- Published
- 29 January 2025
- Tagged
Like a flash, it's the end of the year, and it's time for another of these run-downs. The last six months were charaterised by a number of quite chunky volumes, which means the list is a little less exclusive this time around. It also marks the first time I've got to use my new book logging framework, which I might have to write about some time.
The Counte of Monte Christo - Alexandre Dumas. I have a dim childhood memory of, it seems, watching a TV film of this with my parents - mainly I remember Dantès being imprisoned, and taking years to escape, picking up skills along the way. Weirdly I don't remember much else, given how this takes up perhaps a quarter of the novel. Perhaps as a small child I wandered off after this, I have no idea.
As I'm sure I've observed for other pre-20c books, this story really takes its time building up to the finale. I've heard the theory that these books didn't have to compete with TV or radio, so they could spread out at their lesisure, and that definitely feels the case with this. That means that it feels like this book spans the kind of narrative breadth that a modern-day author would split into a trilogy; it also means that the climax of the book has to tread the narrow line between underselling it on the one hand, and melodrama on the other. (Monte Christo decides to pick melodrama, for what it's worth.)
The book is a product of its time – both in how it assumes knowledge of, and interweaves the politics of, post-Napoleonic France, and in its treatment of women and people of colour – but with that in mind it's still an involving and labrynthine tale of slow revenge which casts a long shadow on the genre.
The Art of Fermentation - Sandor Felix Katz. This is, put simply, a book about the many ways humankind has fermented foods. It covers everything from basic vegetable fermentation through country wines, ginger beers, mold-based fermentation (sake, tofu, etc), as well as fermentation of meat and fish. It's one part practical guide, one part attempt to cover the main ways humankind has fermented foods, and one part a collection of the author's own experiences.
The book isn't comprehensive (although this is usually evidenced by the author freely admitting such in the various sections, and providing secondary references for the curious reader), and some of the later book (discussing non-food uses of fermentation) feels quite tacked-on, but it more than makes up for this in its character and enthusiasm. Katz' interest in, and keenness to explore, the world of fermentation is palpable, and it's hard to read without feeling the urge to get up and just start following along in your own kitchen. Even if it's merely the springboard for further reading, I feel it's of immense value.
Father Goriot - Honoré de Balzac. I started reading this after I finished Monte Christo and realised Dumas was basically the only French author I could name. Balzac often seems to appear in the same vein, so I prevailed upon Standard Ebooks to provide me with a copy of his novel Father Goriot.
If you read Wikipedia, it'll tell you that Goriot is part of Balzac's Comédie humaine, or "Human Comedy". Don't be fooled: Goriot is at heart a tragedy, a story about a bunch of young folks who are doing whatever they can to get ahead in a world wracked by social upheaval. It has all the tools available to be an uplifting romance, but these things aren't meant to be. In contrast to Dumas' Monte Christo, this is a more realist tale of the Bourbon Restoration. Edmund Dantès and his contemporaries often feel like archetypes or like ideas made flesh, while Balzac's characters feel more flesh-and-blood, more affected by the forces surrounding them.
I'm intrigued by descriptions of Balzac's Comiédie humaine: an interweaving set of myriad books whose characters may pop up in multiple novels, exploring the facets of Paris and France during the time. It sounds like an immense undertaking and something I'd love to make my way through - but each individual book is so long that I'm really not sure if it's worth doing. Perhaps one of these will just be Balzac.
Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr. A story of five youths, growing up in troubled times, finding solace in an the fragments of ancient Greek writer's comedy, connected by this thin thread and by the occasional chance meeting.
Doerr's structure and writing - the interspersed stories told across time, the use of written materials as a linking structure, the delving into the near future of humanity - remind me strongly of David Mitchell, although I think Doerr's take is slightly more optimistic and humanist than Mitchell's.
One highlight of the book for me was the haunting description of Constantinople in the final days of the Byzantine Empire.
Grass – Sheri S. Tepper. This novel got mentioned somewhere on the internet, I wish I could remember where. Someone was mentioning it in passing, from memory, and I thought it sounded interesting.
Grass is a science fiction story that follows a family sent undercover as diplomats on a fact-finding mission for a global church to an argarian plant in the back of beyond, as an incurable plague starts to sweep through humanity. It reminds me of plenty of other science fiction books I've enjoyed: the sweeping vistas of the titular planet Grass parallel in my mind to the sands of Dune, and the inter-family squabbles that occupy the first half or so of the book also remind me of the same squabbles you see in the first third of Dune. Some other elements (and some of the alien weirdness the family experience on the planet Grass) remind me of Dan Simons' 1989 novel Hyperion, while the relationship between the protagonist and the aliens she encounters feels somewhat akin to some of Le Guin's Ansible series.
Perhaps the highest praise I can give is that it started me reading through the rest of Tepper's bibliography, which is where I find myself now as I round out the year. So far nothing has been quite as good as Grass, but it's early days yet.
This year – the last couple of years, honestly – have been a bit of a posting desert. I'm hoping that over 2025 I can get back to posting more regularly on other subjects, as well as improving some parts of the site which I know are lacking, and perhaps finishing off some incomplete series. Only time will tell.