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what i'm reading wednesday 7/5/2025
What I finished:
+ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is definitely the Narnia book that I had the strongest memories of. I can't decide if it's because I reread it the most or whether the particular imagery in this book just hooked into my brain.
But again: so many delightful images! It's just chock full of them! Everything from the painting coming to life to pushing the serpent over the end of the boat to dragon!Eustace to the magician's book to the birds eating the feast to the mermaid girl to the lily sea...I love it!
The book is very episodic, which suits a voyage book. It's a parallel to LWW because it's a story about the transforming power of Narnia and Aslan, but it feels different because, as Edmund says, Eustace was just an ass; Edmund was a traitor. I really like Eustace's arc and think he's a great character. He and Reepicheep are the stand-outs in this particular book.
Anyway, I think this one is rollicking good fun, though I understand why someone might not like it if they find the episodic stuff annoying.
+ The Silver Chair, which was the one I was most looking forward to revisiting. I have a theory that this was Tolkien's favorite because it has the atmosphere of what he would call "true Northernness." This is the book which has the most ties to Lewis's background as a medievalist--even for someone like me who's not super familiar with medieval lit, that much is obvious.
I really enjoyed revisiting this one. As I mentioned, I think Eustace is a great character and I love Jill too--I love that she's allowed to be the type whose reaction to things is to cry (same) but is still very brave. But in this one, Puddleglum is the character stand-out in the way that Reepicheep had been in previous books. I love Puddleglum.
If there's one thing I have learned from reading soooo much British kidlit, it's that boarding schools are hotbeds of bullying. Apparently this was a universal thing, so it makes sense to start there. The idea of wanting to escape a place like that so badly that you open a portal to another world must have been something a ton of kids fantasized about.
I also like that this book opens with Jill basically screwing things up and then has her and Eustace continue to screw things up and yet they get back to where they need to be.
Favorite bits: being blown on Aslan's breath, the Parliament of Owls (which I had such a strong memory of! best chapter title ever!), the Arthurian energy of the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Jill looking in the cookbook and figuring out what's going on, the imagery of eating living rubies and diamonds, climbing out of the underground into a typical Narnia revelry (Lewis loves his Narnia revelries).
+ Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik. As with most short story collections, this was hit and miss. I didn't much care about the Teremaire stories, and having not read the Scholomance books, that one hit less hard than it's probably intended to. Some of them were fine--the pirate lady, the fairy godmothers one. I wasn't crazy about the Irene Adler one, and I think I missed some of what "Lord Dunsany's Teapot" was trying to do (though it had a perfect title).
"Seven Years from Home" was her trying to do Le Guin and not quite succeeding--it was worth reading, but didn't quite do what I think it wanted to, perhaps because it was better-suited for a longer format. The final story was not my favorite, but it did introduce the world in which her next novel will presumably be set, and the worldbuilding was intriguing enough that I'm looking forward to it. It was fun visiting the "Spinning Silver" story and seeing where the novel originated. "Castle Coeurlieu" had great atmosphere.
But my favorites were "Seven" and "Buried Deep." The latter was a very atmospheric retelling of Ariadne's story, which I dug--I don't think the world necessarily needs more novel retellings of Greek myths right now, but if Novik wrote such a novel, I would certainly read it. And the worldbuilding details in "Seven" were just SO GOOD. I was delighted all the way through that one.
I did enjoy going to read some GoodReads reviews and finding that the stories that some people loved, others hated and vice versa. TASTES!
Basically: please, Ms. Novik, write me another novel I want to read! Because when we're on the same wavelength, I love your writing so so much! It's just unfortunate that we spend so much time on different wavelengths!
What I'm reading now:
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, which has some very wild worldbuilding and truly feels like nothing I've read before. Love that his Shadow of the Leviathan books are fantasy mystery novels and this one is a fantasy spy novel. We could use more of both in the world.
+ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is definitely the Narnia book that I had the strongest memories of. I can't decide if it's because I reread it the most or whether the particular imagery in this book just hooked into my brain.
But again: so many delightful images! It's just chock full of them! Everything from the painting coming to life to pushing the serpent over the end of the boat to dragon!Eustace to the magician's book to the birds eating the feast to the mermaid girl to the lily sea...I love it!
The book is very episodic, which suits a voyage book. It's a parallel to LWW because it's a story about the transforming power of Narnia and Aslan, but it feels different because, as Edmund says, Eustace was just an ass; Edmund was a traitor. I really like Eustace's arc and think he's a great character. He and Reepicheep are the stand-outs in this particular book.
Anyway, I think this one is rollicking good fun, though I understand why someone might not like it if they find the episodic stuff annoying.
+ The Silver Chair, which was the one I was most looking forward to revisiting. I have a theory that this was Tolkien's favorite because it has the atmosphere of what he would call "true Northernness." This is the book which has the most ties to Lewis's background as a medievalist--even for someone like me who's not super familiar with medieval lit, that much is obvious.
I really enjoyed revisiting this one. As I mentioned, I think Eustace is a great character and I love Jill too--I love that she's allowed to be the type whose reaction to things is to cry (same) but is still very brave. But in this one, Puddleglum is the character stand-out in the way that Reepicheep had been in previous books. I love Puddleglum.
If there's one thing I have learned from reading soooo much British kidlit, it's that boarding schools are hotbeds of bullying. Apparently this was a universal thing, so it makes sense to start there. The idea of wanting to escape a place like that so badly that you open a portal to another world must have been something a ton of kids fantasized about.
I also like that this book opens with Jill basically screwing things up and then has her and Eustace continue to screw things up and yet they get back to where they need to be.
Favorite bits: being blown on Aslan's breath, the Parliament of Owls (which I had such a strong memory of! best chapter title ever!), the Arthurian energy of the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Jill looking in the cookbook and figuring out what's going on, the imagery of eating living rubies and diamonds, climbing out of the underground into a typical Narnia revelry (Lewis loves his Narnia revelries).
+ Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik. As with most short story collections, this was hit and miss. I didn't much care about the Teremaire stories, and having not read the Scholomance books, that one hit less hard than it's probably intended to. Some of them were fine--the pirate lady, the fairy godmothers one. I wasn't crazy about the Irene Adler one, and I think I missed some of what "Lord Dunsany's Teapot" was trying to do (though it had a perfect title).
"Seven Years from Home" was her trying to do Le Guin and not quite succeeding--it was worth reading, but didn't quite do what I think it wanted to, perhaps because it was better-suited for a longer format. The final story was not my favorite, but it did introduce the world in which her next novel will presumably be set, and the worldbuilding was intriguing enough that I'm looking forward to it. It was fun visiting the "Spinning Silver" story and seeing where the novel originated. "Castle Coeurlieu" had great atmosphere.
But my favorites were "Seven" and "Buried Deep." The latter was a very atmospheric retelling of Ariadne's story, which I dug--I don't think the world necessarily needs more novel retellings of Greek myths right now, but if Novik wrote such a novel, I would certainly read it. And the worldbuilding details in "Seven" were just SO GOOD. I was delighted all the way through that one.
I did enjoy going to read some GoodReads reviews and finding that the stories that some people loved, others hated and vice versa. TASTES!
Basically: please, Ms. Novik, write me another novel I want to read! Because when we're on the same wavelength, I love your writing so so much! It's just unfortunate that we spend so much time on different wavelengths!
What I'm reading now:
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, which has some very wild worldbuilding and truly feels like nothing I've read before. Love that his Shadow of the Leviathan books are fantasy mystery novels and this one is a fantasy spy novel. We could use more of both in the world.