What Have I Been Reading?
Jul. 30th, 2018 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThis is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow - Morrow has a tendency to be didactic, and his satire is never what we’d call “subtle.” His witty segments are “good enough,” but I’m spoiled for wit. Terrible things happen to a protagonist who hardly deserves them (Morrow loves a good Job reference) and the supernatural nature of occurrences is necessary but attempt to get buried in soft sci-fi. The courtroom scene is reminiscent of the one he wrote into Blameless in Abbadon, an excuse to run through a litany of arguments (the problem of evil there, the issue of nuclear proliferation here) with a nonetheless predetermined verdict. The world ends, and despite all the places where it might seem like there would be a spot of hope, it continues to end.
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison - Wrapped up in layers of obfuscation and subtle world-building is the story of order vs. chaos, conformity vs. individuality. Contrasted against other writers who try to put together fragmented stories and end up with an unreadable mess, everything here fits together and I was never at loss for the thrust of the action. Ellison was a misogynist and an utter misanthrope; by all accounts an unpleasant person to be around. But the man could write.
The Female Man by Joanna Russ - An alternate future where all the men have died out and women have a semi-utopia starts to interact with an alternate-1950s where WW2 never happened; and also the 1970s when the book was written; and also another alternate world where society has split into Manland and Womanland. It’s a fiercely feminist book, and also rather disjointed and often obtuse. The narrator is a sorta-ghostly author-insert whose ability to interact with (or control) the main characters is unclear. The segments play like a series of semi-fleshed-out ideas for separate stories that got forced together into a single novel. I have to wonder if it would have worked better as separate stories—the original short story about Whileaway was included at the end, and that stands alone as a story much better than the Whileaway sequences work as part of the overall book. (And all that aside, I can’t decide if I’m sad or just aggravated how relevant this is almost 50 years later. A bunch of the Manland stuff comes off as cringingly transphobic, but most of the other material would be at home on Tumblr.)
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - A story about what happens to children spirited away to Fairyland who come back, and all the different and exciting ways they can be messed up by it. Fun, disturbing, a fast read. Queer-friendly independent of everything else.
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik - A layman’s book of materials science factoids, primarily regarding ten common materials of modern life. The science is all very light and fluffy, and it takes a, “Wow, isn’t this cool?” sort of tone. And now I know a bunch of random factoids about aerogels and graphene and exploding billiard balls.
“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison - Wrapped up in layers of obfuscation and subtle world-building is the story of order vs. chaos, conformity vs. individuality. Contrasted against other writers who try to put together fragmented stories and end up with an unreadable mess, everything here fits together and I was never at loss for the thrust of the action. Ellison was a misogynist and an utter misanthrope; by all accounts an unpleasant person to be around. But the man could write.
The Female Man by Joanna Russ - An alternate future where all the men have died out and women have a semi-utopia starts to interact with an alternate-1950s where WW2 never happened; and also the 1970s when the book was written; and also another alternate world where society has split into Manland and Womanland. It’s a fiercely feminist book, and also rather disjointed and often obtuse. The narrator is a sorta-ghostly author-insert whose ability to interact with (or control) the main characters is unclear. The segments play like a series of semi-fleshed-out ideas for separate stories that got forced together into a single novel. I have to wonder if it would have worked better as separate stories—the original short story about Whileaway was included at the end, and that stands alone as a story much better than the Whileaway sequences work as part of the overall book. (And all that aside, I can’t decide if I’m sad or just aggravated how relevant this is almost 50 years later. A bunch of the Manland stuff comes off as cringingly transphobic, but most of the other material would be at home on Tumblr.)
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - A story about what happens to children spirited away to Fairyland who come back, and all the different and exciting ways they can be messed up by it. Fun, disturbing, a fast read. Queer-friendly independent of everything else.
Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik - A layman’s book of materials science factoids, primarily regarding ten common materials of modern life. The science is all very light and fluffy, and it takes a, “Wow, isn’t this cool?” sort of tone. And now I know a bunch of random factoids about aerogels and graphene and exploding billiard balls.
