reading
Hey, it's Wednesday!
Just finished: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, for book club. That was actually really interesting: it's a novel published in 1929 (won the Pulitzer in 1930) written from the POV of two Navajo characters, about life on the Navajo Nation in 1915. The writer was a Harvard-educated anthropologist who spoke a little of the language, and had spent some time there. And the story does address at least some of the damage done by Americans and the US government (the female lead was taken away to a boarding school in California as a child, and comes back irrevocably changed). I don't know enough about Navajo life to identify the errors, but I'm sure they are legion, although the attempt was clearly made with great sympathy for the people La Farge was trying to portray. The story is melodramatic and a bit sentimental, but not nearly as bad as it could have been, although it in no way passes the Bechdel test. I dunno: there are some images and descriptions that will stick with me, despite my uncertainty about the novel as a whole.
I also just finished Cog and the Steel Tower, by W. E. Larson, who is an online friend. It's a children's book (rather than YA), about a 13-yo girl with a talent for mechanical things, in a steampunky world. I thought several of the characters were drawn too broadly and Cog behaved more like a younger girl, but it's engagingly written, with some fun adventure sequences and a lot of creative world-building detail. Recommended for younger kids or steampunk completists, I think.
Now reading: Planetfall by Janet Newman, from the library. Only just started it, but it looks interesting.
Up next: Probably Bloodline by Claudia Gray, which is a Princess Leia novel.
*
Someone at Tor must have heard me grumbling about the male-heavy series rereads at Tor.com, because right now our own Kate Nepveu is leading a reread of the Temeraire series; Stefan Raets is leading a reread of Kage Baker's the Company series; Judith Tarr is leading a reread of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series; and Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer is leading a reread of the Vorkosigan novels. YAY for recognizing female writers, Tor!
My gentle readers will likely remember that I have no patience anymore for Guy Gavriel Kay and his PORTENTOUS narrative style. I said so, in a thread at Metafilter about said novelist's new release. And at the end of the thread, someone linked GGK to the thread, where I had spent a least a couple hundred words bitching about his storytelling. ::facepalm::
*
The only time of year I really wish I hadn't cut my cable is playoff season; which is why I'm sitting on my futon listening to the Warriors game. No energy to go to a bar, that's for sure. I
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
Just finished: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, for book club. That was actually really interesting: it's a novel published in 1929 (won the Pulitzer in 1930) written from the POV of two Navajo characters, about life on the Navajo Nation in 1915. The writer was a Harvard-educated anthropologist who spoke a little of the language, and had spent some time there. And the story does address at least some of the damage done by Americans and the US government (the female lead was taken away to a boarding school in California as a child, and comes back irrevocably changed). I don't know enough about Navajo life to identify the errors, but I'm sure they are legion, although the attempt was clearly made with great sympathy for the people La Farge was trying to portray. The story is melodramatic and a bit sentimental, but not nearly as bad as it could have been, although it in no way passes the Bechdel test. I dunno: there are some images and descriptions that will stick with me, despite my uncertainty about the novel as a whole.
I also just finished Cog and the Steel Tower, by W. E. Larson, who is an online friend. It's a children's book (rather than YA), about a 13-yo girl with a talent for mechanical things, in a steampunky world. I thought several of the characters were drawn too broadly and Cog behaved more like a younger girl, but it's engagingly written, with some fun adventure sequences and a lot of creative world-building detail. Recommended for younger kids or steampunk completists, I think.
Now reading: Planetfall by Janet Newman, from the library. Only just started it, but it looks interesting.
Up next: Probably Bloodline by Claudia Gray, which is a Princess Leia novel.
*
Someone at Tor must have heard me grumbling about the male-heavy series rereads at Tor.com, because right now our own Kate Nepveu is leading a reread of the Temeraire series; Stefan Raets is leading a reread of Kage Baker's the Company series; Judith Tarr is leading a reread of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series; and Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer is leading a reread of the Vorkosigan novels. YAY for recognizing female writers, Tor!
My gentle readers will likely remember that I have no patience anymore for Guy Gavriel Kay and his PORTENTOUS narrative style. I said so, in a thread at Metafilter about said novelist's new release. And at the end of the thread, someone linked GGK to the thread, where I had spent a least a couple hundred words bitching about his storytelling. ::facepalm::
*
The only time of year I really wish I hadn't cut my cable is playoff season; which is why I'm sitting on my futon listening to the Warriors game. No energy to go to a bar, that's for sure. I
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.