Recent reading
Aug. 3rd, 2015 09:42 pmFrederica by Georgette Heyer
My yearly Heyer, I suppose. I chose this because I wanted light reading while I was stressed out by moving, and it certainly delivered that. Maybe too light? This felt like a too-fluffy pastry or something--I liked my two previous Heyers better (Cotillion and Sprig Muslin). I mean, sure, it was cute and domestic and all, but I guess I was more charmed by the characters in the other ones (Cotillion especially). Still, I kept reading and was reasonably entertained, so I guess it served its purpose.
The Just City by Jo Walton
This, OTOH, is very chewy, as it is all about philosophy and free will and nature/nurture and other such questions (not that I'm saying chewy books are automatically better than fluffy ones, this one was just more to my taste). I always love how Jo Walton writes such very different books every time! This one's about how people from different times come together to create Plato's Republic, and I really enjoyed it. I cared about the characters and their struggles and choices, and the last paragraph unexpectedly moved me to tears. I really liked the thread of the book that was about Apollo becoming incarnate in order to learn about the meaning of consent and other people having a significance and choices of their own. I also liked Socrates a lot, and Simmea and Maia. I liked all of the main characters in the book, in fact, and I liked that there were pages and pages of their earnest debates. Although wow, if I were to construct a utopia, it would NOT have people randomly paired together by lottery to have sex for a night and make babies (but secretly the lottery is manipulated for eugenical purposes). *shudders in horror at the thought* But I guess that's part of the purpose of the book--to look at how "utopia" clashes with the way groups of actual flesh-and-blood people act. Recommended!
I also listened to about a fourth of The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick, but didn't quite click with it. The world-building was intriguing, but...I dunno, in the end I didn't keep listening. Maybe because it was grim? Or because the main character was transplanted into a completely different environment after the first section? Ah well.
As for fic, I'm not reading much of it right now, but I can recommend![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dorinda's lovely Legolas/Gimli fic The Sound Below Sound. (But gah, Gigolas has to be the ugliest smush name ever to smush.)
My yearly Heyer, I suppose. I chose this because I wanted light reading while I was stressed out by moving, and it certainly delivered that. Maybe too light? This felt like a too-fluffy pastry or something--I liked my two previous Heyers better (Cotillion and Sprig Muslin). I mean, sure, it was cute and domestic and all, but I guess I was more charmed by the characters in the other ones (Cotillion especially). Still, I kept reading and was reasonably entertained, so I guess it served its purpose.
The Just City by Jo Walton
This, OTOH, is very chewy, as it is all about philosophy and free will and nature/nurture and other such questions (not that I'm saying chewy books are automatically better than fluffy ones, this one was just more to my taste). I always love how Jo Walton writes such very different books every time! This one's about how people from different times come together to create Plato's Republic, and I really enjoyed it. I cared about the characters and their struggles and choices, and the last paragraph unexpectedly moved me to tears. I really liked the thread of the book that was about Apollo becoming incarnate in order to learn about the meaning of consent and other people having a significance and choices of their own. I also liked Socrates a lot, and Simmea and Maia. I liked all of the main characters in the book, in fact, and I liked that there were pages and pages of their earnest debates. Although wow, if I were to construct a utopia, it would NOT have people randomly paired together by lottery to have sex for a night and make babies (but secretly the lottery is manipulated for eugenical purposes). *shudders in horror at the thought* But I guess that's part of the purpose of the book--to look at how "utopia" clashes with the way groups of actual flesh-and-blood people act. Recommended!
I also listened to about a fourth of The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick, but didn't quite click with it. The world-building was intriguing, but...I dunno, in the end I didn't keep listening. Maybe because it was grim? Or because the main character was transplanted into a completely different environment after the first section? Ah well.
As for fic, I'm not reading much of it right now, but I can recommend
dorinda's lovely Legolas/Gimli fic The Sound Below Sound. (But gah, Gigolas has to be the ugliest smush name ever to smush.)
