At the center is The Kid - a member of a mercenary gang whom is mostly silent and observant - and the Judge - a near supernatural being marked by his distinct physical appearance, his penchant for soliloquy, and base desire and evils. McCarthy follows the gang on a trip filled with savage depravity. Casual violence is oft-times brutal without restraint, consequence, or cause. Eventually this violence is met with expectant non-feeling from the reader as McCarthy punctuates the savagery with specific acts of depravity that run throughout the book and never fail to remind the reader of the evils of these men. During these specific atrocities the Judge (and the Kid coincidentally) are never far. Throughout the gang's travels many themes are explored, but the most important I thought were those of the moving compass of morality, losses of innocence, and the over-arcing evil of man operating in an unstructured world.

McCarthy's style for lack of actual punctuation creates a pace that changes swiftly at his command. Sometimes the sentences crawl like a slow moving, radiating sun over the baked desert. Other times passages roll on like a galloping horse. Dialogue is without quotations and at times can be interchangeable among characters (I found myself switching the dialogue up several times and seeing how/if the perspective changed). His prose is timeless, but also sends the reader back to a time or medieval western depravity. McCarthy paints a landscape so vast and vivid I felt like I was on a plateau overlooking the cloud of dust of the gang moving across the floor of the desert as they moved across bones and carcasses through the world and time.

McCarthy's novel of depravity in the frontier of the West is captivating and excels in nearly every faucet necessary. There's more than enough layers to warrant repeated readings and the final page opens itself (and the rest of the book) to close examination and analysis. It it is truly a fantastic read and easily one of the best I have read.

Spoiler

Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn.

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.

Whether in my book or not, ever man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in and endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world.

Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.

A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

School and life are way in the way, but still getting through what I can.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

I finished this a couple weeks ago and probably would've had a very different description had I written this up then but having just started this philosophy class and having all of this stuck in my head it seems to pretty much be Tolstoy's answer to whether or not Socrates was right that an "unexamined life is not worth living". Ivan, now on his deathbed and having lived a long life in what he believed to be the right way, asks why he has to suffer is he's lived life the way he was supposed to. Tolstoy was of the belief that to live an immoral life was to essentially be alive while dead, spiritually bankrupt regardless of actual life. He's trying to grapple with the question of what it truly means to live, not in a short term human sense, but what it means to live in a way that gives a sense of true meaning. It's translated from Russian, so while the prose is still great, I really wonder how it comes off in the original language. I don't know how similar English and Russian are, but I have to wonder what kind of nuances and alternate meanings are lost in translation. I like the themes explored so Tolstoy stays on the list, still need to read Anna.

Spoiler

"Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible."

"And he was furious with the mishap, or with the people who were causing the unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury was killing him but he could not restrain it. One would have thought that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation with circumstances and people aggravated his illness, and that he ought therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he drew the very opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched for everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest infringement of it."
"And what was worst of all was that It drew his attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at It, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly."

"The dull depression he experienced in a somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as something new, afterwards it became as distressing as the pain itself or even more so."

"It seemed to him that he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, but though they were pushed further and further in they could not be pushed to the bottom. And this, terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by suffering. He was frightened yet wanted to fall through the sack, he struggled but yet co-operated."

"And the example of a stone falling downwards with increasing velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing sufferings, flies further and further towards its end – the most terrible suffering. “I am flying … ” He shuddered, shifted himself, and tried to resist, but was already aware that resistance was impossible, and again with eyes weary of gazing but unable to cease seeing what was before them, he stared at the back of the sofa and waited – awaiting that dreadful fall and shock and destruction."

Dubliners by James Joyce and Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver
The reason I chose to write these up together is because I could not stop comparing them the entire time I was going through Carver's collection. Both are collections of short stories, Dubliners from one of the faces of the Rushmore of English literature in Joyce, and WYPBQP from Carver who I had not actually heard of but as soon as I started looking for short story collections his name popped up everywhere. Here's the thing: They are similar in that they are vignettes that amount to old time literary Seinfeld episodes, just about regular people doing regular stuff. Getting through Dubliners it started to occur to me that these stories aren't about anything, they just follow average people in a moment in their life. Carver tries to do the same thing in WYPBQP and this is where my preferences kick in pretty heavy.

Carver's style just does very little for me. The way he writes, the sentences tend to be short and specific almost like direct thoughts from the characters or from a third party watching the characters. He did this, then this happened, he said this, she said this. It is effective in the way he employs it and many of the stories leave you with a kind of emptiness that I think is the point. You feel a very specific kind of despair because of the way he skates through the story, giving only so much information that you can see exactly what happened and can make out for yourself "what it means" if there is a meaning to derive. Joyce does the same, I just think much better. It's not like he hasn't been touted enough, but the way he uses language is just mesmerizing at times. Just a really enjoyable read from a prose standpoint. The stories being about nothing profound and just being tiny windows into the human experience didn't bother me, but you've gotta put some sauce on it. There's a description of Carver's second short story collection in the back of this one which I liked a lot: "...Carver's characters are peripheral people - people without education, insight, or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates those men and women." I liked that description probably more than any of the actual short stories.

Dubliners

Spoiler

"A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived."

"At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the gratefully oppressed."

"A shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save himself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the interpretation of raillery."

"He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul’s incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own."

"“Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack.”"

WYPBQP

Spoiler

"I'm not a frivolous man, nor am I, in my opinion, a serious man, It's my belief that a man has to be a little of both these days. I believe, too, in the value of work - the harder the better. A man who isn't working has got too much time on his hands, too much time to dwell on himself and his problems."

"Were there other man, he wondered drunkenly, who could look at one event in their lives and perceive in it the tiny makings of the catastrophe that thereafter set their lives on a different course?"

On to Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Princess Saves Herself In This One by Amanda Lovelace

Trying to judge and qualify poetry feels like a paradox to me. There are rules and constraints, but then it is also completely wide open and malleable. I don't really want to spend any time running around saying this book isn't poetry like so many reviews have done. Likewise I don't want to begrudge the formatting of Lovelace's poems. It's true that many of them seem to rely on the aesthetic of spacing, alignment, and overall format to drive home the primary point of each poem. To me presentation can be nearly as important as the words so I never took offense like others have. All I can offer is how I perceive the quality of the work and how it connected (or didn't) with me.

The title of this collection of poems is what drew me in initially. It went on to receive the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Poetry. Suffice to say my hopes were a little high and I had some preconceived notions before opening the book. Lovelace breaks the book into four sections: the princess, damsel, the queen, and you. Each of these sections (well the first 3 anyway) are to represent different periods of Lovelace's life as she draws on her life's trials and events, turns them into inspirations and motivations, and how she is now her own Queen. Or at least that is the premise from the beginning. I never fully connected with her once she moved out of the initial section.

Like I said initially poetry can be a conundrum to some. I liked the premise of the book and felt like it would be a provoking and inspirational read. It began extremely well to me as Lovelace reflects on the battles her younger self faced - eating disorders, self-cutting, death of her sister and mother, and a tense relationship with her family members. She does a great job of setting the stage for transformation as her premise and structure of the collection eludes to. Unfortunately the other parts never came close to kindling any type of connection the way the first section does. Occasionally she reconnects on the loss of her family members, but she begins to venture into teenage angst (emo?) and I felt like I was reading middle school and high school diary entries. Not to say the poems themselves are immature or innocently naive, but the tribulations are similar - early love, heartbreaks, learning to love, and learning to love yourself.

Unfortunately, the title of the book rang hollow to me by the end. I picked up very little in the way of self-growth or actualization apart from a handful of entries. For a princess that saves herself she spends a lot of time thanking and waxing on the love of her life - which I found a little perplexing. Lovelace's inability to flesh out her premise and overall structure hurt the collection more than any individual poems and honestly there were some really, really bad ones (Ie: a blank page with a caption of "silence has always been my loudest scream"). I feel like the whole collection comes off as a missed opportunity and my expectations weren't even close to being realized.

Still, I hesitate to tell anyone to skip this. Poetry is hard for me to pin down and I feel like sometimes it's just a matter of experiences connecting. What I may find eye-rolling somebody else may cry their eyes out. The beauty of poetry I suppose.

Spoiler

when i had
no friends
i reach inside
my beloved books
& sculpted some
out of
12 pt
times new roman

- & it was almost good enough

that is what abuse is:
knowing you are
going to get salt
but still hoping for sugar
for nineteen years.

sticks & stones
never broke
my bones,
but words
made me
starve myself
until
you could
see all of them.

there came
a time
when
poetry
showed me
how to
bleed
without
the demand
of blood.


it is a ****ing
tragedy
when
the world
does not stop
for you
even when
you give it
every last
drop of your
blood.


we are the generation
you didn't want to see fail
then ensured that we did.

[sportsdude]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I went ahead and bought it.

I'll do my "write-up" tonight or tomorrow, but I enjoyed the book greatly. Sanderson's writing is basic. There's no fluff or augmentation nor a whole lot of nuance, but I never felt the story suffered from it. By the final 1/3 of the book I felt I was on an incredible ride. The world is interesting as it generally feels like a mix of England Industrial and American Plantation (Steam-Punk I guess?) with the stratified classes and locations. The base is built solidly on the "magic" system Sanderson creates. It's an intriguing system that makes the action mesmerizing and I like how he weaves some nuance into the characters story via Allomancy.

The second Mistborn series, which takes place around 300 years after the first Mistborn trilogy, is much more steampunk. It's known as the Wax and Wayne series, with the first book being The Alloy of Law. I just finished reading the first three in the series (the fourth is still to be released) and liked them, but not as much as the first Mistborn books.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The second Mistborn series, which takes place around 300 years after the first Mistborn trilogy, is much more steampunk. It's known as the Wax and Wayne series, with the first book being The Alloy of Law. I just finished reading the first three in the series (the fourth is still to be released) and liked them, but not as much as the first Mistborn books.

I'm 99% of the way through Well of Ascension. I have been fairly impressed by the improvement of writing from the first installment. It has room to breathe and add small details. The narrative itself feels more nuanced and admittedly it's been a fantastic ride.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

A collection of short stories that infuses small science fiction elements into its narratives which vary from a retelling of the story "The Green Ribbon" (in this collection called "The Husband Stitch"), to how body acceptance and expectations can affect women growing up, to a really weird, overly long re-imagining of the first 12 seasons of Law & Order SVU episode by episode. That story was pretty excruciating and I will skip it entirely if I go through these again, but the rest of the stories (The Husband Stitch, Eight Bites, and The Resident were my top 3) were so good that I'd still say I love the collection. The Husband Stitch was just fantastic, I had never read The Green Ribbon so I didn't know what the punchline was so to speak, the way she flipped it to be about societal roles and expectations on women was dope. The writing is vivid without ever being overbearing, it's not sparse but also doesn't seem like she's using words just to use them.

Spoiler

"When you think about it, stories have this way of running together like raindrops in a pond. Each is borne from the clouds separate, but once they have come together, there is no way to tell them apart."

“People can be monsters, or vulnerable as lambs. They—no, we—are perpetrators and victims at the same time. It takes so little to tip the scale one way or the other."

"Summer will come and the waves will be huge, the kind of waves that feel like a challenge. If you’re brave, you’ll step out of the bright-hot day and into the foaming roil of the water, moving toward where the waves break and might break you. If you’re brave, you’ll turn your body over to this water that is practically an animal, and so much larger than yourself."

"Around me was not the absence of sound, but the sound of absence: a voluptuous silence that pressed against my eardrums."

"What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it? What is worse: writing a trope or being one? What about being more than one?"

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This collection by the same Nigerian author from We Should All Be Feminists fame (side note, I dunno why all of the African authors I come across are Nigerian, it's odd, I'll have to make a concerted effort to read other work from other countries, although I have really enjoyed all the Nigerian authors I've read so far and still have to read Arrow of God) are different takes on the experience of cultures clashing, whether it be Nigerian immigrants in America or the perspective of their parents who stayed and saw their children become unrecognizable and products of a culture completely foreign to them. As always, I just find takes on America from foreigners interesting. There's one story ("The Arrangers of Marriage") about a woman who's had her wife arranged to a Nigerian man in America and how little control she has over her situation when she gets there, it just forces you to feel for her. "Tomorrow is Too Far" is about a little girl who was jealous of the attention her brother got as a boy, an awful prank attempt gone wrong, and the effects on their family, that one is great. The last one, "The Headstrong Historian", is about a woman who goes out of her way to create a better life for her son as she sees the colonization incoming, so she sends him to a school to be taught by missionaries where he basically learns to take everything she believes in as sin, and then his daughter after her reverses the trend. Good collection, no real dredges in it to take it down, but the sci-fi twist in some of the stories in the other collection made it stand out a little more.

Spoiler

"'You got a great house, ma'am,' he'd said, with that curious American smile that meant he believed he, too, could have something like it someday. It is one of the things she had come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope."

"It is what America does to you, she thinks. It forces egalitarianism on you. You have nobody to talk to, really, except for your toddlers, so you turn to your housegirl. And before you know it, she is your friend. Your equal."

"She will listen to the BBC radio and hear the accounts of the riots - 'religious with undertones of ethnic tension' the voice will say. And she will fling the radio to the wall and a fierce red rage will run through her at how it has all been packaged and sanitized and made to fit into so few words, all those bodies."

"She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child were the exception rather than the rule."

"Even at ten you knew that some people can take up too much space by simply being, that by existing , some people can stifle others."

Glad to get back into some really compelling writing after how boring I found Carver's stuff. On to someone who has not disappointed me in all this time, my guy James Baldwin with a collection of his called Going to Meet the Man. After that, I want to get through 2 more collections before the end of the month, one by Alice Walker and another by Ralph Ellison. Then I'll switch gears, I'm gonna flip a coin. I'm doing 2 fairly heavy reads back to back once July hits, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky (Black Thought has inspired me) and Lolita by Nabokov. A deeper dive into Russian(/Russian-American I guess with Nabokov) than I got from Tolstoy, should be a good time.

[kt-od]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I just finished "Ready Player One". Wow, what a ride. I loved it from start to finish. I don't know why I waited this long to read it.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Gather Together In My Name by Maya Angelou

If somebody put a gun to my head and made me a pick a favorite between her first two memoir installments I would have to give the edge to the aforementioned over I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. The latter is a fantastic introduction to Maya's efficiently blunt style of poetical flow. Gather Together In My Name continues this efficient vividness for detail and emotion, but also hones it in as she focuses on a shorter time frame of her life.

This installment picks up where the previous one ended - Maya single, with no job, and a newborn baby to care for. Her innocent naivety is still intact, but as she becomes an adult (maturation hasn't quite touched her until the end) it starts blossoming into full fledged ignorance. There's a wide-eyed ambition in her that is hard to find fault in and is admirable even if she applies it less than admirably. She starts her own business (to put it mildly) and reaches down into the pit of the world to care for a man she mistakenly loves.

While her actions, choices, and trajectory of Maya's life during this time period (late teens to early 20s from 1944 to 1948) are certainly dark and low-bottom the tone of her writing is not one of resentment nor excuse making. She doesn't brush past or around the gutter, but looks at the sloppy water like a reflecting pool. She owns her mistakes (there are many) and her style empowers the acceptance of these mistakes as steps to the great, mortal goddess she ended up becoming.

Whereas I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings reads more as a time capsule capturing both a child's coming of age story as well as life in general in different parts of the US Gather Together In My Name focuses more on Maya's interpersonal demons and struggles to live her own life. There's not as much captured of American life compared to the former. Overall I think the more personal struggle of Maya learning to mature and become an adult resonates with me more between the two books. Still, picking one is like picking between your favorite child. Nearly impossible and not at all plausible.

Spoiler

I thought if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year. Something like a festival.

There was no need to discuss racial prejudice. Hadn't we all, black and white, just snatched the remaining Jews from the hell of concentration camps? Race prejudice was dead. A mistake made by a young country. Something to be forgiven as an unpleasant act committed by an intoxicated friend.

"May I take it again?" That was painful to ask. "No, I'm sorry." If she said she was sorry one more time, I was going to take her by her sorry shoulders and shake a job out of her.

Five in the morning. Those mean streets before the thugs had gone to sleep, pillowing on someone else's dreams. Before the streetcars began to rattle, their lighted insides like exclusive houses in the fog. Five!

My mother heard my plans without surprise. "You're a woman. You can make up your own mind." She hadn't the slightest idea that not only was I not a woman, but what passed for my mind was animal instinct. Like a tree or a river, I merely responded to the winds and the tides.

But all the gentle reminders of his love for me through our childhood stopped at his eyes. It seemed some confrontation, which he had kept secret, dulled their shine and left them flat and unseeing.

People always said Uncle Sam would spend a thousand dollars to get you if you stole a three-cent stamp from him. He was more revengeful than God.

Sh-h-h, sh-h-h-whomp. There is no sound in the world like that of a man storing his fist in the chest of another man. Lions may roar, and coyotes howl, but the vibrations of two human beings struggling for physical superiority introduced to me a nauseating and new terror.

In the past, whenever I had slipped free of Fates's pressing heel, I gave thanks. This time I promised God a regular church attendance.

The life of the underworld was truly a rat race, and most of its inhabitants scurried like rodents in the sewers and gutters of the world. I had walked the precipice and seen it all; and at the critical moment, one man's generosity pushed me safely away from the edge.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I'm 99% of the way through Well of Ascension. I have been fairly impressed by the improvement of writing from the first installment. It has room to breathe and add small details. The narrative itself feels more nuanced and admittedly it's been a fantastic ride.

Mistborn: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Whatever flaws I had found in the first book of the trilogy were thoroughly addressed in the second installment. As a result I loved this book from start to finish. The action, as he had established in The Final Empire, remains imaginative and thrilling. I love the system of "magick" Sanderson has developed and he uses it to great affect throughout as he weaves into the narrative and continues to build upon the established lore. The lore of the universe continues to build upon itself and finds inclusion throughout the narrative in very satisfying ways as characters find themselves connected to the world they're now shaping. The balance of intrapersonal and interpersonal struggles is fascinating as the simple caper story of the first novel is replaced by ideological and political balancing acts.

Most impressive to me, however, was how greatly the writing improved as a whole from the first book. The narrative remained nuanced, the world continues to be fleshed out, the characters continue to develop in fascinating ways, but the writing felt like it had room to breathe in The Well of Ascension (no pun intended). Perhaps it's because Sanderson had already created the separate parts of the Mistborn universe or maybe it's an author starting to come into his style, but whatever the case it's a noticeable improvement. There's time for thoughtful phrases, nuanced detail that comes off more off-offhandedly, and none of the screenplay script feel from The Final Empire.

To be honest I'm surprised this grabbed me by the nape of the neck like it did. I enjoyed the first book and it's ambitious imagination, but felt it was lacking in some areas compared to other fantasy series. Admittedly the writing quality picks up, but the story itself is what really grabbed me from start to finish. A siege standoff with political maneuverings and character drama. It sounds like the summary of Game of Thrones, but Sanderson does an amazing job of handling all the pieces and putting them in place by the end. I think this is one of those rare instances that not only improves upon it's predecessor, but also makes the predecessor better. To me it felt like I was reading one of my favorite Harry Potter books for the first time and I would put it on par with any of the genre's best offerings.

Spoiler

She also liked the night. During the day, Luthadel was cramped and confining despite its size. But at night the mists fell like a deep cloud. They dampened, softened, shaded. Massive keeps became shadowed mountains, and crowded tenements melted together like a chandler's rejected wares.

Plans, successes, and even goals were like shadowy figures in the mist, formless and indistinct.

When you struggle so hard for life, you grow strong - but you can grow harsh, too.

Good men don't need to become legends. They just do what's right anyway.

Manipulation works so well on a personal level, I don't see why it wouldn't be an equally viable national policy.


That was one nice thing about books and notes. They could always wait for another time.

Mist twisted in the sky, different breezes forming silent streams of white, like rivers in the air. Vin skimmed them, burst through them, and rode them like a bouncing stone cast upon the waters.

A man was defined not by his flaws, but by how he overcame them.

A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight.

The others call me mad. As I have said, that may be true.

At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different. Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.

[Kearnzo]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Speaking of Sanderson, I'm currently wrapping up Words of Radiance, book two of the Stormlight Archive.

Never have I been so engrossed in a fantasy series. I loved GoT, but in my honest opinion, Stormlight is another animal altogether. I absolutely love the characters and the world Sanderson has built, and it pains me to know that after Oathbringer, I'll be waiting some time for book 4. Gonna have to look into the Mistborn series to tide me over until then.

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[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I added that series to my list since it sounded right up my alley.