An Infection of the Imagination (August Reading)

[ase]

Air (Geoff Ryman): Absolutely worth reading. Do you know why this got a Tiptree? Because it's a story about a woman in a fake -stan. There's a number of interlocking plot threads that dovetail and swoop around each other to say more than the sum of their individual stories. Do you know why you've never heard about this story? Because there's really

Comments

...and in response.

[lightning58]

1. De Madariaga, Isabel. Ivan the Terrible. Yale University Press, 2005. (B

But Wait! There's more!

[lightning58]

I started Watership Down in high school but I gave up very early on as just being not my thing. On the other hand I have fond memories of Adams' Shardik. But since that was decades ago don't ask me to elaborate; it had a bit of a "Thomas Covenant" vibe.

Re: But Wait! There's more!

[ase]

Invoking Donaldson suggests I ought to walk the other way, quickly.

I found WD decent bus reading, but I think it would be more interesting if I knew what books it was supposed to be in conversation with, as opposed to my "British lit by way of British fantasy novels" interpretation.

[ann_leckie]

I read Watership Down in late high school and found it...okay. The boyfriend who'd pressed me to read it thought it was absolute genius.

Much later--sometime within the past year?--I read an essay talking about how much the author had really skewed around the way rabbits live to give his male characters dominant roles, when in fact it's female rabbits who are the centers and leaders of rabbit families and communities (for lack of better words) and the ooohing and aahhing over all the research the author had done on rabbits was dismaying to the essay's author. I forget where I read it, and don't know enough about rabbits to know if it's true, but given all the bug movies where all the MC bugs are male leads me to assume it's pretty probable.

[ase]

I forget where I read it, and don't know enough about rabbits to know if it's true, but given all the bug movies where all the MC bugs are male leads me to assume it's pretty probable.

I read this as a fantasy novel, so from my interpretation the rabbit sociology was nine-tenths artistic worldbuilding license. Wiki tells me Adams later wrote a sequel / story collection giving more prominence to the female rabbits, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to seek it out. WD was an interesting variation on British boys' story, and I feel there were some "people ought to behave thus-and-such" moralizing that whizzed right past me, but none of this tips me into investigating more of his writing.

An Infection of the Imagination (August Reading)

[dianyla]

I grew up reading Watership Down; my dad used it as a required text in some business sociology/psych class he used to teach. Probably first read it around age 7-8.

I tried reading Shardik sometime in my early teens and for some reason I could not grasp it at all. I should retry it as an adult.

Re: An Infection of the Imagination (August Reading)

[ase]

Watership Down as a metaphor of young, energetic low-level entrepreneurs escaping their fossilized and threatened environment, and establishing their new business / home? I can see how that would appeal to business types.

Pre-teens sounds like a great age to read WD; it's long enough to be interesting, but has relatively little frightening "onscreen" violence.

Re: An Infection of the Imagination (August Reading)

[lightning58]

Speaking of "onscreen" violence, the climax of Shardik does feature what was a pretty graphic image of violence for the time.

Or if Watership Down is about "just-so" moralizing than Shardik has an adult streak of self-doubt and ambiguity.

[robin_june]

I read Watership Down and liked it so much that I even wrote original music to set the female rabbit's poetry to: "Hyzenthlay's Lament." Unfortunately, before I could record it, Adams's subsequent book came out. I worked in animal research at the time, and after reading "The Plague Dogs," I figured that he'd never give publishing permission for the words to "Hyzenthlay's Lament" to someone like me.

[ase]

I'm a child of a different age, but I'd expect copyright concerns to play at least as large a role as moral outrage.