Then and Now #25 (4/4/2022 - 4/10/2022)

Happy Sunday! The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Last Week

It's my sister's birthday and she's 25 and I'm so proud of her! I can't celebrate it actively with her since she's in London, but we'll see each other later this month so she'll get a present then and all the hugs. I did bake her a Linzertorte, which is below. Yes, it does feature my cat. My grandma used to make an amazing Linzertorte and while I'm not entirely there yet, it is definitely looking good. And burnt edges can always be trimmed off. 

I had a busy week full of university events and things, but they were all very interesting and fun. I was also able to really share my opinions as a student on some matters, which I hope can maybe make a difference. I was (not so) mildly hungover on Friday, so I spent it snacking and reading thrillers. I read Queen Bee and After All You've Done, which were both great in their own way. The second one especially was really good, so I'm still working on the review for that. Loads of things to include.

Posted:

• Review: Queen Bee by Nina Manning

Recommendations

I've had this song stuck in my head all week, it's just amazing! It's one of those classics that is always a good mood.

Mailbox Monday

Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Press; 6/7/2022)

A fiendish, classic locked room murder mystery, from one of Japan's greatest crime writers

Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the brilliant Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries.
 
Detective Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news--the son of one of the island's most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger--with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters' lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.
 
As Kindaichi attempts to unravel the island's secrets, a series of gruesome murders begins. He investigates, but soon finds himself in mortal danger from both the unknown killer and the clannish locals, who resent this outsider meddling in their affairs.

I'm fascinated by the sound of this book! Love a detective story on a distant island. And that cover is stunning, it is so beautiful and vivid and gripping.

Chronos:The West Confronts Time by François Hartog (Columbia University Press; 9/27/2022)

As omnipresent as it is ungraspable, time has always inspired and eluded attempts to comprehend it. For the early Christians, for the twenty-first-century world, how have past and future been woven into the present? In Chronos, a leading French historian ranges from Western antiquity to the Anthropocene, pinpointing the crucial turning points in our relationship to time.

François Hartog considers the genealogy of Western temporalities, examining the order of times and the divisions of time into epochs. Beginning with how the ancient Greeks understood time, Chronos explores the fashioning of a Christian time in the early centuries of the Catholic Church. Christianity’s hegemony over time reigned over Europe and beyond, only to ebb as modern time—progress—set out on its march toward the future. Hartog emphasizes the deep uncertainties the world now faces as we reckon with the arrival and significance of the Anthropocene age. Humanity has become capable of altering the climate, triggering in mere life spans changes that once took place across geological epochs. In this threatening new age, which has challenged all existing temporal constructions, what will become of the old ways of understanding time?

Intertwining reflections on intellectual history and historiography with critiques of contemporary presentism and apocalypticism, Chronos brings depth and erudition to debates over the nature of the era we are living through and offers keen insight into the experience of historical time.

As part of a module on Divination we had a long discussion on the nature of time and what it means and how and why we measure it. It was one of those conversations that is both super fascinating and so confusing. So I can't wait to read this book and dive back into the idea of time.

So that's it from me! I'm going to eat cake and enjoy the rare sunshine we're getting this week.