Scattering links and flowers
Apr. 30th, 2021 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Today is, apparently, all about the online author events. Having watched the recording of Roshani Chokshi's Instagram Live event last night, I'm now alerted to the fact that Zen Cho is doing a similar event in about half an hour today. Since this will fall right at the start of my working day, I'm also going to watch it later, and will update this post with the link to the recording so you can all do the same. [Updated to add the link to the recording.]
I will, however, be able to watch Amal El-Mohtar's keynote speech at Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations live on Youtube this afternoon, as it's due to stream at 5pm British Summer Time, which is exactly when I stop work. This may be of interest to some of you as well — check what time it is in your timezone, or come back to the same link to watch asynchronously, as it will be available for a little while afterwards. El-Mohtar is a great public speaker — she's brilliant whether in a podcast, a panel, a kaffeeklatsch, or doing a keynote address, so I highly recommend this event.
Reading-wise, I've been firmly ensconced in Egypt these past few days, with P. Djèlí Clark's short story 'The Angel of Khan el-Khalili' (about feminism, justice, and the workers' movement (including a scenario evocative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire), set against a version of 20th-century Egypt where steampunk automata are part of every home, and angels and djinn talk to people who dare to seek them out), and then Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, a work of historical children's fiction that I read afterlirazel used it as the answer to one of the thirty-day book meme prompts. I think if I'd read this as a child, as lirazel did, I would have enjoyed it uncritically. However, while I love the overall story and setting (a teenage girl, enslaved and chafing against her situation, winds up working as a spy and embroiled in the dangerous politics of ancient Egypt in the time of Hatshepsut), the book is very much of its time, with some very unfortunate 1950s implications which soured things a bit for my twenty-first century eyes.
Onwards to the last book meme prompt:
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
This, again, feels like a confrontationally negative question. Similarly, I feel that I'm so open regarding my tastes in fiction that nothing I say would surprise anyone. However, I do have an answer, although 'detest' is probably too strong a word to describe the book in question.
This book — Terra Farma by Gillian Rubinstein — is the dictionary definition of 'be careful what you wish for.' The wish in question was my own: to find out what happened after the final page of Rubinstein's Galax Arena, a huge favourite of my childhood. I'd spent so many years wondering and daydreaming about the post-canon experiences of the characters of this book, and when I stumbled upon a sequel that I'd had no idea existed it felt as if Christmas had come early!
And yet...
Terra Farma took all the things that were weird and curious and ambiguous about Galax Arena, and overexplained them. Instead of letting its plot remain a metaphor for the ways the greed and iniquities of the wealthy West leads to the exploitation and suffering of children in the poorer parts of the world (worked to the bone in sweatshop labour, living in unsanitory conditions, at risk of sickness, disappearance, or violence in their everyday lives), she made everything too much of an organised, global, shadowy network. It was all too deliberate, whereas what she should have been criticising (as in Galax Arena) was the cruelties that result from indifference, and the desire to lead a comfortable life.
And she sank my first-ever ship!
In my head, I've basically been pretending this book doesn't exist for the past twenty years!
And that's the final post in my series of answers to a great set of questions about books and reading. I've really enjoyed answering them, and I'm happy that I managed to do this across every single day of April without any gaps!
I'll leave you with some photos and a video of the beautiful blossoms in our garden! Have a great weekend!.
I will, however, be able to watch Amal El-Mohtar's keynote speech at Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations live on Youtube this afternoon, as it's due to stream at 5pm British Summer Time, which is exactly when I stop work. This may be of interest to some of you as well — check what time it is in your timezone, or come back to the same link to watch asynchronously, as it will be available for a little while afterwards. El-Mohtar is a great public speaker — she's brilliant whether in a podcast, a panel, a kaffeeklatsch, or doing a keynote address, so I highly recommend this event.
Reading-wise, I've been firmly ensconced in Egypt these past few days, with P. Djèlí Clark's short story 'The Angel of Khan el-Khalili' (about feminism, justice, and the workers' movement (including a scenario evocative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire), set against a version of 20th-century Egypt where steampunk automata are part of every home, and angels and djinn talk to people who dare to seek them out), and then Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, a work of historical children's fiction that I read after
lirazel used it as the answer to one of the thirty-day book meme prompts. I think if I'd read this as a child, as lirazel did, I would have enjoyed it uncritically. However, while I love the overall story and setting (a teenage girl, enslaved and chafing against her situation, winds up working as a spy and embroiled in the dangerous politics of ancient Egypt in the time of Hatshepsut), the book is very much of its time, with some very unfortunate 1950s implications which soured things a bit for my twenty-first century eyes. Onwards to the last book meme prompt:
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
This, again, feels like a confrontationally negative question. Similarly, I feel that I'm so open regarding my tastes in fiction that nothing I say would surprise anyone. However, I do have an answer, although 'detest' is probably too strong a word to describe the book in question.
This book — Terra Farma by Gillian Rubinstein — is the dictionary definition of 'be careful what you wish for.' The wish in question was my own: to find out what happened after the final page of Rubinstein's Galax Arena, a huge favourite of my childhood. I'd spent so many years wondering and daydreaming about the post-canon experiences of the characters of this book, and when I stumbled upon a sequel that I'd had no idea existed it felt as if Christmas had come early!
And yet...
Terra Farma took all the things that were weird and curious and ambiguous about Galax Arena, and overexplained them. Instead of letting its plot remain a metaphor for the ways the greed and iniquities of the wealthy West leads to the exploitation and suffering of children in the poorer parts of the world (worked to the bone in sweatshop labour, living in unsanitory conditions, at risk of sickness, disappearance, or violence in their everyday lives), she made everything too much of an organised, global, shadowy network. It was all too deliberate, whereas what she should have been criticising (as in Galax Arena) was the cruelties that result from indifference, and the desire to lead a comfortable life.
And she sank my first-ever ship!
In my head, I've basically been pretending this book doesn't exist for the past twenty years!
And that's the final post in my series of answers to a great set of questions about books and reading. I've really enjoyed answering them, and I'm happy that I managed to do this across every single day of April without any gaps!
I'll leave you with some photos and a video of the beautiful blossoms in our garden! Have a great weekend!.