troisoiseaux

Finished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like the narrative of someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.

Read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams, picked up at a used book sale; it's technically the sequel to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, a book I have never actually read,* although it made enough sense on its own and the parts that were cheerfully nonsensical would not, I suspect, have been made less so by reading the first book. If I had a nickel for every novel I've read about Norse gods running around 1980s England, I would— scratch that, I'd only have one nickel, because it turns out Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke was published in 1975, but look, my point stands. (Ooh, now I want the fanfic where a now-adult David and Kate meet and compare notes.) It also reminded me a lot of Good Omens, even more than the usual base level of Douglas Adams 🤝 Terry Pratchett similar vibes, maybe because the two meet on the middle ground of "fantasy in (then-)contemporary real world" between the usual distance of Adams' sci-fi and Pratchett's secondary-world fantasy? Anyway, found myself boggled by some of the specifically '80s details, including the depiction of a pre-2000s airport and the running joke that a. pizza delivery was not a thing in London (?) and b. that this was the main thing New Yorker protagonist Kate was homesick about. (I found this especially curious since I don't associate New York City pizza places with delivery, but then again, I don't live in NYC...?)

* I watched the delightful and sadly short-lived TV adaptation that shares a title and apparently little else, some years back, and definitely tried reading the book at some point after that, but it didn't take.

Read Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler, because apparently I'm on a memoir kick. This one is about the author's (voluntary) hospitalization for a mental health crisis in 2021 and her experiences leading up to it, the main narrative interspersed with flashbacks to a lifetime of unpleasant interactions with men, including a relationship with a nearly 30-year-old when she was a minor (enabled by the 2000s emo-punk scene's lack of "any moral compass pertaining to underage girls"). This was an uncomfortable read, in an even though she wrote and published this book I feel vaguely like I'm invading her privacy by reading it way. (And, given the overarching theme of "ways the author has been wronged by men," I also felt faintly guilty for having picked this up mostly because of her association with a famous man, i.e., her ex-husband, a popular comedian, who does not appear in this book whatsoever.) Also there is the death of a pet. :( So, yeah. Oof.

Continuing I Leap Over The Wall by Monica Baldwin, who was a cloistered nun from 1914 to 1941 (!!) and also, as it turns out, the niece of former British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, so on top of everything else— details about life as a nun, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, don't differ that much from those in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, even with the decades between them; her sense of time warp from having left the outside world on the eve of the first World War and returned in the middle of the second, and adventures in adjusting to the "modern" world— she throws in occasional references to "Uncle Stan" and charmingly out-of-touch experiences such as having "received a more or less average education, first by governesses and then at a continental finishing school." All recounted in a cheerful, gossipy, very 1940s tone, so I'm enjoying this a lot.

Read The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, direct sequel to bonkers publishing-industry thriller The Plot and pretty much impossible to describe without ( spoilers for both books. ) Like the first one, this was entertainingly, compulsively readable in a no thoughts, head empty kind of way. Convoluted thriller aside, it's a send-up of the publishing industry and its trappings (book tours, author interviews, etc.) and cheekily meta/self-referential: early on, one character comments that sequels are never as good as the original, are they?; I didn't catch it until the note at the end explaining the joke, but all of the chapter titles are the titles of sequels to popular novels.

Finished The Tatami Galaxy by Tomihiko Morimi, which is not so much a puzzle-box narrative as the literary version of one of those comics where the characters reach between panels to interact with objects or whatever. (Obviously, better versions of the concept exist, but the first one that comes to mind was "luk a hat".) Across four different timelines, a disaffected Japanese college student makes different choices about his social life, but even as he always ends up bemoaning that surely the grass would've been greener if he'd made different choices, some things remain constant. ( ... )

Have started two memoirs from two women with very different life experiences: In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Mendez, a memoir of her Cold War-era career with the CIA, rising through the ranks from a "contract wife" ("the agency had always counted on the accompanying spouse{s}" of CIA officers posted abroad "to fill low-level positions overseas on a contract basis") to Chief of Disguise; and I Leap Over the Wall by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir by a former nun who entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and therefore ends up reading like the memoirs of a time traveler. (The latter was originally recced by oursin, after I'd posted about more recent ex-nun memoir Cloistered, but osprey_archer beat me to actually reading it.)

The 2025 NYC Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night is available online (via PBS) through the end of the year, and is tremendously fun! Such a stacked cast— with Lupita Nyong'o as Viola/Cesario (and her real-life brother as Sebastian), Sandra Oh as Olivia, and Peter Dinklage as Malvolio— it's genuinely hard to pick a stand-out performance?? I will say that Dinklage is probably the best Malvolio of the three I've seen within the past year, although he plays it both less campily and less sympathetically than the Folger's recent production or Tamsin Greig in the 2017 production on National Theatre at Home; I'll also say that Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Sir Andrew Augecheek stole every scene he was in, but honestly, "Sir Andrew was a hoot" was my takeaway from all three productions and so I think it might just be a really fun role. (On a less expected note, Orsino's entourage was also a hoot, especially with the recurring bit of one guy who kept laughing out of turn and then dropping into push-ups when Orsino looked at him. Also, fantastic Orsino, with kind of "manly man who's secretly a softie" vibes that made for an appealing take on the character— although, until the Drag Race runway vibes of the final bows, I would not say that this was a particularly gender-y version of Twelfth Night, overall?) In assorted other details: this staging had Nyong'o (actually, both Nyong'os) occasionally slip into Swahili, including the initial dialogue between Viola and Sebastian when they reunite, which was a cool touch; I didn't know what to think of the backdrop of giant letters reading WHAT YOU WILL, at first, but it earned its keep as a set-up for the punchline in the scene where, as Sir Toby and co. spy on Malvolio, they all hide behind smaller/portable/individual letters spelling out TREE.

Read Paper Towns by John Green, because my year of revisiting 2000s YA lit wouldn't be complete without a single John Green novel and this is the one that was immediately available on Libby. Towards the end of their senior year, perceived manic pixie dream girl Margo and literal boy next door Quentin share one night of shenanigans - pulling an all-nighter to enact teen-movie revenge on Margo's cheating boyfriend and a handful of frenemies - only for Margo to disappear the next day, leaving behind a trail of clues for Quentin to decode and follow. It is a non-zero amount of cringe - mostly in a way that loops around to oddly endearing; sometimes in a way that is definitely still cringe - but overall, I enjoyed this more than I had expected to. There's a weight to it that I hadn't remembered, in that ( ... )

I don't think this book was how I discovered the Mountain Goats as a teenager, but its epigraph quotes from "Game Shows Touch Our Lives" ("People say friends don't destroy one another / What do they know about friends?") and, later, there's a passing reference to Q and his friends singing along to the Mountain Goats that I found disproportionately touching, both because of now knowing about Green's love of the band from The Anthropocene Reviewed (five stars; higher than, say, the wonder and majesty of Halley's Comet, which only rates four and a half) and my own nostalgia.

Finished The Mother's Recompense by Edith Wharton, a 1925 novel about a woman who reunites with her now-adult daughter after having left her husband and losing custody when her daughter was a toddler, only to find out that - and, as this information comes out halfway through the novel but is revealed in the second or third line of the blurb, depending on which one you read, I don't feel like it is technically a spoiler* - her daughter is now engaged to her (the mother's) ex-lover, and handles this very badly. I spent most of it wanting to shake the characters (mostly the mom, Kate, and her ex, Chris**) while screaming PLEASE COMMUNICATE, although, in this case, honest communication definitely would blow up at least two relationships. ( ... )

* I knew the "twist" going in, from the plot description, but I have no idea whether someone reading this when it was originally published would have been similarly forewarned, so I was curious about what the original author intent/audience expectation was— was it supposed to be a shocking twist, or was the emphasis on the dramatic irony of expectation leading up to it? I can't tell from the construction of the narrative alone - there are definitely hints, and red herrings, and then the fairly obvious clue that literally no other youngish man besides Chris is ever introduced - but it probably works either way.

** Honestly kind of a surprise to read an Edith Wharton novel where everyone has names like Kate and Chris rather than, e.g., Newland and Undine.

Saw Arena Stage's revival of Damn Yankees, which updates the 1955 musical about a middle-aged baseball fanatic's deal with the devil - his soul for the chance to lead his beloved Washington Senators Baltimore Orioles to victory over the unbeatable New York Yankees, as a younger man of supernatural talent - to 2000, and adds a layer to main character Joe's backstory via a minor league baseball-playing father who was unable to pursue a major league career due to racial discrimination ("Back then, they didn't let you play unless you were Willie Mays"). Fantastic show! The actor who played young Joe, Jordan Donica, has the most incredible voice— now, I feel like this statement is likely to be interpreted as "he has a really good voice" and, no, I must emphasize it is a genuinely, gobsmackingly incredible voice, like, the kind of voice you feel in your chest when he's singing. Pause, watch this video, and come back. ANYWAY. Outside of Jordan Donica's singing, the highlight of the show was Rob McClure as the devilish Applegate, which he plays with a slimy charisma - half salesman, half stage magician, all gleeful malice - and all of the show's funniest lines (a crack about Florida being worse than hell and the exchange "You've got lawyers?" "Millions of 'em, and more every day" got particularly loud laughs from the DC audience)/moments, including (what is revealed to be) a mid-show appearance as the Orioles' mascot to lead the audience in a sing-along of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

This was staged in the round, with a surprisingly small stage space but creative use of, e.g., aisles and trap doors; I don't think a Broadway transfer has been confirmed yet, but it's definitely aiming for one, and I'd love to see what it does with more room for the spectacle of it all. As it is, this had great lighting/sound design and staging— in particular, the use of lighting to facilitate the slight-of-hand swaps between old and young Joe, and between immortal temptress-for-hire Lola* and the aged crone she would have been a few hundred years ago, when Applegate reminds her of the deal she'd made with him to ensure her help in sabotaging Joe's; fun use of video projection (on a low "wall" fencing in the stage) when Applegate first appears to tempt Joe, by popping up on Joe's TV to continue the pitch after his initial confused dismissal. I would describe it as a dance-heavy musical (although, to air opposing views, my friend D. felt that it wasn't especially dance-heavy for a Golden Age musical), with particularly acrobatic dance numbers for the ensemble cast playing the baseball team; those guys were leaping and backflipping all over the place.

* Speaking of the show's updates, per skimming Wikipedia and some other reviews, it looks like this production toned down the character's faux-exoticness and gave her a more developed/sympathetic backstory; the other big plot change was that Applegate's scheme to sabotage Joe was to frame him for doping. Another nice modern touch was that the staging of the opening number about how baseball-fanatic spouses are distracted by the game "Six Months Out Of Every Year" included both a gay couple and a straight one where the wife, rather than the husband, was the die-hard fan glued to the TV.

Read Clever Girl by Hannah McGregor, part of the Pop Classics series of bite-sized nonfiction/novella-length essays about whatever pop culture its contributors have childhood nostalgia for or otherwise find worth revisiting— this one, as you might guess, is about Jurassic Park. It's a little more self-serious than the other ones I've read (on Jennifer's Body and the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games), with chapters subtitled things like "The Queer Erotics and Feminist Monstrosity of Velociraptors" and "Settler Colonialism, Dinosaur Ecology, and the Violence of Discovery"; I'm not entirely persuaded by all of McGregor's arguments for a queer, feminist reading of Jurassic Park, but that's what's great about movies, right? Different viewers get different things out of them, and for McGregor, it was a way of embracing one's sense of otherness and coping with grief.

Finished Stephenie Meyer's Twilight-from-Edward's-POV official fanfic rewrite, Midnight Sun, and I have some thoughts:
- This was definitely more interesting than original flavor Twilight, mostly because it's more overtly supernatural; in the original, Edward keeps insisting he's a dangerous monster who literally lusts for Bella's blood, but the reader mostly just sees him sparkle and run really fast.

( Read more... )

In other media, Florence + The Machine has a new album out, including a song about transforming into a kraken and eating the haters, so that was a Halloween treat.

Finished Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, which I enjoyed SO much— I don't know what it says that much of the media I've been enjoying lately has shared the premise of "darkly whimsical depictions of Hell" (e.g., Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss), but the version that Kuang's two rival grad students descend into/dungeon-crawl through to rescue their inconveniently deceased dissertation advisor is cleverly drawn as a funhouse mirror of a university campus: ( ... )

It's not first-person POV, so this doesn't feel quite accurate, but I don't know how to describe main character Alice except as an unreliable narrator: her advisor is clearly an awful person, both in a garden-variety if extreme "toxic/predatory professor" way and an "unethical magical experimentation" way, but she spends most of the book bending over backwards to justify his actions (but he's a genius! he's not a bad person, just tragically flawed!); she is so, so deeply messed up and yet convinced that she's completely fine, actually, stop pitying her, GOD, and also all of it was her own fault anyway. ( ... )

Anyway, this appealed to me in a lot of the same ways as the Locked Tomb books, The Magnus Archives, and - of all things - The Phantom Tollbooth. I probably would find some nits to pick if I hadn't finished it in a three-day blur of just deeply vibing with it, but as it is, 10/10.