week_in_readings(5???-aug22.2021)

[fwcu]

honestly I feel like I'm in some kind of hell because my mind is simply just replying olivia rodigro's crooning parts in deja vu and it's like. god please. not this. anyway I've been reading some books, except I'm not capable of writing out my thoughts on them
some cuts. I'm not sure they make any sense out of context. sorry if they seem to have a recurring theme.

Pachinko - Min Jin Lee

Etsuko stood there, believing that if she could just listen and suffer, then maybe her daughter could be saved.

“I am terrible. Soo desu. Forgive me, Hana. Anything but this.”

Hana dropped her large tote bag from her shoulder, and the two wine bottles wrapped in a towel made a muffled clinking sound on the pavement. She wept openly, her arms hanging by her side, and Etsuko knelt on the ground and held her daughter’s knees, refusing to let her go.

Celestial Bodies - Jokha Alharthi (trans. Marilyn Booth)

I remembered her mother's wailing. He beats her? She said he beats her? The peasant's son beats my daughter, mine? And what kind of man beats his wife? In all of al-Awafi I have never heard of anyone beating his wife except for that old drunk Furayh. He used to come home soused and throw up on her, and then he would start hitting her. And so this educated 'dokhtoor' - as he calls himself, hah - is just another version of Furayh the drunk? He beats her? The peasant's son beats my girl? No one ever put his hand on me and no one put his hand on my mother or my sisters, and now this dog comes and beats my little girl? What a scandal we must look amongst all the tribes, every clan, our own, out in the open. The man our daughter is already legally married to, even if, thank the Lord, they haven't moved in together, and Furayh the drunk - they're cut from the same cloth? By God, if only he had never set eyes on her! By God, he's divorcing her today and he'd better do it fast.

I also read: Kafka on the Shore, Annals of the Western Shore, Emma, some of Genji.

Comments

postnote

[fwcu]

both of these were really good. celestial bodies, just due to esoteric narration, is harder to appreciate. if you don't have respect for women, nor understanding for them, I don't think either story would mean very much to you.

hana my meow meow </3

[bonda]

ahhhh i just wanted to say i finished reading pachinko earlier this year and the themes were so good and every storyline so heartbreaking in one way or another....i can't stop thinking about the line that went smth like "a woman's lot is to suffer" like that rly is The Theme and once i figured that out all these other books i've read suddenly fell into this theme: circe, fingersmith, and so on and so forth....also hana is one of my faves in pachinko i was soooo distraught reading her storyline and it's the one i remember the most TT__TT