June Books, Part 1
Jun. 29th, 2006 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienAnthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now
I think I borrowed this from the library one summer in my late teens but never actually read it. It's very long -- it kept me amused from Sheffield to Copenhagen and back to London, and for most of the week after I got home.
It's a tale of gambling, high finance and women of slightly scuffed virtue, in a time of social change. Melmotte the financier makes an interesting parallel to Dickens' Merdle in Little Dorrit, but Trollope treats him rather more sympathetically, and hardly anyone seems to come to any real harm when his bubble collapses. The treatment of the women is interesting; a number of them have dreams of independence, but Trollope obviously doesn't approve. The American lady has had an adventurous past, and thereby rendered herself quite unfit for the love of a good man; most of the others end up safely married in the end, not usually for love. There's an interesting treatment (for the time) of antisemitism, with the introduction of a Jewish banker who is outwardly unprepossessing but a good and honourable man who is quietly presented as being much too good for the aristocratic young woman who almost marries him for all the wrong reasons, and her family who despise him simply for being Jewish.
The next two were my reading matter for the trip from London back to Tucson.
Ken Macleod, Learning the World
A fun stand-alone, with echoes of Gene Wolfe's Long Sun and Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky; extra points for using the phrase 'alien space bats' with a straight face, though the bats in question are actually only just learning powered flight.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain
The last time this worked its way to the front of the queue was right around the time of Katrina, and I couldn't bring myself to read it, so it stayed on the pile in Sheffield until I went back. It's a tale of global warming, science and politics, featuring a remarkably lifelike depiction of an NSF funding peer-review panel. The flooding of Washington DC at the end is a good deal less deadly and more fun than the real-life inundation of New Orleans, which is exactly why I couldn't bring myself to read it last year.
And this is the one book I found time to read the week of the New Mexico trip:
Carole Nelson Douglas, Castle Rouge
More gothic Holmes pastiche, a direct sequel to Chapel Noir, but something of a disappointment, as it all gets rather far-fetched and loosely plotted. Poor Nell Huxleigh discovers considerable resourcefulness, and her final scene is heartwrenching.
I think I borrowed this from the library one summer in my late teens but never actually read it. It's very long -- it kept me amused from Sheffield to Copenhagen and back to London, and for most of the week after I got home.
It's a tale of gambling, high finance and women of slightly scuffed virtue, in a time of social change. Melmotte the financier makes an interesting parallel to Dickens' Merdle in Little Dorrit, but Trollope treats him rather more sympathetically, and hardly anyone seems to come to any real harm when his bubble collapses. The treatment of the women is interesting; a number of them have dreams of independence, but Trollope obviously doesn't approve. The American lady has had an adventurous past, and thereby rendered herself quite unfit for the love of a good man; most of the others end up safely married in the end, not usually for love. There's an interesting treatment (for the time) of antisemitism, with the introduction of a Jewish banker who is outwardly unprepossessing but a good and honourable man who is quietly presented as being much too good for the aristocratic young woman who almost marries him for all the wrong reasons, and her family who despise him simply for being Jewish.
The next two were my reading matter for the trip from London back to Tucson.
Ken Macleod, Learning the World
A fun stand-alone, with echoes of Gene Wolfe's Long Sun and Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky; extra points for using the phrase 'alien space bats' with a straight face, though the bats in question are actually only just learning powered flight.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Forty Signs of Rain
The last time this worked its way to the front of the queue was right around the time of Katrina, and I couldn't bring myself to read it, so it stayed on the pile in Sheffield until I went back. It's a tale of global warming, science and politics, featuring a remarkably lifelike depiction of an NSF funding peer-review panel. The flooding of Washington DC at the end is a good deal less deadly and more fun than the real-life inundation of New Orleans, which is exactly why I couldn't bring myself to read it last year.
And this is the one book I found time to read the week of the New Mexico trip:
Carole Nelson Douglas, Castle Rouge
More gothic Holmes pastiche, a direct sequel to Chapel Noir, but something of a disappointment, as it all gets rather far-fetched and loosely plotted. Poor Nell Huxleigh discovers considerable resourcefulness, and her final scene is heartwrenching.