ase

In the interests of getting my booklist up to date, everything pre-September is below, with notes as-is. 'ware incomplete thoughts and cryptic notes.

A reread of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (Atul Gawande) (2009) which has become indirectly relevant to my professional interests.

Peter Pan (or, Peter and Wendy) (J. M. Barrie) (1911):: Foray into Gutenberg as part of smartphone-as-ereader testing. Meh. This is a story which is a narrow, crisp window on a moment in a particular island nation's history; it does not transcend the constraints of the very dated writing to speak to the wider human condition.

Seven Years in Tibet (Heinrich Harrer) (1953, with new 1996 intro material): Mountaineer on Himalayan expedition is caught in India during the outbreak of WW2 hostilities, escapes from detention multiple times until it sticks in '44, stays in Tibet until fleeing ahead of the Chinese invasion of '50-'51.

And it is charming, in this colonialist "white guy out on a limb" way: ( quotes under the cut )

Finally finished Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) (1863) in June. No one warned me Les Amis could move into Occupy or the less outrageously unaffordable parts of the Bay area without missing a beat. I will refrain from excessive commentary sharing my feelings on Hugo's feelings, but wow, Hugo has a lot of strong emotion tied up in the inevitable forward progress of humanity. He also has a lot to say about the inequalities of the present day. And the one fuels the other, in a happy-for-fans spiral of narration and digression.

Finished a fast skim of The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman) (2000). I like Pullman's writing best when he's making up and exploring new places and people; Amber Spyglass has too many people, places, themes, plots, and a few Better Ideas piled all on top of each other and can't really support the weight.

In anticipation of the new Baz Luhrmann film, I revisited The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) (1925). My appreciation for its literary tricks has increased with age, proportional to disinterested neutrality elevating to loathing of every. Single. Character. There may be an interpretation of Nick Carraway that isn't "go and do something with your life, kid", but until it's propounded to me, it's tough to imagine which characters I'd invite to a dinner party. (Guests ought to be interesting; nice may be optional. I would pay money for some configurations of interesting-not-nice character dinner parties.)

October books: I read them, I logged them, I was 85% done with the post when the Great Hard Drive Meltdown happened. This is the reconstructed version.

The Swords of Lankhmar (Fritz Lieber): One of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Lieber is one of the authors who makes me want to complain about the need for SF to get back in the gutter where it belongs - the science is nonexistent and the creativity more than makes up for it. (For my next trick, I will speak passionately on the need for rigorous hard SF to reinvigorate the field. Watch this space!) Lieber invented some of the gimmes that plague the contemporary fantasy field; his stories self-evidently inspired a number of writers who escaped Tolkien's long shadow. Brust's early Vlad novels feel like some sort of Lieber-meets-potboiler-mysteries-in-Faerie fusion, to me. People with tastes as low as mine may recall Simon Green's 'Hawk and Fisher' books. I'm sure people reading this can name other sword-and-sorcery duos that follow the pattern.

One thing that surprised me when I read this was the bawdiness and scarcely euphemized Evil Overlord's sadistic turn-on. A little wenching is expected; the erotic naked skeletons had my eyebrows climbing. And the smutty almost-threesome-! Despite the '70's-ish pub date, the F&GM books always feel a little older than that to me, so the quantity and explicitness of the carnal lust caught me by surprise.

Anyway. If you like to know where some of the gimmes come from, read Lieber. If you want silly fun reading, read Lieber. If you like your overlords really neurotic and corrupt - you know the drill.

The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten (Jasper Fforde): Third and fourth Thursday Next novels. If you liked the first two, you'll appreciate these; it's more of the same madcap english lit fantasy on acid. Fforde's enjoying exploring the quirks and crannies of his series. Plot arcs are resolved, but the major worldbuilding's happened. I'll definitely read the fifth book in the series if-and-when it comes out, but I'll probably check it out of the library, saving it for comfort reading. Fforde's working in the light and happy side of the spectrum for the moment, and I wish more people could do so with as much panache.

Lyra's Oxford (Philip Pullman): Mostly consisting of the novelette (?) "Lyra and the Birds" wrapped in a sumptuously red thread hardcover binding. The Pretty nearly outweighs the substance of the post-HDM trilogy story.

The Road to Middle-Earth: How Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Tom Shippey): What autumn is complete without gratuitous Tolkien? The importance of words, poetic sagas, and the tension of asterisk/reality in Tolkien's life. What I am most struck by, in retrospect, is the impression of Tolkien trying to write stories that drew strongly on the traditions he studied professionally, and infusing them with his own experiences, and trying to avoid that 'contamination'. Tension, therefore fusion: a table of Rangers, standing silent to face West; an addictive Ring that brings out a stoicism fit for Ragnarok; victories told by the ones who are slipping out on a rising tide. And on the other side, the inconsistencies that might have inspired Tolkien: contradictions in the sources he studied that grew into critical elements of his fiction. And some of the enduring images that spun everything else off.

Hey. I liked it.

I would also like to take note of The Martians, by Kim Stanley Robinson, because I reread most of it in little bits this October. If I had to name my formative authors, I think they'd be KSR, Tolkien, Bujold and Cherryh. To no one's surprise. Though tying in with earlier comments about tension, it's an interesting group of authors: try to stick them on four corners of a semantic rectangle (thank you, Stan Robinson), and some discussions of power, government, optimism, and gender relations sort of immediately spring to my mind's eye. Lois Bujold said at the LoC Book Fair that "genre is a group of books in close conversation" which sort of works for any three of the four, and makes me want to write many more words on formative influences, and why they were.

Coming up in November: Short stories, in several collections, of varying quality. I find it hard to put novels down; short stories cut themselves off if you read too long.