Death takes on an apprentice who's an individual thinker.
Mort
5 stars
This book is the first that really fleshes out the character of Death, one of the best characters in the series, and his obsession with the living world that he can never be a part of.
Another thing I enjoy about this book is the whirlwind tour of the disc - a little bit of Klatch, a little bit of the Counterweight continent, and a lot of Sto Lat and Ankh-Morpork. It feels like the disc is starting to take shape, as it were.
It's the first book in the series that I really can't find any fault with, it's just brilliant.
2020 Reprint of the 1922 Edition. "An American journalist and revolutionary writer, John Reed became …
The writing style in this book is frantic, as if it's just the author's notes sent straight to press, but it captures the nature and energy of the events. It's quite hard to follow what exactly is happening, with the myriad characters, parties, committees, papers and so on, but it is engaging so far.
Over a hundred and fifty years after its initial publication, Emily Brontë’s turbulent portrayal of …
The story of Ellen Dean, a woman born into servitude, who helps to raise two generations of spoiled, petulant brats for a series of masters on the Yorkshire estates of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
Station Eleven is a 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, her fourth. It takes …
Survival is insufficient
5 stars
Station Eleven is a novel about a pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, but, crucially, it is not about the end of the world so much as it is about the birth of a new one.
It follows several characters through different periods in their lives, from decades before the pandemic, to its early days, to 15 and 20 years after the event. Most of the main characters are creatives with different relationships to their art, and to Arthur Leander, a famous actor who dies onstage during a production of King Lear, on the day that the pandemic reaches North America. His death serves a focal point, and symbolically as the death of the old world that brings forth new life.
Life after the pandemic is difficult and dangerous, especially at the beginning. However, most of the focus is on a period 20 years after the event, when people have mostly settled …
Station Eleven is a novel about a pandemic of apocalyptic proportions, but, crucially, it is not about the end of the world so much as it is about the birth of a new one.
It follows several characters through different periods in their lives, from decades before the pandemic, to its early days, to 15 and 20 years after the event. Most of the main characters are creatives with different relationships to their art, and to Arthur Leander, a famous actor who dies onstage during a production of King Lear, on the day that the pandemic reaches North America. His death serves a focal point, and symbolically as the death of the old world that brings forth new life.
Life after the pandemic is difficult and dangerous, especially at the beginning. However, most of the focus is on a period 20 years after the event, when people have mostly settled down into relatively stable settlements. It follows the Travelling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel the Great Lakes region of North America performing Shakespeare and classical music, and a man who builds a museum of artifacts from the fallen civilisation. It's not about an animalistic, Hobbesian struggle for survival, but the preservation of culture and memory, and communicating what we are into the future, because, as the (borrowed) slogan of the Travelling Symphony puts it, "survival is insufficient".
It's about memory and trauma, loss, isolation and hope, it's in turn haunting and terrifying, but above all, beautiful. Loved it.
Station Eleven is a 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, her fourth. It takes …
Content warning
Comparisons of TV show & Novel, spoilers for both
Well it seems confirmed at this point that Jeevan and Kirsten did not have any relationship in the first 15 years, and most likely not in the first 20. Maybe they will meet again at some point, but in the year 15 interview bits she recalls him only as the man who performed CPR on Arthur and was kind to her.
I was genuinely spooked by the disappearances of the members of the traveling symphony, and Kirsten and August getting separated from them. The world of the novel seems significantly more threatening than the one of the TV show, though they both contain dangers and human compassion. In the book, Kirsten talks about how things have settled down from the violence and chaos of the early years, but when we meet the traveling symphony they are thrown immediately into a dangerous situation. In the TV show Kirsten is clearly traumatised by violence, but what we see of the early years seems like a continuation of civilisation, just scaled down - most striking for me was that only a year after the event somebody was plowing roads through the winter snow - and when we meet the traveling symphony they are having a good experience in a peaceful town on their usual route. And yet as Jeevan is setting out from his brother's apartment in the novel, the only danger he seems to face, despite his fears, is isolation. Perhaps there's something about the different experiences of men and women, adults and children, in that.
Station Eleven is a 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, her fourth. It takes …
Content warning
Comparisons of TV show & Novel, so possible spoilers for both
I've read the first couple of sections and really enjoying it so far, but it's interesting to note the differences between the book and the TV show.
1) Jeevan meets Kirsten in the book but apparently doesn't take her to his brother's place. Will they meet at all?
2) The Prophet built his cult on the Station Eleven book in the TV show, but in the book it seems to be based on Christianity. Also he seems to be looking for child brides rather than being a leader of lost children. I assume he will turn out much less sympathetic in the book.
3) The traveling symphony set out for the airport of their own accord in the book, rather than being coerced. Well it's not entirely their choice, but it's not anybody from the airport forcing them to go there.
I wasn't expecting them to be identical, of course.
Content warning
Spoilers for the plot (such as it is)
This book is mostly interesting for capturing a very specific, and now almost unimaginable, time and place - an independent Apple repair shop in New York in the 90s.
The plot is almost non-existent. From what I can recall, there is a particular printer (not a Laserwriter II) that serves as a white whale of sorts for the protagonist, and one of her co-workers persistently and inappropriately hits on her, which may be what prompts her to quit out of the blue - but nothing really happens.
Nonetheless, as a slice of life and tech-support history, it's wonderful.
