“Babel” by R F Kaung

I started reading this book back in January and never really got into it. I have no idea why, but it just did not grab me. Then I started reading the Game of Thrones books, and ended up leaving Babel untouched for months. I knew I wasn’t permanently abandoning it, but I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get back to it. 

I finally picked Babel up again last weekend and ended up really enjoying it! It's well-written, with an interesting story that makes you think. 

Babel is an alternate history of 1800s England, specifically Oxford University and its Royal Institute of Translation. In this fictional world, England is a global empire due to its wealth of silver bars and its expertise with the magical power derived from the matched pairs of words inscribed on the surface of each bar—one word in English and one in another language. The words vary according to the power desired: fortifying an old building, keeping a carriage safe from accident, causing an explosion. The words are paired by the scholars in Babel, the Institute’s headquarters. 

The newest students at Babel are Robin (who is Chinese), Ramy (Indian), Letty (English) and Victoire (Haitian), and they become fast friends. But it isn’t long before they begin to see the vast disparity between those living with the benefits of the silver bars and those without. 

“Jane Austen: A Brief Life” by Fiona Stafford

Yep I picked this one because it's brief. It’s right there in the title. 

It makes me feel virtuous to read a biography. This one was little bit dry at times (which I find to be typical) but it was still interesting enough to read (once). Much of Austen's life story here seems to be speculation based on analysis of her writing rather than real knowledge of her life, but I assume that's out of necessity. 

And I know more about Austen now than before I read the book, although some of it I already kind of knew without knowing, like the fact that she had six novels published. Have I read all of them? I think so, but I really can't remember for sure. I mean I am SURE I have read some, if not all, of them; and I am SURE I enjoyed reading them, and I am SURE I find it odd that my husband doesn't like Jane Austen. 

I didn't know exactly when her books were published (I just knew they were old) but it turns out they're all more than 200 years old, as she died in 1817 (two of her books were published posthumously, but very soon after her death). I like the fact that people still know and love her work centuries later, and their humor and human element can still be enjoyed. 

“Big Swiss” by Jen Beagin

Easing out of Westeros is going really well so far. I started a new book on Friday and finished it on Sunday! And not because it was a teeny tiny book, either. I mean it wasn't huge, but it was a good, book-sized book. 

I picked this up during our most recent trip to the great Friends of the Library bookstore in Los Alamos (last month). It was the bees on the spine that first caught my eye, and then when I unshelved it to look at the cover, the art there was unexpected. Nothing to do with bees at all. Which is fine; I'm not sure I'd really be interested in a novel that was actually about bees. And I definitely wanted to know what happened to the upside-down lady. Sam wondered what she was doing too. Falling? Dying? 

Anyway, Big Swiss turned out to be very readable. And very quirky. It's about Greta (or sometimes Rebekah) Work, who works as a transcriptionist for a local sex therapist. The story starts in quite a voyeuristic way, and the transcription thing almost seemed too obvious as a plot device for a little bit (the scene in the coffee shop where she recognized the voices of several of the therapist's clients and mentally reviewed her transcriptions of their sessions) but then she meets a woman at the dog park whose voice she recognizes as the patient Greta had given the nickname of Big Swiss, and from there the book turns into something else entirely. But I was all in.

I will mention (in a vague way, which I hope is not spoiler-y) that as I read, I guessed that the story about Keith was completely made up, and that Luke was actually the assailant. Why else would Big Swiss have bruises on her legs, and why else would Luke be a shiv collector? Well, I guessed wrong. Although looking back I'd say if this book had been written by Liane Moriarty I would have been right.

Oh and I probably owe it to you to tell you my impression is that the cover art is there for the atmosphere it evokes rather than actually being directly linked to the narrative. 

“A Dance With Dragons” by George RR Martin

 

It is finished.

I know after reading Book 1 I said I would be fine if this series were never completed. I lied. There is too much left unwritten. I want to read the rest of the story! So, actually, I should not have said it is finished. Because it is unfinished. (Although it does still bother me to think that I may have to buy the rest of the series in non-matching books.)

But as much as I enjoyed reading this series, it is also nice to be released from it. Now I am free to choose books to read all willy-nilly! But there is a downside to this . . . I remember back to when I used to choose books all willy-nilly (it feels like ages ago, but really it's only been a few months), and I remember that not all of  my selections are as readable as A Song of Ice and Fire. Some of my choices suck. Some are just OK. I've kissed a lot of frogs in my reading life. But maybe that's part of the appeal? Maybe having to hunt for a gem makes it all the more exciting when you find one? 

Here's hoping my next choice is a gem.