Author: katenepveu

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Adams, Douglas: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The; Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (audio)

I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks on my iPod during my commute, some from the library, some from Audible.com. My prior audiobook experience had been limited to solo trips to Massachusetts, but these are turning out to be a good way to decompress and keep me awake.

So far on this new spate of listening, I’ve only listened to two things that I hadn’t read before. I am a die-hard re-reader, as you will have noticed, and actually I’m finding listening to books to be a good way of re-experiencing them, because I tend to skim when I get really involved in what-happens-next. (I’m planning to try The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (the unabridged Rob Inglis versions) after the turn of the year; I think it might be an interesting way of getting back to the text.) On my daily commute, I find that new stuff is almost too involving—I’ve yet to circle the block so I can listen to the end of the chapter, but I’ve been tempted; also, if I’m distracted for a moment by traffic, it’s slightly inconvenient to skip back and listen again.

On the other hand, I sometimes feel guilty about spending so much time on familiar works. A sort of compromise is to listen to things that I’ve read before but don’t remember well. Douglas Adams’ first four Hitchhiker books turned out to be a good example of this: I had no recollection of the third, Life, the Universe, and Everything. None whatsoever. Which is somewhat odd, since it’s the most like an actual book of the first four, with a plot and pace and a reasonably coherent story. (The first in particular is lumps of exposition with a beginning and a (very abrupt) end; it doesn’t have so much middle, as I’d seen remarked about the adaptations for the forthcoming movie. But when it’s such cool exposition, you can get away with it. The fifth is not a book; it’s a giant slap in the face of the reader, an abomination whose very existence pains me. ) I’d remembered Life as the least good of the first four, and I’m still not sure what I think of it, but I think now I’ll remember what it’s about.

(I’m weird and like the fourth the best, always have, probably because I’m a sap and slightly uncomfortable with the misanthropy in the others, particularly the second. I really don’t want to hear why you dislike it, if you do, because I want to keep it as my favorite.)

Adams, by the way, is very bad at transitions, and this flaw is really pointed up by the audio format. The worst is one transition in Life, because it simply isn’t there; I thought maybe I’d spaced out, or the audio file was glitchy, but no, the book has the same lack.

These are read by Adams, who does a fabulous job of it. There are a few minor infelicities: in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, his voices for the robot characters are run through some kind of special effect filter, which makes the lovely confrontation between Marvin and the war robot unfortunately hard to follow; the overall sound quality isn’t quite as sharp as more recently recorded audiobooks; and occasionally they seem to speed up a bit, as if to fit on a certain number of tapes. But overall I liked these a lot, and I’m quite looking forward to getting the Dirk Gently books, which I also don’t remember at all (these are all available from Audible).

[split into multiple posts for import into MT; hit “next”]

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Sayers, Dorothy L.: (06) Strong Poison [2004 read]; (07) The Five Red Herrings

My Sayers re-read has stalled out after the next two in the series, Strong Poison and The Five Red Herrings. I’ve logged Strong Poison fairly recently, so I’ll just say that in spite of its flaws, I will forever adore it for the seance bits, the lock-picking bits, and for not marrying off Peter and Harriet at the end, because what a disaster that would have been.

The Five Red Herrings, however, I just do not care about. Harriet is not to be seen or even heard of; instead we get a (nearly) emotion-free venture for Peter into a positive orgy of timetables, and I just don’t care. Timetable mysteries aren’t my favorite anyway, but this is such whiplash after Strong Poison, and such a step back in terms of Peter’s development as a character, that I can not think well of it.

Also, there is an egregious trick early in the book, where Peter tells the police a critical deduction, and instead of the conversation, the reader is given an otherwise-blank page with a note at the top: ” . . . as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.”

I have never thrown a book at the wall. I do not expect to ever throw a book at the wall. But sometimes I read a line and my hands twitch convulsively, without conscious direction, as though they’d really like to get this book away from them. (If I were Vlad Taltos, this would be when Loiosh says, “Can I eat him, boss?”) The Five Red Herrings came very close to leaping away from me when I read that line.

Have His Carcase is next, which is why I’m stalled on the re-read; yes, it has Harriet, but I recall it as being extremely long, dreary, and contrived. Maybe I’m wrong; Truepenny had a lot to say about it in her series of Sayers posts (warning: huge spoilers in all of those posts). But it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm for it.

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Bryson, Bill: In a Sunburned Country; A Short History of Nearly Everything (audio)

In a Sunburned Country is Bill Bryson’s Australia book. Bryson is probably best known for A Walk in the Woods, which is still my favorite of his books. In a Sunburned Country is much in the mode of his travel books generally: Bryson bops around the area he’s chosen, whether the Appalachian Trail or Australia, and offers up frequently-funny descriptions of his travels along with bits of social, economic, and political history.

As Chad has said offline, the problem with this book is that Bryson likes Australia too much. He explicitly says it’s part and parcel of his nostalgia for 1950s America, which I frankly distrust [*]; and that colors my reaction to his assertions about Australia’s recent immigration history, for instance (though to his credit he does discuss the history and current status of Australia’s aborigines). It wasn’t a major part of the book, and most of the time I was happy laughing about cricket or the very many ways you can get killed in Australia, but every now and again he’d go into nostalgia rapture and I would twitch.

[*] The xenophobic moment at the start of the book doesn’t help. Did he really say that after traveling so far, he instinctively expects “swarthy men in robes . . . and a real possibility of disease on everything you touch,” but instead is pleasantly surprised to find that “these people are just like you and me”? I’m afraid he really did. Ugh.

Australia still sounds like a very cool place, mind, and as soon as they invent reliable teleportation (and personal force-field shields to keep the spiders and snakes and so forth away), I’ll be there.

(I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. Other than the occasional dialogue that was a little too deadpan, and the footnotes that weren’t read (I’ve read it before), it was excellently done. I’m just annoyed that A Walk in the Woods is only available in abridged format read by Bryson; I know that book too well to listen to an abridged version, even if I cared for such things, but it would be wrong listening to anyone else narrating it.)

(I also have listened to part of A Short History of Nearly Everything on audio since then. It’s narrated by someone who has an unfortunately snooty British-accented voice, and I’m not in any hurry to get back to listening.)

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McKinley, Robin: Deerskin

Robin McKinley’s Deerskin is her “except” book; any description of her accumulated novels will probably include an “ . . . except Deerskin.” It’s a re-write of “Donkeyskin” in its Charles Perrault version, in which a widowed king wants to marry his daughter. (McKinley talks about her problems with Perrault’s version on her website.)

In case you don’t follow those links, Deerskin gets an “except” because the pivotal event is the beating and rape of the princess, Lissar, by her father. It’s a brutal yet non-exploitative piece of writing: an amazing sense of foreboding and dread before, and very little physical detail during, just reactions and effects—which are more than sufficient. I have heard that Lissar’s reactions ring very true to people who have been severely traumatized; I personally couldn’t say, but the force of her trauma, and the distance she must travel to healing, makes the book a powerful and lingering one.

That said, I still want to argue with quite a lot of it. It’s possible that fairy tales—particularly the kind with helpful goddesses—might not fit very well with psychologically realistic trauma. It’s not that Lissar couldn’t use the help, or wasn’t due for something easier than her life to date—but I can’t help but obscurely feel that the magical help diminishes her very real accomplishment of recovering (partly this is because I think some of the magical help wouldn’t actually have worked). The conflation of her with the Moonwoman also makes me slightly uncomfortable in ways I am unable to articulate.

I should point out that there’s at least one way in which this isn’t an “except” book for McKinley: the ending jumps up several levels of abstraction, going as mythic or more as Spindle’s End, which is to say, very mythic. I think I followed it, but it’s too bad that because it went so mythic, it couldn’t answer a few practical questions I had about the aftermath.

(I think I’m going to put spoilers over on my LiveJournal, for people who’ve read the book and are wondering what I’m talking about. I’ll leave the link in comments.)

For people interested in taking apart fairy tales and getting them to work as stories, Deerskin is worth looking at. I’m not convinced that it succeeds, but I freely admit my reaction may be idiosyncratic.

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Pratchett, Terry: (32) A Hat Full of Sky

My reaction on finishing Terry Pratchett’s A Hat Full of Sky was two-part:

  1. Gosh, you’d think he’d have run out of things to say about the nature of witches, after six books about the Lancre witches and the prior nominally-YA book about Tiffany Aching, The Wee Free Men.
  2. And yet he doesn’t appear to have. That’s kind of impressive.

Tiffany is now eleven and leaving home to start her formal education in witching. She knows sheep, and cheese, and the Chalk. She doesn’t know status-conscious girls, or how to make a shamble, or how to deal with having her body taken over when she casually left it empty for a moment—so she’d better learn fast.

Tiffany is only eleven, which helps differentiate this book from prior Witches books: because of her youth and inexperience, she’s prone to mistakes that Granny Weatherwax just wouldn’t make. Tiffany may be Granny’s apparent successor, but she’s no Mary Sue and she has a long road ahead of her to get there.

(I continue to be curious if Pratchett has an end in mind for Granny. In the unlikely event I get to talk to him at Worldcon (I imagine he’ll be mobbed constantly), I may well ask.)

Oh, and the Nac Mac Feegle are back. Good stuff, nothing earth-shaking but solid and enjoyable.

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Walton, Jo: (201) Farthing

Back in May, when I logged the latest Brust, I said “next time I read something pre-publication I’m going to put it directly in the posting queue.” I didn’t expect the question to come up so soon after; yes, it’s August now, but I’m catching up, remember? I read Jo Walton’s Farthing in manuscript form just a few days after I posted that.

Farthing is set in an alternate world where the U.K. made peace with Hitler in 1941. It’s now 1949; the Third Reich remains in power across the Channel, and the politician who made the peace has just been murdered in an English country home. The story is told by two characters, in first-person by the daughter of the country-home owner’s, and in third by the investigating detective.

I’m afraid that thumbnail sketch gives the wrong impression, by mainly describing the political and not the personal aspects of the premise. However, as I did read it in manuscript and it has been revised since, I don’t like to say too much about it. There is a strong personal component, which is tightly woven with the political aspects in a way that, for me, increases the emotional effects of the book until at the end, I felt rather like I’d been kicked in the chest. (Okay, I’ve never been kicked in the chest, but it was how I imagine it to feel.) Your mileage may vary, of course, but I found it a very book hard to shake.

I suspect Farthing will be one of those works that I hold up for the proposition, “‘I didn’t enjoy this’ isn’t the same as “This isn’t good.'” It was tightly written, a gripping and fast read; I liked the characters I was supposed to and admired the construction of the narrative and plot; and I really don’t want to re-read it, because it depressed the hell out of me.

[ Also, yes, I’ve changed the format here, mostly so I can put the “Recent Comments” list on the side. Bugs, reactions, let me know. ]

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King, Stephen: On Writing (audio and text)

I listened to Stephen King’s On Writing as an audiobook read by the author. As other people have observed, the mix of autobiographical sections and writing sections make slightly uneasy companions. I think the autobiographical stuff has obvious relevance to King’s writing for someone familiar with his work, however, and considering how popular King is and how many people out there apparently want to write fiction (not me; I know my limits), I imagine the audience for each part overlaps more than a bit.

The autobiography is involving, and includes a very vivid description of the life-threatening incident where King was hit by a van. I was slightly more interested in the writing sections, as I’ve been lurking about authors and writing forums for a bit now, hearing about the many different ways that people create the books I love to read. King’s advice on writing is interesting and pungent and had me nodding along most of the time; I particularly liked how he drew examples from popular fiction like Grisham and Rowling as well as Literature-with-a-capital-L. It is at a fairly basic level and thus is not new to anyone who’s already read up on the subject—which, I hasten to add, is not a bad thing, because there is no super secret shortcut and so all good advice at this level is going to be similar. My major quibble is that King appears to think of “plot” solely as a verb, something the author actively forces on a book; but then, some large percentage of writing discussions are always definitional. I forgive that, and would forgive a lot more, though, of a book that calls fee-charging agents “unscrupulous fucks.”

As for On Writing as an audiobook, it was mostly a good experience. I would have preferred if King had also read the section numbers, to indicate breaks in the autobiographical portion: I initially thought it was all one continuous section, because it was told in straight chronological order up through the sale of paperback rights to Carrie; when the narrative then went back in time to tell the story of his alcohol and drug addiction, I was briefly disoriented. And there are a few extras at the back of the physical book, including a marked-up first draft, that can’t be included in the audiobook. King is a good reader, though, and I’ll keep an eye out in the library for other short-ish works he’s narrated.

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Nielsen Hayden, Patrick (ed): New Skies

And now back to the catching-up. First in the queue we have New Skies, edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. This is an anthology of short science fiction designed for the teen market but readable by anyone—indeed, I strongly recommend it to anyone like me who isn’t opposed to the general concept of short science fiction, but doesn’t subscribe to the magazines or buy every yearly anthology to keep up with it. New Skies is a compact collection of excellent stories of the last twenty-odd years.

Like Chad, there were only two stories I wasn’t crazy about. I was also underwhelmed by Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars,” and the Orson Scott Card story, “Salvage,” is probably just not my kind of thing. The rest were all very good indeed. What’s more, the best of the stories should dispell any qualms that this is a fluffy kiddie anthology: “fluffy” cannot be applied to any collection with Connie Willis’s “A Letter from the Clearys,” David Langford’s “Different Kinds of Darkness,” or Nancy Kress’s “Out of All Them Bright Stars.”

I have a tendency to feel vaguely guilty that I don’t read more short fiction. Reading this year’s Hugo nominees actually reduced that guilt somewhat, because I found them a distinctly mixed bag. While I’ll probably try to keep up with award nominees in the future, I feel better knowing that in the meantime, PNH has shaken out much of the best recent stuff and distilled it into handy book format for my enjoyment.

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2004 Hugo Award Nominees: Short Story

In contrast to the Novelette category, it’s quite easy for me to rank the 2004 Hugo Award Nominees for Best Short Story. To prove it, here they are (apologies; I’m very tired but want to get this done tonight):

  1. “The Tale of the Golden Eagle,” by David D. Levine (online at Fantasy & Science Fiction). Voice, characters, and plot, all in a little gem of a story.

    This is a story about a bird. A bird, a ship, a machine, a woman — she was all these things, and none, but first and fundamentally a bird.

    It is also a story about a man — a gambler, a liar, and a cheat, but only for the best of reasons.

    No doubt you know the famous Portrait of Denali Eu, also called The Third Decision, whose eyes have been described as “two pools of sadness iced over with determination.” This is the story behind that painting.

    It is a love story. It is a sad story. And it is true.

  2. “Four Short Novels,” by Joe Haldeman (online at Fantasy & Science Fiction). Each start with, “Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die”—unless. There’s always an “unless,” isn’t there? Sharp variations on a theme.
  3. “A Study in Emerald,” by Neil Gaiman (online at the author’s web site). Written for an anthology called Shadows over Baker Street, this is a tale set in a world that, seven hundred years before Sherlock Holmes’ time, was conquered by the Lovecraftian gods. I enjoyed this quite a bit, but it’s not fully accessible to people not familiar with the Holmes canon. This isn’t to the story’s overall discredit, considering the audience it was written for, but it does bump it down on my list for an award.
  4. “Paying It Forward,” by Michael A. Burstein (online at Analog). Overly sentimental with dubious-sounding quantum mechanics. I’d respect it more if it were fantasy.
  5. “Robots Don’t Cry,” by Mike Resnick (online at Asimov’s). Robots don’t cry, but one wants to. Haven’t we done this before?

Note:: If you’d like other people’s opinions on any of these categories, Nicholas Whyte has a very useful mega-meta-review.

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2004 Hugo Award Nominees: Novelette

There are six nominees for the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Novelette because of a tie. This is a fairly difficult category for me to rank. There’s one story I liked quite a lot, one story I didn’t like at all, and the rest are kind of ehhh.

The story I didn’t like at all is “Hexagons,” by Robert Reed (online at Asimov’s). My notes to myself on it read, “Oh look. Alternate history with Hitler. Ooooh.” and I really don’t think I can add to that.

The story I liked quite a lot is Jeffrey Ford’s “The Empire of Ice Cream” (online at scifi.com). My notes on this read “texture and depth,” which probably shows that I was influenced by the nature of the story in making the notes—the narrator has synesthesia, and grew up experiencing “the whisper of vinyl, the stench of purple, the spinning blue gyres of the church bell.” When he’s a teenager, though, he tastes coffee ice cream and sees a young woman, which provides the plot of the story. I believe I saw one reviewer comment that it was predictable, and it may have been, but it was an interesting, distinctive, and enjoyable read.

And then there are the four stories in the middle. I may just draw lots to rank them, honestly.

  • “Bernardo’s House,” by James Patrick Kelly (online at Asimov’s) has an opening that caught my attention (“The house was lonely.”) Apparently in the future, successful men keep houses as mistresses, or at least one does; the story is about what happens when he stops visiting the house. The other main character is of a type I’m not crazy about and, perhaps as a result, pushed my suspension of disbelief a bit. The house’s POV is reasonably good, but the story didn’t really grab me.
  • “Into the Gardens of Sweet Night,” by Jay Lake (downloadable from FictionWise). Fable-like in tone and content, despite its setting in a far-ish future Earth: it’s about a talking (Uplifted-style) dog that’s been kicked out of the titular Gardens over some apples (yes, one of the Gardens is of Eden) and enlists a young man to help him get back. The POV character, the young man, is likeable enough, but the tone kept me at a distance emotionally.
  • “Nightfall,” by Charles Stross (online at Asimov’s). The first time I tried to read this, I simply could not get past the first two paragraphs. I was able to parse it on the second attempt, several days later, and I’m not sure why it gave me such trouble—but to a much lesser extent, the whole story felt like work to me. Too dense, too lurking with political subtext, too something.
  • “Legions in Time,” by Michael Swanwick (online at Asimov’s). I’m not crazy about time travel stories, as they tend to make my head hurt. This strikes me as a fairly light but inoffensive take on the wars-through-time thing.

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