kindkit | book meme answers

I'm not at work today because I somehow managed to hurt my foot in my sleep (how is that even possible?), so here are my answers to the alphabetical book meme so far. Anyone who still wants to pick a letter is welcome to do so.

flo_nelja requested G (Glad You Gave This Book a Chance)

A recent example is Claire North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, an sff novel in which the titular Harry August is a kalachakra or "ouroboran." When ouroborans die, they're reborn at the same time and in the same circumstances as the first time, but at the age of about three they recover their previous adult knowledge and memories. Almost the only rule of ourobran existence is not to try to change history, but in Harry's lifetime an unknown person is doing so and thus bringing the end of the world ever closer. The novel's worldbuilding is ultimately more interesting than its plot, but it's a good read. (Warning: there are repeated mentions of Harry's mother having been raped, and there are a couple of longish and disturbing, though not extremely graphic, sequences of torture.)

glinda requested H (Hidden Gem Book).

I'm going to interpret "hidden gem book" to mean "book that's generally underrated." One of my favorite underrated books, although it's by a major author, is John Le Carré's The Naïve and Sentimental Lover. This was Le Carré's only attempt at a mainstream novel, and I will not deny that it's . . . odd, and perhaps less mainstream than Le Carré thought. It tells the story of Aldo Cassidy, an English businessman who encounters the bohemian Shamus (a novelist) and Shamus's wife Helen, becomes infatuated with, well, both of them. Aldo gets drawn into an enormous, life-eating emotional mess. Part of the strangeness of the book is that it's about three parts social satire to one part love story, so a lot of readers are put off by the mixed tone, but that's one of the things I like about this book: the idea that people can be ridiculous poseurs and liars and cowards and still be exalted and devastated by love.

The novel is heavily m/m homoerotic, which is a plus for me and probably for many of you, but on the minus side, Le Carré has never been great at writing women characters and this book isn't one of the exceptions. Its focus is on men's relationships with other men, and how they're sometimes (imperfectly) triangulated through women; the women characters aren't made much more three-dimensional to readers than they are to the men in the story.

oursin requested O (One Book You're Read Multiple Times)

I'm a re-reader, which is probably connected to fanfic-reading impulse: I like the familiarity of a known story combined with the novelty of a detail I never noticed before or an interpretation I never thought of before. So it's hard to pick a single book for this category. I guess I'll go with one whose reading and re-reading was formative for me but has become more difficult over the years: Mary Renault's The Charioteer. I've owned it since I was about fifteen and I can't guess how often I've read it; there are passages I've known by heart for nearly thirty years. I threw myself into the book when I was a lonely queer kid and I don't think I've ever entirely climbed out again. The irrational intensity of my love for it makes it hard to re-read, because the things about it that bother me really bother me. (I can also barely stand to read fanfic and discussion of the book, because I get genuinely upset if someone criticizes Ralph too much, for example, or interprets the ending in ways I don't agree with.) I was trained as a scholar of literature, and normally I can step back from a text and see how it lends itself to multiple interpretations, but I have no distance from The Charioteer. It's embarrassing (apologies to the person--nameless unless they choose otherwise--for whose Charioteer fic I spectacularly failed to provide a helpful beta!) but I can't seem to help it.

magnetic_pole requested P (Preferred Place to Read).

In bed, I'm afraid. It's partly that I'm not in possession of a comfortable chair to read in, partly that, well, I like the slightly childish feeling of stretching out, totally relaxed, and getting absorbed in a book.

miss_morland requested T (Three of Your All-Time Favorite Books).

This is such an impossible question! It would be easier if I could define "favorite" for myself, because I can love a book for a lot of reasons while disliking it for others, or I can think it's wonderful without its being near to my heart, or love it dearly without actually thinking it's a great book. Gah!

Okay, fine. The Charioteer, for reasons explained above. Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett's Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams (yes, I know these are two books, shush), because they were probably the first books I ever read in which m/m subtext actually became text and it made me so. damn. happy. And Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, because I've read it and taught it and I still don't know what the hell the play is trying to do, except that it's the most depressing comedy ever and has the most sympathetic "villain" and least sympathetic "heroes" ever and also fantastic speeches.

An anonymous commenter requested R (Reading Regret).

Usually if I don't like something I just stop reading, but sometimes there's a train wreck factor, I guess. That's the only way I can explain having read Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing TWICE. Not only is it full of literal torture porn, but it's deeply transphobic and also somewhat homophobic even though the author is a lesbian. The first time I read it, its problematic nature didn't register much, but I still knew that the torture porn creeped me out. Yet I re-read it just a couple of years ago, despite the fact that one of the later books in the series was so enragingly homophobic that I swore I'd never read another one. Re-reading Mermaids really disgusted me, so I think I'm done with them now, though.

lilacsigil requested U (Unapologetic Fanperson For).

China Miéville generally, but in particular The Scar, which even among Miéville's fans is overshadowed by Perdido Street Station. I think The Scar is a better book--damn near a perfect book, in fact. I love that it's full of adventures while methodically deconstructing the adventure story narrative, I love that for once Miéville integrates his politics pretty seamlessly with his storytelling, I love that for once Miéville doesn't make everything as bleak as humanly possible, I love the richness of the prose, and I love that there's a floating pirate city and a kraken and hot air balloons and vampires and a sort-of magical sword.

tree_and_leaf requested W (Worst Bookish Habit).

I do a lot less of it now that money is short, but I still buy books that I might want to read someday and then don't read them. I'm especially prone to this with secondhand history books, because I know that my underfunded local library probably doesn't have it and I may never see another copy anywhere. *looks guiltily at stack of books about the Second World War*