Then and Now #46 (24/7/23 - 30/7/23)

Happy Sunday and welcome to July!  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

What a week! On Tuesday I literally felt like I got tested on every level of being a Doctoral candidate. I first had an oral Norwegian exam (I passed, yay!), which tested if I could learn; then I had my final seminar and got feedback from students (their feedback was lovely, yay!); and then I had to present an article during a Kolloquium and get feedback (which was really constructive and useful, yay!). It was a lot but all of it went really well, I think, and it was a lovely way to end the semester, even if I still had a few days to go. I'm really proud of how I did this semester, which feels a bit bragadocious, but I think I deserve to say it xD I'm very much looking forward to now having a few weeks to write my thesis before the semester starts up again in October!

I also had a lovely final Bollywood class. I really like all the girls I met there and we've all made plans to join the class again next semester and to maybe do more performances! I also decided to treat myself on Friday and booked a Thai massage! The way my back cracked was insane and I always forget how painful part of a massage is. Like, I know my back is a disaster of knots, but I always feel bad for how much they have to dig in and how scared I get of the ache xD But I do think it did me good, even if my back still hurts a bit!

Posted last week:

• Review: A Fist or a Heart by Kristín Eiríksdóttir, trans. by Larissa Kyzer
• Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• I was merely whelmed by this, don't hate me!
• Review: Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro
• Friday Friyay: Assembly by Natasha Brown

Recommendation

We had an insane thunderstorm Saturday morning and while the lightning was flashing this song came up on my playlist and it was just perfect. So enjoy Foreigner's God by Hozier.

Mailbox Monday

The Witches at the End of the World by Chelsea Iversen (10/17/23; SOURCEBOOKS Landmark)

Rage burns brighter than any spellfire...

Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface. Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned.

When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest. Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing—she can't take back what's already done. 

Someone will have to burn.

Give me all the angry witches! And this is perfect, because I will actually be in Norway for a few days in October so this will be my read for that trip! Admittedly I'm going to Oslo, not to the birchwoods, but still, the vibe will be there.

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama, trans. by Jeffrey Angles (10/2/23; University of Minnesota Press)

Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world’s most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity’s shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas. 

Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama’s two Godzilla novellas—both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction—have never been available in English. This book finally provides English-speaking fans and critics the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama’s vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from the films, and clearly display the author’s strong antinuclear, proenvironmental convictions.

Kayama’s fiction depicts Godzilla as engaging in guerrilla-style warfare against humanity, which has allowed the destruction of the natural world through its irresponsible, immoral perversion of science. As human activity continues to cause mass extinctions and rapid climatic change, Godzilla provides a fable for the Anthropocene, powerfully reminding us that nature will fight back against humanity’s onslaught in unpredictable and devastating ways.

I've been oddly obsessed with Godzilla for a while. He's a fascinating "monster" to me, with his origins in nuclear warfare and his ambivalent role as either destroyer or saviour. So I very much am intrigued to get a look at these novels and see how Kayama, the original screen writer, first created him.

That's it for me this weekend! What's new in your mailbox?