book list, August 2009
Sep. 1st, 2009 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingIt's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in August 2009. (Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.)
New: 4
---Raising Twins: What Parents Want to Know (And What Twins Want to Tell Them), Eileen M. Pearlman, Ph.D., and Jill Alison Ganon (nonfiction: the title is self-explanatory. The book's chapters are arranged somewhat chronologically and somewhat thematically, and each chapter includes several brief interviews with various sets of twins and/or their parents. The authors assume their readers are generally upper middle class and obsessively interested in their children's education -- which may be an accurate assessment of the people who are likely to read a book like this, but which is still interesting to note. I read this mostly for story research purposes.)
---Ithaca: A Brief History, Carol Kammen (nonfiction: again, the title is self-explanatory. Kammen begins with the Revolutionary War and works her way through time to the present day, touching on the physical layout of the city, government and politics, population growth and changes, social movements, economic problems and natural disasters, and the pervasive influence of Cornell after its founding. She also provides a good bibliography for further reading in local history. Some of the illustrations seemed only tenuously linked to the neighboring pages, and some of the maps only make full sense if you already know the modern layout of Ithaca, but these are minor quibbles -- especially because anyone reading a local history book probably does already know the layout of Ithaca, or has access to a map. *grin*
I was most surprised by the repeated stories of catastrophic flooding, since Ithaca presently has no such problem. Flood control measures were apparently taken in reaction to a particularly bad 1935 flood, which resulted, in the 1950s, in the straightening of the inlet and the construction of concrete walls and channels for the various streams that cut through the flatlands. These walls were built for the hundred year flood -- or maybe even higher -- and so far as I know, flooding has not been an issue since then, except for occasional issues with groundwater in cellars.)
---Life in a Medieval City, Joseph and Frances Gies (nonfiction: a portrait of life in the city of Troyes, site of two of the major Champagne fairs, around 1250 CE. The chapters are arranged thematically, and deal mostly with burghers, craftsmen, and merchants; the nobility are mentioned, and the clergy get a bit more page time, but peasants and unskilled laborers are mostly ignored. The book is a bit light on detail and, as it's copyright 1969, I am sure there has been new scholarship on many of the issues, but it's a fair introduction to the topic.
There is a tone of apologia to most mentions of women and Jews -- as if to say, "No, really, they were just fine, nothing to complain about!" -- that annoys me, but since most of the book deals with Christian men, at least that smugness is not constantly rubbed in your face? Though I am not sure being ignored is better than being condescended to... *sigh*)
---The Door Through Space, Marion Zimmer Bradley (science fiction: Race Cargill was an intelligence agent on the planet Wolf, working with his native friend Rahkhal Sensar, until Rakhal initiated a blood feud that left them both scarred and Race confined to desk work. Six years later, Race is about to leave Wolf forever when his sister Juli, who married Rakhal and sided with him in the feud, comes to him for help after Rakhal begins behaving oddly and kidnaps their daughter. Race's investigation takes him through the complicated balance of human and nonhuman cultures of Wolf, and into the heart of a religious/technological mystery.
This is an interesting and competently written book, but I found it problematic for three reasons. First, Bradley is obviously working out the rough draft of Darkover -- the red sun, the Dry-Towns and their chained women, the various nonhuman races, the Ghost Winds, the conflict between the native humans and the spacefaring Terran Empire, the hints of psychic powers -- and yet Wolf is very much its own world, slyer and more weary than Darkover. I constantly wanted to reconcile them into one universe, but that's not really possible; Wolf and Darkover work best, I think, as distorted mirrors of each other. Second, while the story is interesting, it falls flat at the resolution. There is simply not enough page time to resolve the upending of Race's understanding of Rakhal and his plans, nor to lay proper foundations for the relationship between Race and Miellyn. And third, Bradley uses a number of ugly gender-related tropes whose implications she ignores. I think most of that is a time-and-place issue, since she later went on to write extensively about the Free Amazons on Darkover; my guess is that she had not yet consciously noticed the ugliness of the genre tropes she was using and/or did not feel confident challenging the status quo in her first published book.)
Old: 1
---The Magic of Recluce, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (fantasy: in which Lerris, a bored and entitled teenager, is exiled from his home on a vague quest and gets in a lot of trouble along the way. Much of the trouble is his own damn fault, but he does manage to fix most of it by the end. I reread this book because I'd been reading about medieval cities and the chapters on guilds reminded me of the woodworking scenes in here, which I love. I found myself skimming the magical plot-related sections and mentally screaming at Lerris to forget about order and chaos and get back to making cabinets. This is my reaction to most of Modesitt's work these days -- I wish he'd just write about people being engineers or traders or soldiers or woodworkers or whatever, because he is brilliant at that, whereas he is at best merely adequate at grand event plots, magic, and characterization.)
August Total: 5 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 55 books (33 new, 22 old)
New: 4
---Raising Twins: What Parents Want to Know (And What Twins Want to Tell Them), Eileen M. Pearlman, Ph.D., and Jill Alison Ganon (nonfiction: the title is self-explanatory. The book's chapters are arranged somewhat chronologically and somewhat thematically, and each chapter includes several brief interviews with various sets of twins and/or their parents. The authors assume their readers are generally upper middle class and obsessively interested in their children's education -- which may be an accurate assessment of the people who are likely to read a book like this, but which is still interesting to note. I read this mostly for story research purposes.)
---Ithaca: A Brief History, Carol Kammen (nonfiction: again, the title is self-explanatory. Kammen begins with the Revolutionary War and works her way through time to the present day, touching on the physical layout of the city, government and politics, population growth and changes, social movements, economic problems and natural disasters, and the pervasive influence of Cornell after its founding. She also provides a good bibliography for further reading in local history. Some of the illustrations seemed only tenuously linked to the neighboring pages, and some of the maps only make full sense if you already know the modern layout of Ithaca, but these are minor quibbles -- especially because anyone reading a local history book probably does already know the layout of Ithaca, or has access to a map. *grin*
I was most surprised by the repeated stories of catastrophic flooding, since Ithaca presently has no such problem. Flood control measures were apparently taken in reaction to a particularly bad 1935 flood, which resulted, in the 1950s, in the straightening of the inlet and the construction of concrete walls and channels for the various streams that cut through the flatlands. These walls were built for the hundred year flood -- or maybe even higher -- and so far as I know, flooding has not been an issue since then, except for occasional issues with groundwater in cellars.)
---Life in a Medieval City, Joseph and Frances Gies (nonfiction: a portrait of life in the city of Troyes, site of two of the major Champagne fairs, around 1250 CE. The chapters are arranged thematically, and deal mostly with burghers, craftsmen, and merchants; the nobility are mentioned, and the clergy get a bit more page time, but peasants and unskilled laborers are mostly ignored. The book is a bit light on detail and, as it's copyright 1969, I am sure there has been new scholarship on many of the issues, but it's a fair introduction to the topic.
There is a tone of apologia to most mentions of women and Jews -- as if to say, "No, really, they were just fine, nothing to complain about!" -- that annoys me, but since most of the book deals with Christian men, at least that smugness is not constantly rubbed in your face? Though I am not sure being ignored is better than being condescended to... *sigh*)
---The Door Through Space, Marion Zimmer Bradley (science fiction: Race Cargill was an intelligence agent on the planet Wolf, working with his native friend Rahkhal Sensar, until Rakhal initiated a blood feud that left them both scarred and Race confined to desk work. Six years later, Race is about to leave Wolf forever when his sister Juli, who married Rakhal and sided with him in the feud, comes to him for help after Rakhal begins behaving oddly and kidnaps their daughter. Race's investigation takes him through the complicated balance of human and nonhuman cultures of Wolf, and into the heart of a religious/technological mystery.
This is an interesting and competently written book, but I found it problematic for three reasons. First, Bradley is obviously working out the rough draft of Darkover -- the red sun, the Dry-Towns and their chained women, the various nonhuman races, the Ghost Winds, the conflict between the native humans and the spacefaring Terran Empire, the hints of psychic powers -- and yet Wolf is very much its own world, slyer and more weary than Darkover. I constantly wanted to reconcile them into one universe, but that's not really possible; Wolf and Darkover work best, I think, as distorted mirrors of each other. Second, while the story is interesting, it falls flat at the resolution. There is simply not enough page time to resolve the upending of Race's understanding of Rakhal and his plans, nor to lay proper foundations for the relationship between Race and Miellyn. And third, Bradley uses a number of ugly gender-related tropes whose implications she ignores. I think most of that is a time-and-place issue, since she later went on to write extensively about the Free Amazons on Darkover; my guess is that she had not yet consciously noticed the ugliness of the genre tropes she was using and/or did not feel confident challenging the status quo in her first published book.)
Old: 1
---The Magic of Recluce, L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (fantasy: in which Lerris, a bored and entitled teenager, is exiled from his home on a vague quest and gets in a lot of trouble along the way. Much of the trouble is his own damn fault, but he does manage to fix most of it by the end. I reread this book because I'd been reading about medieval cities and the chapters on guilds reminded me of the woodworking scenes in here, which I love. I found myself skimming the magical plot-related sections and mentally screaming at Lerris to forget about order and chaos and get back to making cabinets. This is my reaction to most of Modesitt's work these days -- I wish he'd just write about people being engineers or traders or soldiers or woodworkers or whatever, because he is brilliant at that, whereas he is at best merely adequate at grand event plots, magic, and characterization.)
August Total: 5 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 55 books (33 new, 22 old)
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-02 05:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-03 02:40 am (UTC)Of course, that is probably because that's how my parents raised me -- public school, lots of reading material available at home, willing to answer questions when I was confused, and my dad showed me nifty math tricks now and then, like the proof that resolves Xeno's paradox and says you can actually get from point A to point B despite the infinite number of points in between. So I am always a little taken aback by people who insist on putting their kids in special schools and nitpicking everything about their teachers and their curriculums.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-04 01:21 am (UTC)we did have teachers that tried to compare us to each other or ask why we didn't get the same grades on assignments or tests. we had different learning styles and abilities. yeah, we were twins but we weren't the same person. that was very frustrating.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-05 03:09 am (UTC)The authors stress that point a lot, both in their own words and via transcribed conversations with various sets of twins, so clearly a lot of people do treat twins as if they are interchangeable, and clearly that behavior frustrates an awful lot of twins. :-(