Jeff
About 70 pages in, and I'm loving this one. I imagine this may be intentional, but it reads a bit like a post-apocalyptic Tom Sawyer so far.
————–
Almost done with this one. A really good read. The story really is about a possible 22nd-Century America, but the characters are interesting enough, and there is enough plot, to keep me pretty happy. Mostly, though, I just love the style of writing, using a first-person narrator to convey the time and place through how he's providing us with the story.
————–
Finished up the last 100 pages last night. A satisfying ending, if more sad than I had seen coming. I'll likely pick up Spin next...
Savoring this one, reading slowly. Liking it so far...
———————
This is a slim little tome, but I did stretch out the time it took me to read it, because I just loved it. Pretty much the definition of poignant. This is one I will keep and likely read again and again.
——————–
20130917
Re-read this week for book club. Lots to unpack in here that I hadn't noticed before–relationships between men, the many facets of immorality, what is deigned lawful and what is not. Still a lovely tone poem about endings...
The first story is one by Gene Wolfe, and this book is already worth the money–I'm not even done with the story yet. Very excited to read some good stuff...
—-
Update: It's all pretty good stuff. The Harlan Ellison story was good, but pretty much a one-trick pony. I really enjoyed the LeGuin story (more than I've enjoyed either of the two novels of hers I've read), and the story about Saint Judas Iscariot, by George R.R. Martin was pretty much written for me. I'm only a fourth of the way through this book and already it's probably my fave anthology, ever.
—-
Update: Finished this, regretfully, the other day. I love every single story in here, with one exception. Best anthology I've ever read.
Like many folks, I discovered Ishiguro because of Never Let Me Go (rather than Remains of the Day!), and found myself not enjoying WWWO as much–but it's still a really good read. I only recently became cognizant of the whole “unreliable narrator” concept, and it's definitely interesting territory to explore. By the end of the book, it's become clear that one is journeying along with the protagonist from sentimental nostalgia toward reality (and then slightly back again), but it's not clear from the start, so this was a difficult one for me to get into.
Glad I read it, won't likely read it again, unlike Never Let Me Go.
Worth reading, for sure, if only because of the sly way LeGuin writes about power and gender. That said, I find myself wanting more from LeGuin–more character depth, more story. I wish she had taken the last 50 pages, where the two main characters journey across the ice, and created a whole book out of that. Once I had those characters more fleshed-out for me, it was infinitely more interesting, but until then, it was a bit of a chore.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to but this one in the same category as all of Philip K. Dick and most of Octavia Butler: Full of fascinating ideas–and therefore worth reading–but lacking in execution.
An interesting, personal philosophy of sex. So far I'm really enjoying this–Tisdale does overreach when it comes to the ubiquity of, say, how sexuality permeates life (not everybody experiences the world as such a fully sexual thing as others do), and I have some quibbles regarding how she discusses gender, but what a great book.
——————-
This book is over 14 years old now, and in a way that adds to the fun in reading it. In one section, she talks about ever-expanding inclusion in so-called sexual revolution, and notes that the Lesbian and Gay Parades have just become Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Parades, and she hopes for the time when they will become Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Parades.
——————-
Turns out this is one of those books that gets better as it goes along. Though there are a few things that make the book a little “dated” (specifically, her discussions of trans issues), by the time she gets to the end, this is a nice primer of culture and sexuality, at least from one person's perspective. The strength of the book is found in the personal stories Tisdale sprinkles throughout.
It's been a while since I've enjoyed a fiction(-alized) book as much as this one. A friend lent me this, and I have had it on my shelf for weeks and weeks...but once I started it, I'm having a hard time putting it down, wondering when I'm going to find some time to do some more reading. Turns out the author wrote the book that one of my favorite movies is based upon (25th Hour), so it's not exactly surprising that I like this book, but I'm still struck by how much I'm enjoying it. I think I will remember the first page, the feeling evoked, for the rest of my life–I have been thinking about it every time I have a meal.
This book oddly reminds me of a comic, Jar of Fools (by Jason Lutes), in that it has an amazing combination of hope, despair, brutality and humor.
—————–
So I finished this one in two sittings–although, granted, the second sitting was 2 hours long. I loved this book. The only reservation I had was with a slightly too-pat ending, but it's tough to have complaints when (1) the ending was still satisfying, just less so than the rest of the book and (2) it's a true story, of a sort, so it's likely that “pat” ending was simply the way things went.
Through the first few stories now, and this is a really interesting anthology so far. A little author history, a little crime story.
—————————
I'm not sure crime fiction is my bag, or if short-story crime fiction is, anyway, but the anthology is fun, and toward the end there is a Joyce Carol Oates story that is worth the whole book.
This was a fair read. I was disappointed that the scope was wide but not too deep–I would have liked less of a survey and more depth from all of the women interviewed. I was also a little disappointed that there were so few men interviewed/quoted. There are good reason for the fact that Ray mostly talks about women naked on the internet, but I would have liked to have at least some information on how men deal with Hookups, downloads, and cashing in on internet sexploration...there was virtually none.
I am definitely late to the debate about most of the stuff Roy is talking about in this book–10 years late, basically. But it's still amazing to read her stuff. She has a way of being angry without letting bitterness overwhelm, and her sarcasm offers up just a little bit of humore-as-relief while discussing the horrendous power dynamics at play in the world.
———————————–
Now that I've finished this, I'm going to gobble up anything else she's written, and hope to find some stuff that's more current. She's amazing.
This is an interesting one. Roszak is examining the ways in which science has been influenced by the fact that, historically, so many scientists have been men–he takes some basic ideas about how traditional masculinity has affected science (e.g. science as “controlling” nature), and explores a bit more through analysis of metaphorical language and such just what has been influence. To oversimplify one example: Atomic theory held sway for longer than it perhaps should have because it appealed to the traditionally masculine concept of The Individual.
He often overreaches, and a few times gets the facts about the science wrong, but I still am really enjoying the book. He pointed out that the CERN headquarters has an ancient alchemist's symbol (snake eating its own tail) emblazoned on a marble floor–signifying to the physicists the universe understanding itself by creating creatures like us who can understand things), and that the valley that Mary Shelley overlooked while she wrote Frankenstein was actually the future home of CERN...and those tidbits make the book worth the read.
This is a good first book to what could have been a great series, but it devolves from an interesting take on the vampire myth (a take which includes class and race in a way that so-called genre fiction so often doesn't) with an interesting central narrator to a mild courtroom drama, oddly enough. I love Butler, but this story feels like an introduction to a larger tale, one that doesn't quite stand on its own. It is still worth reading for the interesting vampire dynamics that Butler has created, but ultimately a little disappointing.
It's tough to find an anthology that has such consistently good stuff in it, or at least stuff that I consistently find really interesting. This is a finely edited anthology, with lots of various perspectives represented, and myriad writing styles as well. I think I'm also finding this book at a time when it's most helpful to me, while I struggle with traditional scripts about what various types of relationships might look like, and how to find a way to navigate around the traditions without running aground.
It's fascinating to know that, while I struggle in my little world with my little scripts, lots of people are struggling (or not!) with so-called “alternative” relationship models, other ways of being; learning about some of those ways (and knowing this must just be the tip of the iceberg) really helps me find some solace. Given that “traditional” families only exist as comfortable fictions anyway, I'd say anybody might enjoy learning about different types of relationships from the authors here.
Wow. This sucker grabs you right from the start, doesn't it?
—————–
Finished this relatively quickly, in part because it's a surprisingly good little page-turner, partly because there is a sense of foreboding throughout the whole book (a conceit of the plot and concepts within the book, I think) that I wanted to avoid prolonging. The whole time, Little Bee is waiting for the other shoe to drop, and so is the reader, and it was kind of exhausting. Still, it's an interesting book, full of wonderful turns of phrase and some pretty good insights. There were times when it seemed to veer into the overly-sentimental, but then it would veer right back into bleakly realistic. There were tones of the so-called “magical negro” problem found all over the place in fiction, but these were mitigated by the main thrust of the story for me, which was basically a critique of consumer culture and colonialization. I think.
This is an odd one, for sure, but interesting. While reading it, because the “protagonist” is a consciousness that lives “backward in time” within a man, is disorienting. I also feel odd, after having read a bit of it, because my brain starts to turn time around as I read, and then when I stop reading, I have to reorient. It's almost like experiments with sight–give somebody special glasses with a mirror setup so that they see everything “upside down,” and pretty quickly the brain will compensate so that you see it “right side up”–take the glasses off, and (luckily!) the opposite happens.
This book is like those special glasses, except regarding time. Pretty cool.
Whew. I wasn't sure I was going to make it through this one; though I loved the language, sometimes the plot felt pretty soap-operatic. By the end, however, I became fascinated with the central character, especially the ways in which I felt a kinship with him–which, given that he's pretty much a complete asshat, is kind of embarrassing to admit. In the end, I think I will very often think of this book when ruminating on desire and grasping, and how they affect my life.
It took me a bit to get into this book, but I'm really glad I gave it some time, because I'm really enjoying it. There is a slight, slight, slight creepy sci-fi back story, which I won't go into, that was surprising, but mostly this is an interesting personal fictional account of looking back at one's younger and adolescent years, and what growing up sometimes means: Seeing things more clearly. Thirty pages in I wasn't sure I'd finish it. Now, with 50 to go, I don't want it to end!
——————
Lived up to my expectations, though the so-called “twist” ending...wasn't twisty to me. It was still a satisfying ending, and I think I'll go read some more of this guy's books...
Tanglewreck is definitely uneven storytelling, I think. The parts that give a fairy-tale take on quantum physics are really fun an interesting, but the characters feel empty. The language play is fun, but feels like watered-down Winterson to me.
In the end the narrative just didn't hold my attention enough. This is often true of Winterson's books for me–but the richness of the language makes up for it, generally. With this book, not so much. Sure, there are great ideas here–one character using twins as a fairy-tale explanation of particle entanglement, for instance–but the execution of the ideas left me wanting.
Maybe I'll go reread A Wrinkle In Time.