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”there’s no glory in suffering” and “sometimes the effort is the point” are two ideas that co-exist but god damn if I can ever tell when’s the time for which
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I’ve been rereading Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor the last couple of days, and I adore this book so much. I love Maia. I love Csevet. I love Csethiro (you have got to love a girl whose kneejerk first response to both coup attempts against her unwanted husband was a fervent desire to swordfight the perpetrators, because how dare they). I deeply love Vedero, too. And poor Idra.
On rereading, though, I came across the section near the end where Maia, on his first birthday as Emperor, comes downstairs to the absolutely titanic pile of presents and letters:
---
Maia barely noticed the note of reproach. “But who— who are they all from?”
Thy grammar is atrocious, said that dry, rebarbative voice that was no longer Setheris.
“From everyone, Serenity,” said Isheian.
“We expected the messages from the princes, the Corazhas, Lord Berenar, and the members of Parliament,” said Csevet. “The Marquess Lanthevel has sent you a scholarly book about embroidery. We even expected the emperor-clock from the Clocksmith’s Guild of Zhaö.” He paused, then corrected himself primly: “We should say, we were not surprised they sent a gift. The clock itself is …”
“Surprising,” Esaran said, and Maia was startled to realise that she and Csevet were friends.
“Yes,” Csevet agreed. “But, Serenity, you also have gifts from a number of Barizheisei merchants in Cetho, and from the Trade Association of the Western Ethuveraz. There are messages from mayors and hierophants in every principality. The people of Nelozho have sent you a letter with nearly five hundred signatures, which must be the entire population. The crew of the Radiance of Cairado have sent you a model airship. The families of the crew of the Wisdom of Choharo have sent you message after message. And that doesn’t even begin to account for— Serenity?”
“We don’t understand,” Maia said helplessly, sinking into a chair. “What do they want?”
Csevet frowned. “They want you to have a happy birthday.”
---
And. Leaving aside for a second Maia’s heartbreaking lack of comprehension of the concept of presents and people wanting him to be happy that years in isolation under Setheris has left him. I just want to talk for a second about the gifts themselves?
Because they are, of course, a legacy of Maia’s first few months as Emperor, the people he’s touched and the lives he’s changed. Some of them are political, like the gifts from the Trade Association and the Clocksmith’s Guild, who have been given hope for the first time in decades, if not longer, by Maia’s willingness to listen to them, even if it was partly won by manipulation of a young and uncertain emperor. But Maia did honestly champion them, because he did honestly believe in their ideas and causes, and I think that lends an honesty to the gifts in return as well. Because it’s not empty political posturing, they actually do appreciate Maia.
And it’s such a theme to his gifts. There’s a thread of honesty to them, to how people react to him, and kindness too. That they’re giving back to him what he gave to them.
The rote, dutiful gifts from the various political players to the Emperor were expected. The others, the more honest ones from the people he’s helped, weren’t.
The town of Nelozho, which was mentioned mostly in passing from that first hearing where Maia found his feet as an emperor and fought off his abuse and training under Setheris to realise that he didn’t have to make decisions that would please everyone, he could choose to make decisions that would please no one but would be right. He cut through generations of grudges in that meeting to try and reach a solution for the town, and here we see that his efforts and his willingness to step up to the plate despite years of training otherwise are appreciated. The entire town wrote to him in gratitude.
To say nothing of the families of the crew of the Wisdom of Cairado, who received more care from Maia in the wake of all their losses than any common person has ever personally received from an elvish emperor in … basically ever, I think. He came to the funeral of those who’d died alongside his father and family. It was the first thing he did as emperor. He honoured their grief alongside his own (or ahead of his own, given his complicated relationship with his father, but still). The one single decision has reverberated through his entire reign so far, both happily and more darkly, given the reaction of those who murdered his father.
And they’re all … See, the gifts aren’t just letters of thank you, either. Some of them are more personal.
I love that the crew of the Radiance sent him a model ship. Because that’s not an official present, that’s the crew banding together to send him something. He met them for two hours, when he was still more a shabby exile than an emperor, under truly dreadful circumstances, but he still took time in the middle of that to thank them for the gift of seeing the sunrise from the bridge, and to honour them. “We will remember this always as the beginning of our reign.” It’s not an official present, it’s that crew, those people, being so tickled and delighted that they wanted to send him something personal. A little model ship. Just because he took the time to acknowledge them.
And even the official presents. Marquess Lanthevel sent him a scholarly book on embroidery. Which … is an incredibly astute political gift, so carefully judged, yes, but the message is so kind. Because the first and only thing Maia has ever really showed interest in before his courtiers was that tapestry at the dinner in Lanthevel’s house, because of his mother’s embroidery, and also that conversation revealed how much education and socialisation Maia had been denied due to his father’s absent-minded cruelty. One of the things Maia feels most deeply ashamed of before his court is his lack of education, his ‘stupidity’. So Lanthevel sends him a book, on a subject that Lanthevel knows personally interests him, a subject that’s warm and personal and dear to the heart of the mother he was never allowed to talk about, and it’s a scholarly book. Showing that Lanthevel has trust in his emperor’s intelligence.
These aren’t dutiful gifts. They’re so warm and honest and real, even the ones that are politically expected or that have partly political motivations. They genuinely are …
They’re sent in hopes that he’ll have a happy birthday. Because the people he’s met and touched and championed want him to have one. They like him. They appreciate what he’s done for them. They want to help him and show they appreciate him.
It’s such a tiny little scene that truly shows how much Maia, even in these few months of shame and panic and violence and perceived inadequacy, has done for his people, and how much they saw it and appreciated it. How much it matters to people to even be acknowledged, even if his ability to concretely help them has been limited. How much it matters to know … to just know that the Emperor saw them, and took the time to acknowledge them.
You get back what you give. Hopefully. And he’s given a lot, and people have seen it, and want to do what little they can to give it back. And I love it so much.
This is such a good book. One of my best impulse purchases ever. Heh.
I've been doing an old fashioned internet dive following links on very old quilting websites, and I found the website of Caryl Bryer Fallert and her really amazing quilts--many of them are all hand-dyed fabrics on top of intense geometric piecing
vampires are so full of shit. "oh the human race is beneath us, you're just livestock to us" I don't think you know what livestock is. do you feed us? care for us? protect us from predators? no. you just slink around dark alleys and ambush people. that's not what a higher being does. that's a bottom feeder. a parasite. karate punches your head off
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This is probably a criminally unpopular opinion, but people whose walls are covered in brand new booktok books are just as complicit in trend-driven overconsumption as the Stanley girlies or the showertok creators with 80 treehut scrubs. I don't necessarily mean the romance girls either, so don't think the 'my year of rest and relaxation' crowd gets a pass here.
Literally the amount of people I talk to who say reading is their favorite hobby and they read like 3 books a week then will tell me that they don't have a library card is insane. How much money do you guys spend on books without any guarantee that you'll even like it? Why not just read a library copy then buy the book if you really liked it?
"But why would I buy a book that I've already read?"
Why did you buy it without knowing you were going to want to read it more than once??? If you didn't like the book then you've just got a $25 piece of wall decor lmao.
I think that this also opens up a broader conversation about the commodification of hobbies on social media. Reading used to be a means to an end to consume a story you enjoyed, and now it's an aesthetic to be performed on Instagram, just like any other trend but with an added air of superiority.
I'm just ranting but if someone can explain to me how buying endless books that'll be read once and then left to collect dust on your shelf is different than buying an eyeshadow palette that'll be used once then shoved to the back of a drawer for years, I'm all ears.
Books are made of recyclable, compostable materials. Did you forget that paper can be made into... more paper? Like infinitely?? It's like aluminum or glass, you can INFINITELY RECYCLE paper!
When novels published by houses like Harlequin don't get bought, the bookshop strips off their covers and trashes the rest of the book, sending the covers back to the publisher to be counted, so the publisher can keep track of how much was sold. You might have seen on the flyleaf a warning about "if you bought this without its cover you have bought a stripped book, which is unlawful to resell and was reported as 'unsold and destroyed' to the publisher". That's what that means. You holding that book doesn't mean you've necessarily prevented any pollution--it's a fucking brick of PAPER, paper decomposes! Source: I have stripped boxes of Harlequin novels when I worked at a bookstore.
I think sometimes this championing of libraries really does not understand that this isn't to say you aren't allowed or should feel guilty about BUYING BOOKS. Libraries do not want you to stop buying books! I'm pretty sure librarians have lots of books they haven't read yet! It's a running joke among readers, and has been for decades, that we own more books than we have read. Just because your own habits are to only buy books you've already read doesn't mean that's the only "correct" trot with books! I would like to know the answers to the following questions:
A. Do you feel this way about giving OTHER kinds of artist money? I.e. do you think we shouldn't buy music, shouldn't buy video games, shouldn't buy paintings, shouldn't ever hire a plumber, shouldn't ever go to a restaurant, shouldn't ever pay anyone to do anything? Where does this end? Who is worthy of money and who isn't?
B. How do you think authors get enough money to be asked by their publisher to write another book? Go through how you think making a living off writing books works.
C. Have you considered perhaps it's a little fucked up to be mad at your peers for reading in a way you don't, instead of finding a corporation or law to be mad at more productively? It is not your peers' fault libraries are closing.
Instead of being mad online, perhaps it is time for you to go to a city council meeting and channel this anger more productively to advocate for more funding for your local library, you clearly feel very passionate about it and that's good! But helping libraries does not mean closing bookstores and starving authors of sales. Saving trees does not mean making less paper, it means making paper FROM paper, not from wood. I assure you, there's already a LOT of recycling old unsold books into more books. You don't need to worry about that. It's why they're called "pulp".
Adding on to this - in my capacity both author and reader - is that books are what we might refer to as a shelf-stable product (pun very much intended). They last a long fuckin' time. To take OP's example as a comparison, whereas an eyeshadow palette will expire after a couple of years if not used, a book remains useable for decades - potentially even centuries - after its purchase, while still also being, as others have pointed out above, both biodegradable and recyclable.
Which is one of the many reasons why the second-hand book market exists: an entire parallel economy built around redistributing a long-lived, non-polluting commodity. If you buy a book and eventually want to get rid of it, you can sell it on or donate it to charity, thereby enabling someone else to experience the story - and this is true regardless of whether you read (used) the book yourself!
But at a practical level, beyond wanting to financially support the author, a good reason for buying books is that few stories remain in print - which is to say, actively being produced by the publisher - indefinitely. Particularly for niche content, indie authors, debut novels, hardbacks and special editions, you don't know how long the book itself, or that specific version, will be available to purchase, and while, as mentioned, you can still try and track something down second-hand, you'd be surprised by how difficult that can be past a certain point.
Recently, for instance, after learning about the extent to which Neil Gaiman borrowed from Tanith Lee's Tales From the Flat Earth when writing the Sandman without ever having given any credit to her as a source of inspiration, I decided I wanted to read her work for myself. There were ebooks available, but while I can do it in a pinch, I struggle to read in digital formats and much prefer to use a physical copy. But Tales From the Flat Earth is out of print, and because of the rarity of the books, the copies that do still exist can be quite expensive.
Imagine my joy, then, when I recently stumbled on a $6 copy of the first of two hardback omnibus editions of those stories, The Lords of Darkness, in a second-hand bookshop! I was born in 1986; the stories in The Lords of Darkness were first published between 1979-1981, with the omnibus published, as best I can tell, sometime between 1981 and 1987. I'm babying my hardback the way I do few books, because I'm conscious of its value, age and rarity, but I can still read it comfortably, and it's beautiful.
Similarly, in a recent moment of what-shall-I-read-next, wherein nothing on my TBR pile was quite grabbing my attention, I turned to my main shelves and lit upon Kerstin Hall's debut novel, Star Eater. I'd bought it back in 2021, the year it was released, but hadn't gotten around to it at the time. Four years later, I picked it up and thoroughly enjoyed it, because books - unlike food or makeup - don't expire.
Of the picture books that still reside in my 12yo son's room, some were inherited from the childhood libraries of myself and my husband, making them decades older than the person to whom they now, for the moment, belong. Similarly, my dad spent decades collecting volumes on film, theater, vaudeville and jazz, because that was his passion - and when, over twenty years ago now, he and mum downsized from my childhood home, he donated the bulk of that collection to one of Australia's foremost acting schools, where it became a whole named section in their research library.
The point being: books last a long time. They're a form of slow consumption, not fast, because even when it makes sense to acquire them quickly, they don't need to be read at once to retain their value, which is why there's books in my house that are verging on a century old. I don't buy more books than I could possibly read to spite the existence of libraries. I do it to build my own.
my brain: 45 years ago this person could've made a public access television show that ran for half a decade on the strength of this concept with the right framing device and it would've been paid for with federal arts grants and maybe even national syndication rights. now they're begging for a single minute of engagement on tiktok in the hopes that maybe someday the abstract metrics of digital media platforms will translate into a tangible career
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