Book 55: Nation by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is one of those authors who was hugely influential for so many of my friends, and somehow he completely passed me by until now. This is the first book of his I've read, and it's the sort of book that is very very well written but also doesn't feel like it's my kind of book, really.

Part of it is just that it's a post-apocalyptic, stranded on a desert island story, which are never my favorite kind of stories, even when they're told as well as this one is. It takes place on a world that's very much like our own in the not too terribly distant past, and it starts with a massive wave destroying everything on a chain of islands in an ocean like the South Pacific except for one boy named Mau. He had been off becoming a man, but because the wave destroys his home before he can be accepted back by his people as a man, he is now permanently stuck in a place in between, spiritually. He's not completely alone, however, because a ship from England carrying, among other people, an English girl named Daphne, is shipwrecked on his island, and Daphne (and a parrot) is the only survivor. And then things go from there.

Both Mau and Daphne are delightful, and much of the book is compulsively readable, because what Pratchett does with both language and narrative tropes is so inventive. But it's just not my kind of story, overall, and I feel like at the end he tries to have his cake and eat it too, which I understand and appreciate but which also felt a bit like cheating to me. I don't know. I feel like I'm damning it with faint praise to say that it's very good if you like that sort of thing, but that's where I'm at.

Grade: B

Book 54: Thirteen Days by Robert F. Kennedy

Obviously one of the best kinds of books to read during turbulent times is an historical account of two weeks when the world danced with disaster. I'm being only somewhat sarcastic by saying that, honestly; in a lot of ways I find it deeply reassuring in a certain fatalistic way to remember that the world has always been on a knife's edge, and ever thinking that it's not is the dream. However, October 1962 certainly was a crucial time in the history and even sheer existence of humanity.

The construction of this book is fascinating. The central document itself was written as a memoir by RFK four or five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is a fairly straightforward narrative of how JFK made the decisions he did and the rationale behind those choices. He also really drives home that in the moment, none of them knew that they would succeed in averting nuclear war. It's so easy to examine history through the lens of what we know will happen, and to forget that of course no result or outcome is actually inevitable.

In addition to RFK's writings and the relevant primary sources (including the correspondence between JFK and Khrushchev), there is both a foreward written in the late 1990s by a RFK biographer, and an analysis of RFK's writings from the early 1970s. The shift in our understanding and interpretation of the actions taken, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declassification of certain documents, is readily apparent in the two commentaries on RFK's memoirs. I'm glad I read this book both because it expanded my understanding of the U.S.'s relationship with and to the USSR (a topic which feels more relevant to the future by the day) and because it's a compelling reminder that history is constantly being revised, for better and for worse.

Grade: A  

Book 53: A Margin of Promise by Emma Lanner

Note: I know the author of this book socially.

This is yet another m/m regency romance that I've owned for years but somehow never got around to actually reading. The story revolves around Isaac, who has come for his first Season before attending Cambridge. He is staying with his patron Lord Edmund Bancroft, whose dearest friend Gideon is a fairly indiscreet molly boy. Edmund has promised Isaac's father that he will help Isaac find a bride, but that isn't the life Isaac envisions for himself.

One of the more unusual aspects of this book is that I genuinely had no idea what the final pairing (or pairings) would be most of the way through the book. At the beginning of the story, Gideon has been holding a torch for his old friend Edmund for many years, but he's also quite taken with Isaac from their first meeting. Isaac idolizes Edmund while finding Gideon rather intriguing. And Edmund is a bit of a mess, emotionally, and seeks out other male partners while avoiding anything close to real intimacy for as long as he can.

Eventually that resistance has to break, and when it does (and how) results in a fairly madcap final act that includes kidnappings and false marriages and even a Lady Catherine de Bourgh-esque appearance. I would have liked the emotional arcs for the main characters to be a bit clearer, and I wasn't sure exactly how much of a fantasy version of the regency the setting was intended to be, but in the end I felt that the right couple got their happy ending.

Grade: B