#a shining

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

and here they are, all lined up and waiting:

Books of 2024: A SHINING by Jon Fosse.

A Shining by Jon Fosse

🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑

Perhaps reading A Shining directly after Morning and Evening wasn't the right move. Both novellas explore the same idea that our consciousness may very well steamroll its way straight through death without even noticing that the body has perished, but A Shining takes a much more concise and direct approach that I found overall less interesting or evocative. But don't get it twisted; this was still a great read, and while the ideas are similar, their expression is quite different.

In A Shining, we find our narrator driving at random down roads that eventually lead him to a dark forest where his car gets stuck in a rut. Realizing that the last house he passed was miles back down the road and looked to be abandoned anyways, he decides to follow a path through the forest where he quickly gets lost and a bunch of surreal shit begins to ensue.

The metaphors for life are fairly obvious, but I loved the unsettling and claustrophobic atmosphere that Fosse was able to build with them. As our narrator tries to navigate this forest, he runs into ghosts and struggles against fatigue and decision paralysis. A Shining seems to espouse this idea that even in the dark forest of life where progress feels inert, movement and human connection are paramount to survival. It was a much-needed reminder that it does not matter so much which direction you move in so long as you keep moving, even if only to stay warm. And hug your parents, goddammit; they might need the love more than you do.