Alex鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

4,469

pages read

books read

Alex

Shortest Book

123

pages

Longest Book

437

pages

Average book length in 2024

297

pages

Most Shelved

823,315

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Least Shelved

684

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Alex鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.8

The Posthumous Memoirs of Br谩s Cubas by Machado de Assis

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

3.94 average

Alex鈥檚 first review of the year

liked it

The hardest bit of visiting the past is the blinders of the present. The Translator here speaks to this: knowing the history of the area, of the literature of the time, of all manner of little lost items of data, much that feels offhand becomes deeply meaningful and pointed. But for better or worse, I don't read with phone in hand for quick reference. This may not be your shortcoming... if not, there are extensive endnotes, which makes this feel The hardest bit of visiting the past is the blinders of the present. The Translator here speaks to this: knowing the history of the area, of the literature of the time, of all manner of little lost items of data, much that feels offhand becomes deeply meaningful and pointed. But for better or worse, I don't read with phone in hand for quick reference. This may not be your shortcoming... if not, there are extensive endnotes, which makes this feel like an absolutely glorious find for the student of Machado or Portuguese literature.

For me, though, I want a novel to hit me for what it is the first time around, and what this is, well, is the memoirs of a dickhead, if I may be blunt about it. Perhaps this is overstating. Cubas the narrator/author is certainly an oaf, with money in inverse proportion to sense. He is a dullard who fancies himself a philosopher. His autobiography shows a life relatively devoid of great events... outside of the grand love at its center (illicit though it was, and unworthy of it though our narrator is), the contents are small both in scope and in their pettiness. Cubas is the epitome of failing upwards, from a lineage which has manufactured its noble history.

To be sure, there's a reason writing an antihero is more fun than writing in a pure good and evil binary. Satire is good for many things, and the sheer idleness of a rich man, too close to the political Sphere of influence, is indeed timeless (his newspaper era echoes what passes for news and political opinion on the modern right). You can tell Machado had a hell of a lot of fun writing this figure, and if the humor is less obvious than it might be with a Bertie Wooster, it's nevertheless still clear that Cubas is a character to not emulate. (You can also tell the Translator had no less of a blast exploring the translation, even without reading her admit as much in her forewords).

Still, for me, I think I expected more from it. These sorts of "autobiographies" tend to expect critics intertextually, so I suppose I've already been told off for that expectation. And perhaps inhabiting the world of the book longer would make its playfulness more apparent than its narrator's petulence. Bras Cubas is a paragon of self-centered navel (or nose tip) gazing, of philosophy-bro faux-depth, and of upper class twittery. There is maybe just too much of that in the real world at the moment for me to be as charitable to him as I could be. ...more

础尝贰齿鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

it was amazing

The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano

We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino

Moldy Strawberries by Caio Fernando Abreu

really liked it

Alex鈥檚 last review of the year

really liked it

I'm terrible at focusing on longer, slower books these days, and I was taking this one on the train for the better part of 2024, so it should have been a much quicker read, but I finally finished it over holiday travel.

The thing that lured me into the book to begin with was the yearning of the titular madame. There is a despair built into her character that is palpable. With hopes of Love sunk into a reliable but ultimately mediocre man, dreams o I'm terrible at focusing on longer, slower books these days, and I was taking this one on the train for the better part of 2024, so it should have been a much quicker read, but I finally finished it over holiday travel.

The thing that lured me into the book to begin with was the yearning of the titular madame. There is a despair built into her character that is palpable. With hopes of Love sunk into a reliable but ultimately mediocre man, dreams of social mobility equally stymied by his incompetence, it's hard not to feel for Emma, even at her least rational or most demanding. It's arguably a book about bad decisions... not just that of choosing to stray from a marriage (or the terrible options she chose to do so), but also the bad choices of Charles Bovary, the terrible ideas of the society in which the Bovaries live, etc etc. It's a world where Emma is trapped and pleasureless.

It's wild that authors can create characters so inextricably bound to desperation and also seem to think they're in the wrong... Flaubert does not seem to have a high opinion of his character, despite her situation being distinctly pitiable. And it's hard not to watch Charles get everything wrong and still accept his doting over his wife as a positive. By the couple's move to Yonville, it's hard to have real pity for him as anything but a knucklehead. It's the ultimate failure to read the room, to pick up roots from an already claustrophobic situation, and transfer everything to a podunk nowhere full of gossips, blowhards, and the provinciality that really puts Charles and Emma in stark contrast, with his skill barely living up to his new life and her ambitions and interest in the world far outstripping what the town could hope to provide.

And so ultimately I guess my main wish for this book would be something approaching a satisfying release for Emma. It's a bit of an object lesson in how desperation for and dearth of actual emotional stimulation can lead to terrible choices in mates. How trying to live our truths can get us in over our heads. How debtors have always been shady assholes? I guess that should also be a pretty prominent lesson too. Don't trust experts who aren't experts. Learn to vet sources. Probably less popular takes on the book, given most probably stew in the salaciousness of affairs, but honestly... live your slut life, but don't be a shitty businessman. ...more

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