Books of 2025 Part 2: 20-11

 20) Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett

I'm still following that Discworld reading order suggested on a Reddit thread that I always go back to, which says it's Small Gods, then any two of Guards Guards/Mort/Wyrd Sisters, so after Small Gods then Guards Guards last year, I arrived at this mainly because it was in my local library. So I guess I'll get to Mort at some point? But I loved Guards Guards last year, so this one had some big shoes to fill. For the most part I did very much enjoy this. I didn't find it quite as consistently hilarious as Guards Guards, although I was laughing frequently throughout it. I think I found the plot of this one less consistently amusing so I was more laughing at Pratchett's ironical tone and frequent wry jokes throughout. Mainly I did find that sometimes Pratchett can get a bit ahead of himself, so I feel like he had a lot of the plot points laid out for this book, and a lot of the time it's less clear in reading it how we got there or where we were going to go next, and the book therefore seemed to jump a bit erratically from some plot points. Or alternatively, the opposite happens, where the book almost felt like it got stagnated so a plot contrivance occurs to jump fifteen years into the future (without just saying "oh now it's fifteen years into the future") which felt like a step too far for me to really get caught up in the story and its machinations. Truth is I was caught up far more in the intertextual references - obviously to Macbeth, with a touch of Hamlet thrown in particularly with the plot device of 'the play' getting the truth out of the usurper to the throne in the end - than I was in the plot itself. But the characters of the Wyrd sisters and the coven that they create are amusing with their repartee and frequent little arguments, and through them I could enjoy the world-building here. But it just didn't quite land with the satirical points Pratchett was making simply because I wasn't able to follow the plot points in the way that he had them planned out and executed; but as part of getting someone (i.e. me) into the Discworld series which this reading order is meant to do, I think this was a successful enough stepping stone to draw me further into the world.

19) Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead

I'm not sure what point I am with Colson Whitehead now. I enjoyed The Underground Railroad in no small part just because of the high concept of it, then I loved The Nickel Boys way more than I was expecting but I'm still not convinced I loved it, or if again it just had a good conceit. And then Zone One that I read last year I really didn't care for much at all and felt like Whitehead was out of his depth in that kind of genre. So this book could be read as almost an exact analogue to Zone One in that again he's playing very much in genre fiction space here, but instead of post-apocalyptic horror this time he's doing a pretty typical hard-boiled crime fiction. But like Zone One, the city of New York is the ever-present protagonist of the story, and Harlem Shuffle acts as a kind of underground tour of Harlem across a span of many years. Our ostensible protagonist is Ray Carney, the proprietor of a high-class (at least relatively speaking) furniture showroom in Harlem; father to two kids and - as we learn soon enough - son of an organised crime figure who he's determined to differentiate himself from by keeping to the straight and narrow and running a legitimate business. The thorn in his side is his cousin Freddie who, ever since they were kids, has always been a bit of a troublemaker but as the events of this story play out, Freddie's petty larceny starts to escalate and he inevitably gets Ray caught up in his spiral into the underworld of organised crime and ever-grander larceny. On its surface this book has the hallmarks of what little modern crime fiction I've read, and Elmore Leonard tends to be my go-to comparison for things like this. As far as the crime fiction elements go, the tension, the thrills and the moral ambivalence goes, this is fairly pedestrian - and for that reason I start to compare it to Zone One as I just don't think Colson Whitehead has a distinctive enough voice to put a personal stamp on genre work like this. What does make this a bit more interesting though is how it functions as a tribute to Harlem the district and New York the larger city. It's a seedy kind of tour, as a lot of the premise of the story hinges on everybody having a grimey underbelly, where innocent-seeming shops are always a front for some numbers or drug-running business, where every person on the street could be a hired goon for some high-up crime boss, and naturally, of course, ACAB. But Carney is our main conduit to this world, and the story is as much about the situations he finds himself caught up in as much as it is about his own conscience and will being torn between wanting to do the right thing and remain a law-abiding citizen to protect his family, and the temptation to go for the big score and try to cash in and move to easy street. What I think Whitehead is ultimately doing with the two sides of the story is showing that, in this time and place, it has always been necessary to have a certain aspect of crookedness in order to get ahead in the world, and it's impossible to escape that underbelly without losing some friends, or some property or standing, along the way. I'm not sure the book is fully successful simply because I didn't find myself caught up enough in the thrill of the chase or the crime, and nor did I find the tone of the narrative gritty enough to really sell the inevitable oppressiveness of Ray's lifestyle. But as incomplete as the story might be, it remains an enjoyable read because of the mutable likeability of Ray himself and how much Whitehead is able to sell his frequent calculation and wavering decision-making.

18) Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - P G Wodehouse

The more Wodehouse I read, the more I relate to that unnamed character in the first episode of Black Books who says "hang on. I've read this one. That's the trouble with Wodehouse, isn't it?" and the repetitions are so palpable that I in fact completely forgot that this was the second Wodehouse book I’d read this year, and I’d written it up with the same beginning and making many of the same points that I’m about to make. That’s the trouble with Fletcher, isn’t it? At a few points in reading this book I actually had to double-check myself whether I'd actually read this one or not, even though this one has a distinctive enough title from "[Common everyday expression], Jeeves" that I knew I hadn't. The fact is that Wooster as narrator often tends to refer to the same series of events in all of these books, and all of the hijinks tend to stem from the same kind of conflict and end up developing and resolving in much the same way, so there is certainly a similarity between Wodehouse books that tends towards formulaic. It does of course lend itself to much entertainment and a lot of laughs; I read this one frequently in the presence of Dylan and he kept questioning why I was laughing because to his 9yo mind, this doesn't appear to be a funny book from the outside. But really this doesn't have quite the joke ratio nor the sheer absurdism as other Wodehouse I've read that had me fairly cackling. The intertextual references mount in this book to make it feel like this is one of the later works (I wish, in retrospect, I'd consulted some kind of Wodehouse reading order to try and adhere to) and it doesn't feel quite as fresh and vibrant as I've found in other books. Really there's nothing seemingly original in this book, and the plot machinations fall much in the same way as they have in other books: Bertie is a reluctant guest among disagreeable company, his wellbeing or livelihood is threatened by some menace either matrimonial or physical, there are misfortunes and pratfalls and all delivered with a deadpan humour and flair for language. Ultimately there's only a middling place for something like this in my year-end rankings because of course it was entertaining while I was reading it, but there's no great impact for this to create unless it has a particularly high or low level of humour, and really this just delivered what I expected in terms of plot, jokes, and character development (nil, naturally, in the latter case).

17) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling

I feel like a huge weight is off my shoulders, not just to have finished reading the biggest literary phenomenon of the twenty-first century, but just more importantly and immediately: I know how the story finishes now. As I mentioned last year when I wrote up The Half-Blood Prince, I stopped watching the films at Order of the Phoenix so the last two books and their plots were largely unknown to me. As it turns out, if you spend any time on the interwebs, people will spoil these for you even if you don't quite register that they've been spoiled for you. In particular here, I knew one of the prominent deaths in the Battle of Hogwarts because of an off-hand joke someone made on Reddit, and I also knew what the last horcrux was that remains a mystery for most of the book, from various sources I've come across that just lists the horcruxes. But anyway, this was a largely very enjoyable read. I did find it had the negative qualities that I've found throughout this series though, largely through some narratorial tics and habits that Rowling simply can't avoid. Some of it I think of as hallmarks of young adult literature though: for instance when Harry and his friends are captured by Greyback and taken to Malfoy manor, it was all very tense and quite riveting, but I kind of had this unconscious feeling that whatever happened next, the following chapter would be some breathing space to reflect and, sure enough, when the deus ex machina happens, they then transport themselves to a place of peace and quiet to patiently plan out their next move. I remember thinking that I could use that breathing space myself, so it felt like something the author would introduce to help it be an accessible and continually enjoyable book rather than feeling like the reader is in a vice grip the whole time. But the issue I've had with most of the books - especially Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix - is that inevitable moment in the penultimate chapter or at the very moment of climax where the narrative takes a side-track to catch everybody up with one of the characters giving a monologue to explain everything that's happened so far, and fill in all the gaps. Or indeed, in this case, two of the characters having a dialogue. It's all part of the 'tell don't show' mentality that Rowling has - again which may be part of what YA audiences want, but it does just feel a bit weak and self-conscious to me when it happens. Regardless, I've come to expect things like that as the series has gone on and while some of this book, especially at the beginning, felt a little tedious as I was waiting for 'action' to happen, it becomes a very intriguing mystery and chase, and much better than the Hunger Games series, ties up all the narrative threads in a satisfying way (well apart from the fact that time travel is introduced in the third book and never mentioned again) to draw the series into a cathartic ending.

16) Ripeness - Sarah Moss

This was a book group choice, and I started reading it on holiday in Queensland and then my progress slowed a bit once I got back to the humdrum. Still, I enjoyed this read well enough, but I'd say I liked it less than the other book of Moss' that I've finished (Ghost Wall). The main reason for it is that I found myself a little bit - frustrated isn't the right word, but it'll do for want of anything better - by the parallel narratives here. It tells the story of Edith, at two different times of her life: in third person when she is retired, divorced and living in rural Ireland in the present day; and a first person account of how she travelled to rural Italy to keep her sister company during the latter stages of an unwanted pregnancy. I don't think it's spoiling too much to say that her sister Lydia, a professional ballerina, is not just not wanting the baby for career reasons but because it was unexpected, and part of Edith's role in keeping her company is to make the arrangements to have the baby adopted by a charitable organisation based nearby in Italy. What did lead to my dissatisfaction (maybe that's a better word) with the present-day narrative is that it - and the very fact of having parallel timelines and stories - felt a little bit self-conscious and even contrived at times, but more importantly the present-day narrative I felt didn't add a whole lot to the first-person confession-style narrative. In fact, what it did add was largely just in terms of metaphors and themes: for example there is a lot of reflection in the present day about what it means to be a 'local' where Edith's friend Maebh is against the idea of refugees fleeing their homeland to settle in their local community, while Edith herself wonders if she'll ever feel like a local herself. But that concept of 'unwanted' outsiders is clearly meant to be a mirror to the 'unwanted' baby that Edith's sister had in the 60s, where Lydia's refusal to hold or look at the baby is supposed to be a reflection of anti-immigration sentiment being about turning a blind eye to others' suffering and only looking at your own circumstances and how it might affect you. But really my displeasure (another word) with the present-day narrative was minor; I think I was kind of hoping for the two stories to have more obvious links, or for them to dovetail more neatly, while at the same time it was just slightly jolting to switch between first and third-person with no real reason when the present-day narrative could have very easily also been in first person (or vice-versa). Nevertheless, the characters we meet throughout are well-drawn and there is a very detailed sense of the characters - such as Lydia and Edith's mother, 'Maman' - who are conspicuously absent; it does make a lot of the narrative come to life even while I found parts of it self-conscious. Moss writes with a really nice sense of perspective throughout, and a lot of the passages of Edith's first-person 'confession' of sorts are quite heartbreaking and tender, while at the same time the whole book offers a sense of cautious optimism for the future at least while - and as a condition of - offering an argument for living one's life with empathy and humanity.

15) Something to Answer For - P.H. Newby

For those who haven't scrutinized the historical list of Booker Prize winners and shortlists like I have in looking for books to read, this title may be unfamiliar to you, but it's noteworthy for being the first ever book awarded the Booker Prize, in 1969. It tells the story of Townrow (whose name I found oddly disconcerting as I frequently eye-skipped it as "tomorrow" and this created many a garden path sentence), a former British army officer who returns to the Egyptian town of Port Said at the request of a friend's widow who believes her husband was murdered. The setting, the character, situation and the writing all reminded me at first of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and I thought that I was in for a kind of post-colonial Africa-set thriller-romance of some description. That impression was completely mistaken as I soon ascertained in reading some of the dialogue and exchanges that Townrow has on his way to Port Said and in his early days there. What this book starts to feel like after that is like a Graham Greene novel if Greene was fucked out of his brain on acid while writing. But as an overall effect, it reminded me more of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano in the sense that there's this constantly shifting feeling of reality vs unreality, while our central character seems to be under constant threat of death and often due to his own actions. What's different though is that, unlike Lowry's (a novel I appreciated more than liking), Newby doesn't write in an incomprehensible stream of consciousness style, but instead the writing is quite mannered and measured, which makes the shifts - between fever dream and drunken stupor that Townrow experiences with frequent blackouts of memory and a twisted sense of his own consciousness - all the more arresting and confronting. It's perhaps more keenly felt as well because Townrow is an unpleasant yet extremely self-righteous and self-assured person while also being a kind of 'unreliable protagonist'; he's not a first-person narrator but everything is told with him at the centre, so as his own reality starts to bend, we're not exactly sure what is happening and what is real. Townrow frequently asserts that he is an Irish citizen and therefore 'neutral' in the impending conflict between English and Egyptian forces (while also having a sympathy with the colonized nations), he flits between investigating his friend's murder and wholeheartedly believing his friend is still alive and faked his own death for some unknown reason, while also carrying on a sometimes-requited love affair with the beautiful daughter of his late friend's lawyer in Port Said. I will say that the whole concept here ends up sounding a bit more fascinating than the reading experience is, largely because the intransigence of Townrow was grating as he suffers from these lapses in memory as well as personality, and it felt frustrating that I didn't have instead a protagonist with whom I could both sympathise and also relate to. While it's clear that he is somewhat conscious of his slipping reality, he never seems to act in a way that a normal person would, forever barrelling through life determined to see things through to their improbable ends as if the whole of British civilisation depended on it. It's definitely a darkly comic read though, but the main issue I had overall is that the fragmented nature of the narrative would have been more effective if the story overall were shorter, because it does end up feeling quite aimless as one misadventure leads to another and yet another, and there's not quite enough coherence to link the passages together and get a grander vision or theme from the action. Interesting mostly for its historical significance, but certainly worth a read if you like a bit of articulate discombobulation.

14) Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie

A strange part of my experience in reading this book is that when I sat down to write it up, I was reminded of the first part of this story and realised that the first part seems completely separated from the rest of it once you've experienced the whole thing. The thing about this is that its ostensible purpose as a book is to be a modern retelling of the story of Antigone, which I'm only vaguely familiar with both from hours spent being an absurdly (to me, now - I don't think I ever got anything in return for this) obsequious little brother helping Jez learn his lines for Creon back in high school and also from reading the speculative fiction retelling Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth, a book I had to search high and wide for the title because somehow I managed to completely miss it in posting the books I read last year (I did write it up but somehow I didn't post it to my blog, so my searching my blog for "Antigone" showed up nothing). Anyway, the point of this preamble is that part one of this book tells the story of Isha (a stand-in for the character of Ismene), a Pakistani-British woman who is studying abroad in the USA when she meets Eamonn (AKA Haemon in the original story), the son of a prominent Pakistan-born Tory politician back home, and they form a friendship. The reason why this part of the story seems so separate from the rest to me is because I'm not that familiar with the background and setting of the original story and only know the parts specifically about Antigone wanting to bury Polynices, which Shamsie concerns herself with reimagining in the subsequent parts. In her modern reimagining, Polynices is Parvais, twin brother to Aneeka (obviously Antigone) both nine years younger than Isha, and Parvais' "betrayal" is manifested in him leaving Britain to fight with ISIS. During the course of this 'betrayal' he expresses to Aneeka a desire to return home to Britain but this is naturally blocked by Eamonn's father - now Home Secretary - as part of his crackdown on traitors to Britain (which is all part of posturing and rhetoric to help him earn credence and respect in the Conservative party and nationalistic Britain as their token Pakistani MP). Anyway, I don't believe that I'm spoiling the story egregiously since "this book is a retelling of Antigone" which is all over the blurb and cover is as much of a spoiler to people who know the basics of the plot. I felt that the reimagining of the plot and its update into the modern day nightmare of - well, I want to say post-Brexit Britain but really post-911 and 7/7 Britain more generally - was affecting and quite poignant, but I think the key shortcoming of this story lies in either a lack of narrative skill, a lack of empathy or a lack of courage on Shamsie's part. To be clear: I'm not claiming she is any of these generally, but where I felt the story was lacking was specifically regarding Parvais' motivation in leaving Britain to join ISIS. I simply didn't relate at all to his anguish, his feelings of inadequacy at never having met his father, and therefore his desire to meet with fellow Jihadis who would have known his father. I felt that Shamsie introduced his character and his perspective too late in the piece due to a fair bit of jumping around in the timeline, and his conflict and dilemma were introduced in a fairly glib manner. It stands as a bit of a contrast to something like my #1 book of 2016, Elnathan John's Born on a Tuesday which provided such an empathetic lens on those who get caught up in extremism, and more specifically why. As I mentioned, I'm not sure why Shamsie's perspective here feels so lacking - whether she couldn't find herself empathising enough with 'terrorists' to be able to provide their perspective, or whether she didn't dare to, but her writing elsewhere is skilful and evocative enough for me to feel she is a good enough writer to provide this perspective and give it reality and depth if not for whatever held her back. It's a key shortcoming of this otherwise very fine novel, full of pointed satire and dramatic upheaval, when I simply couldn't sympathise or care at all about Parvais and what happened to him. Since the other characters are far more nuanced and interesting (especially the more minor characters of the drama, Isha and Eamonn, as well as Eamonn's father - the Creon standin) but the crux of the drama hinges on Parvais' reasons for betrayal being relatable and Aneeka's heartbreak feeling keen and immediate. Otherwise except from a universal justice perspective, his story just seems like an idiot boy doing stupid things and ultimately bringing his own destruction on himself. And I feel in the original play we're meant to feel that exact pathos towards Creon, not Polynices.

13) Fresh Complaint - Jeffrey Eugenides

I think I've found this at the library before but have forgone it mainly because I don't love Jeffrey Eugenides that much, and short stories tend to be a bit of a hurdle with the best writers. But nevertheless, having read this I am now a Jeffrey Eugenides completist, and I honestly do probably reference him more than I reference anyone else simply because The Virgin Suicides has the most inventive use of narrative voice I've ever read, so whenever any other author employs an unusual narratorial voice, I compare it to The Virgin Suicides. And I bring that up here because one of the stories here does exactly that, as if to reinforce to me that Eugenides is an author keenly aware of how narrative voice - especially when employed askew - can impact the reading of a story. In the case of this story, it's told from a very conventional third person perspective, until partway through the story the narrator suddenly introduces themselves in the first person, and it's specifically someone who has been part of the story up to that point but it's a very unusual perspective to then gain, given the treatment of that character up to that point. Apart from that one instance, there are some clever stories in here; it doesn't really feel like it has much of a thematic flow, and really the thing I enjoyed about this the most was simply that each story stands on its own merits; as much as I enjoyed Murakami's short story collection last year, I felt that each story needed each other story to gain its power and value, whereas these all follow their own twists and turns, and in this form it helps that Eugenides is a more conventional story-teller (hence why I'm not overly warm on him otherwise) because they all tend to have a straightforward structure with a clearly delineated ending. There are certainly some themes that are particular bailiwicks for him, and they cross over into his novels that I've read, in particular communication issues in relationships; there's one story that deals with the biological implications of intersex organs in what is obviously a precursor to Middlesex (dated three years prior to Middlesex's publication), and generally his focus seems to be on everyday conflict between people as they try to get on in life. I feel like my tone through this writeup has been fairly lukewarm but the truth is, while these stories aren't masterpieces, they're very entertaining and some are quite thought-provoking as well. There's three particular favourites I had: the title story Fresh Complaint that concludes this book and provides an ambivalent sense of modern cultural cringe, and two great examples of interpersonal relationships going awry: Baster and in particular Capricious Gardens which follows a kind of sex farce plotline (it reminds me a lot of the Frasier episode The Ski Lodge) with a kind of compelling heightened drama as the character misunderstandings and misleadings escalate. So on the whole, I'm very glad I picked this up if only just to call myself a Eugenides completist but more because this had some really good reads in it.

12) Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer

It's as much of a surprise to me that this book is where it is as it will be to anyone else. But the big surprise for me has already happened, which is that I honestly, and unironically, enjoyed reading this book a lot. Possibly it has something to do with how blown away by some of the idiotic inanities of the previous book (New Moon, my bottom book of last year) but related to that and in sharp contrast to that, this book really felt like Meyer had dealt with the prosaic details of her world-building through the previous books and moreover this book feels like she's hit her stride as a storyteller. The main reason I say that is because there's less need for her here to convince us that werewolves and vampires exist since we're willingly reading the third book, and there's also less need for her to emphasise how beautiful Edward Cullen is nor about how desirable Bella Swan is despite her clumsiness and the fact that bad luck seems to follow her around. There are certainly still some awkward elements of both of these in the book, and Bella remains a slightly blank slate character onto whom teenage girls are meant to imprint their own wants and needs and fantasies, but by this book I'm willing to suspend disbelief a bit and as such I found this a really entertaining page-turning experience. For the main part, it's worth remembering that this is a romance series, not a horror series, and I think the dread of the vampire world ended up being a little bit shoehorned into the previous two books, and while the horror elements here still feel a bit tacked on (as a foundation of this story, Bella is willing to become a vampire herself, so any thought about 'ooh what if the vampires bite her and turn her into one of them?' seems no longer resonant) the dread of this story is far more centred around Bella's indecision between Edward and Jacob. And as much as I found myself staunchly, firmly, on team Jacob at the end of the second book in spite of my own incredulous feelings about the whole thing, this book fleshes out Edward's and Jacob's characters far better through their actions in relation to Bella and in relation to each other. The downside of that is that this book introduces some negative sides of Jacob's character, but I found them more real than just "Jacob is clearly a better match but oh my god Edward is just so beautiful". And ultimately the stakes of the story are about that romance and where Bella's own feelings will manifest and what it will ultimately cost her. There is an external threat to physical safety that Meyer uses as a central plot-framing device as well, but that's also more sophisticated than in previous stories largely by using it as a kind of central mystery throughout the story - there are mysterious happenings going on and the Cullen family and various others are wondering who or what could be behind it - and that adds to the page-turning ability of this book. I do think it drags on a little more than it needs to largely because it's geared to a young-adult audience and my general criticism of such books tends to be around how much they need to explain everything rather than letting the audience fill in the gaps themselves. So it's not as thrilling and tight a narrative as it maybe could have been (and yes I really mean that, it could have been a really exciting book), but I do feel that rather than being an empty vessel narrative for unimaginative readers to fulfill their fantasies, Eclipse as the third book showcases Stephenie Meyer as a storyteller who can weave some engaging events and plot twists into a well-established fantasy world.

 11) My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite

This was another pick for book group that was paired with Ripeness by Sarah Moss and it seems to be an accidentally well-made pairing just because both books centre around the relationship between two sisters, one of whom is sensual and beautiful and tactile and the other of whom is practical and sensible (and, in this case at least, tragically plain). But this one is far more of a ride and less of a meditation. As a sidenote I should mention that I think I ended up liking this one more than others in the book group, including Bec – while I was more dissatisfied with parts of Ripeness which seemed to hit the mark for everybody else. Obviously the title here kind of reveals the plot in a lot of ways but what surprised me about this was that the book is far less comical than the upfrontness of the title suggests. The narrator Korede tells us from the first page that her sister Ayoola has killed a man in the opening pages, and reveals that this is not the first time. But Ayoola is not an indiscriminate murderer, and as the book goes on it becomes apparent that the deaths at her hands are ambiguously motivated, and could well be all in self-defence at the hands of the men in Ayoola's life. I thought that I had a good sense for where this book was going based on Korede's no-nonsense practicalities as a nurse and Ayoola's wayward, carefree hedonism. As such I found the middle section of the book quite stressful, as Ayoola unknowingly invades Korede's work life where she is besotted with the handsome young doctor at her work, while at the same time a police investigation is underway relating to Ayoola's most recent killing. But Braithwaite is less concerned with making this an adrenaline rush or a suspense thriller; rather it takes a turn where its focus draws more sharply on that sibling relationship, on Korede being the responsible older sister and needing to rein in Ayoola's impulsive and unpredictable behaviour, while it raises the question of how far Korede should feel responsible for her sister, and what is ultimately the responsible thing to do? Parallel to the story of this relationship Braithwaite paints a fascinating portrayal of modern power dynamics between men and women - as far as I can tell, probably accurate to its Nigerian setting - and raises the question on whether Ayoola is a radical iconoclast standing up for herself, or an impulsive brat who creates dangerous situations and can find only one way out of them. Or, alternatively, is she a calculating sociopath? As seen through the eyes of her older, more sensible sister, it's an interesting question that Braithwaite explores with a good sense of dark humour but also an effective amount of pathos.