Beggars and Choosers (Kress)
Jan. 7th, 2024 03:03 pmOr: Who is Miranda Sharifi?
Reread. Second book in the Sleepless trilogy, following Beggars in Spain. This is the last writeup I had for 2023 (there are a lot of books I never did write up, mind you).
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seekingferret once said about Beggars in Spain that it was basically examining The Fountainhead in science-fictional terms, with Roger Camden [edit: not Leisha], the main character's father, as the Howard Roark analogue, and coming to its own conclusions. On rereading Beggars and Choosers, I had to laugh. It's a book about an America where everything is slowly breaking down and not working anymore. (Including a train!) As the breakdowns become worse, it highlights the divisions in society, how people are divided into basically three sets: a set who hedonistically enjoy life but don't actually do anything; a set who actually do all the work; and a set of geniuses that hide away from the world that is breaking down, not to be seen directly until late in the book... is this sounding familiar to anyone yet? Yep, Kress is very clearly patterning this entire book after Atlas Shrugged!
(Miranda Sharifi even gets a monologue at the end! Although it's not as long as John Galt's, by far.)
Of course, since this is Kress, she both has a deep compassion for all these sets of people and an SF-writer-worldbuilding eye to how all of this came about, so the set of geniuses are not just hiding away to be ornery, they're the genetically modified Sleepless and Supersleepless from the previous book who have a lot of history with prejudice against them, their own struggles with community, and in the Supers' case, a super-high intelligence that makes them all but incomprehensible to typical human beings and vice versa.
And both Kress and the Supers come to very different conclusions than Ayn Rand does. Although I suspect that one of Kress' other points is that everything is complicated and although one can say that Rand wasn't right when she simplified it in X direction, one cannot then say that simplifying it in not-X direction is right -- the ending (which is pretty great) makes sense as a happy ending, and yet it's also clear that it's a disturbing ending as well.
I remember not liking this much the first time I read it (in college or possibly early 20's), mostly because Leisha Camden, the protagonist of Beggars in Spain, is such a vibrant protagonist, and a) all these other random people who weren't in the first book showed up whom I was not interested in, and they were often even POV characters! and b) spoilery thing. Well, the spoilery thing wasn't a surprise this time, and also I enjoyed the random people a lot more knowing they were coming. Though on this read it was interesting to note that the POV characters are mostly there to watch the events unfold. There are mini-character arcs, of course, but it's very much subsidiary to figuring out what is going on and what the SuperSleepless (and their opponents) are doing.
I'm looking forward to reading Beggars Ride, which I remember absolutely hating for spoilery reasons. I suspect I'll still hate it (honestly I will be surprised if I can get over spoilery thing, it's like a heavy-handed deus ex machina in reverse), but I also suspect that I'll find it more interesting than I did on first reading.
Reread. Second book in the Sleepless trilogy, following Beggars in Spain. This is the last writeup I had for 2023 (there are a lot of books I never did write up, mind you).
seekingferret once said about Beggars in Spain that it was basically examining The Fountainhead in science-fictional terms, with Roger Camden [edit: not Leisha], the main character's father, as the Howard Roark analogue, and coming to its own conclusions. On rereading Beggars and Choosers, I had to laugh. It's a book about an America where everything is slowly breaking down and not working anymore. (Including a train!) As the breakdowns become worse, it highlights the divisions in society, how people are divided into basically three sets: a set who hedonistically enjoy life but don't actually do anything; a set who actually do all the work; and a set of geniuses that hide away from the world that is breaking down, not to be seen directly until late in the book... is this sounding familiar to anyone yet? Yep, Kress is very clearly patterning this entire book after Atlas Shrugged!(Miranda Sharifi even gets a monologue at the end! Although it's not as long as John Galt's, by far.)
Of course, since this is Kress, she both has a deep compassion for all these sets of people and an SF-writer-worldbuilding eye to how all of this came about, so the set of geniuses are not just hiding away to be ornery, they're the genetically modified Sleepless and Supersleepless from the previous book who have a lot of history with prejudice against them, their own struggles with community, and in the Supers' case, a super-high intelligence that makes them all but incomprehensible to typical human beings and vice versa.
And both Kress and the Supers come to very different conclusions than Ayn Rand does. Although I suspect that one of Kress' other points is that everything is complicated and although one can say that Rand wasn't right when she simplified it in X direction, one cannot then say that simplifying it in not-X direction is right -- the ending (which is pretty great) makes sense as a happy ending, and yet it's also clear that it's a disturbing ending as well.
I remember not liking this much the first time I read it (in college or possibly early 20's), mostly because Leisha Camden, the protagonist of Beggars in Spain, is such a vibrant protagonist, and a) all these other random people who weren't in the first book showed up whom I was not interested in, and they were often even POV characters! and b) spoilery thing. Well, the spoilery thing wasn't a surprise this time, and also I enjoyed the random people a lot more knowing they were coming. Though on this read it was interesting to note that the POV characters are mostly there to watch the events unfold. There are mini-character arcs, of course, but it's very much subsidiary to figuring out what is going on and what the SuperSleepless (and their opponents) are doing.
I'm looking forward to reading Beggars Ride, which I remember absolutely hating for spoilery reasons. I suspect I'll still hate it (honestly I will be surprised if I can get over spoilery thing, it's like a heavy-handed deus ex machina in reverse), but I also suspect that I'll find it more interesting than I did on first reading.
Books I've been reading - comfort edition
Jun. 28th, 2023 10:51 pmI had to work a bunch in the last couple of months, and then I used some time to put a bunch of books littering the house back on bookshelves, so between those two things I read and reread several very easy-to-read books.
-Honey and Me (Drazin) - rec fromseekingferret who cited lannamichael's excellent post (discusses all aspects of the book, but this is not the kind of book where you really need to worry about spoilers) which got me to read it. It's a middle-grade book about Orthodox Jewish bas mitzvah girls, and is one of those books where plot is not really a thing, there is a bit of character through-line but it's deliciously like all those books I would read as a kid that just... followed kids around through what happened in their lives and what was going on with their families and friends and themselves, without there having to be an elaborate through-plot. I LOVED IT, as someone who has a religion that reasonably permeates a lot of my life (and even more for people who are more orthodox about it than I am) even if it isn't Orthodox Judaism, I felt that the book did a good job of speaking to me and offering up characters who were extremely relatable and understandable through my own lens which is of course very different but has commonalities. Content note: an important minor character dies during the book, which was apparently based on someone in Drazin's life who died under similar circumstances. (I was glad to be spoiled for this, as it does a bit come out of nowhere.) I really want my kids to read this, though it's hard to get them to read anything that isn't SF or fantasy, so we'll see.
-Small Admissions (Poeppel) -- rec from Ask a Manager. Young woman getting over an emotional experience falls into a job working in admissions for a prestigious NYC private school. ...Okay, I have a weakness for prep school books, and even more for prep school admissions books, and this one I really enjoyed. It's frothy and fun, but also does have a sense of compassion for all the characters, many of whom are a bit more complex than one might expect. (And some of whom are exactly as one might expect.) Unsurprisingly, I really liked the parts (mostly found-document-style, told via emails and admissions notes and so on) that dealt with the different students and admissions drama, and how those played out over the course of the book.
I could have done without nearly as much of the drama with the main character's friends -- I was there mostly for the admissions drama -- but I can see how it fit into the book.
-The ABC Murders (Christie) - Poirot gets sent mocking letters by an adversary who turns out to be killing based on the alphabet. I had never read this one and read it now due torachelmanija's Christie read, and for some reason it took me a looooong time to get through. I don't know why, because I enjoyed it.
-Tara Road (Binchy) - Binchy is a great comfort read for me, and I enjoyed this. It's a bit like all her other books -- the too-handsome, untrustworthy boy, the good-hearted girl who has a group of friends who surround her, the characters who come together and understand one another better, the foreshadowing that is explained by the end. Nice and easy reading.
Rereads:
-Uncharted Territory (Willis) -- The explorer team of Finriddy and Carson, on an alien world, becomes a bit destabilized when a visitor "loaner" temporarily joins their team. A fast read (it's more of a novella, maybe even a novelette), but gosh, this one has really not aged well. I mean, I was never really that excited about it to begin with, so there was no extreme emotional response swamping out my ability to see that, mm, the whole playing the indigenous-alien stereotypes and gender stereotypes for laughs is kind of icky rather than funny.
Also, a large part of the book arc depends on a play on words at the climax that I absolutely Did Not get in high school and I did, finally, get it thirty years later, so I guess progress in my reading abilities, yay? (It's a really obvious play on words, I'm just... really slow.)
-The Pandora Principle (Clowes) - Star Trek (TOS). Saavik's childhood on Hellguard becomes relevant when a Romulan attack threatens the Federation... Now this one I have an extreme emotional response to, which means I love it so much that I have no idea if it really holds up or not. I mean, I can see that a) several of the plot McGuffins are rather nonsensical, both scientifically and politically (although the one at the end is a clever punchline and I love it anyway), and b) Spock is a bit of a Gary Stu parent, who even though he angsts about saying the right thing, generally does, in fact, say the right thing. But I don't mind either of those. Spock as a put-upon parent is still greeeeat, and Saavik is awesome. I don't know whether Saavik as a trauma survivor would be something that passes muster (I'd be super interested to know what others think), but I loved it then and I love it now, especially the small everyday triumphs she has to fight so hard for but that she does fight and win. And I also absolutely adore what I couldn't articulate when I first read it: that Spock and Saavik code for a very neurodiverse parent-child pair (huh, I guess there's also Bobby and Obo coding as a differently neurodiverse parent-child pair, that's interesting, and I would be 100% not surprised to find out that Clowes has experience with ND children) who find their own way even when it's not necessarily the neurotypical-culturally-approved way that anyone else (either Earth or Vulcan) would have prescribed for them.
I love this book so much. Every few years or so I look up Carolyn Clowes' name to see whether she's written anything else, because I would buy it in a heartbeat, but she hasn't, and I suppose she must be getting up in years now. But this is certainly a good single book to have written!
(And if you can't tell from the writeup, yeah, content notes for... well, the writing style is upbeat but a lot (a LOT) of dark things happen. Death, some on-screen; violence; extreme physical child abuse and trauma; strongly implied rape (NOT of children) but nothing spelled out.)
-Honey and Me (Drazin) - rec from
seekingferret who cited lannamichael's excellent post (discusses all aspects of the book, but this is not the kind of book where you really need to worry about spoilers) which got me to read it. It's a middle-grade book about Orthodox Jewish bas mitzvah girls, and is one of those books where plot is not really a thing, there is a bit of character through-line but it's deliciously like all those books I would read as a kid that just... followed kids around through what happened in their lives and what was going on with their families and friends and themselves, without there having to be an elaborate through-plot. I LOVED IT, as someone who has a religion that reasonably permeates a lot of my life (and even more for people who are more orthodox about it than I am) even if it isn't Orthodox Judaism, I felt that the book did a good job of speaking to me and offering up characters who were extremely relatable and understandable through my own lens which is of course very different but has commonalities. Content note: an important minor character dies during the book, which was apparently based on someone in Drazin's life who died under similar circumstances. (I was glad to be spoiled for this, as it does a bit come out of nowhere.) I really want my kids to read this, though it's hard to get them to read anything that isn't SF or fantasy, so we'll see.-Small Admissions (Poeppel) -- rec from Ask a Manager. Young woman getting over an emotional experience falls into a job working in admissions for a prestigious NYC private school. ...Okay, I have a weakness for prep school books, and even more for prep school admissions books, and this one I really enjoyed. It's frothy and fun, but also does have a sense of compassion for all the characters, many of whom are a bit more complex than one might expect. (And some of whom are exactly as one might expect.) Unsurprisingly, I really liked the parts (mostly found-document-style, told via emails and admissions notes and so on) that dealt with the different students and admissions drama, and how those played out over the course of the book.
I could have done without nearly as much of the drama with the main character's friends -- I was there mostly for the admissions drama -- but I can see how it fit into the book.
-The ABC Murders (Christie) - Poirot gets sent mocking letters by an adversary who turns out to be killing based on the alphabet. I had never read this one and read it now due to
rachelmanija's Christie read, and for some reason it took me a looooong time to get through. I don't know why, because I enjoyed it.-Tara Road (Binchy) - Binchy is a great comfort read for me, and I enjoyed this. It's a bit like all her other books -- the too-handsome, untrustworthy boy, the good-hearted girl who has a group of friends who surround her, the characters who come together and understand one another better, the foreshadowing that is explained by the end. Nice and easy reading.
Rereads:
-Uncharted Territory (Willis) -- The explorer team of Finriddy and Carson, on an alien world, becomes a bit destabilized when a visitor "loaner" temporarily joins their team. A fast read (it's more of a novella, maybe even a novelette), but gosh, this one has really not aged well. I mean, I was never really that excited about it to begin with, so there was no extreme emotional response swamping out my ability to see that, mm, the whole playing the indigenous-alien stereotypes and gender stereotypes for laughs is kind of icky rather than funny.
Also, a large part of the book arc depends on a play on words at the climax that I absolutely Did Not get in high school and I did, finally, get it thirty years later, so I guess progress in my reading abilities, yay? (It's a really obvious play on words, I'm just... really slow.)
-The Pandora Principle (Clowes) - Star Trek (TOS). Saavik's childhood on Hellguard becomes relevant when a Romulan attack threatens the Federation... Now this one I have an extreme emotional response to, which means I love it so much that I have no idea if it really holds up or not. I mean, I can see that a) several of the plot McGuffins are rather nonsensical, both scientifically and politically (although the one at the end is a clever punchline and I love it anyway), and b) Spock is a bit of a Gary Stu parent, who even though he angsts about saying the right thing, generally does, in fact, say the right thing. But I don't mind either of those. Spock as a put-upon parent is still greeeeat, and Saavik is awesome. I don't know whether Saavik as a trauma survivor would be something that passes muster (I'd be super interested to know what others think), but I loved it then and I love it now, especially the small everyday triumphs she has to fight so hard for but that she does fight and win. And I also absolutely adore what I couldn't articulate when I first read it: that Spock and Saavik code for a very neurodiverse parent-child pair (huh, I guess there's also Bobby and Obo coding as a differently neurodiverse parent-child pair, that's interesting, and I would be 100% not surprised to find out that Clowes has experience with ND children) who find their own way even when it's not necessarily the neurotypical-culturally-approved way that anyone else (either Earth or Vulcan) would have prescribed for them.
I love this book so much. Every few years or so I look up Carolyn Clowes' name to see whether she's written anything else, because I would buy it in a heartbeat, but she hasn't, and I suppose she must be getting up in years now. But this is certainly a good single book to have written!
(And if you can't tell from the writeup, yeah, content notes for... well, the writing style is upbeat but a lot (a LOT) of dark things happen. Death, some on-screen; violence; extreme physical child abuse and trauma; strongly implied rape (NOT of children) but nothing spelled out.)
I dipped in and out of the Tillerman books this past month, mostly reading Seventeen Against the Dealer but also looking at bits of the others.
-Seventeen is actually a lot more affirming and lovely when, well, when you skip all the parts about Dicey's annoying boat business, which I did this time around (sorry, Dicey, I'm not saying you and boats are annoying at all! But all the people you dealt with in the course of doing business were very annoying!) and concentrate on all the parts with the Tillermans and their friends. Well, I mean -- it's still a book that concerns itself with the theme of failure, so that can by necessity be depressing, but it's also about how to figure out what to do with failure and what's worth it to figure out how to succeed at (and there are important successes as well), which is lovely.
-And also Cisco, while not a great human being AT ALL is actually pretty fascinating to read about, especially knowing who he is, omg. There's a bit where he says, if Dicey had been a boy, he'd have invited her to see the world with him, and Dicey thinks it's a cool idea, too. What if he'd met Sammy instead of Dicey? Okay, Sammy would have punched him :P
-Also: Maybeth thinks in BOXES. She thinks the farm is a BOX. Which until this reread I did not even connect with Bullet thinking the farm was a box in The Runner!! Only for Bullet, the boxes are traps, and for Maybeth, what she means by the farm being a box is all good things. THESE BOOKS, OMG.
-There is a whole background subplot in Seventeen with Phil Milson, Jeff's friend, that I only very vaguely remembered, in large part because the book is from Dicey's POV so she doesn't notice it a whole lot herself, but it's clearly going on in the background -- Phil falls in love with Maybeth in the beginning of Seventeen, they go out sometimes on Saturday night, but by the end of the book Sammy is worried about Maybeth because she's not going out on Saturday night because she's waiting for Phil to call her and he's not. I cross-referenced with Solitary Blue, and Phil comes across as... umm... how shall I put this... Jeff likes him, and he's clearly a good friend to Jeff, but some of the things he says display attitudes towards women that might be then!mainstream but which I'm not sure I'd want a gentle and non-academically-oriented kinswoman to be involved with. That is to say, if you ask me, I don't think Phil would have been as bad as Verricker, but I think (and I think this is intended) Maybeth honestly had something of an escape that he doesn't call anymore, and her life is better off without him, married or not.
(But, of course, people grow up, and we don't see much of Phil in Seventeen, so it's possible that Seventeen!Phil isn't the same as Blue!Phil. Who knows.)
-I think there's a way in which Seventeen is in some ways the closest to being Maybeth's book (she is the only one who has a real triumph, with her history test, but also the Phil disappointment, but also Dicey realizing how good she is at taking care of Gram, how good she is at people) but it's sort of disguised by everything being from Dicey's POV, and so her concerns taking center stage. Subtle, like Maybeth herself.
-Seventeen is actually a lot more affirming and lovely when, well, when you skip all the parts about Dicey's annoying boat business, which I did this time around (sorry, Dicey, I'm not saying you and boats are annoying at all! But all the people you dealt with in the course of doing business were very annoying!) and concentrate on all the parts with the Tillermans and their friends. Well, I mean -- it's still a book that concerns itself with the theme of failure, so that can by necessity be depressing, but it's also about how to figure out what to do with failure and what's worth it to figure out how to succeed at (and there are important successes as well), which is lovely.
-And also Cisco, while not a great human being AT ALL is actually pretty fascinating to read about, especially knowing who he is, omg. There's a bit where he says, if Dicey had been a boy, he'd have invited her to see the world with him, and Dicey thinks it's a cool idea, too. What if he'd met Sammy instead of Dicey? Okay, Sammy would have punched him :P
-Also: Maybeth thinks in BOXES. She thinks the farm is a BOX. Which until this reread I did not even connect with Bullet thinking the farm was a box in The Runner!! Only for Bullet, the boxes are traps, and for Maybeth, what she means by the farm being a box is all good things. THESE BOOKS, OMG.
-There is a whole background subplot in Seventeen with Phil Milson, Jeff's friend, that I only very vaguely remembered, in large part because the book is from Dicey's POV so she doesn't notice it a whole lot herself, but it's clearly going on in the background -- Phil falls in love with Maybeth in the beginning of Seventeen, they go out sometimes on Saturday night, but by the end of the book Sammy is worried about Maybeth because she's not going out on Saturday night because she's waiting for Phil to call her and he's not. I cross-referenced with Solitary Blue, and Phil comes across as... umm... how shall I put this... Jeff likes him, and he's clearly a good friend to Jeff, but some of the things he says display attitudes towards women that might be then!mainstream but which I'm not sure I'd want a gentle and non-academically-oriented kinswoman to be involved with. That is to say, if you ask me, I don't think Phil would have been as bad as Verricker, but I think (and I think this is intended) Maybeth honestly had something of an escape that he doesn't call anymore, and her life is better off without him, married or not.
(But, of course, people grow up, and we don't see much of Phil in Seventeen, so it's possible that Seventeen!Phil isn't the same as Blue!Phil. Who knows.)
-I think there's a way in which Seventeen is in some ways the closest to being Maybeth's book (she is the only one who has a real triumph, with her history test, but also the Phil disappointment, but also Dicey realizing how good she is at taking care of Gram, how good she is at people) but it's sort of disguised by everything being from Dicey's POV, and so her concerns taking center stage. Subtle, like Maybeth herself.
The Explosive Child (Greene)
Feb. 9th, 2023 10:45 pmmildred_of_midgard and rachelmanija both told me to read The Explosive Child, so I reread it. I'd read it when E. was much younger (4? 6? something like that) and we had the most problems with her getting really upset about things -- and I had not found it very useful. I got the e-book from the library. This turned out to be a VERY WEIRD experience for me because I read it and thought, wow, this book seems totally unfamiliar! I know it's been at least six years... and my memory is completely shot these days... but I had distinct memories of the book spending a lot of time on "pick your battles" which I found extremely not useful with E. (E's problem, especially at that age, was not battles of will between me and her! E's problem was battles of will between herself and herself -- she would get upset when she was not able to do things the way she felt she should, which spanned basically all activities, including quite a few that were things she loved to do, not things I was asking her to do at all, while my memories were that the book spent a lot of time on conflicts between what the parents were asking the kid to do and what the kid wanted to do, and how the parent should try just not to ask a whole lot of the former.)
The book I read was not primarily about picking one's battles. If anything I thought Explosive Child was a poor title for it; maybe Defiant Child, but really the title should have been How to Collaboratively Solve Problems with Your Child, because that's what almost all the book was about, and it was rather good at that! (The first few chapters were boring; they were all things like "why being Super Strict with your child isn't productive," which... okay, but yes, I have actually read parenting books before, thanks!) There were lots of examples, lots of discussions on the order of "if your child does X, here's a strategy to use that still keeps the focus on collaborative problem-solving and not going in an unproductive or Unilateral Telling Your Kid What to Do direction." Really it almost does a disservice to call it Explosive Child, because these strategies (as
mildred_of_midgard remarked when she recced it) could be used with really anyone -- all children, not just explosive ones, and even adults. (Though many of the examples and details were child-centric; for example, he goes into things like what to do if a child answers "I don't know," to everything, which in my experience is a very common kid mode but not so common in adults.)It was good and I am trying to use the techniques with both kids! (We do try to foster a family atmosphere where they feel like they have a say and can always bring up when they disagree, but I definitely do have a tendency to barrel through and say "this is what we're gonna do!" as a first pass.) I had one major nitpick: I was majorly side-eyeing Greene's claim that children would magically learn skills they were deficient in (like "difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally") by doing this collaborative problem-solving, because once you work on the problems the skills will naturally be exercised. Uhhhhhh you know what this reminds me of? it's like, if the kid is not able to read, collaborative problem solving and creating an atmosphere where reading is fun and snuggly is great and I absolutely am on board with it making an atmosphere conducive to reading, and some kids will pick it up automatically in the right atmosphere, but it's NOT actually teaching the kid to read, and NOT ALL KIDS WILL LEARN without explicit instruction! This is sort of how I feel about some of these skills. Sometimes you might need other tools! Some kids need more explicit instruction than others! Greene seems to think that you would never need any other tools except his, which is a common failure mode of books like these, but it annoys me :)
But anyway, I was still confused as to why it was so different than my memory; my memory isn't particularly good, but my failure mode with books is usually just to forget things wholesale, not have contradictory memories! So I did an experiment: the library also had a paper copy (first edition from 1998, I believe), and I checked that out. (This would have been the identical copy I would have read in the first place.) And lo, this book is almost COMPLETELY different from the e-book I read! Like literally, there are maybe a few pages that are in common with the e-book (two of the "sample cases," a couple of pages each, are the same). The rest of it is not just entirely different words, but also an almost entirely different focus! The collaborative problem-solving is relegated to one chapter of the book. MOST of the book talks about picking one's battles... sorting one's problems into "baskets" as to whether one wants to deal with them now or later. This is a very simple concept but gets a looooot of padding. Anyway... good choice by Greene, in subsquent editions, to greatly expand the collaborative problem-solving sections and diminish the "basket" section, because the former is way more interesting than the latter.
So my verdict is: if you are interested in the concept of collaborative problem-solving with your child, this book is worth checking out (maybe skip the first few chapters if you've ever read a parenting book before), but make sure it's the current version, not the original! (I also suspect there is a lot of overlap with How to Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk, which I also read at about that age and which perhaps I should also revisit.)
(no subject)
Jan. 2nd, 2023 09:02 amMerry Christmas? and happy Yuletide? and happy New Year? As usual for this year, I am way behind, and actually I managed to drop or refuse to play with a number of balls over Christmas -- I think I had a minor case of burnout this year, which I'm sort of bemused by as I had a lot less going on than in previous years. I only had to organize not-all-that-much music for one morning (not two mornings, I did not have to organize the evening music-intensive performance), I didn't have to organize any instrumental rehearsals (Awesome Musical Family Mom: Should we get a bunch of people together to do an instrumental thing? Me: ...I'd be the one coordinating all these rehearsals, wouldn't I. ...no.), we didn't fly anywhere (which, given the weather, I'm rather grateful for). I did a lot of knitting instead of anything any more intensive than that.
Things I did do: ( Choir conducting, dad's memoirs, skiing )
One more thing I did (a more conventional reveal post here):
This fall I reread The Perilous Gard, a kidlit/YA-ish (Newbery Honor) book from 1974 about a young woman who, in the last days of Mary Tudor's reign, gets sent to an out-of-the-way castle that may or may not be associated with the Fair Folk. This book I adore to little bits and pieces. I love everything about it, although on this reread I was amused to find that I have read the last third or so so many times that I basically have large portions of it memorized, and then the first two-thirds I only remembered rather vaguely. (although I really enjoyed rereading it! It's just that those parts are in a lot of ways setting up the last third, that was and is super iddy for me.) ( minor spoilers )
All the characters are just wonderful, even the ones who have only very slight appearances. Kate's father shows up for... maybe a few paragraphs?? ...and he is delightful; you can totally see how important he is to Kate, and how important Kate is to him, and how Kate turned out the way she did <3 Sir Geoffrey has a fairly minor part in the story but he's also fully-formed and totally great! And the young future Elizabeth I has a single scene, but I've been imprinted with her and that's how I've thought of young Elizabeth ever since. And I love Alicia too! And as for the Lady, and the worldbuilding of the People Under the Hill, and Kate and Christopher... well, as I said toselenak, I suppose one can't assign to this book all my love of over-the-top all-but-adversarial banter to signify a close/other-self relationship, nor all my love of bowing/kneeling/curtseying to signify things that can't be said in words, but it certainly was, shall we say, formative :D And the fairies here are other enough that I cannot read any current fairy YA these days, all of which seem to have fairies who act mostly like immature adolescents. (looking at you, Holly Black! Sorry!)
I've always loved that Kate gets to save the day, and she gets to save it rather a lot; one of the things that struck me in this reread was how many times Kate's brain saves the day, but not in any way that feels overtly 21st-century (though her father clearly is progressive for his time in the way he teaches her, and Kate clearly is extremely intelligent and thoughtful). There are several things about her that save the day, of course, not just her intelligence -- also her stubbornness, also her ability to value what is real, also her compassion, also her sense of what's right -- but it was interesting to me on this read that it's also in large part her intelligence and extreme dose of common sense, which leads her to realize e.g. that something's wrong with Christopher's story in the beginning, how to find Christopher under the Hill, how to get out near the end.
Another thing I loved was how Kate's and Christopher's rationality complement each other. Kate: asskygiants said in her awesome review, Kate Sutton has no TIME for your manpain. She will call Christopher out every time he's being Super Drama Emo Boy! Which is, admittedly, a lot of times! (also I ABSOLUTELY 100% LOVE that this is (yet another) major quality of hers that saves the day!) But then there's also the part where Christopher will also counter Kate's subconscious assumptions that he's Super Dramatic Romance Knight with things like, but what about worrying about cleaning out the drains!
Basically I love these two a lot. Kate in particular is just really an awesome heroine -- she's so individualistic that I felt it was hard for me to extrapolate what she'd think about a situation that wasn't in the book, which I feel I don't usually have a problem with. With Christopher, I did feel like I had a much better idea how he would respond.he would talk about drainage, probably
This was also the only example in my childhood that I can think of where, in the boy-girl romance, it is the boy who is described as extremely conventionally attractive and not the girl! I also love ( spoilers )
Also also! one of my favorite lines continues to be the one that Kate thinks about the Guardian of the Well: Questions, thought Kate savagely; why even now couldn't the thing tell a plain lie, like an honest man? (It's a line that comes near the climax of the book, in an incredibly tense scene, and yet it always makes me laugh when I come across it. It's so Kate. Kate is just so great.)
Things I did do: ( Choir conducting, dad's memoirs, skiing )
One more thing I did (a more conventional reveal post here):
This fall I reread The Perilous Gard, a kidlit/YA-ish (Newbery Honor) book from 1974 about a young woman who, in the last days of Mary Tudor's reign, gets sent to an out-of-the-way castle that may or may not be associated with the Fair Folk. This book I adore to little bits and pieces. I love everything about it, although on this reread I was amused to find that I have read the last third or so so many times that I basically have large portions of it memorized, and then the first two-thirds I only remembered rather vaguely. (although I really enjoyed rereading it! It's just that those parts are in a lot of ways setting up the last third, that was and is super iddy for me.) ( minor spoilers )
All the characters are just wonderful, even the ones who have only very slight appearances. Kate's father shows up for... maybe a few paragraphs?? ...and he is delightful; you can totally see how important he is to Kate, and how important Kate is to him, and how Kate turned out the way she did <3 Sir Geoffrey has a fairly minor part in the story but he's also fully-formed and totally great! And the young future Elizabeth I has a single scene, but I've been imprinted with her and that's how I've thought of young Elizabeth ever since. And I love Alicia too! And as for the Lady, and the worldbuilding of the People Under the Hill, and Kate and Christopher... well, as I said to
selenak, I suppose one can't assign to this book all my love of over-the-top all-but-adversarial banter to signify a close/other-self relationship, nor all my love of bowing/kneeling/curtseying to signify things that can't be said in words, but it certainly was, shall we say, formative :D And the fairies here are other enough that I cannot read any current fairy YA these days, all of which seem to have fairies who act mostly like immature adolescents. (looking at you, Holly Black! Sorry!)I've always loved that Kate gets to save the day, and she gets to save it rather a lot; one of the things that struck me in this reread was how many times Kate's brain saves the day, but not in any way that feels overtly 21st-century (though her father clearly is progressive for his time in the way he teaches her, and Kate clearly is extremely intelligent and thoughtful). There are several things about her that save the day, of course, not just her intelligence -- also her stubbornness, also her ability to value what is real, also her compassion, also her sense of what's right -- but it was interesting to me on this read that it's also in large part her intelligence and extreme dose of common sense, which leads her to realize e.g. that something's wrong with Christopher's story in the beginning, how to find Christopher under the Hill, how to get out near the end.
Another thing I loved was how Kate's and Christopher's rationality complement each other. Kate: as
skygiants said in her awesome review, Kate Sutton has no TIME for your manpain. She will call Christopher out every time he's being Super Drama Emo Boy! Which is, admittedly, a lot of times! (also I ABSOLUTELY 100% LOVE that this is (yet another) major quality of hers that saves the day!) But then there's also the part where Christopher will also counter Kate's subconscious assumptions that he's Super Dramatic Romance Knight with things like, but what about worrying about cleaning out the drains! Basically I love these two a lot. Kate in particular is just really an awesome heroine -- she's so individualistic that I felt it was hard for me to extrapolate what she'd think about a situation that wasn't in the book, which I feel I don't usually have a problem with. With Christopher, I did feel like I had a much better idea how he would respond.
This was also the only example in my childhood that I can think of where, in the boy-girl romance, it is the boy who is described as extremely conventionally attractive and not the girl! I also love ( spoilers )
Also also! one of my favorite lines continues to be the one that Kate thinks about the Guardian of the Well: Questions, thought Kate savagely; why even now couldn't the thing tell a plain lie, like an honest man? (It's a line that comes near the climax of the book, in an incredibly tense scene, and yet it always makes me laugh when I come across it. It's so Kate. Kate is just so great.)
-A Solitary Blue (Voigt) The just amazingly lovely Tillerman fic I got recently inspired me to reread this <3
I continue to identify with Jeff to a degree that's almost painful, even though he's just so diametrically opposed to me (this time around, I thought this especially at the part where he's really good at picking up on people's emotions and what they're thinking, because HAHAHAHAHA um no). I think on this read I identify with him actually partially because he's so different (James is probably the Tillerman character who's most like me, and although I like him and feel for him, I also find him mildly annoying because I dislike the mirror) -- but at the same time, many of his coping mechanisms are really similar to mine, though thankfully I was never nearly as badly off as he was. And also because the way he learns to analyze himself sounds very familiar, too.
Because of the above fic, I was reading it this time looking for Brother Thomas (and, lol, I was amused to find while reading that that fic is now totally my headcanon <3 ) , and now -- I really want a story about his crisis of faith later in the book. He's so unhappy, and I -- just am really moved by his unhappiness, that Voigt thought to include that as something important in his life, even if Jeff himself doesn't really get it in a lot of ways. I was really moved by the bit where he wears his habit around everywhere, even places where he ordinarily wouldn't, even when it's too hot to really, and when called on it he says that he keeps it on because if he took it off he might not put it back on again. Oh, Thomas <3
(Also, I need to reread the other books now to see if Brother Thomas shows up at all -- I was flipping through Come a Stranger and he's name-dropped -- as Brother Thomas and a monk -- at the end of that one, so I think he probably got through the crisis and stayed a monk. But I should go back and look to see if he's mentioned in Seventeen.)
-Miss Pym Disposes (Tey) - DNF. I was rereading the Marlow books (about which more in a bit) because I was wondering whether they would be suitable for E (she would find the school books boring *sigh* but I might be able to get her to read the adventure-focused ones) which led me to the excellent crossover fic Lois Sanger Disposes which led me to reread this book, which I'd read before but forgotten everything about, except a vague feeling that I liked the beginning a lot and disliked the ending.
Ahahaha yeah that seems to sum it up, really. The first 77% of this book is great -- Tey is a great writer -- and ratchets the tension and interpersonal drama up. But once the investigation started going I suddenly remembered why I didn't like it, and I flipped to the end to confirm, and agggggh. It is a great book but it is also a merciless book. ( implicit spoilers ).
-Autumn Term, End of Term, Cricket Term, Attic Term, Run Away Home (Forest) - Books about the large Marlow family, ranging from boarding-school books (all of which I reread) to adventure books (most of which I didn't reread, with the exception of Run Away Home because it was the last) to one RP book (which I also didn't reread). These are so good!
Autumn Term is the best -- there's something about the structure and the compelling centerpiece of the play, and the Lois Sanger / Marie Dobson subplot that is woven into it, that really works for me, and which I feel like wasn't replicated in the other books to the same extent (which I suppose is a known failure mode of sequels). Also, in End of Term I must say that I've been in charge of a few Christmas musical events since I last read it, with the predictable consequence that my sympathies switched totally to be with the teachers who had to deal with all their casting going awry at the last minute, not the kids whose POV we are in. (I'd be horrified if this happened in something I was running!) But I love all these books very very much.
I continue to identify with Jeff to a degree that's almost painful, even though he's just so diametrically opposed to me (this time around, I thought this especially at the part where he's really good at picking up on people's emotions and what they're thinking, because HAHAHAHAHA um no). I think on this read I identify with him actually partially because he's so different (James is probably the Tillerman character who's most like me, and although I like him and feel for him, I also find him mildly annoying because I dislike the mirror) -- but at the same time, many of his coping mechanisms are really similar to mine, though thankfully I was never nearly as badly off as he was. And also because the way he learns to analyze himself sounds very familiar, too.
Because of the above fic, I was reading it this time looking for Brother Thomas (and, lol, I was amused to find while reading that that fic is now totally my headcanon <3 ) , and now -- I really want a story about his crisis of faith later in the book. He's so unhappy, and I -- just am really moved by his unhappiness, that Voigt thought to include that as something important in his life, even if Jeff himself doesn't really get it in a lot of ways. I was really moved by the bit where he wears his habit around everywhere, even places where he ordinarily wouldn't, even when it's too hot to really, and when called on it he says that he keeps it on because if he took it off he might not put it back on again. Oh, Thomas <3
(Also, I need to reread the other books now to see if Brother Thomas shows up at all -- I was flipping through Come a Stranger and he's name-dropped -- as Brother Thomas and a monk -- at the end of that one, so I think he probably got through the crisis and stayed a monk. But I should go back and look to see if he's mentioned in Seventeen.)
-Miss Pym Disposes (Tey) - DNF. I was rereading the Marlow books (about which more in a bit) because I was wondering whether they would be suitable for E (she would find the school books boring *sigh* but I might be able to get her to read the adventure-focused ones) which led me to the excellent crossover fic Lois Sanger Disposes which led me to reread this book, which I'd read before but forgotten everything about, except a vague feeling that I liked the beginning a lot and disliked the ending.
Ahahaha yeah that seems to sum it up, really. The first 77% of this book is great -- Tey is a great writer -- and ratchets the tension and interpersonal drama up. But once the investigation started going I suddenly remembered why I didn't like it, and I flipped to the end to confirm, and agggggh. It is a great book but it is also a merciless book. ( implicit spoilers ).
-Autumn Term, End of Term, Cricket Term, Attic Term, Run Away Home (Forest) - Books about the large Marlow family, ranging from boarding-school books (all of which I reread) to adventure books (most of which I didn't reread, with the exception of Run Away Home because it was the last) to one RP book (which I also didn't reread). These are so good!
Autumn Term is the best -- there's something about the structure and the compelling centerpiece of the play, and the Lois Sanger / Marie Dobson subplot that is woven into it, that really works for me, and which I feel like wasn't replicated in the other books to the same extent (which I suppose is a known failure mode of sequels). Also, in End of Term I must say that I've been in charge of a few Christmas musical events since I last read it, with the predictable consequence that my sympathies switched totally to be with the teachers who had to deal with all their casting going awry at the last minute, not the kids whose POV we are in. (I'd be horrified if this happened in something I was running!) But I love all these books very very much.
Queen's Thief 1-5
Oct. 15th, 2020 09:24 amMe: Ooh, the new Queen's Thief book is out! Eh, I have a lot of other things to read right now and Yuletide is starting up; maybe I'll wait a bit. But I'll look at the kindle sample just to see.
Me: *reads the first two pages*
Me: *orders it immediately and starts rereading all five previous books*
(This may contain general spoilers for the first three books, although I've spoiler-cut specific spoilers. There are no spoilers for anything past the first two pages of Return of the Thief, as I wrote pretty much all of this entry before reading it. I have now read it, but I haven't finished writing it up yet.)
The Thief I remember not thinking was All That when I first read it, ages and ages ago because it was a Newberry Honor -- I don't think I even made the connection to Queen for a while. I've never reread it until now, and I'd forgotten everything about it but the central plot point. At least for me, it works much better both as a reread and as the first book of six than as a stand-alone and first read. It has a lot of dense politics in it that I'd totally forgotten (and honestly probably skipped the first time).
Hilariously, I had also forgotten ( spoilers through the fourth book )
The Queen of Attolia I also don't think I've ever totally reread since the first time I read it (maybe once, a long time ago?) because of, well, what happens in the opening chapter. I still think this one has some weaknesses, the big one of which is that there is one particular major character-arc that is kept secret from the reader --( ok, fine ), and it just didn't work for me because it wasn't telegraphed at all beforehand and it was kind of this weird kneejerk thing.
Queen also, like Thief, does not fully integrate the personal and political (though it does a better job than Thief, and in my opinion is much better written than Thief in general), and I apparently first read it only for the personal and not at all for the political. Which worked out for me, as there was basically half a novel here that I didn't even remember reading before (and again, may well have skipped the first time).
The King of Attolia was an interesting contrast to the first two because I love that one so much, I've reread it a zillion times, and I remembered the majority of the character beats and the plot beats (though not all) -- but it is still brilliant to read. I think it is definitely true that King was where Turner hit her stride both in terms of her own writing and the story she is trying to tell. I feel like this book, for the first time, manages to seamlessly integrate the political and the personal in a way where reading the personal also meant reading about the political, whereas they were more separate in the previous books (which is how I managed to skip all the political). Costis is also a wonderful character, and I love and have always loved his entire world which is so different from everything else we've seen so far, him and Ari (and the way Ari and he act as foils -- e.g., the discussion of how Ari can't afford to have Costis' ideals because he's not a landowner is fantastic) and Teleus and Legarus the Awesomely Beautiful (which always makes me laugh) -- it's just all so so so so good.
I love also how she cheerfully decided to write this book from the main POV of a character we didn't know at all and had no connection to -- and had no connection to his world either -- and it was so the right choice and she made it work so brilliantly. (Unlike Mockingjay.)
I don't think that King stands alone as well as it does as part of the larger story, mostly because I think if I were coming to it without having read the first two, I'd be sort of annoyed at Gen being this trickster god character (though it's a heck of a reveal if you haven't read the first two, I guess), but as it was we all knew that part, and the joy was in watching it all unfold. But besides that it does work as a standalone, or at least not part of a continuous series, in a way that I'm not sure Thief or Queen do quite as much.
Given the first two pages of Return, I thought it was great that there is a throwaway line all the way back in King alluding to that character's parentage. Man, this woman plans ahead!
A Conspiracy of Kings - hmm! This reread has made me definitely think that King was the high point of the series, although it's not to say that Conspiracy is bad, and I still love it, just that it didn't grab my heart like King did. Here is where the political starts to overshadow the personal, and while that's not a bad thing, it is... not what I loved best about King, where they were integrated so perfectly.
I also still had the same problem with it that I did the first time I read it, where, Gen? That joke at the end is not as funny as you think it is. In fact it's not funny at all. ( Spoilers, of course )
Thick as Thieves - Kamet! This is probably my second-favorite book, and not just because of Costis :P Also because I really liked how it opened up the world to the Mede Empire, and how Kamet's worldview is Mede and it's a struggle for him to think any other way. And how eventually he starts basically thinking through how to simulate non-slave behavior. (But also, okay, Costis as a mercenary protecting his guy -- and the mutual hurt-comfort, come to think of it -- is pretty great.)
Me: *reads the first two pages*
Me: *orders it immediately and starts rereading all five previous books*
(This may contain general spoilers for the first three books, although I've spoiler-cut specific spoilers. There are no spoilers for anything past the first two pages of Return of the Thief, as I wrote pretty much all of this entry before reading it. I have now read it, but I haven't finished writing it up yet.)
The Thief I remember not thinking was All That when I first read it, ages and ages ago because it was a Newberry Honor -- I don't think I even made the connection to Queen for a while. I've never reread it until now, and I'd forgotten everything about it but the central plot point. At least for me, it works much better both as a reread and as the first book of six than as a stand-alone and first read. It has a lot of dense politics in it that I'd totally forgotten (and honestly probably skipped the first time).
Hilariously, I had also forgotten ( spoilers through the fourth book )
The Queen of Attolia I also don't think I've ever totally reread since the first time I read it (maybe once, a long time ago?) because of, well, what happens in the opening chapter. I still think this one has some weaknesses, the big one of which is that there is one particular major character-arc that is kept secret from the reader --( ok, fine ), and it just didn't work for me because it wasn't telegraphed at all beforehand and it was kind of this weird kneejerk thing.
Queen also, like Thief, does not fully integrate the personal and political (though it does a better job than Thief, and in my opinion is much better written than Thief in general), and I apparently first read it only for the personal and not at all for the political. Which worked out for me, as there was basically half a novel here that I didn't even remember reading before (and again, may well have skipped the first time).
The King of Attolia was an interesting contrast to the first two because I love that one so much, I've reread it a zillion times, and I remembered the majority of the character beats and the plot beats (though not all) -- but it is still brilliant to read. I think it is definitely true that King was where Turner hit her stride both in terms of her own writing and the story she is trying to tell. I feel like this book, for the first time, manages to seamlessly integrate the political and the personal in a way where reading the personal also meant reading about the political, whereas they were more separate in the previous books (which is how I managed to skip all the political). Costis is also a wonderful character, and I love and have always loved his entire world which is so different from everything else we've seen so far, him and Ari (and the way Ari and he act as foils -- e.g., the discussion of how Ari can't afford to have Costis' ideals because he's not a landowner is fantastic) and Teleus and Legarus the Awesomely Beautiful (which always makes me laugh) -- it's just all so so so so good.
I love also how she cheerfully decided to write this book from the main POV of a character we didn't know at all and had no connection to -- and had no connection to his world either -- and it was so the right choice and she made it work so brilliantly. (Unlike Mockingjay.)
I don't think that King stands alone as well as it does as part of the larger story, mostly because I think if I were coming to it without having read the first two, I'd be sort of annoyed at Gen being this trickster god character (though it's a heck of a reveal if you haven't read the first two, I guess), but as it was we all knew that part, and the joy was in watching it all unfold. But besides that it does work as a standalone, or at least not part of a continuous series, in a way that I'm not sure Thief or Queen do quite as much.
Given the first two pages of Return, I thought it was great that there is a throwaway line all the way back in King alluding to that character's parentage. Man, this woman plans ahead!
A Conspiracy of Kings - hmm! This reread has made me definitely think that King was the high point of the series, although it's not to say that Conspiracy is bad, and I still love it, just that it didn't grab my heart like King did. Here is where the political starts to overshadow the personal, and while that's not a bad thing, it is... not what I loved best about King, where they were integrated so perfectly.
I also still had the same problem with it that I did the first time I read it, where, Gen? That joke at the end is not as funny as you think it is. In fact it's not funny at all. ( Spoilers, of course )
Thick as Thieves - Kamet! This is probably my second-favorite book, and not just because of Costis :P Also because I really liked how it opened up the world to the Mede Empire, and how Kamet's worldview is Mede and it's a struggle for him to think any other way. And how eventually he starts basically thinking through how to simulate non-slave behavior. (But also, okay, Costis as a mercenary protecting his guy -- and the mutual hurt-comfort, come to think of it -- is pretty great.)
Books I read in August
Sep. 2nd, 2020 10:23 pm...I reread Madeleine L'Engle, and that was pretty much it :P (Well, also have been reading for German book club, but that discussion is in the Frederick the Great threads. After a month of Duolingo, I can read German on the level of a six-year-old! :D But not very well at all on the level of a twelve-year-old writing on the level of an eight-year-old, and definitely not on the level of a precocious ten-year-old :PP)
-Meet the Austins - actually this was in July, as I was rereading it as a potential birthday present for a kid who doesn't read fantasy (not the niece for whom I was asking for recs before). The Austins are just such a nice family! I used to read about them and think, "I wish my family was like that!" Now I read it and think, "I wish I could parent like that!" I mean, it's clearly aged, some parts better than others, but it's still charming.
-A Small Rain - Book 1 of Katherine Forrester (later Vigneras). L'Engle's first book. It's one of those books that sort of ambles along and shows Katherine growing up, but besides this doesn't have a huge amount of plot. I like it. There is some sexual harassment and a death I totally did not remember from when I read it as a kid. Justin Vigneras, her piano teacher whom she has a crush on (and who, in book 2, we find out she later married) does not come off super well in this book, and I think he was retconned a bit in Wasp.
-A Severed Wasp - Book 2 of Katherine Forrester Vigneras. You can tell this was written much later in L'Engle's career -- this is a much more focused book, with an actual plot, lots of interesting characters, some really interesting things to say about career and family relationships, etc. And it's very cool to see Suzy (previously Austin) and Dave Davidson again and see their kids, and now I'm wondering if I should ask for fic about the two of them for Yuletide; how did that happen, anyway? I also really admire how Katherine feels like a very different character from the Katherine of Rain, and yet from the flashbacks (where she is a much more similar character to that of Rain) we get an idea how she became the Katherine of the present day. I also really like the descriptions of Katherine and her music, and Katherine and her family, and how you build a life with these things. I really enjoyed so much of this book -- up until the ending. The last time I read this was many years ago, so while I remembered who the antagonist was (and had a good time picking up all the little hints I'd missed the first time through -- she really does do a good job of setting it up), I didn't remember very much at all about how it played out.
( And then: OH L'ENGLE NO. Plot-heavy spoilers and content note for (relatively mild) sexual abuse )
I still liked this book a lot, it does a number of really interesting things before the ending, and to be fair it came out before all the clergy scandals and coverups we've all lived through now, but wooooooow, if I were to recommend this to any other people I'd have to super warn them about that ending. (ETA: Alsorymenhild reminded me I didn't mention the romantic!Nazi WTF at all! Yeah, there is also romantic!Nazi WTF that I did remember and mostly skimmed/skipped on this reading.)
-Meet the Austins - actually this was in July, as I was rereading it as a potential birthday present for a kid who doesn't read fantasy (not the niece for whom I was asking for recs before). The Austins are just such a nice family! I used to read about them and think, "I wish my family was like that!" Now I read it and think, "I wish I could parent like that!" I mean, it's clearly aged, some parts better than others, but it's still charming.
-A Small Rain - Book 1 of Katherine Forrester (later Vigneras). L'Engle's first book. It's one of those books that sort of ambles along and shows Katherine growing up, but besides this doesn't have a huge amount of plot. I like it. There is some sexual harassment and a death I totally did not remember from when I read it as a kid. Justin Vigneras, her piano teacher whom she has a crush on (and who, in book 2, we find out she later married) does not come off super well in this book, and I think he was retconned a bit in Wasp.
-A Severed Wasp - Book 2 of Katherine Forrester Vigneras. You can tell this was written much later in L'Engle's career -- this is a much more focused book, with an actual plot, lots of interesting characters, some really interesting things to say about career and family relationships, etc. And it's very cool to see Suzy (previously Austin) and Dave Davidson again and see their kids, and now I'm wondering if I should ask for fic about the two of them for Yuletide; how did that happen, anyway? I also really admire how Katherine feels like a very different character from the Katherine of Rain, and yet from the flashbacks (where she is a much more similar character to that of Rain) we get an idea how she became the Katherine of the present day. I also really like the descriptions of Katherine and her music, and Katherine and her family, and how you build a life with these things. I really enjoyed so much of this book -- up until the ending. The last time I read this was many years ago, so while I remembered who the antagonist was (and had a good time picking up all the little hints I'd missed the first time through -- she really does do a good job of setting it up), I didn't remember very much at all about how it played out.
( And then: OH L'ENGLE NO. Plot-heavy spoilers and content note for (relatively mild) sexual abuse )
I still liked this book a lot, it does a number of really interesting things before the ending, and to be fair it came out before all the clergy scandals and coverups we've all lived through now, but wooooooow, if I were to recommend this to any other people I'd have to super warn them about that ending. (ETA: Also
rymenhild reminded me I didn't mention the romantic!Nazi WTF at all! Yeah, there is also romantic!Nazi WTF that I did remember and mostly skimmed/skipped on this reading.)I didn't forget!
Tangentially, I realized there is no way I can do this during Yuletide season. I'll pick this up again in January. Anyone have any thoughts on what book they'd like me to do?
OK... let's see whether I can make any sense of this. This is where the book gets even more tangled than it was before. Knowing a bit of history, and knowing that the whole point of some (all?) of these subplots is to riff off of our universe's history, really helps. Again here is the link to Draco Concordans (DC), which elucidates a lot of this history.
( Cut for length. )
Tangentially, I realized there is no way I can do this during Yuletide season. I'll pick this up again in January. Anyone have any thoughts on what book they'd like me to do?
OK... let's see whether I can make any sense of this. This is where the book gets even more tangled than it was before. Knowing a bit of history, and knowing that the whole point of some (all?) of these subplots is to riff off of our universe's history, really helps. Again here is the link to Draco Concordans (DC), which elucidates a lot of this history.
( Cut for length. )
OK, let’s get into the more detailed “what is actually going on in TDW” read! This post will cover Chapters 1 through half of 9, or, “the relatively easy part to understand.” I will concentrate mostly on plot and on other features such as AU history, vampirism, and what-have-you mostly as they relate to the plot and what I think JMF is trying to do. (Although sometimes I will just talk about whatever I want to talk about. Also, since rachelmanija brought up magic, I'll try to put in some mentions of that.) However, I would welcome discussion of anything that is interesting to people! I will refer to Draco Concordans as “DC" and will sometimes parenthetically put in my reponses to various DC claims.
I will also occasionally mention a particularly good pun, none of which I understood before DC :P
The overall plot, let us remember, is Hywel’s plan to stop Byzantium from taking over England. That Byzantium wants to take over England is discussed as early as Chapter 1, although that Hywel is counter-plotting is not a thread that comes in until the end of Chapter 5.
( Cut for length. )
rachelmanija brought up magic, I'll try to put in some mentions of that.) However, I would welcome discussion of anything that is interesting to people! I will refer to Draco Concordans as “DC" and will sometimes parenthetically put in my reponses to various DC claims.I will also occasionally mention a particularly good pun, none of which I understood before DC :P
The overall plot, let us remember, is Hywel’s plan to stop Byzantium from taking over England. That Byzantium wants to take over England is discussed as early as Chapter 1, although that Hywel is counter-plotting is not a thread that comes in until the end of Chapter 5.
( Cut for length. )
September JMF reread is The Dragon Waiting. I consider TDW to be the most complex and rich of John M. Ford's books; it's trying to do all kinds of things, historically and otherwise. Because there is so much going on in it, it has become clear to me that I have to split this into several posts. In this post I will talk about what I think several of the general themes are, and in subsequent posts I will address specific questions and thoughts I have about specific parts of the text. Right now I think I will do one post for Ch 1-8 (which are relatively easier to follow) and another post for Ch 9-13.
First note: This is the first time I have read TDW closely following Andrew Plotkin's Draco Concordans at the same time, which I highly highly recommend as it made sense of quite a few things I hadn't quite been able to parse, and pointed out some of Ford's jokes that I hadn't even realized were there. (I also disagree with or have additional commentary about some of his points, which will go in the later posts.) Andrew Plotkin, you are a hero.
Second note: there will be general spoilers in this post, though this book is one of those where the fun is in seeing how things are done rather than what happens, so I don't think most of them will actually really spoil the book for a new reader. The one exception is the "Chapter" one-sentence synopses, which I've put under a separate cut.
On the most surface level, JMF is writing an AU about Richard III in which (spoiler) the AU plots a path for Richard to live at the end; and in addition the text is very concerned with making sense of the whole Problem of Richard III and finding a narrative (sometimes meaning total AU, as in what happens to the Princes) in which Richard can be someone whose motivations are understandable by and sympathetic to a late-twentieth-century audience. This is something that I understand a lot better now, as a result of watching a lot of operas/musicals and trying very hard to make sense of their nonsensical plots :P No, seriously, history is clearly much less well documented and full of odd personalities than one might ideally like for good storytelling, and I feel like in real life / history, often the reasons that something happens are "everyone involved was being STUPID" and that doesn't make for a good narrative, so Ford is basically, well, taking history and making a novel-with-a-properly-hanging-together-plot-and-characters out of it by way of AU.
That AU, though! The AU, as JMF makes clear in the afterword, is one where Julian the Apostate (in our universe) / Julian the Wise (in AU) brought back paganism. Additionally, the Emperor Justinian made Byzantium into a world power by virtue of becoming vampire after the time at which he died in our universe. (Why yes: this AU has magic and vampirism.)
On an overall plot level, JMF is writing about how four (author-created) characters keep this evil Byzantium from taking over England -- by way of, in fact, having Richard III survive and win the Battle of Bosworth Field. It took me a rather embarrassing number of reads to actually understand that very simple plot, although in this reading I noticed that it is carefully set up explicitly in the first several chapters, I'm just a terribly non-detail-oriented reader.
On a more granular plot level -- well, the plot actually does advance in a granular fashion. There are conspiracies and plots like a little self-contained mystery each chapter or two, all of which feed into either character development or the larger Byzantium-antiByzantium plot, or both.
I'll talk about these more when I do the more in-depth posts, but just briefly: ( Spoilers here. )
Another thing which I haven't seen elsewhere (or in Draco Concordans) is that JMF is also clearly riffing off Charles Williams' conception of Byzantium, which forms an epigraph to the book. So: JMF had read Charles Williams' totally wacko and awesome Arthurian poetry. (*) (BTW, this poetry is now in public domain in Canada. I am just saying.) Charles Williams was an Inkling, and one of the wacko and awesome things about his Arthurian poetry is that it is totally chock full of Christian-religious symbolism (one of the things I adore about it). I could go on about this all day, but suffice it to say for these purposes that the Empire of Byzantium, in Williams' poetry, is analogous to the City/Empire of God/Christ, the highest good. So what does JMF do? He borrows the Byzantine Empire and makes it the Big Bad Evil in an AU where Christianity is relegated to a minor subsect of Judaism. Well played, sir.
landingtree referred in a post to a certain tendency to male gaze in Ford's work (not that there's a lot of discussion of breasts or anything, but there is a certain male POV that sometimes can relegate female characters to little more than love interests / plot points), and I do think that can be a thing (and when we get to Web of Angels, let's discuss fridging in a big way, wheeeee) but this book is the one where I feel he is working against that, and male gaze exists at least partially to be pushed back upon by the female characters. There are still a lot of guys in this book, but Cynthia as one of the four main characters is awesome (interestingly, women in Byzantium!AU seem to be at least incrementally more equal -- almost no one gives Cynthia any crap for being a doctor, though part of that is that her family is famous for doctoring), and there are enough female characters that I am happy with all the roles they're filling. This book passes Bechdel easily, which is not something I can say for... most... of his books. (Growing Up Weightless, and I guess that Liavek story where they're putting on a play, because both of those have ensemble scenes. But everything else I'm coming up blank, although we'll see once I reread. Pretty sure Final Reflection doesn't.)
Also, random thing about this reread: I liked Gregory a lot, even more than on previous readings. Poor Gregory :P
There are probably a whole bunch of other things he's doing that I don't yet know, and other things I've noticed but am forgetting to talk about :P
(*) Which I have now also read literally because Williams shows up as an epigraph in this book and I'm pretty sure in one other of Ford's books (though I don't remember which one) (**). So when K and I were in that bookstore during college and she picked up the Arthurian Torso from the used book shelf and said, "Hey, this has notes by C.S. Lewis, are you interested?" I said, "OMG IT'S CHARLES WILLIAMS! YES. YES I AM."
(**) A list of things I have read because of TDW:
-Charles Williams, most of his work
-A Short History of Byzantium (John Julius Norwich)
-The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey)
-The Princes in the Tower (Alison Weir) (Weir clearly Does Not Approve of Daughter of Time, lol)
First note: This is the first time I have read TDW closely following Andrew Plotkin's Draco Concordans at the same time, which I highly highly recommend as it made sense of quite a few things I hadn't quite been able to parse, and pointed out some of Ford's jokes that I hadn't even realized were there. (I also disagree with or have additional commentary about some of his points, which will go in the later posts.) Andrew Plotkin, you are a hero.
Second note: there will be general spoilers in this post, though this book is one of those where the fun is in seeing how things are done rather than what happens, so I don't think most of them will actually really spoil the book for a new reader. The one exception is the "Chapter" one-sentence synopses, which I've put under a separate cut.
On the most surface level, JMF is writing an AU about Richard III in which (spoiler) the AU plots a path for Richard to live at the end; and in addition the text is very concerned with making sense of the whole Problem of Richard III and finding a narrative (sometimes meaning total AU, as in what happens to the Princes) in which Richard can be someone whose motivations are understandable by and sympathetic to a late-twentieth-century audience. This is something that I understand a lot better now, as a result of watching a lot of operas/musicals and trying very hard to make sense of their nonsensical plots :P No, seriously, history is clearly much less well documented and full of odd personalities than one might ideally like for good storytelling, and I feel like in real life / history, often the reasons that something happens are "everyone involved was being STUPID" and that doesn't make for a good narrative, so Ford is basically, well, taking history and making a novel-with-a-properly-hanging-together-plot-and-characters out of it by way of AU.
That AU, though! The AU, as JMF makes clear in the afterword, is one where Julian the Apostate (in our universe) / Julian the Wise (in AU) brought back paganism. Additionally, the Emperor Justinian made Byzantium into a world power by virtue of becoming vampire after the time at which he died in our universe. (Why yes: this AU has magic and vampirism.)
On an overall plot level, JMF is writing about how four (author-created) characters keep this evil Byzantium from taking over England -- by way of, in fact, having Richard III survive and win the Battle of Bosworth Field. It took me a rather embarrassing number of reads to actually understand that very simple plot, although in this reading I noticed that it is carefully set up explicitly in the first several chapters, I'm just a terribly non-detail-oriented reader.
On a more granular plot level -- well, the plot actually does advance in a granular fashion. There are conspiracies and plots like a little self-contained mystery each chapter or two, all of which feed into either character development or the larger Byzantium-antiByzantium plot, or both.
I'll talk about these more when I do the more in-depth posts, but just briefly: ( Spoilers here. )
Another thing which I haven't seen elsewhere (or in Draco Concordans) is that JMF is also clearly riffing off Charles Williams' conception of Byzantium, which forms an epigraph to the book. So: JMF had read Charles Williams' totally wacko and awesome Arthurian poetry. (*) (BTW, this poetry is now in public domain in Canada. I am just saying.) Charles Williams was an Inkling, and one of the wacko and awesome things about his Arthurian poetry is that it is totally chock full of Christian-religious symbolism (one of the things I adore about it). I could go on about this all day, but suffice it to say for these purposes that the Empire of Byzantium, in Williams' poetry, is analogous to the City/Empire of God/Christ, the highest good. So what does JMF do? He borrows the Byzantine Empire and makes it the Big Bad Evil in an AU where Christianity is relegated to a minor subsect of Judaism. Well played, sir.
landingtree referred in a post to a certain tendency to male gaze in Ford's work (not that there's a lot of discussion of breasts or anything, but there is a certain male POV that sometimes can relegate female characters to little more than love interests / plot points), and I do think that can be a thing (and when we get to Web of Angels, let's discuss fridging in a big way, wheeeee) but this book is the one where I feel he is working against that, and male gaze exists at least partially to be pushed back upon by the female characters. There are still a lot of guys in this book, but Cynthia as one of the four main characters is awesome (interestingly, women in Byzantium!AU seem to be at least incrementally more equal -- almost no one gives Cynthia any crap for being a doctor, though part of that is that her family is famous for doctoring), and there are enough female characters that I am happy with all the roles they're filling. This book passes Bechdel easily, which is not something I can say for... most... of his books. (Growing Up Weightless, and I guess that Liavek story where they're putting on a play, because both of those have ensemble scenes. But everything else I'm coming up blank, although we'll see once I reread. Pretty sure Final Reflection doesn't.)Also, random thing about this reread: I liked Gregory a lot, even more than on previous readings. Poor Gregory :P
There are probably a whole bunch of other things he's doing that I don't yet know, and other things I've noticed but am forgetting to talk about :P
(*) Which I have now also read literally because Williams shows up as an epigraph in this book and I'm pretty sure in one other of Ford's books (though I don't remember which one) (**). So when K and I were in that bookstore during college and she picked up the Arthurian Torso from the used book shelf and said, "Hey, this has notes by C.S. Lewis, are you interested?" I said, "OMG IT'S CHARLES WILLIAMS! YES. YES I AM."
(**) A list of things I have read because of TDW:
-Charles Williams, most of his work
-A Short History of Byzantium (John Julius Norwich)
-The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey)
-The Princes in the Tower (Alison Weir) (Weir clearly Does Not Approve of Daughter of Time, lol)
Liane Moriarty
Jun. 8th, 2019 08:23 pmLiane Moriarty writes chick lit (middle-aged mom lit?), only better, because she has a deep compassion for almost all her characters. I don't always like her books, but usually because of the plot, not the characters.
Nine Perfect Strangers - 3+/5 - I picked this up from the library and it spurred me to check out all the other Moriarty they had. Nine people go to this "health resort" to "transform their lives." But it turns out to all be a little more intense than they had imagined! I liked it! The main character, a romance novelist, is rather hilarious, and the other characters are hilarious and heartbreaking by turns. No death, although one family is grappling with a suicide that took place before the book started.
Big Little Lies (reread, skim) - I had read this before but had forgotten literally everything about it except the identity of the, umm, instigator of the, er, fatal accident, which I did remember. I started skimming about halfway through until the inevitable ending. Partially I think this one's a bit dark (content note for physical/emotional abuse, death) and I think I read Moriarty for the combination of breezy humor and the emotional intensity, which sort of don't work for me with discussing abuse, I guess. Also some of those kindergarten parents are terrible and we never get their POV, so they don't get humanized like her other characters do.
The Husband's Secret - 3/5 - I really love Tess and Cecelia and Rachel's arc with her son, but in general probably my least favorite Moriarty, in large part because of the ending, which features (a) a tit-for-tat that once you think about it makes NO SENSE (b) actually another tit-for-tat that also makes no sense and (c) some really important information that becomes clear to us, the readers, but to no one in the story. Content warning for teenager death (though told through flashback, so it doesn't come out of nowhere) and child maiming. ( Spoilers with more details: )
Nine Perfect Strangers - 3+/5 - I picked this up from the library and it spurred me to check out all the other Moriarty they had. Nine people go to this "health resort" to "transform their lives." But it turns out to all be a little more intense than they had imagined! I liked it! The main character, a romance novelist, is rather hilarious, and the other characters are hilarious and heartbreaking by turns. No death, although one family is grappling with a suicide that took place before the book started.
Big Little Lies (reread, skim) - I had read this before but had forgotten literally everything about it except the identity of the, umm, instigator of the, er, fatal accident, which I did remember. I started skimming about halfway through until the inevitable ending. Partially I think this one's a bit dark (content note for physical/emotional abuse, death) and I think I read Moriarty for the combination of breezy humor and the emotional intensity, which sort of don't work for me with discussing abuse, I guess. Also some of those kindergarten parents are terrible and we never get their POV, so they don't get humanized like her other characters do.
The Husband's Secret - 3/5 - I really love Tess and Cecelia and Rachel's arc with her son, but in general probably my least favorite Moriarty, in large part because of the ending, which features (a) a tit-for-tat that once you think about it makes NO SENSE (b) actually another tit-for-tat that also makes no sense and (c) some really important information that becomes clear to us, the readers, but to no one in the story. Content warning for teenager death (though told through flashback, so it doesn't come out of nowhere) and child maiming. ( Spoilers with more details: )
Various Dragaera books (Brust)
Jun. 7th, 2019 09:13 pmIssola, Dzur, Iorich (rereads), Hawk (DNF), Vallista 3+/5. This is rachelmanija's fault, as so many things are, for posting about these books and how there was a ton of worldbuilding going on!
Well, originally it is D's fault, in the sense that when I was a wee grad student and he was a grad student of somewhat more seniority (I think this was around the time we started dating, actually), he fed me all the Brust books at that time (and tangentially all the Bujold, and some Iain Banks which I never did particularly like all that much).
Not coincidentally, the first Dragaera book that came out after I binge-read all of D's books (and then probably reread) was Issola. All the ones from that point on I have never reread and therefore have correspondingly fewer memories of.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned,rachelmanija said there was cool worldbuilding stuff in Vallista, which it turns out I hadn't read yet (I still had not read Hawk), so I figured I'd start a reread back at Issola. D is a completist and so we have copies of all the books, except as it turns out we somehow missed Tiassa, so that's the only one I haven't reread yet.
Halfway through Dzur I remembered why I'd stopped reading them. They're great caper books, but lately there hasn't been enough -- I now need to append this as "not enough things I understand" -- to hold me besides the capers. (Well, that and Loiosh, who remains my absolute favorite character in every single book. He is cute! (That is still probably my favorite line in any book.))
Vallista changed that, and I didn't even really get that it did until I went looking for the spoiler posts afterwards. So, yeah, there's some worldbuilding going on!
( Spoilers. )
(I only read Vallista in June, the others in May, but I was always going to post about them as a group if I posted about them at all.)
rachelmanija's fault, as so many things are, for posting about these books and how there was a ton of worldbuilding going on!Well, originally it is D's fault, in the sense that when I was a wee grad student and he was a grad student of somewhat more seniority (I think this was around the time we started dating, actually), he fed me all the Brust books at that time (and tangentially all the Bujold, and some Iain Banks which I never did particularly like all that much).
Not coincidentally, the first Dragaera book that came out after I binge-read all of D's books (and then probably reread) was Issola. All the ones from that point on I have never reread and therefore have correspondingly fewer memories of.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned,
rachelmanija said there was cool worldbuilding stuff in Vallista, which it turns out I hadn't read yet (I still had not read Hawk), so I figured I'd start a reread back at Issola. D is a completist and so we have copies of all the books, except as it turns out we somehow missed Tiassa, so that's the only one I haven't reread yet.Halfway through Dzur I remembered why I'd stopped reading them. They're great caper books, but lately there hasn't been enough -- I now need to append this as "not enough things I understand" -- to hold me besides the capers. (Well, that and Loiosh, who remains my absolute favorite character in every single book. He is cute! (That is still probably my favorite line in any book.))
Vallista changed that, and I didn't even really get that it did until I went looking for the spoiler posts afterwards. So, yeah, there's some worldbuilding going on!
( Spoilers. )
(I only read Vallista in June, the others in May, but I was always going to post about them as a group if I posted about them at all.)
Iliad readthrough
Jan. 4th, 2019 08:03 pmisis posted about the community ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
classiclitclub, which is reading the Iliad (this week is the first week!). She also linked to a translation by Caroline Alexander that is selling for $1.99. So far I'm really liking it!I was going to wait until I had time to go into Seventeen and get the textual backup for everything I'm saying, but I have gradually come to realize that if I wait until then it will never happen until possibly after Yuletide which isn't acceptable. Also I guess it would be even longer than it actually is. So. Here you go.
( This is long even without quotations. )
( This is long even without quotations. )
Sons from Afar (Voigt)
Oct. 2nd, 2017 09:47 pmI am gonna finish this sequence. Someday. I really am. :)
This book, I think, has two different themes. ( This time I remembered to cut for length. )
This book, I think, has two different themes. ( This time I remembered to cut for length. )
Come a Stranger (Voigt)
Sep. 24th, 2017 09:35 pmCome a Stranger is the most positive book in the Tillerman Cycle (which, in a series that takes on abandonment, death, failure, racism, and emotional abuse of a couple different kinds, is maybe not saying a whole lot, although the themes of all the books involve growth and compassion and optimism and healing so that I never really noticed until this read-through how relentless they are) — this is the book about a family that works from the very beginning, and with themes that involve an existing strength, and growth mediated by that strength (as opposed to, say, Dicey's Song and Solitary Blue, which are about fractured family that has to figure out how to work, and growth from what started as dysfunctionality).
( Cut for length. )
( Cut for length. )
Dicey's Song (Voigt)
Jul. 1st, 2017 09:43 pmNth reread. I have posts on Thick as Thieves, All the Birds in the Sky, and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch in the queue, but then mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!
In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (asmildred_of_midgard noted).
And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (as
mildred_of_midgard noted). And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
Now that Yuletide reveals are over (I have a more conventional reveal post here) I can finally inflict on you guys all the feelings I have about Earthsea, which I read again for the first time in many years (at least ten, maybe fifteen) this fall.
...I have a lot of feelings.
( The second trilogy, which I reread first. )
( The first trilogy, which I read second. )
( Le Guin and style. )
...I have a lot of feelings.
( The second trilogy, which I reread first. )
( The first trilogy, which I read second. )
( Le Guin and style. )
