November Reading Challenge Wrap-Up
Dec. 6th, 2020 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitNovember is over! I signed up at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
readingtogether for a November reading challenge to reduce my to-be-read pile. Here's the final count, with notes.
Talk books with me!
New books finished:
Half the Day is Night, Maureen McHugh
Primary Inversion, Catherine Asaro
Spock's World, Diane Duane
I really didn't enjoy Half the Day is Night - partly due to bad timing (the time to read a book about being trapped in a horrible corrupt dictatorship is... probably not the same month as the US Presidental election), but also on other levels. Not the least of them being grammar; there were some stylistic choices there that I found awkward or disruptive.
Primary Inversion was better, perhaps by contrast. It reminded me a lot of the Anne McCaffrey novels I read as a teen; if you like telepaths and souldbond-ish connections between characters who just met, give it a try! I didn't feel deeply engaged with it, but the main character was engaging and there was enough action that I got through it pretty quickly (unlike Half the Day is Night).
Spock's World was pretty delightful, mostly for the intercalary chapters featuring Vulcans at various historical points. I can't quite stop thinking of the main plot as, "Vulcan tries Brexit," which, well. See comments above regarding timing! :P Being a Star Trek novel, however, the outcome wasn't in doubt, so the fun in the main narrative stream was all in seeing the characters develop their approaches for the debate, and in seeing more of Sarek & Amanda. I finished the book and immediately went off to reread some favourite Original Vulcan Character fics, so there's that. :D
I almost finished:
Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed. I would have finished it, but I planned to read it on my work break and then forgot to bring it! It pings me very strongly as "the Witcher, but in Fantasy Middle East instead of Fantasy Poland;" it's not heavily fleshed out, but I do enjoy the Doctor's 'incantations' to stun demons, and his colourful insults!
I have reread:
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
The Pride of Chanur, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Venture, CJ Cherryh
The Kif Strike Back, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Homecoming, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Legacy, CJ Cherryh
The Elvenbane, Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey
I am never going to stop loving the Chanur series! I reread it at least once a year, and usually more. ♥ I wish I could find more novels like them. Sci-fi that focuses on understanding (or lack thereof) between species and language limitations are thinner on the ground than they should be.
On the Austen front, rereading has confirmed that S&S is just not my thing. I still spend the entire book convinced that Elinor and the Colonel would deal together so much better than their actual respective endgame relationships! The narrative repeatedly emphasises how well they get along and understand each other, and my brain won't stop wondering when they're going to realise that partnering the Colonel with a girl half his age whom he'll treat more like a daughter than a wife sounds like a terrible idea no matter how pretty she is, and meanwhile there's rational, perceptive Elinor right there doing her best to give him what he wants even though it doesn't sound pleasant for either party...
If you've read any of the above, hit me with your thoughts! Or tell me what you've been reading lately.
readingtogether for a November reading challenge to reduce my to-be-read pile. Here's the final count, with notes.Talk books with me!
New books finished:
Half the Day is Night, Maureen McHugh
Primary Inversion, Catherine Asaro
Spock's World, Diane Duane
I really didn't enjoy Half the Day is Night - partly due to bad timing (the time to read a book about being trapped in a horrible corrupt dictatorship is... probably not the same month as the US Presidental election), but also on other levels. Not the least of them being grammar; there were some stylistic choices there that I found awkward or disruptive.
Primary Inversion was better, perhaps by contrast. It reminded me a lot of the Anne McCaffrey novels I read as a teen; if you like telepaths and souldbond-ish connections between characters who just met, give it a try! I didn't feel deeply engaged with it, but the main character was engaging and there was enough action that I got through it pretty quickly (unlike Half the Day is Night).
Spock's World was pretty delightful, mostly for the intercalary chapters featuring Vulcans at various historical points. I can't quite stop thinking of the main plot as, "Vulcan tries Brexit," which, well. See comments above regarding timing! :P Being a Star Trek novel, however, the outcome wasn't in doubt, so the fun in the main narrative stream was all in seeing the characters develop their approaches for the debate, and in seeing more of Sarek & Amanda. I finished the book and immediately went off to reread some favourite Original Vulcan Character fics, so there's that. :D
I almost finished:
Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed. I would have finished it, but I planned to read it on my work break and then forgot to bring it! It pings me very strongly as "the Witcher, but in Fantasy Middle East instead of Fantasy Poland;" it's not heavily fleshed out, but I do enjoy the Doctor's 'incantations' to stun demons, and his colourful insults!
I have reread:
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
The Pride of Chanur, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Venture, CJ Cherryh
The Kif Strike Back, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Homecoming, CJ Cherryh
Chanur's Legacy, CJ Cherryh
The Elvenbane, Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey
I am never going to stop loving the Chanur series! I reread it at least once a year, and usually more. ♥ I wish I could find more novels like them. Sci-fi that focuses on understanding (or lack thereof) between species and language limitations are thinner on the ground than they should be.
On the Austen front, rereading has confirmed that S&S is just not my thing. I still spend the entire book convinced that Elinor and the Colonel would deal together so much better than their actual respective endgame relationships! The narrative repeatedly emphasises how well they get along and understand each other, and my brain won't stop wondering when they're going to realise that partnering the Colonel with a girl half his age whom he'll treat more like a daughter than a wife sounds like a terrible idea no matter how pretty she is, and meanwhile there's rational, perceptive Elinor right there doing her best to give him what he wants even though it doesn't sound pleasant for either party...
If you've read any of the above, hit me with your thoughts! Or tell me what you've been reading lately.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-07 06:05 am (UTC)I always wonder with S&S if my preference for Elinor and Brandon is because of the plot itself--as you said, aligning Marianne with his ward doesn't feel very romantic--or because of the outrageous chemistry between Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman in the film. It probably also doesn't help that my mental picture of the characters as the actors means I've got a teenage Marianne and a mid-30s Elinor (and an almost-50 Colonel Brandon, for that matter) in my head, making their differences look like more than just temperament. I sort of end up on the margins with Austen. My favorite of her works is far and away Persuasion, but I actually prefer Frances Burney's Evelina when I want sentimental satire. It's one of the few things I didn't resent having to read for my MA comps.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 01:04 am (UTC)I've got to confess that I've never seen a live-action version of Sense & Sensibility! "Outrageous chemistry" between Elinor and Brandon sounds right up my alley, though. One day I'll go through this book and copy out every scene that makes them sound like a great match. Is crack_van still a thing? Maybe I'll post it there as a ship manifesto. :D
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 12:14 am (UTC)Every year I reread one or more of the Foreigner series, also by Cherryh, for the same reason. As a translator and interpreter myself, NAIL-BITINGLY TENSE interpretation scenes soothe my very soul. Even between human languages, you don't put one utterance in and get an exact match out! The interpreter has to be guessing and juggling all the time. (On my first or second read of Foreigner, when I eventually figured out that despite all his whining Bren is a stone-cold adrenaline junkie, his choice of job and choice of leisure started to make sense.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 01:24 am (UTC)The Chanur books are full of excellent translation difficulties, from Tully's first appearance on The Pride (to prove his sapience, he writes a sequence of numbers on the deck - in his own blood) all the way through to Hilfy's figuring out how to ask a stsho a fraught question about personality shift after being shut down. (When everything else failed, the maxim ran ... ask the alien how to ask the question. “Then,” she said carefully, and paused while Dlima poured; and paused further while Dlima served Tlisi-tlas-tin. “Then how shall I ask what information you might have gained in this port?”)
Also: haahaaha, yes, the moment Bren is all, "I kinda miss
throwing myself down mountainsskiing, but I guess my job is a good enough substitute" a lot of things become clear, don't they? :Pno subject
Date: 2020-12-10 01:50 am (UTC)(mental roulette to decide who that is)
Clearly I must reread Chanur! I read it long before starting serious language study, and all I remember is my envy of the earrings. I get so much out of my Foreigner rereads, I bet there's an awful lot in Chanur that I left on the page without noticing. YAY MORE BOOKS
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 04:15 pm (UTC)(Argh, now I need a Chanur icon!)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-08 08:18 am (UTC)I’m working on it, promise, promise!
Okay for real tho, I have only read the first Chanur novel (hard to come by, here), but the thing that really stuck with me are the aliens that communicate in matrices, and those that don’t really … communicate with the other (mammal-esque, for lack of a better word) at all. I think there’s something about those methane-breathing species that just kind of do their thing and expect everyone to roll with it, and I love it so much!
I’m personally (atm) more interested in the infotech side of things. Transmission and reception (and storage) of information is as important as understanding and imo something a lot of sci fi neglects (even more so than the general reliance on hand-wavey standard translators.) - hence the matrix language being so interesting to me. Most sci fi assumes Aliens to be able of and actually employ some form of verbal, (for lack of a better word) human-language-related data transmission, and communication thus mostly a matter of translation. The way Cherryh’s aliens sometimes just … don’t is so fascinating and even in the genre still rather bold.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 01:16 am (UTC)One of the bits I remember most vividly is the meeting between Pyanfar and Sikkukkut, where she says, 'When you say the word 'friend,' I get very nervous,' and Sikkukkut replies, 'I suffer similar apprehensions when you use the word 'subordinate'.' ♥ Even two people who *aware* of the issues in translation don't have a magical fix for them. All they can do is be extra-cautious around culturally loaded words and remind everyone that translation is flawed.
The tc'a with their matrices are also great! There's a bit in the last book where the crew newbie has an accident involving a tc'a vehicle, and suggests to the captain that they get Station Control to explain to the tc'a about it. The captain's reaction: “That’s a myth. That’s a thorough-going myth. Station can approximate things like ‘Open the hatch,’ and ‘That’s a fire hazard!’ [...] They’ve been in space long before we were, and we still don’t know how to say ‘Stop it, you’re in my lane,’ and: ‘My ship can’t perform that maneuver.’
And the way everybody from Pyanfar to the kif to his own partner panics when it becames evident that Jik has been bargaining with the tc'a is another bit that really brings home their strangeness and the huge gaps in the interface between them and oxy-breathers.
(If you would really like to read the rest of the Chanur books, I, uh, can probably make that happen. Send me a PM?)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-13 10:51 pm (UTC)This and the next paragraph, yesss. Especially with how ... idk, sparse? spartan? utilitarian? Cherryhs' own narrator voice often is (which I always thought made her characters' voices more pronounced, too.)
And thanks on the offer. I just have to get around to actually buy the ebooks off Evil A (*sigh*) - getting the actual books in German is hard, since libraries and bookshops generally only carry the translations in English, which, hysterically, are notoriously bad to the point of being incomprehensible.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 11:05 am (UTC)I love everything to do with alien languages and communication too. One of my favourite books in the Foreigner series is Explorer, where Bren uses the blinking lights to communicate with the kyo.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-10 04:17 pm (UTC)If you liked Bren's blink-code communication, I think Chanur will have some great moments for you. (I love that breakthrough in Explorer, too!)