![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
FMK #24: Talking Animals
So I am back from the trip! I did not post FMK yesterday because instead I hid in my room and re-read "All Systems Red," because sometimes after spending a week in very close company with your nearest and dearest (and in hundred-degree temperatures) you need to just hide in your room for a night and re-read "All Systems Red". Perhaps I will post more about the trip later (spoilers: I got to touch Chicago's Stadtkrone! SUCH a good place for an epic magical battle to happen omg. Especially with Trump Tower glowing evilly green next door, and the Tribune Building right past that.)
I didn't finish The Lies of Locke Lamora, which was the LONG BOOK F winner. I got about 1/3 of the way in. So far it's not gripping me, but I've found this year that the long tomes usually don't until I'm over halfway, even if I end up liking them a lot, so I guess we'll see. So far I'm mainly sticking with it so that I can continue imagining a pre-Angelic Visitation Moist von Lipwig coming to Camorr and effortlessly robbing them blind. (He's probably less technically skilled as a grifter than they are, but he's way, way better at actually doing it as a job.)
K was a tie between Quicksilver and Maia, also the two longest on the list! and the thought of never having to read EITHER of them just felt like a massive relief, so I think they will both go. Plus it's like a 3x bonus on freed-up shelf space for each one!
I did read Truckers right before I left, which it turned out I had read before, just twenty-five years ago. So review of that coming up.
Also, the book-on-cd that Mom and I agreed on to listen to while driving was The Tale of Castle Cottage, which was the last of a series of cozy/historical mysteries about TOTALLY NOT RPF FIC OR A FANTASY NOVEL Beatrix Potter and a bunch of helpful woodland creatures. It was okay, and certainly fine to doze off to in the car. But then Beatrix kept having to pause the detecting so that she could go draw yet more bunny illustrations for her editor, and I realized that in the general outline of their lives, she and Ursula Vernon had a lot in common (started in self/small press publishing, got a contract for endless illustrated kids' books about small animals, had a romantic disappointment in their 20s that they subordinated into hardcore gardening, followed by a ridic happy marriage w/ no kids in her 30s, investing all the book money in land conservation.)
So then I started imagining a hundred years from now when some nice lady authoress writes a series of cozy novels about Ursula solving gentle mysteries with the help of friendly woodland creatures (all named Bob, obviously), using KUEC as her main biographical source, the first one to be titled The Tale of Dogskull Patch. And then I felt good about the future for once. :P
So on that note, this week's theme is TALKING ANIMALS!
How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.
I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.
Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)
I didn't finish The Lies of Locke Lamora, which was the LONG BOOK F winner. I got about 1/3 of the way in. So far it's not gripping me, but I've found this year that the long tomes usually don't until I'm over halfway, even if I end up liking them a lot, so I guess we'll see. So far I'm mainly sticking with it so that I can continue imagining a pre-Angelic Visitation Moist von Lipwig coming to Camorr and effortlessly robbing them blind. (He's probably less technically skilled as a grifter than they are, but he's way, way better at actually doing it as a job.)
K was a tie between Quicksilver and Maia, also the two longest on the list! and the thought of never having to read EITHER of them just felt like a massive relief, so I think they will both go. Plus it's like a 3x bonus on freed-up shelf space for each one!
I did read Truckers right before I left, which it turned out I had read before, just twenty-five years ago. So review of that coming up.
Also, the book-on-cd that Mom and I agreed on to listen to while driving was The Tale of Castle Cottage, which was the last of a series of cozy/historical mysteries about TOTALLY NOT RPF FIC OR A FANTASY NOVEL Beatrix Potter and a bunch of helpful woodland creatures. It was okay, and certainly fine to doze off to in the car. But then Beatrix kept having to pause the detecting so that she could go draw yet more bunny illustrations for her editor, and I realized that in the general outline of their lives, she and Ursula Vernon had a lot in common (started in self/small press publishing, got a contract for endless illustrated kids' books about small animals, had a romantic disappointment in their 20s that they subordinated into hardcore gardening, followed by a ridic happy marriage w/ no kids in her 30s, investing all the book money in land conservation.)
So then I started imagining a hundred years from now when some nice lady authoress writes a series of cozy novels about Ursula solving gentle mysteries with the help of friendly woodland creatures (all named Bob, obviously), using KUEC as her main biographical source, the first one to be titled The Tale of Dogskull Patch. And then I felt good about the future for once. :P
So on that note, this week's theme is TALKING ANIMALS!
How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.
I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/ post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.
Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)
Poll #18872 FMK #24: Talking Animals
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34
Shardik by Richard Adams, 564 pages (1974)
Rancher Ferrets on the Range by Richard Bach (2003)
Freddy And The Baseball Team From Mars by Walter Brooks, (1955)
Mother West Wind's Children by Thornton Burgess (1911)
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
Summer's Perfume by Joseph Cahill (1993)
The Badgers of Summercombe by Ewan Clarkson (1977)
Jennifer Murdley's Toad by Bruce Coville (1993)
The Right to Arm Bears by Gordon R. Dickson (2000)
Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara by James Gurney (2007)
The Postman Always Brings Mice by Holm & Hamel (2004)
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (1894)
Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary Wolf (1984)
no subject
Unless you have a deep intellectual interest in reading the book that sparked a zillion adaptations and named a trope, I'd stick with Barsoom for Burroughs writing. Barsoom isn't perfect by a long shot, but it isn't Tarzan of the Apes.
no subject
But, I mean, it's Burroughs, so yeah, RACIST?
I do still have a fondness for Barsoom, though, and I feel like if I want to talk about Burroughs I should have read Tarzan at least once. Plus, my great-grandma, grandma, and mom were all Tarzan fans, so there's that.
no subject
And I do remember having fun with it in parts; it's a quick read and it's full of ACTION and ADVENTURE and NONSENSE. And you already know what to expect with Burroughs. I might have had milder reaction except that it was my first encounter with him, and I went in expecting something different than what I got based on various Tarzan adaptations I'd encountered.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I really liked that book! ^_^
Seldom have I identified with a character so much. I am looking forwards to the sequel! ^_^
no subject
I am half-afraid of the sequelae, though, because if it ends up trying to teach us that Murderbot just needed to Be Social and Make Connections With Humans Instead Of Feeds and Learn To Talk About Its Feelings, I will be mad.
Let Murderbot Hide In A Corner And Watch Its Shows 2017
no subject
...apparently reading Dreamwidth still counts as an introverted activity, even though it's social.
no subject
no subject
I hope this is okay to ask - and please don't answer if you would rather not -
but would you say this is because you have or are
a) Introversion
b) Autistic/Asperger's
c) Anxiety
d) Social Anxiety
e) PTSD
f) Neuroatypical
g) Something else... ?
In my case, I think I relate Murderbot because Introversion + PTSD + Social Anxiety.
no subject
I am also ace as hell, and Murderbot reflects my own experience of aceness better than any other profic protagonist I have read so far. Especially the "oh no, I am feeling strong positive feelings toward another human being, and everybody will expect them to be romantic/sexual which they will never ever be, MUST FLEE" bit, which is basically my teens and early twenties in a nutshell.
I don't have PTSD in the lifelong way that most people on DW describe it, but there have probably been a few times in my life when I met the clinical definition for a time after a specific trauma and then was mostly recovered in a few months with community support but no clinical treatment, which I understand is way more common than chronic PTSD (and is probably mostly because I've been lucky enough that it always *was* things where there was built-in community support afterward instead of, say, gaslighting, or repeated traumas.) But one of those traumas happened in last November and is still sort of ongoing so I was still really feeling it the first time I read Murderbot.
Socal anxiety/ASD/other neuroatypicality I'm also in that place where I don't match the usual experience strongly enough, or experience enough disruption to my life as a result, that I don't feel like even a self-diagnosis would be particularly beneficial... but I have a lot in common with people who are diagnosed and tend to find their metaphors and stories and coping mechanisms really useful. And that's a tough space to navigate socially online in the current climate, and so I tend to mostly talk about it through fiction. (Which is another thing Murderbot and I have in common!)
no subject
I've read one of the stories in the Dickson book for sure and possibly two. I remember finding them amusing but not spectacular. They're not the same as the Hoka books, but I recall them as having some similar themes. It's just been decades, so I can't be sure.
I remember loathing Shardik, but I remember very little about it. I think there was some sort of graphic grossness early in the book that I found too lovingly described, but that was thirty some years ago, and I can't remember enough to be sure that I'd find that bit similarly off putting now.
I think that The Jungle Book is worth reading simply because it's one of Kipling's most widely known works and a heck of a lot different than the Disney version. It also makes an interesting counterpoint to Tarzan, and I think that reading the two in sequence could be fascinating.
no subject
,,,the Dickson is another one that got accidentally filed as a novel instead of anthology, then, I guess.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Or ears, as it turned out, because THE way to go for a Kipling reread at this age, at least for me, was audiobooks. The Ralph Cosham narrated Jungle Book recordings are just outstanding. And yes, I could see so many things I'd been blind to as a child -- colonialism! not romantic! racism! not a good thing! -- but at the same time I could and did appreciate them deeply. (Though, wow, so much focus on death. I'd forgotten. Death and killing, killing and death, packaged as kiddie lit.)
Anyway, there's a media rec for you in case you end up doing a spot of Kipling this round.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
And I'll keep it in mind - my copy of Jungle Book is a very old, very acid-paper paperback, so it may only survive the one read-through anyway.
no subject
no subject
A thing you may wish to check is whether you have the complete Jungle Books, as it was originally published in two volumes, each containing some Mowgli stories and some others. I honestly think they should be read as one compilation.
no subject
We had the Just So Stories around when I was a kid, and I loved them (with some wincing as an adult) but never the Jungle Book. (I think I was also under the illusion at the time that the Just So Stories were based on real folktales.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2017-09-28 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject