Recent reading
Oct. 19th, 2017 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaThe Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Reread. I remember loving this back when I first read it, and I think it holds up pretty well--Lyra is a delightful main character and the plot is compelling. Huh, I didn't remember Asriel committing that horrible thing at the end--I vaguely thought of him as the good guy and Mrs. Coulter as the bad guy, but he's really not unequivocally good at all. I think I had just plain forgotten this, but I'm interested to see where that goes.
The worldbuilding is interesting, but I remembered it as kind of 19th-century-equivalent, which it clearly isn't, at least not technology-wise. I mean, they have nuclear power (atomcraft), and there's some sort of electronic warning system at Bolvangar. That's pretty advanced, and implies some sort of industrialization. And yet I think the reason I got the 19th-century impression is that there are servants! Who all have dog daemons! I got really hung up on this. People in general are shown as having all sort of different daemons implying different personalities, and yet the overarching fact that determines the personalities of ALL servants are their social class?! I mean, sure, dogs have all sorts of different personalities in reality, but it's the symbolism of the thing. I vaguely remember that these books are the anti-Narnia and they're going to depose God and have the Republic of Heaven and all in the end, but if the servants just stay like this I am going to be disappointed.
Fjällen, klimatet och människan by Leif Kullman (The Mountains, the Climate and Humans, only in Swedish)
Published in a magazine, though it's 130 pages so I'm counting it as a book. This was fascinating! It's a botanical history of the Swedish mountains since the last ice age, with special focus on the mountain-forest ecotone. I have strong feelings for these mountains--I remember hiking there for the first time when I was fifteen. It was like falling in love. I've spent a lot of time there since, and I know the flora intimately. And yet there was so much here that I didn't know, or hadn't put together the pieces that I did know. I mean, I knew that the beginning of the interglacial we're in was much warmer than it is now, such that elm and linden grew far up in northern Sweden. But I hadn't thought what that really meant for the mountains. The wide belts of mountain birch that we have now are apparently a pretty recent development, and during warmer periods pines dominated because it was drier. Also, there's been a lot of fairly recent research revealing that many plant species (including trees) survived on nunataks and on the Norwegian coast and spread rapidly from there as soon as the ice retreated. I mean, people thought before that spruce was a late-comer to Scandinavia after the ice age, but now fossils have been found that show it was there all along.
Er, possibly this was more detail than anyone other than me is interested in...
Reread. I remember loving this back when I first read it, and I think it holds up pretty well--Lyra is a delightful main character and the plot is compelling. Huh, I didn't remember Asriel committing that horrible thing at the end--I vaguely thought of him as the good guy and Mrs. Coulter as the bad guy, but he's really not unequivocally good at all. I think I had just plain forgotten this, but I'm interested to see where that goes.
The worldbuilding is interesting, but I remembered it as kind of 19th-century-equivalent, which it clearly isn't, at least not technology-wise. I mean, they have nuclear power (atomcraft), and there's some sort of electronic warning system at Bolvangar. That's pretty advanced, and implies some sort of industrialization. And yet I think the reason I got the 19th-century impression is that there are servants! Who all have dog daemons! I got really hung up on this. People in general are shown as having all sort of different daemons implying different personalities, and yet the overarching fact that determines the personalities of ALL servants are their social class?! I mean, sure, dogs have all sorts of different personalities in reality, but it's the symbolism of the thing. I vaguely remember that these books are the anti-Narnia and they're going to depose God and have the Republic of Heaven and all in the end, but if the servants just stay like this I am going to be disappointed.
Fjällen, klimatet och människan by Leif Kullman (The Mountains, the Climate and Humans, only in Swedish)
Published in a magazine, though it's 130 pages so I'm counting it as a book. This was fascinating! It's a botanical history of the Swedish mountains since the last ice age, with special focus on the mountain-forest ecotone. I have strong feelings for these mountains--I remember hiking there for the first time when I was fifteen. It was like falling in love. I've spent a lot of time there since, and I know the flora intimately. And yet there was so much here that I didn't know, or hadn't put together the pieces that I did know. I mean, I knew that the beginning of the interglacial we're in was much warmer than it is now, such that elm and linden grew far up in northern Sweden. But I hadn't thought what that really meant for the mountains. The wide belts of mountain birch that we have now are apparently a pretty recent development, and during warmer periods pines dominated because it was drier. Also, there's been a lot of fairly recent research revealing that many plant species (including trees) survived on nunataks and on the Norwegian coast and spread rapidly from there as soon as the ice retreated. I mean, people thought before that spruce was a late-comer to Scandinavia after the ice age, but now fossils have been found that show it was there all along.
Er, possibly this was more detail than anyone other than me is interested in...
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-20 06:20 pm (UTC)