hawkwing_lb (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hawkwing_lb) wrote2012-02-04 09:27 pm
hawkwing_lb) wrote2012-02-04 09:27 pm
Entry tags:
Books 2012: unrealised and irrepressible design
Books 2012: 11-13
11. Amanda Downum, Kingdoms of Dust. Orbit, 2012. (1st March.)
An excellent addition to the Necromancer Chronicles. (And I'm not just saying that so![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stillsostrange won't hurt me.) A fuller review should be forthcoming from Tor.com in the next six weeks or so. In the meantime, I will say: you want this book. Most likely.
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12. Adrienne Rich, Arts of the Possible. W.W. Norton, New York, 2001.
Arts of the Possible is a collection of Rich's prose spanning three decades, from 1971's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," to the title essay, 1997's "Arts of the Possible." Rich writes as a woman, a feminist woman, a socialist woman, writing to other women. This collection is a selection of snapshots of her thought, moments in the evolution of the lifetime of a poet and woman of letters. Rich is a thinker, and one of the themes that connect these essays is her belief in the validation of women's intellectual and artistic possibilities.
I went to the library seeking Rich because I found her quoted in Joanna Russ. Reading her for herself, I found myself both fascinated and annoyed by the American-ness of her milieu. I will not say that Rich's voice is narrow - I can't say that. But her location in time and space restricts, I think, the power of her vision to affect me, an Irishwoman.
There is an assumed universality in much American topical writing. An assumed frame of references and experiences. American voices make up a large body of modern writing in English, so much so that it can be hard to disentangle one from the other. But for those of us who stand outside the American frame - and also the English one, too - the experience can prove alienating. We speak the same language, but we don't share a native tongue.
13. Akbar Ahmed, Suspended Somewhere Between: a book of verse. PM Press, US, 2011.
A poetry collection by an academic ambassador. Read for review for the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Interesting, occasionally striking, but very uneven.
Thursday was Geek!Fest day. I have the kind of friends who watch Xena:TWP and criticise the Greek. (We finally decided: actually, the Greek in the chapter titles from "A Day in the Life" is mostly sort of grammatical ancient Greek. But damn, did they screw up the orthography. Nu in place of upsilon and vice versa? Somebody forgot their copyeditor.)
I'm pretty sure there were other things I meant to say. But I'm sleepy.
11. Amanda Downum, Kingdoms of Dust. Orbit, 2012. (1st March.)
An excellent addition to the Necromancer Chronicles. (And I'm not just saying that so
stillsostrange won't hurt me.) A fuller review should be forthcoming from Tor.com in the next six weeks or so. In the meantime, I will say: you want this book. Most likely.nonfiction
12. Adrienne Rich, Arts of the Possible. W.W. Norton, New York, 2001.
Arts of the Possible is a collection of Rich's prose spanning three decades, from 1971's "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," to the title essay, 1997's "Arts of the Possible." Rich writes as a woman, a feminist woman, a socialist woman, writing to other women. This collection is a selection of snapshots of her thought, moments in the evolution of the lifetime of a poet and woman of letters. Rich is a thinker, and one of the themes that connect these essays is her belief in the validation of women's intellectual and artistic possibilities.
I went to the library seeking Rich because I found her quoted in Joanna Russ. Reading her for herself, I found myself both fascinated and annoyed by the American-ness of her milieu. I will not say that Rich's voice is narrow - I can't say that. But her location in time and space restricts, I think, the power of her vision to affect me, an Irishwoman.
There is an assumed universality in much American topical writing. An assumed frame of references and experiences. American voices make up a large body of modern writing in English, so much so that it can be hard to disentangle one from the other. But for those of us who stand outside the American frame - and also the English one, too - the experience can prove alienating. We speak the same language, but we don't share a native tongue.
13. Akbar Ahmed, Suspended Somewhere Between: a book of verse. PM Press, US, 2011.
A poetry collection by an academic ambassador. Read for review for the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Interesting, occasionally striking, but very uneven.
Thursday was Geek!Fest day. I have the kind of friends who watch Xena:TWP and criticise the Greek. (We finally decided: actually, the Greek in the chapter titles from "A Day in the Life" is mostly sort of grammatical ancient Greek. But damn, did they screw up the orthography. Nu in place of upsilon and vice versa? Somebody forgot their copyeditor.)
I'm pretty sure there were other things I meant to say. But I'm sleepy.
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I think it's a combination of not just realizing that other people exist and they are all not like you, but also that part of not being like you is that your position of privilege means that they are more aware of you than you are of them. I think that's one of the things that I started to realize from living in England, but had a hard time articulating until I started reading more social justice blogs on the internets, etc. Because culture shock explained my dismay at the lack of salsa in the grocery stores, and my discovery of curry - but it didn't really cover the part where they got American shows on basic channels - and we mostly just got British shows on cable and PBS.
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And her impassioned plea for poetry as a means of giving a voice to the voiceless is inspirational in a way that defies national borders and cultures.
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(Having borrowing access to the country's largest academic library is terrible for my procrastination prospects, I tell you. I'm looking forward to a memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein at the moment.)
(I don't know what I'll do when they take my borrowing access away.)
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*ahem*
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