Reading Wednesday
Nov. 6th, 2013 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Quarantine by Rahul Mehta. A book of short stories about gay Indian and Indian-American men. Pretty much every single story has as its main character a gay Indian-American from West Virgina who moves to NYC and then upstate New York to become a writer. In a shocking coincidence, this is also the biography of the author! Who would have guessed.
If you want to write about yourself, cool. Write essays, write memoirs, write journals and auto-biographies! But I cannot understand the impulse to write fiction that is so clearly barely fictional. Apparently this is a personal peeve of mine, though, since a great deal of the literary fiction genre consists of just this sort of story. It just seems so irritatingly solipsistic to me, as if the effort of imagining a story other than your own is too much effort. As if the only author is only interested in themselves. Ugh.
Anyway, the stories themselves are fine, and I might have liked them better if I had encountered them individually. But having the same story over and over again, when it's a story that I particularly dislike, just was not for me.
When Dreams Travel by Githa Hariharan. A sort of sequel or retelling of A Thousand and One Nights. This book starts decades after the original, when Shahrzad– or Scheherazade– has died of an illness, or possibly been murdered, or possibly escaped to some unknown place. It focuses on her sister, Dunyazad, and her servant, Dilshad, as they seek to define themselves in and out of Shahrzad's shadow, and tell stories of their own. Very mythological, with singing monkeys and evil jinnis and ghouls and palace rivalries, and the constant question of chastity or betrayal, love and violence. I did like this, but not quite as much as I wanted to.
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is actually just a collection of three short stories: The Mountains of Mourning, Labyrinth, and Borders of Infinity. They're all fairly disconnected from one another, in time and tone and plot, although each is about Miles alone having to solve a problem. 'The Mountains of Mourning' is very very good, dealing with infanticide and long overdue justice; Labyrinth is much lighter (AND HAS WEREWOLF SEX I AM NEVER GETTING OVER THAT) and deals with a assassination mission that turns into a rescue attempt; Borders of Infinity starts with Miles in a POW camp, completely naked and with no resources, and is the story of how he gets back out. I really love Borders of Infinity and didn't see the twist at the end coming at all. I feel like I need to reread it to pick up on all the little clues early on.
Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold. AHH VERY GOOD. I love getting to see Earth in this universe, though I sort of wish we had seen more, or that there had been more world-building changes. The London we do see is not that different from London today. I like Galeni (I knew he wasn't the bad guy!) and I like even more Galen, who is a very compelling bad guy, the sort that's fun to root against. I like, as always, Ivan, especially the dramatic rescue at the end. I love Quinn (though c'mon Miles, do not propose to people you haven't even slept with yet). I love that we finally get the story behind the "Butcher of Komarr" title! I've been waiting ages to figure that out. The living cat blanket is SO CREEPY but such a perfect sci-fi detail. And Mark! I love Mark. I really love that Miles decides not to treat him as a enemy to be defeated, but as a brother to be rescued.
I've been reading these reviews of the Vorkosigan series on Tor.com, and one of the most fascinating things is how very different the publication order is from the internal chronological order. This was only the second Miles book! That's amazing! How did Bujold do that? Reading them as I have, I never would have been able to tell that they weren't written straight-forwardly. I can't think of another published series that has jumped around in time like this, though I suppose fanfiction authors do it often enough. It's just fascinating to me.
What are you currently reading?
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. More Mark! More Bel! More Taura!
I just finished When Dreams Travel this morning, and so do not have another India book yet.
Quarantine by Rahul Mehta. A book of short stories about gay Indian and Indian-American men. Pretty much every single story has as its main character a gay Indian-American from West Virgina who moves to NYC and then upstate New York to become a writer. In a shocking coincidence, this is also the biography of the author! Who would have guessed.
If you want to write about yourself, cool. Write essays, write memoirs, write journals and auto-biographies! But I cannot understand the impulse to write fiction that is so clearly barely fictional. Apparently this is a personal peeve of mine, though, since a great deal of the literary fiction genre consists of just this sort of story. It just seems so irritatingly solipsistic to me, as if the effort of imagining a story other than your own is too much effort. As if the only author is only interested in themselves. Ugh.
Anyway, the stories themselves are fine, and I might have liked them better if I had encountered them individually. But having the same story over and over again, when it's a story that I particularly dislike, just was not for me.
When Dreams Travel by Githa Hariharan. A sort of sequel or retelling of A Thousand and One Nights. This book starts decades after the original, when Shahrzad– or Scheherazade– has died of an illness, or possibly been murdered, or possibly escaped to some unknown place. It focuses on her sister, Dunyazad, and her servant, Dilshad, as they seek to define themselves in and out of Shahrzad's shadow, and tell stories of their own. Very mythological, with singing monkeys and evil jinnis and ghouls and palace rivalries, and the constant question of chastity or betrayal, love and violence. I did like this, but not quite as much as I wanted to.
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is actually just a collection of three short stories: The Mountains of Mourning, Labyrinth, and Borders of Infinity. They're all fairly disconnected from one another, in time and tone and plot, although each is about Miles alone having to solve a problem. 'The Mountains of Mourning' is very very good, dealing with infanticide and long overdue justice; Labyrinth is much lighter (AND HAS WEREWOLF SEX I AM NEVER GETTING OVER THAT) and deals with a assassination mission that turns into a rescue attempt; Borders of Infinity starts with Miles in a POW camp, completely naked and with no resources, and is the story of how he gets back out. I really love Borders of Infinity and didn't see the twist at the end coming at all. I feel like I need to reread it to pick up on all the little clues early on.
Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold. AHH VERY GOOD. I love getting to see Earth in this universe, though I sort of wish we had seen more, or that there had been more world-building changes. The London we do see is not that different from London today. I like Galeni (I knew he wasn't the bad guy!) and I like even more Galen, who is a very compelling bad guy, the sort that's fun to root against. I like, as always, Ivan, especially the dramatic rescue at the end. I love Quinn (though c'mon Miles, do not propose to people you haven't even slept with yet). I love that we finally get the story behind the "Butcher of Komarr" title! I've been waiting ages to figure that out. The living cat blanket is SO CREEPY but such a perfect sci-fi detail. And Mark! I love Mark. I really love that Miles decides not to treat him as a enemy to be defeated, but as a brother to be rescued.
I've been reading these reviews of the Vorkosigan series on Tor.com, and one of the most fascinating things is how very different the publication order is from the internal chronological order. This was only the second Miles book! That's amazing! How did Bujold do that? Reading them as I have, I never would have been able to tell that they weren't written straight-forwardly. I can't think of another published series that has jumped around in time like this, though I suppose fanfiction authors do it often enough. It's just fascinating to me.
What are you currently reading?
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. More Mark! More Bel! More Taura!
I just finished When Dreams Travel this morning, and so do not have another India book yet.
