(Untitled)

[bookelfe]

It's always a strange experience reading books that talk directly to the girl I was at fifteen, because I remember quite a lot about that girl and there are many ways in which I don't like her much now. Jo Walton's new book Among Others is very much a book that talks directly to that girl, and I think it's honestly pretty brilliant, and there are

Comments

[mme_hardy]

I've been curious about this book ever since I heard about the theme. Are the books Mori name-checks entirely the books you (or I) would have read as a teenager, or is any modern SF included? I ask because I wonder how much using Heinlein as a touchstone resonates with a modern YA.

[bookelfe]

Well, the book takes place in the seventies, and is written in real-time for Mori, so it's all things that either were already published then or were just coming out - it is SUPER EXCITING for Mori when the second book in the Pern series is published, for example, and there's a whole entry about her startlement at finding out that James Tiptree, Jr. is female. It's not really in conversation with modern YA, I think, and I don't think it's reeeally meant for that audience either, although obviously fifteen-year-olds are going to find it and some of them will probably take reading lists from it.

[mme_hardy]

This is what I've wondered from the outside, whether the book has a fairly limited audience, namely people who were passionate SF geeks in the 1970s.

[bookelfe]

Well, I enjoyed it, and I wasn't born until several years after the period that Mori's living through. :) So anecdotally, yes, it has at least a somewhat broader audience than that!

[rymenhild]

More than anything else, Among Others is a fictionalized memoir. That bit at the beginning about how readers should look at it as sort of like one of those faked autobiographies is actually literally correct. Mori has a great deal in common with all of us geeky reader teens, but her reading list is young Jo Walton's.

[bookelfe]

Yeah, I was figuring that was the case both from reviews I've read and from she said at the reading at Housing Works where I was volunteering. I didn't really want to talk about it as a memoir though, because I want to talk about Mori-as-a-character, which is part of my project as a booklogger. And it feels weird to talk about Jo Walton's childhood the way I would talk about Mori-the-character; that feels like it's not really my business.

[ceitfianna]

This answers some questions for me since I've been curious about this book.

I think it sounds a bit like something I'd like and I love Jo Walton's posts on Tor.com.

[bookelfe]

I think you would probably enjoy it.

[kindness_says]

This sounds really interesting. Just in a, this sounds really interesting! way (I like the way you talk about it talking to a younger version of yourself; that really intrigues me), not so much in a way that I'm sure I'd want to read it, like you say. I was probably less this kid than friends with this kid, and the peak of sympathizing/those friendships was probably around middle school. I would guess that by fifteen I had probably started to disapprove a little of that attitude, plus I was definitely never as isolated as it sounds like you mean (and neither were the friends I refer to; we have the luxury of hailing from a town with lots of little nerds). I also, yeah, probably don't know of a lot of the books they'll talk about; I'm not so much with the hard sci-fi.

GAHHH LEVIATHAN IS DUE AGAIN IN LIKE TWO DAYS AND I HAVE NOT READ IT. MAYBE I WILL START IT NOW

[bookelfe]

Yeah, I think this probably would not be the right book for you. Read Leviathan instead! DON'T LET THE LIBRARY DEFEAT YOU.

[kindness_says]

I PICKED IT UP FROM UNDER THE TABLE AND WIPED THE DUST OFF IT....

[kindness_says]

Ugh, I also tried to start the book rachelmanija gave me for Yuletide book swap? Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh bored. I mean admittedly I wasn't trying that hard and I only read like a page, but it's a romance novel and I'm sooooo superficial about them. I was like, I do not like this heroine's name/the back of the book. Maybe it will grow on me? Maybe I'm too lazy to wait for it to do that.

I WILL TRY AGAIN LATER. MAYBE. IT IS NOT AS EXCITING AS THE PROSPECT OF LEVIATHAN.