Books read, early January, and a few other things.

[mrissa]

I am, uff da, tired today, and the dog is ready to play. I sometimes forget how much more tiring it is to do things like making a salad or deviling eggs when I have to work to keep my balance the whole time. And then I go to do them "just quick here" and then am surprised: wait! I'm tired! Well, yes. It works that way.

The people who are going to replace the shower said they would start March 24 or so, and then they called back today to say, "How about Monday?" and I said, "Okay." So there's that. March 24. January 21. They're almost the same. In geological time they're identical. (But I really don't want timprov and the tub falling through the kitchen ceiling one day, so: Monday. Fine.)

I have gotten a Christmas present, two random presents, and something nifty I ordered for myself, so far this week in the mail. So that's kind of cool.

John Barnes, The Armies of Memory. So this was a mistake. Not the book itself, but my timing of reading it: I thought it was the last in its series, which it was. I thought the series was a trilogy. Not so much, it turns out. So thanks to the kindness of one of you, the actual third book is winging its way towards me, and I hope it's still interesting having skipped ahead to the end accidentally.

Anyway. I enjoyed much of this book. Big sections of this book were lots of fun. But I did that thing where you peer suspiciously at the amount of book remaining and you think, "He's not going to be able to do all this in the time he's got." And in fact he was not, and he handled it by totally not doing one of the things I most wanted to see. One of the things that provided for interesting tension was just...left. And I have every reason to think he's done, so...enh. Also I am absolutely sure that the thing I didn't like about this ending would not have been better if I'd gotten the third book where it was supposed to go.

Also I think there are a few bits where he slips on the interface of planetary and interplanetary culture. And also I am really not pleased with the handling of female physical attractiveness and particularly Margaret. NB: you do not count as enlightened when you write a plain woman with a big ass as the love and lust of the main character's life and then go waaaay out of your way every time you turn around to tell us how kinky and atypical this is, how across the manymany planets with manymany cultures everybody likes approximately the same thing in girlses, and when they don't, it's because they personally are total weirdos. These cultures have difficulty agreeing on, say, what the place of sex in society is, or when and how violence is appropriate, or what governance means and how it should be handled. They come from all sorts of blends of earth ethnotypes. And yet they all like exactly the same pretty narrow range of visual things in women? Riiiight.

This is one of the things that has bothered me about Giraut throughout the series. Who is worse than the guy who won't date your intelligent, funny, wonderful, large-assed friend because of the size of her ass? (See also: flat-chested, bespectacled, irregular-featured, etc. etc. as local cultural standards dictate.) The guy who does date her -- and tries to tell her at every turn that he's the only one who will ever want her. Do I need to spell the implications of that lovely piece of behavior out for you? I hope not; and I hope that rather few of us have been in the position of doing the "dump him because he is not worth you dump him dump him DUMP HIM NOW" dance for such a friend. But I suspect it's come up for more people than we'd like; I know a couple people on my friendslist have lived that one from the inside. Combine that piece of ick with the belated revelation that Shan, the boss, had made all of his women employees constantly aware of whether he had the hots for them, and this aspect of the series totally creeps me out. "Oh, women want to be attractive to everyone, not just one guy." No, Giraut, you asshole, they want you to shut the hell up about how open-minded you are to be able to sleep with them. Shut up shut up shut up I hope you get eaten by brain-eating alien robots SHUT UP.

(I will still be reading the third book. But: ew. Ew.)

Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road. Swashing. Buckling. I think it mattered a great deal more to Mr. Chabon that the swashbucklers were Jewish than it did to me -- not from the text of the book, but from the author's note after. He wrote about how he'd told people this book was called Jews With Swords or something like that, and everybody had laughed. I think he needs a better social circle, because mine would mostly have nodded and waited to hear what the Jews with the swords were doing. This may mean I know too many people who are or have been in the SCA. So be it; I wouldn't trade them.

Lisa de Gorog, From Sibelius to Sallinen: Finnish Nationalism and the Music of Finland. Do you care about when Finnish music got the pentatonic vs. the diatonic scale? Do you care about how the tuning of the kantele relates to the Finno-Ugric languages' structural elements? Can you read music and hear in your head what it's doing? If not, this is not the book for you. I wallowed. It was lovely, just exactly what I wanted it to be, and also it did that creepy thing where it supported my secret history in ways I hadn't even thought about. Go, dense and obscure little book!

Nancy Goldstone, Four Queens: the Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe. Where by "Europe" we mean "not really most of Europe" and by "ruled" we mean "in some cases not ruled at all." This book suffered some, in my opinion, from an excess of wishing to be popular, as a genre of history. The overstated subtitle, for example. The scattering of clunky metaphors (fairly clearly intended to be vivid) throughout the text. Hint: if one is comparing a sword and a needle in a medieval context, one need not specify a "sewing needle." No one will stop and say, "Wait, does she mean a hypodermic in this metaphor? What if it's a knitting needle? Perhaps a darning needle?" Also, the sword/needle thing is not actually all that worthy of repetition. On the other hand, trying to get from limited records on these people to actual readable story is hard, and I think worth doing. It's the sort of matrilineal thing that's obscured in a lot of histories but entirely relevant to the time under consideration.

Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel. So the feeling of this was dead-on. The feeling of this book was more 21st century than just about anything I've read. People throw around "post-9/11" this and "post-9/11" that, but this was a book written with awareness not only of 9/11 but of the political mistakes and wrong turns since then. However. The fact that it was an alternate history and the direction in which it took that detracted strongly for me -- I almost always object to alternate histories that end up substantially the same as the real thing, and this one even more so, on the grounds that that kind of political defeatism is the last thing I need at the moment. Also, the ending? Not my favorite thing, let's say. If you're headed straight for a depressing ending, sticking in a deus ex Sino-machina does not make it less depressing.

John Matteson, Eden's Outcasts: the Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. This started with just Bronson Alcott. We all know how I feel about Bronson Alcott, right? (Hint: the working title of one of my future YA projects is, variously, Bronson Alcott Must Die or Screw You, Bronson Alcott or Stupid, Stupid, Stupid Bronson Alcott. I can provide further clarification in the comments as necessary, if you're still not sure how I feel about Bronson Alcott.) So there was awhile before Louisa was old enough to be a character when I was not sure I was going to make it through this book. It is sensible of the author not to have written a biography -- even half a biography -- of someone he hated. I wouldn't want to do it either. But I just want to reach back through history and shake Bronson Alcott until his teeth rattled, which I wouldn't even want to do if I hadn't read Little Women, because the thought just didn't occur to me that one would do such a thing. But then Louisa got to be a person, and it got more interesting from there. And it was very useful for what I wanted, and I knew I wasn't going to like Bronson Alcott anyway.

Priscilla McMillan, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race. Last Oppie book on my pile at the moment. McMillan doesn't have time to explain to you about who is what and who hung out in Copenhagen with whom and how they met their wives. She wants to talk about exactly what the title says. And she has enough interesting tidbits to cram into doing so that it's worth reading this book even if you've read half a dozen other Oppie and/or Teller books in the last few months. Which I have, so I'd know. Points of polemic were brief.

I am nothing like objective here. For as distant as all this was from me -- before my time by a long shot -- I know people involved personally. I had Philip Morrison for a professor for a semester-long seminar on science and culture, and he was one of Oppie's grad students -- one of the ones who actually was a Communist for awhile. And for a similar (and totally different) seminar the next year I had Freeman Dyson, with whom I ended up spending even more time than I did with the Morrisons, and Freeman was not exactly neutral on this topic, either. But it's the problem I have with the news media these days: sometimes people are not neutral for damn good reasons. Sometimes their bias comes from somewhere reasonable and good, and assessing their bias doesn't automatically mean discounting their ideas because of it.

E. Nesbit, The Book of Dragons. I recommend this to a Nesbit completist, mostly. It's short stories, all featuring dragons, all...very Nesbitty. But there's not much room in short stories for the things I like best in Nesbit to come out, so mostly it just made me want to go read Five Children and It again.

Karl Schroeder, Queen of Candesce. Swash! Buckle! Giant gas bag with planetismalish thingers and minisuns inside! Whee!

Charles Stross (autopope), The Merchants' War. He'd better be giving me some story arc endings in the next book, dammit. And this [spoiler] plot: if it goes somewhere lame and limiting for Miriam, I will be out for blood. Bloooood. I'm just sayin'.

Scott Westerfeld, Extras. I am running out of book-notes brain rather quickly. Like book. Yes. Like cultural shift, like difficulties, like characters' mistakes, like book. Um.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

what sort of shower are they replacing? a shower head in a bathtub, a freestanding one, or something else?

(i have a shower that wants replacing, you see...)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a bathtub with a showerhead. They're checking the subflooring and repairing as necessary (there's an internal leak) and redoing the walls and ceiling, replacing the tub, putting in new fixtures, shower door, etc.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And I have every reason to think he's done, so...enh.

Despite the serious "this feels like the end" endingness of Armies of Memory, we are apparently due A Far Cry at some point soonish.

And also I am really not pleased with the handling of female physical attractiveness and particularly Margaret. NB: you do not count as enlightened when you write a plain woman with a big ass as the love and lust of the main character's life and then go waaaay out of your way every time you turn around to tell us how kinky and atypical this is, how across the manymany planets with manymany cultures everybody likes approximately the same thing in girlses, and when they don't, it's because they personally are total weirdos

I may have been overly generous in reading this as "Giraut completely incapable of seeing past cultural blinders" rather than "John Barnes being a jerk", and I'll probably read it again at some point; I was getting annoyed enough with the book for other spoilery reasons that I was not focusing on that in particular.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There is certainly the "Giraut is a total jerk" element to it. But I don't think we see any evidence that he's wrong about the narrow standards across the human-settled part of the universe, and I'd really want that. Contrast with Harry Dresden being a complete idiot about gender roles from time to time, for which the text gives him a thorough smacking.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Put it this way: were Giraut a real person, I would attempt to keep myself and any relevant friends a substantial emotional distance from him at all times. I don't feel even remotely the same about John Barnes without further data. But I also would not pat him on the back for a job well done in this regard.

[loup_noir]

Yay! You've read a few things I've been eying and stuff I've not heard of at all.

I loved "Little Women" way back when. Should I admit that I know nothing of her father, nor really, do I care much...but should I?

The Four Queens book has been one I've been interested in from afar. Am now not sure I want to read it.

The McMillan sounds fascinating, and how cool that you got to meet some of the folks directly affected by it. *makes note of author and title*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bronson Alcott was a minor Transcendentalist who thought he was a major genius, and he hauled his wife and children around after his stupid notions. So no, I don't think much more research is necessary for you there!

It's not that the Four Queens book was bad, it's that it was limited and trying to be vivid beyond what its research matter would bear, I felt.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Also: Bronson Alcott's stupid notions interfered with minor (to him) things like keeping his wife and children fed and warm and under non-leaking roofs.

Yeah, I think that's most of what people need to know about him.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

I've mentioned how much I abhor Little Women, yes? Never could finish it, even as a child. Stupid bloody yank writers.

*sigh* It is entirely likely that I'll have to teach that book one of these days. I already forced myself to teach The Wizard of Oz. Isn't that penance enough? Oh, and I have to teach The Outsiders and make reference to The Chocolate War. Surely, if there is a god, s/he will take pity on me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We had a conversation about it: about how subversive it was in some ways at the time and about how you just can't make yourself care, was I believe how that went.

But I have some fondness for the Oz books, too -- not so much the Wizard as the later ones -- so never mind me.

Perhaps while teaching The Outsiders you could do the West-Side Story-style snaps and see who noticed? Maybe?

[timprov.livejournal.com]

We had a conversation about it: about how subversive it was in some ways at the time and about how you just can't make yourself care, was I believe how that went.

That was me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it was each of you separately, actually.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

I do not recall this conversation, but I may very well have blocked it out of my memory. Lousia May Alcott? Bah.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Hee . . . maybe.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I never made it through Little Women. I eventually asked Mom to point me to the death scene because someone in a Baby Sitters Club book cried at it, and... I totally missed it. It was not the book I wanted to read then, not the book I want to read now, just... not. However, I did enjoy a my-parents era biography of Louisa May Alcott, even if I didn't understand all of it at the time. There was a very small mention of a colored boy, and because I'd never heard of colored people, I have to this day a mental vision of yellow and pink and purple patches all over someone's skin.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

The way things are going for Miriam, the series has now been moved down to "buy it when it's in paperback" status for me. *sigh*

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

It's been moved to "not read" for me, alas. For the same reasons as Karen Traviss. Leah likes her plot arcs to touch earth every so often, so when the new problems start up we have some sense of natural consequential motion.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Paperback for both of them, for me.

I am currently more disappointed in the Stross one, because I think he had a lot of potential and just did boring stuff with it. Now, this may just be Stross; I have been unimpressed with almost everything of his I've read (though I did enjoy the "Occult service" books). I keep getting suckered in because people keep telling me how much is stuff rocks... but I do not agree.

Traviss: I suspect she jumped the shark in the last one. I'll give her some benefit of the doubt until I read the next, though. I do think she needs to resolve a story arc or 2 sometime soon rather than just throwing more and more balls in the air!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I really like Stross's SF stuff (particularly Accelerando and Glasshouse). How much this has to do with being stand-alone novels, with the structure requirements those entail, may have something to do with it. I have a very low patience threshold for Interminable Series Fiction. What he does that I really love in those, I think, is...a mixture of the world living on the page, conveying a lot of technical information in very digestible fashion, the humour, and just the wild ballsiness of some of the ideas.

Traviss...I tried to read the last one. I picked it up off my coffee table and put it back down about once a day over five weeks, wailing "but nothing'll happen! Just like the last one! AAAGH!". Then I remembered I didn't have to read the nice book if it would hurt me. So I didn't.

Also, there's only so much page mileage you can really get with "oh noes! they're coming to blow up Earth! You deserved it! Oh noes! ...still coming! Almost there! Another twenty years now!"

Give me my boom or shut up.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Well, I was bored by "Accelerando". (Haven't read "Glasshouse" yet, though I have a copy.) I think to me most of the plot points, such as they were, seemed utterly arbitrary, and the characters didn't engage me at all; they too seemed more like cut-outs than persons. I think I had the same problem with it that I often have with fantasy: if everything is possible, little is interesting. *shrug* Personal taste, I'm sure, since lots of people loved the thing!

Traviss REALLY NEEDS to close down one of her plot arcs and not just keep adding more. The new aliens in the latest were the shark-jumping, I fear.

I was totally entranced with the series when it seemed it was going somewhere. I like the moral ambiguity. But damnit! at this point it seems enmeshed in stasis, and that's really boring! Even if she does write pretty good aliens, for the most part.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I liked the aliens. I liked the world, and I liked the ethics. I sorta wish it had ended after three books, so I could still like it. :p

[zalena.livejournal.com]

An Alcott book I haven't read! I will check it out with your caveat. Bronson also pisses me off. William Godwin is ALMOST as bad.

I'm also interested in the Oppenheimer book. Do you have a favorite overview on the subject?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Are you more interested in an Oppenheimer bio or a Manhattan Project book or a HUAC hearings book?

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Probably a Oppenheimer bio or a Manhattan Project book.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, then I'd start with Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I think it's the classic. It's very well done, and if you like you can then follow up with Dark Sun, which is about the making of the hydrogen bomb.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

You had a seminar with Freeman Dyson?


Wow.

Re the Book of Dragons, I read it in my childhood library, where for some reason it and The House of Arden were shelved in the children's section , not with the fiction but rather in the stall way at the back end with the books for adults about teaching children. I have no idea why. Anyway, it was a quarto illustrated version. It's been a very long time, but I think it's probably better that way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Freeman came to my first public reading. He is a big ol' SF fanboy (well, he's not very big, but definitely a fanboy) and was going to his first con the weekend I was going to mine, so we freaked out together. He was simultaneously thrilled and terrified to be meeting Octavia Butler. He is a wonderful, wonderful person.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Again, all I'm left with is "Wow".

Except, I wish I'd heard Octavia Butler's reaction!

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Well, in theory it could have been a tapestry needle. Not that that would make an awful lot of difference to the desirability of the metaphor, probably. [/Pedant]

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My point was not, "There is no other needle it could have been!" but that it made the metaphor clunky without genuinely adding information.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I thought that was probably the case.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I had no idea there were all these people who don't like Little Women.

Jo, who still misses Beth and hasn't forgiven Amy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Was it one of the things forced on children to read in the UK? It was here, and I tend to expect that anything in that category is going to be hated by a subset of the population made to read it.

While I am an Eight Cousins partisan, I encountered Little Women long before anyone might have tried to shove it down my throat, so I don't have that taint on it, and I liked it, too. (Even with the taint of Transcendentalism on them, I am and always have been satisfied that Jo and Rose both ended up with total nerds in the end. I know there are people who wanted Jo to end up with Laurie, but I say he and Amy deserved each other, and you can appreciate how much that means.)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Is the Finnish music book going to be interesting to someone with a passing acquaintance with Sibelius and an even slighter acquaintance with Rautavaara? Because if so, the thing about a correspondance between tuning and language sounds fascinating.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would say that great familiarity with Finnish composers is not necessary in order to find this book interesting.

I'll also caution that it is a bit expensive, so if you can't get it through interlibrary loan and have no deep and abiding interest in Finland and its composers, it may not be worth your time.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks.

[keilexandra]

I liked EXTRAS too, though I only had slightly more to say about it than you. I like Westerfeld's stories (the cultural references in EXTRAS was especially nice) but I can never find much to say--fluffy, breezy, fun, and there ya go.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I know what else I have to say:

I like how the mistakes in his books are us-mistakes, not them-mistakes. They're the things that smart people would do, valuing reasonable things to value, not things that only total idiots or total villains would ever think of. While I think stupidity is a great force for the worse in this world (obviously!), I think it's too easy to be self-congratulatory about being smart and miss the ways in which we've been smart in too narrow a direction. And Westerfeld refuses to do that.

[keilexandra]

Definitely.