Wednesday book meme thing
Jan. 3rd, 2018 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseWhat I've just finished reading
Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. A couple of years ago, Brian and I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation via Netflix, and it occurred to me how fundamentally different it was from anything I'd seen on television over the past couple of decades; specifically, the way the Enterprise crew fundamentally assumed from the get-go that any aliens it encountered, no matter how powerful or strange, could be reasoned with - they might or might not hold the same values humanity did, but that there was always some common ground. Several of the best episodes ("Darmok" comes to mind, though there are others) centered on this idea, in fact. (I'm far from the first person to observe this about the show, but growing up watching primarily Star Trek spinoffs and very little other television, it never really struck me until then exactly how unusual that was. I remember, in fact, watching the new Battlestar Galactica in my twenties and thinking how much more appropriate it was, in a post-9/11 landscape, to have a sci-fi show that addressed the more distrustful aspects of humanity...and only realized some seasons later how depressing it got because it almost continually refused to acknowledge the flip side, perhaps because it was afraid of being compared to Star Trek.)
I bring this up because this series is one of the first that I've seen that does something different with the space opera formula. Even my beloved Vorkosigan series, delightful as it is, tends to have easily-identifiable characters and follow fairly standard plot arcs; this is hardly surprising, as tropes and archetypes are integral to our storytelling traditions. But the Ancillary books could almost entirely be summed up in this one line, from a recent installment of a different space opera franchise: "This is not going to go the way you think." And while lots of stories attempt to do what Leckie does here - subvert expectations, zig when you think it's going to zag, create fascinating characters and a meaty conflict with a satisfying resolution without a single Giant Space Battle - I've rarely seen it pulled off with such aplomb. It's not Star Wars-style space opera, about myth or the expectations that myth generates; it's not Star Trek either (the one alien race we have even tangential contact with, the Presger, are notable for precisely how alien they are - threatening not due to their desire for power or territory or resources, but because we can't even conceptualize of what they want). It's something completely its own, and refreshing, and so well-built that I can't quite believe it's over - the characters and their world still exist vividly in my head, long after I've put the book down.
What I'm currently reading
Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. I feel like this book started about ten chapters too early - I'm seven hours in to the audiobook and it's only just starting to really pique my interest. While I get what the author was doing - Nina and Meredith's mother is so completely closed-off that it takes their father's death, the frustration of Nina's career prospects, and the dissolution of Meredith's marriage in order to get them to the point where they're finally in a place to make the effort to get her to open up - it basically translated to six and a half hours of listening to "hey, these people have problems, and hey look, those problems are getting worse!" Which, now that I think about it, may well be preparing me to dive into some Russian history and literature, although perhaps not how I was intending it to. :P Still, I'm enjoying their mother's 'fairy tale', even if the contrivance feels--well--contrived; how is it not plainly obvious to both of these women that this is their mother's life story, thinly veiled?
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've only read the first chapter or so, and I already like Ella - cursed with the 'virtue' of forced obedience, she develops a rebellious streak and finds creative ways to subvert it. I'm looking forward to this one, despite my general dislike of Clumsy Heroine Syndrome.
What I plan to read next
Might as well get a start on Yoga Sequencing, since I made it one of my New Year's goals. I haven't been journaling as much as I'd like to, either, so I think I'm going to go with the idea I had before - set aside the time to read a chapter each week, and journal about how I might apply it in my work.
Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. A couple of years ago, Brian and I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation via Netflix, and it occurred to me how fundamentally different it was from anything I'd seen on television over the past couple of decades; specifically, the way the Enterprise crew fundamentally assumed from the get-go that any aliens it encountered, no matter how powerful or strange, could be reasoned with - they might or might not hold the same values humanity did, but that there was always some common ground. Several of the best episodes ("Darmok" comes to mind, though there are others) centered on this idea, in fact. (I'm far from the first person to observe this about the show, but growing up watching primarily Star Trek spinoffs and very little other television, it never really struck me until then exactly how unusual that was. I remember, in fact, watching the new Battlestar Galactica in my twenties and thinking how much more appropriate it was, in a post-9/11 landscape, to have a sci-fi show that addressed the more distrustful aspects of humanity...and only realized some seasons later how depressing it got because it almost continually refused to acknowledge the flip side, perhaps because it was afraid of being compared to Star Trek.)
I bring this up because this series is one of the first that I've seen that does something different with the space opera formula. Even my beloved Vorkosigan series, delightful as it is, tends to have easily-identifiable characters and follow fairly standard plot arcs; this is hardly surprising, as tropes and archetypes are integral to our storytelling traditions. But the Ancillary books could almost entirely be summed up in this one line, from a recent installment of a different space opera franchise: "This is not going to go the way you think." And while lots of stories attempt to do what Leckie does here - subvert expectations, zig when you think it's going to zag, create fascinating characters and a meaty conflict with a satisfying resolution without a single Giant Space Battle - I've rarely seen it pulled off with such aplomb. It's not Star Wars-style space opera, about myth or the expectations that myth generates; it's not Star Trek either (the one alien race we have even tangential contact with, the Presger, are notable for precisely how alien they are - threatening not due to their desire for power or territory or resources, but because we can't even conceptualize of what they want). It's something completely its own, and refreshing, and so well-built that I can't quite believe it's over - the characters and their world still exist vividly in my head, long after I've put the book down.
What I'm currently reading
Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah. I feel like this book started about ten chapters too early - I'm seven hours in to the audiobook and it's only just starting to really pique my interest. While I get what the author was doing - Nina and Meredith's mother is so completely closed-off that it takes their father's death, the frustration of Nina's career prospects, and the dissolution of Meredith's marriage in order to get them to the point where they're finally in a place to make the effort to get her to open up - it basically translated to six and a half hours of listening to "hey, these people have problems, and hey look, those problems are getting worse!" Which, now that I think about it, may well be preparing me to dive into some Russian history and literature, although perhaps not how I was intending it to. :P Still, I'm enjoying their mother's 'fairy tale', even if the contrivance feels--well--contrived; how is it not plainly obvious to both of these women that this is their mother's life story, thinly veiled?
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. I've only read the first chapter or so, and I already like Ella - cursed with the 'virtue' of forced obedience, she develops a rebellious streak and finds creative ways to subvert it. I'm looking forward to this one, despite my general dislike of Clumsy Heroine Syndrome.
What I plan to read next
Might as well get a start on Yoga Sequencing, since I made it one of my New Year's goals. I haven't been journaling as much as I'd like to, either, so I think I'm going to go with the idea I had before - set aside the time to read a chapter each week, and journal about how I might apply it in my work.
