mrspollifax (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mrspollifax) wrote2012-10-22 12:03 pm
mrspollifax) wrote2012-10-22 12:03 pm
Entry tags:
set fire to the room. do it now.
1) Filed under ways in which I am coping with the current state of politics in my country (besides my annual fall West Wing rewatch): Have just finished reading Feed by Mira Grant, which is set during a Presidential primary 25 years after the zombie apocalypse. YES. Because no matter how much this election might make us all want to tear our hair out, it is not happening after the zombie apocalypse. At least not yet, and if that changes, we'll probably all be too busy getting eaten to care.
So anyway, said zombie apocalypse started in 2014 (time to start stocking the guns and canned goods, you guys), and a quarter century later the world is populated by both zombies and un-zombied people (who could turn into zombies at any moment). Three twenty-something bloggers set out to cover one of the candidates in the primary, and things move apace from there. I'd call this more on the scifi/thriller genre with a bit of horror thrown in for effect – for reference, I can't actually get all the way through a horror novel, so it can't be all that bad. Interesting characters for the most part, good worldbuilding, interesting structure. First of a trilogy – I've started the second, but the first book really can stand alone. Worth a look. Mira Grant is apparently a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, who I have not read before but will probably check out.
2) Filed under chick lit with a bit of scifi flair, and also, I've been looking for a book like this for a long time: Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. Set approximately in present time, but not quite our current history, since NASA is sending off a manned mission to the moon.
This book is a little bit about marriage, and a little bit about motherhood, and a little bit about Asperger's Syndrome. It's a little bit about a guy going to the moon with a bunch of robots and the wife and mother he leaves behind. It's a little bit about the ways motherhood sacrifices you as a person. Mostly it's about family, and degrees of normal, and accepting yourself. This book has beautiful poetic prose and really fabulous use of non-linear storytelling, but more importantly, it has a female POV character who sounds like this:
She fell asleep and dreamed of a matrix of all possible babies that she could be carrying at that moment. The possible babies spread out over a three-dimensional cube. At point zero, zero, zero was a normal human male baby, looking exactly like Maxon. Tall, mad-eyed, long-limbed, and pale. From there, the change in babies radiated out along a three-dimensional grid through the whole volume of the cube. At the intersection of every line was another scrawny infant, crouched and curled, naked and wrinkled. Eye color, hair color, pianist hands, knobby legs, short neck. Along this axis, more and more freckles. Along that axis, more and more hair. Of course, there cannot be an incremental change in gender. So, all alone, the baby at the opposite point of the cube, with her large alien eyes and her bald alien head, and her padded fingers and short legs, was the only female. She rotated like the other babies, but in the opposite direction. Already different.
Because motherhood did not stop my brain from working in odd, quirky ways, and so I cannot help but like a woman who can dream in a matrix. First novel by Lydia Netzer, and I will definitely be looking for the next one.
Anybody else reading anything fun? Once I am done with the zombies, I have an intimidating number of sample chapters sitting around waiting for me on my Kindle. By the time I get around to reading them, I've almost always completely forgotten what they were about or who told me to try them. That is how things like this happen: I started in on Feed at about 10:30 one night, and since the first chapter is one of the bits with actual scary (to me) zombies in it, I had to read that entire chapter to see what happened and then send a bunch of emails out saying "OMG I AM READING ABOUT ZOMBIES RIGHT BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP WHAT WAS I THINKING AAAAAAAAAA!" Funny.
So anyway, said zombie apocalypse started in 2014 (time to start stocking the guns and canned goods, you guys), and a quarter century later the world is populated by both zombies and un-zombied people (who could turn into zombies at any moment). Three twenty-something bloggers set out to cover one of the candidates in the primary, and things move apace from there. I'd call this more on the scifi/thriller genre with a bit of horror thrown in for effect – for reference, I can't actually get all the way through a horror novel, so it can't be all that bad. Interesting characters for the most part, good worldbuilding, interesting structure. First of a trilogy – I've started the second, but the first book really can stand alone. Worth a look. Mira Grant is apparently a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, who I have not read before but will probably check out.
2) Filed under chick lit with a bit of scifi flair, and also, I've been looking for a book like this for a long time: Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. Set approximately in present time, but not quite our current history, since NASA is sending off a manned mission to the moon.
This book is a little bit about marriage, and a little bit about motherhood, and a little bit about Asperger's Syndrome. It's a little bit about a guy going to the moon with a bunch of robots and the wife and mother he leaves behind. It's a little bit about the ways motherhood sacrifices you as a person. Mostly it's about family, and degrees of normal, and accepting yourself. This book has beautiful poetic prose and really fabulous use of non-linear storytelling, but more importantly, it has a female POV character who sounds like this:
She fell asleep and dreamed of a matrix of all possible babies that she could be carrying at that moment. The possible babies spread out over a three-dimensional cube. At point zero, zero, zero was a normal human male baby, looking exactly like Maxon. Tall, mad-eyed, long-limbed, and pale. From there, the change in babies radiated out along a three-dimensional grid through the whole volume of the cube. At the intersection of every line was another scrawny infant, crouched and curled, naked and wrinkled. Eye color, hair color, pianist hands, knobby legs, short neck. Along this axis, more and more freckles. Along that axis, more and more hair. Of course, there cannot be an incremental change in gender. So, all alone, the baby at the opposite point of the cube, with her large alien eyes and her bald alien head, and her padded fingers and short legs, was the only female. She rotated like the other babies, but in the opposite direction. Already different.
Because motherhood did not stop my brain from working in odd, quirky ways, and so I cannot help but like a woman who can dream in a matrix. First novel by Lydia Netzer, and I will definitely be looking for the next one.
Anybody else reading anything fun? Once I am done with the zombies, I have an intimidating number of sample chapters sitting around waiting for me on my Kindle. By the time I get around to reading them, I've almost always completely forgotten what they were about or who told me to try them. That is how things like this happen: I started in on Feed at about 10:30 one night, and since the first chapter is one of the bits with actual scary (to me) zombies in it, I had to read that entire chapter to see what happened and then send a bunch of emails out saying "OMG I AM READING ABOUT ZOMBIES RIGHT BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP WHAT WAS I THINKING AAAAAAAAAA!" Funny.