Just started Throne of Jade (second Temeraire novel.) These books are great fun, though the narrative is heavily padded with boring whatever.
I tried twice, and failed, to get through the first one thanks to the boring whatevers.
Just started Throne of Jade (second Temeraire novel.) These books are great fun, though the narrative is heavily padded with boring whatever.
I tried twice, and failed, to get through the first one thanks to the boring whatevers.![]()
One rarely goes wrong with Renault.
Just finished reading a great book called "Meditations on Violence" about the psychology and reality of close in violence as compared to the approach of many martial arts schools today. If you are interested in understanding a lot more about the reality of violence and war I think this teamed with Keegan's "Face of Battle" and "On Killing" would be a very good grounding.
Just finished: The Long Earth by Terry Prachett. Currently rereading Harry Potter to my daughter.
I picked up The Handmaid's Tale. I don't usually like to read dystopian stories and true to form I find this one very depressing. But I can't deny the power of the narrative. Despite myself, I'm hooked.
Probably the only Atwood work I didn't like. The implausibility of the setup started me off on the wrong foot. Maybe I'll take another look at it some time. I do like her other works.
I liked a Handmaid's Tale, until Ms. Atwood tried to convince people it was not science fiction for reasons that struck me as quite petty.
Well, personally, looking at the world around me today, it doesn't seem all that implausible.![]()
I think she's quite right. There's nothing "science" about it. The only possible reason one could want to categorize it as SF is because it was set in a near future. But I think the idea that anything set in the future must be SF is ridiculous. Speculative fiction is a much better label for the book.
Atwood’s appalling claim on BBC Breakfast that science fiction is no more than “talking squids in outer space,”
Anyway, finished it the other day. The ending was a bit unsatisfying. It seemed more like she didn't really know how to end the handmaid's story so she just pulled out (haha, pun intended) and tacked on that epilogue as if to say "so, was it good for you?" The epilogue just was so different from the tone of the tale that it was jarring and as it didn't actually give any real insight or answers to the story I don't see the point of it except making an END. But I thought there was a lot of thought provoking material in the story.
The problem with Atwood, is she made very reductive, insulting, and snobbish comments about SF to support her idea of that of course she never wrote any such thing.
At least, one interpretation is snobbery. Ursula K. LeGuin, who criticized Atwood over this, said is was more a kind of literary self-preservation. “She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.”
I still like Atwood's writing generally, however.
I do think Atwood is at times snobbish, even more noticeably in recent interviews, those related with the serialization of her book, and even so, I have to agree with her in that is hard to find reasons to call The Handmaid's Tale science fiction. And yes, Atwood is now fighting to get out of the literary fiction category (I love LeGuins' literary ghetto reference, by the way), but in the 80s she was quite please when the critics put her there, and edgy choreographers and musicians were putting together operas based on the story... but I suppose that if your book is still relevant after 30 years of publication, you kind of have won the right to rethink what genre or classification suits it better.