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What am I reading now?
I seem to be reading some books rather slowly, so these two have both been listed under this header before:
Anasazi America, by David E. Stuart. I am now up to about 1350, and enjoying the archeology and the explanations of how cultures in the Four Corners areas changed and interacted. I think he's onto something in terms of parallels to our own situation, as well as the importance of climate, but it feels a little heavy-handed.
King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian Macdonald. Too early in the book to have much to say about it, except that I can entirely understand some of the reasons the characters are annoyed with each other, without anyone actually doing wrong. [Having posted this two weeks ago, I put the book aside for a couple of weeks, but am hanging onto it for now.]
What have I read recently?
A Door into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski. I liked the Slonczewski book I read before Wiscon, and this seems to be considered her best work, so I picked up a copy at Wiscon. It's very good. I liked the world-building and many of the characters—and even some of the ones I didn't like were believable, not villains for the sake of driving the plot.
It's hard to say a lot about this without risking spoilers, but I liked the Sharer culture (that's what they call themselves) on the ocean world Shora, who have what seems to be fairly advanced biotech but are still very much constrained by the realities of their ecosystem. The Stone Moon isn't described in as much detail, because most of the story takes place on Shora; we see a few places on the Stone Moon, and some of the ways that it differs from our own world, along with the similarities. It's unusual reading about a war in which one side seems to deeply understand that even winning the war will be like winning an earthquake, that the best they can do is ride it out and lose as little as possible. I suspect I'm going to reread this fairly soon.
What am I going to read next?
Probably Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States after Anasazi America, and likely some relatively light nonfiction. Or maybe I'll reread Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu, since I just unpacked nine volumes of Neruda.
I seem to be reading some books rather slowly, so these two have both been listed under this header before:
Anasazi America, by David E. Stuart. I am now up to about 1350, and enjoying the archeology and the explanations of how cultures in the Four Corners areas changed and interacted. I think he's onto something in terms of parallels to our own situation, as well as the importance of climate, but it feels a little heavy-handed.
King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian Macdonald. Too early in the book to have much to say about it, except that I can entirely understand some of the reasons the characters are annoyed with each other, without anyone actually doing wrong. [Having posted this two weeks ago, I put the book aside for a couple of weeks, but am hanging onto it for now.]
What have I read recently?
A Door into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski. I liked the Slonczewski book I read before Wiscon, and this seems to be considered her best work, so I picked up a copy at Wiscon. It's very good. I liked the world-building and many of the characters—and even some of the ones I didn't like were believable, not villains for the sake of driving the plot.
It's hard to say a lot about this without risking spoilers, but I liked the Sharer culture (that's what they call themselves) on the ocean world Shora, who have what seems to be fairly advanced biotech but are still very much constrained by the realities of their ecosystem. The Stone Moon isn't described in as much detail, because most of the story takes place on Shora; we see a few places on the Stone Moon, and some of the ways that it differs from our own world, along with the similarities. It's unusual reading about a war in which one side seems to deeply understand that even winning the war will be like winning an earthquake, that the best they can do is ride it out and lose as little as possible. I suspect I'm going to reread this fairly soon.
What am I going to read next?
Probably Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States after Anasazi America, and likely some relatively light nonfiction. Or maybe I'll reread Neruda's The Heights of Macchu Picchu, since I just unpacked nine volumes of Neruda.
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