Posted my 2021 reading list.
Finished reading (or rereading?) The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, one of his earlier Culture novels. I think I might have read this about 25 years ago, but I have even less memory of it than I would have expected, recalling story beats more than scenes or even plot points. Anyway, I quite enjoyed it.
Finished reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories and “The Wood at Midwinter”, short fiction by Susanna Clarke. All of the stories fit right into the Strange & Norrell setting. The stories in the former are all charming and have the novel’s characteristic humor. The latter is unsettling in the same way as Piranesi.
Finished rereading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, about the return of English magic during the Napoleonic era. This massive book proceeds at an appropriately stately pace, but the intensity ratchets up a notch every time the gentleman with the thistle-down hair appears. In addition to her well-crafted writing, Clarke’s footnote game is top-notch.
Finished reading The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, which was recommended by one of the owners of the new bookstore. I super-enjoyed this, based on Russian mythology, about a girl who can see spirits at a time when Christianity was driving them away. I wasn’t fully hooked until about halfway through, but then devoured the rest of the book.