Booklog 8: The Limits of Words
It is apparently September, and I have read what feels like hardly anything. (I started off well and then... work happened. O_O)
-The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
This is all about World War II and its aftermath for a bunch of queer/women/outcasts (and sometimes all three). It is a little on the soap-opera-y side for those who dislike that, maybe, but I found it very engaging and delightful in its depiction of the variety of experience and responses to huge and traumatic events. I kept contrasting it favourably with Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear take on the war... there, the characters were very deliberately Learning About Heroism, whereas these are just people who happen to be living through some historically famous stuff, getting through in their own way.
(Also, I am not sure what I made of the genderqueer elements... mostly positive, I think, but would like other people's thoughts.)
- Tickling the English by Dara O'Briain
This is Dara's tour diary and random thoughts. I found it quite entertaining and fluffy - he is quite interesting as long as you are happy to hear what an Irish comic living in England who seems like a fairly pleasant and intelligent guy has to say about life. I am, so I enjoyed it. It's quite sweet, and he comes over as a guy I'd happily have a drink with.
- Halting State by Charles Stross
I do like Charles Stross, largely because while he is a very geek/theory focused writer, he manages to make his characters people.
The conceit behind this one is that somebody managed to steal a whole load of money from a virtual bank in an online game, which sets off an unwilling police investigation that in turn leads to some really well presented ideas on the future of technology and society and international relations.
It's a decent thriller and much better SF, but my favourite thing is definitely the characters. I love the lesbian cop, I love the expert lady, I love that they are both specified as sexually active competent adults with no objectivication or weirdness about that at all. They're not super-perfect, they're just... there, as individuals and main characters. There's a male main character too, and he's pretty decently interesting, but amazingly there is absolutely no indication that he is any cooler or more important or more inherently interesting than anyone else!
- Bones of the Earth by Ursula K LeGuin
This is a strangely beautiful and moving story about a guy who stops an earthquake and dies in the attempt. It's very LeGuin, in an awesome way, and manages to also be about love and chldren and respect out being in the world. Lovely.
- The Poisoning at the Pub by Simon Brett
I enjoy the Fethering mysteries, even though they are super fluffy, and I think most fans would lol at this bringing the mysteries to the Crown and Anchor. Otherwise this one is mostly okay - there's a portrayal of mental illness and a social worker which, as I am in related fields in real life, didn't really work for me. It wasn't dreadful - not nearly as bad as some, if only because it was more 'a little simplistic and fluffy' than 'actively malevolent', and even more especially because there was a recognition that not everyone dealing with social workers is, y'know, the same. I enjoyed it.
- The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
This is the third novel set in the Swordspoint universe and I liked it a lot. It has a lot of the same sort of detail, worldbuilding, and delightfully casual queerness as the others, yay. I also loved the ladies in it though. They are important and delightful, and this is especially cool give the way they're integral to the sense of continuity this book has. It has history - a sense of the other two novels, most importantly, even though they could be read independently, although it also has A Long Time Ago history - and it's awesome.
- Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
This is Atwood's fictionalisation of a famous 19th century Canadian murder case that managed to hit all the 'hot young woman in a case that involved sex and death omg' buttons to become a big media deal.
It's clearly trying to do two things: make Grace sympathetic and talk about the problems women faced then, while also remaining ambiguous as to whether she's a murderer. Those two things sometimes work quite well together, but other times they don't. I specifically think the climactic hypnotism scene is kind of clunky and anvilicious in that respect. On the other hand, I do very much like th way Simon is shown to be a complete douchebag. He's very believably "nice" and convincing himself that he's doing the right thing, while abandoning a woman he's at the LEAST taken advantage of to, as far as he knows, desperate poverty to the point of starvation.
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Atwood's famously "not a sci-fi novel at all omg" novel. It's good - I particularly like Oryx, and the reveal of what happened is well done even if the final revelation is a bit abrupt. I did feel though like it would have been better had she been more aware of genre: that greater knowledge of what SF has done with disaster diction and dystopias would have helped take it even higher, that more interaction with its own genre would take made this pretty straight take on science-used-for-eeevil! somewhere even better. But it is still good!
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/67686.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
-The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
This is all about World War II and its aftermath for a bunch of queer/women/outcasts (and sometimes all three). It is a little on the soap-opera-y side for those who dislike that, maybe, but I found it very engaging and delightful in its depiction of the variety of experience and responses to huge and traumatic events. I kept contrasting it favourably with Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear take on the war... there, the characters were very deliberately Learning About Heroism, whereas these are just people who happen to be living through some historically famous stuff, getting through in their own way.
(Also, I am not sure what I made of the genderqueer elements... mostly positive, I think, but would like other people's thoughts.)
- Tickling the English by Dara O'Briain
This is Dara's tour diary and random thoughts. I found it quite entertaining and fluffy - he is quite interesting as long as you are happy to hear what an Irish comic living in England who seems like a fairly pleasant and intelligent guy has to say about life. I am, so I enjoyed it. It's quite sweet, and he comes over as a guy I'd happily have a drink with.
- Halting State by Charles Stross
I do like Charles Stross, largely because while he is a very geek/theory focused writer, he manages to make his characters people.
The conceit behind this one is that somebody managed to steal a whole load of money from a virtual bank in an online game, which sets off an unwilling police investigation that in turn leads to some really well presented ideas on the future of technology and society and international relations.
It's a decent thriller and much better SF, but my favourite thing is definitely the characters. I love the lesbian cop, I love the expert lady, I love that they are both specified as sexually active competent adults with no objectivication or weirdness about that at all. They're not super-perfect, they're just... there, as individuals and main characters. There's a male main character too, and he's pretty decently interesting, but amazingly there is absolutely no indication that he is any cooler or more important or more inherently interesting than anyone else!
- Bones of the Earth by Ursula K LeGuin
This is a strangely beautiful and moving story about a guy who stops an earthquake and dies in the attempt. It's very LeGuin, in an awesome way, and manages to also be about love and chldren and respect out being in the world. Lovely.
- The Poisoning at the Pub by Simon Brett
I enjoy the Fethering mysteries, even though they are super fluffy, and I think most fans would lol at this bringing the mysteries to the Crown and Anchor. Otherwise this one is mostly okay - there's a portrayal of mental illness and a social worker which, as I am in related fields in real life, didn't really work for me. It wasn't dreadful - not nearly as bad as some, if only because it was more 'a little simplistic and fluffy' than 'actively malevolent', and even more especially because there was a recognition that not everyone dealing with social workers is, y'know, the same. I enjoyed it.
- The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
This is the third novel set in the Swordspoint universe and I liked it a lot. It has a lot of the same sort of detail, worldbuilding, and delightfully casual queerness as the others, yay. I also loved the ladies in it though. They are important and delightful, and this is especially cool give the way they're integral to the sense of continuity this book has. It has history - a sense of the other two novels, most importantly, even though they could be read independently, although it also has A Long Time Ago history - and it's awesome.
- Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
This is Atwood's fictionalisation of a famous 19th century Canadian murder case that managed to hit all the 'hot young woman in a case that involved sex and death omg' buttons to become a big media deal.
It's clearly trying to do two things: make Grace sympathetic and talk about the problems women faced then, while also remaining ambiguous as to whether she's a murderer. Those two things sometimes work quite well together, but other times they don't. I specifically think the climactic hypnotism scene is kind of clunky and anvilicious in that respect. On the other hand, I do very much like th way Simon is shown to be a complete douchebag. He's very believably "nice" and convincing himself that he's doing the right thing, while abandoning a woman he's at the LEAST taken advantage of to, as far as he knows, desperate poverty to the point of starvation.
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Atwood's famously "not a sci-fi novel at all omg" novel. It's good - I particularly like Oryx, and the reveal of what happened is well done even if the final revelation is a bit abrupt. I did feel though like it would have been better had she been more aware of genre: that greater knowledge of what SF has done with disaster diction and dystopias would have helped take it even higher, that more interaction with its own genre would take made this pretty straight take on science-used-for-eeevil! somewhere even better. But it is still good!
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/67686.html. Please comment there using OpenID.