Wednesday Reading
31 January 2018 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frayadjacentRecently finished
The evening after I heard that Ursula K. Le Guin had died, I re-read the short story "The Day Before the Revolution", from the collection The Compass Rose. It comes after her classic parable, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", and she begins the story with a foreward ending with 'this is a story about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas'. I still remember so clearly the first time I read that, and how it moved me, having just read Omelas. Anyway, it's about Leia Odo, of Odonianism in the The Dispossessed. The revolution that eventually leads to the events in The Dispossessed is starting, but she is on the sidelines. It's a quiet story of an old woman reflecting on her life. The prose is beautiful, and the character feels so true in such a short space. Wonderful story.
Last night I finished Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. I ... want to like it, because people whose opinions I trust like it. And some of it I did enjoy. But all the moments wherepeople have sex/grope each other while planning their political machinations was really, really off-putting to me. The thing that keeps me holding on is the mention, early in the book, that some people had embraced Mycroft Canner's philosophy, and one character (I don't remember who), says something like, "how can people be into the philosophy of a seventeen year-old?" I am hoping/wondering if that moment points toward where the books are going with the philosophising in Too Like the Lighting.
Current reading
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew. A graphic novel about an important Singaporean comic artist, with a lot of focus on the history of Singapore's independence from Britain, its relationship with Malaysia, and conflicts between communist/left-wing and centrist/liberal factions in the independence movement. I am enjoying it, but I admit I find the national history a lot more interesting than the comic book artist.
The evening after I heard that Ursula K. Le Guin had died, I re-read the short story "The Day Before the Revolution", from the collection The Compass Rose. It comes after her classic parable, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", and she begins the story with a foreward ending with 'this is a story about one of the ones who walked away from Omelas'. I still remember so clearly the first time I read that, and how it moved me, having just read Omelas. Anyway, it's about Leia Odo, of Odonianism in the The Dispossessed. The revolution that eventually leads to the events in The Dispossessed is starting, but she is on the sidelines. It's a quiet story of an old woman reflecting on her life. The prose is beautiful, and the character feels so true in such a short space. Wonderful story.
Last night I finished Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. I ... want to like it, because people whose opinions I trust like it. And some of it I did enjoy. But all the moments wherepeople have sex/grope each other while planning their political machinations was really, really off-putting to me. The thing that keeps me holding on is the mention, early in the book, that some people had embraced Mycroft Canner's philosophy, and one character (I don't remember who), says something like, "how can people be into the philosophy of a seventeen year-old?" I am hoping/wondering if that moment points toward where the books are going with the philosophising in Too Like the Lighting.
Current reading
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew. A graphic novel about an important Singaporean comic artist, with a lot of focus on the history of Singapore's independence from Britain, its relationship with Malaysia, and conflicts between communist/left-wing and centrist/liberal factions in the independence movement. I am enjoying it, but I admit I find the national history a lot more interesting than the comic book artist.
no subject
on 31/1/18 05:47 pm (UTC)I had no idea there was a story like that! Just reading the sentence gave me chills.
The graphic novel sounds fascinating!
I so enjoy seeing your book posts :)
no subject
on 1/2/18 08:31 am (UTC)If you have access to The Compass Rose, I definitely recommend it. I love her short stories. It's on my TBR (or TBR-r?) list for this year. :)
The graphic novel is really good! Also, I just learned that the character Charlie Chan Hock Chye is fictional, which makes me like the book a lot more! I thought it was a biography the whole time...
no subject
on 21/2/18 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 13/3/18 10:20 pm (UTC)I read fifty pages of Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer. I'd read Too Like the Lightning some time ago, and been intrigued but ambivalent about it. But it's done the opposite of growing on me since. I still thought I should give the second volume a try, but I didn't get far. Everything is so charged with power games in a way I don't enjoy, and there are two rapes in the first fifty pages. Wait, those aren't supposed to be two of the surrenders in the title, are they?? Anyway, I didn't get any further.
So I think the books might not be for me either...
no subject
on 22/6/18 09:35 am (UTC)