#askaway

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Answered here, but I'll give you five more:

Beowulf - Unknown: Maybe the origin of flying dragons. Super cool saxon epic poetry. I got the 34 edition which also features the other poems thought to belong to the same tradition, and I found Deor – a poem about a poet taking comfort in the epics he loves in a difficult time – particularly moving.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For - Alison Bechdel: A deeply funny and touching story of flawed but endearing queer people. L Word if it was good.

Claude Gueux - Victor Hugo: A touching novella about a prisoner who is mistreated and ultimately condemned to death. I also read (actually listened to, both on Audiolude's channel) Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné (The Last Day of a Condemned Man), and I found Claude Gueux to be the better of Hugo's oeuvres against the death penalty.

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler: The protagonist (a black woman) finds herself sent back to the Antebellum South repeatedly to save her ancestor Rufus, a white boy who grows into a cruel man. What I loved the most about this book is how it doesn't look down on people of the past as inherently lesser. The most impactful passage, to me, was one about how the protagonist, even with all her future knowledge and education, could not handle the life she'd been thrust into, not like the slaves of that time.

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine: the protagonist is the ambassador of a small mining Station to the huge imperial power of Teixcalaanli. Her predecessor was murdered, she does not know by whom and she might be next. She also has a corrupted chip with the memories of her predecessor, a technology she must hide; while also maneuvering diplomatically to keep her Station's independence. The book is also a lot about the protagonist wrestling with the fact that she thinks in a language that is not her own, reads the literature of the culture that is colonizing her own over that of the authors of her own Station. I found that aspect almost uncomfortably close to home.

6. Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

Lots, lol. The ones I most wanted to get to but didn't were probably The Aenid and Os Sertões. Also Orlando Furioso, but that was a conscious decision because I wanna start learning Italian next year and I think I'll appreciate it more if I read it later.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

The only new releases I read this year were The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar – which was pretty good and I would say did meet my expectations, though I didn't quite love as much as This is How We Lose the Time War – and a book that is actually unreleased but it's by a friend of my aunt's so I read her advanced copy – that was also pretty good but I had no idea it even existed before she showed me her favorite short story on it so...

I almost exclusively stick to backlist titles, I'm afraid.

3. What were your top 5 books of the year?

From the one I read more recently to the one I read earliest in the year:

Une Femme m'Apparut (A Woman Appeared to Me) - Renée Vivien: In beautiful, poetic prose, the author fictionalizes her relationship with Natalie Clifford Barney, a relationship the back of the book describes as "painful and passionate, and strewn with affairs". The narrator falls deeply in love with Lerély, a pagan priestess (likely inspired by Sappho) who inspires love in others but can't feel love herself. The book centers on the question of whether it's better to love passionately and suffer, or to love more temperately – meditating on whether the suffering actually elevates the love.

Une Si Longue Lettre (So Long a Letter) - Mariama Bâ: Framed as a (long) letter written to a friend who had gone something similar as the protagonist, both of their husbands married another woman without telling them. The book tackles the conditions under which women live(d) in Senegal.

A Palavra que resta (The Words that Remain) - Stênio Gardel: Told in a non-linear timeline, the book tells the story of Raimundo, who is illiterate and has kept a letter written by his first love (another boy) for 50 years. The book tackles the cycle of violence in absolutely gorgeous prose that is reminiscent of Saramago's without being annoying.

A Ilíada (The Illiad) - Homero (trans. Leonardo Antunes): This was my first time reading the Illiad and – though being initially quite thrown off that it doesn't actually talk about all or even most of the War of Troy, and that Achilles is basically AWOL in the first half – I really loved it. I'm a sucker for battle scenes and the Illiad certainly has plenty of those, though my favorite Canto has to be the one in which Achilles mourns Patroclus. I think the Antunes translation was a great pick for a first read, as a verse translation that is also a pretty easy read.

Le Morte D'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory (Norton Critical Edition): Imma just paste a sorta review I sent to a friend when I finished it:

I really loved it! It's really cool to read the "canonical" version of the myth, and to see how much this book has influenced so many other things that I've loved. Malory has a very to the point style, which makes the narrative pretty fast paced, and I think the fact that he excluded any interiority from the narrative basically (the editor says that it was actually present in a lot of his sources) actually contributes to the way the story has been iterated upon, as you can't help but wonder why people are doing these things and what they think about others' actions and their own. Malory's prose has a certain rhythm to it that I appreciate, there's an essay at the end that goes into how he uses repetition and how that contributes to his style which is interesting. The book is largely summation (and translation in the case of his French sources) of older books, but the most vivid image of the whole thing is apparently authorial (though he attributes even sections which are believed to be authorial to an unnamed French book, likely to boost his credibility). That scene is at the end, and the ending overall is really really good. I'd read TH White's The Once and Future King as a sort of primer but the ending on that is garbled, so I didn't really know what to expect. The book over all is really really fun, I just thought it lagged a bit on the Trystram section, but the editor says the original is 6 times the length so I think Malory tried his best, he even kind of cut off the Trystram ending, maybe he got kind of bored too lol. I also feel like I made 100% the right choice with the Norton Critical Edition. The chronologies provided beforehand are super interesting, the pronunciation guide helps with reading the Middle English, the notes are really good, and there's a glossary. There are essays at the end which I really enjoyed as well. I mentioned the one on Malory's style but the best one imo is the first one which is on Malory and rape (a Malory believed to indeed be the one who wrote Le Morte Darthur was accused of "raptus" of the same woman twice), there is discussion of how rape is treated in the narrative, be it as to how it is condemned, when the cases are acknowledged to be rape in the narrative, and cases which are not treated as rape by Malory but that we would consider such. There's also poignant commentary on the false dichotomy of Malory as a rapist and Malory as the author of a beloved work and how some critics struggle to reconcile the two. There are some excerpts from Malory's main sources which are cool to read and compare to how Malory translated those passages (definitely added a few things to my TBR). The only thing I could take or leave are some letters from Malory's time concerning themes that may have impacted his work (notions of Chivalry and the Wars of the Roses). Overall, an absolute amazing reading experience.

4. Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

This year was the first I read from Renée Vivien, Mariama Bâ, and Stênio Gardel, whose works I mentioned above. I've also started Maurice Druon's Les Rois Maudits (The Accursed Kings) series this year, and I'm loving it so far.

welcome aboard, hope you enjoy, i think we should explore each others bodies and see how they fit

taking naps on the grass under the sun when i take a hike🏕

hanging out with friends for hours so that we share meals (breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, whatever)🍜

playing a song that fits perfectly with the mood 🎶

perrear till my legs give out 🗣

oh and getting drunk/high with my friends 💕

Hello hello!

I honestly can be doing better but in feeling worse Dx. I got the covids 😔

Psa &another secret