Wed Reading Meme...
Mar. 2nd, 2016 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[As an aside, the headline of the Daily News was rather humorous...it was sitting on a coffee table at work. Below the poll percentages for each of the Republican Presidential Candidates, (guess who was in the lead?) was the headline: "Sign of the Apocalypse?" (No, but possibly a sign of the end of the Republican Party and US politics as we know it.)
Talked to my mother, who has been reading the biography Hamilton, upon which the musical of the same name is currently based. She said that apparently they were just as nasty to each other back then as they are now. (Recently there was an article about how the Republican Candidates were acting like the characters in Mad Max: Fury Road. Personally, I think that's giving them too much credit. More like the characters in Heathers or Mean Girls.) At any rate, it's really no different now than it was back in the 1700s. Hamilton was pretty much hated by his peers - mainly because he wanted to do things that were "unpopular" at the time. And Thomas Jefferson comes across as a bit of a hypocrite in the book and a deluded idealist. Hamilton wanted a centralized government, banking system, industrialized economy, and abolish slavery. Jefferson wanted localized government, agricultural economy, and was ambivalent about slavery (scary but true, also he owned slaves, so there was that). My mother stated that after reading this, it's no surprise that we ended up with the Civil War - 100 years later. And it was definitely about slavery - that was a huge divining rod between the two factions. The problem was the Agricultural States depended on slavery as their workforce, while the Industrial States did not (or ahem, a different type of slavery, women and children worked for next to nothing, but Hamilton who had worked as a child saw that as no big deal and better than poverty. A job is better than no job, was his attitude. (It was also a step or two up from slavery.) Sort of similar to various Southerner's view that the slave workforce was taken care of in exchange for work. (Not exactly true, of course.) And their justification? There's slavery in the Bible (which of course makes everything okey-dokey -- people have been using religious texts to excuse the worse crimes, giving religious text a bad name as a result. It's not the Bible's fault that people insist on misinterpreting it). Hamilton apparently hated slavery because he'd come from the Caribbean and seen how horrible it was down there, and the atrocities committed. (I'm kinda loving Hamilton at the moment). At any rate, the States Rights vs. Centralized Government debate was what eventually lead to the Civil War and has been at the base of the US political debate for well over 200 years. We're still fighting over it. ex: Same-sex marriage - should be left up to the States. Back then? Whether slavery should be abolished should be decided by the States. (I kid you not.) And in the 1950s? Marriage between two people of different races should be decided by the States. (Racism and sexism, unfortunately, have been part of US politics since it's founding.Although we've come a long way, back in the 1700s, both women and blacks were considered property with no voting rights, equal pay rights, or ability to own property - now? Both can run for political office and become President of the US. Let's take a moment to celebrate that.) Hamilton saw Thomas Jefferson as a coward. Jefferson took off during the Revolutionary War - he stayed in Paris. He would have been happiest staying in his plantation in Virgina reading his books and doing nothing. (I can sort of identify, there are days that's all I want to do.) Wonder what our country would have been like if Jefferson died and Hamilton became President? ]
1. What did you just finish reading?
Nothing quite as interesting as Hamilton. But I did finish Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan, which I reviewed at length in a previous post on this subject. What I'd like to add to that review is that Milan is one of a handful of genre writers who breaks with the form. By that, I mean she steps slightly outside of the formula. Also, she started self-publishing some of her novels - in order to have more freedom over her story, and to be able to break the formula. (For example? She's currently writing a contemporary transgender romance novel. )That's by the way, a big difference between self-published genre fiction and published genre fiction, self-published breaks the formula, while published is more or less following the established formula. (Which means, yes, that plot seems familiar, because yes, this is a book that follows an established formula. I think they even have mimeographed handouts on how to write best-selling romance novels, mystery novels, thrillers, etc...) James Patterson writes formula fiction -- and now by committee. Writers who shell out a book every five months are formula fiction writers. They are quick reads. Lots of people like them. But there's really not a whole lot to say about them. They do make it possible for literary books to get published, believe it or not.
The other genre writers that I've read that break with the formula or color outside the lines are:
* Illona Andrews - she actually has a long-term relationship in her books, and lead doesn't sleep with everyone. Also she uses Russian and Eastern European, Persian and Asian mythology as opposed to Judeo-Christian. Goes against the trope. Her's are urban fantasy, but she colors outside the lines to such a degree that she's ruined me for urban fantasy, I can't read any of the others now. They seem silly.
* Minette Walters -- creates mystery novels around an ensemble, rarely just one detective, and often explores the uneasy emotions underneath. Often her heroes are the murderers. She breaks with the form consistently. And sort of ruined me in regards to mystery novels. It was hard to read PD James after Walters.
* Sherry Thomas - is another romance novelist who likes to color outside the lines. She focuses on pre-established relationships, marriages, or people reconnecting after a period of time, and how they screwed up. Often flipping the gender roles. In one of her books the woman was older and more accomplished than the man, he was the manager of the household, she was a well-reknowned surgeon, He was pretty, she wasn't. In another, the woman is a Chinese Assassin, who is on a quest, and he's along for the ride.
* GRR Martin - who broke the formula on fantasy, with his pseudo-realistic Game of Thrones, where the so-called heroes die, and it feels like an odd coming of age story in a horrifically violent world.
Part revisionist historical loosely based on the War of the Roses, part fantasy, part horror tale complete with medieval zombies.
* Andy Weir - The Martian - which is a science fiction novel that centers mostly on a guy stranded on Mars. Realitic, and character driven. Not plotty or speculative. Jumps outside the sci-fi box.
* Ellen Kushner - who writes swashbuckling gender flipping LGBT fantasy romances.
So they exist. The non-boilerplate writers. You just have to look for them.
2. What I'm reading now?
Euphoria by Lilly King - which is a lot better than expected. It's more of an exploration of what it means to be an anthropologist and the degree to which we should study other cultures, and to what extent our study of them is, in reality, just a finely veiled study of ourselves - than it is a romance. Also an in-depth study of three different people, Bankson (the narrator), Fen and Nell Stone. All three are loosely based on real people.
Through the novel, the writer says some interesting things about our own culture and the current clash between cultures.
Below are a few excerpts:
1. Discussion of the Dobu
2. The three characters, Fen, Nell, and Bankson (the narrator) received an anthropological manuscript from a colleague, Helen Benjamin, and are devouring it, with envy and excitement. (The book is set in the early 1930s, around 1930 or thereabouts. The narrator doesn't meet Helen until 1938, which is much later, after the events of the book.
The frustrated cultural anthropology major inside me is eating this up like chocolate. Yummy, yummy.
Reminds me a little of The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell, albeit less horrific and violent, and far more cereberal. That too played around with these ideas.
A lot of what is written there, resonated with me, and to a degree why I backed away from cultural anthropology. Well outside of the fact that I have no facility for learning lanugages, and that's sort of required. I envy people who learn languages easily - you can do so much with that. Like become a cultural anthropologist, travel the world, studying diverse cultures in their actual environment.
Talked to my mother, who has been reading the biography Hamilton, upon which the musical of the same name is currently based. She said that apparently they were just as nasty to each other back then as they are now. (Recently there was an article about how the Republican Candidates were acting like the characters in Mad Max: Fury Road. Personally, I think that's giving them too much credit. More like the characters in Heathers or Mean Girls.) At any rate, it's really no different now than it was back in the 1700s. Hamilton was pretty much hated by his peers - mainly because he wanted to do things that were "unpopular" at the time. And Thomas Jefferson comes across as a bit of a hypocrite in the book and a deluded idealist. Hamilton wanted a centralized government, banking system, industrialized economy, and abolish slavery. Jefferson wanted localized government, agricultural economy, and was ambivalent about slavery (scary but true, also he owned slaves, so there was that). My mother stated that after reading this, it's no surprise that we ended up with the Civil War - 100 years later. And it was definitely about slavery - that was a huge divining rod between the two factions. The problem was the Agricultural States depended on slavery as their workforce, while the Industrial States did not (or ahem, a different type of slavery, women and children worked for next to nothing, but Hamilton who had worked as a child saw that as no big deal and better than poverty. A job is better than no job, was his attitude. (It was also a step or two up from slavery.) Sort of similar to various Southerner's view that the slave workforce was taken care of in exchange for work. (Not exactly true, of course.) And their justification? There's slavery in the Bible (which of course makes everything okey-dokey -- people have been using religious texts to excuse the worse crimes, giving religious text a bad name as a result. It's not the Bible's fault that people insist on misinterpreting it). Hamilton apparently hated slavery because he'd come from the Caribbean and seen how horrible it was down there, and the atrocities committed. (I'm kinda loving Hamilton at the moment). At any rate, the States Rights vs. Centralized Government debate was what eventually lead to the Civil War and has been at the base of the US political debate for well over 200 years. We're still fighting over it. ex: Same-sex marriage - should be left up to the States. Back then? Whether slavery should be abolished should be decided by the States. (I kid you not.) And in the 1950s? Marriage between two people of different races should be decided by the States. (Racism and sexism, unfortunately, have been part of US politics since it's founding.Although we've come a long way, back in the 1700s, both women and blacks were considered property with no voting rights, equal pay rights, or ability to own property - now? Both can run for political office and become President of the US. Let's take a moment to celebrate that.) Hamilton saw Thomas Jefferson as a coward. Jefferson took off during the Revolutionary War - he stayed in Paris. He would have been happiest staying in his plantation in Virgina reading his books and doing nothing. (I can sort of identify, there are days that's all I want to do.) Wonder what our country would have been like if Jefferson died and Hamilton became President? ]
1. What did you just finish reading?
Nothing quite as interesting as Hamilton. But I did finish Once Upon a Marquess by Courtney Milan, which I reviewed at length in a previous post on this subject. What I'd like to add to that review is that Milan is one of a handful of genre writers who breaks with the form. By that, I mean she steps slightly outside of the formula. Also, she started self-publishing some of her novels - in order to have more freedom over her story, and to be able to break the formula. (For example? She's currently writing a contemporary transgender romance novel. )That's by the way, a big difference between self-published genre fiction and published genre fiction, self-published breaks the formula, while published is more or less following the established formula. (Which means, yes, that plot seems familiar, because yes, this is a book that follows an established formula. I think they even have mimeographed handouts on how to write best-selling romance novels, mystery novels, thrillers, etc...) James Patterson writes formula fiction -- and now by committee. Writers who shell out a book every five months are formula fiction writers. They are quick reads. Lots of people like them. But there's really not a whole lot to say about them. They do make it possible for literary books to get published, believe it or not.
The other genre writers that I've read that break with the formula or color outside the lines are:
* Illona Andrews - she actually has a long-term relationship in her books, and lead doesn't sleep with everyone. Also she uses Russian and Eastern European, Persian and Asian mythology as opposed to Judeo-Christian. Goes against the trope. Her's are urban fantasy, but she colors outside the lines to such a degree that she's ruined me for urban fantasy, I can't read any of the others now. They seem silly.
* Minette Walters -- creates mystery novels around an ensemble, rarely just one detective, and often explores the uneasy emotions underneath. Often her heroes are the murderers. She breaks with the form consistently. And sort of ruined me in regards to mystery novels. It was hard to read PD James after Walters.
* Sherry Thomas - is another romance novelist who likes to color outside the lines. She focuses on pre-established relationships, marriages, or people reconnecting after a period of time, and how they screwed up. Often flipping the gender roles. In one of her books the woman was older and more accomplished than the man, he was the manager of the household, she was a well-reknowned surgeon, He was pretty, she wasn't. In another, the woman is a Chinese Assassin, who is on a quest, and he's along for the ride.
* GRR Martin - who broke the formula on fantasy, with his pseudo-realistic Game of Thrones, where the so-called heroes die, and it feels like an odd coming of age story in a horrifically violent world.
Part revisionist historical loosely based on the War of the Roses, part fantasy, part horror tale complete with medieval zombies.
* Andy Weir - The Martian - which is a science fiction novel that centers mostly on a guy stranded on Mars. Realitic, and character driven. Not plotty or speculative. Jumps outside the sci-fi box.
* Ellen Kushner - who writes swashbuckling gender flipping LGBT fantasy romances.
So they exist. The non-boilerplate writers. You just have to look for them.
2. What I'm reading now?
Euphoria by Lilly King - which is a lot better than expected. It's more of an exploration of what it means to be an anthropologist and the degree to which we should study other cultures, and to what extent our study of them is, in reality, just a finely veiled study of ourselves - than it is a romance. Also an in-depth study of three different people, Bankson (the narrator), Fen and Nell Stone. All three are loosely based on real people.
Through the novel, the writer says some interesting things about our own culture and the current clash between cultures.
Below are a few excerpts:
1. Discussion of the Dobu
"The Douban," Helen concluded , "lives out without repression man's worst nightmares of the ill-will of the universe."
"I think they're the most terrifying people I've ever read about," I said.
"Fen was a little unstable when I met him," Nell said. " His eyes were like this." She stretched her eyelids as open as possible.
"I'd been frightened out of my mind every day for two years," he said.
"I wouldn't have lasted half that," I said, but it occurred to me that the Dobu sounded a lot like him: his paranoid streak, his dark humor, his distrust of pleasure, his secrecy. I couldn't help questioning the research. When only one person is the expert on a particular people, do we learn more about the people or the anthropologist when we read the analysis?
2. The three characters, Fen, Nell, and Bankson (the narrator) received an anthropological manuscript from a colleague, Helen Benjamin, and are devouring it, with envy and excitement. (The book is set in the early 1930s, around 1930 or thereabouts. The narrator doesn't meet Helen until 1938, which is much later, after the events of the book.
There was a pale violet light in the sky when Fen read the last pages. Helen's final push toward the understanding that every culture has its own unique goals and orients its society in the direction of those goals. She described the whole set of human potentialities as a great arc, and each culture a selection of traits from that arc. These last pages reminded me of the finale of fireworks show, many flares sent up at once, exploding one after the other. She claimed that because of the emphasis in the West on private property, our freedom was restricted much more than in many primitive societies. She said that it was often taboo in a culture to have a real discussion of the dominant traits; in our culture, for example, a real discussion of capitalism or war was not permitted, suggesting that these dominant traits had become compulsive and overgrown. Homosexuality and trance were considered abnormalities now, while in the Middle Ages people had been made saints for their trances, which were considered the highest state of being, and in Ancient Greece, as Plato makes clear, homosexuality was a major means to the good life. She claimed that conformity created maladjustment and tradition could turn psychopathic. Her last sentences urged acceptance of cultural relativism and tolerance of differences.
"Written by a true deviant," Fen said, tossing the last page down. " A true paranoid deviant. She gets a little hysterical towards the end there, as if the whole world's just about to go down the gurgler."
The frustrated cultural anthropology major inside me is eating this up like chocolate. Yummy, yummy.
Reminds me a little of The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell, albeit less horrific and violent, and far more cereberal. That too played around with these ideas.
A lot of what is written there, resonated with me, and to a degree why I backed away from cultural anthropology. Well outside of the fact that I have no facility for learning lanugages, and that's sort of required. I envy people who learn languages easily - you can do so much with that. Like become a cultural anthropologist, travel the world, studying diverse cultures in their actual environment.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 01:42 am (UTC)Have you read any Reginald Hill? The quality of his books varies WILDLY so don't just pick one up at random. Pictures of Perfection is a hilarious romp which actually contains a crime. And The Wood Beyond, one of his serious books, is excellent. It doesn't mess with genre the way Pictures of Perfection did, it's just a damn good mystery.
Deadheads SERIOULY messes with genre and is a hoot at times. My only criticism is the exoticization of a young Police cadet of Pakistani extraction. But the book was first published in 1983, and Hill's improved since then on his representations of people of colour. He's not perfect but not so clumsy anymore. It's a great genre-breaking mystery, though, so I wholeheartedly recommend Deadheads, as long as you go in forewarned.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 02:56 am (UTC)You're right - prolific writers works vary wildly. Illona Andrews' Kate Daniels series is wonderful, but I wouldn't recommend her other novels. And Stephen King can be hit or miss. As too can Minette Walters for that matter.
The Echo wasn't that memorable. But The Ice House and The Sculptress blew me away.
It's also insanely subjective. So hard to know what will grab someone.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 08:04 am (UTC)Yes, I've been thinking the same thing myself.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-04 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 08:10 am (UTC)Hmm... trying to remember how long it's been since I bought a book (a novel, that is) just to read. I pretty much stopped buying them over a decade ago when I realized I had all these books piled up that I had eagerly purchased and then either never read, or read them partway and got detoured by other things I had to do, and they were left unfinished.
I greatly admire your ability (and those of other posters here among my friendslist) who keep up with reading the way you do. I miss it, but things are the way they are.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-04 03:23 am (UTC)Hope you like it in any event.
Completely understand the difficulty with hoarding books or acquiring more books than you will ever read. My apartment is filled with books that I have yet to read. It's rather pathetic. Instead of reading those books, I buy new ones on my Kindle which I read instead. Because I'm moody and can only read whatever I'm in the mood for. Also I have a tendency to impulse buy books -- while I'm busy with another book, so that by the time I get around to the books that I bought, I've lost interest in them and want this shiny book over there.
Have the same problem with television shows. With the DVR, I can tape about 15 shows at the same time. This is not necessarily a good thing. I can also save up to 100 hours worth of television, apparently, also not necessarily a good thing. As a result, I currently have over 20 shows saved and over 62 hours worth of television. There are 11 episodes and counting of Elementary on my DVR. And 10 episodes of American Crime...
Having this many choices and options is not good for me. I was better off when we had a lot fewer options, the good old days, when there were only four shows I liked, and two of them were opposite each other, and I could only watch one.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-03 12:22 pm (UTC)If you like Minette Walters, have you tried Ruth Rendell? Her series novels featuring Inspector Wexford would be too conventional for you, but her non-series novels are very like Walters (and probably influenced her).
The Martian isn't so much "outside the box" as reviving a type of very-old-school ultra-hard SF about humanity-versus-uncaring-nature that had been thought to have died out. It's why people find it so annoying/ironic that the Puppies prevented Weir from being nominated for the John W Campbell Award, when The Martian was exactly the kind of book they claimed they wanted to support.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-04 03:14 am (UTC)Yep, but mostly in her guise as Barbara Vine. I wasn't as fond of her style as Walters, or her characters. Walters was a bit more accessible to me for some reason -- I don't know why.
*RE The Martian? Not sure if you read the book or just saw the movie? It's been a while since I read it, but my take was slightly different.
I think what I found to be outside the box in regards to the Martian was the emphasis on character as opposed to "the monster" or "the world" or some "theme" and the fact that it wasn't a horror story or post-apocalyptic/dystopia. So much of the sci-fi that I've seen or read of late seems to be a dystopia, horror, or post-apocalyptic. I'm sort of tired of the monsters and horrible alien trope.
The Martian, I thought, was a breath of fresh air, because there were no villains, no bad guys, no monsters, no damsels, it was just basically a scientist struggling to survive in a foreign place, and how do we figure out how to get him home. Using science to solve a problem. The Captain of his ship was female, the head of NASA, Indian, and it was a diverse bunch of people working together to bring him home.
I can see why the Puppies hated it. (Captain was female, head of NASA was Indian...the white guys were idiots..) It had various themes that would have turned them off, and was somewhat satirical about some of the tropes they adored. Flipping some gender roles. Mark Watney was a botanist and not a geek or tough, while the women were, and tough. Weir in short made fun of various sci-fi tropes and pop culture sacred cows in the novel.
So, no, the book wasn't really the type of book they wanted exactly. Maybe on a superficial level - ie. Man vs. his environment. But even there? No, not really. And there's a lot of books that do that trope - which admittedly is a favorite trope of mine, I've read a lot of them as a result, but not that many in sci-fi. There aren't that many in sci-fi genre. The publisher's current obsession with YA dystopian fiction and YA coming of age trilogies has just about destroyed the sci-fi genre from a what gets published perspective. (I swear if I see one more rip-off of the Hunger Games...)
BUT...The Puppies, near as I could figure, wanted their friends to win a Hugo and their values reflected and validated in the books that were nominated and won. As opposed to values/beliefs that they did not agree with. (Which to be fair, is true of most writers and fans. They were just assholes about it. And a wee bit juvenile. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever leave high school.)