Rebecca H’s last login was Wednesday, March 18 2009.
Rated 4 stars
Read the review for Gradisil (Gollancz SF S.)
Rated 3 stars
Rated 5 stars
Read the review for Voices from the Street
Rated 1 star
Read the review for Postsingular
Read the review for Spook Country
Read the review for The Annotated Hunting of the Snark
Read the review for A Wrinkle in Time
Rated 2 stars
Read the review for Freakonomics
Read the review for The Time Traveler's Wife
Read the review for Axis
Read the review for The Best Short Stories of Leslea Newman
Read the review for Slaughterhouse-Five
Read the review for The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
Read the review for Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Read the review for Barrel Fever
Read the review for The Philosopher's Apprentice: A Novel
Read the review for Still Life with Woodpecker
Read the review for Starfish (Rifters Trilogy)
Read the review for Maelstrom (Rifters)
Read the review for Incandescence
Read the review for Solaris
Read the review for Darwinia
Finished Motherless Brooklyn - thanks for the suggestion, btw. What was the deal with all the characters appearing as couplets, as dyads? Some thematic thing? Yin and Yang? I felt I was missing something there.
Hi Rebecca, well, cynic might be a better statement for me since I tend toward the romantic but always enjoy humor. I also like many the same books as yourself. I have Delany's Dahlgren on my shelf waiting for a few moments and haven't made it to Queen City Jazz. Most recently I've enjoyed Baxter's Xeelee series and Light by M. John Harrison and some Folk Tales from Mexico and South America.
Hi, Rebecca,I started Motherless Brooklyn and it's pretty prose in some places. I'll probably finish it in the next few days.Is it cheating to end a series of books with, "Who knows?" :)Christina
In re: Behemoth - Shaking of fists can be very eloquent. :) Tell me if you think he ended the world. The last page has something about a nonlinear regression failing, and I thought, wtf? The Entropy Police were doing regressions on the spread of Behemoth, but I couldn't tell if he meant that the world was actually ending or there might be some hope or what the hell that last page was about. (Speaking of fist-shaking?)I'll let you know how Motherless Brooklyn hits me; I have never been to Brooklyn, so I have no fond memories of it from the 1970's.Spook Country sits forlorn and lonely on the passenger's side front seat of my car. I really have to rescue it and finish the story. Maybe I'll start from the beginning, to energize the process? I am pretty sure I read some books by Gibson in the 80's, which is why I bought Spook Country while trapped in an airport. Interestingly enough, I can remember the plot of none of his books. Wonder what that indicates?
Hi, Rebecca, I read through the entire Rifters series, because it's a page-turner, and because when I finished Maelstrom, I just had to find out if the world ended. Plus, I had already invested several days reading the first two novels. I had a similar reaction to yours in that I thought it started strong, but as the tale unfolded, I was less pleased with it. Did you notice in the preface the author was unhappy that Behemoth was split in two? He's right; the story suffered from it. A large and muscular editor might have raised his pen like death's sicle and hacked away anything that was not plot to the betterment of the overarching story. The publishers did him a real disservice in the name of money here, imho.At first I thought, okay, you have a minor character named Achilles Desjardin (I get it - greek godling with one weakness and "of the garden" to suggest he was from Eden, that he came from perfection and was gonna fall) but when he became the Evil Sadistic Villain, I felt over-poked with the pointy pointy symbolism. Like, okay, okay, I got it, I got it.Mr. Watts's got a real talent for sucking the reader into the primitive emotions he's exploring in his writing, and I was surprised how delighted I was when I contemplated Alice's death through Achilles' eyes, when it was hinted but not explicitly shown how his "liberator" was going to be brutally slain. That's some good writing there, to make you see exactly the internal logic of a monster commiting a monstrous act.I have to agree with you that the torture chamber was gratuituos, although I am sure it excited the sadists in his audience, of which there are a few, I imagine. It also had the effect on me, anyway, of removing Achilles from my empathy circuits; it made him an EVil mustache twirler, a "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to Die!" kind of fellow. Before, I got to take a ride inside his mind as it drifted from self-control to anarchy, now I have to feel it only from the outside. I won't go further in case you haven't finished the book.I am having a hard time finishing Spook Country - I keep toting it around to read on my commute but finding something else to read instead? Not a good sign. I guess I should just plow through it to get it over with.In re: Infoquake. If you find the idea of high-powered Donald Trump type CEOs strategizing, wheeling and dealing exciting, you will love it. I think that stuff doesn't float my boat so much. He writes in a clear direct style, though, so I can recommend that. I'd check to see how many of the three part series is out, since Infoquake is part one, and nothing is resolved in part one.I've not read any other Jonathan Lethem stuff - what is his best, outside of Men and Cartoons?
I see you read Starfish and Maelstrom, and in your review you mentioned possibly trying to finish the series - did you ever get around to Behemoth?
