More Reading

[gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Today, I finished reading Greenwood, by Michael Christie.

I liked it a lot! This is what I wrote about it:

It's a generational family saga, starting from Jake Greenwood 12 years in the future, in an ecologically ravaged dustscape, all the way back to the origin of her estranged family in the early 20th century, and back again. The narrative is non-linear, but it manages to keep the flow by planting the seeds of understanding, only to rip them from dry ground as the secrets of the Greenwood bloodline are laid bare to the reader, decade by decade, tragedy upon tragedy, before we crawl our way back to present day to witness the felling of the family tree, maybe for good, maybe to allow a new sapling to take root.

There's a very strong environmentalist streak to the novel, but there's also a strong sense of practical existence; it's not an embrace of wanton destruction and reckless appropriation of the natural resources for personal or industrial gain, but rather a rejection or at least a partial condemnation of rigid ideology at the expense of the effective preservation of the so-called natural world.

Family, love, legacy, and identity (both in the individual sense of "who am I?" and "am I allowed to be who I am?" and "what am I willing to sacrifice to be myself?", and in the relational sense of how our roots define us, regardless of whether or not we are aware of them) are also themes. To avoid spoilers I won't go into detail on the actual points, but I want to assure you these themes are handled gracefully and critically.

The prose is good. It does flash garish shades of purple at times (especially when nature is concerned), but it's mostly grounded. I noticed some editing mistakes in my edition, but they were few and far between. I liked how the vocabulary adapted to the time period in question, even when that veered into the socially unacceptable in current times.

The worst part was the last chapter, as it attempts to provide unnecessary closure, and fails.

I think it's a fantastic novel worth checking out. 4/5

I was restricted by Discord's character limit and I don't feel like writing any more about it. It was good; I recommend it.

Then, I started reading The Will to Change, by bell hooks. I cried reading the preface... I'm not sure I've ever read such cutting thoughts on any subject, but certainly not on men, the patriarchy, love, and emotional numbness. This is something I've struggled with and that I do struggle with regularly, all the time, maybe, and for the first time I felt seen. I felt observed, taken-in, analyzed, and understood; Diagnosed? I've never experienced something like this, and I'm still reeling from it. It feels like the book slapped me, and I mean that literally (again, I did cry). The writing is simple and direct, unadorned, practical; but bell hooks is by no means writing empty words. I'm about a quarter of the way through and I can't help but dread the book's end.

I feel like the blinds have been cracked open on a window I didn't know I had. I didn't even know I was in a room; it was so dark I was scared to walk around and embarrassed to reach out my hands. At first, the light felt blinding and painful, but it was immediately obvious that it was a glorious thing.

Is that crazy? To be honest, I feel a little insane. I was not expecting to have such a strong reaction, but there were several sentences that hit me like a brick and then another brick and then several more, and I was bleeding and then broken and then ground to a smear. I'll keep reading and see what I get from this... But the thing is, what she's saying isn't even really news to me, not really. I've definitely read things influenced by bell hooks and by The Will to Change specifically. There's something about the very direct, clear-headed, sober rhythm and tone of the text that's just doing something crazy to me, I think.

And she gave lectures... I wonder if she was a better orator or writer.

Anyway, I wore shorts, today.