Books and things
Oct. 14th, 2014 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerI have approximately three million backlogged, half-finished thoughts on Stuff I Have Read/Watched Lately. Here's a few to clear out the queue.
A Stranger in Olondria / Sofia Samatar
This is a strange and beautiful book, full of longing and the impossibility of truly knowing any person or place. Abigaul Nussbaum has already said much of what I might have said about it, were I as eloquent as she is in that essay. So go read that, and then—if you’re so inclined—come back for my disjointed addenda to her thoughts.
The longing to know is pervasive. The country folk devoted to the cult of the angels want to speak to the angels so that they may know things which are now hidden from them, to feel connected to something now inaccessible. The Priest of the Stone mandates a different form of knowing with books, for “in books we may commune with the dead. Beyond this there is nothing true, no voices we can hear.”
Jevick straddles this conflict over different ways of knowing. At first, his devotion to books cuts him off from living in the present—from his family, first, but also from a true first-hand experience of Olondria, since everything he sees is initially mediated through what he has read. It is no accident that the beginnings of his visit are written as a hazy dream the reader can never quite grasp, and that details of time and place and names become suddenly defined once Jissavet starts haunting him. Then her haunting takes him away from the world as well, in a different way (starting with being literally locked away). Only once he unites the two ways of knowing—listening to Jissavet’s words, and translating them into writing—does he finally really start to know another person, which brings him to love her. Except that once he does so, she moves on, possibly beyond his knowledge forever.
After his experiences, he becomes a semi-hermit, disconnected from humanity, or perhaps recognizing the gulf which already existed. But he tries to reach out, sharing Jissavet’s alphabet and story with the local children, so that they may seek their own knowing, ultimately doomed as all such attempts may be. Everything is in translation, in the end, what Jevick calls “the most violent and sacrilegious form of reading.” Everything is not real but “the land of shadows.” You will never truly know anything, only partial forms, and will always be seeking.
That haunting final line—“I look for her still.”
Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel / Jacqueline Koyanagi
http://www.paperbackswap.com/Ascension-Tangled-Axon-Jacqueline-Koyanagi/book/1607014017/
First things first. How awesome is that cover? SO AWESOME. I admit that about 70% of my motivation for buying the book was the cover.
I have mixed feelings about the part between the covers. On the one hand, Alana is pretty awesome. She’s a “sky surgeon” (i.e. spaceship mechanic) at her aunt’s struggling shop, and to make things tougher, both of them have a degenerative muscular disease for which they need expensive medication. If she misses too many doses, she’s in for a world of pain. This adds great ticking clock tension in parts of the book and makes for a more developed, less-common character background. They’re saving up for the cure offered by the friendly overlords from the next dimension over who have all kinds of amazing, near-magical tech, but nowhere near yet. I also love that one of the main relationships is between Alana and her sister Nova – they don’t understand each other’s personalities or career choices, but when it gets down to it, they have each other’s backs.
Which is a good thing, because the friendly overlords want Nova for some unspecified—but presumably bad—purpose. And the crew of the ship Alana has stowed away on and become junior mechanic for intends to hand her over, in exchange for curing their pilot, who, er, keeps having bits of herself disappear. (The cause sounds like the author watched the Firefly episode “Objects in Space” and ran with one of the ideas River uses to fool Jubal Early. The whole ship family is rather Firefly-ish, actually.) The captain’s Tragic Painful Backstory involves an industrial accident and a prosthetic leg she hasn’t paid off yet rather than a dead little sister or grimdark rape, which is a nice change and also totally logical given the setting to the point where you wonder why there aren’t lots more tragic painful backstories involving big machines and squishy human limbs in space opera.
But. The writing itself is very… first book. And then there’s the giant error: right on the first page, Alana says she’s never been off-world, but then a few chapters later she talks about visiting her parents on the space station in another system where they work. Given that her main motivation at the beginning is to work on a spaceship, this is a hugely significant difference! Has she been in space once and is desperate to go back, or has she never been and is desperate to get there? You can also see the author straining to push the characters into their end-of-book relationships – and it requires some emotional fast-forwarding to get Alana from “the captain is totes hot BUT IS KIDNAPPING MY SISTER AND THREATENED ME WITH HORRIBLE THINGS TO FACILITATE THE KIDNAPPING” to happy sexytimes and “the crew is like my family.”
Verdict: fun, has potential for the author to grow and write more awesome things later, but don’t necessarily rush out and buy it.
ETA from 2021: Turns out this book has really stuck in my mind. Portraying the characters and their relationships that vividly is impressive. And all those refreshingly meaningful, non-cliche details are still pretty cool. I retract my earlier verdict. That confusing continuity error still bothers me, but a relatively fluffy SF novel which handles things like disability and chronic illness as normal parts of life and has happy polyamorous relationships and sticks in your mind years later even if those things aren't personally deeply meaningful to you is a pretty awesome book. If those things are important parts of your life, it's probably even more awesome.
Criminal Minds, 200
So, JJ has been kidnapped by a guy the team knows will torture her for about 24 hours. They realize that the only prisoners he's ever raped were the one he held longer than that, presumably because he ran out of ideas or something? Anyway. Garcia blurts out that they have to find JJ before 24 hours have passed, because you know what happens then!
Because cattle prods, waterboarding, or whatever other tortures he's using for the first 24 hours don't count, I guess.
Oh, did I mention JJ had worked for an "enhanced interrogation" unit while somehow never actually torturing anyone herself, or even being asked to do so? So she's still totally cool?
I'm not sure whether the show used to be better or whether the haze of nostalgia is making the earlier seasons look less fail-y by comparison. There was that horrible not-really-Roma episode, come to think of it. Serialized television, stop letting me down!
Hamlet (And Claudius)
So, David Tennant and Patrick Stewart starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet, and all I can say is *omg incoherent squee* So that's why we keep talking about this play four hundred years after it opened!
So many things I could say. Ophelia ribbing Laertes about his, er, planned extracurriculars in response to his pompous attempt at being a protective older brother reminds you that this is an actual family here, one soon due to be torn apart. Osric is hilarious without, somehow, wrecking the feeling of impending doom. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are distinct individuals, which is amazing. Claudius mixing them up was not only a humorous nod to some theatrical history, but also fits with a pattern he has of not quite remembering some underlings' names, which beautifully gives you the feeling that there's just something every so slightly off about this Claudius guy despite his evident skill at ruling and diplomacy. (That whole "howabout instead of smashing Norway like my bro did, we make a peace treaty" thing completely blew past me every other time I have seen or read this play somehow. This production shows you why the attempt matters.)
Just OMG CLAUDIUS AMAZING AMAZING in general, really. Kyra at Ferretbrain already reviewed much of his amazingness, so I wont' recap it all, but OMG CLAUDIUS.
(I didn't mind Laertes, incidentally. He seemed like an average kid with a controlling dad who gets thrust into circumstances way over his head. Though I guess you have to assume the Danes were ready to revolt for any college boy in a leather jacket who accused the king of covering up a felony, but it's not like we had any idea of what was going on in Denmark at large anyway, so why not? Maybe they want their share of the black marble pillars! Redistribute the marble!)
This is one of the movies where I bothered to watch the director's commentary afterward, and there were actually some interesting points in it. Like the bit at the beginning with the ghost where, after an "it's behind you!!1!" jump scare, one of the guys talking (sorry, forget which one) said something like, "Hamlet is really kind of a thriller." Which had never occurred to me, because it's Hamlet, Prince of English Class. But yes. There's a ghost, which may or may not be a demon or the actual dead king. There's a grief-stricken young man all too eager to believe that his hated uncle is really a murderer. There's spying and madness and tension and suicide and will the truth come out before the royal family kills each other off and drags the kingdom into ruin?!?!?
So yeah. Claudius!
A Stranger in Olondria / Sofia Samatar
This is a strange and beautiful book, full of longing and the impossibility of truly knowing any person or place. Abigaul Nussbaum has already said much of what I might have said about it, were I as eloquent as she is in that essay. So go read that, and then—if you’re so inclined—come back for my disjointed addenda to her thoughts.
The longing to know is pervasive. The country folk devoted to the cult of the angels want to speak to the angels so that they may know things which are now hidden from them, to feel connected to something now inaccessible. The Priest of the Stone mandates a different form of knowing with books, for “in books we may commune with the dead. Beyond this there is nothing true, no voices we can hear.”
Jevick straddles this conflict over different ways of knowing. At first, his devotion to books cuts him off from living in the present—from his family, first, but also from a true first-hand experience of Olondria, since everything he sees is initially mediated through what he has read. It is no accident that the beginnings of his visit are written as a hazy dream the reader can never quite grasp, and that details of time and place and names become suddenly defined once Jissavet starts haunting him. Then her haunting takes him away from the world as well, in a different way (starting with being literally locked away). Only once he unites the two ways of knowing—listening to Jissavet’s words, and translating them into writing—does he finally really start to know another person, which brings him to love her. Except that once he does so, she moves on, possibly beyond his knowledge forever.
After his experiences, he becomes a semi-hermit, disconnected from humanity, or perhaps recognizing the gulf which already existed. But he tries to reach out, sharing Jissavet’s alphabet and story with the local children, so that they may seek their own knowing, ultimately doomed as all such attempts may be. Everything is in translation, in the end, what Jevick calls “the most violent and sacrilegious form of reading.” Everything is not real but “the land of shadows.” You will never truly know anything, only partial forms, and will always be seeking.
That haunting final line—“I look for her still.”
Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel / Jacqueline Koyanagi
http://www.paperbackswap.com/Ascension-Tangled-Axon-Jacqueline-Koyanagi/book/1607014017/
First things first. How awesome is that cover? SO AWESOME. I admit that about 70% of my motivation for buying the book was the cover.
I have mixed feelings about the part between the covers. On the one hand, Alana is pretty awesome. She’s a “sky surgeon” (i.e. spaceship mechanic) at her aunt’s struggling shop, and to make things tougher, both of them have a degenerative muscular disease for which they need expensive medication. If she misses too many doses, she’s in for a world of pain. This adds great ticking clock tension in parts of the book and makes for a more developed, less-common character background. They’re saving up for the cure offered by the friendly overlords from the next dimension over who have all kinds of amazing, near-magical tech, but nowhere near yet. I also love that one of the main relationships is between Alana and her sister Nova – they don’t understand each other’s personalities or career choices, but when it gets down to it, they have each other’s backs.
Which is a good thing, because the friendly overlords want Nova for some unspecified—but presumably bad—purpose. And the crew of the ship Alana has stowed away on and become junior mechanic for intends to hand her over, in exchange for curing their pilot, who, er, keeps having bits of herself disappear. (The cause sounds like the author watched the Firefly episode “Objects in Space” and ran with one of the ideas River uses to fool Jubal Early. The whole ship family is rather Firefly-ish, actually.) The captain’s Tragic Painful Backstory involves an industrial accident and a prosthetic leg she hasn’t paid off yet rather than a dead little sister or grimdark rape, which is a nice change and also totally logical given the setting to the point where you wonder why there aren’t lots more tragic painful backstories involving big machines and squishy human limbs in space opera.
But. The writing itself is very… first book. And then there’s the giant error: right on the first page, Alana says she’s never been off-world, but then a few chapters later she talks about visiting her parents on the space station in another system where they work. Given that her main motivation at the beginning is to work on a spaceship, this is a hugely significant difference! Has she been in space once and is desperate to go back, or has she never been and is desperate to get there? You can also see the author straining to push the characters into their end-of-book relationships – and it requires some emotional fast-forwarding to get Alana from “the captain is totes hot BUT IS KIDNAPPING MY SISTER AND THREATENED ME WITH HORRIBLE THINGS TO FACILITATE THE KIDNAPPING” to happy sexytimes and “the crew is like my family.”
Verdict: fun, has potential for the author to grow and write more awesome things later, but don’t necessarily rush out and buy it.
ETA from 2021: Turns out this book has really stuck in my mind. Portraying the characters and their relationships that vividly is impressive. And all those refreshingly meaningful, non-cliche details are still pretty cool. I retract my earlier verdict. That confusing continuity error still bothers me, but a relatively fluffy SF novel which handles things like disability and chronic illness as normal parts of life and has happy polyamorous relationships and sticks in your mind years later even if those things aren't personally deeply meaningful to you is a pretty awesome book. If those things are important parts of your life, it's probably even more awesome.
Criminal Minds, 200
So, JJ has been kidnapped by a guy the team knows will torture her for about 24 hours. They realize that the only prisoners he's ever raped were the one he held longer than that, presumably because he ran out of ideas or something? Anyway. Garcia blurts out that they have to find JJ before 24 hours have passed, because you know what happens then!
Because cattle prods, waterboarding, or whatever other tortures he's using for the first 24 hours don't count, I guess.
Oh, did I mention JJ had worked for an "enhanced interrogation" unit while somehow never actually torturing anyone herself, or even being asked to do so? So she's still totally cool?
I'm not sure whether the show used to be better or whether the haze of nostalgia is making the earlier seasons look less fail-y by comparison. There was that horrible not-really-Roma episode, come to think of it. Serialized television, stop letting me down!
Hamlet (And Claudius)
So, David Tennant and Patrick Stewart starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamlet, and all I can say is *omg incoherent squee* So that's why we keep talking about this play four hundred years after it opened!
So many things I could say. Ophelia ribbing Laertes about his, er, planned extracurriculars in response to his pompous attempt at being a protective older brother reminds you that this is an actual family here, one soon due to be torn apart. Osric is hilarious without, somehow, wrecking the feeling of impending doom. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are distinct individuals, which is amazing. Claudius mixing them up was not only a humorous nod to some theatrical history, but also fits with a pattern he has of not quite remembering some underlings' names, which beautifully gives you the feeling that there's just something every so slightly off about this Claudius guy despite his evident skill at ruling and diplomacy. (That whole "howabout instead of smashing Norway like my bro did, we make a peace treaty" thing completely blew past me every other time I have seen or read this play somehow. This production shows you why the attempt matters.)
Just OMG CLAUDIUS AMAZING AMAZING in general, really. Kyra at Ferretbrain already reviewed much of his amazingness, so I wont' recap it all, but OMG CLAUDIUS.
(I didn't mind Laertes, incidentally. He seemed like an average kid with a controlling dad who gets thrust into circumstances way over his head. Though I guess you have to assume the Danes were ready to revolt for any college boy in a leather jacket who accused the king of covering up a felony, but it's not like we had any idea of what was going on in Denmark at large anyway, so why not? Maybe they want their share of the black marble pillars! Redistribute the marble!)
This is one of the movies where I bothered to watch the director's commentary afterward, and there were actually some interesting points in it. Like the bit at the beginning with the ghost where, after an "it's behind you!!1!" jump scare, one of the guys talking (sorry, forget which one) said something like, "Hamlet is really kind of a thriller." Which had never occurred to me, because it's Hamlet, Prince of English Class. But yes. There's a ghost, which may or may not be a demon or the actual dead king. There's a grief-stricken young man all too eager to believe that his hated uncle is really a murderer. There's spying and madness and tension and suicide and will the truth come out before the royal family kills each other off and drags the kingdom into ruin?!?!?
So yeah. Claudius!
