Pausing for breath

[dolorosa_12]

I went straight back to work on Tuesday, and was thrown straight into it: a lot of teaching, a lot of students back and studying, and a period of downtime as we switch from one library management system to another. This latter meant that we had access to neither the old system nor the new, but were still expected to issue, return and renew books, and register new users -- quite hard to do when you can't access the required program, but we found workarounds.

This weekend has been slightly busier than I would have liked, given the work week I had (and given how busy January is shaping up to be), but I still found time to snatch a bit of reading. I'm just over one hundred pages into The Will to Battle, the third in Ada Palmer's extraordinary Terra Ignota series, and I'm as awed by this third book as I was by the first and second. My husband sent me a link to great article by Palmer about her use of social science (as opposed to 'hard' sciences) in her science fiction, and it's reminded me all over again how intricate and clever her books are. naye, you might be interested in reading the article; it's here if anyone wants to read it.

Two of my four sisters (Kitty and Nell, sisters #2 and #3) are about midway through a trip around Europe with their grandparents (for new readers of my Dreamwidth, the reason I say their and not our grandparents is that my three youngest sisters only share a father, not a mother, with me and my other younger sister -- and thus only one set of grandparents; these are their maternal grandparents). This past week they were in London, and I organised for the four of them to take the train up to Cambridge and visit me and Matthias. I hadn't seen these sisters since 2015, and although we stay vaguely in touch via social media, they are quite young (Kitty is fifteen, and Nell ten), and it's been harder to stay a part of their lives than it has been with relatives and friends who are adults. In any case, I showed them and their grandparents around Cambridge, and we all had lunch together, and it was easy to pick up where I left off. I was struck once again by what wonderful people the two girls are: so thoughtful and clever and kind. Obviously I'm a bit biased -- I think all my sisters are amazing -- but my heart sang to see what good people they were.

Other than reading and hanging out with my family, it's mostly been a weekend of cooking and chores. I've got this slow-cooked pork recipe roasting away in the oven, and it's filling the whole house with the smell of apple, redcurrant and rosemary.

How have everyone else's first weekends of 2018 been?

Comments

[naye]

Thanks for the link - I've saved it to Pocket to read if my info desk shift is quiet tomorrow. And do hit me up any time (really, any time!) you want to talk Terra Ignota I am still reeling.

So how's the changeover to Alma going? Are you getting the Alma/Primo combo? It sounds like you're not quite there yet - I am so glad I missed my library's massive changeover operation, which conveniently ended just before I started.

Next year January 2nd is on a Wednesday, which I hope will make the work week feel less atrocious. Last year it was on a Monday and I remember being deeply miserable with that.

So happy you got to see your little sisters! They sound lovely and amazing, and I'm so glad they have you for a sister.

[dolorosa_12]

As you can probably tell from Twitter, I am always up for talking about Terra Ignota - I'll probably have more thoughts once I've finished the third book, so watch this space.

Alma changeover is going fine, and everything should hopefully be up and running by the end of this week. We are indeed getting the Alma/Primo combination - we've had Primo running for a little over a year now, although up until now it's been running with Voyager as the management system, which has been less than ideal. I've not been impressed by Primo so far, although it's a lot better than how it was initially, but I'm hoping that things will improve once it's running with Alma instead of Voyager.

A later start after New Year's Eve would be really great, so I'm glad to hear the dates are going to fall in a more congenial way in 2019.

It was so amazing to see my sisters! I see so little of them, and when they're children they change so quickly, but it's amazing to see what brilliant people they are. I just hope at some point there will be a way for all five of us to be in the same place at the same time, as this has never happened before.

[naye]

Hopefully the Alma situation will stabilize and make Primo more useful - I don't mind either, but then again, it's been years since I worked with Voyager (and then very briefly).

Yay, enjoy the rest of the book! :D

[orcofnewyork]

I'm glad you got to see your sisters, sounds like a lovely time was had by all!

I go back to work this Tuesday so this past weekend was mostly prepping for that though I'm not sure how successful I was. The apartment could use more cleaning but I pulled something in my back just after Christmas so very little has gotten done since then.

[dolorosa_12]

It was great to see my sisters. I just wish all five of us could be in the same place at the same time - as I emigrated just after Sister 3 was born, and had been living overseas for six years by the time Sister 4 was born, this has so far proved impossible.

Sorry to hear about your back. I hope your return to work goes smoothly nonetheless.

[merit]

This latter meant that we had access to neither the old system nor the new, but were still expected to issue, return and renew books, and register new users

Naturally. I'm glad you found some work arounds!

Terra Ignota sure is something else. Thanks for the link!

[dolorosa_12]

There was always going to be this transitional period, and I'm just glad they picked a really quiet time of year when hardly anyone is around!

The Terra Ignota books really are incredible. I'm still not finished The Will to Battle, and it was a real struggle to put it down this morning and force myself to go to work!

[frayadjacent]

Ooh, I've got the first two of the Terra Ignota series waiting on my e-reader. I'm glad you liked them -- I know very little about them but that they seem to be recommended by the right people.

I'm glad you had such a nice time with your sisters. I've seen a lot more of my sister this past year than usual (still not much, fewer than 10 days in the whole year), and even though we are different in many ways she's a very kind and caring person, and it's been great spending time with her.

I had a cozy weekend! Housework, browsing the internet, a bit of reading, had the neighbour over for a cup of tea. When I left for work this morning I realised I hadn't left the house once since I'd come home Friday evening.

[dolorosa_12]

The Terra Ignota books are amazing -- easily the best thing I read last year, and the third book is, if anything, even better than the second (I still think the first is the best). The only thing I would caution you about going in is that they're deliberately written in the style of Enlightenment literature, in this very ornate, referential style, packed with allusions to Enlightenment philosophers and so on -- it's done in a deliberate way to make you feel disoriented and distanced, but can come as something of a shock and takes a while to get used to. I am not familiar with all the philosophers etc being referenced, but this hasn't affected my enjoyment of the series in the slightest.

I'm so glad you, too, were able to spend time with your sister and enjoyed that time. It's so hard to stay in touch with family if you're a migrant, and it makes those brief moments even more precious.

That sounds like the ideal weekend! I would love for a weekend where I didn't leave the house - I can't remember the last time that happened!

[frayadjacent]

Thank you for that heads up about the writing style! I can easily see myself being put off by that if I wasn't expecting it, but now that I am it will be fine.

[dolorosa_12]

I knew about it going in, and I'm not sure it would have bothered me even if I hadn't, but I know a lot of people were thrown out of the story by it, so I try to warn people just in case. I hope you enjoy it!

[luzula]

I was about to ask what you did for a living and then I saw the librarian tag. : )

I've read the first Terra Ignota book and couldn't decide whether to go on. It was definitely interesting. But part of my reaction to the first one was "this is supposed to be such a utopia and yet it's certainly got an incestous set of rulers that I don't much like". Given that, do you think I should go on? I mean, it could be I was set up to think that and the next book will do something based on it.

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, I am a librarian! It's a pretty fun job - I like working with people and helping people and teaching, and my job involves all those things, all the time. I work in an academic library.

Two things which made the Terra Ignota books really work for me: firstly, it's not the story of a utopia - it's the story of a dystopia which thinks it's a utopia.

The other thing that made it really, really resonate with me was the worldbuilding: the fact that there are no nation-states, and that identity is determined not by random accidents of geography and/or genetics, but rather a conscious choice, made in adulthood, to affiliate with the philosophical/political grouping with which a person feels the strongest affinity. I am a migrant, and I spent a good seven years of my life paying huge amounts of money to the British government to continue to be allowed to live in the country that felt like home, with the person that I loved. I didn't just have to pay them, I had to constantly fulfill and prove various criteria (which changed from year to year) to be allowed to go on living here. The idea of being able to choose where to live, among which people, and which set of laws to follow - and that this choice would remain equally valid whether a person lived in London or Lima, Beijing or Brisbane - was like a paradise to me. And the fact that this seemed like a paradise - even after the revelation of terrible compromises on which this world was built - unnerved me, and made me understand new things about myself. It made me think, and go on thinking.

I'm not an advocate of people continuing to read things which aren't bringing them joy, or aren't interesting to them, so I'm not necessarily suggesting that you persist with Terra Ignota. If you were repelled by the characters in Too Like the Lightning, it's not likely you're going to like them any more in the subsequent books, and if you didn't find anything else to enjoy in the first book, I'm not sure it's worth wasting any more time reading the sequels.

[luzula]

firstly, it's not the story of a utopia - it's the story of a dystopia which thinks it's a utopia

Well, that does sound promising. And I can see why the idea of choosing appeals to you! I have not had a citizenship problem, so I guess it doesn't resonate with me in the same way. And the things I am engaged with politically just would not be solved by people getting to choose that way, or at least I don't think they would. Hmm, maybe some of them would. But things like forest conservation or climate change wouldn't, I think, because they're problems of managing a commons in which everyone has a part whether they want to or not.

I didn't not enjoy it while reading! I did think it was quite interesting. I think it's just done the opposite of growing on me afterwards. Hmm, do the later books do anything about the odd mix of SF and fantasy elements--I thought the magical little boy sat kind of oddly in the middle of the SF world.

Will also read your recent post on the topic!

[dolorosa_12]

Yeah, in the series climate change has just been solved at some unspecified moment in the past, but it doesn't talk about how or when that happened. I guess the one thing that's different about how citizenship works is that it's not tied to a specific geographical location, so you can live wherever you want and affiliate however you want, and you may end up living in a household where every other member is affiliated to a different group - and that's completely normal and okay. And I guess if everyone is living all over the world without restriction, even if you get to choose your affiliation and the kind of philosophy and laws that underpin your life, there's going to still be an element of inter-community collaborative work to tackle big problems, because people live all mixed together all over the world.

They don't really address the mix of SF and fantasy (although it becomes clearer that the narrator is seriously unreliable and may not have the strongest grasp on reality).