elainegrey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elainegrey) wrote2023-01-14 07:26 am
elainegrey) wrote2023-01-14 07:26 am
Entry tags:
(health, f&f, reading notes, watching notes)
Yay antibiotics! Feeling better. Not back yet.
Brother's family is heading back to Singapore. My sister and i continue to worry about my brother, although i admitted to Christine that one of our significant worries has no basis in anything my brother has said. Christine, instead of taking that as evidence we are looking for trouble added on by suggesting my brother might be oblivious. Which... yeah. So we worry about our brother.
I have been resting as best i can. Thus reading.
Czerneda, Julie E. A Thousand Words for Stranger: 10th Anniversary Edition. Reissue edition. DAW, 2007.
I can't remember why Czerneda ended up on my reading list; the hat tip is to "sapience 2011-12-04" which does not ring a bell. This wasn't in the books listed in that note, either. This book reminded me a little of some of Miller and Lee's writing: romance between a human and humanoid from a xenophobic culture, space trading context. I'm not sure the resonance does the book any favors in my reading since i am so invested in the Liadian universe. The humanoid culture's eugenic background and some of the gendered power dynamics that resulted might have been more interesting to me in 1997 than now.
Short Fiction, by Robert Sheckley - Free Ebook Download. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-sheckley/short-fiction.
I enjoyed these, with a classic Science Fiction energy and rhythm to the story telling. They hold up well with the nostalgic media of recording things on tape and innocent modeling of AI development. Sheckley was born in the mid 20s and, while i am sure there are racial subtext "of the times," none slapped me in the face (see Smith, Sayers). Maybe one description's reference to ancestry? Unquestioned gendered roles, but -- shrug.
The Skylark of Space, by E. E. Smith - Free Ebook Download. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-e-smith/the-skylark-of-space.
Noped out. The writing was just a little too ... wooden? The bad guy set-up a little to melodramatic? Mustache twirling would have occurred in another genera. Very early in the description of an assistant to a main character slapped me in the face with a racial term that made me grit my teeth. No woman showed up or was referred to, but i was prepared to cringe around it.
Sayers, Dorothy. Whose Body? Lord Peter Wimsey 1. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/dorothy-l-sayers/whose-body.
I apparently read the Dorthy Sayers in 2009 but have no memory of it. The antisemitism seemed to me to be observed and not condoned, that is, the reader was not put in a place of being complicit with the attitudes of the time in my non critical reading. I have grown a high tolerance for genera British mysteries and the attitudes that include not only the North American biases but also biases against Welsh (which feels like the biases against Southerners and Appalachian folks in the US), any one not from Britain (constantly skewered in episodes of Poirot), particularly Italian and Spanish characters (so frequently the red herring suspects) and Catholics (offset by Father Brown, etc). I suppose growing up in the South of the 70s, the racial landscape was so Black and white that other biases and prejudices have a somewhat anthropological curiosity.
Finch. Amblin Partners, Apple Original Films, Dutch Angle, 2021.
Not a book! We signed up for the proffered free trial of Apple's streaming to watch. I was not excited at the prospect of Tom Hanks reprising Castaway with a robot instead of a beach ball. But the robot was wonderful in its fanatastical channeling of a teenage boy. Such a sweet performance. I enjoyed the robot's journey. I did have to slap the suspension of disbelief over my reaction to the robot learning. Very hard. And i sat on it. I have not seen Tom Hanks in Pinocchio so i can't compare there. The robot is far far more fantasy than science fiction, the story a fable or fairy tale. One could make a surface comparison to The Martian, but while the Martian underscored its believably, ... i ... again, fairy tale, sitting on the box of reactions sealed up with a suspension of disbelief.
Brother's family is heading back to Singapore. My sister and i continue to worry about my brother, although i admitted to Christine that one of our significant worries has no basis in anything my brother has said. Christine, instead of taking that as evidence we are looking for trouble added on by suggesting my brother might be oblivious. Which... yeah. So we worry about our brother.
I have been resting as best i can. Thus reading.
Czerneda, Julie E. A Thousand Words for Stranger: 10th Anniversary Edition. Reissue edition. DAW, 2007.
I can't remember why Czerneda ended up on my reading list; the hat tip is to "sapience 2011-12-04" which does not ring a bell. This wasn't in the books listed in that note, either. This book reminded me a little of some of Miller and Lee's writing: romance between a human and humanoid from a xenophobic culture, space trading context. I'm not sure the resonance does the book any favors in my reading since i am so invested in the Liadian universe. The humanoid culture's eugenic background and some of the gendered power dynamics that resulted might have been more interesting to me in 1997 than now.
Short Fiction, by Robert Sheckley - Free Ebook Download. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-sheckley/short-fiction.
I enjoyed these, with a classic Science Fiction energy and rhythm to the story telling. They hold up well with the nostalgic media of recording things on tape and innocent modeling of AI development. Sheckley was born in the mid 20s and, while i am sure there are racial subtext "of the times," none slapped me in the face (see Smith, Sayers). Maybe one description's reference to ancestry? Unquestioned gendered roles, but -- shrug.
The Skylark of Space, by E. E. Smith - Free Ebook Download. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-e-smith/the-skylark-of-space.
Noped out. The writing was just a little too ... wooden? The bad guy set-up a little to melodramatic? Mustache twirling would have occurred in another genera. Very early in the description of an assistant to a main character slapped me in the face with a racial term that made me grit my teeth. No woman showed up or was referred to, but i was prepared to cringe around it.
Sayers, Dorothy. Whose Body? Lord Peter Wimsey 1. Accessed January 13, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/dorothy-l-sayers/whose-body.
I apparently read the Dorthy Sayers in 2009 but have no memory of it. The antisemitism seemed to me to be observed and not condoned, that is, the reader was not put in a place of being complicit with the attitudes of the time in my non critical reading. I have grown a high tolerance for genera British mysteries and the attitudes that include not only the North American biases but also biases against Welsh (which feels like the biases against Southerners and Appalachian folks in the US), any one not from Britain (constantly skewered in episodes of Poirot), particularly Italian and Spanish characters (so frequently the red herring suspects) and Catholics (offset by Father Brown, etc). I suppose growing up in the South of the 70s, the racial landscape was so Black and white that other biases and prejudices have a somewhat anthropological curiosity.
Finch. Amblin Partners, Apple Original Films, Dutch Angle, 2021.
Not a book! We signed up for the proffered free trial of Apple's streaming to watch. I was not excited at the prospect of Tom Hanks reprising Castaway with a robot instead of a beach ball. But the robot was wonderful in its fanatastical channeling of a teenage boy. Such a sweet performance. I enjoyed the robot's journey. I did have to slap the suspension of disbelief over my reaction to the robot learning. Very hard. And i sat on it. I have not seen Tom Hanks in Pinocchio so i can't compare there. The robot is far far more fantasy than science fiction, the story a fable or fairy tale. One could make a surface comparison to The Martian, but while the Martian underscored its believably, ... i ... again, fairy tale, sitting on the box of reactions sealed up with a suspension of disbelief.
no subject
Sidebar re: Julie Czerneda
As to how well that book's "aged" since its original publication, I don't know. Haven't read it myself yet.
no subject
no subject
Loved the Skylark series when I was a kid. Haven't tried to read them since. Probably, like you, would find them very wooden and dated (had similar reaction trying to read Isaac Asimov recently). For the most part, you would cringe about the women, but there are a few bad-ass ones, including an alien princess (although they all look human), and possibly Stephanie Demarganie (sp?) who ends up with "Blackie" Duquesne in the last book (appearing deus ex machina as a female scientist they'd all known all along).
Also went through all the Dorothy Sayers in my 20's. Was going through a classic English detective series phase, courtesy of my then-g.f. Again, hard to re-read at this age, but at the time, desperately wanted to be Peter Whimsey when I grew up.
no subject
I happened into Finch because Sheeyun was watching it, and had the startled impression that this was an opening gambit to yet another character introduction to (probably Fear) the Walking Dead. That Tom Hanks was there was the most starting bit, but I didn't imagine he would last. The continuing lack of zombies was mysterious, though.
I did eventually figure it out and confirm it with Sheeyun.
I didn't reckon much on it.