Booknotes 4.18

The Tragedy of King Lear, by William Shakespeare, published 1606, play. I first read this over two decades ago for a comparative literature class in college. Reading it again now, shortly after sampling Geoffrey of Monmouth’s early (and different) version of the tale: it’s quite good. One of my favorites by the Bard. Poor Gloucester, though.

Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, by Chrétien de Troyes, published 1180, fantasy. Really liked it. Only a few decades after Geoffrey of Monmouth, we’re now in full Arthurian mode, with Lancelot and Galahad and Gawain already in the cycle and with knights — such as the said Yvain — questing and encountering weird things. Very readable and surprisingly compelling, at least for me. One scene made me wonder if it was part of Tolkien’s inspiration for a particular element in Lord of the Rings. Looking forward to the rest of Chrétien de Troyes’ works! (Though Yvain is supposed to be the best of the lot, so we’ll see how this goes.)

How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, by Deb Chachra, published 2023, nonfiction. This was good, and interesting throughout. I ate it up. Especially loved the material parts, and the bits about knitting and crocheting, and the idea of local, resilient, renewable energy. A good reminder of the vital necessity for routine maintenance, too. I didn’t know about rural electricity largely coming from nonprofit co-ops (but had wondered). Nor did I know about travel being largely unrestricted in Europe until passports became more of a thing after World War I, nor had I thought much about how infrastructure harms typically get displaced onto other, more vulnerable groups of people. (Which is obviously not good.) Reading this book, by the way, reminded me of Charles C. Mann’s How the System Works articles for The New Atlantis.

Red Country, by Joe Abercrombie, published 2012, fantasy. Violent as usual and chock-full of content warnings. Part of me wonders why I still read these. This one is effectively a western, which usually don’t have much aesthetic appeal for me, and the writing didn’t feel as strong. In fact, I almost gave up partway through, but say one thing for me, say I’m a completionist. (Well, sometimes.) Enjoyed seeing the recurring characters. Also liked this passage, which felt apropos: “Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.”