Dog Days of Summer (August Reading)
Instead of reading books I read the paper and did logic puzzles. I am hopeless at Sudoku, so my reading list lost a lot of ground to the numbers 1-9.
Garlic and Sapphires (Ruth Reichl): LA Times restaurant reviewer switches coasts to become the NY Times restaurant reviewer. There's no question that Reichl is a food nut; her writing spikes each time it brushes against the topic. People are introduced by name, distinguishing characteristics are noted, then author and people go out to eat. At which point the stiff writing dissolves into ecstatic, vivid descriptions of food. The good, the bad and the ugly are presented with fanatic joy as Reichl (occasionally in disguise, to avoid the lavish attentions of anxious high-caliber restaurants) munches her way through New York City. About as deep as a bowl of ice cream, and nearly as fun. Recommended for light reading.
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin): Reread. But this time, I got it. Authors often have central ideas or images they come back to; Le Guin has a hard time getting away from rocks and trees. And her writing reflects this - her words have the weight and density of stone, of granite and pumice and quartz. Le Guin's trying very hard to say something about intangibles by the careful arrangement of rocks. Sometimes, they're built just right, and the reader finds the mind's eye cast in such a way that they're not seeing deliberate, stolid arrangements, they're seeing the air between the sculptures. And it means something.
That's why it's worth reading The Left Hand of Darkness.
The emotional center of the book is Genly Ai's relationship with Estraven, so the heart of the book - I think - is on the Ice, where the only characters are Genly and Estraven. This part of the novel is never as long as I remember it.
(Tangent: Le Guin/Kim Stanley Robinson crossover. Rocks get technical names and scientific histories. The Mars trilogy as told by Hiroko Ai? Jackie Boone goes to Hain? The mind shudders.)
Califia's Daughters (Leigh Richards/Laurie R. King): SF is grounded in the idea as the focus, the novel as a thought experiment where the author gets to stack the deck, and stuff like characterization is somewhat secondary to the coolness of the Idea. So I'm going to have to slam this book, and I feel kind of bad about that, because the novel's greatest sin is that it was mislabeled. A woman treks up the postapocalyptic West Coast generations after rogue bioweapons have established the male-female ratio at about 1:10. Califia's Daughters is billed as science fiction, but it's really mainstream+75 years, with a side of annoying plotting. There's minimal sense of wonder. The characters are reasonably distinguishable and comprehensible, but the author likes them too much. Nothing bad happens permanently to Dian, the Strong Female Lead. (She also has the Name of Spelling Sacrificed for Edginess, never a good sign. In an era of bizaare spellings, the "e" has remained in "Diane" for very good reasons.) She moves from sterility to being the mother of twins. Dog-mad Dian has to kill one of her favorite dogs in a scene filled with pathos, but it turns out to be mostly a flesh wound! Also, she gets to have vague ESP, the least mainstream element of the novel, but that's washed into the background halfway through the book. It could have been a cool and prominent plot element. Why not make subtle plays about some sort of Jungian "feminine intuition" and follow through with that? I've been reading Le Guin, people, where the FTL impulse is affected by crew consensus reality. I'll suspend disbelief for anything, if you can do something unexpected and inventive with it.
Califia's Daughters is missing a central idea, a comprehensive "what if?" for the book to explore and unfold for the reader. Dian is restless; Dian meets a nice, sexually attractive man; Dian roadtrips; Dian meets another, much more brotherly man; Dian pretends to be a brutal, erratically moral woman, and tangentially foments revolution, which has no impact on the emotional center of the book, which sort of vaguely seems to involve Dian's relationships with men. The story isn't about anything, except perhaps the human condition, in the most vague and broad sense. When I spend the time to read 489 pages, I want those pages to be about something. If they can't be about something, they'd better spark my sense of wonder. If a book doesn't make me think, or make me dream, or at least make me giggle, why am I bothering to read it?
This is why I don't read a lot of mainstream. It's also why I haven't been reading a lot of contemporary SF lately; neither has made me think.
"Leigh Richards" is a pen name of Laurie R. King's (according to her website). San Francisco's survival as a center of compassionate civilization surprises no one who knows that LRK hails from the Bay area. Skip this and curl up with a nice, silly Mary Russell novel instead.
In related news, King is working on a Kate Martinelli/Sherlock Holmes novel. I'm desperately trying to reserve judgment until I've actually read the book.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (Ursula K. Le Guin). Reread. I vaguely recalled some short stories about FTL in the Hainish universe, eventually remembered which volume I'd read them in, and finally got a copy via ILL. It's a short, small collection, so rereading the entire thing wasn't too time-consuming. Le Guin was herself; "The Rock that Changed Things" is a nice, rock-ish parable. "Newton's Sleep" fails to move me. It's the triumph of the Message over logic, plot, and simple coherence. "The Shobies' Story" and "Dancing to Ganam" need to be remixed for increased perception screwiness and didactism effacement. "Another Story"/"A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" is fairly minor, but pleasant. The remaining stories failed to move me to more than passing irritation or fleeting amusement.
And, like, wow. Cyteen sequel in the works. Original announcement on Cherryh's journal/ progress report,
August 25 '05. Given the decade of rumors preceding this, I'll believe it when I am holding the hardcover. (And yet. Posting about it - you really can't kill hope.)
Garlic and Sapphires (Ruth Reichl): LA Times restaurant reviewer switches coasts to become the NY Times restaurant reviewer. There's no question that Reichl is a food nut; her writing spikes each time it brushes against the topic. People are introduced by name, distinguishing characteristics are noted, then author and people go out to eat. At which point the stiff writing dissolves into ecstatic, vivid descriptions of food. The good, the bad and the ugly are presented with fanatic joy as Reichl (occasionally in disguise, to avoid the lavish attentions of anxious high-caliber restaurants) munches her way through New York City. About as deep as a bowl of ice cream, and nearly as fun. Recommended for light reading.
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin): Reread. But this time, I got it. Authors often have central ideas or images they come back to; Le Guin has a hard time getting away from rocks and trees. And her writing reflects this - her words have the weight and density of stone, of granite and pumice and quartz. Le Guin's trying very hard to say something about intangibles by the careful arrangement of rocks. Sometimes, they're built just right, and the reader finds the mind's eye cast in such a way that they're not seeing deliberate, stolid arrangements, they're seeing the air between the sculptures. And it means something.
That's why it's worth reading The Left Hand of Darkness.
The emotional center of the book is Genly Ai's relationship with Estraven, so the heart of the book - I think - is on the Ice, where the only characters are Genly and Estraven. This part of the novel is never as long as I remember it.
(Tangent: Le Guin/Kim Stanley Robinson crossover. Rocks get technical names and scientific histories. The Mars trilogy as told by Hiroko Ai? Jackie Boone goes to Hain? The mind shudders.)
Califia's Daughters (Leigh Richards/Laurie R. King): SF is grounded in the idea as the focus, the novel as a thought experiment where the author gets to stack the deck, and stuff like characterization is somewhat secondary to the coolness of the Idea. So I'm going to have to slam this book, and I feel kind of bad about that, because the novel's greatest sin is that it was mislabeled. A woman treks up the postapocalyptic West Coast generations after rogue bioweapons have established the male-female ratio at about 1:10. Califia's Daughters is billed as science fiction, but it's really mainstream+75 years, with a side of annoying plotting. There's minimal sense of wonder. The characters are reasonably distinguishable and comprehensible, but the author likes them too much. Nothing bad happens permanently to Dian, the Strong Female Lead. (She also has the Name of Spelling Sacrificed for Edginess, never a good sign. In an era of bizaare spellings, the "e" has remained in "Diane" for very good reasons.) She moves from sterility to being the mother of twins. Dog-mad Dian has to kill one of her favorite dogs in a scene filled with pathos, but it turns out to be mostly a flesh wound! Also, she gets to have vague ESP, the least mainstream element of the novel, but that's washed into the background halfway through the book. It could have been a cool and prominent plot element. Why not make subtle plays about some sort of Jungian "feminine intuition" and follow through with that? I've been reading Le Guin, people, where the FTL impulse is affected by crew consensus reality. I'll suspend disbelief for anything, if you can do something unexpected and inventive with it.
Califia's Daughters is missing a central idea, a comprehensive "what if?" for the book to explore and unfold for the reader. Dian is restless; Dian meets a nice, sexually attractive man; Dian roadtrips; Dian meets another, much more brotherly man; Dian pretends to be a brutal, erratically moral woman, and tangentially foments revolution, which has no impact on the emotional center of the book, which sort of vaguely seems to involve Dian's relationships with men. The story isn't about anything, except perhaps the human condition, in the most vague and broad sense. When I spend the time to read 489 pages, I want those pages to be about something. If they can't be about something, they'd better spark my sense of wonder. If a book doesn't make me think, or make me dream, or at least make me giggle, why am I bothering to read it?
This is why I don't read a lot of mainstream. It's also why I haven't been reading a lot of contemporary SF lately; neither has made me think.
"Leigh Richards" is a pen name of Laurie R. King's (according to her website). San Francisco's survival as a center of compassionate civilization surprises no one who knows that LRK hails from the Bay area. Skip this and curl up with a nice, silly Mary Russell novel instead.
In related news, King is working on a Kate Martinelli/Sherlock Holmes novel. I'm desperately trying to reserve judgment until I've actually read the book.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (Ursula K. Le Guin). Reread. I vaguely recalled some short stories about FTL in the Hainish universe, eventually remembered which volume I'd read them in, and finally got a copy via ILL. It's a short, small collection, so rereading the entire thing wasn't too time-consuming. Le Guin was herself; "The Rock that Changed Things" is a nice, rock-ish parable. "Newton's Sleep" fails to move me. It's the triumph of the Message over logic, plot, and simple coherence. "The Shobies' Story" and "Dancing to Ganam" need to be remixed for increased perception screwiness and didactism effacement. "Another Story"/"A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" is fairly minor, but pleasant. The remaining stories failed to move me to more than passing irritation or fleeting amusement.
And, like, wow. Cyteen sequel in the works. Original announcement on Cherryh's journal/ progress report,
August 25 '05. Given the decade of rumors preceding this, I'll believe it when I am holding the hardcover. (And yet. Posting about it - you really can't kill hope.)