konniecanread's reviews
71 reviews

This is a book that contains three fictional dictionaries about the Khazars, a (real, historical) nomadic people, and their (made-up) conversion to either Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. There is no plot, in the traditional sense, you literally just get three alphabetically sorted encyclopaedias you have to dig your own way through to find out what's going on. There are three dictionaries, incidentally, because they all present different narratives from the perspectives of the three religions the Khazars might have converted to.
This is very cool and weird, and I definitely enjoyed this approach to storytelling. The issue for me is that on top of all this strangeness, the dictionary entries are also super cryptic, metaphorical, and abstract. Everything is told in weird non-sequitur fantastical narratives, nothing is clear or obvious. This was a little too much for me, I think. I do need something normal-ish to hang on to in my books, to keep me reading, and this was completely missing. It's experimental all the way down.


At some point I also became a little unsure about whether there actually was something deeper to the book, or whether it's all just gimmicks for their own sake. This came to a head for me when the author, in one passage, explicitly talks about why he structured the book like this, in an attempt to make the reader more actively involved in the narrative, to allow him to be a participant and not just follow the author around. Sure, this is cool, but something about so explicitly explaining a pretty obvious thought in such an abstract book made me kind of doubt that there was much behind the rest of it.

Imagine you're looking at a piece of abstract art which includes, amongst much more symbolic shit, one of those Instagram quotes that's like "I'm broken". Since the rest of the artwork is so weird, you assume this has to be more than just teenage edge - perhaps its satirical or metaphorical, or making a commentary on society? But then the artist comes to you and explains to you how the crossed out letters actually show you that the person is not ok, but broken! And you're like ??? Were you stupid all along?

But yea anyway all this negativity and such aside, still a pretty fun book, I guess.

To me, this read like a collection of bits and essays on literature, gender, feminism, death, and pretty much everything else tied together (very) loosely by a mostly uninspiring plotline. The bits (sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes beautiful) are all great, but the whole Vita/Sackville Family/Orlando aspect of the plot just doesn’t really speak to me.

Terry Pratchett meets... Lovecraft? Everything in this book is huge, mysterious, grotesque, strange, dense, and absurd. This would usually be right down my alley, but somehow in this case it didn't quite click. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood, but I think the darkness and complex language on top of all the weirdness was just all a bit much for me, in the end.

When I was a kid I read these books called The Edge Chronicles - similarly, these had everything be big, weird, strange, with these crazy grotesque double-page illustrations by Chris Riddell (one of my favourite illustrators even now). I remember liking the first few books of these because throughout all of this Lovecraftian scale, it was still light in tone and style. In the later books, these shifted to fit to the rest of the narrative, and it all just became a bit much. Gormenghast felt the same.

Very strange, very funny, and very, very good. About a woman who is the last animal on earth. Probably. She claims she is, but she's also completely insane, so we really can't be sure. She chooses to spend this book writing about... everything, really. She covers Homeric myth, a book in her house called The Life of Brahms which has been warped by moisture, Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language, a piece of tape which, when blown by the wind, sounds a bit like a cat, which she then names after Van Gogh (the cat, that is), Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger (none of whom she has read a single word of), Spanish castles, and bricolage. Throughout this there's also a more genuine metatextual discussion of loneliness, truth, and language.

The writing is completely non-linear. Her thoughts do not follow from each other (if you are sane), she frequently comes back to the same stories and ideas she has already discussed, often misremembers stories and facts, sometimes returns to these 200 pages later to correct them, otherwise leaves them standing. She makes up stories, then later forgets she made them up, she tells real stories, then later decides she made them up.

If this all sounds very pretentious - that's because it is. But it's also continuously hilarious, thought provoking, and managed to completely subvert how I think about storytelling. Very likely my new favourite book.

I read this once a few years ago, thought I'd give it a reread since I remembered it positively and wanted something easy to read. For me, this is the pinnacle of one of my favourite genres, "cool idea fiction", where it feels like the author had a cool idea one time and decided to write a book around it.

The idea was cool and well explored. I am always a sucker for immortality/rebirth/time loops as themes, but the way it is done here, with characters re-living their life again and again, is particularly creative. Characters feel their age, discuss philosophical implications of the idea, and their immortality even has some surprising consequences beyond the usual groundhog day tropes.

The writing is also surprisingly good, considering that this book is mainly sold by the cool idea - North did not have to go so hard. I really liked the pacing of chapters, which oscillated between main plot line and flashbacks to previous moments from Harry August's lives. It was a nice way to build up his character on the go.

Perhaps the only negative is that I didn't really care too much for the main plotline? I can't really pinpoint why, but I often felt more engaged by the mini-narratives of the non-plot chapters than by this grand line. Made reading past ~60% a bit less fun - but still, good stuff.

I always thought of Brandon Sanderson books as kind of like of Marvel movies: not the best, but mindless and entertaining. This book really rounds off that comparison by also becoming bad. 

What was once quirky, clumsy attempts at humour and one-liners is now obnoxiously unfunny and cringey. All characters have become quippy and jokey, even when it doesn't fit at all.

What was once well-intended diversity of mental health, sexuality, race, and gender identity is now so oversimplified and out of place that it borders on parody. Previously characters were unsure about who they were and how they felt - now they rattle off DSM diagnostics. 

What was once cool tie-ins for fans who had also consumed other media from the same source is now mandatory reading that makes the otherwise very black and white plot line unnecessarily complex. Honestly, I don't really want to keep having to cross-reference to various wikis in order to understand the plot of my action-fantasy book. 

The plot is still cool, probably in part because I am invested after reading the past four books, but everything else was too weak for me to really enjoy it. 

Considering I agree with everything this book is doing, it's a testament to how bad it is that I disliked it this much. 

Accessibly (derogatory) written, often just straight up wrong (Neanderthals had no culture?!), and yet still extremely pretentious. No likey!

One of my favourite things in media is when the story follows the entire lifetime of a character and looks at how their personality develops over that time - this is the epitome of that. 

You really get to know the three siblings the book focuses on - their weaknesses, their fears and anxieties. Nobody, even side characters, is two-dimensional, everyone is complicated and self-contradicting. The book also doesn't feel the need to explicitly explain every character, like others would - like in real life, people stay opaque.

Perhaps, for my liking, it was a little too sad at times, especially when it came to topics like death - but I think you're going to have to accept that an author that writes a book like this also thinks about death or how good life is in kinda negative ways.

Every time I give continental philosophy a chance I am disappointed. I agree with everything Derrida is saying here, pretty much, but how can you write/speak like this? What's the matter with him? 

The follow-up to Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, this book was de facto revolutionary at the time, though much of it is kind of obvious to the modern reader. The two books are in many ways the same, going through the data obtained with the same methods and presenting it thoroughly. The insane attention to detail means that realistically you have to skip through a lot of the discussion and scrape the findings out of the sludge.

When reading the first book, the gimmick of reading a discussion of human sexuality like one might read a discussion of gall wasp behaviour drew me more - by the time I read this book, I grew a little tired of it. It's still a good read, his methodology and findings are still one-of-a-kind, but it's pretty hard to slog through 1700 pages of data and still be engaged. 

3.5*s because despite this being an objectively cool study it's also objectively extremely boring.