Bookshelf Update Feb/March 2025

I'm paring down my physical bookshelves again (making room for some new stuff). Last year (or the year before?) I read many of the books that I had bought but never read. Now I'm working my way through some that I read many years ago to see if I still like them. I don't have enough to say for full reviews, but I want to record my reactions. 

Lythande and The Gratitude of Kings
Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1986, 1997

Oof. Talk about problematic authors. I always wanted to like MZB's stuff more than I actually liked her work, even before I found out about her being probably a terrible awful person. (I have a strong memory of throwing Mists of Avalon across the room in fury as a teenager, although I still overall enjoyed it at the time.)

Lythande is a book of short stories about the wizard Lythande, whose power depends on keeping the fact that she's a woman a secret. (The Gratitude of Kings is another story about the character written a decade later.) I liked these stories long ago, and there are still some fun aspects to some of them. But there's a weird tension around the stories refusal to actually engage with gender in most ways. Lythande acts "like a man" (to the point that she considers committing a kind of magical sexual assault in the first story!) and resents anything that reminds her she is in fact female or that she might have anything in common with any other woman. That could be interesting, but the narrative isn't interested in engaging with it. One of the introductions from the author actually unintentionally confirms that MZB's own personal sorta-misogynistic attitude ("I'm not like other girls"/"If I had to work twice as hard as a man to be respected then you should have to as well or else you are useless") is reflected in her approach, and Lythande is a weird, off-putting character in some of the stories because of it. 

The Anvil of Ice
Michael Scott Rohan, 1986

I read this in high school and vaguely remembered liking it, so I picked up a copy on a dollar rack years ago. Finally reading it, and it's... okay...? The relations between the different groups of people aren't super racist, but there's an overtone of the savages versus the civilized that I don't like. 

The characters aren't very compelling. The magic is intriguing but more hinted at than explained, and eventually I got bored halfway through and abandoned it. 

Bridge of Birds
Barry Hughart, 1984

I loved this when I last read it (in the '90s or early '00s, probably), and it's not as bad/boring as the others in this round-up, but I didn't like it nearly as much as I remembered, reading it now. This pastiche/fantasy inspired by ancient Chinese tales has funny and fantastical parts, some exciting parts and some poignant parts. Early on, however, there were some ambiguously unpleasant scenes ("wait, was that a date rape joke?" stuff) and the overall tone just wasn't working for me. 

I almost didn't keep reading it, but I stuck with it, and the second half is much better than the first. I was able to get into the farcical nature of it all, but even so, I don't think it's going to make the cut to stay on the shelf. To stay this year, I have to either LOVE a book and want to re-read it, and/or it has to be super rare and something I want to have for reference/research, and/or I have to actively want to share it with my kid, and this doesn't quite check any of the boxes.