Reading Wednesday

[chomiji]

I finished All the Birds in the Sky. It wasn't bad, but it just sort of ended: too much build up, not enough resolution. And now I'm annoyed by the title, because although it sounds really nifty, it doesn't have all that much to do with the story. This is not going to be my top vote for best novel, I'm afraid.

Also in Hugo reading, I read through Ursula Le Guin's Words Are My Matter, a collection of recent short non-fiction pieces. I love Le Guin as an essayist, and the first part of the book contains some good examples. But the back half-and-a-bit is introductions to books and book reviews, and I found those less interesting. A number of them were for non-genre literary or magical realism works that didn't sound as though they'd appeal to me. She did mention a couple of Western (as in, Western U.S.) novels that I might want to look up, which I will mention here partially for my own reference: Crazy Weather by Charles McNichols and The Jump-Off Creek and The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss. Also, although Perdido Street Station pretty much put me off China Mielville for life, her review of Embassytown is making me reconsider.

Overall, unless the rest of the Related Works are very mediocre, I don't think this will be my top pick in that category.

I have just started Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, which is short-listed for Best Novel. A number of the readers on File 770 had trouble with this book, but I'm not finding it problematic thus far. Possibly the fact that I actually like Anthony Burgess' A Dead Man in Deptford (link goes to Kirkus review), which was also purposefully written in the style of an earlier era, has something to do with this. I'll have to see where the book goes, of course.

Finally, I'll be re-reading some of Fruits Basket, Because Reasons. Does anyone recall the number of the exact volume in which Machi shows up? It's when she wrecks the student council room, if the Wikia is to be believed.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

Le Guin was my introduction to Molly Gloss, and Molly Gloss, it turns out, has never written a bad book. I don't know why she isn't more known, except that her books are in such wildly different genres: one middle-grade/YA fantasy of astonishing simple gorgeousness, as though it were hewn out of rock; two Westerns; one Quakers-in-space generation ship novel; one completely indescribable brilliant Pacific Northwest fantasy for adults. I have never tried to review anything by Molly Gloss because she is one of those writers where words fail and I never seem to communicate what her actual good points are, but she is well worth the read.

I was also put off China Mieville by Perdido Street Station, and then for reasons I don't know recall came back circa Embassytown. He is a different writer now. Everything since and including Embassytown is spectacular, and Embassytown, Railsea, and The Last Days of New Paris are my favorite books of the years they came out. This Census-Taker would have been my favorite book of the year it came out except that it came out the same year as The Last Days of New Paris. Seriously, he has basically nothing in common with the writer he used to be, and it's really worth giving him another try.

[rushthatspeaks]

Wait, I am wrong. I wrote a very bad review of Outside the Gates, the middle-grade, and the review is so bad I had blocked out that I tried to do it. Sigh. Anyhow, it's a brilliant book.

[chomiji]

Interesting about This Census-Taker. People are being crabby about it on File 770. (I myself was not amused that the free Hugo packet copy has a watermark on it.) I'll have to see what I think.

Thanks for the recs for Gloss!

[ambyr]

I've heard good things about Molly Gloss before, although I think it was Falling from Horses that was specifically recommended to me.

Embassytown I was . . . not entirely sold on, but it had its moments. The City and the City is so far the only Mieville that's solidly worked for me.

[chomiji]

My bro-in-law the genetics person recommended The City and the City also, but then he also liked Perdido. He also recced Railsea, which I tried starting and had to put away: I wasn't getting anywhere.

(He's much more of a "head" reader than a "heart" reader, so we often don't agree on books. We both liked Leckie, but he didn't like the Raksura books at all, for example.)

[umadoshi]

Does anyone recall the number of the exact volume in which Machi shows up?

Technically she appears at the very end of vol. 7 with Kakeru (for about a page and a half), but neither of them is identified and I don't know if she has any dialogue. (He does.) Her first real appearance is in vol. 9.

I haven't read Too Like the Lightning yet, but it sure seems to be polarizing.

[chomiji]

Thank you! That will help!

Lightning is reminding me most of The Diamond Age, of all things, except written in 18th-century pastiche. It's not the plot that reminds me of the Stephenson, but rather the setting.

[oracne]

Definitely read Molly Gloss. She is so good! But warning, there is also sadness, and she is so good you really feel it.

[chomiji]

Sometimes I can do sad. It depends on the why of the sadness. I don't like betrayals and terrible misunderstandings that could have been avoided if people would just *talk* to each other.

[oracne]

Her sadness is more "why is the world like this, bad things happen to people, some people are bad."

[neotoma]

I'm trying to get a group together to discuss Too Like The Lightning, probably in August or September given the number of people who just aren't available in July. Would you like to be included?

[chomiji]

I'm terribly conflicted. I'm very pleased to be asked, but I don't think I'd be comfortable with a face-to-face discussion with people I don't know. Social anxiety is kind of embarrassing at my age, but there it is.

[daegaer]

A Dead Man in Deptford! I loved that! Kit's repeated frustration at his eventual killer's over-familiarity throughout. "I am not 'thou' to you," indeed.

[muccamukk]

Hi, just adding you because we like similar SF/F and you're friends with Nenya.