aeudaimonia's reviews
70 reviews

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

challenging dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

Several weeks after I finished the book, this review won't be as detailed and nuanced as I'd like. For what it's worth, I did enjoy it. I usually rate anthologies 4 stars to cover the mostly good and the some bad; some of Borges's stories felt neither good nor bad, but intellectually inaccessible to me. I've never read an author who could write cogently about so many cultures and subjects, so widely fluent in history and philosophy. I'm sure that I'll understand some of these stories better if I return to them later, after further study beyond Borges's pages: the occasional inaccessibility seems to be to his credit. This book also represented my first foray into Borges's corpus and Argentine literature at large; I have much to learn yet.

In my opinion, Borges at his best is Borges on Argentina (and neighboring Uruguay). From "Man on Pink Corner" and "Funes, His Memory" to creative takes on Martín Fierro and gaucho literature, it was nothing less than a joy to discover the region and its history so intimately, through the eyes of one of its most learned men. While his stories about Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were by no means less skillfully written, they inevitably felt rather less authentic.

On that last point, I found myself considering more than ever whether some of these stories were Borges's to write. Specifically, his work features a plethora of Jewish characters--along with a subtle yet pervasive antisemitism. One story in particular, "Deutsches Requiem," I found irredeemably egregious:

an investigation into a Nazi's soul, a subdirector of the Tarnowitz concentration camp, portraying him more like an anti-hero than anything else. Importantly, I am not Jewish, and all this should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, with Nazism on the rise globally, I can't help but think that stories like this cede too much ground. Sure, Borges doesn't suggest that this Nazi is actually a good man--if anything, he's more symbolic of the rule of violence endemic to the 20th century and beyond. But simply by drafting this character study at all, by making a symbol and an intellectual quandry of a fictional man who belonged to a very nonfictional party, who tortured and murdered very nonfictional people, innocent people--in my opinion, Borges goes too far here. Particularly since he himself was not Jewish, and since his Jewish characters by no means subvert antisemitic tropes and the same rhetoric that helped to fuel the Holocaust.

In short, I think a discussion about who gets to write whose stories is very relevant.

Overall, however, I liked the collection and liked it more once I got used to his style. Towards the end of the book (corresponding to the end of his life) I thought the stories were almost too philosophical: almost every paragraph contained some "deep thoughts" and felt like Borges, now an elderly man, was just telling us what he had learned and what the world is like. This isn't a flaw per se, but generally I preferred his earlier writing--a little more intimate and a little less moralizing. Consequently I'm not sure about the last couple books, but the first few I'd love to return to eventually, whenever I have time and whenever I have the intellectual capacity.

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren

funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

4.0

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The Eclogues by Virgil

lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I don't want the 3.75 rating to convey a sense of disappointment, or - worse - to denigrate Virgil's obvious poetic skill. I only mean that (unless you're a classics major or otherwise passionate for bucolic poetry) this is not a pleasure read for a 21st-century English-speaking audience. Virgil's skill, I think, is not in content but in construction; the beauty is in the language itself and how he molds it to fit Latin dactylic hexameter. The Eclogues are beautiful, but translating them diminishes their beauty almost beyond reach for a casual reader.

(NB: Guy Lee's translation itself was lovely and, in my opinion, accessible. I loved his decision to render the dactylic hexameter into the English Alexandrine; it preserved the work's poetic cohesion and replicated as much as possible the original's cadence.)

The other issue for the casual reader is the pervasive repetition. As a Gen-Z American I feel hopelessly far removed from the world Virgil describes and celebrates. Occasionally a topic struck a chord (the then hot-button issue of land confiscation, for example) but, generally, the content felt so alien as to obscure or distract from the enduring human truths to be found in all literature.

If I ever have time to brush up on my Latin, I hope to reread The Eclogues entirely in their native language. No doubt my esteem (and star rating) will be all the greater. But, for now, and in English, a 3.75 will have to suffice.

Buzz Words: Poems about Insects by

lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

4.0

4 stars feels appropriate for a poetry anthology. The book includes poems from a wide variety of cultures, time periods, and languages (all, however, are given in English). Some, of course, I hated, but many more I loved: they're united by topic only, not by skill. Speaking of topic, my only complaint is that the poems are arranged by type of insect: bees and ants (the workers), spiders (the spinners), flies and gnats (pests), etc etc. I was sometimes weary reading 20 poems in a row about a single insect or two; I'd have liked it better if they were ordered alphabetically or chronologically by author to lend at least the illusion of variety. All things considered, however, a delightful little book and a great start for anyone who wants to read poetry but doesn't necessarily have the stamina to commit to a single poet's collection.

The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún by Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien

adventurous challenging dark sad medium-paced

5.0

Rating this book - Tolkien's poetic reworking of the Old Norse lays (with supplemental information from the Prose Sagas) - is frankly beyond my intellectual capacity. 5 stars for my time and trouble! Before you begin, please read the introduction(s). You won't understand anything that's happening otherwise, and you won't understand why you don't understand (Norse skaldic verse is obscure and troublesome by design). Secondly, read it out loud! Tolkien went to great lengths to make it read like poetry rather than a mere translation. Silent reading, I think, actively diminishes the artistry and makes it harder to understand. 

Additionally, for anyone nervous about the length of the book, the lays themselves are relatively short; the bulk of the page count goes to the introduction and commentaries on both the Völsungakvida and the Gudrúnarkvida. Consult them liberally! Christopher Tolkien took great pains to make his father's work intellectually accessible to Norse amateurs. Apologies for my unusual bossiness in this review but I love and appreciate this work so, so much. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Incest

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

I feel weird about rating a dead man's grief journal, but suffice to say I loved this book. I read this around the 2-year anniversary of my dad's passing; while Lewis is writing primarily about spousal relationships and subsequent grief, I still sobbed at multiple points within a mere 76 pages. It's not the masterwork of logic Lewis is so often known for, but so much the better: it is simply the process of anger, doubt, self-loathing, and acceptance. As a Christian, especially, there's so much stigma around experiencing grief as it is! We are reminded of Job who refused to curse God; we're encouraged that "everything happens for a reason" and to think of the people who have it worse. What's actually encouraging is to get such an intimate look into Lewis's mind, so familiar to anyone processing loss, and to know that the most influential theological giant of the last century has struggled in the same way. I will be forever grateful to him for publishing his vulnerability in all its imperfection and beauty.

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

4.25

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

challenging informative medium-paced

4.5