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a friendly penguin posted:It can be considered "normie" because of how it was marketed. The character work and relationships are definitely wonderful which made it easy for blurbers to be like, "it's just like fiction and not at all that genre stuff we know can't possibly have these features." Just more gatekeeping. lol.
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Dec 28, 2021 04:00
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About halfway through Commonweal #2, A Succession of Bad Days, I realized something: there aren't any pronouns in this book. A whole-word search in Calibre shows that there's not a single use of "she," "he," or "his" in the entire novel, and "her" is only used three times in ~600ish pages, twice for a character we never see on-screen (Flaed) and once for a character who was established as female in the previous book (Grue), but who's a shapeshifter and shifts biological sex frequently. "They" is only ever used in the traditional sense of referring to multiple persons, or to a person whose gender is unknown because the person being referenced is completely unknown and can't be identified. We only know the main character is biologically male because of a reference their anatomy, and that Kynefrid is called a "lad" and is called out as liking male sexual partners in a way that says "gay." Going back through The March North shows the thing. No pronouns to be found anywhere, and references to gender and biological sex are almost completely absent outside of a few words like "grandmotherly" or "looks like your kid sister" that Saunders writes with a style so strong it's almost overpowering, so this is clearly a stylistic decision. The absence of pronouns gets obfuscated by how weird his sentence construction is, with the layers and layers of nested commas, but now I can't unsee it and I wonder why it's being done this way. Gut reaction is that it's something to do with the egalitarian premise of the Commonweal, but since gender and biological sex do still get recognized, albeit infrequently, it's not as though they've abolished the concept altogether. I'm curious, do the subsequent books keep up this style, or give any indication of why it's used? Also do books 4-5 shift away from wizard training? I think I can get through two books of this, because while I'm normally allergic to cozy slice of life stuff, this is sufficiently bizarre to hold my interest, especially since all the magical civil engineering seems to be window-dressing for the actual story about the origin stories of terrifyingly powerful wizards ala The Black Company's Ten Who Were Taken. That said, I'm not sure if it can hold me for another four books of this length.
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Dec 28, 2021 04:10
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Kestral posted:I'm curious, do the subsequent books keep up this style, or give any indication of why it's used? at one point edgar thinks about his ex-girlfriend as "her" then corrects himself using the full name, reminding himself they are no longer involved. basically any time you see a gendered pronoun it is directly about a person considering a romantic relationship or thinking about someone like that Also I've been rereading book 2 and there's definitely plenty of singular they/theirs, it's used fairly regularly? Though less common than using peoples names instead and yeah they very much switch away from Wizard School, though those characters remain significant eke out fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 04:34
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eke out posted:at one point edgar thinks about his ex-girlfriend as "her" then corrects himself using the full name, reminding himself they are no longer involved. basically any time you see a gendered pronoun it is directly about a person considering a romantic relationship or thinking about someone like that Iiiinteresting, so it is a cultural thing! I wonder what the in-culture explanation for that is, for why it's necessary or appropriate. quote:Also I've been rereading book 2 and there's definitely plenty of singular they/theirs, it's used fairly regularly? Though less common than using peoples names instead Yep, you're right, my Calibre search wasn't properly set up when I ran it again after realizing I hadn't checked for they/their. quote:and yeah they very much switch away from Wizard School, though those characters remain significant Rad. Cozy slice of life wizard school in the context of a larger series is perfectly acceptable, especially if the characters we've grown attached to stay around to some extent.
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Dec 28, 2021 05:27
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Kestral posted:Iiiinteresting, so it is a cultural thing! I wonder what the in-culture explanation for that is, for why it's necessary or appropriate. There's a partial answer in the books, Creeks are I think hermaphroditic with gender constructed on two distinct axes. edit: Removed google group content. Danhenge fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jun 30, 2022 |
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Dec 28, 2021 07:43
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I picked up Piranesi yesterday and finished it today, beautiful book. My only complaint is that I wanted it to be even weirder. How is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? I had conflated it this whole time with stuff like Lemony Snicket. Tokelau All Star fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 09:40
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mllaneza posted:This is an excellent novel by the way. Lavinia is namedropped in the Homeric/Virgilian epic, but is never present as a character. LeGuin uses her as a main character to tell much the same story. It's a true epic and has a great mix of day to day life in the period and the sweeping scope of great events that changed the course of history. It's not :eGuin's usual style, but she's more than up to it. Highly recommended. Yeah Lavinia is incredible. It’s for sure not her usual style but if anyone liked what she was doing in Tehanu or the later Earthsea books, this is to a large degree that only even better executed. I think it might quietly be her best book or at the very least a late career masterpiece.
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Dec 28, 2021 12:59
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Tokelau All Star posted:How is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? I had conflated it this whole time with stuff like Lemony Snicket.
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Dec 28, 2021 13:05
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Tokelau All Star posted:I picked up Piranesi yesterday and finished it today, beautiful book. My only complaint is that I wanted it to be even weirder. it’s one of the best SF books ever written, op
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Dec 28, 2021 14:10
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Danhenge posted:There's a partial answer in the books, Creeks are I think hermaphroditic with gender constructed on two distinct axes. There's also some other talk on the google groups about how gender relates to civil life, here's a direct copy and paste under a spoiler: this is cool imo. Apparently Banks did a similar thing with the Minds in the Culture books: https://twitter.com/Yaz_Minsky/status/1467150778993451018 NB: I never personally noticed this and haven't actually gone back to verify since seeing this tweet
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Dec 28, 2021 14:26
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buffalo all day posted:anyone read the new Ishiguro book? The buried giant and never let me go are both incredible. Was given it for Xmas so will post reacts when done Stuporstar posted:Klara and the Sun? Oh yeah, it’s drat good, but feels like a punch in the heart So far this describes every Ishiguro book I've read. Excellent, excellent books that leave you gutted at the end.
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Dec 28, 2021 15:16
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Tokelau All Star posted:I picked up Piranesi yesterday and finished it today, beautiful book. My only complaint is that I wanted it to be even weirder. It is extremely good, but also extremely different from Piranesi.
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Dec 28, 2021 16:28
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Sharparse posted:this is cool imo. Apparently Banks did a similar thing with the Minds in the Culture books: Maybe this is the case in later books, but not in The Player of Games.
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Dec 28, 2021 16:29
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I previously said I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by Piranesi - but I absolutely loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
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Dec 28, 2021 17:00
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Sarern posted:So far this describes every Ishiguro book I've read. Excellent, excellent books that leave you gutted at the end. I didn't realize he wrote sci-fi or fantasy adjacent, but yes, absolutely. Everyone should read Ishiguro. My recommendation for his stuff is a bit of a stretch for this thread given it's at best lightly "magical realist" in parts, but I highly recommend "An Artist of the Floating World" if anyone enjoys beautifully bittersweet gutpunches about the regrets of growing old.
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Dec 28, 2021 17:01
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Sarern posted:So far this describes every Ishiguro book I've read. Excellent, excellent books that leave you gutted at the end. Pretty much, yeah Took me a while to come up with a more specific description for Klara and the Sun, but I’d say it’s like What if the Velveteen Rabbit*, but realist science fiction about a sentient child’s doll *that story absolutely devastated me as a small child
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Dec 28, 2021 17:05
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Famethrowa posted:I didn't realize he wrote sci-fi or fantasy adjacent, but yes, absolutely. Everyone should read Ishiguro. I don’t want to get into genre arguments and obviously the remains of the day isn’t SF but Never Let Me Go is 100% a sci-fi book, it could easily be an episode of the twilight zone, and The Buried Giant has dragons and ogres and King Arthur.
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Dec 28, 2021 17:05
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buffalo all day posted:I don’t want to get into genre arguments and obviously the remains of the day isn’t SF but Never Let Me Go is 100% a sci-fi book, it could easily be an episode of the twilight zone, and The Buried Giant has dragons and ogres and King Arthur. I suppose The Uncounseled is pretty Twilight Zone as well with the Kafka-ish web of constant surreal distractions and duties that the protag keeps getting dragged into. I just took him as an author I deeply loved because of his prose rather then belonging to any genre, heh.
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Dec 28, 2021 17:09
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buffalo all day posted:I don’t want to get into genre arguments and obviously the remains of the day isn’t SF but Never Let Me Go is 100% a sci-fi book, it could easily be an episode of the twilight zone, and The Buried Giant has dragons and ogres and King Arthur. This is good to hear. I read Remains of the Day early this year and Buried Giant caught my interest because of how overtly fantasy it was. I'm sure it's good because it's him, but do you have any particular thoughts on it?
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Dec 28, 2021 17:19
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I don’t think genre arguments and pigeon-holing authors into genres matters as much as it used to. I love it when Literary authors dip their toes in sff, and sff authors who take on more experimental literary styles
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Dec 28, 2021 17:20
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Soysaucebeast posted:So apparently every year this guy on Reddit organizes a huge two-day book sale for charity (don't ask me details, I just found out about it this morning lol). This year it's 400 sci-fi/fantasy e-books for 0.99$ each, with the proceeds going to St. Judes. If you've got reddit, here's the direct post, but if you don't wanna go there here's the google doc spreadsheet with everything (and links to the non-US Amazon pages). There's some good stuff on there, and A LOT of stuff I've never heard of, but I figure for a buck a book you can't really go wrong. To no one's surprise, Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin is approximately as bad as I thought it would be. But I don't mind sending an author who writes casually bad LitRPG 99 cents once. On the scale of Graydon Saunder's Commonweal to the 1994 MLB All Stars game, I give it a solidly meh rating of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey quote:In the modern world, qi is money. I am not a Sarah Lin alt, this is not an endorsement of reading LitRPG. The 'guy on Reddit' is actually an author who is LitRPG adjacent, which is why there's so much LitRPG on the list. If LitRPG results in charitable contributions it's fine. Let's not derail the thread about what should and should not be read. Now back to discussing Piranesi and nongendered characters. Happiness Commando fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 18:09
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Tokelau All Star posted:How is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? I had conflated it this whole time with stuff like Lemony Snicket. Personally IIRC I made it about 50-100 pages in and was bored since it was very slow and felt like it was imitating an old writing style I didn’t care for. I read it before Piranesi and wouldn’t really have guessed it was by the same author.
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Dec 28, 2021 18:31
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smackfu posted:Personally IIRC I made it about 50-100 pages in and was bored since it was very slow and felt like it was imitating an old writing style I didn’t care for. I read it before Piranesi and wouldn’t really have guessed it was by the same author. Yeah, JS&N is a brilliant book but it's very specifically a pastiche of regency era fiction and if you aren't into that it won't be your thing.
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Dec 28, 2021 18:39
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The audiobook for Jonathan Strange is very, very good.
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Dec 28, 2021 18:42
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BananaNutkins posted:The audiobook for Jonathan Strange is very, very good. How does it handle the footnotes
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Dec 28, 2021 19:20
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I read and watched the bbc series in parallel and that helped me get through the first hundred pages.
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Dec 28, 2021 19:22
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The Dragon Republic (Poppy War #2) by RF Kuang - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CRKXQ1Y/
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Dec 28, 2021 19:27
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buffalo all day posted:I don’t want to get into genre arguments and obviously the remains of the day isn’t SF but Never Let Me Go is 100% a sci-fi book, it could easily be an episode of the twilight zone, and The Buried Giant has dragons and ogres and King Arthur. This is arguably a somewhat controversial point in the case of Never Let Me Go. (It could only be an episode of the Twilight Zone if you turned the premise into a twist ending.) A lot of "literary" SF gets called "not really SF" by people who like it but don't like SF in general, but in the case of Never Let Me Go, I think a lot of the gatekeeping came from the other direction. Which doesn't make the gatekeepers right, obviously! Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 19:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How does it handle the footnotes I think they're appended to the end. I can't think of a better way to do it in pure audio.
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Dec 28, 2021 19:40
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BananaNutkins posted:The audiobook for Jonathan Strange is very, very good. It is, and whoever recommended the audiobook version of Piranesi the other day was also correct. It's got me through a lot of driving the last two days. buffalo all day posted:I don’t want to get into genre arguments and obviously the remains of the day isn’t SF but Never Let Me Go is 100% a sci-fi book, it could easily be an episode of the twilight zone, and The Buried Giant has dragons and ogres and King Arthur. Never Let Me Go is for my money the most heartbreaking sci fi story to stealth its way into the 'literary' canon. I listened to that one while driving too, which was tricky at times.
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Dec 28, 2021 20:31
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I share the story of how Suzanne Palmer skipped the Hugo awards because she was farting too bad https://twitter.com/zanzjan/status/1475906330313601029
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Dec 28, 2021 20:32
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The Sweet Hereafter posted:Never Let Me Go is for my money the most heartbreaking sci fi story to stealth its way into the 'literary' canon. just reading the summary on wiki will leave you depressed, there's no way i'm ever opening the book itself i'd rather watch "the island", that's NLMG but optimistic
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Dec 28, 2021 22:37
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You mean Parts: The Clonus Horror?
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Dec 29, 2021 00:30
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BananaNutkins posted:I'm really enjoying the Blacktongue Thief. GrandmaParty posted:Honestly, it's just got a sense of fun to it. That's something I'm missing a lot of in fantasy. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that you're writing something fun and not grim. Any other recent / new books in this vein that people would suggest? I just read this thinking it was a series but it's not a series yet and now I'm in the mood for more.
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Dec 29, 2021 01:06
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The new Anthony Ryan has a similar style - I liked it more than anything of his since bloodsong but reviews here were split.
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Dec 29, 2021 01:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:How does it handle the footnotes Gonna steal this for a similar question — how do Pratchett audiobooks handle footnotes?
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Dec 29, 2021 02:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, JS&N is a brilliant book but it's very specifically a pastiche of regency era fiction and if you aren't into that it won't be your thing. If on the other hand the idea of reading incredibly extensive footnotes about a fictional fantasy world sounds appealing to you it'll be one of the best things you ever read. BananaNutkins posted:I think they're appended to the end. I can't think of a better way to do it in pure audio. That seems crazy. Surely you'd just narrate them at the end of the sentence in question, which is how I think most people read them?
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Dec 29, 2021 02:40
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freebooter posted:If on the other hand the idea of reading incredibly extensive footnotes about a fictional fantasy world sounds appealing to you it'll be one of the best things you ever read. Some people are vehemently against this idea. They say the footnotes are put there as optional, that they're a distraction from the main plot that you choose to ignore if you aren't curious. I personally like them, but I can understand the danger in breaking up the flow of prose with hundreds of tangents. It would be nice if there were two options for listeners--one with the footnotes read in line and one with them at the end--but in my experience I've never known an audiobook to do that.
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Dec 29, 2021 03:02
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I think I had this author bookmarked from SBTB but this one is free today: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0759XVRRN/ Gunpowder Alchemy: An Opium War steampunk adventure (Gunpowder Chronicles Book 1) by Jeannie Lin
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Dec 29, 2021 03:06
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Been reading Behold! Humanity as a series and it's pretty neat. I enjoy the bright and somewhat upbeat future idea instead of the normal dystopian all is bleak and sad future idea. It's got some pretty goddamn weird subcultures in there though like kawaii 40k marines, etc.
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Dec 29, 2021 03:09
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