Thank you so much, Tracy. Yes - finding books that run that perfect alignment between a well realized concept and your personal taste is the sweet spot.
Very interesting thoughts Petya! I got sent both 1 & 2 by the publisher and I wonder if I will want to read them in immediate succession, and whether that will result in a different feeling? I will feedback. Although, the fact that only 2 are available in English right now, instead of all 7, is interesting for how it'll shape all English readers opinion. The ability to consume everything in a series in one go compared to having to wait between books has a massive affect on our relationship with them/the story!
It is so unnerving to fail to connect with a book that so many of my people are loving but I think it's important to stand by your own experience of the world and that applies to books, too.
Sara (of FictionMatters) told me to listen to the newest episode of Merve Emre's podcast in which she talks to the amazing FSG editor Jackson Howard and in that conversation she said something like... when you read in bulk as they do (for work, on literary prize committees, etc) ... she said that sometimes it feels that people just end up admiring the book that is different. And it's the difference that they like, more than the book itself. Which I thought was so interesting and I suspect there is at least a bit of an element of that in this particular case.
oh SO interesting re what Howard said - frankly makes a tonne of sense as well. I listen to that pod - thanks for the rec! It is so unnerving to fail to connect with a book so many people are loving - well done for being honest and standing by your own experience. There is no right or wrong when it comes to books, even tho the internet feels that way sometimes...
It would be insane to commit to a 7 part series (imo) when you didn't love the beginning of it! Even if books are a part of a series, you sometimes have to give yourself the freedom to NOT read them all!
Petya, your review is interesting since this is one of the books that I was interested in among the IBP longlist. Buttttt I hate starting a book series. As to your question about a book being technical brilliant yet unmoving, at the top of my head, I don’t think I have experienced it yet cos to me, thinking about it now, they should go hand in hand. I don’t think I can say something is brilliant without being moved by it but this is just me :)
Yeah... I am not entirely convinced by my own argument here. I know a lot of people say that they don't mind poorly written books as long as they are a good "story" - which is where a lot of the criticism of genre fiction comes from.
I struggled with this idea regarding classics this past week. As I felt tortured attempting to finish Emma by Jane Austen, I asked myself what I was missing that others saw. It prompted me to think deeply on this idea of technical brilliance vs enjoyability. Are both subjective? Is technical brilliance objective and opinion subjective? It is a lot to ponder but in my case I moved on to the next book.
I had the same problem with Emma, a book I felt I had to read, but after two attempts with several years between, I just put it aside. Another book I struggled with was Middlemarch, but I persisted on advice from a friend, and came to enjoy the novel, but not like I loved classics like Anna Karenina, The Red and the Black, and Of Human Bondage. No stopping there. (And I will give Austen a third chance, knowing how essential she is.)
I feel this so deeply. I have not tried Emma, but have tried Sense and Sensibility and could not get into the book. I have been wondering recently if it was because I was too young at the time, maybe I should try now.... But I keep reminding myself that - in my particular case - I am a reader first and someone who writes about books second. So, my loyalty is to my own reading soul. I want to maximize my time reading books that grab be, charm me... even kick me in the face a little bit... I want them to feel like a good match. The older I get, the less I can make myself just slog through books that are not doing it for me.
I saw your note about that earlier this week. And you gave it PLENTY of time - 300 pages is a lot of reading if you don't enjoy it. It's so hard, especially when there is so much chatter about the significance of that particular book to The Canon, etc. Maybe you come back to it at another point, maybe you don't. Life is too short to read books that can't keep you reading.
This piece is so interesting and it comes at a time when I've been considering this distinction between enjoying and appreciating a book. Perhaps not all writers, or not all books, are meant to entertain and I think that is perfectly fine. If literature is art, then it is up to the artist to set the terms of engagement and for the reader to accept or not--both choices have their consequences for the experience and I don't think there's necessarily a right choice. But there might be the right moment for one choice or the other.
As for the argument that this is only the first volume of a series... I can see the logic, but Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend is also a set-up novel for a series and it works just as well as its own thing, imho!
Even the didactic Bertolt Brecht stressed the importance of entertaining the audience in A Short Organum for the Theatre. Groundhog Day without the humor would have been awfully boring. Why would we excuse a novel that puts you to sleep (disclaimer: I've not read Balle.)
I am so relieved to read about your reaction to The Calculation of Volume. I read it after a friend exuberantly gushed over it, but I felt nothing. Nada. El zippo. I was vacillating between "OMG this is booooring" and "OMG what is wrong with me why can't I understand what the point is?" I did NOT read the second book. I admire you for doing that, and please let me know if it is worth reading.
Sounds like we have had very similar experiences with this one. I will read the second book because I realize that it's possible that I was just in a different mental space and the book was just catching me at the wrong time... Will report back!
Yes, I do. I really liked this book - both on its own merits and for the self-reflection it provoked. Plus, it leaves you with a reading list which to me is always a bonus!
I love this review, Petya! You brought up some really excellent points and connections with both books. I just finished Bibliophobia and am still gathering my thoughts about it. I'd like to hear your thoughts!
I appreciate your appreciation for On The Calculation of Volume's technical aspects and that it did not stick with you in the ways you had hoped. It's interesting to read someone else's experience with a novel you had an opposite experience with. "The problem is that it never reached back," this sentence in your piece was striking because, yes, Tara and the novel never reach back, but that is where I met her in the middle. I know my appreciation for the aspects that didn't click for you are the reason the novel for me went from being good to great—it found me at the right time when I was in a place of feeling like half a person only experiencing the events around me and unable to participate fully, much like Tara. I now want to think about that in the context of Bibliophobia.
Thank you again for your honest review. I love reading other perspectives on novels/media where someone has a different experience or takeaway, as it helps to expand our understanding of each other!
I love your perspective, Katie. And after reading your last post I can totally see how you would feel that connection with the book that was not available to me.
I think that what makes the book dialogue on Substack so enriching is that personal experience of / with reading that we share so openly and is typically not part of traditional book criticism... I am a firm believer that the material circumstances around us completely color our reading of certain books and I think this is such a good example of that.
The only comments I have heard about The Employees are identical to yours... which is exactly why I've been avoiding it. I kind of like it when an author plays with my heart.
Mike and I are starting Calculation now! It's a very interesting take, and one I might agree by the end with simply because I just read two extremely plot-heavy books that reminded me of the joy of reading and left me wondering when we suddenly stopped caring about plot.
I am reading my second Deborah Levy in a week - she is an odd duck - and still... I am amazed how riveting a minimal plot can feel after the stuff I've been reading this past year! 🤣🤣🤣
I DNF’d On The Calculation of Volume. I couldn’t do it anymore. When I read I’ve got to FEEL SOMETHING. I also felt nothing with this book. Good storytelling captivates no matter the subject. To me, technical skill means nothing if you can’t compel your audience to care/feel/attach to the story.
No time to struggle through books that don't capture you - in SOME way. Every once in a while I find myself slogging through a book, I actually pause and tell myself... you are the boss of you! You don't owe anyone an explanation! 🤣🤣🤣 Thank god I made it to 44 to learn that!
“reserve our praise for when it's all out” Imagine how everyone waiting for the last Game of Thrones feels like 😂 I don’t think I’d make it past book 2 if I have to wait that long for it to make sense. This is a situation I’ve been trying to articulate for a year of reading.
It was so interesting to read this, Petya. I think I can recognize the qualities that left you flat, but personally I loved the books so much!
What you experienced as technical, I experienced as magical — the ability of both Balle and Tara Selter to keep turning and turning inside circumstance, to keep finding possibility, to keep opening.
Sal! I saw your name come through my inbox and I felt so nervous because I'd read your post about the book and knew you loved it. I love it when readers NOTICE the same qualities of a book and have totally different reactions to them. It makes perfect sense to me that we would share an interest but maybe not share taste, right? Like... we are drawn to certain themes, questions, types of books (that's why we read the same books)... but ultimately made different judgements about what we read.
I will say that since I posted this, my curiosity about book 2 has only increased... a lot having to do with the fact that I keep finding myself in my own life having more or less the same conversation with different people... you know, the administration, how to be an immigrant right now, my beliefs about america... and i just kept hearing myself saying similar things and getting similar questions and responses.... and then catching myself maybe half-listening... and then wondering if i was actually responding to the right question or to a version of the question that someone else had asked me the day before... very Tara Selter-esque thoughts!!! Will definitely write about vol2!
Thank you so much, Tracy. Yes - finding books that run that perfect alignment between a well realized concept and your personal taste is the sweet spot.
Very interesting thoughts Petya! I got sent both 1 & 2 by the publisher and I wonder if I will want to read them in immediate succession, and whether that will result in a different feeling? I will feedback. Although, the fact that only 2 are available in English right now, instead of all 7, is interesting for how it'll shape all English readers opinion. The ability to consume everything in a series in one go compared to having to wait between books has a massive affect on our relationship with them/the story!
It is so unnerving to fail to connect with a book that so many of my people are loving but I think it's important to stand by your own experience of the world and that applies to books, too.
Sara (of FictionMatters) told me to listen to the newest episode of Merve Emre's podcast in which she talks to the amazing FSG editor Jackson Howard and in that conversation she said something like... when you read in bulk as they do (for work, on literary prize committees, etc) ... she said that sometimes it feels that people just end up admiring the book that is different. And it's the difference that they like, more than the book itself. Which I thought was so interesting and I suspect there is at least a bit of an element of that in this particular case.
oh SO interesting re what Howard said - frankly makes a tonne of sense as well. I listen to that pod - thanks for the rec! It is so unnerving to fail to connect with a book so many people are loving - well done for being honest and standing by your own experience. There is no right or wrong when it comes to books, even tho the internet feels that way sometimes...
No. There isn't... Our conversation about Anaiis Nin from earlier this week completely applies!
I fully feel like that happened with Orbital, even though I loved it
On reading the series... I know... It's strange. I will read the second one soon, I think. But I am not committing to the series yet.
It would be insane to commit to a 7 part series (imo) when you didn't love the beginning of it! Even if books are a part of a series, you sometimes have to give yourself the freedom to NOT read them all!
Petya, your review is interesting since this is one of the books that I was interested in among the IBP longlist. Buttttt I hate starting a book series. As to your question about a book being technical brilliant yet unmoving, at the top of my head, I don’t think I have experienced it yet cos to me, thinking about it now, they should go hand in hand. I don’t think I can say something is brilliant without being moved by it but this is just me :)
Yeah... I am not entirely convinced by my own argument here. I know a lot of people say that they don't mind poorly written books as long as they are a good "story" - which is where a lot of the criticism of genre fiction comes from.
I struggle with series too.
I struggled with this idea regarding classics this past week. As I felt tortured attempting to finish Emma by Jane Austen, I asked myself what I was missing that others saw. It prompted me to think deeply on this idea of technical brilliance vs enjoyability. Are both subjective? Is technical brilliance objective and opinion subjective? It is a lot to ponder but in my case I moved on to the next book.
I had the same problem with Emma, a book I felt I had to read, but after two attempts with several years between, I just put it aside. Another book I struggled with was Middlemarch, but I persisted on advice from a friend, and came to enjoy the novel, but not like I loved classics like Anna Karenina, The Red and the Black, and Of Human Bondage. No stopping there. (And I will give Austen a third chance, knowing how essential she is.)
I feel this so deeply. I have not tried Emma, but have tried Sense and Sensibility and could not get into the book. I have been wondering recently if it was because I was too young at the time, maybe I should try now.... But I keep reminding myself that - in my particular case - I am a reader first and someone who writes about books second. So, my loyalty is to my own reading soul. I want to maximize my time reading books that grab be, charm me... even kick me in the face a little bit... I want them to feel like a good match. The older I get, the less I can make myself just slog through books that are not doing it for me.
I love your list of classics you have enjoyed!
I saw your note about that earlier this week. And you gave it PLENTY of time - 300 pages is a lot of reading if you don't enjoy it. It's so hard, especially when there is so much chatter about the significance of that particular book to The Canon, etc. Maybe you come back to it at another point, maybe you don't. Life is too short to read books that can't keep you reading.
This piece is so interesting and it comes at a time when I've been considering this distinction between enjoying and appreciating a book. Perhaps not all writers, or not all books, are meant to entertain and I think that is perfectly fine. If literature is art, then it is up to the artist to set the terms of engagement and for the reader to accept or not--both choices have their consequences for the experience and I don't think there's necessarily a right choice. But there might be the right moment for one choice or the other.
As for the argument that this is only the first volume of a series... I can see the logic, but Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend is also a set-up novel for a series and it works just as well as its own thing, imho!
Even the didactic Bertolt Brecht stressed the importance of entertaining the audience in A Short Organum for the Theatre. Groundhog Day without the humor would have been awfully boring. Why would we excuse a novel that puts you to sleep (disclaimer: I've not read Balle.)
I am so relieved to read about your reaction to The Calculation of Volume. I read it after a friend exuberantly gushed over it, but I felt nothing. Nada. El zippo. I was vacillating between "OMG this is booooring" and "OMG what is wrong with me why can't I understand what the point is?" I did NOT read the second book. I admire you for doing that, and please let me know if it is worth reading.
Sounds like we have had very similar experiences with this one. I will read the second book because I realize that it's possible that I was just in a different mental space and the book was just catching me at the wrong time... Will report back!
Would you recommend Bibliophobia? I was eyeing it yesterday (it's a local feminist-bookstore read for the month).
Yes, I do. I really liked this book - both on its own merits and for the self-reflection it provoked. Plus, it leaves you with a reading list which to me is always a bonus!
Thank you! Loved this essay also, by the way, and spent my waking hour thinking about it.
I love this review, Petya! You brought up some really excellent points and connections with both books. I just finished Bibliophobia and am still gathering my thoughts about it. I'd like to hear your thoughts!
I appreciate your appreciation for On The Calculation of Volume's technical aspects and that it did not stick with you in the ways you had hoped. It's interesting to read someone else's experience with a novel you had an opposite experience with. "The problem is that it never reached back," this sentence in your piece was striking because, yes, Tara and the novel never reach back, but that is where I met her in the middle. I know my appreciation for the aspects that didn't click for you are the reason the novel for me went from being good to great—it found me at the right time when I was in a place of feeling like half a person only experiencing the events around me and unable to participate fully, much like Tara. I now want to think about that in the context of Bibliophobia.
Thank you again for your honest review. I love reading other perspectives on novels/media where someone has a different experience or takeaway, as it helps to expand our understanding of each other!
I love your perspective, Katie. And after reading your last post I can totally see how you would feel that connection with the book that was not available to me.
I think that what makes the book dialogue on Substack so enriching is that personal experience of / with reading that we share so openly and is typically not part of traditional book criticism... I am a firm believer that the material circumstances around us completely color our reading of certain books and I think this is such a good example of that.
This reminded me of another Danish novel: The Employees by Olga Ravn. Fascinating book but I had no emotional connection with it whatsoever
The only comments I have heard about The Employees are identical to yours... which is exactly why I've been avoiding it. I kind of like it when an author plays with my heart.
I thought the same thing! The part about On the Calculation of Volume reminding me of Olga Ravn, I mean, not the part about not liking it.
I was so excited to read it and thought I was going to love it
Mike and I are starting Calculation now! It's a very interesting take, and one I might agree by the end with simply because I just read two extremely plot-heavy books that reminded me of the joy of reading and left me wondering when we suddenly stopped caring about plot.
I am reading my second Deborah Levy in a week - she is an odd duck - and still... I am amazed how riveting a minimal plot can feel after the stuff I've been reading this past year! 🤣🤣🤣
I DNF’d On The Calculation of Volume. I couldn’t do it anymore. When I read I’ve got to FEEL SOMETHING. I also felt nothing with this book. Good storytelling captivates no matter the subject. To me, technical skill means nothing if you can’t compel your audience to care/feel/attach to the story.
No time to struggle through books that don't capture you - in SOME way. Every once in a while I find myself slogging through a book, I actually pause and tell myself... you are the boss of you! You don't owe anyone an explanation! 🤣🤣🤣 Thank god I made it to 44 to learn that!
“reserve our praise for when it's all out” Imagine how everyone waiting for the last Game of Thrones feels like 😂 I don’t think I’d make it past book 2 if I have to wait that long for it to make sense. This is a situation I’ve been trying to articulate for a year of reading.
It was so interesting to read this, Petya. I think I can recognize the qualities that left you flat, but personally I loved the books so much!
What you experienced as technical, I experienced as magical — the ability of both Balle and Tara Selter to keep turning and turning inside circumstance, to keep finding possibility, to keep opening.
So curious to see how you find book 2.
Sal! I saw your name come through my inbox and I felt so nervous because I'd read your post about the book and knew you loved it. I love it when readers NOTICE the same qualities of a book and have totally different reactions to them. It makes perfect sense to me that we would share an interest but maybe not share taste, right? Like... we are drawn to certain themes, questions, types of books (that's why we read the same books)... but ultimately made different judgements about what we read.
I will say that since I posted this, my curiosity about book 2 has only increased... a lot having to do with the fact that I keep finding myself in my own life having more or less the same conversation with different people... you know, the administration, how to be an immigrant right now, my beliefs about america... and i just kept hearing myself saying similar things and getting similar questions and responses.... and then catching myself maybe half-listening... and then wondering if i was actually responding to the right question or to a version of the question that someone else had asked me the day before... very Tara Selter-esque thoughts!!! Will definitely write about vol2!
I find I don't care books move me emotionally. I like a cold text.
You probably didn't mean it as a joke but your note made me laugh in delight. I completely support your preferred way of engaging with books!