Reading not-Wednesday 17/05
May. 17th, 2018 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI haven't done a reading Wednesday post for absolutely ages, not this calendar year. Then again, I haven't been doing much reading.
Recently read: An unkindness of ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Pub Akashic Books 2017; ISBN 978-1617755880.
I know the author very slightly (they're local), and several of my partners were enthusiastic about the book, and it sounds like exactly my sort of thing; I'm fond of generation ship stories, especially with non-default characters. Also, Solomon is Campbell nominated, I assume mainly because of this book, because I'm not aware they've published anything else. I borrowedghoti_mhic_uait's copy, and got stuck into it immediately. It's an original take on a fairly standard SF trope, and beautifully written, almost elegiac in tone.
I found An unkindness of ghosts extremely readable, though it's also very sad and sometimes quite grim. It provides what I want from a generation ship book, an interesting and layered society within the constrained context of the ship. Also lots of sensawunda, and an exciting adventure.
I really like the characterization, including several people with non-standard gender identities, and the choice to focus on the lower classes rather than the people in charge. I particularly love Aster, the protagonist; most of the story is told in tight third from her point of view, with a few first person interludes from other characters. I liked the portrayal of Aster as an autistic character, but then again, I enjoyed The curious incident of the dog in the night-time and The speed of dark, which many #ActuallyAutistic readers object to, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. She's also a medic, and the portrayals of medical scenes didn't make me horribly cringe, at least.
I was also really interested in the character of Giselle as a person living with some of the mental health problems caused by chronic trauma. She's not romanticized at all, not even in the most obvious sense sympathetic, though the narration has a lot of sympathy for her. I have met a few people like her, who are very destructive in relationships and manipulate others into hurting them.
The aspect that put me off slightly was that aUoG is a bit of a slavery-is-bad book. Darker skinned low-deckers are abused in ways that are very directly derived from pre Civil War America, and the book dwells a lot on how immoral and terrible this is. There's a lot of descriptions of beatings and other inhumane physical punishments. Most of the rape is off-screen but there's really a lot of it, and there is at least one scene depicting a flashback to a character being raped as a young child. I think the book just about stays the right side of hopeful rather than depressing, but it's not a story about everybody escaping from their terrible situation. I found the ending quite ambiguous, but there's a possible positive interpretation, at least.
Anyway, it's a really exciting book and definitely worth the hype, if you can cope with a lot of detail of the horrors of slavery.
Currently reading: Womanist Midrash by Wilda C Gafney. I read and enjoyed Gafney's commentary on Genesis, and then put the book down for ages. Then I zipped through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers while I was travelling withangelofthenorth, when I had a bit more time than usual for reading, and wanted to talk about the book.
Gafney has a lovely accessible style even when she's talking about abstruse textual scholarship. I am very much appreciating her insight into racial dynamics and other social hierarchies; she has a really subtle grasp of how the Israelites were an oppressed minority in their context, but are very much the hegemonic class in the Bible, which of course is the foundational text of the dominant colonizing power in the modern world. And some really interesting interpretations of things like the extremely strange and violent story of Pinchas, Cozbi and Zimri. I've come across plenty of commentary on women in the Bible before, but I think the Womanist rather than more broadly feminist perspective Gafney presents really adds something new. Partly because Gafney doesn't focus only on the (named) female characters, but points out the implications of the fact that women were always present among 'the people' even when not specifically mentioned. I have a few quibbles with the book in terms of accuracy, and a few of the arguments rest on really quite egregious cherry-picking. But it's well worth reading if you're interested in the topic.
Up next:ghoti_mhic_uait lent me Runemarks by Joanne Harris, so probably that. But I'm about to be travelling by budget airline, so I might instead pick something I have available in ebook for ease of transport. Possibly something from the rather amazing Nebula collection I just picked up from Humble Bundle. Some of the books are region locked, but it's worth having a look if you're interested in SF ebooks at all. I'm probably most excited by Jane Yolen, Nalo Hopkinson or Maureen McHugh, but they're all short story collections so I might just dip into them. If anyone wants to recommend me anything from the list I'm certainly interested.
Recently read: An unkindness of ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Pub Akashic Books 2017; ISBN 978-1617755880.
I know the author very slightly (they're local), and several of my partners were enthusiastic about the book, and it sounds like exactly my sort of thing; I'm fond of generation ship stories, especially with non-default characters. Also, Solomon is Campbell nominated, I assume mainly because of this book, because I'm not aware they've published anything else. I borrowed
ghoti_mhic_uait's copy, and got stuck into it immediately. It's an original take on a fairly standard SF trope, and beautifully written, almost elegiac in tone. I found An unkindness of ghosts extremely readable, though it's also very sad and sometimes quite grim. It provides what I want from a generation ship book, an interesting and layered society within the constrained context of the ship. Also lots of sensawunda, and an exciting adventure.
I really like the characterization, including several people with non-standard gender identities, and the choice to focus on the lower classes rather than the people in charge. I particularly love Aster, the protagonist; most of the story is told in tight third from her point of view, with a few first person interludes from other characters. I liked the portrayal of Aster as an autistic character, but then again, I enjoyed The curious incident of the dog in the night-time and The speed of dark, which many #ActuallyAutistic readers object to, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. She's also a medic, and the portrayals of medical scenes didn't make me horribly cringe, at least.
I was also really interested in the character of Giselle as a person living with some of the mental health problems caused by chronic trauma. She's not romanticized at all, not even in the most obvious sense sympathetic, though the narration has a lot of sympathy for her. I have met a few people like her, who are very destructive in relationships and manipulate others into hurting them.
The aspect that put me off slightly was that aUoG is a bit of a slavery-is-bad book. Darker skinned low-deckers are abused in ways that are very directly derived from pre Civil War America, and the book dwells a lot on how immoral and terrible this is. There's a lot of descriptions of beatings and other inhumane physical punishments. Most of the rape is off-screen but there's really a lot of it, and there is at least one scene depicting a flashback to a character being raped as a young child. I think the book just about stays the right side of hopeful rather than depressing, but it's not a story about everybody escaping from their terrible situation. I found the ending quite ambiguous, but there's a possible positive interpretation, at least.
Anyway, it's a really exciting book and definitely worth the hype, if you can cope with a lot of detail of the horrors of slavery.
Currently reading: Womanist Midrash by Wilda C Gafney. I read and enjoyed Gafney's commentary on Genesis, and then put the book down for ages. Then I zipped through Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers while I was travelling with
angelofthenorth, when I had a bit more time than usual for reading, and wanted to talk about the book. Gafney has a lovely accessible style even when she's talking about abstruse textual scholarship. I am very much appreciating her insight into racial dynamics and other social hierarchies; she has a really subtle grasp of how the Israelites were an oppressed minority in their context, but are very much the hegemonic class in the Bible, which of course is the foundational text of the dominant colonizing power in the modern world. And some really interesting interpretations of things like the extremely strange and violent story of Pinchas, Cozbi and Zimri. I've come across plenty of commentary on women in the Bible before, but I think the Womanist rather than more broadly feminist perspective Gafney presents really adds something new. Partly because Gafney doesn't focus only on the (named) female characters, but points out the implications of the fact that women were always present among 'the people' even when not specifically mentioned. I have a few quibbles with the book in terms of accuracy, and a few of the arguments rest on really quite egregious cherry-picking. But it's well worth reading if you're interested in the topic.
Up next:
ghoti_mhic_uait lent me Runemarks by Joanne Harris, so probably that. But I'm about to be travelling by budget airline, so I might instead pick something I have available in ebook for ease of transport. Possibly something from the rather amazing Nebula collection I just picked up from Humble Bundle. Some of the books are region locked, but it's worth having a look if you're interested in SF ebooks at all. I'm probably most excited by Jane Yolen, Nalo Hopkinson or Maureen McHugh, but they're all short story collections so I might just dip into them. If anyone wants to recommend me anything from the list I'm certainly interested.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-05-17 10:30 pm (UTC)