#100daysofbooks

i thought it would make for an interesting reading experiment, taking two famous 'pandemic' novels one after the other, published over 60 years apart, to see how they compared. for one thing, i really enjoyed how station eleven was largely built around the before and after of the virus, while the plague was much more in the monotonous day-to-day of life alongside the disease. despite both books looking at the nature of people in the face something terrible, in both cases a deadly illness, they're both also such different worlds and have such different things to say about it. funnily enough, we do get travelling companies of actors in both books! though, one is a shakespearean company very much on the move, whereas the other is operatic and firmly stranded in disease territory. i do find it striking that both books see the untimely death of an actor on-stage; i don't know if this was intentional on emily st. john mandel's part, a kind of call-back to camus's novel, but either way, it makes for a haunting little echo.

i've spent this week reading ninth house, after finally getting my hands on it last november. i recall there being controversy when it was first released, but honestly, i still don't understand why it provoked so much anger. the book comes with its own undercurrents of anger, and with so much still unresolved i don't expect that to end any time soon, but there's also something cathartic in it, every time a man gets brutalised for his misogyny, every time alex gets to truly show who she is. this was definitely not an easy read, but it was a powerful one.

it's lgbt history month (in my country, anyway), so much like the local libraries, i'm showing off my collection of gay classics! this is hardly an exhaustive selection, just an offering of some of my favourites - and all books i would strongly recommend diving into as soon as you can get your hands on them! in the meantime, my february reading is off to a strong start on the theme of gay history - i'm on maria mccann's as meat loves salt! fellas, is it gay to finger another man's fatal stab wound? especially when you were the one who stabbed him?

i haven't actually posted anything about the last three books i read this year, because they each seemed progressively worse, and consequently i didn't read anything else for two months. i read my second han kang novel at the end of july. after reading human acts in april, my expectations were obviously high, and while the white book doesn't quite surpass human acts for me, it definitely came close. han kang simply has such a way with words that makes even such a short book as this feel so very full and leaving its mark on you. of course, in my experience reading this as an english translation rather than the original korean text, some of that perhaps does come down to the translator deborah smith's choices as well. in any case, i already have my third han kang title waiting impatiently on the tbr pile, and i fully expect to be blown away by that one, too!

i don't think i've ever been so devastated by a book before. it's just... astoundingly good. i knew to expect greatness, after all, han kang only went and won herself a nobel prize last year! but even so, i don't think i was expecting it to be this damn good. you read chapter one. 'my god, she deserved the noble prize for this chapter alone!' you read chapter two. 'no, she deserved it for this chapter alone!' you read chapter three- it is an absolutely gut-wrenching piece of work. it's brutal and terrible and bleak. it might be the best book i've ever read.

one of those very rare occasions when you simply know that a book is going to linger with you, long after you've put it back on the shelf. we're only two months into the year, but i'm already classing i who have never known men as one of my top reads of the year. it's such a haunting little book, set in a sparsely detailed world and full of questions that will never be answered. i don't believe i've ever read a book before in which men appear but only women speak. it makes for a deeply interesting reading experience, and i know that the world of this book is one that is very bleak and confusing, and the female community that exists achieves little more than tedious survival. but all the same, i find it telling that the only killing that occurs in the book is acts of mercy. i think that as much as this book speaks to very universal truths about what it is to be human, it would be an altogether very different story if men were more present (and alive) than they actually are here.

the latest pick from my tbr shelf has been katy hays' the cloisters - my first journey into the world of dark academia, and one that was overall very enjoyable! i think what this book really nails is the atmosphere, above all else. i wasn't especially fond of the romantic subplot; i thought some of the characterisation choices were questionably executed, and i think i craved a darker ending than what i actually got - but atmosphere? god, i could have lived in this haunted, suffocating little world of medieval artefacts and occult tarot readings forever.

"the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay" i rounded off february last night with regeneration, another histfic novel i've been meaning to read for years! i'm not usually one for war fiction, but this had me captivated from start to finish. (not to mention completely and unexpectedly enamoured with wilfred owen!) my tbr pile is still a mountain, so i won't be jumping into the rest of the trilogy just yet. but i'm definitely prioritising it the next time i find myself looking for new books!