stuff i read 9 february 2020
Feb. 9th, 2020 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabacoychanelI actually watched Marriage Story this week and I'm confused about why it's so ~controversial when it's straight-up anti-divorce-lawyer propaganda?? If there is one thing we as a society can agree on it's our hatred of divorce lawyers.
Also watched the Taylor Swift documentary and I gotta say my problem with it was not that it was performative and fake, it was that it was boring and basic and I guess if I wanted to actually learns something about how female artists navigate the shark-infested waters of the music industry I'd just rewatch Nashville lol
don't think i mentioned this on here buti saw Knives Out and it was, as advertised, fucking brilliant. sometimes good movies are good because they activate some emotion or thought process you’d never have imagined on your own; THIS movie though? i wanted an “eat the rich” movie that was also mega hella entertaining and Rian Johnson delivered it to me in SPADES
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944) Historically the market has been subordinate to, or an appendage of, society. Along came the 19th century to upset that applecart. You can’t substitute “pecuniary gain” for “social relationships” as the organizing principle of human activity without causing strife, dislocation, and suffering on a planetary scale—Polanyi calls it a “cataclysm.” Karl Polanyi is a thinker of titanic stature and his ideas have dribbled down to me via so many other thinkers that by the time I encountered the source they were well chewed over. I also think the level of granular detail we got about, say, parliamentary machinations in Prussia was of limited utility to the average lay reader. However, as far as the big picture goes, Polanyi’s work holds up. He’s so prescient that his entire final chapter is “the center cannot hold, it’s either socialism or fascism.” Another way of putting it is that, contra Econ 101, “society” is metaphysically upstream of “the individual.” It’s nonsensical to speak of “the government” meddling in “the market”: There is no market without society. It is because the market is embedded in society that we had to totally overhaul our social relations just so that market values could reign supreme. Sidenote: it’s fascinating that during the apocalyptic (in terms of how it decimated communities) transition to a market-based society you saw a lot of strange bedfellows—for instance, landlords and peasants arrayed against industrialists.
Seanan McGuire, The Unkindest Tide (2019) (October Daye #13) It’s the selkie book! Following on the heels of the Tam Lin book. It’s another Luidaeg-centric one. No lie this book is 35% Luidaeg and I’m digging it bc I relate to her sense of humor. It’s not that I don’t think Seaman McGuire’s funny; but she’s not as funny as she thinks she is, and wow does Quentin get more than his fair share of zingers. This book carries over many of the thematic concerns of the previous book, only with less “healing from trauma” and more “this is a how-not-to-parent manual.” The cruelest line was when tertiary character Liz Ryan spat at Toby, “You’re lucky one of us knows how to be a mother.” I mean OUCH. There’s a moment when Toby registers her own culpability in this clusterfuck—that she’s repeated her own mother’s mistakes by raising her own daughter to expect one set of rules where an entirely different set actually applies. Sometimes I think about that tumblr shitpost about how Frodo had to leave for the Grey Havens bc they don’t have therapists on Middle Earth …but surely they have therapists in San Francisco??? Why don’t Toby, Tybalt et al take advantage of said therapists??? What I liked: that in a world of unequal bargains and unpayable debts volition still matters; that humans understand change less well than the fae because they’re born & die in the same bodies—it’s axiomatic that mortality=change so this role-reversal felt very fresh, and seems to constitute an anti-Cartesian argument for an embodied existence (it’s literally a book about selkies). What I disliked: When the character beats hit in this series, they REALLY hit (I’m still recovering from the Simon book). Otoh everything in between is kind of wobbly. You notice it more in minor books like this precisely because there aren’t as many major beats to anchor it.
Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings (2015) (Dandelion Dynasty #1) Less than the sum of its parts. I’m circulating a petition to make Ken Liu write fairy tale retellings and only fairy tale retellings, who’s with me. The man is so good at this one thing that you wonder why he bothers doing anything else (I jest, I jest; I do not at all wonder that he tried his hand at epic fantasy rather than spend the rest of his life regretting the missed opportunity). It wasn’t that I didn’t get attached to the characters, but they’d get their heads lopped off as soon as I learned their names (or self-immolate in some other messy fashion). In theory I’m receptive to the idea of vignettes featuring one-off POVs building toward a larger story—I have, in fact, read Water Margin which is one of the ur-texts this novel is in conversation with, since it’s about BANDITS and OUTLAWS resisting an empire—but for pete’s sake there needs to be more connective tissue than this. I found our main Guile Hero, Kuni Garu, to be irresistible but by himself he was not up to the task of making the whole book hang together. Ken Liu excels at the kind of cruel reversals and bittersweet triumphs that epitomize fairy tales; even his politicking reads like parables (the antelope/horse episode!!!). But short stories are like carving a miniature figurine of fixed dimensions—you have to fit the story to the container. Novels give you a lot more latitude in designing the shape of the container but the tradeoff is you may suffer decision fatigue from having to make all these CHOICES about what to put in it. I know Ken Liu is aware of this because he’s talked about it in a blog post. Quite a gap between theory and praxis, there. I DNF’d it at 50%, life is too short and this book is too long.
Steven Brust, Teckla (1987) (Vlad Taltos #3) 3 books into a series about internecine elf mafia wars I was not expecting to be crying about a fight I had with my husband; Vlad and Cawti fight the way married people fight. I wasn’t expecting to be singing “Solidarity Forever” either. Teckla is the book where assimilationist Vlad’s revolutionary wife joins an anarchist cell, puts her body in the gears of the machine and Vlad loses half his hair from stress. I kept waiting for Brust to commit to one side or the other—can violent insurrection ever change an oppressive status quo? Does class struggle get the goods or not? Is Cawti right that strength lies in numbers & organizing the masses, or is Vlad right to be apprehensive of a paramilitary crackdown (it is after all what they did to Occupy Wall Street)? I had written Cawti off in the previous books as merely a useful sounding board for Vlad to bounce ideas off (to say Brust has a heavy hand with romance is perhaps to understate the case). Imagine my surprise when in this book she has sincere ideological commitments where Vlad has only a very Slytherin commitment to protecting the people who belong to him. The contrast does Vlad no favors. He was ready to blow up dozens of innocent people to “save” her, until he met Frantz the Ghost (which btw raises interesting worldbuilding questions about reincarnation & souls). This supposed contradiction he touts between putting abstract ideals first and putting actual people first majorly annoyed me until someone (Kelly) finally called Vlad out on it. Honestly if anybody is devaluing human lives here it is Vlad, who was about to assassinate a house full of people who have done him no harm. Kelly points out, quite rightly, “for Easterners and Teckla in this world, these aren’t problems an individual can solve” and Vlad “Bootstraps” Taltos shoots back “I’m an individual. I solved them. I got out of there and made something of myself.” Ok buddy way to miss the point. This is a world where ten-year-olds (Natalia) are reduced to pickpocketing to survive. I don’t think the narrative comes down as strongly on the revolutionaries’ side as I would, but it sure doesn’t permit Vlad to persist in the delusion that he can refuse to pick a side. I’m dying to know what happened in the decades-ago uprising that took Vlad’s grandma’s life, and apparently turned Vlad’s dad into a reactionary, and why Vlad’s grandpa thinks that conflict was unavoidable but this one is ill-advised? I loved seeing Vlad’s Ravenclaw Secondary side which caused him physical pain when he had to change a plan at the last minute lmao. I missed Morrolan and Aliera, if only for the group dynamic born of long association—in the last book I remember Aliera threatening to do something stupid and/or wave a big stick around, and Vlad and Morrolan being entirely unmoved by her theatrics, and Vlad assuring newcomer Cawti it was fine, just Aliera being Aliera. I think Kragar is the real MVP and deserves a big fat raise & some stock options for working what sounds like 80 hour weeks at a critical time for the organization. I’m starting to get a better handle on Loiash, too—seeing a cross-section of Dragaeran society brings it home to me how lonely Vlad the Perpetual Outsider must’ve been all these years, and as a support system Loiash isn’t perfect but he’s a sight better than nothing. In conclusion SOLIDARITY FOREVER (for the union makes us strong).
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Date: 2020-02-11 02:41 am (UTC)If there is one thing we as a society can agree on it's our hatred of divorce lawyers.
LOL! XD (I havent seen Marriage Story, and I wasn't aware there was controversy -- was it just people complaining that the acting in that one scene was over the top?)
I am looking forward to watching Knives Out when it's on video (L and I wanted to see it together, but it didn't work out over the break, but hopefully we'll be able to watch it on DVD)
No lie this book is 35% Luidaeg
I clearly need to catch up the Toby books in that case, since Luidaeg is my favorite. And Quentin is probably number 2,
about how Frodo had to leave for the Grey Havens bc they don’t have therapists on Middle Earth …but surely they have therapists in San Francisco???
1) Awww! but true XD and 2) YOU'D THINK! Hell, with the number of fey folk lurking around, you'd think they would have therapists specializing in fey and changelings, even.
I'm glad to have the validation that I do not need to read Ken Liu's doorstopper. (I've read a couple of his short fiction pieces and thought they were merely OK, but I think they were all sci-fi rather than fairytale retellings. Well, and his translation of Three Body Problem -- which, if you've read that in translation or in original, what did you think?)
OK, TECKLA! :D
internecine elf mafia wars
LOL!
I'm very pleased to hear you liked Teckla as much as you did! The first time I read it, I didn't really -- I found it too much of a downer -- but it has grown on me the most of any of the Vlad books, so that now, several rereads later, it's one of the Vlad books I respect the most, even though I still wouldn't say I *love* it -- it's too uncomfortable a book for that, and this series is comfort reading for me. I do think it's a really good book, and a really unusual book, and I'm just really impressed that there exists a fantasy book -- an elf mafia book, as you say XD -- which has revolutionaries in a complicated setup, and married people running up against ideological disagreements, and all kinds of stuff you don't normally see.
Vlad and Cawti fight the way married people fight
Yeah, they really do. Actually, that might be part of why Teckla grew on me as I got older (in a similar way that Komarr has), because as I get older I become more aware of the faults that can develop in marriages.
The thing I find so fascinating about the relationship stuff in Teckla is, so, if you look in publication order, Yendi, where Vlad and Cawti get together, and Teckla, where, well, they're not doing great as a couple, were written back to back. And if you look in internal chronology order, the end of Jhereg, where Vlad is contemplating buying Cawti a castle (for some reason...) and the beginning of Teckla are, like a couple of weeks apart. I find the sequence of these three books does a really good job of illustrating Vlad as unreliable narrator, and also the series doing that thing Jo Walton was talking about, the books illuminating each other (like, going back and rereading the part in Yendi where Vlad and Cawti have their first real conversation together and they're talking about Easterners and you can already see the seeds of their disagreement in Teckla as far back as the very beginning of their relationship.
assimilationist Vlad’s
It's so interesting to me that for all of Vlad's very deliberate Easterner paraphernalia -- his mustache and his rapier and his witchcraft and his dubious moral high ground of not killing Easterners for money, he really is assimilationist (and doesn't even realize/admit it to himself, probably, at least at that point). This was the kind of nuance I meant in the series' treatment of the immigrant themes, because I think you seldom see something so shades-of-grey, you know?
(to say Brust has a heavy hand with romance is perhaps to understate the case)
If you mean Vlad and Cawti specifically, I tend to regard what we see of their relationship in Jhereg and Yendi as a feature rather than a bug, but I'm curious to see how you feel about it when/if you've read more of the series :)
here Vlad has only a very Slytherin commitment to protecting the people who belong to him.
Yeah, Vlad is SUPER Slytherin Primary that way! (which I think is one big thing he has in common with his Dragonlord buddies). I hadn't thought about him being Ravenclaw Secondary, but that feels true, too! After all, assassination as a profession rewards careful preparation, and witchcraft as a discipline does, too. Vlad often acts in Gryffindor fashion, but thinking about it, I think he only does it when he thinks he can get away with it, and that in itself is a Ravenclaw kind of thing...
Frantz the Ghost (which btw raises interesting worldbuilding questions about reincarnation & souls).
Yeah, it does! I still don't have any idea on what the answers are XD
Vlad “Bootstraps” Taltos shoots back “I’m an individual. I solved them. I got out of there and made something of myself.” Ok buddy way to miss the point.
This made me snort out loud XD But, yeah. This is another case where my feelings somewhat evolved over rereads. I started out being firmly on Vlad's side, and, to be honest, am still on the side of not getting involved in anarchist cells (and not springing your involvement in them on your spouse), but, no, morally Vlad definitely does not come off very well here, and he is most definitely being a huge hypocrite (like, besides the large-scale moral implications, I also feel that while I would be very pissed if my spouse got involved in something this dangerous without discussing it with me, I wouls ALSO be pissed if my spouse took the kind of extremely dangerous job that Vlad undertakes in Jhereg without discussing it with me). And, like, if you read through Vlad's thoughts in Yendi, Vlad is certainly aware of how crappy and unfair the system is; he just doesn't care because he's got his. Which I do think is a very plausible way for him to be. (Also, remin me of the "Bootstrap" think when you're done with Orca, because this spoilery thought literally just hit me, but I'll try not to forget.)
I’m dying to know what happened in the decades-ago uprising that took Vlad’s grandma’s life, and apparently turned Vlad’s dad into a reactionary, and why Vlad’s grandpa thinks that conflict was unavoidable but this one is ill-advised?
Me too1 But I don't think it's ever been explained. And, hmm, I wonder if Noish-Pa's assessment is just a reflection of people becoming more conservative and entrenched in the status quo as they get older, because I can't imagine a whole lot would've actually changed in two generations of Easterner lives -- that's, like, a couple of years for Dragaerans...
. I missed Morrolan and Aliera,
I'm glad to hear it! :D The next book, Taltos, has plenty of Morrolan and a little bit of Aliera -- it jumps back to the beginning and shows how Vlad met the two of them (and Sethra). It is my FAVORITE, and I can't wait to see what you think of it. (The next one, Phoenix, picks up right after Teckla.)
think Kragar is the real MVP and deserves a big fat raise & some stock options
Kragar is indeed the MVP in Vlad's organization and the perfect lieutenant. Vlad does not deserve him XD
brings it home to me how lonely Vlad the Perpetual Outsider must’ve been all these years, and as a support system Loiash isn’t perfect but he’s a sight better than nothing
Yeah, reading Yendi and Teckla close together, which I did on reread a couple of years back, drove the point of Vlad's loneliness home for me as well, I think it explains some things about the decisions he makes in his personal life.
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Date: 2020-02-12 03:01 pm (UTC)this sounds like an ace idea for a spinoff series. which i’m sure Seanan McGuire can manage since her literary output is already insane. This woman puts out like 4 books a year it’s crazy
L and I wanted to see it together, but it didn't work out over the break, but hopefully we'll be able to watch it on DVD
It’s so much fun!! You guys will enjoy
re: Ken Liu, “The Paper Menagerie” is the only short fiction of his I’ve read and I loved it and I cried. I think although its technically SF even that story has a fantasy feel to it. I’ve heard Ken Liu interviewed and he seems like a really thoughtful person, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into my liking all his writing. Can’t speak to his translation work but I started Three-Body Problem in Chinese and wandered away before I really got hooked, or even understood the premise (it felt very noir those first few chapters); I have vague plans to assay it again at some point. What were your impressions of Three-Body Problem?
it's too uncomfortable a book for that, and this series is comfort reading for me
Oh, is it ever uncomfortable. I love that I immediately took Cawti’s side and you took Vlad’s, and I think that speaks to what kind of political priors the two of us were bringing to the table but also I think Brust does a good job of presenting both sides pretty even-handedly? Not entirely even-handedly, I think we still come down more on Vlad’s side. You know, actually Marriage Story manages to pull off the even-handed thing 100%. It’s pretty transparently semi-autobiographical and I’m impressed the writer-director managed not to slip in a note of “well ACTUALLY i’m right and my ex was wrong.”
Jhereg, where Vlad is contemplating buying Cawti a castle (for some reason...) and the beginning of Teckla are, like a couple of weeks apart
Yikes! it’s hard to believe Vlad could misread Cawti so badly but yeah…it’s not hard to believe at all.
that thing Jo Walton was talking about, the books illuminating each other
YES. I’m so excited to be getting deeper into the series and seeing how the books refract each other. This is not a series that’d have been on my radar if not for your recommendation and I am getting so much out of them. Thank you.
he really is assimilationist (and doesn't even realize/admit it to himself, probably, at least at that point)
He can’t admit it, though, can he? Not without dismantling his whole worldview which is built on “I’ve got mine” and any individual can “make it” out of the ghetto if they work hard, and he just seems to have this blind spot for systemic forces of any kind.
Vlad is SUPER Slytherin Primary that way! (which I think is one big thing he has in common with his Dragonlord buddies
i don’t know the Dragonlords well enough yet but I’ll take your word for it! I’m curious where you think he models Gryffindor secondary though
I tend to regard what we see of their relationship in Jhereg and Yendi as a feature rather than a bug
The way they jumped each other’s bones in Yendi is what I mean by heavy-handed. There was no tension or pining or nothing. It wasn’t romantic, in the small-r sense, but I got over it because Brust writes really well about married people in an established relationship he just seems to have trouble with the getting-together part lol but it’s fine, I find fanfic is usually better than profic at that anyway so my expectations weren’t high.
I wouls ALSO be pissed if my spouse took the kind of extremely dangerous job that Vlad undertakes in Jhereg without discussing it with me
Whoah that double standard didn’t even occur to me. I think there are two things going on here: Are we, the readers, on Vlad or Cawti’s side politically; and are we on Vlad or Cawti’s side of this marital spat? And I think Brust does a better job of presenting Cawti’s side of the personal disagreement than the political one. Now I was already predisposed to take the anarchists’ side, so I started there and there I will remain, but I don’t think Brust bothers to give both sides a fair hearing because he’s fundamentally only interested in the political clashes as far as they affect Vlad (maybe this changes down the line but that’s how I read it so far).
I wonder if Noish-Pa's assessment is just a reflection of people becoming more conservative and entrenched in the status quo as they get older
oh actually i read something somewhere recently that cast doubt upon this piece of received wisdom. i think it said it depends on what kind of economy & job market you graduate into, that that’s really formative for your long-term political views? maybe i can dig it up. Anyway I love Noiash-Pa and him showing up with his sword and his familiar were all really badass but I could not get a clear handle on what his objectives were. To reconcile Vlad and Cawti, and to keep them from getting killed, but was he trying to prevent the Easterner/Teckla resistance from clashing with Phoenix Guards altogether? Because that horse has left the barn. If Noiash-Pa doesn’t do telepathy is that because telepathy’s a Dragaeran thing? Does Noiash-Pa’s horizon of possibility simply not include Dragaerans and Easterners mixing on equal terms? Like, is eking out a living in the ghetto the best one can do? That’s the vibe I get: Noiash-Pa thinks that “friendship” with Dragaerans isn’t a real thing, that Easterners have to stick together, but also that they can’t fundamentally change the status quo. Reminds me of Malcolm X in some ways tbh. The part where he thinks racism is just baked in, this impersonal ahistorical force, and the only way to beat it is start a mass exodus to Africa.
Onwards to Taltos!
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Date: 2020-02-12 07:23 pm (UTC)Actually, yeah XD Although I'm not sure Seanan McGuire should be the one to write it, though I do certainly believe she has the bandwidth to, LOL. (I think there's literally been a McGuire series on the Hugo series ballot every year since that became a thing, because her output just overwhelms the 240k words/2 books requirement. I mean, not the same series every year, but I think they've been alternating? Which is insane XD)
I'll keep "The Paper Menagerie" in mind -- definitely have not read that one!
3BP -- OK, I read the first book, and, um. The math/science was my favorite part? OK, that's not entirely fair, and I'm absolutely willing to concede that I'm probably not getting anything like a true sense of the prose (because translation) or character (because cultural norms) -- maybe they're as flat as they came across to me, or maybe they aren't. The things Western audiences seemed to really enjoy about the book, though, were all things I feel like I've seen done better in Soviet/Eastern Bloc sci-fi I've already read -- Strugatskys' "A Billion Years Before the End of the World" (translated as Definitely Maybe for some bizarre reason) for the central premise and Lem's sci-fi for the sort of more comedic but also long view look at alien culture. Basically, I've seen it done better and more entertainingly? (and I've seen a very similar reaction from other people who grew up on Soviet sci-fi and read 3BP).
In an effort to keep my comments a little less epic, so I can actually post the damn things, I'm going to hit "Post" on this part and follow up with Vlad things in a bit :)
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Date: 2020-02-12 08:12 pm (UTC)Agreed! This is something I was really impressed by (especially since I know Brust's personal politics -- I'm actually generally impressed with how he handles personal soap boxes in his fiction, which is I think an approach a lot of authors could learn from). I can say more about this if you would like, but this was the thing I've been holding off on until you get through Phoenix, which I think is the better point at which to have that discussion :)
Yikes! it’s hard to believe Vlad could misread Cawti so badly but yeah…it’s not hard to believe at all.
Yeah, it's... such an odd moment in retrospect, which makes it really painful -- just how OBLIVIOUS he was to it all (and really shouldn't have been, which is where Yendi comes in).
and seeing how the books refract each other.
Oh, "refract" is another excellent term for this!!
This is not a series that’d have been on my radar if not for your recommendation and I am getting so much out of them.
This makes me incredibly, incredibly happy :) (as I'm sure you can guess :D)
He can’t admit it, though, can he? Not without dismantling his whole worldview which is built on “I’ve got mine” and any individual can “make it” out of the ghetto if they work hard, and he just seems to have this blind spot for systemic forces of any kind.
Yes, and, ooh, you're right about the systemic forces blind spot, which is not a way I've thought about it before, but yeah, I do think he thinks of it very much in terms of the individual, and himself as that individual (which I think is another reason he gets along with the Dragonlords, actually -- it's their sort of faulty worldview).
I’m curious where you think he models Gryffindor secondary though
I think Taltos has a couple of examples, which, it might be significant that it's one of the earliest books. But I definitely do think it's a model, because Vlad does tend to think through and analyze things even when he then goes and does the stupid Gryffindor thing. I'm not sure if you've gotten into the book yet, so keeping this non-spoilery but 1) Vlad and Morrolan on the stairs, and 2) compensation :) But I do think that in the "stupid Gryffindor actions" cases, Vlad is acting out consistently with a way that would lead to one particular result if he were dealing with the Jhereg, or, like, random street toughs, so it's a calculated/learned response, just one that's not a good fit for the present situation.
Well, and I think jumping into bed and then marriage with Cawti was kind of a Gryffindor thing, too :P (I do think Brust is not all that interested in writing couples getting together.)
i think it said it depends on what kind of economy & job market you graduate into, that that’s really formative for your long-term political views?
Oh, interesting! I could see that being formative, I suppose!
I also love Noish-Pa! As for his objectives -- it's been a while since I read Teckla, but I reskimmed that chapter just now, and, hmm, I think it really is just a personal errand/~mission, looking out for Vlad and Cawti specifically (I think he realizes not much can be done about the broader thing, and he's kind of ignoring everyone who isn't Vlad or Cawti anyway.
If Noiash-Pa doesn’t do telepathy is that because telepathy’s a Dragaeran thing?
Yeah, that's my understanding. Although magic is one of the things I think about the least in these books, because I feel like we're not given enough info and it would drive me nuts :P
Does Noiash-Pa’s horizon of possibility simply not include Dragaerans and Easterners mixing on equal terms?
I kind of think so, yeah. Like, Vlad just views Dragaerans as people -- a different species of people, and he likes to talk about how they're not human and stuff, but he interacts with them the way you would with another person. While I do think Noish-Pa views them as more profoundly alien -- Faerie and elfs and all that.
Can't wait to hear your Taltos impressions! :D
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Date: 2020-02-13 07:14 pm (UTC)So one of the recent posts on Brust's site was entitled "Am I a democratic socialist?" which really impressed me because I remember you hinting something about his personal politics making his achievement with Teckla all the more impressive and I have to say you are Correct. I am Impressed.
Vlad and Morrolan on the stairs
My take is he's behaving the way he expects a mob boss ought to behave if he wants to keep his reputation/respect after he finds out he's been screwed/swindled in some way (led by the nose, in this case; maneuvered into a corner). It's not an impulsive reaction, the way a real Gryffindor secondary would just charge in. He's conditioned himself to react instantaenously to a perceived threat to his position. So we are in agreement i think, still Ravenclaw secondary.
so it's a calculated/learned response
exactly!
I can say more about this if you would like, but this was the thing I've been holding off on until you get through Phoenix
no no wait till i'm through Phoenix. At this rate I'll have to set up a checklist of things to remind you to tell me about--there's something you're supposed to say after Orca, iirc
you're right about the systemic forces blind spot, which is not a way I've thought about it before
but it's exactly the kind of thing a writer with Brust's politics would build into a character like Vlad, who does not share those politics. Well done.
While I do think Noish-Pa views them as more profoundly alien
"Vladimir, it isn't a right and a wrong. It is a difference between our blood and the blood of Faerie." this line!!! like i am simultaenousy so found of Noiash-Pa and also. did he just let a 14-year-old live on his own??? to exercise those "independence" muscles i suppose but talk about sink or swim
I'm intrigued by the fact that Morrolan decorates his castle with Eastern art--which is not dispositive of any views but it's a data point. When he calls the Interregnum "wilder times" and confesses to missing those days---Idk what we are supposed to think. That the chaos of the Interregnum and losing the capital city resulted in the leveling of a lot of hierarchies, I think is irrefutable. War, famine, disease are great levelers. But while I think his experiences during the Interregnum may have erased certain preconceptions about Easterners that were bred into him, and allowed him to see Vlad, for one, as a human being...he still doesn't strike me as any more inclined toward structural change than Vlad is.
other things i was excited to see: 5 hour energy drinks!!! in the form of kelsch leaves. And teenage!Vlad pronouncing witchcraft more "fun" than sorcery because it involved more preparation lololol Ravenclaw harder, i dare you
Wait wait wait if you haven't read The Paper Menagerie, Liu's Hugo-, Nebula-, and World-Fantasy-Award-winning marquee short story, what have you read? You should read it btw I promise it's good. Not good in the groundbreaking sense of doing anything new but good in the sense it nails what it's doing.
McGuire series on the Hugo series ballot every year since that became a thing, because her output just overwhelms the 240k words/2 books requirement
incredible! someone pointed out McGuire was on the ballot one year for five different categories and that's gotta be a record right? I do have Middlegame on my ereader now and I think I'm going to have to read it because it'll almost certainly be in Hugo contention, and I've been assured this is a novel in which she "levels up." This is an important caveat bc I don't think McGuire is the kind of writer who produces effortlessly good stories (which is not a knock on her! it actually makes me more impressed with her work ethic and the sheer grit it took to get where she is).
I took out Jo Walton's Hugos book from the library and thumbed through it and you're right, it's invaluable. I got a lot of recs and continue to be blown away by how uncannily our tastes align. It shoudln't be possible, really. But she was unimpressed with the same books I was, and every time she seemed extra enthusiastic about anything I took note. At this rate (and having learned of her love of Vlad Taltos) I am going to have to read Ada Palmer aren't I.
I don't think I'd have absorbed so much about out-of-print SF/F classics from more than half a century ago in any other context, so thank you for filling up my brain Jo!
Basically, I've seen it done better and more entertainingly? (and I've seen a very similar reaction from other people who grew up on Soviet sci-fi and read 3BP)
Makes sense! I've heard Cixin Liu give interviews and he always emphasizes his western influences, but i guess he woudl, wouldn't he--he was speaking to a Chinese audience to whom all the Soviet/Eastern-Bloc stuff would be baked in. My dad still waxes lyrical about the terrible Hungarian movies he was made to see as a kid because there was an embargo on any First-World cultural products. But if that's your cultural context, it's no surprise a fish wouldn't notice it's swimming in water. Thanks for the heads-up!
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Date: 2020-02-13 11:33 pm (UTC)LOL, wow, I did not expect that either XD (I must've seen the Brust post, but back in 2014 Jo Walton's name would not have meant much to me.)
(I do actually like The Princess Bride -- the movie probably more than the book, but I read the book first and still liked it. Admittedly, though, I was probably young enough that even if I didn't skim the framing story (I don't THINK I did, anyway...), I was probably paying way less attention to it than to the "good parts" story, and probably not thinking about the interplay between the two.)
(Also, every single thing you link me to with Jo Walton is gold. Please feel free to keep doing so! And, in turn, I'm glad you got her Hugo book. I read it cover to cover in library copy -- recommend it, btw! Even other people's comments are great and well-curated -- and then bought a copy for myself, which I don't do very often. I also walked away from it -- and Jo Walton's panel at Worldcon (I mean, there were other people who also said stuff, but I was there for Jo Walton, and mostly took notes on what she said) with a whole bunch of recs, and if there's overlap in our lists, which I'm going to assume there is, I'd be more than happy to sync read more Walton-recommended SFF with you :D)
I am going to have to read Ada Palmer aren't I.
Well, I'd highly recommend it :D (I mean, not in general -- it's a very odd series, and I can easily see people bouncing off it. But it's a very thinky, crunchy series, for a reader with tolerance for some pretty dark stuff, unreliable narrators, terrible people, and 18th century prose -- and I think it may work for you. It is the SMARTEST edifice I've read in a long time, I think, and I think odds are better than average that you would appreciate it in a similar way that I did (and K did, and Jo Walton did).
his personal politics making his achievement with Teckla all the more impressive and I have to say you are Correct. I am Impressed.
I forget if it was an interview or his blog or where I saw this, but I've seen Brust say that he intentionally tries to keep his politics from being soapboxy in his fiction, by making sure that his protagonist does not share them, and if there is a character who does, that there are sympathetic and prominent characters who disagree with them. (Like, in The Incrementalists, the character who shares Brust's politics is, like, the member of the secret society that everyone else agrees is a huge jerk XD) I respect that a lot!
Ok I finished Taltos!!! and it is 10/10.
:DDDDD (So, I do love Taltos for a bunch of reasons, from the triple timeframe braid to the most thorough look we get at Vlad's past, but in no small part I also love it because it might as well be a Vlad/Morrolan ship manifesto :D Also, I'm just going to put it out there: life-changing fieldtrip to Deathgate Falls :D (But, OK, my waterfall of Taltos thoughts will keep until your actual write-up :)
My take is he's behaving the way he expects a mob boss ought to behave if he wants to keep his reputation/respect
Yeah, same. I also think he's trying to operate by the rules he's learned for dealing with the Jhereg (Ravenclaw Secondary style), only it's DEFINITELY the wrong set of rules to employ with Morrolan. (I remember Brust saying that Vlad's behavior on the stairs surprised him, and he stopped there, convinced Morrolan was just going to kill him and there went the three already published books. But "they worked it out" (or something like that) XD
but it's exactly the kind of thing a writer with Brust's politics would build into a character like Vlad, who does not share those politics.
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me! and I'm really glad you pointed it out, because I, without Brust's politics, would not have thought of it that way.
and also. did he just let a 14-year-old live on his own???
Yeah, that seems a bit rough! I mean, he did look after Vlad still... and I suppose there were promises he made to Vlad's father that he still felt bound by even after the father died?
he [Morrolan] still doesn't strike me as any more inclined toward structural change than Vlad is.
Nope! Although, admittedly, he's in a position of much higher privilege (he's a rich noble whose House is in ascendance, among other things) so there's less of a reason for him to back structural change.
But actually Morrolan's views on Easterners and his history with the Interregnum are more complex than Vlad realizes at this point (or probably ever will). He gets a bit of the history in Issola, and a bunch more of it -- some of it possibly made up, but, you know XD -- in the Paarfi books. Which I'm not sure if you're planning to read -- they are very different from the Vlad books, and I'm less of a fan myself, except that some of the great character bits for some of my favorite characters live there. Tiassa in the Vlad series, when/if you get to it, will give you a sense of Paarfi style. If you decide it's not for you, I'll gleefully provide a digest on the bits important to Vlad canon :)
Wait wait wait if you haven't read The Paper Menagerie, Liu's Hugo-, Nebula-, and World-Fantasy-Award-winning marquee short story, what have you read?
LOL! I have read "Quality Time" in Robots vs Fairies and I thought at least started something else -- "The Hidden Girl", maybe? since I have the anthology. Well, and now I've also read "Paper Menagerie", thank you for the link! -- I also teared up, and really liked some of the lines (the difference between one language speaking from the heart vs not, YES), although I do think it lays it on a bit thick. But it is certainly effective at what it's doing, and I'm definitely glad I read it; and I like it more than "Quality Time". (I read it as fantasy rather than sci-fi, btw :) Anyway, in light of that story and "Quality Time", I'm starting to wonder if Liu can write narrators who are not ambitious, self-centered dicks...
I do have Middlegame on my ereader now and I think I'm going to have to read it because it'll almost certainly be in Hugo contention, and I've been assured this is a novel in which she "levels up."
Interesting! I'll wait to see what you think... My trouble with McGuire is that people I know have mostly either given up on her because she is Not For Them (for many of the same reasons I find her frustrating) or people love ALLLLL her things, and so their love of something of hers is not at all a predictor of quality/that I'll enjoy a particular book. But I think you and I are in the same kind of limbo, so hopefully your opinion will be :) I definitely think she has plenty of room to level up, so hopefully it's true, and in the aspects that I personally care about, heh.
I've heard Cixin Liu give interviews and he always emphasizes his western influences
Oh, interesting! Because I definitely did not notice any, but as you say, fish and water :) I do wonder if Cixin Liu has read those particular works by Lem and Strugatsky that 3BP reminded me of, or if it's a case of convergent evolution...
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Date: 2020-02-15 03:26 am (UTC)the movie probably more than the book, but I read the book first and still liked it
same! i saw the movie first too. i found jo’s compare-and-contrast of movie and book framing devices very illuminating. but yeah at age 13 i skimmed right over the frame story
every single thing you link me to with Jo Walton is gold
Omg so glad to hear that! I will continue to bombard you with links. Starting with this one: I have found a strong candidate for our next sync-read book (the next one after Deeplight, i mean). Please tell me if you’re not as sold on it as I am. Jo’s summary has me vibrating with excitement. it sounds to me like Guy Gavriel Kay but leveled up, and just the type of crunchy text that it’d be productive to read together instead of flailing along on one’s own. and the number of SF/F luminaries in the comments chiming in to say it’s an old favorite of theirs, one they’ve reread many times. finally, when i went hunting for a copy, of course it’s out of print but then a curious thing happened when i tried to request it via interlibrary loan—I belong to two different library networks. The first one had 1 copy and 10 people waiting to get ahold of it. the other network had 1 copy and thirty people in the queue. for a book published in nineteen eighty-three. If you’d rather not risk an unknown author or the premise doesn’t appeal to you quite as much, do not hesitate to say so!!! I think i’ll have to read it myself, any road, so no harm done. (there's a reprint coming out september 2020)
well i posted my Taltos writeup but it seemed to me a general-audiences writeup and not an Anna-audience writeup, so here are some Anna-specific thoughts, feel free to respond here there or wherever!
I cannot believe that we got Spellbreaker’s origin story and it was…that. omg still not over it. I don’t think Vlad is generally speaking a himbo but that was Big Himbo Energy
that Vlad sends up those “Verra preserve me” prayers almost reflexively—he’s in danger all the time so he does it all the time—is cast in a rather different light by these events and holy shit i just started Phoenix and did she just—summon Vlad so she could hire him for a hit wtffff haha
You’re right about this book reading like a ship manifesto btw. By the time we got to Vlad calling Morrolan’s bluff “You? Attack a disarmed opponent?? Pffttt” I was completely :D because this is so! much! growth! since that ultra-tense moment waaaay back there on the stairs when he completely misread Morrolan and the protocols and he was operating under (you are also right that he’s transferred Jhereg protocols to Dragonlord-interactions and this mismatch is hugely important in driving both character + plot—though maybe less plot than character)
You’re again right that the narrative is a triple-braid not a double-braid durrrr I can’t believe I missed that. I knew the third braid was occurring in the future ofc but I think it’s the kind of thing that has more impact on a reread when you already know what’s coming down the pike and you can pick apart the resonances.
my waterfall of Taltos thoughts
i see what you did there. you have Deathsgate Falls thoughts, i’m listening!
Brust saying that Vlad's behavior on the stairs surprised him, and he stopped there, convinced Morrolan was just going to kill him and there went the three already published booksthere were promises he made to Vlad's father that he still felt bound by even after the father died
OOHHH promises. yes, those would bind Vlad’s father and Noaish-Pa, wouldn’t they, despite their disparate worldviews.
the Paarfi books. Which I'm not sure if you're planning to read
i saw my first Paarfi reference (Cawti was reading him). or maybe it was just the first Paarfi reference I noticed. atm i’m all in for Vlad so I will leave the option of reading Paarfi books open, and also the option of consuming them via Anna-digest also open :D
Like, in The Incrementalists, the character who shares Brust's politics is, like, the member of the secret society that everyone else agrees is a huge jerk
whoah. have you read everything Brust has published btw? none of it hits the spot the way the Vlad books do? i think in general it’s hard to keep one’s political views out of one’s fiction, since an author is a whole ass person and not divisible into literary and political personas; otoh giving a soapbox to a character (without interrogating it) is a surefire way to turn all your readers off, so i do appreciate that Brust is aware of & avoids this pitfall!
I'm really shook by how much I'm getting out of the Vlad books, and how much MORE i get with you as my bespoke guide & concierge, but ALSO how because i'm farther to the left of you politically I see different angles than you do and we put our heads together and get more combined angles and that's incredibly cool
although I do think it lays it on a bit thick
:nods: Mmhmmm. I think a lot of his stuff (having read 1/2 of Grace of Kings) could benefit from a lighter touch. Doesn’t mean I don’t cry every time I read Paper Menagerie, however. I am happy that it worked for you (tho i wasn't TOO worried on that front, it's a pretty broad-appeal story).
starting to wonder if Liu can write narrators who are not ambitious, self-centered dicks
lmao this is an open question. i don’t think the protagonist of Grace of Kings is supposed to come off as a dick, but there was more than one scene where he struck me as one, and i don’t think that was the intended effect
ok we’re talking Stanislaw Lem and which Strugatsky was it? i’m going to amble over to Wikipedia and learn their names in Chinese so i can listen for them in case they come up in future :)
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Date: 2020-02-16 08:10 pm (UTC)'Fraid so! XD (I mean, in fairness, I also know people who bounced off the Ada Palmer book very, very hard -- it's a bit like an obstacle course to the reader (in a similar way that I think Cyteen is shaping up to be, but I think more so) -- but to me the exercise was very satisfying and the destinations so far have been great. (The quadrilogy is not yet finished, but the last book is coming out next year, and already exists in full draft, so it should happen, but like some other authors we could name. One of my flisters has read book 4 and says it was awesome, so now I'm even more excited for it, if possible.)
i found jo’s compare-and-contrast of movie and book framing devices very illuminating.
Yeah, same! I'd never thought to compare them myself (because, to be honest, I never think of the framing story that much in either medium), but that was a very good thing to have laid out for me like that.
I have found a strong candidate for our next sync-read book (the next one after Deeplight, i mean).
LOL, how did you know I've wanted to try something by John M. Ford for ages XD (another good friend of Brust's actually; he wrote one of the "in-universe" afterwords or forewords to the Paarfi books :D) Anyway, as you say, Tor is doing a reprint, so I was planning to wait until then to start figuring out which book of his to start with. Because it hasn't happened yet, I haven't really looked into it yet -- I have some flisters who are big fans, and probably more of them than I realize, like with Cyteen, lol -- but The Dragon Waitingwill be the first to come out, so that might be the deciding point in its favor, anyway. (And, heh, the description did make me think of GGK, too :)
I think I'll go put all the Taltos thoughts in your write-up post (LOL, it is literally impossible for a write-up of Taltos to not be relevant to my interests, but I do appreciate the personally catered addendum <333 XD
whoah. have you read everything Brust has published btw? none of it hits the spot the way the Vlad books do?
I haven't read everything, but so far I've not found anything that comes close to my heart/enjoyment as Vlad does (not even Paarfi, though my love of the characters carries me through and its an excellent companion series for those mutual illumination purposes). Let's see, of the non-Dragaera books, I've read Good Guys (urban fantasy noir with solid bureaucracy) and Incrementalists (co-authored), and about half of Agyar (which is clever!), but I'm afraid my reaction in each case was "why weren't you writing more Vlad", though I do think Agyar is objectively good at what it sets out to do and Good Guys is a neat take on the sub-genre. There's also a fairy tale retelling The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars and Cowboy Feng's Bar and Grill, which sound relevant to my interests but I haven't read yet. Oh, but you might enjoy some of the things I've decided are probably not worth me tracking them down, like Freedom & Necessity (co-authored with Emma Bull, who is another author I love). Or To Reign in Hell, which apparently comes from before the point that Brust decided to keep his politics out of his fiction -- or so I've been told, as I haven't read it myself. Also Brokedown Palace, which is set in Dragaera (in the Easterner lands) though not connected to anything else, except very, very implicitly, apparently works as a Marxist parable as well as a cute original fairy tale.
otoh giving a soapbox to a character (without interrogating it) is a surefire way to turn all your readers off, so i do appreciate that Brust is aware of & avoids this pitfall!
Yep!
I'm really shook by how much I'm getting out of the Vlad books, and how much MORE i get with you as my bespoke guide & concierge
Or consigliere :DDD?
but ALSO how because i'm farther to the left of you politically I see different angles than you do and we put our heads together and get more combined angles and that's incredibly cool
YES, OMG YES! That has been a really, really cool artefact of you reading these books, and I'm so glad! :DDD
lmao this is an open question.
Well that's...encouraging XD I did find that I had more tolerance for it in "Paper Menagerie" than in "Quality Time" (which is something like novelette-length), so it's probably a good indication I should stick to his short fiction, if anything, LOL.
ok we’re talking Stanislaw Lem and which Strugatsky was it?
Yeah, Lem, and specifically his linked short stories oeuvre, like Ijon Tichy and The Cyberiad (that one appears to have had a Chinese translation at least, from the existence of a Chinese wiki page?). And the Strugatsky was "За миллиард лет до конца света" [A billion years before the end of the world] in Russian, but the English title, at least, was for some reason Definitely Maybe, so I'm not sure what the translated titles might've been in other languages. Wiki has a Korean entry for it, but not a Chinese one, though maybe a title is mentioned on the Strugatsky's Chinese page? It seems pretty short, though...
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Date: 2020-02-19 11:32 pm (UTC)thank you for the encouragement that the destination is worth it! I started it and it seems very Victorian and also far-future and there are toy soldiers!!!! my heart
And for the non-Vlad Brust primer!! Emma Bull omg I started her War for the Oaks but I'm in the middle of a spate of parallel-univesre SF novels I want to finish first and then i'll be back to it. It's always fun to look at friendships between authors and see how they feed off each other creatively isn't it? I'm suuuuper behind on Serpentcast and catching up today i was listening to Alex squee about her ARC of Gideon the Ninth and I checked the date and this was last March oof it's not that I haven't listened to any eps since last March but I certainly haven't listened to every minute of every single one, which I did up until about Ep 30 or so. Anyway I also just listened to the portal fantasy one and bumped DWJ's Dark Lord of Derkholm, which I picked up for $0.50 at a library sale, straight to the top of my TBR
Or consigliere :DDD?
lolololol you are correct, i should just bite the bullet and accept the fact i am now a mafioso
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Date: 2020-02-20 01:40 am (UTC)Emma Bull omg I started her War for the Oaks
I looove War for the Oaks! I read it a while ago (though also a while after it came out), so I hope it's aged well, but I remember thinking it's great and it's got a very good take on the fey, I think
that Seanan McGuire could learn a thing or two fromAnyway I also just listened to the portal fantasy one and bumped DWJ's Dark Lord of Derkholm, which I picked up for $0.50 at a library sale, straight to the top of my TBR
Meanwhile, I dug up the ARC of Ten Thousand Doors of January that I've had since like September and started reading that XD
lolololol you are correct,
:D I couldn't resist :D
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Date: 2020-02-21 08:17 pm (UTC)i haven't got to hear from any of them except Major, who seems gr8. Mostly we're hanging with Mycroft. How that man's head hasn't exploded from the number of secrets he's keeping i have no idea. I wouldn't say I'm hooked yet--there's usually a moment near the beginning where I go "aha! there's the hook, i'm confident i won't DNF this monster" but i'm only at 8% and I trust you so i'm not bothered :)
I dug up the ARC of Ten Thousand Doors of January
lemme know how it is!
Oh right, War for the Oaks is Urban Fantasy too! Re: McGuire, someone somewhere on a Discord server mentioned that two of the MCs in Middlegame are twins and there are major shippy vibes and i'm like, torn between my desire to drown in shippy vibes and my desire to take a break from McGuire because i can only take her in small doses, carefully spaced out
I mentioned Naomi Novik's upcoming boarding school fantasy to my sister and she just. Doesn't care. I'm so mad at her. I got her as far as 25% into Black Powder War which where she's been stalled for OVER A YEAR because she doesn't trust me that she needs to GET TO ISTANBUL and then the rest of the book is a riot. and then VICTORY OF EAGLES. Which she will (sob) probably never get to experience because she got bored and peaced out, and i cannot help feeling this is a reflection on my evangelizing prowess
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Date: 2020-02-21 11:09 pm (UTC)He was the one I meant :))
Mycroft. How that man's head hasn't exploded from the number of secrets he's keeping i have no idea.
This is a fair concern!
I think for me the WHOAAA moment for me was towards the end, but a couple of things that grabbed me before that were the conversation between Eureeka (the set-set) and I think it was Carlyle -- not sure if you've gotten to that already -- plus another conversation about set-sets later, and JEDD Mason visiting the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash'. But overall it's really a series that grows as the volumes build (and I should note that books 1 and 2 were meant to be one book and were split kind of at a last moment, which has led to a lot of "all setup and no payoff!" complaints from readers; well, yeah, it's half a book). My reaction after the first book was "this is really impressive but there's a bunch of things it's doing that don't necessarily work for me" and after book 2 it was "WOW!" and after book 3 it was "*flail* when can I have the end??"
twins and there are major shippy vibes and i'm like, torn between my desire to drown in shippy vibes and my desire to take a break from McGuire
Haha, relatable!
and then VICTORY OF EAGLES.
Well, there's Empire of Ivory in between ;) but I tend to forget about it more often than not, lol, because I assume all the things I like about it happened in VoE :P
You should not feel bad about your evangelizing powers! I've come to accept that with book recs it's really a "you can lead a horse to water" situation, and beyond that you win some, you lose some. (In particular, have you heard K use the word "temerairing", as a verb, in the sense of forcing oneself through a series that one is not enjoying because one's friends like it or you promised to give it a shot? :P I'm always mindful of that :PP)
Thread to Discuss Recs mined from Jo's Hugo Book
Date: 2020-02-15 03:35 am (UTC)There were things I bumped down my TBR: I’ve never read William Gibson or Phillip K. Dick and if I die without reading them I won’t regret it. Heinlein I haven’t read either; I’ll start with Double Star, and steer clear of Stranger in a Strange Land. I’m never ever going near Lord of Light or (despite Jo’s love of it) This Immortal, I’m just going to reread my Amber omnibus until the spine gives out.
I definitely want to read:
Samuel Delany’s Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand (i liked Babel-17 but it was brutal)
Ian MacLeod’s The Summer Isles
Robert Charles Wilson’s Last Year—so I had the same reaction as Jo to the last 1/3 of Darwinia, which was wtff??? I went on to read a good chunk of Wilson’s backlist, of which Mysterium is my personal fave; I listen sporadically to Jonathan Straham and Gary K. Wolfe’s Coode St Podcast, which is not a well edited podcast and I do wish Gary would get off his “genre vs literary” hobbyhorse already but I somehow keep panning valuable nuggets out of this stream nonetheless? anyhow, the two of them are always on about how Wilson’s Spin is a book with vast “crossover” appeal and I did like Spin but I didn’t love it. My goal is to fall back in love with Robert Charles Wilson’s writing, and the synopsis for Last Year (time travel!) gives me hope that this is the book to do it.
Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven—Jonathan & Gary keep dismissing it as “minor” Le Guin which is probably fair but why do they act like that’s a mark against it??? “Minor” Le Guin means it’s less dense and it won’t take me a month to process, I say bring it on. Jo LOVES this book!!! Can’t wait to read it.
For Extra Pettiness Points™ here are some books I felt extremely validated for being left cold by because Jo did too: Vonda McIntyre, The Moon and the Sun and Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen. I don’t like Robert J. Sawyer (I read his Hominid Trilogy and went YUCK) and it appears Jo doesn’t either. Jo and I are probably equally conflicted about Ender’s Game and she’s much more conflicted about Dune where I was straight up bored by it.
Re: Thread to Discuss Recs mined from Jo's Hugo Book
Date: 2020-02-16 08:45 pm (UTC)Same on William Gibson, heh. I have read some Phillip K. Dick (there was a period where I watched BladeRunner and Minority Report and liked both, and figured I should readthe guy's books, too, so I read whatever the library had). I am not as put off by him as Walton seems to be, but I also don't know that I get much out of his books? Like, a very weird feeling, yes, but ultimately I don't find them satisfying, so I don't think I'm interested in reading any more.
Heinlein, whom I haven't read but want to try, went on my list with "Double Star" also, so, that seems like a good sync read candidate (I have a flister who read a lot of Heinlein in her youth, and might help shepherd us through. And, yeah, Jo's write-up decreased my desireto read "Stranger in a Strange Land".
I actually really like Lord of Light, because it has a character I adore, BUT it also has some things going on with female characters that I don't like so much. I mean, I can't fault your decision to reread Amber, anyway (I should do a reread myself, at some point).
My to-read list from the book is here. I'll add that I've never read any Walter M.Miller ("The Darfsteller") or any Arthur C Clarke ("The Star"), Bester, or Sturgeon. I have read a little bit of Silverberg and didn't like it, but "Dying Inside" seemed like a very different sort of book, so I was thinking of giving it a shot. And I don't really remember what I was thinking about some of the others...
For Delany, I had "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones". I tried Babel-17, but in russian translation (we had it lying around) and that wasn't working for me, but I didn't get very far with the prose.
I have not read Ian MacLeod, but I think "The Summer Isles" might be not for me. I've also not read any Robert Charles Wilson -- I've heard good things about his books from authors I like, browsed them at the library, but they failed to grab me.
I think it's possible that I've read Lathe of Heaven, but so long ago (early high school) that I remember absolutely nothing, including whether I did or not (I have the same problem with The Dispossessed), so if you read it, I'm probably in!
I've listened to the Coode Street Podcast now and again, mostly as part of Hugo homework, but also the one that Jo Walton was on, because Jo Walton. It does tend to be a bit rambly, but its one of the Hugo nominated podcasts I do like best (well, top half), because it's more conversation than polemic. Oh, and I was trying to remember which book that they'd recommended I subsequently read, and had to go and check my write-ups, and it was Kelly Robson's Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach -- that was one of my favorite Hugo homework finds last year, and Coode Street's recommendation is heartily backed by my own! :D
For Extra Pettiness Points™ here are some books I felt extremely validated for being left cold by because Jo did too:
Hahaha, this is an excellent category XD The Dune quote ("I loved it when I was twelve, and I read the sequels, which are each half as good as the one before, and I didn’t give up until they were homeopathically good.") made me laugh so hard, and share it with Best Chat, who immediately adopted "homeopathically good" as a thing, because how can you not. Unlike Jo, I also never actually loved Dune, possibly because I wasn't 12 when I read it -- I was in my late teens, I think, or maybe right after college. I thought the first book was fine, but not AMAZING, and I liked it less because it was clearly taking itself way too seriously. I think I made it only halfway into the sequel, if that, but am very prepared to believe the geometric progression Jo describes is true XD
And ditto on being conflicted about Ender's Game. I actually had the rodents read it when the movie came out, and skimmed it myself before I handed it to them to make sure I still thought it was worth reading, and, dammit, I still did, and still thought it was a good book. But that's where I would stop, nowadays. I was talking to my manager, who is also a SFF reader, and he actually did not realize that there WERE any sequels after Speaker for the Dead, and I was like, I want to live in your universe, because talk about a book with homeopathically good sequels... :P
Re: Thread to Discuss Recs mined from Jo's Hugo Book
Date: 2020-02-19 11:20 pm (UTC)I liked it less because it was clearly taking itself way too seriously
RIGHT??
"Extra Pettiness Points™ " would absolutely be a recurring segment on the Anna + Lya podcast
because it's more conversation than polemic
oh, true! i keep gettting Kelly Robson confused with Kelly Link, whose Get in Trouble i liked but didn't love (i just had trouble getting into any of the stories or characters tbh) but i think i first heard tell of both Kellys via Coode Street Podcast
thanks for linking me to your Jo Walton's Hugo book writeup! the Walter Jon Williams book sounds like something i would definitely be up for! Ngl at this point I'm more excited for the republication of the John M. Ford book than anything else (books? are the reprinting everything he wrote?)
Re: Thread to Discuss Recs mined from Jo's Hugo Book
Date: 2020-02-20 01:49 am (UTC)As well it should be! :D
I like Kelly Link too (but I've only read her short fiction). And I've not read anything else by Robson except stuff in the Lucky Peach-verse (i.e. the novella and a short story), but I found the world really great and the storytelling really impressive.
Hmm, here's what I've been able to find on Ford: (from here)
"Tor and the family have reached an agreement that will gradually bring all of his books back into print, plus a new volume of stories, poems, Christmas cards, and other uncollected material. First up, in fall 2020, is the book that introduced me to Ford, The Dragon Waiting. Then, in 2021, Tor will publish—at long last—the unfinished Aspects, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman."
Sooo, probably a while before we get any other books republished, and might as well start with The Dragon Waiting.
Re: Thread to Discuss Recs mined from Jo's Hugo Book
Date: 2020-02-21 08:06 pm (UTC)i am h y p e, thanks for link!
I like Kelly Link too (but I've only read her short fiction)
Right, me too! Get in Trouble is a short story collection, and while I liked it i don't think it exaclty ignited a desire in me to seek out her other stuff.
re: Annalee Newitz comment from way upthread, i think you're safe not reading her. the way i see it there's only two reasons to read a book for pleasure: 1) because you'd get something valuable out of it, whether that's enjoyment or ~expanding your horizons~ and 2) because it's so important & impactful you can't not read it.