Reading Wrap Up / November 2021

hello hello how are you doing it is getting quite gray and gloomy here in london uh as often happens at this time of year uh so i hope you had a good reading month in november i know things get quite hectic at this time of year and i often find it difficult to find enough reading time uh though i did manage to read seven books uh over the course of the the month a couple of them were quite long i i did hope to read more but you know there's there's always more time to to read more books uh so i'm gonna get into talking about uh the different books i read all really interesting and good books um that are quite different from each other so i'm quite excited to talk about all of these but i'd be really interested to know if you've read any of them as well or if you after hearing me talk about them if you're interested in reading them uh please let me know about that in the comments below but i'd also love to hear about some of the best or worst things that you read over the the past month as well um it's always wonderful hearing what other people have been reading and what you're thinking about so first off i want to talk about this novel dinner party by sarah gilmartin which is subtitled a tragedy and this is about a contemporary irish family of farmers called the gleasons and it follows um their story over uh the course of uh year although it sort of flashes back in time as um they have a couple of separate dinner parties to commemorate uh very close family members in uh who have died and uh so i i felt like the title was almost like a misnomer at first because the the novel begins with immediately with the dinner party and then almost uh not many pages um the dinner party is is over and i thought like oh wow i i thought this was gonna be a whole novel about a dinner party but it does circle back to another dinner party but uh anyway i'm making this sound more complicated than it actually is it's quite a um in some ways like a quite straightforward uh novel about family life and you know how all the the details about how our family members when we have these family events we come to them with the best intentions but how they can quickly spiral out of control into arguments and chaos and how our family members are the ones that sort of know us best there's this intense familiarity there but at the same time like our family members can sometimes feel like strangers to us and and so you know there's all this these contradictions about family life and i think that's something sarah gail martin captures really well in this novel in describing this family through one of the daughter's points of view um she's now a young woman and who is yeah sort of suffering with the grief of her close family members but then struggling to connect with the family members who remain and the varying levels of allyship or um or arguments that that occur between the different family members and um so it's it's really poignant how she gets at this aspect of family life but also community life i think she really describes this uh this irish community in a very striking way and uh how there are also these contradictions which exist in community life that you know that communities can come together and support each other in really important ways uh but at the same time you know there's local gossip and and uh families can be you know sort of pigeonholed and and how that this has slightly destructive effects and um and that's really personified in the figure of the mother who um is uh has quite a temper on her and is prone to just sort of lashing out in anger and she's a really striking and vivid character um but also in the sort of community level she loves to gossip she and know everyone's business but at the same time she doesn't like her family being discussed in the same way and so yeah there's that sort of contradiction there to it and uh so yeah there's there's a lot of poignant um aspects of this novel about grief but also eating disorders that um the central character suffers from an eating disorder and uh but then it's um there there are some quite like humorous moments as well and i like how she gets at uh describing how the daughter is sort of listening to the mother talk or sort of not listening to her she just sort of it becomes sort of white noise and she's like trying to read her book and and while her mother's talking at her and um and then she realizes that she's expected to respond to something her mother says and so she's trying to scramble to um to to know how to respond and and to figure out what her mother was talking about and so i feel like there's these slightly humorous aspects of the interactions she gets between the family members but also yeah she gets that a lot of the poignancy of it so um so yeah this is a really good novel and there's some really beautiful writing it in in it as well um there was a very striking line um i thought where she was describing uh family the physical similarities between family members and um she writes he had a similar skin to herself the kind that flashed up feelings to the world and uh yeah i just thought that was such a wonderful vivid way of describing yeah the family resemblance and and like the skin the physicality of this family and uh so yeah i thought this was a really good novel a shock by keith ridgway um which is a novel that i picked up uh it was published earlier this year but it was listed for this year's goldsmith's prize and i am so glad that it was because uh this is an extraordinary novel i i think it's really striking and uh yeah unlike anything i've read for quite a long time it's uh it's also another novel that's sort of quite a lot about community life um particularly about a area of south london um which i live very close to and i'm very familiar with so i know there's i probably have a sort of slight personal connection to this this novel in a way that i know people reading it in other parts of the world might might not do you know there's a lot of local references uh like the the redevelopment of the elephant and castle area um which people might not know about if you don't know about the the area um which is just a very particular area of of london and um is a very run-down area but which is finally being um redeveloped but there's you know all sorts of controversy of that of an area being gentrified and then the the local population sort of being forced out and you know all those those sort of issues um which yeah just sort of hearing that name elephant and castle you wouldn't really know that but then um there are other references like the um how how local buses went from um you can't use cash on local buses anymore and you know that that was sort of the thing for a while uh but yeah it sort of captures this community through a number of different individuals it's almost a a collection of short stories and following um their different lives and the but these uh people have sort of loose connections to each other and in the the community um whether they uh sort of are roommates or live near each other or are sort of loose friends with each other and it all mostly centers around this pub called the arms um which is depicted on this the beautiful cover of this novel and uh but the each each section is written in quite a distinct style that sort of matches with the characters psychology so some of it is a much more straightforward representation of a character's thought process or following the dialogue between characters some of them some of the sections are very dialogue heavy and you get to know and understand the characters and and by what they're they're not saying or sublimable things in in what they're saying like there's um sort of some subliminal racism which which comes out over the course of one of the the conversations but then other sections follow really the inner thoughts and processes of these characters and um how some of them get slightly hallucinatory i mean whether they're sort of drinking or or on drugs um or they just that's sort of how how their minds work um yeah you follow these very like intense thought processes as they go about their day and um some some of them yeah get quite hallucinatory or even nightmarish um there's this sort of the the opening section is i think both nightmarish and and uh sort of uh sad and moving but also really funny i mean follows this older woman as she's steadily getting drunk in her apartment as her gay neighbors next door um are having a party and she's um yeah just sort of drinking and starts clawing through the wall um to peek into their party and just the whole process of that i i think is is is really funny in a way but but it's also really tragic because um she's she's grieving for her lost husband and she's um yeah and so uh so yeah it's it's um it's really good how he captures all the mixture of emotions in this and something about this novel which i i didn't really get from the description of it the general description of it before i started reading it was how gay this book is there's a number of sections which follow a number of gay characters in in a really uh interesting way and in depicting uh their lives in a way that i hadn't really come across before and um and i really appreciate this this new take on like modern queer life like there's a couple of the characters that um are hiv positive and and are just sort of casually uh taking drugs and and having sex um but also having having this meaningful connection with each other but also connection with each other that is in some ways like quite trivial and superficial and um so yeah i like how he gets at the duality of of that and then um but you know certainly not all of the characters are are gay there's there's other characters that are slightly more ambiguous and um there there's a character that gets really involved in in politics and in local politics and uh there's there's a character that's um that's sort of working class and he's a builder and um and it's a really striking section where he gets sort of trapped in this this house that he's he's doing um assisting in some construction on and uh and so yeah it's slightly nightmarish in that way but but also comic and so yeah again he gets at that kind of duality of it and there so yeah and the writing is um i guess you could call it slightly experimental in the way that he approaches this psychology and point of view in in this fiction um some at at some point some it goes into the point of view of like a rodent and there's quite a lot about sort of mice that are going in and out of apartments and and stuff and and so yeah it's really striking and interesting and i i just thought this is an incredible novel and and voice i never read anything by keith ridgeway before but he's written several other books so i'm really eager to read more by him he fell by sarah moss and i know sarah moss is a much beloved author i've really enjoyed i think i've read two of her other novels in the past and yeah and i think she's such a skillful and uh fascinating writer and um so this novel is very contemporary it takes place exactly a year ago in november 2020 uh when there was uh um going into lockdown again in england and a woman it follows a woman in a in a rural community um called kate who is in the middle of a tui quarantine so she's not meant to to leave her house and she lives there with her um adolescent son and uh so yeah feels really pressured about this and uh but it also follows the story of her neighbor who's a slightly older woman um who has medical issues and and so it doesn't want to leave the house and is kind of shielding because um she uh yeah is much more vulnerable to the the pandemic um but it also follows an uh emergency response man um and uh his life as kate gets into a situation which she can't get out of because she decides to leave her house because the pressure gets too much um she's a single mother she's lost her job she um she yeah and has been cooped up and feeling really the the pressure of of the circumstances and she just wants to go at a for a walk out on the the local fell or you know sort of rural um sort of slightly mountainous uh terrain that's that's around her house because she sort of thinks like well i'm not gonna you know physically encounter anyone out there so it's very low risk but um but but at the same time you know if things go wrong it's it's a very high risk because um she could be fined uh for um for leaving her house uh but also the local community members have started sort of reporting on each other if they see people have been leaving their homes when they they shouldn't have and uh and she does get into trouble she and she has a fall and injures herself and then it's like oh what what does she do from there and so it follows that dramatic incident and um sort of revolving between these four different main characters of her kate her son uh her neighbor and this emergency response worker and uh and so yeah it just captures the feeling of this period of our lives i mean it's so difficult i think in a way to to write about our um you know contemporary circumstances in a way which is at all objectives because you know we're still living through them it's still happening and and of course there's a new variant which has just come up in um and so yeah we might go through these things again and it's uh it's really scary and um so but i really admire writers that take on the challenge of trying to do that and i think sarah moss does it really well and uh you know ali smith of course did it in her most recent novel summer as well and uh and because she does really capture um the mood and the feeling of of all of these uh emotions where we're going through um the the terror and um real fear that that we have as um that the stress builds up over time over the the real uncertainty of of what's happening but also at the same time you're realizing um you know i certainly you realize that i'm in a much more fortunate position than a lot of other people and who don't live in in such privileged circumstances and and the characters really express that in this this novel and um and you know i really like how the neighbor she starts watching random youtube videos you know as i found myself doing over over the past year so i think there's a lot in this that's really relatable and something i think is uh i want to to say as i was looking through goodreads review of this uh novel and one of the top goodreads reviews um was just like one star review of someone objecting saying that i love sarah moss's writing but i cannot um continue reading this and get on board with it because she felt like it was promoting uh that the people to break the rules and to go out um and interact with each other you know rather than following the government guidance and uh and of course this is a dramatic fictional situation but i don't think the author was at all promoting that she that that's that's entirely opposite the the point of of this novel and um so you know if you're if you're worried about it reading it for that reason um don't go into this thinking that that that is the case that ceremos is trying to promote that i think that's a really severe misreading of of this novel um so yeah i definitely want to caution um about that um but she she just really handles it in a in a very sympathetic and dynamic way um portraying the current times we're living in and what we're going through and um all of the myriad emotions that we're having and uh yeah i really admire the the book for that and and think it's it's an excellent work of fiction i also read a slightly older novel um an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishiguro which was first published in 1986 and i have this um 30th anniversary edition so it's um it's it comes with a new introduction by the author where he talks about the physical circumstances of writing this novel that is um first book had been very well received but was still um you know he wasn't uh well off at all he was struggling to find time to to to write and um while continuing to work and and have a family and uh so yeah um it's it's really interesting going back and because i never read this before but i read his more recent novels and to go back to his earlier work to see the development of his style and how he gets psychological insights so well and telling the story of of a man in the years before and after world war ii um in japan and and it's a really unique new perspective because i i've not really read about the um life and or much about life in japan from the the point of view of the japanese um during during the war time i you know mostly read fiction um from uh like an american or or more western point of view and um so following his uh his his life um and how he deals with the circumstances and this politically fraught time and and alliances or or um in the the community um and and how you politically position yourself and then how you psychologically justify your political position um is really interesting and it follows his immediate family life as um he has two daughters and one who is married and one who is not married and how he's trying to arrange a marriage for the second daughter and the myriad problems sort of in involved in that in trying to strike up a family alliance but then how that sort of questions his own uh past and um his his work as an artist and his political position and um since we're all very much in his mind in his thought process i think you're sort of lulled into this sense of believing him and trusting him and he's a very likable individual but then over the course of the book you start to question him a bit and and like how much can you honestly believe what he's saying and and there are some points where he says like well i think this is what happened i think this is what was said um but was that really what was said or is that just what he's revised in his memory over the course of time to you know sort of suit his position and i think that's really fascinating and uh so yeah it's um it's it's a really great book it's it's probably not my favorite by ishiguro i probably prefers more recent novels but this was a really interesting read now as this is nonfiction november i i did want to read a non-fiction book and one that a lot of people on youtube have been telling me to get to is empire of pain by patrick radden keith it's a very long book it's over 500 pages long and is the count of the the sackler family um the patrick rodden keith is a journalist and he pieces together on the the story of this very powerful wealthy influential family and that that uh acquired their their wealth through involvement in the pharmaceutical industry and um and so he traced the development of of three brothers uh jewish brothers um who come from very humble origins in new york city in the early 20th century um but how they through their ingenuity and um and hard work they uh they acquired this this dynasty and this um this empire of influence and money and power and in doing so he he basically traces the development of the the medical industry in uh uh from from the last century and uh i really got to see through reading this book why america is in the state it is in regards to uh to medicine and and and how so many people are are really struggling to get the medical care that they need um how it's really governed and and driven by um by money and profit on the pharmaceutical industry is and and um and how this is has influenced what is prescribed and and um the the care that is um advised to be given and and uh and this is just one instance of that following the development of the drug oxycontin which is a pain reliever but which is highly addictive and which has led uh to so much addiction and um and death and uh and a lot of problems um which weren't acknowledged for a very long time by the pharmaceutical um industry and the sackler family and um but how numerous trials and numerous cases have shown that this is actually the case and uh so it's it's a really thrilling story in in a way because you get this this larger picture of the medical industry but also this really intense picture of a family and how wealth and and power have like distorted and changed and perverted this family over generations on how you know it's it's uh i've been i've been watching um very avidly on the the the show succession and you know this this powerful family dynasty and and how warped the the family becomes um because of of this this money in power and how it makes them into such awful people and really corrupts them and um and it's even said um stated in this how the the parallels between um you know the family and the show succession and and this family because yeah the resemblance is really striking i think it shows that you know this is what happens when um when you know there's there's mega money and mega power involved in these um in these families and what it does to individuals and how it's it's almost inescapable being corrupted by it because um it it holds such a sway in these people's lives so this is such a powerful and and vividly told story um that was really gripping in a lot of sections and i really admire how the author was so thorough in his journalistic research of of the family and and following documents um to to prove what happened to this family and why they're in the state that they're in why why america is in the state it is i mean i mean i have such a different perspective on it now having lived my whole adult life in in the uk whereas there's the nhs and um and so you know it's a very different feeling over here from it is what it is in in america and uh and so yeah i think it's so good in in that way although there are some sections where i thought it was slightly weighted down because he he was so thorough about the research and and i think it's it's right that he was to do so but i felt like it was almost sort of going over the same points sometime um to prove how the the facts that he was writing about and so so some of it did feel slightly repetitious but um but how it was structured sort of following the family through the generations you do get a sort of through narrative of of telling the story so yeah it was is i mean everyone who prays it i think is is right and it's and it's it's it's so good and um yeah and i'm really glad that i read it leo wife by j.r thorpe um which has such a beautiful cover and uh the the author images is very moody and uh so this is a debut novel and it's really striking and original new voice uh it's uh highly poetic in some ways uh but uh but also very intense and and vivid um telling the story of the the wife of king lear from shakespeare and uh following her account after um the events of the the play when uh king lear who went mad has died and his three daughters um who he was trying to distribute his kingdom to uh have also died and uh and so following her point of view and who of a woman who has been exiled um for 15 years uh and in in an abbey and she um lives in this abbey and um her interactions with the nuns and uh and you gradually learn over the course of the book why she has been exiled to this place because she doesn't really understand even why this has happened to her why she's been sent here and why she's living here and so um has a real bitterness um about that obviously as as you would do um being sort of thrown out of the the family and thrown out of royal life uh to to live with um a group of nuns who um she she very hilariously says at one point um trying to speak about emotions with nuns is just like trying to talk about politics um to a piece of wood and then so you know you get this this sense of um at being really isolated there she um has a servant girl with her um and uh and but yeah has a slight fraught relationship with um some of the nuns and um and so yeah i think it's really striking and original um following her thought process and um going through um her pieces of her life you get these sort of fragments from her life um because actually um as jr thorpe writes it um quindir was her second marriage she was also married married to a a very young king who was very pious and and yeah but that ended fairly early on and then she she married kin lear and um yeah and so following her story and um her piecing together her development but also in the immediacy of what's happening and how she wants to leave the abbey to reconnect um with the kingdom and um and grieve for her family who is now all dead and uh so in in some ways um i feel like it's uh it's slightly tricky um where the author chose to start this story because it's it's the essential drama of the story um or there there just isn't much actual drama to the story because it sort of takes place after the events of the play and so you know all of the the big dramatic events have sort of already happened um you're getting more just her reflections and her point of view and her thought process and um and following that and i think she does it really well but i think it poses this problem of there even though it's it's not that long a novel it's like 325 pages long but it took me quite a long time to read it i think because the the story wasn't so like gripping that i was like oh what's gonna happen next it was more just following her meditations and her thought process and you know there is there's some slight drama to it um there there is you know the the question of why she is there and and finding out um that the the problem of that but um but also the the relationships between the none and they they have to choose a new abyss and and it gets um left to her to choose the new abbess for and there's these two nuns which are sort of vying for that position so so there's that drama but you know that's not too dramatic um that there was a fire at one point so that's slightly dramatic but yeah i just felt like there even though i really enjoyed and appreciated um the the writing in this which i think was really striking um yeah there just wasn't in terms of plot and the story um it uh yeah it didn't grip me as some other books and stories you know do um so so there was that issue with it but but overall i really admired and i thought this was a really fascinating and uh original book and finally i read quite a long novel uh which is palmares by gail jones which is almost 500 pages long and so yeah this took me quite a while as as well but was such an involving and fascinating story and also has a really beautiful cover to it and uh so i was really highly anticipating this book because um gail jones is such a fascinating author i've also read her novel corrigadora which was published a number of decades ago and uh which tony morrison was was a big fan of and promoter of and um so but uh gail jones is a very reclusive author and um hasn't published anything for quite a while but this is the book which has been in the making for quite a long time so i feel like the publication of it is such an event and so it follows the the story of a young slave girl um called almeda in the late 1600s in brazil and she's born into slavery and um you follow her point of view very vividly over a number of years as she is sold off to another plantation in brazil and um but then is stolen away and taken to a uh community called palmares um which is made up of ex-uh black slaves um who are sort of running their own community and uh and following events after that and there's a lot of events after that as well and all of the the complications of this society and these communities and uh and it gets it portrays um life in this time period so vividly and strikingly and and i've you know never read about this time period you know through this area of the world and it's so striking to think how the slavery industry in brazil was such a big thing and not as often written about you know at least in um you know sort of from american writers or british writers um but was a really big deal about that um that i think there were five million slaves um brought from africa to brazil which is substantially more than um in the americas and to write about um the rich variety of life during this time and all of the the complications of this to do with with race and culture and um and so to follow a number of individuals through the the story of this girl's life um where you meet so many it's this has such a wide cast to it um it's it's sort of an episodic novel in that she meets a number of different individuals and most of the um the story takes place through her dialogue with these different individuals she meets along her way um on her sort of episodic journey um through a number of different really harrowing circumstances um but also the the intense um connections she makes along the way the knowledge she gains and um she's in a in a very um interesting position in that she knows how to read and write unlike many of the the slaves um around her and the community because a priest taught her to to do this and so she's educated in a way that others aren't and um and she gains more education along the way as she she learns about medical practices and um and um and that gives her a sigh advantage in some ways but also a disadvantage and that there's um sort of paranoia and fear about um and she comes labeled by as a witch by some and uh so yeah you follow her adventures and and um and it is uh it's such an epic story um they're it's so rich in detail and i feel like uh probably a lot of it like went over my head as um you know i don't have the the same context and understanding of this history as as i do reading some other books but i found it so fascinating and really vividly told and so striking and original and um and yeah though the way she gets at the psychology of her characters i i think is so different from any other writer i've read and so i think that's something so striking about um gail jones's fiction and um and so i'm so glad that she's still producing new work and i think apparently there's there's more novels to come from this so um so yeah quite an incredible novel um and one that i'm still sort of thinking about and mulling over because there's so much to think about with this book um so but i i really appreciated it and so so yeah um those are the books that i read in november um like i said let me know if you've read any of these books i'd love to know your thoughts and reactions to them um or if there's anything else um you've read that you you want to tell me about and you think that i would like um please let me know about that in the the comments below so thank you for watching this and and all of my rambling thoughts about the the books that i read uh but i also want to thank in particular for their support stephanie windsor joyce schwartz peter longworth sage and bob the booker um i really appreciate your your support um so i'm hoping to read um some more good things in december um it's it's a very like busy period of the year but i'm hoping to find some quiet reading time amongst all the hubbub of the holiday season but uh yeah i hope um you get some good reading time in as well and i will speak to you again soon bye

Channel: Eric Karl Anderson

Views: 3,109

Keywords: booktube, reading wrap up November 2021, book reviews, Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin, A Shock by Keith Ridgway, The Fell by Sarah Moss, An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Learwife by JR Thorp, Palmares by Gayl Jones, goldsmiths prize 2021

Id: cci_bPxTots

Length: 36min 42sec (2202 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021