Currently physically on my bedtable: Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter
Charming. I really liked putting Galileo's discoveries in a cultural, personal setting. About the Medici, the Inquisition, and the Reformation, yes, I knew that Galileo lived and worked in their shadow. But I had not connected the Thirty Years War with his time. At least slightly interdisciplinary. And the ending had just the right sentimental touch.
A.S. Byatt, The Biographer's Tale
At first I thought it was going to be hard, and I'm sure I could read it on a different level if ever I had read Les Mots et les Choses, but I haven't. So it was just fun. She refers to Daniel Deronda and there's an allusion to what might be the leopard of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Vocabulary: the meanings of synaesthetic and adumbrate were obvious given context and my minimal Latin, encomia, and illude. Also, the first time I have come across "quiddity" in a novel that I remember.
Suburban Nation
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
He misuses "decimate" continually; he ignores or skims over accepted facts for the convenience of his premise; he cites almost nothing; he admits the claim that humans have been in the Americas for only 11,000 years is weak and then goes on to base major arguments on that shaky factoid; and he uses lots of personal speculation like "I am not personally aware...."
At the same time, he brought up interesting ideas and it was otherwise often an enjoyable read.
Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool
Yes, again.
Pamela Dean, Tam Lin
Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog
Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer
Loved it. Sustainable, non-tobacco agriculture; factoids; sensuality; connection with nature. Goats. Despite the unnatural exposition in the dialog.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I wish they'd all except Levin thrown themselves under trains. I liked Levin
and Tolstoy's commentary on Russian society and politics but either my translation
(the Maude in a Norton edition sucked) or I wouldn't have liked Tolstoy's style
even with a good translation or I am a cretin without taste. Whatever.
31 January 2002
Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
The eight terrestials landed on Rakhat not having thought about or weighed (that the reader is told about) biological or ecological or any other impact. That peeved me. I wasn't expecting either humans or natives to die of a common cold, because H.G. Wells covered that, or of smallpox, because Europeans in America did that. But if it's part of the world structure that the two bacteriological systems don't affect one another, then I wonder how the seeds could germinate, the foods could be mutually nourishing.
The dialogue might have seemed stitled, but since I knew MDR was trying to Set Up Characters, I thought it was okay. (I have continuing despite continually undermined prejudices about spec. fiction, so when it seemed forced or D.W. too much like Molly Ivins, I thought, eh, it's sff, and let it go.) In the latter portion of the book, I had more of a problem with the writing: everything had to happen right quick--the first two thirds or more being set-up--and it was forced. Because he had new hand-prosthetics, suddenly he got over his reticence? I didn't see it as adequate motivation.
Even if I hadn't known there would be some "Crying Game" Big Secret to look for, I would have seen that this was a Modest Proposal society and anyone who's seen kudzu could've told them not to plant. Marc's excuse that the plants didn't volunteer well was another MDR's blithe escapes from a huge issue. When the second terrestial crew found Emilio in a brothel with child's blood on his hands, you already know the character well enough that he didn't choose either of those actions. And, surprise! he didn't.
What else. Ah yes, Emilio's hands aren't the only part of him that would be bleeding after such abuse. I thought it was convenient that human and native parts would fit together at all. I guess bestiality was written into the dominant species' culture because of how it treated the other, but the two species are built similarly. Happily, I myself cannot fathom using something just because it gives a nice tight fit, as Emilio put it. It felt like MDR wrote it in as a cheap ploy, that this, above being stranded lightyears from home, above the murder and eating of his friends by the predators, above his own eating of parahuman children, would be the worst of all these dreadful things.
I guess the whole second part of the book had no chance with me because I Do Not Like, have never liked, anything as obviously science-fictiony as Descriptions of an Extraterrestial Planet. I am too aware, and too unforgiving of, the fact that a terrestial author invented the ecosystem, and therefore that ecosystem is inescapably terrestial. I cannot suspend my disbelief. I loved The Amber Spyglass except for the bits with the wheeled creatures. Ho-hum.
We don't know, or I don't remember, how much the retrieving crew knew about what had happened before the gardens. For the U.N. equivalent of merchant marines to see a dead child in front of a prostitute and jump to conclusions is one thing, but for the Vatican or the Society of Jesuits to leap to judgment is another. I can see wanting to get to the bottom of it--pardon the pun, I first wrote a much ruder one--since the U.N.'s reports were publicized, embarrassing to the church. But for all the Jesuits, not just Bad Guy Voelkemer, to assume he had chosen murder and prostitution, I don't think, from what I know about Jesuits, to be likely; and I think the author ignored the Jesuits' scholarly reputation to achieve tension while she paced the unraveling.
She made me look up threnody, karstic, and hidalgo in the first 40 pages, and that was good, but there's also alien anal rape and cannibalism not to mention the Jesuit in love with another Jesuit who's in love with a former child prostitute. It sounds like it should be a book on the Not For Browsing shelf of the Paperback Trader. And I didn't have to look up anything else.
There was a young girl in 2019 named Heather "presumably after a grandmother" even though likely after an aunt, and that the characters riffed movies that'd be popular with her given audience--"Princess Bride" chief among them--but apparently these folks were fans of only antique movies, because no one quoted a post-1996 movie. I can forgive her saying that Carl Sagan died in 2017, but if these people are movie buffs, they'd quote recent ones too. Except when, poor in a slum and then in seminary school, did Emilio ever watch PB enough to quote it at will and in context?
There were a couple of future points I liked: the emphasis on woodlessness and that the vote of the next college of cardinals would be announced by a sign reading "white smoke." That was pretty funny. There was nothing about the technical advances between 2019 and 2060, true, but I thought MDR explained that okay by setting most of 2060 in the Vatican and an rustic retreat and with Emilio's curiosity being tapped out.
19 January 2002
Wallace Stegner, Big Rock Candy Mountain
SPM said Stegner writes like a landscape painter paints. Yep. There are a
lot of similarities between this and Angle of Repose, which is a fine
thing--a (grand)son tries to make sense of his antecedents, and it's so beautifully
written, with such wonderful descriptions of my adopted region, that I'll keep
reading four different versions of the same story.
18 January 2002
Lemony Snickett, The Austere Academy, The Ersatz Elevator,
and The Vile Village
Sunny put three words together ("one! two! [one of her words meaning three!]"
and two words into a phrase, "like me!" and is now walking.
I'm so proud. Lemony Snickett is entering his own story as the Beatrice thread
picks up. I'm so pleased.
17 January 2002
Diana Freund, Four Corners
RDC picked this up for me at Barbie's recommendation: she said it contained
one of her favorite characters in fiction. He said he couldn't remember the
character's name and I said good, because I would want to figure it out myself.
Except it was obvious. It was set in the Finger Lakes district, which is good
because from the start it reminded me of Bastard out of Carolina. I knew
what character Barbie meant, and she was well-drawn and funny sometimes but
too disturbing to resonate with me. I have trouble distinguishing a well-written
character from a good character.
January 2002
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