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Flashback (June Reading)
Jul. 19th, 2011 10:33 pmWhile most of these are novels new to me, it so happened that I had previous exposure to all three writers.
Kindred (Octavia Butler) (1979): Fiction. One minute Dana is at home, and a dizzying moment later she is on a riverbank, watching a boy drown. Ripped from 20th century Los Angeles to 19th century Maryland, Dana is compelled to keep alive Rufus Weylin, plantation heir and slaveowner - and direct ancestor of Dana's mother - in a time when a black woman is property to be kept in its place. Brutal and uncomfortable, compelling while not stretching my mind the way some of Butler's other novels have.
The Snow Queen (Joan Vinge) (1980): Reread, first pass since my teens. ( Now I have the tools to articulate my lukewarm reaction! )
This wasn't great. The narrative wandered across two planets and bifurcating subplots that eventually (mostly) drew back together thanks to author shepherding. Scientific extrapolation was entertainingly hand-wave-y. The prose put one foot in front of the other. The worldbuilding was enhanced by the narrative sprawl, a plus that kept me reading. As a teen I actually bought one of the sequels and eventually got rid of it unread. This year I figured out what I was missing and got around to World's End, see below.
The Matisse Stories (A.S. Byatt) (1993): Three stories inspired by or mentioning a Matisse painting. I've been using "mimetic fiction" as shorthand for "slice-of-life fiction, usually not that interesting to me". These stories were in that mold: they passed the time but rarely pressed themselves into my memory. "Medusa's Ankles" didn't do much for me one way or another. I could see the craft that had gone into it, but didn't care. I saw the twist coming in "Art Work". "The Chinese Lobster" pulled me in by way of the emotions under the surface. I liked the unfolding layers: it starts out about a student complaint and widens into questions of art, suffering, and death. One of three isn't a great average; these passed the time, but I'm not inclined to hunt out more of Byatt's short stories.
World's End (Joan Vinge) (1984): Sequel to The Snow Queen, companion volume to The Summer Queen. BZ Gundhalinu goes on a quest to rescue his two older brothers, falls in with wildcat prospectors on a jungle-and-desert trek, and gets his crazy on.
An enjoyable reading experience is all about expectations. When I first read The Snow Queen, I expected good fiction, and couldn't put a finger why I felt so ambivalent to it. This year I broke a rule and skipped to the end of The Summer Queen. All those petty concerns about agency, agenda, and multi-novel time-versus-reward were swept off the table when I found out a secondary character got the wormhole technology downloaded to his brain from a relict of theAncients Old Empire and kicked off an arms race.
( Cut for space and incoherent spoilers. )
It should be noted, I was reading this the same week I was completing school applications. A little displaced stress seemed appropriate. So I can't say this was technically good, but it let me add sybil virus to Aurora chairs, needle grenades to your brother's chest, vodka and orange, and the snowglobe flashforward in the lexicon of so over your head, son. And I was vastly entertained in the process.
The Summer Queen (Joan Vinge) (1991): Co-sequel to The Snow Queen. Undomesticated equines could not keep me away from a whopping doorstop epic hinging on a economic/political scramble and one man's undeclared agenda. The core storyline - BZ, Moon, and the threat of empire - is pretty cool, but the execution was way too ambitious. Twenty years of storytelling are refracted through a Greek chorus of PoV characters scattered over five planets, in a Stephenson-sized novel, and somehow several character arcs still feel shortchanged. I anticipated several plot "twists", to my disappointment, and the Tammis-and-Merovy plot was an agenda trainwreck.
( Disjointed plot reactions. )
Numbers game: 5 total finished. 4 new, 1 reread; 5 fiction.
Kindred (Octavia Butler) (1979): Fiction. One minute Dana is at home, and a dizzying moment later she is on a riverbank, watching a boy drown. Ripped from 20th century Los Angeles to 19th century Maryland, Dana is compelled to keep alive Rufus Weylin, plantation heir and slaveowner - and direct ancestor of Dana's mother - in a time when a black woman is property to be kept in its place. Brutal and uncomfortable, compelling while not stretching my mind the way some of Butler's other novels have.
The Snow Queen (Joan Vinge) (1980): Reread, first pass since my teens. ( Now I have the tools to articulate my lukewarm reaction! )
This wasn't great. The narrative wandered across two planets and bifurcating subplots that eventually (mostly) drew back together thanks to author shepherding. Scientific extrapolation was entertainingly hand-wave-y. The prose put one foot in front of the other. The worldbuilding was enhanced by the narrative sprawl, a plus that kept me reading. As a teen I actually bought one of the sequels and eventually got rid of it unread. This year I figured out what I was missing and got around to World's End, see below.
The Matisse Stories (A.S. Byatt) (1993): Three stories inspired by or mentioning a Matisse painting. I've been using "mimetic fiction" as shorthand for "slice-of-life fiction, usually not that interesting to me". These stories were in that mold: they passed the time but rarely pressed themselves into my memory. "Medusa's Ankles" didn't do much for me one way or another. I could see the craft that had gone into it, but didn't care. I saw the twist coming in "Art Work". "The Chinese Lobster" pulled me in by way of the emotions under the surface. I liked the unfolding layers: it starts out about a student complaint and widens into questions of art, suffering, and death. One of three isn't a great average; these passed the time, but I'm not inclined to hunt out more of Byatt's short stories.
World's End (Joan Vinge) (1984): Sequel to The Snow Queen, companion volume to The Summer Queen. BZ Gundhalinu goes on a quest to rescue his two older brothers, falls in with wildcat prospectors on a jungle-and-desert trek, and gets his crazy on.
An enjoyable reading experience is all about expectations. When I first read The Snow Queen, I expected good fiction, and couldn't put a finger why I felt so ambivalent to it. This year I broke a rule and skipped to the end of The Summer Queen. All those petty concerns about agency, agenda, and multi-novel time-versus-reward were swept off the table when I found out a secondary character got the wormhole technology downloaded to his brain from a relict of the
( Cut for space and incoherent spoilers. )
It should be noted, I was reading this the same week I was completing school applications. A little displaced stress seemed appropriate. So I can't say this was technically good, but it let me add sybil virus to Aurora chairs, needle grenades to your brother's chest, vodka and orange, and the snowglobe flashforward in the lexicon of so over your head, son. And I was vastly entertained in the process.
The Summer Queen (Joan Vinge) (1991): Co-sequel to The Snow Queen. Undomesticated equines could not keep me away from a whopping doorstop epic hinging on a economic/political scramble and one man's undeclared agenda. The core storyline - BZ, Moon, and the threat of empire - is pretty cool, but the execution was way too ambitious. Twenty years of storytelling are refracted through a Greek chorus of PoV characters scattered over five planets, in a Stephenson-sized novel, and somehow several character arcs still feel shortchanged. I anticipated several plot "twists", to my disappointment, and the Tammis-and-Merovy plot was an agenda trainwreck.
( Disjointed plot reactions. )
Numbers game: 5 total finished. 4 new, 1 reread; 5 fiction.
