Just finished Children of Time and I'm absolutely floored. I can't function. That was the best possible ending. I cried. That was everything I want from science fiction. Can't believe it's taken a year of people recommending that for me to get to it.
Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary
I have realised that I can send a special treat to myself in the future by placing a deferred hold on a book from the library for several months so that I completely forget about it until I get an email saying it's ready to be collected.
Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary
I can't believe I'm only now* discovering Ursula K Le Guin.
One of my best friends in high school was always trying to get me to read The Wizard of Earthsea, but I never did. I think I borrowed it, but never finished it. Well, better I take that advice 15 years late that never.
I wonder if I'd be a different person now if I had, though.
* Update: figured it out. After high school I went straight into 8 years of university during which I read almost nothing that wasn't pertaining to my studies. Damn you, education. Making up for lost time now.
Last modified:
"Stop egoizing."
+ http://abiteboul.com/PRESENTATION/15.Pims.tutorial.pdf
Amy added http://abiteboul.com/PRESENTATION/15.Pims.tutorial.pdf to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
+ https://vaniea.com/publications.html
Amy added https://vaniea.com/publications.html to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
+ http://semprivacy.com/papers/privon2013.pdf
Amy added http://semprivacy.com/papers/privon2013.pdf to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
+ https://hackpad.com/PrivOn-2015-1w1AVtigY92
Amy added https://hackpad.com/PrivOn-2015-1w1AVtigY92 to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
I magicked Autobiography to my Kindle, but I haven't started reading it yet because I'm worried I'll cry from beginning to end due to the sheer beauty of the prose.
I'm looking forward to a spectacularly written yarn, designed explicitly to incite scandal and speculation.
I'll read it as fiction and fantasy, inspired by, but not based upon, real events.
I might relate too much, or regress back to my teenage years. I think I'd enjoy/despise it best shut away from the world until it's over; always the case with the first listening of a new album. I don't know when I'll have time or understanding of peers for that. I'll try to schedule a few days. Maybe I'll run away to Kerrara for a weekend on my own.
Blew.
My.
Mind.
Last modified:
I have a thing where I can't not finish reading something. There's a very short list of books I never finished, and they all date from when I was about 8 to 13, and are because I was to young to follow them or too young to bear them, and just haven't got around to picking them up again. They haunt my subconscious.
These days I feel I have to get at least half way to have given it enough of a chance, and once I'm past half way I feel I might as well finish it.
By the time I had wrenched my way through the first half of Angel of Death, I had started to come round to it. By the end I guess I'd enjoyed it in some ways.
What I struggled with through the first half was the erratic jumping between persons and, worst of all, tenses. You experience one character's perspective in first person present tense (something I dislike anyway), plus second person directed at another character. And sometimes past tense. Other perspectives were usually third person past tense. I guess I got used to it, but if someone had told me before I started that it was written in this way, I probably wouldn't have picked it up.
I'm starting to figure out that I prefer character-driven narratives. This is the pattern with things I've enjoyed lately, anyway. The premise of Angel of Death was kinda interesting. But the characters were utterly flat and often behaved unbelievably or in a very contrived manner, given how they'd been set up. It was all tell and no show. THIS IS A BAD EVENT IN HER TROUBLED PAST, OH BOY, NOW YOU KNOW HER MOTIVATIONS. Totally wasn't enough.
The twists and turns throughout are, I suppose, well done. The reader is convinced of the state of the world and, just as you're absolutely certain that that's the way it is, you're being convinced of the opposite. This happens not quite enough to feel like an indecisive cop-out, but isn't far off.
There's gory horror, but it feels appropriate and not over-done. Kudos.
If there were deeper levels of meaning or metaphor intended, which I suspect they might have been, I missed them.
Conclusion: meh, don't bother. But if you've got nothing else to read, you could do worse. If you want my copy you can have it, get in touch.
Last modified: