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

[sallymn]

I tend to dither about The Hunger Games - its sheer popularity tends to put me off and the theme isn't one I car much about - but maybe one day...

Sis has a LOT of books about Antarctica, the expeditions and the history. I've read some of them but they're invariably bleak...

[evelyn_b]

They are bleak but I'm also finding them surprisingly cozy? I'm enjoying the tension between the half of my brain that keeps going, "But WHY would you even GO to the South Pole, there's NOTHING THERE" even as I sympathize with the guys and want them to be ok, and the other half, or tenth or however much it is, that kind of gets it. Plus when I am on my feet for 12 hours straight at work and then have to walk home in the rain, I can think, "This rain is suboptimal but at least I'm not camping on pack ice."

I didn't think I would like The Hunger Games because I'm not really into dystopias, but the film soundtrack hit me where I live in all the most obvious ways, and the book is very fast-paced and exciting, even if it does have the most half-hearted love triangle ever.

[sallymn]

As I am not into romance and triangles at all anyway, half-hearted sounds good to me :)

[osprey_archer]

The Secret Country and The Hidden Land would work so much better as one book smushed together. It would get rid that totally non-ending ending in The Secret Country - the ending of The Hidden Land is still inconclusive in a lot of ways, but at the same time it does feel like an end, you know? Whereas the ending of The Secret Country is barely a stopping point.

Good luck with The Whim of the Dragon! I had mixed feelings about it, but I feel like it's a must-read after reading the first two.

[evelyn_b]

It does! I mean, the situation changes appreciably! We learn something new! I'm actually really concerned now. . . at the end of The Secret Country I was like, "Well, this is certainly a cliffhanger. . . of sorts. . . a plateauhanger?" But now I am genuinely distressed.

I hope I'll be able to find The Whim of the Dragon at the library! I'm on STRICT ORDERS from myself not to buy any new books until March, so . . . :(

[wordsofastory]

Guys on the ice is a fun category! I particularly like to read about the Franklin expedition, if you've heard of it: two ships in 1845 make an attempt to find the Northwest Passage by going through the ice north of Canada; after leaving Britain none of them are ever heard from again. It's depressing, but the various attempts to figure out exactly what happened to them are fascinating.

[evelyn_b]

I did not know about this expedition. Were they never found? D:

Not that it would be very surprising if they weren't; northern Canada is huge and full of carnivores, even if there weren't also miles and miles of icy water to fall into. :(

ETA: "A breakthrough was made in September 2014 when an expedition led by Parks Canada discovered the wreck of HMS Erebus, in the south of Victoria Island in Nunavut. A second breakthrough happened in September 2016, when HMS Terror was found in Terror Bay, further north."

I found this page on Parks Canada! They have a page about the history of the expedition and some pictures of the things that were found in the shipwrecks.

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/culture/franklin/index.aspx

(also, I think there are a couple of mountains in Antarctica named after these ships!)

[wordsofastory]

That's the one!

Dan Simmons has a novel about it called The Terror (which, how amazing is it that one of the ships was actually named that?) which slightly fantasy-izes the story (he adds a psychic polar bear stalking them, which really seems unnecessary given how many other things went wrong with the expedition), but which is nonetheless incredibly well-researched and goes deep into the day-by-day slow disintegration of their plans.

[evelyn_b]

I might read it! I am laughing at how extremely unnecessary it is for a polar bear to be psychic to do great harm to a bunch of guys wandering around on some ice.

It is too perfect a name. I don't know how comfortable I would feel going on a journey of any length in a ship called The Terror, though 1) that is just superstition, and 2) it's not like naming your ship The Safe Return or The Total Absence of Hypothermia isn't asking for trouble, probably.

[lost_spook]

the overall impression this anthology creates of Alabama fiction, accurate or not, is that pickings are considerably slimmer than you thought.

Whoops.

And if you don't stop with the Antarctica, next it'll be the most famous expedition of them all, with Scott and Oates and nobody making it back alive, you know. ;-)

[evelyn_b]

OOPS.

The twentieth-century selections are a lot better, to be fair, even if there are too many white authors and too much space has been lost to the historical-interest stuff. And the nineteenth-century stuff isn't awful (except when it is). There's a lot that is kind of on the decent side of mediocre, and it probably hasn't aged as badly as a lot of its contemporaries, but that doesn't mean it's aged particularly well.

This book is about that expedition! That is, it's about the larger Terra Nova expedition of which Scott's Polar Party was one part. Is it the most famous one of all? I have been forewarned by the introduction that Scott's team is going to die only a few miles from their supply drop. :(

[lost_spook]

Well, in the UK, Scott of the Antarctic is the most famous, but then we always do enjoy a story of heroic failure; and then there's the whole Captain Oates part. ("I'm going out. I may be some time.")

Poor Alabama, or is it only what they deserve? Or just not the best anthology??

[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

[liadtbunny]

I've guessed the name of the dog, but I'd better not say. There's an old pub near me where the RAF used to drink during the war and there's a picture of a badly named dog and it's pilot master on the wall.

Have fun with guys on ice ... or not;p

[evelyn_b]

Best not! Though it was a cat in this case.

It's always a good time with my guys on the ice. . . until it's not. :(