Mostly light reading these two months, with Vila-Matas in reserve occasionally.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Made Things. Throwaway fantasy short novel. The usual. Fine for kids. At this point he must be able to write stuff like this in 2-3 days?

Benjamin Black, Christine Falls.

Benjamin Black, The SIlver Swan. After reading a couple of John Bannister literary novels, decided to dip into his crime novels (written under pseudonym). While friends highly recommend, I was disappointed. The crimes did not seem that interesting, and Quirk, the forensic pathologist, kept being described in exactly the same way. And according to the narrator, Quirk’s self-description (inner voice passages) is the same as the narrator’s! What? For Irish “color” or world-building of the 1950s, barely a whisper. Could be set in the present and most readers would not know.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Reading for book club. After we selected, slew of stories came out; I guess it is 100th anniversary. My daughter said it best: “It is great for every high school student to read, because all the literary devices are there hitting you over the head, so it is good for 10th grade analysis!” I had not read since high school, and had forgotten all of the plot. The unrequited love story is so superficial, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan are so one-dimensional, one wonders how, say, someone who had read Proust or Zola or Balzac or Dickens thought it significant.

Ursula LeGuin. Wizard of Earthsea. I do like reading fantasy novels in Spanish or French, because the shift in vocabulary adds some distancing and immersion that is useful I think for “transportation” that fantasy novels rely on. I read this in French, and noticed that some words that I thought to myself “don’t know” were her own made up words… so it was more like being a chid and not knowing whether a word referred to something or was fantasy. I’m a sucker for a single-themed novel about coming of age and being reconciled to the world as a big, bad, grim place, with dashes of beauty and joy, and this novel delivers that.

Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice, and Royal Assassin. Very good fantasy escapism… close attention to detail and character. In the end, I grew weary though, and really started skipping. I found I could pick up 100 pages later with little loss. Will not be reading others. But would definitely recommend for a 14 year old avid reader.

Junji Ito, Frankenstein. Manga-style version of Frankenstein. Fun read.