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dolorosa_12) wrote2020-05-29 02:34 pm
dolorosa_12) wrote2020-05-29 02:34 pm
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Final reading log post for May
It's Friday afternoon, my courtyard garden is full of sunlight, I've got rocket, radishes, tomatoes and beans growing steadily under the baking sun, and I'm coming up to the end of my second month of working from home. It's time for another post rounding up the various books and short stories I've read in May.
I've already discussed some of them: Tessa Gratton's Strange Grace, my rereads of the Pagan Chronicles and A Charm of Magpies books, Joanne Harris's collection Honeycomb, and the Lore Olympus webcomic. What remains, therefore, is a short story collection, a novel, a novella, and all the short stories currently released for free in this month's issue of Uncanny Magazine.
Aliette de Bodard made a collection of her Xuya universe short stories available for free to download from her website. The collection, called The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun, was I think what she made available to Hugo voters last year when Xuya was a finalist for Best Series, so I had read most of the stories before — but it was very nice to return to them. Some stories were elegiac, some were grim, and some were hopeful, and they all dealt with de Bodard's favourite themes: family, motherhood, history, and the weight and trauma of living in the shadow of war and empire. As always, food featured heavily — de Bodard is a master at using it as a metaphor for culture, community, family, distance and home. If you're looking for a great space opera setting into which to sink your teeth, I highly recommend this collection.
Mena van Praag's novel The Sisters Grimm is a weird one. The 'sisters' of the title are a group of girls, born at the same moment, and born with various elemental powers. Inevitably, there is a shadowy evil group hunting them, and inevitably the love interest of one of the 'sisters' is part of that group. I enjoyed the fairytale elements (not all the 'sisters' can be matched immediately with fairytales, although one is obviously Red Riding Hood, another Beauty and the Beast), and the Cambridge setting — the author was obviously a genuine Cambridge local, and I really enjoyed spotting the references to independent cafes and so on. But I ultimately felt that the book somewhat undermined its own message of feminist sisterly solidarity, and it was weaker for that.
'To Be Taught, If Fortunate' is a novella by Becky Chambers. The book is a love letter to scientists, space exploration for the sake of furthering human knowledge, and a stinging rebuke to the vast corpus of science fiction literature representing space exploration as colonisation. The novella's quartet of space-dwelling characters have made a sincere and deep commitment to their scientific ideals: a long, lonely trip through space, stopping at various places to catalogue what they find and transmit this data back to Earth, across distances so vast that by the time they do return to our planet, decades will have passed. I loved Chambers' choice to commit to that return, and to show that that sustained connection to Earth strengthens the astronauts' resolve: they do good work, because they're reminded always of what that work is for. However, for me — someone for whom space exploration holds zero appeal and a great deal of horror — the emotion of the novella was somewhat lost. I could understand and appreciate what Chambers was saying on an intellectual level, but because I am so resolutely earthbound, so focused on what our own planet, and our own human minds and earth-dwelling communities can create and offer that the prospect of distant stars holds no appeal, and I find it difficult to understand people for whom that is true. I guess I'm a bad science fiction fan?
I've also read the three free short stories in this month's issue of Uncanny Magazine (other stories will be made available on 2nd June). These stories are:
'Through the Veil' by Jennifer Marie Brissett, a story of interdimensional travel, frustrated underfunded and exploited academics, and the pull of worlds other than our own. I found it a bit slight.
'A Being Together Amongst Strangers' by Arkady Martine, a love letter to New York in all its messiness, unquiet history, fractious subway travel, and that particular form of kindness to strangers which manifests itself in large cities. Although I live in quite bucolic surrounds, I am a city dweller at heart, and while New York has never got into my bones the way, say, Sydney, London or Berlin have done, I recognise a kindred spirit in Arkady Martine, and my soul sings back.
'High in the Clean Blue Air' by Emma Törzs, a gorgeous fairytale about animal transformations, external souls, and love. I really, really loved this.
And that's a wrap on my May reading (unless I finish another book over the weekend, but I'm really in more of a TV frame of mind at the moment).
I've already discussed some of them: Tessa Gratton's Strange Grace, my rereads of the Pagan Chronicles and A Charm of Magpies books, Joanne Harris's collection Honeycomb, and the Lore Olympus webcomic. What remains, therefore, is a short story collection, a novel, a novella, and all the short stories currently released for free in this month's issue of Uncanny Magazine.
Aliette de Bodard made a collection of her Xuya universe short stories available for free to download from her website. The collection, called The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun, was I think what she made available to Hugo voters last year when Xuya was a finalist for Best Series, so I had read most of the stories before — but it was very nice to return to them. Some stories were elegiac, some were grim, and some were hopeful, and they all dealt with de Bodard's favourite themes: family, motherhood, history, and the weight and trauma of living in the shadow of war and empire. As always, food featured heavily — de Bodard is a master at using it as a metaphor for culture, community, family, distance and home. If you're looking for a great space opera setting into which to sink your teeth, I highly recommend this collection.
Mena van Praag's novel The Sisters Grimm is a weird one. The 'sisters' of the title are a group of girls, born at the same moment, and born with various elemental powers. Inevitably, there is a shadowy evil group hunting them, and inevitably the love interest of one of the 'sisters' is part of that group. I enjoyed the fairytale elements (not all the 'sisters' can be matched immediately with fairytales, although one is obviously Red Riding Hood, another Beauty and the Beast), and the Cambridge setting — the author was obviously a genuine Cambridge local, and I really enjoyed spotting the references to independent cafes and so on. But I ultimately felt that the book somewhat undermined its own message of feminist sisterly solidarity, and it was weaker for that.
'To Be Taught, If Fortunate' is a novella by Becky Chambers. The book is a love letter to scientists, space exploration for the sake of furthering human knowledge, and a stinging rebuke to the vast corpus of science fiction literature representing space exploration as colonisation. The novella's quartet of space-dwelling characters have made a sincere and deep commitment to their scientific ideals: a long, lonely trip through space, stopping at various places to catalogue what they find and transmit this data back to Earth, across distances so vast that by the time they do return to our planet, decades will have passed. I loved Chambers' choice to commit to that return, and to show that that sustained connection to Earth strengthens the astronauts' resolve: they do good work, because they're reminded always of what that work is for. However, for me — someone for whom space exploration holds zero appeal and a great deal of horror — the emotion of the novella was somewhat lost. I could understand and appreciate what Chambers was saying on an intellectual level, but because I am so resolutely earthbound, so focused on what our own planet, and our own human minds and earth-dwelling communities can create and offer that the prospect of distant stars holds no appeal, and I find it difficult to understand people for whom that is true. I guess I'm a bad science fiction fan?
I've also read the three free short stories in this month's issue of Uncanny Magazine (other stories will be made available on 2nd June). These stories are:
'Through the Veil' by Jennifer Marie Brissett, a story of interdimensional travel, frustrated underfunded and exploited academics, and the pull of worlds other than our own. I found it a bit slight.
'A Being Together Amongst Strangers' by Arkady Martine, a love letter to New York in all its messiness, unquiet history, fractious subway travel, and that particular form of kindness to strangers which manifests itself in large cities. Although I live in quite bucolic surrounds, I am a city dweller at heart, and while New York has never got into my bones the way, say, Sydney, London or Berlin have done, I recognise a kindred spirit in Arkady Martine, and my soul sings back.
'High in the Clean Blue Air' by Emma Törzs, a gorgeous fairytale about animal transformations, external souls, and love. I really, really loved this.
And that's a wrap on my May reading (unless I finish another book over the weekend, but I'm really in more of a TV frame of mind at the moment).
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