Booknotes 4.7

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar, published 2024, science fiction. Good writing, interesting world. Liked it. I still need to read Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, published 2004, fiction. I read this for book group, decades after a friend first recommended it. It’s poignant and meditative and wonderful. So good. Also, I think often of what Robinson said once in a Washington Post interview: “People say to me ‘I’m religious, I’d like to write about religion, but everybody would hate it, nobody would read it.’ You’re a coward, is what you feel like saying. Faith is one of the great structuring elements in civilization. It has fascinated the best minds of many centuries. If it happens to fascinate yours also, there is no reason to be afraid. Of what, a bad review?”

Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire, published 2021, fantasy. Wayward Children book 6. As always, McGuire nails the dark fairy tale vibe. I’m also enjoying all the different explorations of portal fantasy in this series.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver), published 1972 (translated 1974), fiction. This was formally interesting — Marco Polo telling Kublai Khan about dozens of imaginary cities, like Octavia (the city hanging from ropes over an abyss), Adelma (where everyone looks like someone you know who has died), and Eusapia (where the inhabitants have built an identical copy of the city underground and they bring the dead down there to populate it) — but didn’t really grip me like I’d hoped it would.