A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle

May. 9th, 2018 09:42 pm
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
I read this book as a kid, and evidently read it multiple times, given how familiar it feels to me on reread. But I don't remember ever loving it as a kid. I hoped it would click with me more on reread, given how much so many people love this book. But I still don't love it.

It's a bit too...mystical/spiritual for me, honestly. And weirdly Christian about it in a way that felt very out of place for the otherworldly Mrs W's; why would they be quoting the Bible?

Also I never felt able to connect with any of the characters in it - they feel more like set pieces than real people to me.

Camazotz's particular type of evil is compellingly awful, but that alone is not enough to make the book work for me.

Oh well. I'm glad other people get joy out of it at least.
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A whole lot of books

Dec. 4th, 2017 09:43 pm
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
Back in the days after I'd started keeping a list of all the books I read each year but BEFORE I started posting reviews of them, I kept desultory personal notes (ranging from a single word to quite a few paragraphs) on some of the books. And I always vaguely forget I have, and forget where exactly to find them, and I'd like to just have them on my dw so they're FINDABLE again for me. And also some of you might find these interesting/amusing? (N.B. some of these contain what I would now classify as INCORRECT OPINIONS.)

SO HERE'S THREE YEARS' WORTH OF BOOKS IN ONE POST, OKAY GO.

( expand this cut to see nested cuts listing all the books )
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Little Fuzzy, by H Beam Piper

Apr. 15th, 2015 09:12 pm
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
This is a charming little book that is deeply, clearly, obviously of its time. I found it on Librivox, remembering I'd heard good things about the book, and assumed that therefore since it was in the public domain it must be pre-1923. I started listening to it and within a few minutes was convinced it must be from the 60's, as little sense as that made.

Turns out it is indeed from the 60's and yet still is in the public domain. Let me categorically state that I DON'T UNDERSTAND USA COPYRIGHT AND BOOKS. (wiki is very little help, alas, only serving to make me more confused.)

The book in general continued to feel very much of its era as I continued listening. Not in a bad way (...mostly)! Just in a way where all sorts of authorial choices constantly reaffirmed that it originated in a specific cultural context. Which - well, all books do. Some are more obvious than others, but in general books can't easily escape their cultural context. It's an interesting experiment to compare Little Fuzzy with John Scalzi's recent reboot of it, Fuzzy Nation. Fuzzy Nation has the same approximate plot and characters as Little Fuzzy, and yet it is obviously from a different context, reflecting the culture it came from just as much as Little Fuzzy does.

( contains spoilers for both Fuzzy Nation and Little Fuzzy )
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A horrorshow book

Mar. 3rd, 2011 08:48 pm
sophia_sol: Text saying "fascinating" with the Star Trek logo beneath it (ST: fascinating)
I just read A Clockwork Orange today, which I never really expected to do because dystopian novels about teenage violence are not really my thing. But there's a book club, and it was chosen, and it's short, so I read it. And you know what I forgot to take into account?

The use of language.

Let me tell you, that book is DAMN CAPTIVATING. I read the whole book in one sitting, and it leaves you running adrift on a sea of vocabulary that you only have a few clues about, but if you don't get hung up about it (which I didn't, because I spend a lot of time reading fanfic where vocab is the least of the things I don't know) the language just flows around you and you get caught up in it and mostly understand what's being said, and it's just FASCINATING.

And I mean, Burgess obviously had a really tight grip on what he was doing with language in that book, because he didn't just throw in alternate words here and there to make it sound "different" and thus "slangy". No, the entire rhythm of the language is subtly different and it just...oh, it is fantastic.

I LOVED reading it.

Even if it was super-depressing and rather horrifying.

(The other fascinating thing about the book: the last chapter. Some editions don't include it, and that ENTIRELY changes the meaning of the book. So, so much. And it is fascinating to think about the book from both perspectives and see how it changes. And also to think about how apparently that change was made because Burgess was told American audiences wouldn't find the last chapter believable, or something like that...)
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