Reading and Watching

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is so good. It's about the intersecting lives of three women--a peasant, Wanda; the daughter of a moneylender, Miryem; and Irina, a woman forced to marry the tsar. Novik plays with fairytale elements: the power of a name, spinning straw into gold, magic, transformation. She also gives Miryem and her family a rich Jewish history and community that play a profound role in the story.

This book brought me to tears multiple times, and it made me smile, and it made me jealous of all the beautifully crafted sentences.

I cannot recommend this highly enough. I thoroughly enjoyed Uprooted, but Spinning Silver is an order of magnitude better.



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Diana & Persis by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an unfinished manuscript of four chapters plus an introductory note with some biographical details about Alcott that help contextualize the manuscript (such as her sister May's career as an artist). The first chapter is almost entirely dialogue, the second is epistolary, and the final two chapters are traditional prose. I really like what's there, but it's very clear that the manuscript is unfinished. Chapter 3 is a thread left dangling, and chapter 4 comes out of nowhere with whatever would have segued from 3 to 4 missing. It's worth a read, though, especially for Alcott's ideas about women and art and female communities of artists.



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( Spoilers for penultimate episode of Gotham )