The Backlog, Part One (September Reading)

[ase]

I had brilliant plans for a special two-month deal, but then I noticed it was swiftly heading for a three-month book log. So here's September.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University (Kevin Roose): The subtitle says it all: a Brown University student transfers to Liberty University, bastion of evangelical

Comments

[countrycousin]

Re Language of Bees: Before it came out Mary Russell had a MySpace page where she was listed as 109 for a while (it changed to 101, don't know why), and told the backstory of how the manuscripts came into Ms King's possession. IIRC, in this tale, Holmes was still around just prior to Beekeeper's Apprentice. So I don't anticipate signs of imminent passing. ;-)

[countrycousin]

ugh. Unclear. That's just prior to the publishing of Beekeeper's Apprentice that Holmes was reported still with Russell. But she was doing the heavy lifting. ;-)

[ase]

That's... interesting. Unlikely, but not surprising.

Two months or so of reading

[anonymous]

Again, no shortage of genre fiction and military history. And, why yes, I have no life

[ann_leckie]

Woohoo! I'm namechecked! :)

This isn't a story about a Mars that never was, this is a story questioning the motives for never-Mars stories and why people keep writing them. Or that is my interpretation.

That's in there. It was kind of a side issue to the things I was thinking about, though, when I wrote it. Or, let's say, an issue that's part of the issue I was thinking of. I am loathe to tell anyone how to think about my writing, but I will say that this is the one and only overtly political story I've ever done. Except, it turns out not to be so overt that anyone sees it, but that works out fine.

[ase]

Eeee I know namecheck-able people. :-) Finding your overtly political story may not have been the best place to start, but it's also interesting to see what people pick up and what they project onto a story. (I had to cut a tangential diatribe about how much I hate the cultural appropriation debate that came out of 2006, and what I think of the debate as currently constructed. And that was all something I probably projected onto a completely innocent story.)

Some people talk about po-mo theory and how the author is dead, but Lois Bujold defines genre as a group of works in conversation, which means to me that the authors are reading and reacting to each other. I don't think the author is not dead; the author is in the box with the cat.

[filkferengi]

Great metaphor! Hopefully with treats & a litterbox.