The Green World and the White: January Reading
Cutting for size, not spoilers. Low on content, high on chatty commentary.
The title this month refers to one character's perception of the mystic and the mundane in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; it seemed appropriate, since it's been so snowy (and icy!) lately.
New icon courtesy Photoshop 7.0 and my Precious digital camera.
The Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien: It's very likely I'm going to reread the trilogy far too frequently for far too many years. No one does crazy, beautiful worldbuilding like Tolkien.
Tangential thought of the day: I picked up The Silmarillion to check a reference, and realized it's got a very similar "braided" structure to the Norse epics. There's even a line somewhere about someone not being spoken of in the tale that has a similar rhythm and feel to the "and they are no longer seen in this saga" line sometimes seen in the sagas we studied in Vikings last semester. I felt like I'd had a gold brick dropped on my head, because it makes so much sense, considering Tolkien's background.
Very little to say about RotK itself. The parts I usually like I liked. I'm less and less sure whether to be amused or bothered by Ioreth's characterization every time I reread the trilogy. Someday I need to pay really close attention to the timing in the trilogy - who is where when, and how their actions interlock, and who knows who's where when. Protagonists acting on less information than the reader has can be really fun to watch.
The Folk Keeper, Franny Billingsley: Another loan from miriel. Fifteen year old Corinna Stonewall is brought to the estate of Cliffsend to keep the Folk, a particularly vicious and wraithlike manifestation of Faerie, at bay.
Relatively conventional coming-of-age plot, including a moderately unsubtle clue-by-four about being yourself. The book suffers a bit from transparency - the reader can see that Corinna's deliberately crushing herself into a box she doesn't fit in - and a shaky "girl gets the guy and vice versa" ending. On the other hand, it was a fast, entertaining read. Casting it in diary format was an interesting device, and the Fae are a nifty take on "fairy = bad". The setup has a passing similarity to Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard - a young woman pulled from her urban environment to a remote manor that has a powerful dynamic with the usually unseen Folk - but the greatest overlap is probably the basic "girl -> woman + sweetheart" plot.
Tolkien: Author of the Century, T. A. Shippey: Nonfiction. Literary analysis Tolkien's fiction, aiming to show contemporary context and sources of inspiration. This is the closest I've gotten to Tolkien in academia since reading The Hobbit in eigth grade English class, so a lot of the material that made me sit up and go, "oh, how interesting" is probably old hat to more academic-minded Tolkien fans. That said, it's a lot of fun to read an academic take on a work of fiction you've really enjoyed reading, and let someone else point out the deep background stuff, or the small, coherent details, or the sweeping themes, motifs and interrelations you missed. (Theoden died almost exactly as Denethor was going nuts. I missed that entirely until Shippey pointed it out. And the "stars and trees" stuff was really cool. On the other hand, Shippey should stay away from analyzing the Ring; he frets over it more than fangirls fret over Sean Astin's lack of an Oscar nomination.) I think I need to push this book in the direction of the Tolkien fans I know; that is to say most of my friends list.
Star Wars: Survivor's Quest, Timothy Zahn: Literary trash. Paid fanfiction. Fabulous stuff. The remnants of the Outbound Flight, first mentioned in Zahn's original spin-off trilogy, are rediscovered in the Unknown Regions by an almost unknown alien race. Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his wife Mara are invited to accompany a Chiss expedition that is formally returning the remains to the New Republic.
A nice, calm diplomatic mission, right?
Famous last words.
There's exactly one canon movie character in the entire book: Luke. For some reason, this amuses me way too much. All the characers are very 3 dimensional, and the plot is a piece of art: every time I thought, "oh, it's late, I should finish the chapter and crash," Zahn threw in another cliffhanger or plot twist.
I think it's not exactly a spoiler to mention that Talon Karrde and Booster Terrik have cameos appearances.
Talking about the droideka, however, possibly could be.
One quibble: Luke is what, forty? And Mara can't be much younger. Shouldn't they be slowing down a bit?
The Changeling Sea, Patricia McKillip: Peri, a fifteen year old scrubber-of-floors at a local inn, tries to hex the sea that drowned her father and seems to have taken her mother's spirit too, and accidentally summons a sea dragon five days after meeting the prince of the land.
I really shouldn't count this - it's only 137 small pages - but it's been a short month. On the other hand, it's a nice contrast to The Folk Keeper, since they share a number of elements: female coming of age, magic, the ocean. Also, I really wanted to comment on McKillip's prose - she really infuses the narrative with a sense of the ocean. The plot feels very much like an adapted fairy tale - a girl's coming of age story in an unnamed kingdom with vaguely defined magic, and lots of it - except I'm not sure I've read a fairy tale that told this particular story. The tale's deeply rooted in Faerie, anyway. The prose really carried the story for me, more than the plot; I really shouldn't be this surprised, since a lot of readers seem to think that prose is McKillip's strength as a writer.
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde: Gift from my big brother at initiation in December. Finally got around to reading it toward the end of January. I should never have waited so long.
"This is the midday news on Monday, May 6, 1985, and this is Alexandria Belfridge reading it. The Crimean peninsula has again come under scrutiny this week as the United Nations passed resolution PN 17296, insisting that England and the Imperial Russian Government open negotiations concerning sovereignty. As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty-first year, pressure groups both at home and abroad are pushing for a peaceful end to hostilities."
Madcap alternate history, or one story of theft, intruige and losing wives in poems. Thursday Next of SpecOps 27 (Literary Detectives) is embroiled in thwarting an increasingly high stakes and outrageous plot after the famous Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript is stolen from a Charles Dickens museum. Pet dodoes, time travel, Edward Rochester and a performance of Richard III that tops Rocky Horror all make cameos.
Fforde isn't afraid to make literary in-jokes and mess with history: the Inspector Boswell who is involved in foiling the sale of fake Samuel Johnson first editions, the recreation of the Charge of the Light Brigade, the audacious creation of entire unwritten novels. (Or perhaps real novels I've never heard of. Who knows?)
Besides, you have to love an author who has the audacity to name a minor villain "Jack Schitt".
Mirabile, Janet Kagan: Reread. A collection of the (mis)adventures of a group of "Jasons", biologists on the planet Mirabile. The Jasons have to deal with both the native ecology and the Earth-authentic plants and animals planted by the colonists. There's a catch: when the generation ships were launched, massive redundancy was fashionable on Earth, and extended to genetics. So when the mission was outfitted, all plant samples and animal embryos were given secondary and terciary genetic helixes, which will express under the correct environmental conditions. Violets sprout pansies, cows give birth to bison, and the kangaroos... we don't talk about the kangaroos.
Theoretically, the redundant genes can be activated and deactivated at will... but part of the ships' databases were lost in transit, including the genetic control information. Whoops.
So sometimes your carrot seeds give you carrots, and sometimes they give you nightshade. Or a "dragon's tooth", a mix of the two. No big deal.
And we're still not talking about the kangaroos.
Very fun collection. I have no idea how accurate the genetics are (not very, likely; it's been more than 10 years since the collection was published, and that's a long time in bio right now), but the plots hold up otherwise. Nice background work - a very few details are dropped throughout the collection, enough to tell the reader where the Mirabilans came from, but not so much as to draw attention from the story on Mirabile.
The title this month refers to one character's perception of the mystic and the mundane in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; it seemed appropriate, since it's been so snowy (and icy!) lately.
New icon courtesy Photoshop 7.0 and my Precious digital camera.
The Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien: It's very likely I'm going to reread the trilogy far too frequently for far too many years. No one does crazy, beautiful worldbuilding like Tolkien.
Tangential thought of the day: I picked up The Silmarillion to check a reference, and realized it's got a very similar "braided" structure to the Norse epics. There's even a line somewhere about someone not being spoken of in the tale that has a similar rhythm and feel to the "and they are no longer seen in this saga" line sometimes seen in the sagas we studied in Vikings last semester. I felt like I'd had a gold brick dropped on my head, because it makes so much sense, considering Tolkien's background.
Very little to say about RotK itself. The parts I usually like I liked. I'm less and less sure whether to be amused or bothered by Ioreth's characterization every time I reread the trilogy. Someday I need to pay really close attention to the timing in the trilogy - who is where when, and how their actions interlock, and who knows who's where when. Protagonists acting on less information than the reader has can be really fun to watch.
The Folk Keeper, Franny Billingsley: Another loan from miriel. Fifteen year old Corinna Stonewall is brought to the estate of Cliffsend to keep the Folk, a particularly vicious and wraithlike manifestation of Faerie, at bay.
Relatively conventional coming-of-age plot, including a moderately unsubtle clue-by-four about being yourself. The book suffers a bit from transparency - the reader can see that Corinna's deliberately crushing herself into a box she doesn't fit in - and a shaky "girl gets the guy and vice versa" ending. On the other hand, it was a fast, entertaining read. Casting it in diary format was an interesting device, and the Fae are a nifty take on "fairy = bad". The setup has a passing similarity to Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard - a young woman pulled from her urban environment to a remote manor that has a powerful dynamic with the usually unseen Folk - but the greatest overlap is probably the basic "girl -> woman + sweetheart" plot.
Tolkien: Author of the Century, T. A. Shippey: Nonfiction. Literary analysis Tolkien's fiction, aiming to show contemporary context and sources of inspiration. This is the closest I've gotten to Tolkien in academia since reading The Hobbit in eigth grade English class, so a lot of the material that made me sit up and go, "oh, how interesting" is probably old hat to more academic-minded Tolkien fans. That said, it's a lot of fun to read an academic take on a work of fiction you've really enjoyed reading, and let someone else point out the deep background stuff, or the small, coherent details, or the sweeping themes, motifs and interrelations you missed. (Theoden died almost exactly as Denethor was going nuts. I missed that entirely until Shippey pointed it out. And the "stars and trees" stuff was really cool. On the other hand, Shippey should stay away from analyzing the Ring; he frets over it more than fangirls fret over Sean Astin's lack of an Oscar nomination.) I think I need to push this book in the direction of the Tolkien fans I know; that is to say most of my friends list.
Star Wars: Survivor's Quest, Timothy Zahn: Literary trash. Paid fanfiction. Fabulous stuff. The remnants of the Outbound Flight, first mentioned in Zahn's original spin-off trilogy, are rediscovered in the Unknown Regions by an almost unknown alien race. Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his wife Mara are invited to accompany a Chiss expedition that is formally returning the remains to the New Republic.
A nice, calm diplomatic mission, right?
Famous last words.
There's exactly one canon movie character in the entire book: Luke. For some reason, this amuses me way too much. All the characers are very 3 dimensional, and the plot is a piece of art: every time I thought, "oh, it's late, I should finish the chapter and crash," Zahn threw in another cliffhanger or plot twist.
I think it's not exactly a spoiler to mention that Talon Karrde and Booster Terrik have cameos appearances.
Talking about the droideka, however, possibly could be.
One quibble: Luke is what, forty? And Mara can't be much younger. Shouldn't they be slowing down a bit?
The Changeling Sea, Patricia McKillip: Peri, a fifteen year old scrubber-of-floors at a local inn, tries to hex the sea that drowned her father and seems to have taken her mother's spirit too, and accidentally summons a sea dragon five days after meeting the prince of the land.
I really shouldn't count this - it's only 137 small pages - but it's been a short month. On the other hand, it's a nice contrast to The Folk Keeper, since they share a number of elements: female coming of age, magic, the ocean. Also, I really wanted to comment on McKillip's prose - she really infuses the narrative with a sense of the ocean. The plot feels very much like an adapted fairy tale - a girl's coming of age story in an unnamed kingdom with vaguely defined magic, and lots of it - except I'm not sure I've read a fairy tale that told this particular story. The tale's deeply rooted in Faerie, anyway. The prose really carried the story for me, more than the plot; I really shouldn't be this surprised, since a lot of readers seem to think that prose is McKillip's strength as a writer.
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde: Gift from my big brother at initiation in December. Finally got around to reading it toward the end of January. I should never have waited so long.
"This is the midday news on Monday, May 6, 1985, and this is Alexandria Belfridge reading it. The Crimean peninsula has again come under scrutiny this week as the United Nations passed resolution PN 17296, insisting that England and the Imperial Russian Government open negotiations concerning sovereignty. As the Crimean War enters its one hundred and thirty-first year, pressure groups both at home and abroad are pushing for a peaceful end to hostilities."
Madcap alternate history, or one story of theft, intruige and losing wives in poems. Thursday Next of SpecOps 27 (Literary Detectives) is embroiled in thwarting an increasingly high stakes and outrageous plot after the famous Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript is stolen from a Charles Dickens museum. Pet dodoes, time travel, Edward Rochester and a performance of Richard III that tops Rocky Horror all make cameos.
Fforde isn't afraid to make literary in-jokes and mess with history: the Inspector Boswell who is involved in foiling the sale of fake Samuel Johnson first editions, the recreation of the Charge of the Light Brigade, the audacious creation of entire unwritten novels. (Or perhaps real novels I've never heard of. Who knows?)
Besides, you have to love an author who has the audacity to name a minor villain "Jack Schitt".
Mirabile, Janet Kagan: Reread. A collection of the (mis)adventures of a group of "Jasons", biologists on the planet Mirabile. The Jasons have to deal with both the native ecology and the Earth-authentic plants and animals planted by the colonists. There's a catch: when the generation ships were launched, massive redundancy was fashionable on Earth, and extended to genetics. So when the mission was outfitted, all plant samples and animal embryos were given secondary and terciary genetic helixes, which will express under the correct environmental conditions. Violets sprout pansies, cows give birth to bison, and the kangaroos... we don't talk about the kangaroos.
Theoretically, the redundant genes can be activated and deactivated at will... but part of the ships' databases were lost in transit, including the genetic control information. Whoops.
So sometimes your carrot seeds give you carrots, and sometimes they give you nightshade. Or a "dragon's tooth", a mix of the two. No big deal.
And we're still not talking about the kangaroos.
Very fun collection. I have no idea how accurate the genetics are (not very, likely; it's been more than 10 years since the collection was published, and that's a long time in bio right now), but the plots hold up otherwise. Nice background work - a very few details are dropped throughout the collection, enough to tell the reader where the Mirabilans came from, but not so much as to draw attention from the story on Mirabile.