helpless to the bass and the fading light

It's been like two months since I last did this but I am still reading a bunch (and there's some stuff I forgot last time around). So, here we go.

Everything but the mangas, I listened to as an audiobook.

A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin (narrated by Harlan Ellison) - I specify that Harlan Ellison narrated it because he put some INCREDIBLE sauce on it, and also because I guess they rerecorded it later with a different narrator. Overall I enjoyed it, and I can definitely see how it influenced the DNA of fantasy to come, but considering Leguin's reputation as a fantasy titan, it did feel like an early work. Ellison's narration really elevated the experience for me. The prose has a mythic quality, and his creative choices really lean into that and make it sound like a legend that is being actively recounted to the listener in the moment. Really quality audiobook experience.

The Witcher: The Last Wish, by Andrzej Sapkowski - This was fine. I mainly read it to experiment with a serialized short story collection, and it was that. Mostly it made me want to rewatch S1 of the TV show and compare it as an adaptation. The Gender of it all was interesting (eg, the monsters are almost always women, but Geralt feels a deep empathy for/kinship with monstrosity), and some of the stuff about the way the elemental planes work makes me wonder what crosspollination/shared DNA/etc. it has with DND, considering it was published in 1993 but not translated into English until 2007. In any case, I finished it but didn't get into it enough to continue with the series.

The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett - I listened to this on a recommendation from a friend, and it was excellent. It's a speculative fiction mystery that manages to actually succeed on the mystery part, and also it focuses on a classic Holmes and Watson type duo where the Holmes is an amazing rude old lady who insists on being blindfolded at all times to avoid accidentally seeing anything irrelevant. She's PHENOMENAL. I love her so much. Also, the voice the narrator gave her really adds to the vibe.

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde - I think I started listening to this book in February, didn't finish it in time before my loan ran out, picked it up again and finished it recently. I liked it more than the other Jasper Fforde book I've read, and I do want to check out the sequel, but I do think it sort of meandered. It's a surreal dystopian future mystery that is also somehow slice of life, and that sort of kitchen sink stuff does seem to be Fforde's thing, but the middle definitely dragged because of it. I am glad I finished it though, because the ending was great.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson - This is another one that I feel like was really elevated by being an audiobook, because Jackson makes so much use of repetition in her prose that it gave the narrator a lot of space to play and make things spooky. I read it for book club and it was great, there is SO MUCH going on and it's SO juicy. A traumatized house with no person and a traumatized person with no house...

Islam: A Very Short Introduction, by Malise Ruthven - I've seen VSIs in bookstores for ages and I finally figured out I could get them as audiobooks from the library. This one was read by the author (who has a great reading voice) and I liked it a lot! He makes a point of organizing the book around different ways of conceptualizing Islam (faith, history, identity, political movement) which meant that while I never really felt like I got a good overview, a "good overview" might not be something that exists, and in the meantime I got glimpses into lots of different facets.

Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, by Damien Keown - The second VSI I listened to and it was really weak, especially following Ruthven. It was much less organized, and Keown has some very obvious biases that make it hard to trust anything he said re: the role of Buddhism in the modern world. I want to find another primer on Buddhism written by someone else to try and compare, because the parts about Buddhist teachings and the structure of the universe were really interesting, but I need to verify them from someone who understands what Orientalism actually means.

The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction, by Amanda H. Podany - The third VSI, which proved that these things live and die by their structure. This one was AMAZING. It was a history of the civilizations in and around Mesopotamia up until the rise of the Persian Empire, where each chapter was like "here is a thing that we know about this place at this time, because of this piece of writing that was preserved, and here is what we can extrapolate and here is what we cannot". That makes it sound super dry, but it meant that each chapter ended up being deep dive close readings of ancient document fragments, which was rad.

Bloom Into You (volumes 5-8) by Nio Nakatani - I watched the first half of Bloom into You as an anime with my girlfriend, and read the second half of the manga at her urging because it never got a second season. (The curse of yuri...) It's really good! I think I liked it more as a manga than as an anime because I could go at my own pace, but that's relative. In any case, it's a really good romance that's grounded in the individual characters' very specific flaws and fears, and it's the only story I've ever seen that manages to nail a flash-forward epilogue while keeping to its themes.

I have been reading a lot lately owing to Long Commute + Audiobooks. I have been trying to get around to this post for a long time and the backlog keeps getting longer. So:

Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space, by Janna Levin. Short-ish nonfiction that's been on my shelf in print form for a long time, telling the story of the development of LIGO, an astronomical observing project that listens for the sound of gravitational waves. The book covers about 50 years, starting from "well we don't even have proof gravitational waves are real, but if they were, how would we notice them?" to "no one does messy breakups like middle-aged scientists firing each other for bad project management practices" to LIGO's first successful detection in 2015. Very approachable for laypeople, if you're curious about astronomy/astrophysics/Extremely Reputable Scientists Being Drama Llamas check it out.

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. Short novella about a man who lives alone in a labyrinthine house made of endless halls, filled with waves and statues. Picked this up upon seeing that LAIKA Studios is considering adapting it as a movie. I really liked it! Grabbed the ebook because the wait for the audiobook was super long, so this is one that I got through despite the commute instead of because of it. Gotta love a book with really unique narrative voice, and a book where the POV character has no frame of reference for the puzzle that is clearly unfolding around them.

Mob Psycho 100, volumes 1-3. Shonen manga about a teenager who's repressing his psychic powers in favor of getting swole. Found this on a list of "comic books we can check out infinitely" at my local library, picked it up because I like shonen OK and I was curious. It's pretty decent so far (I have checked out volume 4, so it's clearly doing something right) but it hasn't totally hooked me. I think Mob is so repressed and so good at ninja-dodging the plot that that he's eluding my grasp as a protagonist. (The only thing I knew about MP100 going in was that Reigen is a Tumblr sexyman, but... he's done sweet fuck-all so far, he's basically a non-entity. ...???)

Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws, by Adrienne Major. Nonfiction collection of essays from a historian who specializes in antiquity, myths, and archaeology. The first NF book I had finished in a long time. A collection of any kind will always be a mixed bag, but I would say the ratio was ~90% good, 3% boring or bad, and 7% standout hits. It felt very self indulgent of the author, but not in a bad way -- it's a collection of "I thought this was cool enough to write an essay about" topics, of course it's going to be self indulgent. It's fun to read stuff where the author is clearly having a great time. And she had a rich tapestry of topics! Mad honey, griffin claws from dinosaurs, Spartan tourist attractions, Ancient Roman foot fetishes, anti-weasel stereotypes and pro-weasel anecdotes... Made me think much more extensively about worldbuilding and creative ideas for my own stories. I have holds on her other essay collections already.