![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Blog: Stuff I've been reading
Nov. 17th, 2016 03:16 pm Crosstalk by Connie Willis
Reinventing Australia by Hugh Mckay
Brotherhood in Death by J.D. Robb
Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett
I began this year faithfully blogging about everything I've read, but admit it's become a bit of a chore lately. With some books all I manage to do is note that they were read. With these four; two were bought on Kindle, one rescued from the wild* and one bought as an actual book from Stefen's Books; my favourite genre bookshop in Perth. One of my resolutions for this year was to do better about patronising local business where I could. With books, sometimes I can't because I don't have unlimited money, but I do where possible. Now, can people guess which book came from which origin? :-)
Crosstalk is my most recent read and it was very hard to set it down and do anything else when I'd started it. My interest was sparked when I read a comment by somebody that they had enjoyed it as much as they had Blackout and All Clear, although the two stories were completely different. Since I had enjoyed the latter two enough to buy them in hardback and read them several times each so far, I thought I might well agree with this person. Also I've enjoyed all of her books read so far, particularly the details of the characters' lives and the web of people and interactions around them which form those lives. So I'm not going to spoiler this one at all. Read it.
Reinventing Australia is written by a psychologist, Hugh Mackay, who according to the back blurb, "Has spent more than 35 years studying the attitudes and behaviour of the Australian community." Since the book was written in 1993 and concerns the early '90s, it's now more of a history book than anything, which I read with an attitude of "let's see what he got right and which trends actually did develop into what we're seeing now." It's quite readable, though I wouldn't say I had any trouble setting it down. I did in fact read it around the other three books on my recent list and that worked quite well.
Brotherhood in Death is around the 42nd book in the series featuring police homicide detective Eve Dallas in 2060s New York, so going through the backstory would take awhile. Like the others, it's an enjoyable read, containing some memorably unpleasant characters, and the obligatory steamy sex scenes between Eve and her gorgeous billionare husband, which one can skip with absolutely no loss of the story.
Daughter of Eden, after reading the above, is definitely a case of "let's try something completely different." It's the third in Beckett's series about a culture which arose on the sunless world of Eden, which gets its warmth and minimal light from organisms known as "trees." After a spacecraft crash lands on it, three of the occupants decide to try to get back to Earth, while the other two stay on the planet to wait for rescue. And they wait. This is the backstory of the first book and again, I don't want to spoil that for people. It's called Dark Eden and I think I blogged about it earlier on LJ; will find if anyone is interested. It's the story of a culture that developed from only two people and the storytelling tradition that their children continued, based on what the two castaways were able to pass down to their four daughters and one son, who in turn tell the origin stories to their own children. Among these is the 'Secret story' told by Angela Young, the female astronaut, which she tells her daughters to pass down only to those girls whom they feel can keep a secret. It begins "Watch out for men who want to turn everything into a story that's all about them.... "
With that degree of inbreeding, you're going to have problems, never mind the difficulties of survival on the planet itself. I think Beckett handles these reasonably well, considering we've never actually seen what happens in humans where the inbreeding continues for many generations. The ancient royal families of Egypt and to a lesser extent, Europe in general, come to mind, but even that was not done to this extent. One of the two founders' was related to somebody with a harelip, so the condition of "batfaces" is prevalent, as is that of "clawfeet" and mental retardation.
The first book takes place when there are 500-odd people still living in the one place where the spacecraft crashed. The second, Mother of Eden, happens some five generations later (from memory) when the Family have been forced to spread out....and discovered religious conflict. This one takes place about ten years after that, in a time where the stories are forced to change. I'm not sure if there's another one but would buy it if there is.
* Found in the wild means it was among a few dozen books set out on top of a table that was part of the recent local "Bring Out Your Dead" major rubbish collection.
Reinventing Australia by Hugh Mckay
Brotherhood in Death by J.D. Robb
Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett
I began this year faithfully blogging about everything I've read, but admit it's become a bit of a chore lately. With some books all I manage to do is note that they were read. With these four; two were bought on Kindle, one rescued from the wild* and one bought as an actual book from Stefen's Books; my favourite genre bookshop in Perth. One of my resolutions for this year was to do better about patronising local business where I could. With books, sometimes I can't because I don't have unlimited money, but I do where possible. Now, can people guess which book came from which origin? :-)
Crosstalk is my most recent read and it was very hard to set it down and do anything else when I'd started it. My interest was sparked when I read a comment by somebody that they had enjoyed it as much as they had Blackout and All Clear, although the two stories were completely different. Since I had enjoyed the latter two enough to buy them in hardback and read them several times each so far, I thought I might well agree with this person. Also I've enjoyed all of her books read so far, particularly the details of the characters' lives and the web of people and interactions around them which form those lives. So I'm not going to spoiler this one at all. Read it.
Reinventing Australia is written by a psychologist, Hugh Mackay, who according to the back blurb, "Has spent more than 35 years studying the attitudes and behaviour of the Australian community." Since the book was written in 1993 and concerns the early '90s, it's now more of a history book than anything, which I read with an attitude of "let's see what he got right and which trends actually did develop into what we're seeing now." It's quite readable, though I wouldn't say I had any trouble setting it down. I did in fact read it around the other three books on my recent list and that worked quite well.
Brotherhood in Death is around the 42nd book in the series featuring police homicide detective Eve Dallas in 2060s New York, so going through the backstory would take awhile. Like the others, it's an enjoyable read, containing some memorably unpleasant characters, and the obligatory steamy sex scenes between Eve and her gorgeous billionare husband, which one can skip with absolutely no loss of the story.
Daughter of Eden, after reading the above, is definitely a case of "let's try something completely different." It's the third in Beckett's series about a culture which arose on the sunless world of Eden, which gets its warmth and minimal light from organisms known as "trees." After a spacecraft crash lands on it, three of the occupants decide to try to get back to Earth, while the other two stay on the planet to wait for rescue. And they wait. This is the backstory of the first book and again, I don't want to spoil that for people. It's called Dark Eden and I think I blogged about it earlier on LJ; will find if anyone is interested. It's the story of a culture that developed from only two people and the storytelling tradition that their children continued, based on what the two castaways were able to pass down to their four daughters and one son, who in turn tell the origin stories to their own children. Among these is the 'Secret story' told by Angela Young, the female astronaut, which she tells her daughters to pass down only to those girls whom they feel can keep a secret. It begins "Watch out for men who want to turn everything into a story that's all about them.... "
With that degree of inbreeding, you're going to have problems, never mind the difficulties of survival on the planet itself. I think Beckett handles these reasonably well, considering we've never actually seen what happens in humans where the inbreeding continues for many generations. The ancient royal families of Egypt and to a lesser extent, Europe in general, come to mind, but even that was not done to this extent. One of the two founders' was related to somebody with a harelip, so the condition of "batfaces" is prevalent, as is that of "clawfeet" and mental retardation.
The first book takes place when there are 500-odd people still living in the one place where the spacecraft crashed. The second, Mother of Eden, happens some five generations later (from memory) when the Family have been forced to spread out....and discovered religious conflict. This one takes place about ten years after that, in a time where the stories are forced to change. I'm not sure if there's another one but would buy it if there is.
* Found in the wild means it was among a few dozen books set out on top of a table that was part of the recent local "Bring Out Your Dead" major rubbish collection.