![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recently read:
Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett. This is the newest Discworld novel, and is largely about the invention of railways. Pratchett spends a lot of time describing people being enthusiastic about trains, but even when I can see that they're really enthusiastic, the book doesn't make me feel the enthusiasm, or what it is about trains as distinct from stamps or knitting that makes them appeal so strongly to so many people, as described. I can see that Simnel loves the engine he built, but what comes across is his pride in workmanship and sense of connection, not why so many people are excited just to see the train. (It's not that I don't get why people like trains; maybe it's that I do, and thought Pratchett could have done more here, given how much time is spent on that along with the action-and-politics plot.)
Other than that, I'm glad to have lots of Pratchett footnotes again, but I wouldn't recommend starting here: not just because I don't think it's close to the best of these, but because a lot of this leans on the previous worldbuilding. I don't think a new reader would necessarily be confused, but some of the things that do work about this book, work because readers already know about a lot of the characters, including some who are only mentioned in passing.
Currently reading:
Our Man in Camelot, by Anthony Price. Thriller from the mid-1970s, which I'm enjoying so far, though I was startled and dismayed in the first few pages by the extent to which the third-person narrative voice emphasized one character's dark skin, while never mentioning any of the white characters' color. We get his "black face" in the first few lines, and then "the big negro [sic]" on the next page. Maybe this will turn out to be somehow relevant to the plot later, but I suspect not; just white being the unmarked state and anything else getting "hey look at this!" This is part of a long series that I am reading in essentially random order, and no hurry whatsoever; other than the odd emphasis on the one character's race, I'd say so far so good, in terms of getting the action moving quickly (it is a thriller, after all).
A Symphony of Echoes, by Jodi Taylor. Another fast-moving adventure, this one involving a badly understaffed organization of time-traveling historians. (I suspect that what makes the other a "thriller" and this not is that Price is using a Cold War background, and Taylor's is sf.) The narrator is trying desperately to keep up with things, or at least keep her feet under her. This is a sequel to Just One Damned Thing After Another, and is full of spoilers for the first book.
Likely to read next:
I'll probably go back to Oxygen, by Donald Canfield, which I got back from the library (after having had to return it so someone else could read it).
Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett. This is the newest Discworld novel, and is largely about the invention of railways. Pratchett spends a lot of time describing people being enthusiastic about trains, but even when I can see that they're really enthusiastic, the book doesn't make me feel the enthusiasm, or what it is about trains as distinct from stamps or knitting that makes them appeal so strongly to so many people, as described. I can see that Simnel loves the engine he built, but what comes across is his pride in workmanship and sense of connection, not why so many people are excited just to see the train. (It's not that I don't get why people like trains; maybe it's that I do, and thought Pratchett could have done more here, given how much time is spent on that along with the action-and-politics plot.)
Other than that, I'm glad to have lots of Pratchett footnotes again, but I wouldn't recommend starting here: not just because I don't think it's close to the best of these, but because a lot of this leans on the previous worldbuilding. I don't think a new reader would necessarily be confused, but some of the things that do work about this book, work because readers already know about a lot of the characters, including some who are only mentioned in passing.
Currently reading:
Our Man in Camelot, by Anthony Price. Thriller from the mid-1970s, which I'm enjoying so far, though I was startled and dismayed in the first few pages by the extent to which the third-person narrative voice emphasized one character's dark skin, while never mentioning any of the white characters' color. We get his "black face" in the first few lines, and then "the big negro [sic]" on the next page. Maybe this will turn out to be somehow relevant to the plot later, but I suspect not; just white being the unmarked state and anything else getting "hey look at this!" This is part of a long series that I am reading in essentially random order, and no hurry whatsoever; other than the odd emphasis on the one character's race, I'd say so far so good, in terms of getting the action moving quickly (it is a thriller, after all).
A Symphony of Echoes, by Jodi Taylor. Another fast-moving adventure, this one involving a badly understaffed organization of time-traveling historians. (I suspect that what makes the other a "thriller" and this not is that Price is using a Cold War background, and Taylor's is sf.) The narrator is trying desperately to keep up with things, or at least keep her feet under her. This is a sequel to Just One Damned Thing After Another, and is full of spoilers for the first book.
Likely to read next:
I'll probably go back to Oxygen, by Donald Canfield, which I got back from the library (after having had to return it so someone else could read it).
Tags: