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Recent reading
Aug. 19th, 2015 09:49 pmWow, I'm doing a lot of reading right now...
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (audiobook)
Short story collection. I'd been trying out and bouncing off several audiobooks, but then I tried this one and was caught up at once. The reader is great! The titular story is sort-of mpreg and quite disturbing; that one and several others reminded me of Tiptree stories, with the focus on biology and sex and death.
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton (sequel to The Just City)
I was a bit sad when this book started off with one of my favorite characters dying. : ( But the book was good, and also compulsively readable! It was interesting to see the fallout from the end of the first book, although I would've liked to see something more interesting happen with the robots. Although I have seen on Jo Walton's LJ that Crocus will be a viewpoint character in book three, so I'm looking forward to that. And wow, that was a left-turn ending--it'll be interesting to see where she goes with that in book three.
The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle by Kobayashi Takiji
Three novellas; 1920-30's leftist literature from Japan. Apparently this author had a surge of popularity in Japan five years ago or so. It was interesting and also pretty good, although too uncritical towards Soviet Russia for my taste. He certainly seems to write from experience--one of the novellas breaks off with the main characters in prison and then there's a note that the author never finished it because he was tortured to death by the police in 1933. Um. I thought the first novella about an uprising on a cannery ship was the best--the ending especially gave a good balance between hope and despair (apparently there's a movie and various manga made of it as well?). The third one was a bit uncomfortable to read--the main character works day and night for the Party and sacrifices his private life completely. I wonder if the author meant that as something to emulate or if it's meant to make the reader uncomfortable; it's hard to tell.
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (audiobook)
Short story collection. I'd been trying out and bouncing off several audiobooks, but then I tried this one and was caught up at once. The reader is great! The titular story is sort-of mpreg and quite disturbing; that one and several others reminded me of Tiptree stories, with the focus on biology and sex and death.
The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton (sequel to The Just City)
I was a bit sad when this book started off with one of my favorite characters dying. : ( But the book was good, and also compulsively readable! It was interesting to see the fallout from the end of the first book, although I would've liked to see something more interesting happen with the robots. Although I have seen on Jo Walton's LJ that Crocus will be a viewpoint character in book three, so I'm looking forward to that. And wow, that was a left-turn ending--it'll be interesting to see where she goes with that in book three.
The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle by Kobayashi Takiji
Three novellas; 1920-30's leftist literature from Japan. Apparently this author had a surge of popularity in Japan five years ago or so. It was interesting and also pretty good, although too uncritical towards Soviet Russia for my taste. He certainly seems to write from experience--one of the novellas breaks off with the main characters in prison and then there's a note that the author never finished it because he was tortured to death by the police in 1933. Um. I thought the first novella about an uprising on a cannery ship was the best--the ending especially gave a good balance between hope and despair (apparently there's a movie and various manga made of it as well?). The third one was a bit uncomfortable to read--the main character works day and night for the Party and sacrifices his private life completely. I wonder if the author meant that as something to emulate or if it's meant to make the reader uncomfortable; it's hard to tell.
