Sort of kind of back and reading roundup
Apr. 8th, 2009 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustine* I am online again, more or less, due to the amazing kindness of strangers. Seriously, I am all over ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lawrence520 and his incredible loaner laptop and willingness to give it to a total stranger, and hilarytamar, who seems to have embarked on a single-handed, oddly determined quest to keep me sane in my time of hardship. Seriously, I have no idea how to pay forward this level of awesome.
* I have gotten so spoiled with phone contact! All I have to say is "I'm computerless and lonely!" and all these people become willing to talk to me on the phone, often at ridiculous length. I don't know how I'll give it up. I am so warm and fuzzy you have no idea. Seriously, I feel like one of those sloppy drunks: "I love you all!" Especially you,bdblack and miriad and hilarytamar.
* Was that Tricia Helfer on Chuck? I adore her so much! If someone had told me that the underwear model in That Dress was going to be my favorite New Actor crush out of BSG, instead of Katee Sackhoff, I wouldn't have believed it, but I am so glad she's made good and is popping up everywhere. That said, I am getting really sick of Ellie being kept out of the loop. The show is just getting meaner and meaner to her, and it's starting to get me down.
* RE: SPN. Entertainment Weekly says "The new brother is a Wincest fan's dream come true!" *boggles* Look, I know fandom became rather blase about incest about two years ago, but in Entertainment Weekly? Bwuh?
It's not like SPN has been My Show since "In the Beginning," and I haven't even watched it since the one with the fallen angel. This is because I was breaking up with it before it could hurt me, because, asbdblack can confirm, I really am the guy in all my relationships. I still may catch up to it over hiatus, but adding a third brother? This show is on seriously thin ice with me.
* And since the computer died I have been reading a book a day. No, really. A little less than five days, five books.
Cetaganda: This exactly hit my spot for really good, really alien SF anthropology. The whole society looks baffling until you unravel the fundamental assumption difference it's built on, the whole thing snaps into focus: completely rational and completely alien. I have very rarely seen alien anthropology done so well.
Ethan of Athos: Not one of my favorites so far. This was obviously written well before Cetaganda, and so the Cetagandans are far less fleshed out and in fact in some ways contradict the far more detailed version of their society she fleshed on in that book. Ethan is personally unlikeable for most of it, but the book is more or less saved by his development and by Quinn finally emerging as a character in her own right. That said, she closes the book on Ethan realizing that every one of the ovarian cell lines that made his entire culture possible represent an actual woman- a stunning revelation for him, and one that really managed to redeem all the potential ickyness that I had been carefully reading around.
Borders of Infinity: This is a three-novella set. It starts with Mountains of Mourning, which I had already read, and which I have Huge Issues with. Then again, on a pro-life to pro-choice scale of, say, 1-10, I am at about a 12 and prone to go off like a firecracker when something pings me wrong. So let's leave Mountains of Mourning aside. The other two are both military SF with Miles in absolutely top form and I adore them. The novella seems to be Bujold's natural length- she develops them perfectly without the structural problems that crept into some of her full-length novels.
Brothers in Arms: Yaay! Ivan! And spy politics crap! And Quinn! And Cetagandans! And Miles in top form! And clones and identity issues and split personalities! Yaay! That is all.
Falling Free: Bujold owns my soul, I swear. Just when I wanted military SF, she gave me Warrior's Apprentice. Just when I wanted alien anthropology, she gave me Cetaganda. And just when I was thinking that I really wanted some hard SF, she gives me Falling Free! It's so incredibly soothing- 1980s style hard SF, with spinny centrifugal gravity space stations and light-speed communication delays and zero-G bone demineralization and tons of litte details of cargo hauling and shipping through a solar system and measuring distances in terms of acceleration rather than speed and tons of little details of life in free fall... *little happy sounds* Nostalgia city. And, you know, a good story and decent characters on top of it.
lawrence520 and his incredible loaner laptop and willingness to give it to a total stranger, and hilarytamar, who seems to have embarked on a single-handed, oddly determined quest to keep me sane in my time of hardship. Seriously, I have no idea how to pay forward this level of awesome. * I have gotten so spoiled with phone contact! All I have to say is "I'm computerless and lonely!" and all these people become willing to talk to me on the phone, often at ridiculous length. I don't know how I'll give it up. I am so warm and fuzzy you have no idea. Seriously, I feel like one of those sloppy drunks: "I love you all!" Especially you,
bdblack and miriad and hilarytamar. * Was that Tricia Helfer on Chuck? I adore her so much! If someone had told me that the underwear model in That Dress was going to be my favorite New Actor crush out of BSG, instead of Katee Sackhoff, I wouldn't have believed it, but I am so glad she's made good and is popping up everywhere. That said, I am getting really sick of Ellie being kept out of the loop. The show is just getting meaner and meaner to her, and it's starting to get me down.
* RE: SPN. Entertainment Weekly says "The new brother is a Wincest fan's dream come true!" *boggles* Look, I know fandom became rather blase about incest about two years ago, but in Entertainment Weekly? Bwuh?
It's not like SPN has been My Show since "In the Beginning," and I haven't even watched it since the one with the fallen angel. This is because I was breaking up with it before it could hurt me, because, as
bdblack can confirm, I really am the guy in all my relationships. I still may catch up to it over hiatus, but adding a third brother? This show is on seriously thin ice with me. * And since the computer died I have been reading a book a day. No, really. A little less than five days, five books.
Cetaganda: This exactly hit my spot for really good, really alien SF anthropology. The whole society looks baffling until you unravel the fundamental assumption difference it's built on, the whole thing snaps into focus: completely rational and completely alien. I have very rarely seen alien anthropology done so well.
Ethan of Athos: Not one of my favorites so far. This was obviously written well before Cetaganda, and so the Cetagandans are far less fleshed out and in fact in some ways contradict the far more detailed version of their society she fleshed on in that book. Ethan is personally unlikeable for most of it, but the book is more or less saved by his development and by Quinn finally emerging as a character in her own right. That said, she closes the book on Ethan realizing that every one of the ovarian cell lines that made his entire culture possible represent an actual woman- a stunning revelation for him, and one that really managed to redeem all the potential ickyness that I had been carefully reading around.
Borders of Infinity: This is a three-novella set. It starts with Mountains of Mourning, which I had already read, and which I have Huge Issues with. Then again, on a pro-life to pro-choice scale of, say, 1-10, I am at about a 12 and prone to go off like a firecracker when something pings me wrong. So let's leave Mountains of Mourning aside. The other two are both military SF with Miles in absolutely top form and I adore them. The novella seems to be Bujold's natural length- she develops them perfectly without the structural problems that crept into some of her full-length novels.
Brothers in Arms: Yaay! Ivan! And spy politics crap! And Quinn! And Cetagandans! And Miles in top form! And clones and identity issues and split personalities! Yaay! That is all.
Falling Free: Bujold owns my soul, I swear. Just when I wanted military SF, she gave me Warrior's Apprentice. Just when I wanted alien anthropology, she gave me Cetaganda. And just when I was thinking that I really wanted some hard SF, she gives me Falling Free! It's so incredibly soothing- 1980s style hard SF, with spinny centrifugal gravity space stations and light-speed communication delays and zero-G bone demineralization and tons of litte details of cargo hauling and shipping through a solar system and measuring distances in terms of acceleration rather than speed and tons of little details of life in free fall... *little happy sounds* Nostalgia city. And, you know, a good story and decent characters on top of it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 05:02 am (UTC)2. But more importantly, Entertainment Weekly? I'm not sure my brain knows how to process that...
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 05:46 am (UTC)We'll take you any way we can get you. :-)
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Date: 2009-04-08 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 06:39 am (UTC)It's true. It's almost enough to give me a sexual identity crisis. Except that she's, you know, gorgeous. Which balances out a lot.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 03:01 pm (UTC)Much as I like the earlier books in the Vorkosiganverse, I have to admit I really didn't fall in love with the series until we get the Cordelia books (Shards of Honor and Barrayar) fleshing out the beginning, and then Memory, Komarr and a Civil Campaign. So much fun reading!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 06:27 pm (UTC)If you really like the military SF part, then Shards of Honor and Barrayar should please you well enough - without spoiling it for you, Miles' mom kicks ass, takes names and generally shows that the apple didn't really fall far from the tree.
If I remember correctly, Bujold herself describes A Civil Campaign as a Regency romance set in the Vorkosiganverse. Another of her descriptions (of Memory, I think) is "Miles hits 30. Thirty hits back." In that vein, I would describe A Civil Campaign as "Miles discovers romance. Romance laughs hysterically." It's also much less milatary and much more politics. I love it anyway.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 11:06 pm (UTC)Hahaha! That is an awesome description of that book.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 12:19 am (UTC)The only way I can see Wincest is if a writer emphasizes the idea that they boys grew up so cut off from other people that they had only each other for any and all human interaction that really mattered, so they turned to each other. So, in my mind, a third brother who didn't grow up with them wouldn't make sense for Wincest. He'd be an outsider. And reading that in EW? The world really is getting weirder.