“Lamentation” by C.J. Sansom

Lamentation is part of the Matthew Shardlake series, which follows a hunchbacked lawyer in Tudor times in England as he solves mysteries and shit. It’s a mix of historical fiction and mystery, which I like. I just think that combining the two takes more effort than just one or the other, and I appreciate it. Sansom in particular weaves together fact and fiction masterfully well. He reveals what he made up in a “Historical Note” at the end, and I’m always a little surprised who was real and who was not.

In particular, this book centers around the end of Henry VIII’s reign and his wife, Catharine Parr writing a novel. It’s a religious work entitled Lamentations of a Sinner (gee I wonder where the title came from…). Since this is a religious work, the book itself also centers pretty heavily around religion in Tudor times. Religion was pretty darn serious in those days, you could get killed for saying your opinions in public and not going along with strictly what the king said to believe. This is all further complicated by the Queen’s book, which could be considered radical for these times, being stolen from her. (This theft is invented, however the book itself is real.)

So Shardlake is put on the case, as usual his assistant Barak joins him, as well as his new apprentice Nicholas. Other recurring characters like Guy aren’t around all that much. Shardlake and Guy get into a fight early on and he isn’t present all that much afterwards. However, Hugh from Heartstone (the previous novel) is mentioned often, as is the trauma from Shardlake being involved in a battle with the French. As a result, there’s a pretty good mix of old and new faces. But there are numerous times where Shardlake and Barak are described as getting older and aging, which makes me wonder how many more novels there will be in this series.

The politics present are also pretty complicated, but Sansom does a good job explaining it clearly to the reader. And they’re all so entrenched in the plot that it’s a good thing too!

Climax of this novel isn’t as dramatic as in the previous ones, which is probably why I don’t think this book stands on it’s own as well. You have to really enjoy politics and religious debates to get involved in the arguments here. It’s all explained very well, so you can get through it and understand it, it’s just not as action packed and exciting.

History or mystery fans will enjoy this one, and the rest of the series as well!

“Case Histories”

Sorry about the delay again. This one's totally on me, I completely forgot. Here's a picture of a pup to make up for it before I move on to my actual post.

You may continue now to Case Histories.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, is much better than I expected. Of course, the last book I read by her was Life After Life and it’s buried somewhere in here if you are interested. Life After Life was trying to be Case Histories in a way, with all the interweaving story lines and such. It’s just that Case Histories does a much better job with it.

Case Histories is a mystery novel, but one that centers around the individual characters rather than the cases. There are also three cases being examined, so there are quite a few characters. As a result each one of the individuals involved stands out clearly and has their own storyline going on. This is where I tend to take issue with Atkinson, her characters are always so darn sad! There isn’t a pleasant marriage or a happy parent-child relationship that makes it out alive. People might say that it’s more realistic, but she could have thrown in one happy pair to keep my interest alive in the beginning, when they’re all being introduced.

The narration is also pretty interesting, it opens with a “Case History” narrated by one character. She first present the three cases this way. Then the narrating characters carry on the rest of the novel, swapping every chapter. Of course Jackson, the investigator working on all these cases, is added to the mix. This can make it hard to follow, but once you get your bearings within a chapter it’s ok. Often she’ll add details to the end and beginnings of chapters that overlap, so you see the same incident from two viewpoints. This can be confusing or clarifying. Then at the end there’s another “Case History” from the victim revealing the secret Jackson found. Because it doesn’t come out in his narration, it’s not his story.

She also talks a lot about the aftermath of these crimes, how they affect those remaining. Most of these cases are several years old, so you see the remaining scars. Which is a more interesting angle, I think, than right after because all that suffering will manifest in different ways after all that time.

There’s also this recurring theme of children and the dead being angels and whatever, which got a little annoying after a while. Another one is the middle aged adult who hates his/her life. Makes me wonder what Atkinson thinks of her own life.

Each of the cases is linked in a way, but it doesn’t become obvious until the end of the novel how. Which adds another layer of complexity, it’s both a whodunit and a connectthem. And of course everything wraps up neatly. A little too neatly, but I guess the characters deserve it after all that they have been through.

Sometimes I Feel Like Don Quixote

I have always been an avid reader. My family still makes fun of me for bringing giant reference books with me to parties and then sitting down and reading instead of socializing. And Don Quixote is the quintessential figure of a reader gone wrong.

The fact that I used to want to disappear, literally, into books when I was younger doesn’t really help. I would imagine my life in some other world and want to go there and picture all of my adventures. I used to think my life was pretty boring, for whatever reason, and I wanted to go somewhere exciting and dangerous. (To give context, I was also around the age of 10 and hadn’t thought this all through.)

Even now, there are still things that I see or hear that make me think of certain novels or a certain world and it really doesn’t help. Because how do I know that I am not Don Quixote in a modern setting, maybe everything I’m living is part of a book somewhere and the author is dictating my fate as we speak? Existential questions like this don’t really help, but it’s something to think about.

Don Quixote did end up regretting it in the end, which I always found really sad. He’s on his deathbed yelling about what an idiot he was, it’s pretty disappointing for an end to a novel that seems so whimsical. I hope I don’t end up like that, but then again, I always seem to think that so many things I do are ridiculous about 10 seconds after I do them.

But Don Quixote ended up being braver than all the rest while under his delusions, why shouldn’t the same hold true for the rest of us? Maybe we’re all capable of great things, we just have to be insane to figure it out. Ideally this wouldn’t be the case, but you never know.

It’d be interesting if someone did a “modern Don Quixote” story, or tried to find the equivalent today. It probably would involve believing that you are stuck in a love story or a worthless teen novel or something like that. Actually, maybe no one should ever look into that. Ever.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Don Quixote, I think it’s because we’re fellow readers, trying to make sense of the world and better our lives through books. And that line between sanity and madness is much finer than we all think.

Romanticizing Artists

Hey sorry for the delay, I'm on a midterm struggle bus right now and the ride has been bumpier than expected. :(

I tend to romanticize artists, writers in particular. Maybe because writing is always hard for me, in more than a short chunk (aka blog post). It feels like I’m setting something in stone. I’ll have an idea that has such potential and then write it and it feels wrong and I can’t fix it so I give up. I imagine someone doing this for a living to be some mysterious, troubled soul who can handle that. And when I see strangers with a notebook, I think they might be that elusive writer.

Real writers are definitely nothing like that though, they’re probably like everyone else. Maybe a little introverted and bookwormish, but not a tortured soul searching for truth in the midst of all this absurdity.

Of course this also applies to musicians and artists, but I feel like I notice lonely writers more often. They’re also more likely to be in a quiet place writing or something and looking emotional.

It’s strange the assumptions that you make about people, it can be based on the weirdest, most random aspects. I’m pretty sure that this idea came from Sylvia Plath or Hemingway or someone like that. And while they created great art, they had pretty sad lives. Not exactly something you want to wish on other people.

That’s the catch, isn’t it, you can create all this emotional art, but you have to go through pain for it. Which is really the hand off in life in general, you can go through it feeling fine and not doing much, or you could take all the ups and downs of emotions. It’s a risk that you have to take if you want to feel.

Being Ace

*disclaimer: hey so this is just one person’s experience, and having a different one if totally legit and fine!*

So I identify as a female asexual biromantic. What does that mean, you ask? Well, asexuality is characterized as just not feeling sexual attraction towards other people. And that’s it. You can have sex/masturbate as much as you want and still be asexual. (There’s a difference between sexual attraction and sex drive that people often overlook and never talk about.) I also like to go by my romantic orientation, biromantic, as well. And finding this out has been a wild ride, let me tell you (in fact I’m going to).

My whole life I just assumed I was a heterosexual (I mean, most everyone does really) but just like really bad at it. I never really had crushes in school, I remember actually pretending to have one in first grade because these two girls that I was hanging out with during recess at the time were doing it. (It wasn’t the best situation, I really only hung out with them because they were the only ones in my class that I knew at all.) I literally just picked the same guy as one of the other girls, and then they decided that only one person could have a certain guy and just had me sit to the side while they talked about boys or like whatever. I developed a great relationship with woodchips.

In sixth grade a guy asked me out. There were several issues that I had with this, first of all he got his friend to ask me for him. I mean, guys if you’re going to ask someone out, do it yourself. And it was in the middle of lunch, which isn’t the best one-on-one time. So me being me, I thought it was a joke and practically yelled “no!” and she went back to him and told him and found the whole thing hilarious which I didn’t really appreciate because as I said I had no idea what was happening. Classic.

I’ve also had strange encounters with crushes, I tend to get crushes only after I think the guy might be into me a little. Which sounds good in theory, but I tend to misinterpret his body language and everything falls apart. In eighth grade a guy asked me to our first fancy dance. My main reaction was “uhhhhgee”. I eventually said yes. It didn’t end up working out since he got a girlfriend and didn’t tell me so we didn’t go together but ended up awkwardly dancing together anyways (eighth grade was weird man) and were even friends all through high school! And as a result of this, I had a bit of a crush for about a year after he asked me to the dance.

There have been a few more like that. And when I say that I mean like 2. I had never been on a date, and didn’t really even appreciate beautiful celebrities until halfway through high school. I thought I might have been slightly homosexual for a while because I had some feelings for my friends, I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to like have sex with girls (or guys really, I didn’t question my feelings much). I wasn’t too bothered by things like this, I kind of just wasn’t concerned with my orientation. In a like fuck labels way. I didn’t see the need to specifically pin down my orientation. I also had absolutely no idea what asexuality was. I knew it existed, but I only knew the biological definition of cells splitting in two.

And then a few months ago I hit on this article explaining asexuality (it was done through a comic, I think it’s still floating around) and it smacked me across the face: this article was talking about ME. It explained so much. Now I knew why I asked my mom how early humans knew sex would lead to reproduction when she gave me the talk, and why I almost walked in on my friend having sex when his girlfriend was over. Because the rationality behind having sex was just something that I didn’t understand at all!

Being asexual is pretty nice, fundamental Christians don’t seem to have a problem with us which is a nice bonus. Really the main problem is that no one knows what asexuality is (and this is coming from someone who didn’t know anything about it either until she realized she was one). Which is why I haven’t come out to many people, I just don’t want to have to explain it to them. And there’s other problems, like the fact that asexuality is characterized by a lack of attraction, so I tend to be in a lot of doubt about it sometimes (honestly whenever I feel like this I remember the aforementioned almost-walking-in-on-my-friend incident) (then I wonder how I missed the signs earlier). And another problem is realizing that everyone thinks completely differently from you, which can be a little alienating.

But the nice thing is that I now have words for what I am, and how I feel. And as I said, I came out to a few friends and they have all been nothing but supportive about it. (Full disclosure: I was a little drunk at the time. Pro tip: don’t do that.) I haven’t come out to my family because I can almost guarantee that they won’t know what it is, and that it won’t affect our relationship in any way. I still want to tell them at some point, I just have literally no idea how to do it. I’ll get around to it eventually.

What I would really like to see is more asexual awareness out there. The average person has no idea what asexuality is or what it means to be asexual. And this is a part of someone’s identity, it should be more widely known!