Recent reading
May. 21st, 2014 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI held my last lecture yesterday! Woohoo! Now there's just the exam-making and graaading and administration...anyway, here's my recent reading.
The Inquisitor's Apprentice, by Chris Moriarty
I was interested to see how Moriarty would write YA, because I love her SF. And this was charming and fun! It's set in a magical version of turn-of-the-19th century New York, and the main character is a Jewish boy who can see magic and so is semi-forcibly recruited by the NYPD, thus setting him against his family who work illegal magic. As many people do in this world. There's a lot of Jewish culture in the book (apparently Moriarty is Jewish and wanted to write a book for her kids where the Jewish kid got to be the hero). Also there is evil capitalism trying to weed out folk magic so that people will have to buy goods rather than do stuff magically themselves, and the IndustrialWorkers Witches of the World working against them. Ahahaha. I am not sure I completely buy the parallell between struggling workers and struggling magic users, but it's an interesting take on it instead of the more common parallell to minority rights. And in a way I guess you could see it as a struggle over the means of production. But the political stuff is mostly background worldbuilding--most of the book is fun YA action. The only thing I didn't really understand in the book was why the main character's family is happy for him to get the job, even though they're doing illegal stuff.
Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
Linguistics SF for the win! I liked this better than Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is the other Delany I've read. Maybe because this one is shorter and more focused, and yeah, Rydra Wong is pretty cool.sineala described this book as Sapir-Whorf: The Novel, which I guess is pretty much true, and I do like books that make SF out of social science hypotheses. But besides the linguistic stuff, there's also cool worldbuilding and spaceship battles, and also a close non-sexual/romantic relationship between a woman and a man, which I like.
Fic-wise, I can recommend The Murmuring of Innumerable Bees bykindkit, which is an beautiful bit of post-canon Sherlock Holmes (book canon).
The Inquisitor's Apprentice, by Chris Moriarty
I was interested to see how Moriarty would write YA, because I love her SF. And this was charming and fun! It's set in a magical version of turn-of-the-19th century New York, and the main character is a Jewish boy who can see magic and so is semi-forcibly recruited by the NYPD, thus setting him against his family who work illegal magic. As many people do in this world. There's a lot of Jewish culture in the book (apparently Moriarty is Jewish and wanted to write a book for her kids where the Jewish kid got to be the hero). Also there is evil capitalism trying to weed out folk magic so that people will have to buy goods rather than do stuff magically themselves, and the Industrial
Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany
Linguistics SF for the win! I liked this better than Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is the other Delany I've read. Maybe because this one is shorter and more focused, and yeah, Rydra Wong is pretty cool.
sineala described this book as Sapir-Whorf: The Novel, which I guess is pretty much true, and I do like books that make SF out of social science hypotheses. But besides the linguistic stuff, there's also cool worldbuilding and spaceship battles, and also a close non-sexual/romantic relationship between a woman and a man, which I like. Fic-wise, I can recommend The Murmuring of Innumerable Bees by
kindkit, which is an beautiful bit of post-canon Sherlock Holmes (book canon).
