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Canon and canonicity
Mar. 17th, 2019 01:13 pmThirty Day Book Meme Day 17: Future classic
I don't really know how to predict this. 'Classic' is such a loaded term, and, as anyone who has studied literature could tell you, the literary canon is not a fixed thing — it changes over time, different countries/cultures/groups of readers have different canons, canonicity is not the same thing as popularity, and sometimes what it takes for something to stick in the cultural zeitgeist is just really, really good publicity.
I suspect N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is likely to feature in the curricula of a lot of university speculative fiction literature courses in the future, if it's not there already, though.
( The other days )
Reading over the past few days has consisted of two novels — King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (I really missed the Dregs, and the Ketterdam setting — Ravkan political manoeuvring has always been my least favourite element of Bardugo's Grishaverse, as I'm in it for found families, migrants and exiles, and heists), and The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf (I devoured this historical novel, set in 1969 Malaysia during a time of race riots sparked by election results and the country's simmering problems boiling over, and it left me feeling quite weepy, in that it emphasises small acts of kindness, community building and solidarity in the face of violence and destruction) — and two pieces of free short fiction. These were 'Circus Girl, the Hunter, and Mirror Boy' by JY Yang (which, like all Yang's writing, didn't quite work for me), and 'The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun' by Aliette de Bodard (another excellent piece of space opera from de Bodard). Matthias and I also managed to watch Captain Marvel earlier this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I don't really know how to predict this. 'Classic' is such a loaded term, and, as anyone who has studied literature could tell you, the literary canon is not a fixed thing — it changes over time, different countries/cultures/groups of readers have different canons, canonicity is not the same thing as popularity, and sometimes what it takes for something to stick in the cultural zeitgeist is just really, really good publicity.
I suspect N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is likely to feature in the curricula of a lot of university speculative fiction literature courses in the future, if it's not there already, though.
( The other days )
Reading over the past few days has consisted of two novels — King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (I really missed the Dregs, and the Ketterdam setting — Ravkan political manoeuvring has always been my least favourite element of Bardugo's Grishaverse, as I'm in it for found families, migrants and exiles, and heists), and The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf (I devoured this historical novel, set in 1969 Malaysia during a time of race riots sparked by election results and the country's simmering problems boiling over, and it left me feeling quite weepy, in that it emphasises small acts of kindness, community building and solidarity in the face of violence and destruction) — and two pieces of free short fiction. These were 'Circus Girl, the Hunter, and Mirror Boy' by JY Yang (which, like all Yang's writing, didn't quite work for me), and 'The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun' by Aliette de Bodard (another excellent piece of space opera from de Bodard). Matthias and I also managed to watch Captain Marvel earlier this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.