We Don't Have to Reap the Fear They Sow Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Finished Reading

The Hidden Land is much more fast-paced and intense than The Secret Country, and the intensity gets a giant boost three pages from the end, with YET ANOTHER inconclusive and uncomfortable ending. Characters are a little sharper and a couple of plot elements that were total mysteries in the first book are - not so much

Comments

[evelyn_b]

It's hard to say. I don't know enough about the period to know what's being overlooked. I suspect an anthology made ten years later would find a way to include stories from African-Americans and e.g. Muskogee and Cherokee stories along with the four different flavors of white people feeling put upon because those snooty Northerners are so ignorant and condescending. Which is frustrating because I hate regional condescension and am naturally inclined to cheer on anyone who says, "Fuck you, my hometown is all right," but it's harder to sympathize when that "Fuck you" is explicitly a defense of chattel slavery and white supremacy, and during this period in this part of the US it nearly always is.

There's one story about a tricky gambler that is all right, or at least it has some lines of dialogue that I liked, like the phrase "I was drinky and played careless" (I just like the idea of people regularly describing their state of mind as "drinky")

Poor Oates. :((((((( I knew what was going to happen to him from the introduction, but I was still unprepared for how sad I was going to be. Poor everybody. :(

I don't think I know enough about polar explorations in general to have picked up on what the most famous ones are in the US. I knew roughly that there were some, and that they were dangerous and a lot of people got frostbite - that's all.

[lost_spook]

The Scott expedition is just very well known and the "I'm going out" line has become part of our culture & pops up everywhere as a joke. Which takes away from the tragedy of its origin, but it was tragic when you get back to it, of course. (I read a YA novel by Gerladine McCaughrean once all about a teenaged girl getting haunted by Oates. Probably metaphorically.)

[evelyn_b]

Ah! I can see how that would happen!

Was the haunted-by-Oates book any good?

[lost_spook]

The Oates book was The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean, who's always good and it was my favourite I've read of hers. I can't remember what happened or why I liked it, though! (I met her at one of our book festival gala days and she was so pleased to hear that, because apparently it was one of her favourites, but everybody else kept talking about her other books. Which was the opposite of the time I met Michael Morpurgo and told him War HOrse was my favourite of his, which led to him telling 300 people at the YLG conference that he had hated me instantly. :LoL: