 Hello and welcome, you feeble-minded consumers! I'm Philip Magnus and I'm back after a three-month hiatus, during which I enjoyed myself so much more than I would have if I was locked inside this room doing YouTube videos forever. YouTube videos that no one will ever see, in fact. It is a Sisyphian task and it is, I suspect, my punishment. But I did get a little bit of reprieve in the summer of 2021. And the purpose of this video, in fact, is to catch you up with all the books I read during that summer. Were there plenty of them? Perhaps depends on whom you're asking. If you're a book blogger, perhaps you will laugh at the small, tiny amount of books that I have read during the last few months. Or perhaps you will be in awe of me if you are one of those people who never pick up a book. But then again, if you are, you probably are not watching this video. So, let us get on with it. What did I read in this summer, the never-ending summer of 2020-2021? At least it feels that way. First off, we're going to be doing... ...literary and contemporary fiction. Cue the cue card. Thank you. First off, my friends, I have read a number of really good pieces of either contemporary or literary fiction. Perhaps my favorite of them all has to be Rachel Cusk's second place, a novel which tells of a novelist's invitation to a great, in her opinion, artist. An artist she feels very much compelled by and connected with. Unfortunately, when this artist arrives to her, shall we call it, summer house. It's not really her summer house, but it is treated as such by her many guests. As soon as he arrives, the expected connection that our unnamed protagonist has sought, well, it doesn't materialize. What's worse, there are quite a few moments of tragedy that strike some of them elaborately crafted by the artist. Others completely natural and unforeseen, which turn the life of our protagonist very much fragmentary and confusing, which turn around some of her preconceptions. It is an enjoyable novel, is the least powerful in which I can describe it. Second place is one of those works that really resonated with me, not just chapter by chapter, but as I read each page, each paragraph, I found that Rachel Cusk was delivering truths that resonated with me on a deep level. It's cool, isn't it? To find a novel and non-vantasy one of that, which simply speaks to you on a level that literature rarely seems capable of doing. And I'm saying something because literature, to me, is the genre that, or rather the art that speaks to me most. It is on the long list for the Booker Prize for this year, and I would say a very, very well-earned spot that. I'm a big fan of Rachel Cusk. I have read her outline trilogy, I have even written about it, an academic setting, and I have to say I honestly think that Rachel Cusk is the foremost literary author of Great Britain right now, one of them certainly. I don't read that many literary authors as of yet, contemporary ones, I mean. So I'm not sure how many have the skills, the technique, the foresight to compare with her, but I know for a fact that she is someone worth reading, if you enjoy interesting writing, which is attempting to do more with the form of literature than has been done before. It is at the same time, this novel's second place, a play on some history with D. H. Lawrence, which you can definitely read more about if you'd like. My memory of it is not very clear because it was the very first novel I read over the summer, but I have to tell you, it's left in me impressions like few other books have in recent times. If you'd like me to talk about it more, to go and refresh my memory of second place and to perhaps do an actual review of that book, why don't you let me know in the comments down below and don't forget to press the like button. Let's move on and we will do so with three novels by Haruki Murakami, which I read in a wave of thirst for the Japanese author's craft. Haruki Murakami is one of my absolute favorite authors. No question about that. I think that he is perhaps literature's foremost expert on loneliness, on writing about individuals who feel outside of a society that Japanese society, as you might imagine, very much expects that you will to some point at least abandon a certain degree of individuality for the collective, and not every individual is ready to do so. These individuals are the bread and butter of Haruki Murakami's work most commonly. The first work I read was South of the Border and West of the Sun. Very short, I think I went over it in a day and a half. It is about post-Second World War, the post-Second World War generation about an only child during a time when only children were something of a rarity in Japan. And that was the first point during which this character felt isolated. It is very much a typical Bill Dunge-Roman, a novel of development which follows and in some way mirrors common themes in Haruki Murakami's fiction and, as I said, mirrors parts of his life. Murakami himself was an owner of a jazz bar. He himself, I suspect, always felt a certain level of isolation from his compatriots and the folks he lived with during his early years. And all that shows common topics in Murakami's fiction involve cats. They involve people who might or might not own jazz bars or work at jazz bars, a love for classical and jazz music, very commonly West European and American culture. Now South of the Border and West of the Sun is in some ways a love story and in other ways a story of familial, of marriage life and of the difficulties of being true to another person. I suspect that one of the greatest lessons I learned from that book was just how difficult having it easy sometimes can turn out to be. And it is a lesson that Murakami really manages to show in a persuasive way. Next up, in another day and a half, I also read Sputnik My Sweetheart which was even closer to my own preference for novelistic heroes because while the protagonist is once more post-World War II generation Japanese man or rather the point of view character is such a man. The actual main character of the novel, the one around whom everything is going on is a woman who is imbued by this singular purpose to become a writer. However, she is quite incapable of returning to works that she has already begun. She has this amazing impetus to write and she keeps doing it but she finds herself incapable of finishing anything. She is another one of those figures who also are incapable of becoming part of the collective. She is outside of society attempting to live by her own rules and the big conflict in the novel is born out of her falling in love with another woman and for the sake of that love attempting to become part of the collective, attempting to live within society whereas before she has always lived outside it and that brings about a lot of issues for her. And of course in addition to that I have to mention the magical realism that is such an influential and key part of the DNA of Murakami's works. Magical realism in which people disappear without a trace, in which different unspeakable or other undescribable elements suddenly materialize, only to disappear later without either question or providing any answers. Without either question that doesn't make much sense does it? I mean that things happen in Murakami's novel Stings which are devoid of reason. That is the difference between magical realism and fantasy after all, right? Because in fantasy you always have this explanation of the fantastic. Well in magical realism whatever happens that is out of this world it doesn't demand explanation. It will, if you expect explanation, if you're looking for explanation you will be sorely disappointed most of the time. But then again explanation is not the purpose of it. What magical realism is trying and attempting and succeeding at doing more often than not is showing human characters being human in in somehow sometimes in human conditions. Makes sense, right? I hope it does. The last Furuki Murakami book I read was the Winderbird Chronicles and that one took me so much longer than the previous two put together. Truthfully it is a much longer novel at over 650 pages I recall I think, whereas both South of the Border in West of the Sun and Sputnik My Sweetheart are over or just about 200 pages, just barely over I think in the case of Sputnik My Sweetheart. I think that was 220 while South of the Border West of the Sun was more like 180. So a lot more of a time commitment the Winderbird Chronicles. The other thing, the other part and that it was it was kind of more difficult to read. There is something of a reckoning in the Winderbird Chronicles with Japan's imperial history and the history of all those horrors that the Japanese imperialists and warmongering government managed to to create during the Second World War. There are some truly brutal scenes in the Winderbird Chronicles which portray violence like you would not believe. Scenes which make me even me and I read I've read a lot of brutal stuff in my life. Scenes which made me queasy. Scenes which made me turn off my Kindle and go for a walk. Those kinds of scenes. They're not the main point of the Winderbird Chronicles. There I would say more of a B-plot if we should think in the you know traditional TV show A-plot, B-plot kind of viewpoint. What is the Winderbird Chronicles all about? In short it is a man who loses his cat and then eventually loses his wife. It is about a man who makes an unexpected connection with a World War II veteran. It is about a man who has something of a gift to help others and of a woman who also has something of a similar gift. It is about two Japanese women who have the most curious and un-Japanese names you could imagine Krita and Malta Kano. It is about all of these things and yet about none of them. It is about men who are rather one man who is overtly ambitious and one man who is his antithesis. It is a complicated book to talk about and in it you will find everything that you would expect from Haruki Murakami and a lot more besides. I have great difficulty talking about it because there is so much going on in that novel. If you would like to hear about it let me know and I will endeavor to prepare something far more interesting. The last piece of literary fiction was Philip Prott's Ghostwriter which is a short book. I listened to the audio version of this one and it was just over four hours long. This is a novel about what it means to be Jewish in a way. It is a novel about the success of a young writer and the ability of a writer to live in his own head to imagine things that don't necessarily have much to do with the truth or at any rate with reality. Whether a reality and the truth have a lot in common is a question that I am not capable of answering in this video. The Ghostwriter is about a meeting of a successful novelist with an incoming new ambitious writer who has always admired this older the Jew who got away I believe was our protagonist's description of the writer in question. In Ghostwriter our protagonist Nathan Zuckerman meets his literary hero as I mentioned E.I. Lounoff and this meeting becomes something far more complex than at first appears. Zuckerman ends up being dragged into something of a domestic circus which complicates his relationship first with his idol and then with a young woman. The whole notion of Zuckerman living in his head imagining things that are not naturally the whole notion of Zuckerman living in his head imagining things that are not necessarily true comes from this meeting with what the novel's blurb describes as a dark-haired beauty. At the same time there is an intertextual play with the journals of Anne Frank which adds a delightful layer of historicity to the Ghostwriter and one which almost has the taste of of likelihood to it not not truthfulness necessarily but a very convincing what if in the way that that wishful thinking can often convince you of things that are not necessarily the way that life actually is. Cool book is all I'm saying very cool book. Next up we've got a few works of non-fiction the first of them is a very short collection of addresses that Kurt Vonnegut did in sending of graduates into university graduates into the real world. It is called if this isn't nice what is and it is perhaps two and a half hours of listening as an audiobook which is how I consumed this particular one, consumed I hate that word, gives you all those notions of consumerism and consumers and anyway the point is if this isn't nice what is such a fun collection. At no point does Kurt Vonnegut repeat himself during these collected addresses in in a way that that annoys or frustrates. No what he does is he overall looks at the same several themes but in fresh in new ways and there is one particular anecdote from which the title of this collection comes into the fore if this isn't nice what is which Vonnegut returns to again and again during I would say about half the addresses that that he gives to each and every one of those I received this anecdote in ever so slightly different way the idea is you have to take a moment now and then to appreciate your life even if you're having a bit of a hard time but especially when you're not stop for a moment and ask yourself if this isn't nice what is it's a good advice I think and it promotes kind of mindfulness that I can really get into Vonnegut has always been one of my favorite writers and Slaughterhouse 5 is I think the second greatest anti-war novel ever written the first being Cache 22. Vonnegut was a true visionary and I truly wish he were he was still out there and creating he would be about 100 years old now he passed away in 2007 or 2008 I think at the age of 80 something a very good age and I think we're all the poorer for not having his words of wisdom with us reflecting more of the time there is one aspect in which his his collection his one of his addresses was widely off the mark I hope in which he talks about keeping your kids away from computer devices and how computer devices will basically turn you into well not great folks not folks you'd like to be around and certainly not those who can contribute to society I think vagabonds idiots and something of the like was used I have the exact quote on my review in my blog the link for which you will likely find down in the description and if I may remind you that you press the like button and subscribe as we move on to our next two or even three works of non-fiction I read Nemesis by Max Hastings an excellent historical account of the Japanese slash American front the Pacific front pardon and that was actually great preparation for the Haruki Murakami book The Windup Bird Chronicles because it gave me so much knowledge such a better idea of the conflict going on in Manchuria throughout China in the Pacific just such a massive amount of fascinating information very very lengthy book but well worth reading I also read two works of literary criticism I've read a few more but two are particularly worth mentioning one is three inquiries into character by Tony Morrill and Rita Felsky and Amanda the name is here oh here somewhere I'm sure the second the second novel these these essays very good very good essays if you're interested in literary criticism the way they think about looking at characters in new ways at examining characters critically is invaluable for anyone who is planning on doing English academia English literature or any other kind of academic literary critical critical work the second book also by Rita Felsky the limits of critique which expands on this idea that there are certain ways of doing literary criticism that are dominant and that are dominant for no good reason these ways are diminishing our capacity to do interesting things in an academic context they are furthermore weakening interest in the humanities and and are creating a rift between the way in which professional critics and the layman who read literature take up literature consume literature enjoy literature and think about literature and Rita Felsky's project the one she proposes in the limits of critique is meant to bridge this gap and to breathe life once more into interest in the humanities to redefine and clarify the role that the humanities have in our lives huh I think I managed to vocalize all of this pretty well Rita Felsky's novel novel I had to screw it up this critical work well worth reading whether you're an academic or someone else interested interested in the world of critical analysis that much for nonfiction this last point of our discussion has everything to do with science fiction and fantasy the best book I've read during my time away was the shadow of the gods by John Gwynne Mr. Gwynne the father of my lovely friends at the brothers Gwynne child Will and Edd is is a phenomenal fantasy author one that I had not read until I picked up shadow of the gods and one that I am now certain to read everything else by shadow of the gods recreates in a way that if not the content certainly not and then the feeling of a Norse epic and it does so in in the best ways possible the world of shadow of the gods is gritty and dark and full of monsters it is not at all hospitable to human life it is hostile but at the same time civilization is inextricably moving forward in it we have a trio of really excellent characters all of them defined and motivated by what I think you will find really relatable relatable motivations and yes I know I kind of repeat myself by using motivated and motivations but doesn't matter I'm not going to talk about shadow of the gods a lot here I very much plan on maybe rereading it by the end of the year and and involving myself with it a lot more at a lot higher level of discourse I think it is well worth that discussion what I will leave you with is this idea that it truly is something something of an exceptional release and definitely one of the high points of the fantasy genre for 2021 two other books I read in the sff genre one of them was the war of the worlds in fact I listened to this one as narrated by David Tennant a fun experience in itself just to listen to I can see a lot of how the war of the worlds has has left its marks on the popular psyche on science fiction certainly but also on the way perhaps in which we write today's bestsellers there was so much that I could just point out in that novel as a prototype of of conventions which is still widely in use and and very popular to this day and I have to respect that it's perhaps not as effective as affecting as it would be it would have been rather 50 years certainly 100 years ago but that doesn't take away from from this colossal work a foundational piece of the genre I enjoyed it didn't love it but I appreciate it for the importance it has one last book that I will bring to your attention and this one I will just mention in the barest of terms because I beta read it so it wasn't necessarily a final version of the book and this is the return of the well-fleet by my good friend Benedict Patrick Ortrov the excellent folklore-based Jan's world novels the return of the well-fleet sees the return of a beloved character of mine someone who starred in the dark star dragon novel the first of a new series Benedict has been working on it is fun adventurous portal world hoppity hoppity and an overall exciting exciting read the return of the well-fleet however at one point does shift from from the tone that I expected and adored into something unexpected a lot darker a lot more f-top I'm going to say just so I don't offend the youtube gods it's not like I need that as well it's good it's good I look forward to getting the final version I kick started it some months ago when Benedict had a campaign for that he's a friend of mine so I'm very much biased towards looking kind of you know hoping he is successful with the release of this one and looking favorably upon him is what I was trying to say but that that is something to look forward to in a few months time I think in fact this video has gone on very very long long enough certainly so I will now leave you to it with with one last word of of of I suppose wisdom and that word is subscribe please I'm desperate I really need this child to grow so I do not one day starve as a starving literary graduate which I'm I'm currently on the way of becoming I did graduate my my underground degree I got that that was fun but um video ending yes thank you for watching friends that's how you do it yes thank you for watching like and share this video with your friends I don't know why you would like that it's been just bragging and very much stream of consciousness kind of thing going on lately in this channel and by later I mean over the last half an hour or so but I did enjoy doing this I think it's been a while so I needed to get this whole just just messy video out of the way so I can go back to doing better structured content there's some video games content incoming as well so look forward to that maybe I'll do it on a new channel however I haven't yet decided thinking about it and with that I leave you I bid you a do you friends goodbye goodbye I've missed you you've missed me too now tell me what you would like to care about in the comments down below any of these books any other books yes goodbye bye yes goodbye don't know no you go please um leave me leave me alone please I have had enough of this