Book 14: Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

A book a friend mentioned in a group chat and I decided to see if the library had it, and indeed it did! A short novel about a woman in New Orleans and the absolute disaster of a man who she loves, that takes place in a hazy idea of then-contemporary day (the book was published in 1985). It depicts an idea of the white South that floats between eras; the first scene is at a wedding, and I thought it was in the 1920s, but then a passing reference made it clear it was post-WWII, so I thought maybe the early 1960s, and then there are enough other identifying objects that mean it can only be in the mid-1980s. But the lost in time, the gentile South, the Lost Cause of it all is such a key element of the novel that it might as well have been in 1927 in the days right before things came crashing down, just like 1985 was part of the yuppie days right before the post-Reagan recession. 

This is also the kind of book that introduces a small boy in a way where you can feel his incoming death and how that will unmoor everyone, but what will stick with me is how out of time the whole story feels. It longs for a time past and considers the South to be a completely different world from the rest of the country (and certainly the East), and maybe that's right. 

Grade: B

Book 13: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin

I started reading this book at the beginning of the year, before the first season of the show based on these novellas came out, but waited to read the second and third novellas until after. And that may have been a mistake, only because I enjoyed the versions of the characters on the show much more than I did the ones in the novellas. I was excited to read these because after reading GRRM's "history" of Fire and Blood I thought that I would probably enjoy his actual stories better than half-told wikipedia entries of a made-up history. And I was right, I did, but unfortunately I think I may have lost a bit of my taste for his style of writing at this point - I remember loving the ASOIAF books that I read, but I'm not sure if I still would if I went back to reread them now. I look forward to more stories of Dunk and Egg on my screen, but I hope that the creators of that show continue to adapt rather than transcribe his work for the series. 

Grade: B