February's reading list
Mar. 1st, 2003 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaselmom- Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker*
- Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds (for Book Club)
- Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road*
- Georgette Heyer - Sprig Muslin*
- Bill Watterson - Calvin and Hobbes 6-10
- Ian Linn - Weasels*
- Miranda MacQuitty - Discovering Weasels*
- Darby Conley - Fuzzy Logic
- Mariam Naficy - Fast Track: The Insider's Guide to Winning Jobs in Management Consulting, Investment Banking, & Securities Trading* (to help me understand the strange tribal customs at the TJTAMB)
This isn't a very long list, especially compared to January. But February was very busy, and it was a shorter month, and I didn't have as many days off (Toe notwithstanding), and a couple of these books are completely uphill reading. I was lucky to get through 20 pages a day.
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Date: 2003-03-02 12:00 am (UTC)Scott
Yay! It's Scott!
Date: 2003-03-02 07:31 pm (UTC)You shouldn't feel in the least bit like a barbarian (unless you want to, of course), as these are hardly mainstream books. And now I get to be all didactic and yap about them!
I picked up Riddley Walker (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0253212340/qid=1046660614/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6296362-7969742?v=glance&s=books) because I read a quote from it in somebody else's LJ. It was so chilling and evocative and intriguing that I just had to read the book. Here is the quote:
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Lorna said to me, ‘You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.’
I said, ‘What thing is that?’
She said, ‘Its some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it don’t even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.'
I said, ‘If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got to be a manying theres got to be a millying and mor.’
Lorna said, ‘Wel there is a millying and mor.’
I said, ‘Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys it loan?’
She said, ‘Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it dont have nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part.’
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Yes, the whole book is written in that sort of dialect. After the first few pages you get the hang of it and it's not that hard to comprehend. The story is set in England more than 2,000 years in the future after some sort of nuclear calamity (war? accident? the story is oddly ambivalent) and humanity has finally struggled back to Iron Age levels. It's a difficult story to follow but is also completely engrossing.
Bridge of Birds (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345321383/qid=1046660729/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-6296362-7969742) is, I think, one of the best books ever written. I know it won World Fantasy and probably other awards as well. It's set in mythical 7th-century China and is a quest, a fairy tale, and a "buddy" story. It's also sly, witty, scary, lusty, and ultimately heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Eternity Road is a SF book that I read as a bribe to get Shawn to read Bridge of Birds. It's also a post-holocaust book. It is some hundreds of pages long and contains many nouns, verbs, and adjectives, along with punctuation marks. Moving briskly along...
I wouldn't expect you to have ever heard of Georgette Heyer! She writes romances set in the Regency period (ca. 1800). Kij got me started on these and got Jilli into them as well. With just a little prodding, I bet we could get J. to read them! They are funny, satisfying, manneristic, and gently wicked. In my own defense, I don't read any other romance-type stuff!
The weasels books I got used off eBay. Honestly, I just get them for the pictures!
"Get Fuzzy" is a comic strip that Kij got us started on. It's very quirky, offbeat humor about a somewhat feckless guy, his goodhearted shar pei, and his unmitigatedly evil cat. Sometimes it has a ferret in it! There are two comic collections out now and a third one is scheduled to be released in April.
I don't know if this has helped or just made things worse!
Re: Yay! It's Scott!
Date: 2003-03-02 10:17 pm (UTC)Scott
Re: Yay! It's Scott!
Date: 2003-03-03 01:41 pm (UTC)Looks like a good list, WM. My faves for 2002 (from nominations for the Campbell Award, for which I've been reading):
I recommend 'em all! Enjoy!
Best,
Chris