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hawkwing_lbIt's August, already? Why did nobody tell me half the year had happened while I was looking the other way?
So. There have been books.
*doesn't lj-cut, and makes everyone suffer*
Justine Robson's Keeping It Real mixes magic and technology for a fast and moderately enjoyable hybrid of a story - thriller, romance, genre-hopping fantasy-SF. Alas, enjoyable as it is, it felt very light - fluffy, almost - to me. Nothing wrong with fluff, nothing at all, but I was hoping for something a bit more, given Robson's reputation (this is the first of her books I've read) and the initial high-concept presentation. The elves are... elfy, the demons rather less than demonic, and the main character suffers from backstory that doesn't quite live up to its initial promise.
D&D elves - humans with magic and pointy ears - was not what I was expecting from a book subtitled Quantum Gravity Book One. Though justice forces me to admit that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala's Blood and Iron has probably spoiled me forever when it comes to elves and faeries.
John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades is adequately entertaining reading for the sleep-deprived, though I think he could have given more play to the politics. And, damnit, I wanted more Jane Sagan!
Holly Black's Valiant is... Eh. I read Tithe and saw that, yea verily, it was good, so when I saw Valiant, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Alas, the elements which made Tithe such a refreshing read are not present in Valiant. Drug addiction, yes. Angst-ridden teenagers, yes. Journeys into the strange and terrible realms of Faerie?
Not so much.
And of all Tithe's characters, only Roiben gets as much as a cameo. Disappointing? Yep. Will I be reading the next one, if it exists? Probably, yes.
Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword is an intriguing, well-characterised book. I'm not sure I'm precisely its target audience, considering some of the rapturous responses I've read. I'll blame my slightly lukewarm, not-quite-entirely-satisfied state upon completion upon being Young, Naïve, and Irish.
Liz Williams' Nine Layers of Sky, on the other hand...
It's a book about dreams, and places that aren't yours, or you aren't theirs, and staking out a place, a dream, a piece of the future, that is. It is refreshing to read a novel set in the former Soviet republics that treats their inhabitants as people, as opposed to stereotypes. Williams does an excellent job of characterising the sense of dislocation felt by both main characters, and evoking the contradictions and complexity of the places, as well. Solid pacing, tight plotting, and excellent characterisation make it a book that I'm more than merely lukewarm about. If you haven't read it yet, give it a go.
Non-fiction.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Personal account of slavery in the American South, during the 1800s. Eye-opening. Sickening. What was done to people who were considered property and thus legally, morally, subhuman. If the antebellum South was not the most comprehensively morally wrong society in recent history, it's definitely right up there.
Particularly with regard to the provision that children should 'follow the condition of the mother', making children of male slaveholders by female slaves their legal property, available to be sold.
Instead of making us read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings for the Leaving, they should have had us read this.
In progress:
Non-fiction.
I'm still struggling through Thucydides, when I get up the strength required. Margaret Collins Weitz's Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945, is far more interesting. Since I've only begun the second chapter, I'll have more to say on this later.
Robert Gildea's Marianne in Chains is proving slow going. Social history, interesting but dry. I need to get momentum going on that again.
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, by Elaine Scarry, is another book which is proving slow going. It is, however, an absolutely fascinating treatise on the intersection of pain, perception and power. The first chapter, the one I've succeeded in completing, is on torture. It deserves a post to itself: Scarry makes many interesting and useful observations, not least of which is that pain destroys the relationship - I am putting this much more crudely than she - between the world and oneself: it annihilates reason, until the world ceases, for the sufferer, to exist beyond the body in pain, and thus the idiom of 'betrayal' which is used in relation to forced confessions is itself false: how can you betray something that has ceased to exist in any meaningful form?
------------------------------
V for Vendetta is a good film, but one that annoyed me. It seems to me to be three plotlines, that of Inspector Finch and his growing disillusionment with the regime which employs him; that of V, who makes no bones about the fact that his only desire is to bring down the regime; and that of Evey, whose disillusionment with the regime already exists, but who cannot bring herself to act in any meaningful way until V forces her to, in a sense, grow into self-knowledge.
Finch's growth mirrors Evey's. Alas, though both Rhea and Portman give excellent performances, the film loses something in the way of tension, as I feel that the three plotlines fail to support each other adequately - it loses out on the transitions.
Thematically? Three cheers and tour de force. Technically? Well, I'd call it sloppy, but hey, not like I could do a better job.
---------------------------------
In other news, I have written my letter-of-resignation to the d*mned job, before it kills me. I am now unemployed again.
--------------------------------
PS: If anyone knows anything about the drugs trade in Paris, information would be appreciated. *kicks story-in-progress*
So. There have been books.
*doesn't lj-cut, and makes everyone suffer*
Justine Robson's Keeping It Real mixes magic and technology for a fast and moderately enjoyable hybrid of a story - thriller, romance, genre-hopping fantasy-SF. Alas, enjoyable as it is, it felt very light - fluffy, almost - to me. Nothing wrong with fluff, nothing at all, but I was hoping for something a bit more, given Robson's reputation (this is the first of her books I've read) and the initial high-concept presentation. The elves are... elfy, the demons rather less than demonic, and the main character suffers from backstory that doesn't quite live up to its initial promise.
D&D elves - humans with magic and pointy ears - was not what I was expecting from a book subtitled Quantum Gravity Book One. Though justice forces me to admit that
matociquala's Blood and Iron has probably spoiled me forever when it comes to elves and faeries.John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades is adequately entertaining reading for the sleep-deprived, though I think he could have given more play to the politics. And, damnit, I wanted more Jane Sagan!
Holly Black's Valiant is... Eh. I read Tithe and saw that, yea verily, it was good, so when I saw Valiant, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Alas, the elements which made Tithe such a refreshing read are not present in Valiant. Drug addiction, yes. Angst-ridden teenagers, yes. Journeys into the strange and terrible realms of Faerie?
Not so much.
And of all Tithe's characters, only Roiben gets as much as a cameo. Disappointing? Yep. Will I be reading the next one, if it exists? Probably, yes.
Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword is an intriguing, well-characterised book. I'm not sure I'm precisely its target audience, considering some of the rapturous responses I've read. I'll blame my slightly lukewarm, not-quite-entirely-satisfied state upon completion upon being Young, Naïve, and Irish.
Liz Williams' Nine Layers of Sky, on the other hand...
It's a book about dreams, and places that aren't yours, or you aren't theirs, and staking out a place, a dream, a piece of the future, that is. It is refreshing to read a novel set in the former Soviet republics that treats their inhabitants as people, as opposed to stereotypes. Williams does an excellent job of characterising the sense of dislocation felt by both main characters, and evoking the contradictions and complexity of the places, as well. Solid pacing, tight plotting, and excellent characterisation make it a book that I'm more than merely lukewarm about. If you haven't read it yet, give it a go.
Non-fiction.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Personal account of slavery in the American South, during the 1800s. Eye-opening. Sickening. What was done to people who were considered property and thus legally, morally, subhuman. If the antebellum South was not the most comprehensively morally wrong society in recent history, it's definitely right up there.
Particularly with regard to the provision that children should 'follow the condition of the mother', making children of male slaveholders by female slaves their legal property, available to be sold.
Instead of making us read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings for the Leaving, they should have had us read this.
In progress:
Non-fiction.
I'm still struggling through Thucydides, when I get up the strength required. Margaret Collins Weitz's Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945, is far more interesting. Since I've only begun the second chapter, I'll have more to say on this later.
Robert Gildea's Marianne in Chains is proving slow going. Social history, interesting but dry. I need to get momentum going on that again.
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, by Elaine Scarry, is another book which is proving slow going. It is, however, an absolutely fascinating treatise on the intersection of pain, perception and power. The first chapter, the one I've succeeded in completing, is on torture. It deserves a post to itself: Scarry makes many interesting and useful observations, not least of which is that pain destroys the relationship - I am putting this much more crudely than she - between the world and oneself: it annihilates reason, until the world ceases, for the sufferer, to exist beyond the body in pain, and thus the idiom of 'betrayal' which is used in relation to forced confessions is itself false: how can you betray something that has ceased to exist in any meaningful form?
------------------------------
V for Vendetta is a good film, but one that annoyed me. It seems to me to be three plotlines, that of Inspector Finch and his growing disillusionment with the regime which employs him; that of V, who makes no bones about the fact that his only desire is to bring down the regime; and that of Evey, whose disillusionment with the regime already exists, but who cannot bring herself to act in any meaningful way until V forces her to, in a sense, grow into self-knowledge.
Finch's growth mirrors Evey's. Alas, though both Rhea and Portman give excellent performances, the film loses something in the way of tension, as I feel that the three plotlines fail to support each other adequately - it loses out on the transitions.
Thematically? Three cheers and tour de force. Technically? Well, I'd call it sloppy, but hey, not like I could do a better job.
---------------------------------
In other news, I have written my letter-of-resignation to the d*mned job, before it kills me. I am now unemployed again.
--------------------------------
PS: If anyone knows anything about the drugs trade in Paris, information would be appreciated. *kicks story-in-progress*
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-04 07:52 pm (UTC)So it's not going to kill me, and I'll still be able to eat!