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what i'm reading wednesday
What I finished:
+ Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle. What a delight! As I said over on GoodReads, if I'd read this book when I was 13 or 14, I would have made it my entire personality. I'm kind of heartbroken that I didn't read it then! But it's still a wonderful read from start to finish.
Basically: a teenage girl's mom remarries a British man and moves them from NYC to the Devon countryside, where they move into a big rambling house. Cue ghosts and all kinds of fantastical creatures out of Devon folklore, a healthy dose of Devon history, and also general teenage angst.
The narrative voice of our protagonist Jenny is a wonder. How did an old man write a teenage girl so perfectly? It's proof, if we needed more, that anyone can write from any perspective if they just do it correctly. Jenny is beautifully flawed and I especially like how it's written by a slightly older Jenny (19ish) looking back on her younger days (13ish) and seeing where she was wrong, where she was unkind, where she was selfish but also where she was brave and loving. She's still young enough that everything is very immediate to her and the conversational tone seems appropriate, but old enough to have learned quite a bit.
Each character we meet is wonderfully drawn and realistic, every relationship feels real, there's no rush to get to plot points but I was never bored. The narrative voice reminds me somewhat of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, and it also has other McKinley-esque vibes in the animal characters, the attention to small details of life, etc. It just scratches a similar itch for me.
Some other things that especially delighted me:
~ the integration of Devon history (even though I think the main historical figure probably isn't historically accurate)
~ the cat characters! with an emphasis on characters!
~ our main character and her family is white, but they don't live in a monochrome world
~ an absolutely chilling villain
~ the very queer overtones of our main character
~ the random farming details
I still don't get why Jenny calls her mother by her first name though.
All in all, highly recommended for people of any age, though if you know a preteen or teenager, you should especially buy them this book!
+ Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild. This is an Important book but it is not an enjoyable book. It's an exhaustingly exhaustive history of Rothschild conspiracy theories and it does a very good job of being that. It's also a debunking book, pointing out again and again all the things that people get wrong when they talk about the Rothschilds.
I listened to this on audiobook because I couldn't get ahold of a print or ebook copy through any of my libraries. I do not recommend this, even for people who are more into audiobooks than me, both because it means you can't skim over the repetitive parts and because the dude who's reading it pronounces many names (Herzel, Tevye, etc.) wrong in a way that majorly irked me.
But the book does accomplish its main goal, which is to make you understand the width and depth and breadth of Rothschild conspiracy theories. It's just unrelenting. The canards about the Rothschilds both fit neatly into the wider framework of Western antisemitism and also expand it. There's so much of it. It fuels so much hate and violence. It's exhausting to read about.
The main focus is Europe, for obvious reasons, with several chapters devoted to the US and one devoted to the rest of the world. The final chapter is about George Soros and how he has taken the place of the Rothschilds in contemporary Western though, which I very much appreciated because it is true. The author speculates on who might be slotted into that spot when Soros dies because, as he rightfully insists, someone is going to have to take that spot.
I'm glad this book exists, but unless you're willing to spend however many hours being told over and over again how first this person and then that person wrote a hugely antisemitic screed, I don't necessarily recommend it. I think it serves better as a kind of reference book than as something someone just wants to read from start to finish.
What I'm reading now:
I'm dallying. I've had a hard time picking any one book. I read a couple of chapters of various books this weekend, but didn't get super into any one thing.
I read the first 20% of The Square of Sevens, a fantasy novel mostly set in 18th century Bath. It's got good characters and a fun plot, but the writer's style/prose is underwhelming. I will certainly finish this, probably soon, and I do think it's a good book, but I was just not in a real reading mood this weekend.
+ Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle. What a delight! As I said over on GoodReads, if I'd read this book when I was 13 or 14, I would have made it my entire personality. I'm kind of heartbroken that I didn't read it then! But it's still a wonderful read from start to finish.
Basically: a teenage girl's mom remarries a British man and moves them from NYC to the Devon countryside, where they move into a big rambling house. Cue ghosts and all kinds of fantastical creatures out of Devon folklore, a healthy dose of Devon history, and also general teenage angst.
The narrative voice of our protagonist Jenny is a wonder. How did an old man write a teenage girl so perfectly? It's proof, if we needed more, that anyone can write from any perspective if they just do it correctly. Jenny is beautifully flawed and I especially like how it's written by a slightly older Jenny (19ish) looking back on her younger days (13ish) and seeing where she was wrong, where she was unkind, where she was selfish but also where she was brave and loving. She's still young enough that everything is very immediate to her and the conversational tone seems appropriate, but old enough to have learned quite a bit.
Each character we meet is wonderfully drawn and realistic, every relationship feels real, there's no rush to get to plot points but I was never bored. The narrative voice reminds me somewhat of Robin McKinley's Sunshine, and it also has other McKinley-esque vibes in the animal characters, the attention to small details of life, etc. It just scratches a similar itch for me.
Some other things that especially delighted me:
~ the integration of Devon history (even though I think the main historical figure probably isn't historically accurate)
~ the cat characters! with an emphasis on characters!
~ our main character and her family is white, but they don't live in a monochrome world
~ an absolutely chilling villain
~ the very queer overtones of our main character
~ the random farming details
I still don't get why Jenny calls her mother by her first name though.
All in all, highly recommended for people of any age, though if you know a preteen or teenager, you should especially buy them this book!
+ Jewish Space Lasers by Mike Rothschild. This is an Important book but it is not an enjoyable book. It's an exhaustingly exhaustive history of Rothschild conspiracy theories and it does a very good job of being that. It's also a debunking book, pointing out again and again all the things that people get wrong when they talk about the Rothschilds.
I listened to this on audiobook because I couldn't get ahold of a print or ebook copy through any of my libraries. I do not recommend this, even for people who are more into audiobooks than me, both because it means you can't skim over the repetitive parts and because the dude who's reading it pronounces many names (Herzel, Tevye, etc.) wrong in a way that majorly irked me.
But the book does accomplish its main goal, which is to make you understand the width and depth and breadth of Rothschild conspiracy theories. It's just unrelenting. The canards about the Rothschilds both fit neatly into the wider framework of Western antisemitism and also expand it. There's so much of it. It fuels so much hate and violence. It's exhausting to read about.
The main focus is Europe, for obvious reasons, with several chapters devoted to the US and one devoted to the rest of the world. The final chapter is about George Soros and how he has taken the place of the Rothschilds in contemporary Western though, which I very much appreciated because it is true. The author speculates on who might be slotted into that spot when Soros dies because, as he rightfully insists, someone is going to have to take that spot.
I'm glad this book exists, but unless you're willing to spend however many hours being told over and over again how first this person and then that person wrote a hugely antisemitic screed, I don't necessarily recommend it. I think it serves better as a kind of reference book than as something someone just wants to read from start to finish.
What I'm reading now:
I'm dallying. I've had a hard time picking any one book. I read a couple of chapters of various books this weekend, but didn't get super into any one thing.
I read the first 20% of The Square of Sevens, a fantasy novel mostly set in 18th century Bath. It's got good characters and a fun plot, but the writer's style/prose is underwhelming. I will certainly finish this, probably soon, and I do think it's a good book, but I was just not in a real reading mood this weekend.