a journal of the plague year [long weekend reviews]

Read Thinblade, ordered by mistake as I confused the author David Wells for another more famous one! An absolute disaster, from the poor quality of the printed-on-order self-published amazon-made copy to the abyssal style of the author (or of his dog). The story has no depth and no originality [a teenager discovers he must save the World against an evil entity released from captivity and gathers a team of un.be.lie.va.ble followers], the characters are uni-dimensional, either unbelievably good or complete evil and a colour comes with them to tell the hero which is which. The style (or lack thereof!) is massively indigest, with numerous repetitions about the feelings and questionings of the central characters, plus an hilarious focus on food, all menus being included in the text!, same endless drones about the incredible beauty of the visited castles a few days of ride from the hero’s farm. The plot is, again, laughably simplistic, making the Shannara books I read a few months ago sounding like an elaborate literary construct, and completely predictable. I cannot imagine myself or anyone else’s dog reading further books in the series…

Watched The Old Guard after an exhausting day, including a (physical) trip to a dreaded DIY store!, after reading a somewhat lukewarm review in The New Yorker… I found out later that the film is based on a comics series with the same title. And it shows from the lack of real plot (need to get quickly to Afghanistan? just drop out from a freight train in the middle of Sudan…) to the predictability of the story (set-up heroes fight bad guys and at the end, guess what, …), to the massive amount of stale gun fights with the addition of archaic weapons (to make sure everyone understands the old guard is really old!). The funniest part is actually taking place in Goussainville, France, in the ghost section of this town located on the path of De Gaulle airport planes (and thus evacuated, but not demolished), and in its Roman church (listed, hence intact!). The lack of moral imperative or of higher being driving such immortal killers, who mostly seem tired of said immortality, and the absence of connection with the locals (as e.g. in the scenes taking place in Morocco) do not make this B movie any better. (And the French character definitely has an English accent!)

Had a chance lunch in a Michelin recommended restaurant, on the road to Chenonceau and a family vacation, as we were looking for an open restaurant. The haddock appetizer was fantastic (and enough!), while the trout was not so great, presumably frozen, even though the vegetables were original (incl. chayotte) and yummy.

Read Konungsbók (The King’s Book) by Arnaldur Indriðason, found on my mother’s bookshelves, which is a stand-alone book more of the “involuntary spy” type found in Eric Ambler‘s stories than the usual social theme detective story favoured by Indriðason. While the two involuntary spies in the story are indeed two archeolinguists blundering their way through implausible situations, against hidding Nazis and East German police, as Ambler’s The Dark Frontier, the appeal of the book is in the quest for the ultimate Icelandic saga that would close the nation’s history, The King’s Book, towards recovering other foundational and historical documents hoarded by Denmark. At some point, Halldór Guðjónsson Laxness gets the Nobel Prize in Literature, which first stuns the characters into stupefied pride and second helps them into making another unlikely escape. What I enjoyed in the novel is the feeling of ultimate importance attached to the sagas and their role in cementing Iceland as a genuine nation (again connecting with Laxness, whose books described the social desagregation produced by the American occupation).

a journal of the plague year [confined reviews]

Watched TV series His Dark Materials produced for the BBC, which is much much better than the earlier film, as the actors are all fabulous—first and foremost Lyra, but also Ma Costa, the Gyptian Muter Courage—, the gypsy community is given a much stronger role, the characters are deep and complex, as eg Mrs and Mr Coulter, both ready to sacrifice kids for the greater “good” without appearing as absolute monsters! The special effects are a wee bit deficient as often with BBC productions but not enough to make a case. Although I sort of cringed each time a bear moved!

Read The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks, which I noticed standing on my son’s bookshelves. The original Shannara Trilogy was one of the very first fantasy books I read in English in my undergrad years (after Lord of the Rings of course and possibly The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), which did not leave me with an everlasting feeling of superlative literature, to say the least. This avatar of the original Sword of Shannara trilogy did nothing to improve my feelings as the plot is lazy at best, with super-powered villains suddenly acting, last second deus ex machina rescues, endless internal debates, heavy hints at treacheries and double-treacheries, and, worst of all!, intrusion of 20th century technology, e.g., computers, AIs and robots, that the far future characters make sense of. Only suitable for a time of lockdown and even then… I should have left it on the bookshelf! Incidentally, one fight scene against a cyborg was highly reminiscent of the black knight scene in Holy Grail!

Watched by chance Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. For the first time. And was totally un-impressed. Highly pretentious construction falling flat from being a modern reconstruction of antique dramas, endless dialogues (which could have been cut by half if removing all the occurrences of fucking from them), boring and threadbare story, and artificial characters that essentially make no sense. I cannot fathom why this film is so highly ranked..! (And even less to witness it being compared with Rashomon!)

Read [part] of Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes (射鵰英雄傳) but, lockdown or not, I simply could not finish it. Despite its fantasy approach to Chinese martial arts, which I usually enjoy (at least in planes!), and some proximity with the Judge Dee stories by van Gulik, the story felt very contrived and somewhat out of reach, plus [not yet] Genghis Khan being depicted in a fairly positive way [at least in the part I read]. Too irrealist for my reading buds, I presume…

Cooked plenty of new dishes, thanks to the delivery of weekly farmer boxes, from radish stems & buckwheat pancakes to celery roots purées, to fregola sarda (leftovers from ISBA 2016!) con acciughe, to chard gratins, to pea pod and cauliflower core soups, to flaxseed bread and buckwheat naans (as we ran out of wheat flour). We also managed to use and survive most of the out-of-date cans and bags that had stood forgotten in the back of our cupboard… Not visiting a supermarket for two months was actually most pleasant, living very nicely from the above mentioned farmer boxes and the occasional delivery from a cheesemonger, and supplementing weekly visits to the baker with attempts at home made bread.

Read Matha Well’s Murderbot diaries, my first read on a Kindle!, for free courtesy of Tor. Starting with All Systems Red, which won the 2017 Nebula Award for Best Novella, the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2018 Locus Award, and the American Library Association‘s Alex Award. Very good if somewhat classical (Blade Runner anyone?!) trope of the rogue robot turned autonomous and human, so human! This is a sequence of novellas which means a fast-paced story and an efficient style. (Including a less exciting third novella, due to a lazy scenario.) More mind-candy à la John Scalzi than profound literature but quite enjoyable for a quick read during lunch or tea break! But which induced me to buy the first and incoming novel in the series,  Network Effect. (To be commented in a subsequent entry…)

Leading to (re)read the Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi, the last volume in the series being just out. Very lazy buildup, in the traditional spirit of a few people driving the future of the entire Universe, with unlimited resources and unrestricted hacking abilities, but with funny dialogues, as usual with Scalzi. In this binge (re)read, I actually realised the frustrating intricacies of Kindle ordering as (i) I could not use my amazon.com account and hence none of my associate gains (ii) I could not merge several amazon.fr accounts and (iii) prices varied a lot between using directly the Kindle and ordering from amazon.fr…

And even growing some salads and radishes over the two months and eating them before the end of the lockdown, as the weather in Paris was quite mild most of the time. Although it meant a daily-basis fight with slugs. The arugula did not resist that well, though…

Reading Tade Thompson’s Rosewater for more than a month, having trouble keeping my concentration as the story goes in loops and not a particularly well settled plot. With a central idea of an alien race taking over humanity a few cells at a time. Which reminded me of Greg Bear’s Blood Music I read during the first year of my PhD. The book has some appeal, from being located in Nigeria 30 years from now to America having completely vanished from the map after Trump pulled the ultimate drawbridge. It won the 2019 Arthur Clarke Award after all! But I found it too hard to complete to even consider embarking upon the next two volumes on the trilogy…