Galactic North
I finished this a couple of days ago – given it is a set of novellas, it serves as my break from reading about the Chinese Revolution, which book I will also post about at some time – there are some doozies of quotes that I have to share with people.
Anyway, to Galactic North: the latest Alastair Reynolds (although apparently there’s a new novel on the way – hurrah). I am eternally grateful to Kate for getting me to to read short stories, since before she started foisting Urchin stories on me (an example of which can be read here – I do so love the Wild Hunt), I never was much of a fan. This I have since repented, and am doing my part in reading a large stack of Aussie shorts (don’t believe me? Check this out). But back to the point. The first two stories (Great Wall of Mars, and Glacial) of this collection are about Galiana and Clavain, familiar to anyone who has read Revelation Space stories and still fascinating characters for newbies. Representing very different forms of culture and humanity – one a Conjoiner, those humans who exist with what is, crudely, an interweb between them, connecting them irrevocably, the other from a faction implacably opposed to such forms of humanity. They are great stories, and although you can read them as stand-alones, as I said, i think they are best seen as filling in (very nicely) holes from the novels.
Those two stories were probablymy favourites, because they did plug holes. “A Spy in Europa” is excellent, a very clever twisty story; “Weather” looks at both Ultras (space-adapted sailors, basically) and Conjoiners more than usual. “Dilation Sleep” is apparently a very old story, and suitably creepy, although not the most interesting of the set; “Grafenwalder’s Bestiary” allows Reynolds’ macabre side out to play. “Nightingale” (took me a while to get the name; it’s the name of a hospital ship) is also quite macabre, and an anti-war gem. Finally, “Galactic North” reminded me a lot of Time, Space, and Origin by Stephen Baxter, for its sheer scope of time and space. It was really, really good, too – picking up on something mentioned in one of the novels, and running with it to what should be a ridiculous extent, and yet… it works.
All in all, a glorious set of stories. And it just makes me want more from the Revelation Space ‘verse.
The Player of Games
I found Iain M Banks when we were in the UK – reminds me that I should get around to talking at least about the books I read over there, if not about the whole trip. It feels like it was such a long time ago, now, though – 10 weeks in fact. Anyway: I just finished his The Player of Games the second of the Culture novels. I think I’ve decided they can be safely read out of order, which is nice – now I can just go nuts at the second hand book shop, and buy whatever they happen to have.
It’s a great book. Banks is a great storyteller – you know, after you’ve read one, that there is a fair bit more going on than is obvious at the first and that this will be revealed in clever ways, and pretty much logically too: that is, there won’t be ta-dah! moments just to get the hero out of a sticky spot. I have to say, though, that I found the conclusion to this one just a bit anti-climactic. I don’t know what else I was expecting (well, yes actually I do, and it has a lot to do with Janny Wurts and the Empire books), but it wasn’t what happened.
Getting to that conclusion, though, was fun. The main character isn’t much of a hero – just an every-day Culture dude, who happens to be about the best games-player in the entirety of the Culture. He gets contracted, basically, to go and play the highest-stakes game he’s ever come across, and the book is about him learning it and playing it. Which sounds daft, except that the stakes are who gets to Emperor of Azad.
One of the more interesting, if surprisingly understated, aspects is the difference between Azad and the Culture, in politics and morals and pretty much every other aspect of life. There are a few conversation where these things are explored, and – I think deliberately – it’s weird for a reader to try and figure out exactly where they want to position themselves. With the Culture, that tolerates incest and pretty much anything else its citizens can come up with, or the Empire, that goes around subjugating everyone they meet (sounds familiar)? And really, as things are presented here, there are no half-measures. One side or the other.
Interesting. Fun. And, unlike Consider Phlebas (the one I read in the UK), only one page of ickiness that I had to skip over.
Spicy history
I finished Jack Turner’s Spice: The History of a Temptation yesterday. Overall, I really enjoyed it. It’s quite an idiosyncratic history, and deliberately so – writing about absolutely everything to do with spice, even just in western Europe and/or just in the Middle Ages would be an incomprehensibly huge project, I would imagine. So he hasn’t done that: although he does go into great detail in some things, in others he skips over stuff a bit. He does seem to have a fairly good bibliography at the back, so I guess if you were so inclined you could chase stuff up yourself.
The first part is about the spice race – Columbus, Magellan, and their cohort, who opened up the world for Europeans – at least the western ones – all, or at least partly, in the name of spice, I love the idea of Portugese or Spanish explorer getting to Malabar or other such places and finding Italian merchants already there; the look on their faces must have been priceless… much like the spice there were seeking.
The second part focusses on the palate – the thing that I was expecting most of the book to look at, to be honest, despite the fact that I know spices were used in incense etc. Anyway, this section was really interesting: it looked at recipes, it looked at how spice helped to create/maintain class distinction; discredits the idea that spice was used in the Middle Ages to hide the taste of rotting meat (it was rich people who used spice – do you think rich people would be eating rotting meat in the first place? It was at least partly to hide the taste of the salt used in curing the meat, probably).
The third part focussed on the body, in two ways: spice in medicine, and spice for love. Starting with cloves being shoved up Ramses II’s nose, as part of the mummification process, and then talking about the whole idea of pomanders and bad air (mal aria…) being respondible for disease. The section on spice as aphrodisiac was quite funny. And almost entirely male-centred – the remedies suggested, that is, not Turner’s treatment of it, since he himself points it out.
Part four is on the spirit: the use of spice in incense, for example. It mostly focussed, though, on the changing attitude of Christians towards spice in worship. The earliest Church fathers thought it was ok-ish – Christians were often anointed with spices for burial, since Christ was. Then people went a bit off it, because after all if God is incorporeal then presumably he doesn’t enjoy pleasant smells (personally I think this is a daft argument: so you’re limiting what God is able to do, then?). This is a very, very brief overview, of course.
The last chapter is called “Some Like it Bland,” which is a great heading. It talks about the movement – slowly – against spices, for a range of reasons, including that it was a drain of resources away from Europe towards those nasty, decadent Easterners; plus, interestingly, he links the development of the nation-state and national sentiment to the development of a national cuisine, which makes sense, and in England at least this led to a bland cuisine they were proud of, contrasting it with those very spices their forebears used to love.
As I said, this is a ridiculously brief overview, but it gives an idea what the book was about. It’s really well written, and a lot of fun to read; Turner’s not afraid of pointing out the humorous and ridiculous nature of some of the things he discusses.
Reading for pleasure (gasp!)
I feel like it is a long time since I read anything without another agenda in mind: it was for school, or I was going to write a review of it… even history books I read for fun still have the not-very-subliminal purpose of increasing my general (trivial) knowledge. That’s not to say that I dont enjoy those books, of course; just that as I read I’m thinking of things other than just the enjoyment.
To celebrate the start of my break, I am reading Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds. It has been sitting on my shelf for a while, holding out the promise of complete escapism and masterful writing, for a while now, and it is with a huge sense of relief and relaxation that I dived into it yesterday. It’s 8 short stories – novellas, really – set in the Revelation Space et al universe. The first two are about Nevil Clavain, Galiana, and Felka. I remember them from at least one of the four stories set in that ‘verse, and it’s really nice to get some background on them. It also, of course, makes me itch to go back and read them all again. I think I read them too fast first time around and may have missed some of the subtleties. Plus, they are jsut damned fine stories. Truly, Reynolds is a heroic storyteller.
Hell, and the history thereof
As I cook an enormous lasagne to feed a 5 year old and 4 year old tonight (and their parents), I’m catching up on my “In our Time” podcasts. At the moment it’s “The history of hell,” which is interesting for a whole load of reasons. But something that just struck me: Bosch and Luther were contemporaries! Fascinating.
Now they’re talking about the fact that in many early traditions, hell was freezing, rather than being, with the speculation that this is some sort of folk memory of the change, 10,000 years ago, from the last Ice Age. Apparently – and I don’t know who thinks this – there is an idea that the Ice Age changed over just 10 years or so, such that people would experience it very obviously.
And now they’re talking about Heart of Darkness The Waste Land. The idea of the journey down the Congo, to the supervisor at the inner station, who might be described as a modern Tiresias. Now that is a really, really interesting idea.
Lady Friday
It was good; I enjoyed it. That is, I really just want to find out how Nix is going to resolve the whole issue, so I was bound to enjoy it unless it was dreadful. This wasn’t dreadful. Some of the characters were a bit annoying, and the action seemed to take a while to get going, but it was still fun. Lady Friday wasn’t quite the same opponent as some of the others, though… and the Piper only appeared personally for a couple of pages. Most of the time it was Arthur dealing with lots of issues, which is the same in the others but I seem to remember that there were more personal conflicts in the others. Probably one of the more interesting things were that Dame Primus is being more dreadful, which is a bit of fun – will be interesting to see how that turns out – and Arthur starts to wonder more about Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday.
Now I have to wait for the next one. Again.
Bridge to Terabithia…
looks crap.
No: as a movie, it looks ok, possibly quite good.
As an adaptation of the book, it looks ridiculous. The book doesn’t talk very much at all about what happens in Terabithia – and there is certainly no indication that their imaginations populate it to the degree shown in the trailers for the film. Looks like they are moving it completely out of the family-centred story, which is what the book is all about – her family being different from his and how you live with yours – into the fantastic.
This might make for a good film, but it’s negating everything that makes it such a classic.
Of course, that might just be the trailer… but I doubt it.
Reading at the moment
1. Just finished Lady Friday, by Garth Nix.
2. History of Spice, by … someone…
3. the Theory and Practice of Communism, by RN Carew Hunt
Pretty much sums up my reading habits, really… fantasy, history, food, and technology.
That’s me.
So many books
I’ve read heaps over the last while. Lots for ASif!, but all of those have been ones that I’ve enjoyed too, so it’s not like it’s a hardship!
Days of Allison by Eric Shapiro – robots, as partners that you can programme, basically. A novella, so you don’t really have time to get jack of Louis, your utterly spineless (for most of the book) protagonist. I guessed one of the twists, but not the last.
Monster Blood Tattoo by DW Cornish, which it turns out girlie jones hated; there you go. I really liked it – an interesting take on monsters, where they’re pretty much like the Huns or Goths: barbarians at the gate, to be kept away, but not all of whom might be bad. It’s the start of the series, and I don’t mind that there will be more – I hope they’re as good as this. Rossamund (male; a bit of a Boy Named Sue thing happening, I think) is a fun little hero.
There have been others, but they escape me right now. And I just found out yesterday that Lady Friday has been published!! Hurrah!!!
Joy joy joy
Oh yes, joy joy joy: Lady Friday has been released! Woohoo! I thought I was going to have to wait until June or so, but turns out I can buy it this weekend! Yay!
Unless, of course, Readings is stating what will be published this month, meaning I have to wait another couple of weeks… oh, that would make me sad sad sad.
Randomly Yours, Alex 