I read Is Gender Necessary? (Redux), Le Guin's retro-retrospective on this book (a redux of a retrospective essay about TLHOD) before I read the book itself (it was in Space Crone and I thought well what am I gonna do, skip it? no!) which I think probably gave me a slightly different experience with this book than other people might have had. Not in a bad way; just in the sense that I was more conscious of the regrets or thoughts Le Guin had about this book. Nonetheless I enjoyed it immensely. I often struggle to articulate what exactly I love about Le Guin— except for the fact that she was immensely clever and I love her characters and her worlds— but I think it's partially a refusal to compromise on her prose regardless of what she's writing or how. The way her writing sounds is always so competent, so considered— and also her lack of real cynicism. Even when she's satirical or critical she's never truly cynical. In a book about alienation and binaries (or what it means to have a lack of them) you can hardly be cynical, because it requires a belief in humanity (whatever that means in the Hainish Cycle) and human connection, which is what Genly eventually reaches; even when we're discussing betrayals and traitors, it still requires that belief to enable the betrayal in the first place.

Thoroughly enjoyable Halloween read; Booth appears to be one of Monette's longest-running characters (he is, I see from the chronology of the series, the same age as me...) and I do like a whole lot the very dry and very droll Victoriana tone of this series, probably because I was trained to like it in The Cemeteries of Amalo (he's very much a Celehar forefather) and also because I'm a big classics reader anyway. Slightly nerdy droll historical horror; where else am I going to get a horror novel that also has lines like 'The séance that evening followed a dinner that was like something Dante forgot to put in the Inferno.' alongside '...wondered about vengeful ghostly beavers mobbing any bear unfortunate enough to come too close, and then told myself sternly not to be ridiculous.' (I often think Monette is funnier than she gets credit for; perhaps it's because it's so dry?) I'd read some of the more recent short stories about Booth and the Parrington Museum, so it was fun to pick this up. I thought the ending chapter felt very slightly rushed and the side characters were a tad thin and too numerous (I know, seven or thirteen for a séance, but still!), but those things can be largely explained by this being a novella. Otherwise its pacing overall was pretty good and the sense of building terror was palpable; I think it got a bit carried away with the specificity of the archiving sometimes but I didn't mind too much lol. (I didn't quite understand what happened at the end with a certain character, though?) Regardless, I like Monette's style a lot and enjoyed myself immensely.

(3.75) really charming novella about the journey to self discovery and the importance of free choice, via the decision to strike out and help others despite reservations. Woven cleverly and feelingly with post-Thirteenth Amendment USA, and dotted with lots of really interesting little bits of fantastical worldbuilding (hippocampi-drawn carriages!) so it becomes a bit of an alternate history. It would be really nice to see some things expanded upon in more stories from this world, if Royce feels like it; certainly I think there's potential in doing more with Phee and Cross and their burgeoning partnership. Pretty pacy since it's less than 200 pages, but not rushed, and while I think from the premise I was expecting more of a societal or social story about wrangling funeral directors and hymnals, I also liked the more supernatural mystery of it and the sort of bildungsroman feel to Phee's story.

It took me an irritatingly long time to read this, for various reasons, but every time I picked it back up, I did feel, in a way, possessed. A big old dense book, 606 pages in my edition, and one that feels like you're doing your own academic research in a way: sprawling, occasionally tedious, frequently engrossing. Between the letters and the journals and the poetry and the academic scuffles and the newspaper articles and so on it feels almost like your own triumph by the time you finish it. Beautiful and evocative, an unbelievably effective pastiche, (both of Victorian England and 1980s academic England, not that it was exactly far away in 1995; but what I mean is it had that frequently almost thoughtless British judgemental nastiness in some of its dialogue and narration and it captures the state of academia + academic thinking at the time), and I enjoyed the clashing machinations of the scholars a lot. I can't honestly say I thought much of either Randolph or Roland (except for his advocating for Lady Bailey to have her wheelchair) but that's Victorian poetic men and colourless male academics for you...? (Being flippant, but I never WAS a fan of Byron or Shelley particularly...) I appreciated their function but I think I ended up pledging myself to Beatrice and Maud and Blanche and Leonora on the whole. And I especially enjoyed Sabine's journal section; vivid. Fantastically clever intertwining of family fates and romances and literature and passions, and a wry examination of the state of modern Victorian academia. Desperate to read some criticism on this. How many free articles do you get on JSTOR?? 😭 I've also tabbed ('tabbed' hah not really I just folded the corners lol) a bunch of pages to go back to because they had quotes I really liked.