The Book Lair - all book talk ITT

[Dullahan]

The passages of Temple of Dawn where he sits the reader down and explains the Yuishiki school for five chapters straight are, I think, firstly reflective of a personal project of research Mishima embarked upon when writing - he wasn't a Buddhist himself but nevertheless felt he had to accurately represent the kind of philosophical interest taken by Honda at that point in the story - and secondly part of a kind of overarching structural contrast set up between Buddhism and Shinto over the tetralogy as a whole. The passages detailing Honda's research into Buddhism are, if you will, a mirror image of the passages in Runaway Horses which reproduce Isao's pamphlet about the League of the Divine Wind. In very general terms you can (cautiously) say that Mishima develops a polarity. Shinto is associated with youth, vitality, purity, spirit, which at its extreme flips over into the suicidal 'pure act' realised in Isao's suicide; meanwhile Buddhism is associated with old age, sickness, flesh (esp. the desires of the flesh), everything that the aging Honda comes to embody. Yet Mishima remains to the end ambiguous: the work is never clearly a tract in favour of one or opposed to the other. Rather than according to a contrast of actual religions I would hazard the polarity responds to a polarity Mishima found in himself, his own contradictory tendencies. In 1970 he was 45 and already thought himself an old man; he foresaw a future of gentle and mildly pleasurable decay, a withering of spirit which would trickle downhill to arrive ultimately at a place much like where Honda does at the very end, the garden at Gesshu-ji: "a place where there were no memories, where there was nothing." And he chose - the alternative.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyway now that you've read that I recommend checking out his plays. An excellent set of translations were published a while ago by Columbia University; look for the book with the bright pink cover bearing the words "My Friend Hitler: And Other Plays of Yukio Mishima"

[Sesto]

Yeah, that makes sense. With how Honda lived his life believing he had never reached the same pinnacle Kiyoaki and co. did, the ending felt fairly positive, at least from Honda's perspective. I didn't fully consider the idea Mishima was proposing this fate while still personally rejecting it for himself. For some reason I was actually under the impression Mishima died relatively younger (early 30s or so), and always viewed him more along the lines of Kiyoaki and co. rather than Honda. But knowing he was actually 45 makes things clearer, I assume there is more of Mishima in Honda than I first imagined.

I'm actually digging into his other novels right now, as I had only read The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea before this tetralogy. Which in retrospect seems like a mistake, this series feels like it would be a proper capstone to his works. But yeah, I'll get to his plays eventually.

[black1blade]

Just finished wheel of time, was pretty awesome tho share the mass opinion about the pacing issues ect.

[eddyak]

I'm of the opinion that you could cut out half the material in the Wheel of Time and lose nothing of any value, and Sanderson's volumes were better than almost the entire rest combined.

[SpoonyViking]

It's a series I'm curious about, but there's no way in hell I'm going to invest all that time in it.

[black1blade]

It's a series I'm curious about, but there's no way in hell I'm going to invest all that time in it.

It took me about 3 months to read through it all so a decent ammount of time but not tooo long. But yeah do agree that it should have ended up being around 10 books rather than the 14 we got. The first few have decent pacing but it really starts grinding to a halt midway through the series and it suffers from ever increasing numbers of subplots each with many named characters (most of which are fairly inconsequential).

[Imperial]

On the nonfiction front, I recently finished Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Depressing stuff but not really anything I didn't expect to hear about predatory employer-employee relationships. The best parts of the book were the little insights into stuff like the cleaning service where the maids seem motivated by the approval of their boss just as much as their meager paychecks. There's a sinister societal cage that comes with having less opportunity in life, and it seems impossible to break out of once you get there or are born there. The idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a joke when the game is rigged from the start.

On the fiction front, I read The Ritual by Adam Nevill after watching the movie on Netflix. The movie does a better job of capturing the wicked grandeur of everything that is going on, but the book obviously allows for more time with the characters and simpler fear of being lost and slowly starving in the wilderness. The supernatural stuff is present throughout the novel, but it takes a backseat to the interpersonal conflicts and the growing fear and hunger for a good 2/3 of the book. The book also throws in a group of Satanic teenagers for a while that doesn't seem to have much purpose. I guess it gives author mouthpiece Luke a chance to rage against faux-edgy people and serial killers, but it doesn't add much to the story. I really liked the meditations on what it means to be "successful" in life -- Dom and Phil's jobs and families juxtaposed with Luke's sense of freedom as the pros of each side and the looming bankruptcies and divorces on Dom and Phil's side juxtaposed with Luke's loneliness and sense of immaturity as the cons. You could make a case that any of them failures or they are all doing the best they can, depending on how you feel about the wife, two kids, and the white picket fence. I wasn't expecting that much reflection on adulthood in a book about dudes getting lost in some spooky woods.

[eddyak]

It took me about 3 months to read through it all so a decent ammount of time but not tooo long. But yeah do agree that it should have ended up being around 10 books rather than the 14 we got. The first few have decent pacing but it really starts grinding to a halt midway through the series and it suffers from ever increasing numbers of subplots each with many named characters (most of which are fairly inconsequential).

It was way too goddamn long for its own good- you can only stretch a bridge out so far before it sags under its own weight, and most of the middle books were just so much dead weight- they went places, but those places didn't go anywhere near the finish line.

[black1blade]

It was way too goddamn long for its own good- you can only stretch a bridge out so far before it sags under its own weight, and most of the middle books were just so much dead weight- they went places, but those places didn't go anywhere near the finish line.

Yeah I feel like a lot of the subplots didn't have a satisfactory pay off to make the time spent in them worthwhile like all the time spent on the seafolk and kin after the start of book 8. Does vary person to person but I would say for me the time spent was worth it for the eventual pay off for the main storylines but not the for the faint hearted definitely. I would definitely recommend stormlight over WoT because I feel in stormlight the characters' emotional arcs are woven more tightly into the overall narrative.

[Deathhappens]

That reminded me I have Book Six somewhere in my library and I legit do not remember where I left off in the slightest. I'll probably get around to finishing it someday.

The Dresden Files' Peace Talks was finally finished as of July 20, so I expect it should be coming to print sometime this month. Hype.exe

[black1blade]

Ahh the university chapters in name of the wind are simply magical. Find myself grinning and laughing along and occasionally relate things to ongoing uni experience.

[Dullahan]

in a fit of pique i read Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" in one night. a promising beginning let down by the second half. extremely strong candidate for "SF book most obviously written by an engineer" surpassing even stephen baxter's "Coalescent". a very "anime" kind of story, in a manner of speaking. will not be continuing with the sequel

[Mattias]

'Sci-fi writen by an engineer' + 'anime' makes me think of one of those stories where the main plot gets lost 1/3 of the way in in exchange for the MC abusing the magic/tech system to make increasingly outlandishly overpowered things that won't actually see use in the story proper outside of their 'wow, look at how I can game the system' introduction.

[Dullahan]

ok look it's not mahouka by any means, it's just a disappointing book

[Deathhappens]

ok look it's not mahouka by any means, it's just a disappointing book

I would dispute the idea that Mahouka was written by someone with even a rudimentary understanding of how physics work.

[Hermitfold]

Whoa, been some time since I was on this thread!

I'm currently reading the Teixcalaan series. It has an interesting view of the ways conquest and empire can shape culture, history, politics and especially language.

[Deathhappens]

Gaunt's Ghosts is a pretty good series, even if you're not really into the madness that is 40k. In fact, it's probably a great introduction for those who aren't into rah rah Space Mehreens shooting up things with big guns for ten pages straight. First and Only drags a bit at the start, though.

[Five_X]

How do you book-reading folks manage to keep up reading something that's 300+ pages, let alone a series? Something that's shorter I can do in an afternoon or two, but my brain tapers off eventually when I try something longer these days.

[aldeayeah]

Long books tend to have part breaks, just stop on one of those?

[Five_X]

Then I stop reading forever and by the time I come back to the book I forget everything

I need to get better at being consistent with reading so I can keep a better pace than 2.5 books per year.