book list, July 2019
It's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in July 2019. Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.
Wraiths of Time, by Andre Norton
-----I was reminded of this through a tangential comment somebody made on one of
rachelmanija's posts about a completely different book, and made the annoying discovery that my library system doesn't have a copy. So I bought the ebook, because what the hell, it's a childhood favorite and I'm sure I'll want to reread it again at some point.
This one's a little awkward because it's kind of, uh, "Andre Norton decides ancient Nubia is neat! But she's extremely vague about modern Africa, and also avoids dealing with racism in 20th century America though she's fine with tackling sexism." I still give her props for writing a book with a black female lead (though Tallahasse is specifically noted as being lighter-skinned than her counterpart, Ashake, which, although defensible from a worldbuilding perspective -- Tallahassee probably has a white ancestor or two, because slavery is horrible, and Ashake obviously would not -- still reads a little bit like Norton going, "she's black... but not too black," although maybe that's just me, I dunno), and a book in which, after Tallashasse's inadvertent journey from America to Ashake's world, there isn't a single white character so much as mentioned, except as a passing reference to northern barbarians. Also the mix of weird science and psychic powers speaks to me, okay?
The ending is unfortunately rather weak. Once the political/civil war plot resolves, the emotional arc just kind of stops dead without Tallahassee either making a genuine choice to be okay with her enforced exile in a strange alternate world, or taking some time to grieve the loss of her home and family. I think letting her build more solid emotional relationships with any of the characters would have helped there, but she spends a lot of the book cut off from anyone except Jayta and Herrihor, and the former maintains a sort of professional distance while the latter relationship is awkward on both sides because of alternate universe duplicate weirdness.
Knave of Dreams, by Andre Norton
-----Another childhood favorite, which I was reminded of because it's very much in the same vein as Wraiths of Time: young adult from 1970s-ish America is somewhat accidentally transported to another world and forced to play the part of their dead royal double. Mental powers and weird science abound, and everyone is brown-skinned even if that's mostly just mentioned in passing. This time Our Hero is Ramsay Kimble, half-Iroquois (nation not specified), and the particular mental power is targeted dreaming. Unlike in Wraiths of Time, nobody initially wants him to take over for his dead double, for a number of valid reasons. Also unlike Wraiths of Time, Ramsay gets to resolve his emotional arc by freely choosing to commit himself to this new world and building relationships with people he meets there.
Anyway, the thing about Andre Norton is that she has a very specific aesthetic that tends to mash a bunch of my narrative kink buttons really strongly, and also she mostly doesn't do romance, or only does it as an understated side plot. She's a lot more into loyalty kink, which frankly I am all in favor of. And for reasons I have never learned, my hometown library had an unusually large collection of her work which they filed almost entirely in the children's section. (Not even the YA section; this was the late 80s and early 90s and YA didn't really exist yet as a genre.) As a child, this was a godsend to me. As an adult, I have no idea what the catalogers were thinking. But hey, I got a lifelong favorite author out of the mixup, so I'm not complaining. :)
The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin
-----I guess 2019 is the year in which I work my way through Jemisin's entire published oeuvre? Not a bad way to spend a year, honestly! Anyway, this is the first volume of the Broken Earth trilogy, which is about a world that suffers recurrent extinction-level tectonic catastrophes. Also some people are born with an ability to affect seismic events, which for the past few thousand years has led to them being ostracized and essentially raised as, hmm, slave specialists who protect the world government? This volume follows one such woman (Essun, aka Syenite, aka Damaya) from childhood through middle age (non-chronologically, because reasons), and slowly reveals some of the mystery behind why this world is so inimical to life. I will report back on book 2 in my August book list. :)
First Bite: How We Learn To Eat, by Bee Wilson
-----A really interesting discussion of how children learn to eat (and how parents teach or fail to teach sustainable and healthy eating habits), and about how people can change our eating habits at all stages of life. Also some stuff about eating disorders. This is a hopeful book on the whole, though reading it may briefly drive one to despair over how bad we apparently are at successfully feeding children. This made me retroactively even more grateful to my own parents than I already was.
...
And now on to August, I guess. *wry*
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Wraiths of Time, by Andre Norton
-----I was reminded of this through a tangential comment somebody made on one of
rachelmanija's posts about a completely different book, and made the annoying discovery that my library system doesn't have a copy. So I bought the ebook, because what the hell, it's a childhood favorite and I'm sure I'll want to reread it again at some point.
This one's a little awkward because it's kind of, uh, "Andre Norton decides ancient Nubia is neat! But she's extremely vague about modern Africa, and also avoids dealing with racism in 20th century America though she's fine with tackling sexism." I still give her props for writing a book with a black female lead (though Tallahasse is specifically noted as being lighter-skinned than her counterpart, Ashake, which, although defensible from a worldbuilding perspective -- Tallahassee probably has a white ancestor or two, because slavery is horrible, and Ashake obviously would not -- still reads a little bit like Norton going, "she's black... but not too black," although maybe that's just me, I dunno), and a book in which, after Tallashasse's inadvertent journey from America to Ashake's world, there isn't a single white character so much as mentioned, except as a passing reference to northern barbarians. Also the mix of weird science and psychic powers speaks to me, okay?
The ending is unfortunately rather weak. Once the political/civil war plot resolves, the emotional arc just kind of stops dead without Tallahassee either making a genuine choice to be okay with her enforced exile in a strange alternate world, or taking some time to grieve the loss of her home and family. I think letting her build more solid emotional relationships with any of the characters would have helped there, but she spends a lot of the book cut off from anyone except Jayta and Herrihor, and the former maintains a sort of professional distance while the latter relationship is awkward on both sides because of alternate universe duplicate weirdness.
Knave of Dreams, by Andre Norton
-----Another childhood favorite, which I was reminded of because it's very much in the same vein as Wraiths of Time: young adult from 1970s-ish America is somewhat accidentally transported to another world and forced to play the part of their dead royal double. Mental powers and weird science abound, and everyone is brown-skinned even if that's mostly just mentioned in passing. This time Our Hero is Ramsay Kimble, half-Iroquois (nation not specified), and the particular mental power is targeted dreaming. Unlike in Wraiths of Time, nobody initially wants him to take over for his dead double, for a number of valid reasons. Also unlike Wraiths of Time, Ramsay gets to resolve his emotional arc by freely choosing to commit himself to this new world and building relationships with people he meets there.
Anyway, the thing about Andre Norton is that she has a very specific aesthetic that tends to mash a bunch of my narrative kink buttons really strongly, and also she mostly doesn't do romance, or only does it as an understated side plot. She's a lot more into loyalty kink, which frankly I am all in favor of. And for reasons I have never learned, my hometown library had an unusually large collection of her work which they filed almost entirely in the children's section. (Not even the YA section; this was the late 80s and early 90s and YA didn't really exist yet as a genre.) As a child, this was a godsend to me. As an adult, I have no idea what the catalogers were thinking. But hey, I got a lifelong favorite author out of the mixup, so I'm not complaining. :)
The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin
-----I guess 2019 is the year in which I work my way through Jemisin's entire published oeuvre? Not a bad way to spend a year, honestly! Anyway, this is the first volume of the Broken Earth trilogy, which is about a world that suffers recurrent extinction-level tectonic catastrophes. Also some people are born with an ability to affect seismic events, which for the past few thousand years has led to them being ostracized and essentially raised as, hmm, slave specialists who protect the world government? This volume follows one such woman (Essun, aka Syenite, aka Damaya) from childhood through middle age (non-chronologically, because reasons), and slowly reveals some of the mystery behind why this world is so inimical to life. I will report back on book 2 in my August book list. :)
First Bite: How We Learn To Eat, by Bee Wilson
-----A really interesting discussion of how children learn to eat (and how parents teach or fail to teach sustainable and healthy eating habits), and about how people can change our eating habits at all stages of life. Also some stuff about eating disorders. This is a hopeful book on the whole, though reading it may briefly drive one to despair over how bad we apparently are at successfully feeding children. This made me retroactively even more grateful to my own parents than I already was.
...
And now on to August, I guess. *wry*
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)