Two hate reads at a time?

[got_quiet]

I haven't been able to keep up completely with my Libby hold habit. A few books I had to just let go without starting them, including one about modern sea piracy that I did want to read, so I've stuck myself back on the queue.

I'm currently mid read on two different books, and I'm not enjoying either of them. But I'm not enjoying them in a way where instead of just being bored and stopping I'm getting aggravated and the reaction is driving me forward as some sort of psychic self-harm. They're starting to turn a little into hate reads.

The first book I'm trying to get through is Babel by R. F. Kuang. The premise is that the industrial revolution is driven by a magic involving linguistics and silver. And the blurb says the main character gets to take a stand against imperialism.

It's just so... ugh. I had picked it up and put it down a dozen times in bookshops because worldbuilding that engages with language is right up my alley, but the blurb always made me suspicious and I would put it back. A little while ago it was sitting on a display at the library so I thought, well, no risk there and I borrowed it. But it is turning out to be the sort of hamfisted lecture that I was worried it might be. And so far the worldbuilding has been disappointing. I'm not super far in, only to chapter 4, but I can only continue by making note after note of complaint after what feels like every other paragraph. I am hoping that eventually an interesting character will show up, or something interesting will happen, but so far no dice.

I wanted to hold off on specific gripes for after I was done with the whole thing but just starting to write about this book has now gotten me into sporking gear so here are a couple things I noted so far. They are by far not the only details I took issue with, but they're bits where I was like... huh? And they're kind of nitpicky details that I wouldn't have spent much thought on if they didn't sort of demonstrate what feels like a broader problem with the book so far, which is that no one seems to behave with a consistent logic beyond trying to make some sort of very basic point about how colonialism and racism are bad mmkay.

So a few examples of moments that annoyed me:

 

Some dude goes through all the trouble of fathering a biracial kid who can speak Mandarin and English because being a polyglot means power. He makes this kid grind out Latin and Greek after. But then he 1) doesn't bother giving the kid any access to Mandarin speakers to maintain his skills so that Robin feels the language sort of slipping away and 2) has Robin just forget Cantonese. A footnote explains it's because Oxford scholars didn't have the resources for Cantonese and were just focused on Mandarin... but there were resources by westerners for Cantonese in the turn of the 19th century available, Oxford is supposed to be the pinnacle of language study, and the only worldbuilding that exists so far is that knowing languages is power so why the fuck let a rarer language go? I will add I hate all the footnotes so far. They add almost nothing and in this case just actively make me want to argue with the book.

I assume things go this way because the author is trying to make a point about colonialism, but when your premise introduces a new angle to consider with how languages are lost or suppressed within colonialism and you just refuse to engage with that new angle, IDK what the point of the fantasy element is. Maybe this will be explained later in the book?

Also, I'm only 4 chapters in and already I can't figure out if the author keeps forgetting things have happened or doesn't have  a strong sense of the character or what. Robin is both a kid who spends a bunch of time walking through every single street of London to map it out and "make it his" but then even though reading is his only joy in the entire world, he has never fucking entered any of the bookshops in London EVER until his dad takes him to one. And then after he has spent something like 6 years in England at one point someone makes a stereotyically racist comment about his eyes and whether he can see out of him and he's stunned and has no clue what to do and acts like he's never been faced with such BS before in his life. But later the book gives us another footnote that says yeah he's been bullied about his eyes before. After 6 years let me tell you most people will have a mental flowchart for all of the responses they can give to people like this. And again, if the idea is to make Robin look sheltered the author shouldn't have described him as someone who spent a ton of time trawling through the streets of London. Are we supposed to imagine he never came across racism as he did so?

There's also a moment where Robin and his new (Indian) classmate spend a night sitting on the floor talking because the furniture feels too formal and then the next day the classmate shows disdain towards a painting that depicts a westerner in a desk and Indians on the floor after the librarian says the Indians prefer it that way. And it's like...what is going on here? Like you're weirdly reinforcing a stereotype in one breath and then criticizing the stereotype in the next? Was there any thought behind these choices or is it just an unfortunate coincidence or something?

The thing is that it's both ok to prefer to sit on the floor and to dislike racist depictions of people that suggests that they are inferior for sitting on the floor. But when you're writing fiction you choose what happens, what doesn't, and how, and when the way you line things up makes it feel like the conclusion should be, "That racist librarian was kinda right though," I feel like a mark has been missed.

 

Overall, my mood as I read this book has so far largely been, "Why?!" We'll see if that is the mood that continues.

---

The second book I'm sort of regretting starting is One For My Enemy. This got recced by the Librarything algorithm. It was sort of a NY crime family fantasy drawn from Slavic myth. Seemed appealing as a blurb.

My big problem with this book -- and again I haven't gotten that far -- is that I forgot how much I fucking hate het romances about 90% of the time. Just cannot bear the het cliches. The girl acting all "I can handle myself!" and the guy agreeing but insisting on babying her anyway, the weird borderline negging dialog that's meant to be banter, the dude jumping in to stop sexual harassment resulting in love at first sight. I hate it all. I'm kind of hoping that now that I've gotten past that setup the rest of the book will play out ok but honestly I doubt it. My man walked a drunk chick to the subway for a block and now he's like, "oh she's lovely and spirited and razor sharp and mean!" Ahhh I'm making myself annoyed all over again. I'm sure this aversion is the result of how fucking annoying it is for a guy to tell you all about yourself and get half it of wrong after having known you for 5 minutes but regardless of why I hate it I do.

 The writing style also hits on one of my most massive pet peeves, which is aversion to the word "said" and the use of inappropriate verbs as replacement. A quote verb has to take the quote as its object. I know there is a drift away from that and some verbs have become commonplace exceptions but I still can't stand it when people "assure, 'I will do it.'" or "determine, 'Fine.'" You can't determine a "fine." You can be determined. You can say determinedly, but you cannot determine a word. This has been happening every other page and is honestly more annoying than the het.

But I'm also very early on in this book, so I'm going to keep going at least a little more and see if it gets better.

Comments

[shadowbliss]

Its been a while since I last read a book. Kind of want to.

[got_quiet]

I find starting is the hardest part. There's always something else to do instead. But once I get going if the book is decent it's much easier to finish.

[got_quiet]

I haven't gotten far enough in for the characters to start in on the discourse yet, but the narrator herself is already clearly the author being snarky every time a slaver is mentioned. I like stories with narrators-as-character so that wouldn't bother me if it were executed well. The narrator just has so far been as annoying as everyone else.

The preface for the book is essentially a list of all the things the author knows she got wrong about Oxford (for example a scone shop doesn't exist yet and the characters all eat a bunch of oysters on their first day when she knows that was poor people food back then) and her explanation is basically, "These are the things I experienced when I went to Oxford and I want Robin to experience them too." So I think the desire to write an autobiography may have overwhelmed the desire to write a period fiction in substantive ways beyond just the little details like that. That's my theory so far at least.

[autumndaze]

I've heard mixed things about Babel. One reviewer I listened to said "this is a book people will either love or hate", and that seems to be the thing here. I browsed reviews online (I know, very definitive on quality lol) because what I read about it also sounded interesting, and the author's book, "Yellowface" has also been popular, but I've heard varying things about it, mostly in that while the author is very much a good researcher, a good fiction writer she is not. And reading an even worse version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (another book in a seemingly similar vein I didn't like, albeit this one deals more with race) doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

I'm sorry the other book is miserable. I've also become more hostile to generic het romance these days, because I just have so much more to choose from with queer romance, particularly m/m, which is my preference. There are plenty of het romances that get it right, but so many do it wrong, and they fall right into those tropes. I hope it gets better! The last overt het romance I gave a shot I had a visceral disgusted reaction to, despite the fact that both protagonists had a lot of things going for them which I enjoyed. So yeah.

[got_quiet]

I loved JS&MN and the comparison with this book pains me lol. They're very different. But Babel is also a chonker so definitely better to just read something else if it doesn't sound appealing. I'm hoping that the linguistics saves it for me.

I was surprised at how visceral my squick was with the het romance! It's been so long I think my immunity had lapsed and it was suddenly surprising when it didn't used to be.