Two books I finished today
Feb. 11th, 2006 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienM. John Harrison, Light
I was very impressed by this, but find it hard to write about it coherently.
Very strange, very confusing, very beautifully written, very ugly in places. One of the viewpoint characters is a serial killer; mercifully, the killings aren't described in detail. The descriptions of grungy London are spot-on. It's about chance and choice and chaos, exploration and futile attempts at escape. And anagrams. And cats. And a thing with a horse's skull for a head. (What is it with Harrison and horse-heads? The motif turns up in Viriconium, too.)What's real, what's delusion, what's a dream, what's an alien pulling strings behind the scenes? It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure that the alien's account of herself at the end can be taken quite at face value.
W. Scott Morton, Charlton M. Lewis, China: Its History and Culture
This was the first step in the educate-myself-about-China project, a slim volume covering China's development from Neolithic times almost to the present (2003). It necessarily skims the surface, and it's fairly dry and educational, but it seemed like a good place to start. About the last third covers the last century or so, which I suppose is both inevitable and proper. I was intrigued by the hints of old, old patterns playing out in the early days of the revolution, puzzled by the loss of momentum after 1600 or so. I'd have liked a bit more on the science and technology, but history is mostly written by and for arts majors, I suppose. Writers of space opera about encounters with alien cultures could probably do worse than to study the history of western interactions with China for inspiration.
I was very impressed by this, but find it hard to write about it coherently.
Very strange, very confusing, very beautifully written, very ugly in places. One of the viewpoint characters is a serial killer; mercifully, the killings aren't described in detail. The descriptions of grungy London are spot-on. It's about chance and choice and chaos, exploration and futile attempts at escape. And anagrams. And cats. And a thing with a horse's skull for a head. (What is it with Harrison and horse-heads? The motif turns up in Viriconium, too.)What's real, what's delusion, what's a dream, what's an alien pulling strings behind the scenes? It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure that the alien's account of herself at the end can be taken quite at face value.
W. Scott Morton, Charlton M. Lewis, China: Its History and Culture
This was the first step in the educate-myself-about-China project, a slim volume covering China's development from Neolithic times almost to the present (2003). It necessarily skims the surface, and it's fairly dry and educational, but it seemed like a good place to start. About the last third covers the last century or so, which I suppose is both inevitable and proper. I was intrigued by the hints of old, old patterns playing out in the early days of the revolution, puzzled by the loss of momentum after 1600 or so. I'd have liked a bit more on the science and technology, but history is mostly written by and for arts majors, I suppose. Writers of space opera about encounters with alien cultures could probably do worse than to study the history of western interactions with China for inspiration.
