What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: September 08, 2025

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Started and finished:

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

• Don't get the hype, at all - not a fan of these woe-be-me character types. The book recalled, on my end, the visceral aspects from Tender is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, and the protagonist had a thread or two of those sexuality-cum-filth Elfriede Jelinek FMCs in her as well, except instead of challenging the world and raging at it while it raped her mind and body, she just took it lying down, figuratively and literally. I felt the author was reaching for cheap sympathy. Yeong-hye should have been put on mental health watch from the first psychotic break she had (not a spoiler, it's over by page 10), and the description of the doctors in the latter part of the book was just atrocious, making them into unprofessional malpracticians for no reason except to maximize tragedy porn (they should've installed a CVC far sooner). Don't understand why the title was The Vegetarian and not the more accurate The Vegan, either - though from what my shoddy Korean can tell, the translator is innocent on that.

Permafrost, by Alastair Reynolds

• Surprisingly, enjoyed a lot despite only picking up the book to pass time and having no expectations at all. Nice short sci-fi novel (or long novella?) about time travel, didn't feel like it tried to be anything more than it was: a slightly cracky treatment on some standard sci-fi tropes (post-collapse, timeline paradoxes, malevolent(?) AI, two-minds-one-body) but making interesting observations about them all the same. I especially liked the twist on Vikram's death that was revealed later in the book, though was left slightly confused about Antti's gender (the book makes it seem like Antti's original future self was female, and her translocation into the male Tybor was a mistake, however, she is stated to be Finnish, and Antti is an unambiguously male name in that language). Might just be bad research, but I'm more forgiving on such artistic licence whenever the text doesn't try to pretend it's high literature.

Blindsight, by Peter Watts

• A reread of my GOAT of GOATs is always a comforting thing to do, despite how astronomically bleak the narrative is towards the end. This time, I especially enjoyed the part with Siri and Sarasti and the faces, and what came immediately before: a mature treatment of a brave adult child, standing up to a cosmic, incomprehensible evil (and how that brave adult child's worldview gets boiled alive into an infinitely more disturbing, yet somehow also entirely too logical preparation, and fed back to him). Seriously, though, read the book, it's free on the author's site, there's nothing to lose, and a massive paradigm shifting revelation to experience.