Reading Wedn- Thursday
Feb. 27th, 2014 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Nothing! D: All my free time this week was consumed by a writing project.
What are you currently reading?
Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. I'm so close to being done with this book! This week's new batch of infuriating stories included Diana Gabaldon's, in which the 'dangerous woman' was leading a group of bandits in medieval Europe while pretending to be a respectable lady. Very promising! If only she had appeared for more than a few pages, and those pages hadn't included the hero lecturing her about morality, despite being in a mercenary band himself. Also, two rape scenes (neither of the heroine), because Man Pain.
Sherrilyn Kenyon's story featured a Native American curse on the land, in which our heroine teaches the ghost how to let go of her anger by quoting random other Native Americans.
No, seriously:
"Did I ever tell you that my great-grandmother was Cherokee?”
“No, you didn’t.”
He nodded. “She died when I was six, but I still remember her, and something she’d always say keeps echoing in my head.”
“What?”
“‘Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.’”
***
Cait flinched as she saw an image of Elizabeth as an old woman in a stark hand-built cabin. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun as she lit a candle and placed it in the window while she whispered a Creek prayer.
***
"It’s time to let go, Louina. Release the hatred.” And then she heard Elizabeth in her ear, telling her what to say. “Remember the words of Crazy Horse. Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.”
By an author who clearly has no idea how the Trail of Tears worked (hint: not within living memory, and it did not involve bringing wagons of gold along) or really, history in general. The epilogue (though why a story that's not even 20 pages long needs an epilogue, God alone knows) features this deep and moving dialogue:
“I think we all came away from the weekend with a different lesson.”
AND THEN THE CHARACTERS LITERALLY DISCUSS THE LESSONS THEY HAVE LEARNED. Top-notch writing there, good job.
Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal. It's not incredibly terrible! I ask so little from my books.
Nothing! D: All my free time this week was consumed by a writing project.
What are you currently reading?
Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. I'm so close to being done with this book! This week's new batch of infuriating stories included Diana Gabaldon's, in which the 'dangerous woman' was leading a group of bandits in medieval Europe while pretending to be a respectable lady. Very promising! If only she had appeared for more than a few pages, and those pages hadn't included the hero lecturing her about morality, despite being in a mercenary band himself. Also, two rape scenes (neither of the heroine), because Man Pain.
Sherrilyn Kenyon's story featured a Native American curse on the land, in which our heroine teaches the ghost how to let go of her anger by quoting random other Native Americans.
No, seriously:
"Did I ever tell you that my great-grandmother was Cherokee?”
“No, you didn’t.”
He nodded. “She died when I was six, but I still remember her, and something she’d always say keeps echoing in my head.”
“What?”
“‘Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.’”
***
Cait flinched as she saw an image of Elizabeth as an old woman in a stark hand-built cabin. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun as she lit a candle and placed it in the window while she whispered a Creek prayer.
***
"It’s time to let go, Louina. Release the hatred.” And then she heard Elizabeth in her ear, telling her what to say. “Remember the words of Crazy Horse. Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness, and separations. A world longing for light again. I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one.”
By an author who clearly has no idea how the Trail of Tears worked (hint: not within living memory, and it did not involve bringing wagons of gold along) or really, history in general. The epilogue (though why a story that's not even 20 pages long needs an epilogue, God alone knows) features this deep and moving dialogue:
“I think we all came away from the weekend with a different lesson.”
AND THEN THE CHARACTERS LITERALLY DISCUSS THE LESSONS THEY HAVE LEARNED. Top-notch writing there, good job.
Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal. It's not incredibly terrible! I ask so little from my books.
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Date: 2014-02-27 09:57 pm (UTC)ETA I take that back, I've never read her short stories. Maybe it is a thing, idk.