Also eldang@weirder.earth
I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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This is Standard Ebooks' collection of Gogol's shorter works. It appears to be a compilation …
Confusing listing, because Standard Ebooks seems to have made their own meta-compilation from various translations of Gogol's shorter works. Here's their page: standardebooks.org/ebooks/nikolai-gogol/short-fiction/claud-field_isabel-f-hapgood_vizetelly-and-company_george-tolstoy
Christmas present! I think I might try reading one chapter a day.
Jade City is a 2017 fantasy novel by Fonda Lee. It won the World Fantasy …
I'm not usually all that excited about either really martial fantasy or mob stories, because both tend to rely on either very flatly good/evil dichotomies, or just telling the reader that one set of characters are the good ones and should be sympathised with.
At first, this book felt like it was going down that road, since our introduction to some of the core characters is them dispensing a lot of violence for profit, against some thieves who I found myself sympathising with. But by about 1/4 of the way I was getting reeled in by the Kauls' charm even as I was never convinced by their goodness. I think that ambiguity is one of the great strengths of Lee's writing. She could so easily have brought the world another set of Atreides/Skywalkers/Gandalf-and-the-hobbits, and instead we got some much more interesting, real and complex characters fighting a much smaller war. …
I'm not usually all that excited about either really martial fantasy or mob stories, because both tend to rely on either very flatly good/evil dichotomies, or just telling the reader that one set of characters are the good ones and should be sympathised with.
At first, this book felt like it was going down that road, since our introduction to some of the core characters is them dispensing a lot of violence for profit, against some thieves who I found myself sympathising with. But by about 1/4 of the way I was getting reeled in by the Kauls' charm even as I was never convinced by their goodness. I think that ambiguity is one of the great strengths of Lee's writing. She could so easily have brought the world another set of Atreides/Skywalkers/Gandalf-and-the-hobbits, and instead we got some much more interesting, real and complex characters fighting a much smaller war.
Along with that, Janloon feels like a living breathing city, the combination magic/technology/martial arts system strikes a good balance between epic powers and finite, human limitations, and the geopolitical background adds a little grounding without intruding too much.
Some criticisms: aesthetically I don't like magic systems being described as discrete Abilities--that can make a fight feel a bit like narration of a video game--and some of the world-building is a bit front-loaded. But overall I loved this book and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the …
I was quite charmed by The Conference of the Birds for some time, but eventually it became rather repetitive. The basic theme is delightful: the hoopoe painstakingly convincing all the other birds to join it on a spiritual quest, which they keep making excuses to cover up their cowardice about. But I was hoping a work of this length would have more breadth of discussion, without which it starts to feel like the same argument over and over again.
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, …
Content warning spoilers, though, you know, it's a book older than me
I first read Dune when I was about 11 or 12, and I absolutely adored it. This year's movie was excellent, and it made me want to reread the book, albeit with trepidation from all the critiques I've heard as an adult.
Re-reading as an adult was kind of painful. The elements I liked were all still there, but there's so much about the book that is just horrible. A few:
I love the Fremen and the ideas about geoengineering the desert planet, but by the end they were just barely enough to keep me reading.
I don't think I've ever said this about any book before, but I strongly recommend just watching the movie and forgetting about the book.
I've kind of lost interest in Don Quixote. Any half dozen or so chapters are fun, but after that the joke gets very old very fast. I think I'll keep occasionally dropping in on the group read, but I'm not even bothering to read chapters for the weeks I miss because it's not like the story really advances.
Also, as I near the end of the book: come on Herbert, say "race consciousness" and "terrible purpose" one more time, I dare you.
The other issue with the Harkonnens is just that they're so purely, cartoonishly evil that their existence lets the Atreides off the hook for being white-knight colonisers who think they're so much purer than they are. A subtler villain would leave more space for considering that tension between the Atreides' self-concept and the colonialism inherent to how they found themselves on Arrakis in the first place.
OK, the first few chapters of this were a riot, but by chapter 20 the joke is getting verrrrry repetitive.
@sohkamyung Yeah, it really does make sense, and re-reading it with adult eyes the hints about why certain tech was abandoned are there and intriguing. I hadn't remembered them, so when a friend referenced the "Butlerian Jihad" a few years ago I thought he was referring to stuff that's deep into sequels I hadn't read or something. And in hindsight it just seems odd that this part of the worldbuilding didn't make more of an impression on me back then - it's actually well done, and without it the backstory would be a bit random.
Bleargh. I remembered that the portrayal of Baron von Harkonnen was gross and fatphobic, but I'd forgotten that it extends to the whole House, and I don't think I'd quite processed the homophobia attached to it. There are so many interesting elements to this book, why did Herbert have to throw this one in?
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, …
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
— Dune by Frank Herbert (Page 17)
This quote from the Reverend Mother in the very first scene is... prescient.
And it's interesting as a re-read because I didn't remember the general backstory to the oddly low-tech elements of Dune being explicit. I guess when I read it the first time they weren't the parts that made an impression. Not sure how much that reflects how young I was or how long ago it was in terms of tech progression.
Also, I have the edition pictured and I think it has some terrible careless typos in it. Or does the Reverend Mother really talk about the "Swisatz Haderach" in the first chapter? I suppose that's consistent with how much I don't like this edition's cover art, and how much better the Villeneuve film's visuals fit my recollection of the story and its atmosphere.
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, …
Welp, I enjoyed the new movie a lot but it left me with a lot of questions about my recollections of this book that I probably read too young, at least 30 years ago. So it's time for a re-read.
Content warning mild spoilers inside
A lovely third instalment of the Earthsea series, and a good handoff from it being all Ged's story to broadening out. A few off notes though:
I gather that the later books were in part a deliberate effort by an older Le Guin to fix some of the deficiencies of the first 3, especially around gender (even in Tombs of Atuan, I found Tenar more a captive who has things happen to her than a full actor). As much as I did enjoy this one, it's made me look forward to those even more.
