What I read in August and September
Not much!
The White Bear, by Henrik Pontoppidan. Two novellas in a nice little nyrb edition. I liked both of them a lot, especially the first one. I don't really know why, but I love reading about the clergy. Particularly when it's small-time, rather pathetic. Also I haven't gone wrong so far with nyrb editions.
On the Calculation of Volume IV, by Solvej Balle. I think this series is suffering its own slowness. I liked the first book very much, but I've liked every book since less than the last. Cliffhangers are not the only way to advance stories, but I guess they are very tempting if you already plan on writing seven (short) books. That's a lot of cliffhangers you can allow yourself! The books are just becoming repetitive, boring, and a little ridiculous. There are many interesting questions that the (by now several dozen) characters could be asking, but they rarely do and, if they do, they are dismissed by the author in favor of very tedious and delicate descriptions of tedious and delicate things.
The Wolves of Eternity, by Karl Ove Knausgard. Too long. Boring. The only reason I pushed through was that this was the first long book I read in German without having read it in some other language before. I could do it just fine, which means it was, stylistically, not very interesting. A lot of "I woke up, made myself breakfast, went to the store". A lot of very annoying teen angst that had no business lasting a thousand pages.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country, by Rosalind Miles. Good, low-stakes uncomplicated arthuriana. Found it for 2 euros in a second hand store. It's not a book I will remember long but I had fun.
Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen, by Michael Moorcock. This is very good. I felt, reading this, a bit like I used to feel when I was 14 and read good fantasy books. This is an elusive feeling, because re-reading those results in me realizing they were never good in the first place, I was just 14. There are many fantasy books that are fun, but good is very hard to find, and when one tries to find recommendations one realizes most fantasy readers consider a book "good" if it is long, and has a so-called "magic system" that is detailed to the point of being tedious, or is full of references to itself and other books by the same guy. I just want to read a good sentence, and the sci-fi/fantasy industrial complex doesn't have too many of those. Moorcock does, he writes well.
I realize that I dislike most of the books I read. This is very unfortunate, and I really miss enjoying the books I read. I guess this is part of which I'm not reading as much. There are safe bets, and I take those, but every time I try and read a book published recently, by someone I've never heard of, it's infuriating. I just really miss books being good. It's not a good state of affairs.
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