What a great series, I'm heartbroken to be finished with it. Also wish we had more information about why Pheris, as he's writing the book, is having tWhat a great series, I'm heartbroken to be finished with it. Also wish we had more information about why Pheris, as he's writing the book, is having to deal with people defacing his work - "No matter how many times I have come to my study to find words have been inked over or mocking comments added to my manuscript, I have simply recopied those passages" - who are these people I'll fight them! And am so curious about the implications for life at court following the events of the narrative....more
Surprised by how much I enjoyed this. My general impression going in was that Heinlein wrote sleazy old school sci-fi primarily enjoyed by the sort ofSurprised by how much I enjoyed this. My general impression going in was that Heinlein wrote sleazy old school sci-fi primarily enjoyed by the sort of men who think hot women have an ethical duty to fuck them, but I trust Jo Walton's book rec lists and indeed Double Star is a romp. (It's true that there's only one female character and she's a secretary who enjoys being sexually harassed at work: yet let us accept the book on its merits.)
Spacemen did not often come to the bar of Casa Mañana; it was not their sort of hotel and it’s miles from the port. When one shows up in ground clothes, seeks a dark corner of the bar, and objects to being called a spaceman, that’s his business. I had picked that spot myself so that I could see without being seen � I owed a little money here and there at the time, nothing important but embarrassing. I should have assumed that he had his reasons, too, and respected them.
But my vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. ‘Don’t give me that, shipmate,� I replied. ‘If you’re a ground hog, I’m Mayor of Tycho City. I’ll wager you’ve done more drinking on Mars,� I added, noticing the cautious way he lifted his glass, a dead giveaway of low-gravity habits, ‘than you’ve ever done on Earth.�
The language is just FUN, and Heinlein is having fun with it. The worldbuilding is interesting. Most of all the development of the narrator's character is fascinating to watch. It becomes clear early on where the story is heading but for me that only added to the pleasure of watching it unfold....more
Literally all I want is EM Forster to come back to life and read all the same things as me and then we talk about them. I don't feel this is too much Literally all I want is EM Forster to come back to life and read all the same things as me and then we talk about them. I don't feel this is too much to ask; reality, please take note. Some disjointed thoughts:
- Forster has such a mild, reasonable-sounding academic voice it is easy to find yourself nodding in agreement even when you do not in fact agree.
- This makes it all the more delightful when he drops a real banger of an out-of-pocket opinion, which he does regularly ("Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom" - okay king!).
- His faux-modesty is very funny. "Most of us are pseudo-scholars, and I want to consider our characteristics with sympathy and respect," he says, while delivering the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge.
- By pseudo-scholarship he means goofy little attempts to classify books without actually understanding them. He makes particular fun of a critic who "classified novels by their dates, their length, their locality, their sex, their point of view, [and] the weather [..]"
- THEN, with an entirely straight face, he announces that we will be considering "The Story; People; The Plot; Fantasy and Prophecy; [and] Pattern and Rhythm". RIP to weather guy but we're different.
- Really fascinating to look at the lives of the books he talks about. Some are still widely read and studied (War and Peace, Wuthering Heights) and some have sunk like a stone (Roman Pictures, by one Percy Lubbock, currently has two ratings and no reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ).
- I love the way he uses metaphor! His serene belief in the power of figurative language to communicate the essence of something is missing from so much modern writing about books, and we are the poorer for it. Take this passage, on Henry James's characters: "Maimed creatures can alone breathe in Henry James’s pages � maimed yet specialized. They remind one of the exquisite deformities who haunted Egyptian art in the reign of Akhnaton � huge heads and tiny legs, but nevertheless charming. In the following reign they disappear." Do I love Henry James YES, is Forster wrong here no he is not. He has used a ridiculous, fanciful image to tell us something true....more
A gorgeous silk jacket of a novel, in ivory with stripes of peacock green. Our narrator Richard is hungry for beauty and he gorges pleasantly on his bA gorgeous silk jacket of a novel, in ivory with stripes of peacock green. Our narrator Richard is hungry for beauty and he gorges pleasantly on his beautiful memories of his time at Hampden College.
Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath, the heavy sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.
"[D]isordered and wild with stars"! So lovely. Of course there's also the murder but let's be frank, it would be a very navel-gazey sort of book if it were just Richard appreciating beauty and being louche and magnificent with his posh new Hampden friends. Tartt tells us in the first few pages about the murder - Bunny, one of the friends, is the victim, and truly it couldn't have happened to a nicer person - and then slowly reels us in as she drops more and more information about what happened. I spent a happy few hours on her line....more
**spoiler alert** VERY tasty, for me. It is your classic "friends in the golden heart of a secret world sent into a tailspin when one of them is vilel**spoiler alert** VERY tasty, for me. It is your classic "friends in the golden heart of a secret world sent into a tailspin when one of them is vilely murdered" plot, but reading The Secret History I wanted Bunny dead from approximately his first sentence, whereas Toby's malignancies unfold only gradually. One feels a great deal of sympathy for his friends.
Loved our protagonist Jem; loved Nicky, his love interest. Charles is, as always, delicate and perceptive regarding class.
‘Are you always this rude to everyone?�
‘I find it saves time. Do you object?�
Jem didn’t precisely object, as such. He had been brought up to say please and thank you, never to speak out of turn or show disrespect, to know his place and hold it with decency and pride. Nicky’s casually appalling manners were, he assumed, part of the aesthetic pose. It was disturbing, and unsettling, and fascinating in a way he couldn’t quite define.
A gorgeous romp of a book, and I'm not just saying that because I'm thanked in the acknowledgements.A gorgeous romp of a book, and I'm not just saying that because I'm thanked in the acknowledgements....more
- Really interesting structure, beautifully deployed! One of my favourite things about reading sci-fi is when you first dive in and aren't oriented ye- Really interesting structure, beautifully deployed! One of my favourite things about reading sci-fi is when you first dive in and aren't oriented yet and have to kind of feel your way around, mentally speaking. The double-stranded opposite time flow narrative of this book really maximises and extends that feeling
- Sma is so thinly characterised lol. Banks is like ok, imagine a woman... are you with me... all right, now imagine that: she enjoys sex. And then he drops his mic and literally doesn't tell us anything further about her
- Cheradenine by contrast is fascinating! I had some presentiment of the final act twist, probably bc I've read a lot of Iain Banks in my time, and I think it works incredibly well even/especially when you suspect it's coming...more
First of all congrats to ME for reading something that's not a detective novel!!! Wow. Ok, thoughts!
1. Not to be a Victorian reading Daniel Deronda anFirst of all congrats to ME for reading something that's not a detective novel!!! Wow. Ok, thoughts!
1. Not to be a Victorian reading Daniel Deronda and saying "Fantastic, yes, loved the Gwendolen Harleth stuff, pity about all the Daniel Deronda" BUT. I really wanted this to be a whole book about Seamus! Who reminded me of Gwendolen, tbh, in that he was strong and interesting and compelling almost despite himself, and also entirely utterly un-self-aware and continually shooting himself in the foot.
2. The opening Seamus-focussed section of the book knocked me FLAT and then as the narrative diffused out to encompass the entire arts population of Iowa City (estimated) it lost focus. Fyodor and Noah and Daw and Ivan and and and, they all blurred together for me - they're dancers, they're poets, they're fucking, they're breaking up, they're worried about money, they're guilty about not being worried about money, they're making stupid choices and trying their best and moving to New York and never leaving the Midwest. They were a mass to me rather than individuals. But GOD they were all so young (am I getting older? No, it is the 20-somethings who are too juvenile etc etc).
3. Going back to being a Victorian: I would've loved a shameless Victorian Novel resolution to Seamus's story. Like an uncle he didn't know he had dies and leaves him a legacy and also he gets married, or whatever. You know, real Jane Eyre shit. Recognise this isn't cool but I have to speak my truth.
4. Sex in this book is interesting! A lot of like. Sex as a way of opening yourself to being hurt (SOMETIMES not always).
5. Including an excerpt of Seamus's poetry was a brave choice and I mean that entirely sincerely, just thinking about doing it makes me want to peel myself. I think in general it's certainly safer as an author to make the reader imagine your characters' in-work work, unless you are Nabokov, and who among us is. HOWEVER what is that one Tumblr post that's like "99% of all poetry is bullshit and 1% is brilliant, and the 1% is different for every person." Seamus's poetry wasn't the 1% for me and (writing workshop instructor voice) that's valid.
6. Minor related point but it is so funny to me that poet characters in books always write loads of villanelles. Villanelles! Mm, alright, really. Show me THAT, Esther Greenwood!
7. On a sentence and paragraph level this book is gorgeous.
Not for the first time, Seamus imagined Oliver’s face going grotesque with pain. Imagined the slant of his mouth in suffering, beautiful in the way of those early, crude carvings of Christ, the suffering and the beauty one and the same. Seamus turned away from Oliver, took in the industrial park and its long tusks of steam. The cars on the bridge near the library ambling along.
Long tusks of steam! And then the cars ambling, oh lovely.
8. Seamus works as a cook at a hospice, because "he didn't get the good fellowship," and the way he thinks about food is really beautiful and also made me wistful for this world where hospice catering is done by people who can choose the recipes they use, rather than Serco or Sodexo.
9. I just enjoyed this book so much! Will be thinking about it for a long time. I want to talk about it with people I love (ATTN ERIN IF YOU READ THIS)....more
Very kind of John Gardner to move through time and write a book precisely tailored to my preferences and interests! What he does to Grendel's mother iVery kind of John Gardner to move through time and write a book precisely tailored to my preferences and interests! What he does to Grendel's mother is monstrous of course—she can't speak, really?—but it was the 70s, sex had been invented but I'm not sure if women were people yet.
I would read a book about how time works in this book, how Gardner stretches it and plays with it and dives headlong through it. And the narration is very clever but! not cloying, it's not a Scalzi-style "look at me can I get a gold star" cleverness, it's cleverness as a tool to do INTERESTING THINGS with the narrative. I highlighted approximately half the book....more
His eyes caressed my face like the flutter of a butterfly wing. ‘You care so much. You feel so much. So, if you’re a robot, you’re one of them robots
His eyes caressed my face like the flutter of a butterfly wing. ‘You care so much. You feel so much. So, if you’re a robot, you’re one of them robots that everyone is scared will overthrow humans one day because they’re so emotionally sophisticated. If you’re a robot you’re a really sexy, despotic one.�
We have all read those romance novels where the blurbs promise smart, sexy banter and then when you read the book you're like ah, how fortunate that the publisher told me, because otherwise the smartness of this banter might have entirely slipped me by. This book: lives up to its blurbs. Kiki is a gloriously fun narrator. Her interplay with Malakai is funny and sexy and sharp, and their emotional journey, as they slowly learn to trust each other, is beautifully drawn.
As well as being a romance novel the book is a love letter: to friendship, to uni and figuring out who and how you want to be in the world, to giving yourself second chances. To believing better things are possible. Most of all, to Blackness and Black excellence and Black joy.
Stayed up far too late reading this; don't regret my choices �...more
I put off reading this for literal decades because I didn't like the title, which goes to show I am an idiot. Exquisite, a top tier DWJ.I put off reading this for literal decades because I didn't like the title, which goes to show I am an idiot. Exquisite, a top tier DWJ....more
First off a huge thanks to Gene Wolfe for recognising how distressing yet sexy it is for us ladies when our gowns are torn such that our TITS ARE OUT First off a huge thanks to Gene Wolfe for recognising how distressing yet sexy it is for us ladies when our gowns are torn such that our TITS ARE OUT unless we clutch the ruined fabric to ourselves. There are three main Sexy Lady characters in this book and the gown-tearing happens to two of them: that's what I call a good percentage. I hear what you're saying, and yes, the third lady's nipples do go undescribed, but in recompense I offer that she has ~*~violet eyes~*~, "each as deep as the cistern beneath the Bell Keep," so you know, swings and roundabouts.
This book is essentially Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel series but for straight men. I adored it. Wolfe's prose isn't purple so much as fuligin (fuligin is of course the darker-than-black hue that is the hallmark of the torturers' guild. What can I say: I would wear it). Our narrator, Severian, is a torturer and headsman but also he is nice to doggies and quite funny, with an excellent turn of phrase: of being smitten by one of the Sexy Ladies, he writes "I could no more have resisted her than I could have resisted the blind greed of Urth if I had tumbled over a cliff." What a way to describe gravity! Hats off!
About the torture: I do not enjoy descriptions of torture and suffering, I loathed and skimmed those bits of the Game of Thrones books, but someone whose book recs I trust recommended this book so I chanced it. I am happy to say that the descriptions of torture are, at least in this volume, very minimal (and the writing overall is leagues ahead of GoT). Severian is a torturer but he's not a sadist and the narrative is occupied by other things.
A final note, on language. Wolfe does some extraordinary worldbuilding and a large part of his technique is using highly-specific but obsolete and/or non-English nouns: and so our characters ride in fiacres; they rejoice in the job title of chiliarch or portreeve or ephor; they wear jelabs, capotes, cymars. It is very effective and not a technique I've seen used before, at least not to this extent....more
He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use onl
He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. There are some men who have never been kissed like that.
This is a joyous book, and very funny. It is clearly written by someone who is very self-consciously A Writer, which I often loathe, but in this case I enjoyed both the prose and the meta-textual elements greatly....more
**spoiler alert** Gorgeously twisty plot with heaps of intrigue and scheming, very enjoyable worldbuilding, interestingly imperfect characters (I was **spoiler alert** Gorgeously twisty plot with heaps of intrigue and scheming, very enjoyable worldbuilding, interestingly imperfect characters (I was pleasantly surprised that the spy was not at all Redeemed by the Narrative, for example, but was rather allowed to be small and ugly of spirit right through to his bitter end. Also I assume that was his finger in the box—hard luck, old man).
I hugely enjoy watching fencing (not to be confused with actually doing it, which I would loathe) so really this book was like a delicious cake baked especially for me with my favourite icing on top. Huge thanks to the author, too kind, you shouldn't have....more
It's a romance novel in which the characters are contestants on a (very) thinly veiled Great British Bakeoff! Yes, I am HERE FOR IT. Less excitingly, It's a romance novel in which the characters are contestants on a (very) thinly veiled Great British Bakeoff! Yes, I am HERE FOR IT. Less excitingly, it's a romance novel in which our heroine must choose between two gorgeous men who both fancy her, which is not my favourite trope. (Alexis, if you read this, please don't feel bad--you had no way of knowing, and I've already forgiven you).
I adored Rosaline, who won my heart early on in an excellent scene in which she defends her daughter's right to say "my mummy is bisexual" in the classroom. Beautiful parenting, beautiful bi representation, well done. I did NOT adore Alain, the first of her suitors. Genuinely one of the first things he says to her is "I went to a university friend’s wedding last year, and honestly, I’d have been surprised if the bride’s family had read a book between them. I got stuck talking to one of their many peripheral cousins, and I swear, the man thought grammar was a nickname for an elderly relative." And he just carries on like that! It's very offputting!! It made me like Rosaline less that she wasn't off-put, actually.
Fortunately Harry, her second suitor, is much more appealing. I don't always love the way Hall writes working class characters (I have an entire THESIS about Hall's own class background which I will not share here because a) irrelevant really and b) not my place to speculate, but suffice it to say I'm fascinated) but he doesn't burden Harry with e.g. an excruciatingly phonetically-rendered accent or an implausible absence of faults (looks pointedly at Glitterland) so I'm counting him as a win.
As always Hall's writing is a delight and there are many funny moments. I'm looking forward to the next in the series....more
Talia Hibbert is like, rudely good at fun sexy romance. This is fun sexy romance with the trope pedal pushed ALL the way to the metal (secret prince! Talia Hibbert is like, rudely good at fun sexy romance. This is fun sexy romance with the trope pedal pushed ALL the way to the metal (secret prince! fake engagement!) and it's a delight. Cherry is such an excellent heroine and I especially love Hibbert's take on the traditional makeover sequence: Cherry bites her tongue and puts up with it until the palace-hired hair stylist tries to straighten her hair, at which point she says you know what NOPE I know how to look good and this isn't it, and also I'm going to need a Black makeup artist, thank youuuu.
Three stars for me because I wish it were a bit longer and gave us a bit more of a chance to see Ruben and Cherry's relationship developing....more
Interesting treatment of gender, unique and thought-provoking magic, and! AND! (view spoiler)[the precocious young female magician DOESN'T fuck her olInteresting treatment of gender, unique and thought-provoking magic, and! AND! (view spoiler)[the precocious young female magician DOESN'T fuck her older male tutor! (hide spoiler)] I genuinely wasn't sure if that was legal in fantasy novels....more
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