Books: North & South, Unspoken, All Men Of Genius, The Freedom Maze, The Count of Monte Cristo

[sophia_sol]

This weekend I was internetless! (see my post on tumblr for more? LOOK, IT'S EASY TO UPLOAD PHOTOS ON TUMBLR......)

So I READ STUFF.

First of all, I finished rereading North & South, by Elizabeth Gaskell! AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I, um, don't appear to have anything else to say about it. Except that now I also want to rewatch the miniseries.

Then I finished reading Sarah Rees Brennan's Unspoken, which I started reading, um, MONTHS ago, I think? It's a very good book, but it's...idk, it's not for me? I enjoyed SRB's Demon Lexicon trilogy because the bits of her id she was writing for in that series spoke to me super hard, but the bits of her id she's writing for in this book do not. I am not into the Hot Blond Aristocratic Death thing, or Intrepid Lady Reporters. I loved Rusty the most out of anybody, and Holly and Angela second. But.... the stuff the book was actually ABOUT didn't speak to me. Which, I want to make it clear, does not mean anything except that it's not what I'm personally into!

Then I started reading All Men of Genius, by Lev A.C. Rosen, which on the surface sounds AMAZING: Importance of Being Earnest crossed with Twelfth Night, starring a lady who is into science? Sign me up! But it turns out it is extremely super much part of the steampunk genre, and while I can live with that it is not a particular draw, and the first fifty pages just read like Oh Look This Is Certainly A Steampunk Novel and I was just.... I have preferable ways to occupy my time. So I closed it and put it away. I am very proud of myself! I have this terrible tendency to be like "but I heard this book was good! So I need to KEEP SLOGGING THROUGH IT to make sure I don't miss out on its amazingness!" But not every book is for everyone and it is OKAY to give up on books that are not for me! AND I DID THIS TIME.

Then I read The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman, which is mostly a very good book, but it made me uncomfortable. Because the arc was White Girl Has A Learning Experience And Grows As A person Via A Brief Stint Of Being Read As Black In The 19th Century American South. At the end of the book Sophie has learned how to deal with her autocratic grandmother and found the strength of will to stand up to her mother and a direct link is made between Sophie standing up to her mom and slaves running away???? Perhaps I am interrogating the book from the wrong perspective but this all seems super oogy to me.

Then I began to read The Count Of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (père) because apparently I am into 19th century french novels now. Okay then! I am a quarter of the way in and it is thus far VERY different from Les Miserables in feel. So far it is a book that does not believe in redemption or higher causes. It makes me want to introduce Dantes to some people from Les Miserables to get his head screwed on straight! Dantes' story has a lot of similarities with Valjean's: undeservedly imprisoned fairly young for a very long time, extremely embittered by the imprisonment, meets a priest whose gifts of money and love utterly changes his life..... and then. Valjean responds to the bishop's gifts by trying to live up to it, to be a better person. Dantes responds by vowing revenge on everyone who mistreated him. It makes me sad! Because Dantes was once upon a time a really great person and he had the potential to continue to be! But though the abbe begins by telling Dantes to think of all the good he can do his friends with that much money, despite the fact that he seems to suspect Dantes intends to use the money to instead exact revenge he does not bring the topic back up, does not exhort Dantes to behave in a worthy manner. The abbe does not have the bishop's saintliness; he loves Dantes as a son and so he wants Dantes to be rich, and that is all, whereas the bishop loves all people and wants nobody to suffer. Anyways, I'll be interested to see where the book goes from here. Currently Dantes and some rich dude named Franz are partaking of hashish together in Dantes' secret fabulous dwelling place on the island of Monte Cristo.....