Books read, late September

[mrissa]

Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. Oh, what a dubiously done book. Cohen is very solid when he snarks at Westerners for knowing a great deal about the scary, scary anti-Western Boxer Rebellion and not nearly so much about the Taiping Rebellion that did a great deal more concrete damage to Chinese people. But he has some pretty seriously wrongheaded notions about what people understand of their own experience and its place in history--particularly when he starts talking about "people" being the little people, because of course the great people sometimes understand that they are making history. And then his historical examples outside late 19th and early 20th century Chinese history, towards making this point, are just laughably wrong, and...well. The scoffing. It was not pretty.

Glen Cook, The Dragon Never Sleeps. It took me awhile to attach to reading this book at all, and I finally figured out what it was. The nature of structure made it feel like a short story to me, so my brain didn't process that I needed to. The chapters are incredibly short--there are over a hundred of them, and there are scenes of less than a page within many or most of them. It's space opera, and eventually I got into the rhythm of it, but it started out feeling very weird that way.

Hilary Davidson, The Damage Done. Discussed elsewhere.

Naomi Novik, Tongues of Serpents. I wanted to see what she was doing with Australia, but it ended up feeling very, very middle-book to me, and the journey structure didn't help with that: they went from here to there, and things happened along the way--it's certainly not the case that nothing happened--and yet. Well. I don't know. This was the point in the series where I got it from the library rather than buying it; I think the next one may be the point where I stop reading them as they come out and wait to see how many it takes before there's anything like an ending.

Cherie Priest (cmpriest), Dreadnought. Discussed elsewhere.

Martha Wells, The Element of Fire. My favorite Martha Wells so far. If you only read one Martha Wells, read this one. Good court, good characters, good fun.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction to Tongues of Serpents as well.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Considering that Empire of Ivory has remained on my shelf, unread, ever since I bought it...ah well.

I love all of Martha's stuff, although I'm totally biased by having known her since before she was published. I'm not sure the Fall of Ile-Rien is as good as the rest of it, but the ship is one of my favorite invented places ever.

[redbird]

I keep being surprised that people haven't heard of the Taiping Rebellion. And then I stop myself, and start to wonder what I don't know that they consider equally obvious, because they didn't happen to take the Modern Chinese History lecture course taught by an expert in the field, but I didn't take the introductory Art History lecture that so many people swore was wonderful, or because tornado drills weren't part of my upbringing, or…

At the same time, there's a difference between "knows no Chinese history" (or knows nothing before Mao, or knows only the bits that they read in the papers as they were happening) and the skew that writer is talking about. It sounds rather a shame that he can't see the beam in his own eye.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The Element of Fire used to be available for free on Martha Well's website - and it's still available for free, in multiple e-book formats, here (http://manybooks.net/titles/wellsmother07element_of_fire.html), with the blessing of the author.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Novik is saying there will be nine books, and the final three will form a loose trilogy, so I expect the next one should be less middle-bookish.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Whereas I've been really enjoying the way that Novik is deconstructing the self-mythologizing of the British Empire. It may help to have read, enjoyed, and shouted at a lot of Kipling. I'm reading for the thematic and character stuff, and am slightly disappointed to hear that the series will eventually be wrapping up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No. I have read boatloads and trainloads and any other kind of 19th/early 20th century transportloads of Kipling you can name, starting from a very young age and going to the present. So clearly that's not the difference here.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, so much for that hypothesis. You're not the only person I know who thinks they're getting too travel-guidish. De gustibus, and all that.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

PS--I know well what you mean about Friends Lists and being exhausted.

I went away from LJ for a very long time, feeling generally overwhelmed.

Love from Jackie