June reading list

[cahn]

As I expected when I started this June reading thing, my reading has outstripped my capacity to write about it, not least because all my spare time right now is going to getting this irksome opera PPT done. (I don't read in spare time, I read while multitasking other things.) I am still planning to get to most of these books, but in the meantime here's a list, in rough order of how fascinated I was with it (not completely correlated with how much I liked it), with a couple of words about each one:

*: am definitely planning to write something at least a little more about this, may not be in June proper
~: read for Hugos
+: read as a direct result of reading An Informal History of the Hugos

*~1. An Informal History of the Hugos (Walton) - VOTE FOR WALTON
*~2. Ursula K. Le Guin - Conversations on Writing(Le Guin, Naimon) - Even slight Le Guin is good Le Guin
*~3. The Poppy War (Kuang) - Let's seriously give this person a Campbell already, this is brilliant and ambitious and historically rooted, also very grimdark ALL the content warnings (also! only 2.99 on kindle)
*+4. Xenocide (Card), partial reread ("Gloriously Bright" sections) - I'm so confused as to whether Card knows what he's doing here with the competing religious subtexts, I think he must but...
*+5. Doomsday Book (Willis), partial reread (last third) - I love the last third of this, and I don't agree with a specific thing Walton says in her writeup, in this essay I will
+6. The Last Defender of Camelot (Zelazny, anthology, reread) - this was fine, nice to reread, not much more to say
~7. Belles (DNF) - first person present tense, need I say more, though better than Children of Blood and Bone

Comments

[schneefink]

"The Poppy War" is on my reading list. Which content warnings would you add? Does it have an overall pessimistic/hopeless atmosphere?, that's not the kind of thing I want to read at the moment.

[cahn]

Oh boy. Let's see. Content warnings include (but are not necessarily limited to, these are just the ones I can remember offhand) genocide(s), massacre (in particular describing the remains of a massacre, somewhat graphic, includes death of children and babies), war violence in general, experimentation on human beings, drug addiction, fairly graphic conversation about rape (though the pov character is not raped and no on-screen rape is shown). Basically, the book is modeled on the actual Second Sino-Japanese War, so, you know. With all that said I'm not entirely sure that I would exactly say it has a pessimistic/hopeless atmosphere -- the ending is, hmm, not positive at all really (it's the first book in a trilogy, so it's not clear how it's going to go), and it is strongly indicated that the protagonist has made an extremely bad (probably even catastrophic) decision, but she never gives up or entirely loses hope herself, which distinguishes it for me from, oh, the third Hunger Games book, or anything by K.J. Parker, say, both of which made me want to throw the book across the room (which this book didn't do).

All that being said, if you are not in the mood for dark but are interested in checking it out (are you voting in the Hugos?) I would just read the first section and leave it at that. The first section is actually pretty upbeat (think Ender's Game meets Chinese-inflected fantasy) and I don't think any content warnings apply -- hmm, the protagonist does end up drinking a potion to get rid of her periods (and thus render herself infertile) but I'm having a hard time thinking of anything worse. Discussion of previous genocide, I guess.

[schneefink]

Hm, maybe I'll read it some other time then. Thanks for the warning! I'm not voting in the Hugos, I just thought it sounded interesting.

[cahn]

It is interesting! Very worth reading, but yeah, not when one is in a mood for escapism.

[forestofglory]

Jo Walton's book reviews do that to me too! She's really good at making you want to read things!

[cahn]

Yes! It's like having a really satisfying book conversation with a good friend :D (And sometimes it's even books that she didn't like -- but it's the conversation that reminds me what I liked about them :) )

[ambyr]

I did finish The Belles, but the First Person Present Tense struggle is real.

[cahn]

Right?! So is it worth it for me to keep going at all?

[ambyr]

I mean, it's willing to go darker than a lot of YA, but I don't know that that's a selling point for you. It is mostly pretty tropey and predictable, with occasional forays into, "Okay, but you're not going to follow through on that premise . . . oh. You went there. Okay then." Some spoilers below in rot-13, read at your own risk:

Gurer vf n cerggl rtertvbhf Qrnq Yrfovnaf zbzrag gbjneq gur raq bs gur obbx. Vg jbhyq unir obgurerq zr zber vs gung jnf gur bayl yrfovna pbhcyr, ohg va snpg gurer ner n ahzore bs dhrre crbcyr va gur obbx, gubhtu gung'f bar cynpr jurer gur jbeyqohvyqvat sryg jbooyl gb zr--ba gur bar unaq guvf vf n jbeyq jurer ubzbfrkhnyvgl vf pbzzba naq npprcgrq naq tnl zneevntr vf n guvat, ba gur bgure unaq gurer'f n jubyr ybg bs Arire Or Nybar Jvgu N Obl fbeg bs fbpvny ehyrf gung yrnir zr fpengpuvat zl urnq naq jbaqrevat jul orvat Nybar Jvgu N Tvey vfa'g whfg nf onq.

Gurer vf n ybir gevnatyr bs fbegf, ohg vg obgurerq zr yrff guna zbfg LN ybir gevnatyrf--rkprcg sbe gur cneg jurer vg raqrq hc orvat ubeevslvat bapr V jbexrq bhg gung gur cebgntbavfg vf abg n grrantre ohg vf, yvxr, fvk lrnef byq (pybavat, nppryrengrq tebjgu, rgp.). Ba gur bgure unaq gung qbrf rkphfr n ybg bs ure anvirgr naq greevoyr qrpvfvba-znxvat!

[cahn]

ahahahaha. ...Yeah. I'm skipping that. Thanks for making that decision easy! :)

[snickfic]

I think Last Defender of Camelot might be my favorite Zelazny anthology. It's got some real favorites in there, like Auto da Fe and Comes Now the Power. Hmm, I feel a reread coming on...

[cahn]

I really like it! (Mine doesn't have Auto da Fe in it, though!)

[snickfic]

How odd! I have the book club edition; maybe that made a difference?

[cahn]

Maybe. Weird!

[iberiandoctor]

I remember enjoying Xenocide (greatly, even; largely Lusitania, but I did also enjoy Path and the Gloriously Bright sections), though I clearly don't remember the competing religious subtexts quite enough! What did you enjoy/were you confused about Card's authorial motivations?

[cahn]

ahahahaha I will get back to you later on this at greater length! Briefly, Qing-jao's arc is that of someone whose religious worldview is completely broken by evidence that comes in later -- that part is pretty obvious. The part you almost certainly didn't get is that all the soul/aiua stuff is actually basically lifted from Mormon theology, so in some sense all of that is an argument for a Mormon theology worldview. The juxtaposition of these two subtexts is... interesting to me.

[iberiandoctor]

Huh; you're right, I did not at all get that the soul/aiua stuff is actually basically lifted from Mormon theology. I mean, I think most religions (and certainly all Abrahamic ones) do believe in the concept of the soul, but the notion that all living things have an aiua that lives Outside, that gets called into our plane of existence at birth? is not one that I'm familiar with as a lapsed Catholic/mainstream Protestant. I'd be keen to talk about it further when you're done with your powerpoints!