@compostablespork No worries! I have been finding that threading here takes a bit of time to get used to, because it's in that territory of being similar to but not quite like mastodon's, so sometimes I make wrong assumptions. But anyway, yes I did mean Origin. That first section sounds like rehashing arguments that I'm reasonably familiar with (and you clearly already were too), but it's the added detail I'm interested in because I haven't read anything book length on the subject.
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I'm currently the coordinator of the #SFFBookClub so a lot of what I'm reading is suggestions from there.
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@compostablespork Ooh, I'm very interested to hear what you make of this book. The premise seems both intriguing and fraught.
Content warning section 1 spoilers
@mouse Having finished section 1, I have to say the rest is not as intensely grim as the extremely visceral descriptions of desperate hunger in the very first chapter. Not even the burning of the monastery, though I suppose I'll soon see where Zhu ends up after that.
@mouse Good to know. In fairness, the blurb in the book listing is pretty much what will happen in the first chapter, so I shouldn't have been so blindsided.
el dang commented on She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
Mulan meets …
CW: the first chapter is super grim. Well written, I think I'm going to like this book, but it's so grim that I do wish I'd had some warning.
el dang
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Content warning SFFBookClub
el dang started reading She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
Mulan meets …
Time to start the September #SFFBookClub pick!
@Tak@reading.taks.garden Thank you! There's a complete list at docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UW-L9gSLjk8cNaMviI3veGv7ScQa4eEcA5sFeZd7fJM/edit?usp=sharing but tbh bookwyrm is a much nicer format for it. I might start a companion list of potential future candidates.
el dang reviewed A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - …
made me cry more than once
5 stars
I absolutely adored this book. I realise that part of this is that it was a perfect little escape while I was stuck at home with covid, but I do also think it's really wonderful.
It has some similar strengths to the first in the series, in that it's mostly about the relationships between a few outcast characters that become a chosen family and just happen to be in space. But if anything I think it's better written (I guess Chambers getting into her stride with book 2), and benefits from being a more focussed story of a smaller number of characters. And has some weightier things to say about embodiment, the tension between fitting in and freedom, and loyalty & reciprocity.
I am excited about the rest of the series.
el dang
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el dang started reading A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Once, Lovelace had eyes and ears everywhere. She was a ship's artificial intelligence system - possessing a personality and very …
el dang started reading The Butterfly's Burden by Mahmoud Darwish
el dang reviewed Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley
Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that …
How does one review a millenium-old poem?
No rating
I guess in two halves. This translation is 97% wonderful, with the other 3% being occasional grating patches. It is the most alive and readable version I've read, and I think the stylistic choices Headley made all make sense, from the repeated exhortations of "bro" to the ways she works to treat the women of the story--especially Grendel's mother, but not only her--better than other translations I've read. Using the techniques of heavy alliteration and kenning compounds with all modern language really brings home how driving they can be, and the originals must have been when their vocabulary was current. Sometimes "bro" and "daddy" felt over-repeated, and then started to grate, but that really is an occasional glitch in a wonderful translation (and I wonder if I'd even have felt that if I'd listened to the poem rather than reading it, or read it more slowly instead of in …
I guess in two halves. This translation is 97% wonderful, with the other 3% being occasional grating patches. It is the most alive and readable version I've read, and I think the stylistic choices Headley made all make sense, from the repeated exhortations of "bro" to the ways she works to treat the women of the story--especially Grendel's mother, but not only her--better than other translations I've read. Using the techniques of heavy alliteration and kenning compounds with all modern language really brings home how driving they can be, and the originals must have been when their vocabulary was current. Sometimes "bro" and "daddy" felt over-repeated, and then started to grate, but that really is an occasional glitch in a wonderful translation (and I wonder if I'd even have felt that if I'd listened to the poem rather than reading it, or read it more slowly instead of in just 2 sittings).
But even in this best translation yet, the story frustrates me. However much Headley tries to open it up, and pushes back on this reading in the translator's introduction, it's still a story of macho men bragging and proving themselves with violence, in which womens' main role is to be prizes and servers. And Grendel's mother still gets short shrift. She's the character whose violence is the easiest to justify, but her role in the story is still to be an enemy whose defeat we cheer for.
It's amazing to be able to read this snapshot from so long ago, and this translation is now the one that I'd recommend to people. But I'm still so ambivalent about the actual content.
el dang replied to Soh Kam Yung's status
@sohkamyung Heh, I agree, and I bet it would be more distracting if "Tan" were a common name in my milieu. I love the cover art imagery, but this detail is distracting. At least the spines spell the whole names out straightforwardly.
el dang started reading Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley
Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that …
Bro, I've been looking forward to this one for a while.