August 2024 Reading
Sep. 1st, 2024 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrimettThe Lost Souls of Benzaiten, by Kelly Murashige - After the trauma of her best friends wanting nothing to do with her anymore, Machi develops selective mutism and serious apathy and depression. After seeing therapist after therapist, she visits an little unknown shrine, makes an unexpected prayer, and surprisingly, the goddess Benzaiten actually answers, though in a way Machi didn't expect and mostly doesn't want. The book is a powerful exploration of grief and trauma and the ways it can affect us that look baffling from the outside, and also how sometimes small seemingly-inconsequential actions can change a person's life, for good or ill. This book resonated with me a lot, it had many echoes of some traumatic things I've experienced in the past, and after reading it, I needed a bit of a break. It was fantastic! It was an engaging story and written well and I loved it. But it also hit extremely close to home for me and I needed some time to process everything before I read anything else. Highly recommended, though. Go read it if you haven't yet!
I Want to Live, by Nina Lugovskaya - The translated diary of a teenager who lived during Stalin's reign in Russia, in the 1930s, before she and her family were arrested and exhiled to years of hard labour. While it was a fascinating look back at that time, and a piece of history that I didn't know much about, I have to admit that Nina herself was, well, pretty boring. I didn't find much to be interested in when it came to her stories of liking a boy but the next week thinking he was dull and beneath her and then the week after liking him again. Or her feuds with her older sisters, most of which seemed to be prompted by absolutely nothing and were rather incomprehensible to me. Maybe it's just been too long since I was a teenager, but I was far more interested in aspects of her life which were often only barely touched upon in the diary entries. I'm aware that some of this was due to the translation, and also the destruction and redaction of certain entries to keep the family safe, but still. It's an interesting look at a period of history I knew nothing about, but Nina herself just didn't appeal to me. And I feel rather bad saying that about an actual person who went through hell.
Among Others, by Jo Walton - The diary of a disabled teenager, written from 1979-1980, and how she experiences boarding school, a sci-fi book club, and saving the world from her insane witch of a mother with the aid of fairies and her love of fiction. No, seriously. This book is magical realism at its finest, and I adore it, so much so that this is a re-read. I can't count how many times I've already read it. It's a book I want to savour every time, reading slowly, but also one that I want to speed through because I want to see the next part, the next entry, the next book recommendation. The protagonist, Mori, has a typical teenager snobbishness about her, but also a good heart, and her voice is fantastically realistic. Fans of magical realism and historical fantasy will find a lot to love about Among Others. No review I could write can really do it justice, in my opinion.
I Want to Live, by Nina Lugovskaya - The translated diary of a teenager who lived during Stalin's reign in Russia, in the 1930s, before she and her family were arrested and exhiled to years of hard labour. While it was a fascinating look back at that time, and a piece of history that I didn't know much about, I have to admit that Nina herself was, well, pretty boring. I didn't find much to be interested in when it came to her stories of liking a boy but the next week thinking he was dull and beneath her and then the week after liking him again. Or her feuds with her older sisters, most of which seemed to be prompted by absolutely nothing and were rather incomprehensible to me. Maybe it's just been too long since I was a teenager, but I was far more interested in aspects of her life which were often only barely touched upon in the diary entries. I'm aware that some of this was due to the translation, and also the destruction and redaction of certain entries to keep the family safe, but still. It's an interesting look at a period of history I knew nothing about, but Nina herself just didn't appeal to me. And I feel rather bad saying that about an actual person who went through hell.
Among Others, by Jo Walton - The diary of a disabled teenager, written from 1979-1980, and how she experiences boarding school, a sci-fi book club, and saving the world from her insane witch of a mother with the aid of fairies and her love of fiction. No, seriously. This book is magical realism at its finest, and I adore it, so much so that this is a re-read. I can't count how many times I've already read it. It's a book I want to savour every time, reading slowly, but also one that I want to speed through because I want to see the next part, the next entry, the next book recommendation. The protagonist, Mori, has a typical teenager snobbishness about her, but also a good heart, and her voice is fantastically realistic. Fans of magical realism and historical fantasy will find a lot to love about Among Others. No review I could write can really do it justice, in my opinion.