Weekly Reading Meme for Sept 24, 2025
Sep. 24th, 2025 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishWhat I’ve Read
Lent by Jo Walton – “A novel of many returns” – I read this for the first time about three months ago and avoided spoilers – I recommend this book and I also recommend going in without an idea of you’re getting into it. That said, I think some spoilers would help people make up their minds, so I will put them under a cut.
The first half of this book is the life of Girolomo Savonarola from 1492 thru his death in 1498. He casts out demons, he uses his prophetic knowledge of the future to aid his beloved city of Florence, he loses dear friends to murder and mishap, he faces moral dilemmas. Throughout, his faith in the wisdom and mercy of God is strong and clear and he anchors himself to it. Because of his piety, he falls so far out of favor with the papacy and the leadership of the city that he’s executed for heresy. He’s hanged and his body fed into a fire.
And in a passage that’s too good to summarize : “He lands on his back, slamming into Hell with a force that would have knocked out the breath and broken all the bones of a mortal man. He knows he is not that, nor never has been. There is no saving moment in which he knows nothing, no breathing space, no time in between the expectation of God’s mercy and the reality of damnation. … He knows all at once that he is damned, and this is his torment. He is a demon,… and was sent into the world to live without this knowledge only to make this moment of returning what it is: Hell.”
And that’s the MIDDLE OF THE BOOK. This is the starting point of the meat of the book: Savonarola will be returned to earth, he will realize in 1492 that he is a demon in a human body and that he is damned for his rebellion against God, that earth is his only respite from Hell, and that he still loves the people around him and will try to help them as much as he can.
The cycle repeats – he tries different ways of living in the hopes that one of them will release him from his cycle of human life and demonic punishment, and each time, he returns to hell. He leaves his monastery in one life and tries to save Florence with a coalition of friends; in another, he becomes pope and reforms the church before the Reformation; in another, he marries a friend’s cast-off mistress. It’s such an examination of how life’s choices layer over each other and how each version of Girolomo is real and full and his life is absolutely defined by his own choices while also being entirely constrained by the memories of his past lives and the knowledge that, no matter what happens, he will fall into Hell, and have to start again.
This book is catnip to me – I love to read and re-read and feel the same book shift and change as I read it and understand it differently each time, and by god, Lent does that immensely well. It examines the balance between Girolomo’s faith in a loving and merciful God, and the real and devastating reality of his damnation.
Honestly, I don’t really buy Hell as a concept, I think I lean too much in the Just and Merciful God Would Not Punish Forever camp – so this was a fascinating fictional look at one way it might work if BOTH things were true.
After I finished the book, I went looking for any interview where Jo Walton talked about the book, and found nothing – But! She did have this to say in an interview, about the pleasures of re-reading - ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbUmD3Xs2c )
Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers – # 1 in series - Fun to read, really gives Lord Peter’s backstory some oomph, but it’s also a bit convoluted and very very English. I can see the promise of the future but if this were the first book I’d read, I am not sure I would have bothered with the rest of the series .
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers - #2 in Series – Wow, this book is just a careful examination, via murder mystery, of all the ways women are trapped in this society in this era. It introduces Peter Wimsey’s noble family, and his brother and sister are both moderately miserable to be caught in a murder investigation. It’s very 1920s England but also does a great job of characterizing a lot of ways a person could be flawed, and how women end up having to make the best of some fairly awful situations.
In news unrelated to reading, I’ve been trying for some time to get off the short form video content sites (mostly TikTok) and spend more time with people whose work feels thoughtful and interesting – so, here’s Technology Connections - https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections Go learn about how pinball machines do math.
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 by Robert Darnton – The library has returned this lovely audiobook to me! I am really enjoying, as a counterpoint to Lent, the ways the book really looks at how the specific circumstances and personalities impact the decisions leading up to the breakdown of the French monarchy. I am sure this is all old hat to people who studied this period of French history in any detail, but I was not among them. Even my interest in the History of Napoleon podcast didn’t cover this period in such a pragmatic, on-the-ground, “who knew what when” approach. The little details matter – I had not know that, as the Estates General was meeting to try and figure out how France was to go on, King Louis XVI left for a day to go sit with his dying seven year old son. Like, it’s not the most important detail of the book, but it just sticks with me that all this uproar and confusion and politics, his kid was dying. I finished the book late last night – highly recommend.
What I’m Reading
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
Mimesis – Auerbach -Just started this while I was trapped in a long meeting and it was available. Said’s forward is good!
What I’ll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for book club
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Lent by Jo Walton – “A novel of many returns” – I read this for the first time about three months ago and avoided spoilers – I recommend this book and I also recommend going in without an idea of you’re getting into it. That said, I think some spoilers would help people make up their minds, so I will put them under a cut.
The first half of this book is the life of Girolomo Savonarola from 1492 thru his death in 1498. He casts out demons, he uses his prophetic knowledge of the future to aid his beloved city of Florence, he loses dear friends to murder and mishap, he faces moral dilemmas. Throughout, his faith in the wisdom and mercy of God is strong and clear and he anchors himself to it. Because of his piety, he falls so far out of favor with the papacy and the leadership of the city that he’s executed for heresy. He’s hanged and his body fed into a fire.
And in a passage that’s too good to summarize : “He lands on his back, slamming into Hell with a force that would have knocked out the breath and broken all the bones of a mortal man. He knows he is not that, nor never has been. There is no saving moment in which he knows nothing, no breathing space, no time in between the expectation of God’s mercy and the reality of damnation. … He knows all at once that he is damned, and this is his torment. He is a demon,… and was sent into the world to live without this knowledge only to make this moment of returning what it is: Hell.”
And that’s the MIDDLE OF THE BOOK. This is the starting point of the meat of the book: Savonarola will be returned to earth, he will realize in 1492 that he is a demon in a human body and that he is damned for his rebellion against God, that earth is his only respite from Hell, and that he still loves the people around him and will try to help them as much as he can.
The cycle repeats – he tries different ways of living in the hopes that one of them will release him from his cycle of human life and demonic punishment, and each time, he returns to hell. He leaves his monastery in one life and tries to save Florence with a coalition of friends; in another, he becomes pope and reforms the church before the Reformation; in another, he marries a friend’s cast-off mistress. It’s such an examination of how life’s choices layer over each other and how each version of Girolomo is real and full and his life is absolutely defined by his own choices while also being entirely constrained by the memories of his past lives and the knowledge that, no matter what happens, he will fall into Hell, and have to start again.
This book is catnip to me – I love to read and re-read and feel the same book shift and change as I read it and understand it differently each time, and by god, Lent does that immensely well. It examines the balance between Girolomo’s faith in a loving and merciful God, and the real and devastating reality of his damnation.
Honestly, I don’t really buy Hell as a concept, I think I lean too much in the Just and Merciful God Would Not Punish Forever camp – so this was a fascinating fictional look at one way it might work if BOTH things were true.
Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers – # 1 in series - Fun to read, really gives Lord Peter’s backstory some oomph, but it’s also a bit convoluted and very very English. I can see the promise of the future but if this were the first book I’d read, I am not sure I would have bothered with the rest of the series .
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers - #2 in Series – Wow, this book is just a careful examination, via murder mystery, of all the ways women are trapped in this society in this era. It introduces Peter Wimsey’s noble family, and his brother and sister are both moderately miserable to be caught in a murder investigation. It’s very 1920s England but also does a great job of characterizing a lot of ways a person could be flawed, and how women end up having to make the best of some fairly awful situations.
In news unrelated to reading, I’ve been trying for some time to get off the short form video content sites (mostly TikTok) and spend more time with people whose work feels thoughtful and interesting – so, here’s Technology Connections - https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections Go learn about how pinball machines do math.
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 by Robert Darnton – The library has returned this lovely audiobook to me! I am really enjoying, as a counterpoint to Lent, the ways the book really looks at how the specific circumstances and personalities impact the decisions leading up to the breakdown of the French monarchy. I am sure this is all old hat to people who studied this period of French history in any detail, but I was not among them. Even my interest in the History of Napoleon podcast didn’t cover this period in such a pragmatic, on-the-ground, “who knew what when” approach. The little details matter – I had not know that, as the Estates General was meeting to try and figure out how France was to go on, King Louis XVI left for a day to go sit with his dying seven year old son. Like, it’s not the most important detail of the book, but it just sticks with me that all this uproar and confusion and politics, his kid was dying. I finished the book late last night – highly recommend.
What I’m Reading
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
Mimesis – Auerbach -Just started this while I was trapped in a long meeting and it was available. Said’s forward is good!
What I’ll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for book club
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
no subject
Date: 2025-09-25 12:55 pm (UTC)Oh, I hope it works for you! I would eb delighted to hear your thoughts, even if you don't end up enjoying it.
I just got a book club to read it and a lot of new thoughts came up in the discussion, I appear to be patient zero for a fair few readers.