Can I have my Personal Pan Pizza yet?
The Great Readathon of 2025 continues. I got a little bogged down in March, but thanks to May's book being brief I've not only kept up with the 1-book-a-month schedule, I'm even a little ahead.
I don't know whether it's fate or happy coincidence or good reviews and careful curation, but the books that have crossed my lap have been pretty fantastic.
March: The Once and Future King by T.H. White. For all of my fellow OG Disney nerds, the first part of this book was the inspiration for The Sword in the Stone. The story is divided up into multiple books. The first one is very childlike and whimsical and...annoying. I didn't particularly care for it, but I trudged ahead anyway to please the ghost of my high school English Teacher. I'm glad I did. The second book started with what is frankly one of the top three most disturbing scenes I've ever read. It was jarring. And yet it was necessary. The opening book takes place from a child's point of view, and childhood is hopeful, safe, the big evil isn't really that bad. The second book starting with a scene of petty, casual, actual evil changes the tone immediately. There are real evils in the world--in us--and they must be resisted. Even the very structure and style of the books is integral to the overarching story.
The rest of the books are really a treatise about humanity and the nature of evil and if it can ever really be beaten or changed, thinly frosted with the trappings of familiar Arthurian legend. The story was amazing and hopeful and poignant all at once, fading into despair and resignation. Amid the slowly deepening gloom there are beautiful moments, such as when Lancelot is finally able to perform the miracle he's always longed for, and he performs it in the midst of his unworthiness. And the language! White uses words in such unexpectedly beautiful ways. "She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul."
There are so many of these moments--describing how people come to knowledge of the world and how we simply keep moving forward because can "we can think of nothing else to do." Elaine's devotion to an undeserving Lancelot. Arthur's deliberate ignorance due to his love for his wife and friend. How the weakest are the cruelest, driven out of envy and a twisted love that mirrors hate. Most heartbreaking of all is Arthur struggling so desperately to keep his dream alive, to channel might for right and then right for its own sake.
April: Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. OH MY GOSH. This is one of the best nonfiction books I've read--not because the subject was so revolutionary (it isn't) but because of the beautiful writing style that makes meticulously researched and cross-referenced history so riveting and easy to follow. The book is about the Comanche, the Native American tribe that dominated the plains of North America during the time of western expansion by the U.S. In an era that seeks to romanticize and politicize history, Gwynne manages to just tell things as they happened. He doesn't champion the Comanche or the U.S. settlers; instead he focuses on the conflict between two empires with two completely different world views as they crashed into each other. There were no angels, no devils--just people in all their glorious contradictions.
I finished this book both relieved at living in the 21st century and sad that the Comanche--and so many other native nations--have dwindled to a shadow of their former selves. So much has been lost, and the attempts to recreate it are ultimately unsuccessful. In the attempt to salvage something, anything, of what they had been, so many tribes have largely amalgamated into a group that represents all yet nothing. It reminded me of Cry, the Beloved Country, where one of the main themes is the tragedy of having your past and heritage stripped from you, but not being allowed to assimilate and therefore stuck between, undefined and cut off from anything that might give you direction.
I really recommend it. It is very frank about Comanche warfare, so consider yourselves warned. Even so, it was a great look at an era that is often insultingly oversimplified.
It's unsettlingly prophetic, though I suppose you could argue that humanity was ever thus. Still, it's definitely part of the great dystopian novels for a reason.
Now, I'm not a Bradbury fan. His style is loose and sometimes veers into stream-of-consciousness, which has never been my jam. I also find him to be a little bit of a douche. Reading an essay by him at the back of the book about the response to his works, Bradbury is overconfident to the point of obnoxiousness. For example: "If teachers and grammar-school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture." I love the ideas in his work, but I don't think I'd like him very much. I don't much care for artists who worship themselves, though I can agree with him that an author shouldn't change their work to please others because it will ultimately become nothing worth reading.
Honorable Mentions: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Bower and Matthew Henson: Explorer at the North Pole by Matthew Henson.
We read these as a family. The Emma M. Lion series is a delightful story about a Victorian English orphan come to claim her house and her freedom. They are funny, clever, charming, and full of squee-moments. Beth Bower has a lovely grasp of language and a gift for turns of phrase.
And on we go! The smalls and I are currently reading My Side of the Mountain. As for me, I'm not sure which book I'll pick next. What I do know is that I'm really enjoying stretching my brain again. I'd forgotten the comfort of a book.
Comments
Post a Comment