Powering Through

Current Read: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Current Listen: Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Hello internet! I've read many things, and also purchased/received some things. BETTER GET READY.

First, I finished the second book in Marie Lu's Young Elite series, The Rose Society. You'll recall that I was a little skeptical about the first book. It's a very ambitious series that is completely fantasy (as opposed to the Legend trilogy, which is dystopian and set in America) and that also has a sometimes-almost-even-a-little-bit-evil heroine, Adelina.

It's hard to give too many details without spoiling plot points from the first book, but I was happy with new developments and new characters. Adelina is continuing in her quest for revenge against the government's Inquisitors, who are trying to rid the land of Kenettra from malfettos like her. Malfettos are young people who suffered from a past plague, and some malfettos have developed strange powers after surviving the illness. LIKE I SAID. It's a very ambitious story. But in this second book Adelina also encounters many new, intriguing characters, such as Magiano and Sergio. The reader also gets to know Adelina's sister, Violetta, as well as just get a better handle on Adelina. She's a very complicated girl, and it took me awhile to figure her out. Actually, I think Marie Lu does a fabulous job of conveying the fact that Adelina does not have herself figured out. It was a great read, and I can't wait to see how the series continues. I think it will be hard to just stop it at a trilogy, but I haven't heard about what her plans are for Adelina. It better not be over, though. There is an unresolved love triangle, and that just won't do.

Next was M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead, which was about Shostakovitch's 7th Symphony, known as the Leningrad symphony. I know basic facts about Shostakovitch, since I was required to take music history courses in college, but I LOVED learning more about him in the context of Soviet Russia. M.T. Anderson does a nice job of balancing the Soviet Russia/Stalin stuff with the music stuff and the Shostakovitch personal life stuff, if that makes sense. I learned a LOT about the context for many of the great composers, musicians, and writers of early Soviet Russia, and it was some scary stuff. There were many times where Shostakovitch could've been killed or exiled by Stalin. Many of his friends were. The book talked a lot about the siege of Leningrad, also, which I knew almost nothing about. The Leningrad Symphony did not get performed in Leningrad for a long time because he radio orchestra, the only one left in town, had too many members who were dead or dying. They ended up recruiting other musicians still in the city with extra rations, and even then many died while rehearsing the piece. I've been listening to Shosty 7 a lot since I read that book. And a lot more Shostakovitch in general. Not sure why it's taken me this long to figure out that nonfiction is my jam. Especially enjoyed the audiobook of this, since they interspersed some passages of the music that they were discussing.

Finally, last night I finished the Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet. Took a month and a half, but I did it. This was the book that I used as my "book I should've read in school but didn't" on my Popsugar reading challenge. I was told to purchase this book for a freshman writing seminar, but we never actually read it and did poetry instead. Saul Bellow has a Nobel Prize for literature, which makes sense, but that doesn't mean that this book was easy to read. It was quite difficult for me.

It is set in New York in the 1970s and is told from the perspective of a man named Artur Sammler. Sammler is a Polish Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust. Sammler feels that he has a unique perspective on humanity, particularly the brand of humanity found in New York City, because of his experiences. At one point he says of himself, "What Sammler was he could not clearly formulate. Human, in some altered way. The human being at the point where he attempted to obtain his release from being human...Petitioning for a release from God's attention." He wanders around New York City thinking about modern America and the modern world in general, which is what made it so hard. There was not a lot of action in this book, but a lot of very interesting philosophical ideas. Most of the novel takes place in his head. I think this would've been a great book to discuss with classmates, and there would have been a wealth of material for a paper. Sammler was personally very hard to relate to for me, since I am neither old, in the 1970's, nor Jewish, but by the end of the book I appreciated his perspective and unique outlook on the normal lives of the people around him. The vocabulary is quite advanced, and there were some cultural references that were beyond me. If anyone has read it, please feel free to message me to discuss it. I think that would be enlightening. I'll leave you with a long quote, but a very interesting and representative one:

"Sammler, from keeping his own counsel for so long, from seven decades of internal consultation, had his own views on most matters...there were mental dry courses in his head...small ravines made by the steady erosion of preoccupations. The taking of life was one of these. Just that. His life had nearly been taken. He had seen life taken. He had taken it himself. He knew it was one of the luxuries. No wonder princes had so long reserved the right to murder with impunity. At the very bottom of society there was also a kind of impunity, because no one cared what happened. Under that dark brutal mass blood crimes were often disregarded. And at the very top, the ancient immunities of kings and nobles. Sammler thought that this was what revolutions were really about. In a revolution you took away the privileges of an aristocracy and redistributed them. What did equality mean? Did it mean all men were friends and brothers? No, it meant that all belonged to the elite. Killing was an ancient privilege. That was why revolutions plunged into blood."

The whole book is like that. Rambling, very eloquent, but very dense and sometimes hard to read or understand the first time. That being said, I marked many pages with intense, important quotes like that. It's quality, just not what I normally gravitate toward.

In other news, I only have three books left in my challenge! And it's currently Thanksgiving break which means I'll finish at least one more this week (hopefully) in addition to the Rainbow Rowell. I also have Ransom Riggs' Library of Souls waiting for me at the library, which is very exciting. ALSO I got to go to a giant library giveaway and got a ton of books for free, which was basically the greatest thing. PHEW. That was a long one. Thanks for taking the time, and that's all she read!