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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,071
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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(Quote) Well yes there is that - as a rule it's a place I avoid :)
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That's a good point to bring up - in my understanding, "natural justice" is not only about retribution for wrong doing, but also reward for right doing. For example "it was only right that they helped her rebuild the house, after all …
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(Quote) That's a really interesting observation - so Whatitsname is a bit like a hive mind or collective rather than an individual, despite its outward superficial appearance of being a person.
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Just pondering here, as a result of @BarnerCobblewood 's comments about playing in one's homeland. Is a lot of gaming done in worlds which one can imagine to be simpler than one's own? Like classical or medieval, for example, albeit with magical ele…
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> @BarnerCobblewood said: . After I finished it I read somewhere that there was quite an editing job on the translation, presumably to make it more palatable for English readers, so I do wonder what the differences in Arabic were. Something I…
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I wonder if Ahmed Saadawi is intending to make a comment about the attempted gluing together of factions. Whatitsname was glued together like that, and in some respects thinks of himself as the ideal Iraqi citizen because of that. But the glue is ba…
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(Quote) A similar background for me, but I'm not so sure. In a post-Einstein world, I am at total liberty to tell the story that my viewpoint does not move and everything else does - so long as I am also willing to pay the cost of vastly more comple…
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(Quote) That seems too narrow a limitation to me, though it's probably true that pretty much all allegory written in the English language is based on biblical material. Ironically, of course, very little (perhaps none) of the storytelling parts of t…
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(Quote) Totally agree - and also this is one of the major points of departure from the original Frankenstein, in which the creature kind of dallies with crime in the middle of the book but then turns away from it into a more remorseful state at the …
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I don't think that "allegory" is quite the right word - the pedant in me reckons that in an allegory you lose the sense that the characters are real people, and they are replaced by qualities or traits of some kind (the classic example bei…
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It's a topic that we have circled round several times in the last year or so - I remember a lengthy chat about it when we read The Orenda. Oddly enough I came across this article a few days ago https://lithub.com/between-fact-and-fable-historical-fi…
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It made me think about justice vs vengeance. Is justice always requiring like for like (ie an elaborately extended eye-for-an-eye concept) and if so what is vengeance? And how does either apply to a person who has carried out multiple murders - the …
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(Quote) One would like to think this was true, but I do wonder if it is. I have read that before both Iraq wars, the country was one of the most religiously tolerant in the world, which would support this. Whether that still holds true now is, I gue…
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This particular quote was something that stood out - there was an expectation set up from the start that some folk on the Iraqi side of the camp would be able to tap into mysticism and magic. But this assertion levelled the playing field - not only …
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I thought it was handled very well - on one level there was a huge amount of violence, but it was never graphic (even with the assembled body parts in Whatsitsname). So I never felt inclined to abandon the book because of it, nor that it was in any …
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I reckon this was a huge strength of the book, and a fascinating insight into what (I presume) Baghdad must be like. Like so much of the book, it was both witty but also full of profound sorrow - those distinctions used to mean something important t…
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I didn't feel that he got enough of a voice, or indeed enough individuality. I kept wondering if (and to what extent) the book was like the original Frankenstein, and concluded in the end that it really wasn't. Frankenstein was of course the creator…
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Together they depicted a city quite unlike any I have known, both in terms of its happier past and its more recent suffering. I thought they kind of represented facets of the city, very diverse and originally living in a kind of harmony, but no sepa…
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I was glad to have read it, but wasn't altogether sure what I thought of it! I went in not really knowing what to expect. I found it more built around characters than plot, which is no bad thing as so many books are basically just plot. And the char…
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Commenting so I get to see what others write...
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(Quote) I read it some years ago with mixed feelings (not that this is necessarily a bad thing). I like some of Ishiguro's work but not all of it - I thought Never Let Me Go was excellent, for example, in both book and film versions, and I very much…
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Me too
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Funnily enough the actual tree damage goes back to an Atlantic storm we had last November - Storm Arwen (also suitably LotR based, of course). There was lots of tree damage including this particular one. The National Parks Authority tried just putti…
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I hadn't heard of these books before and (accepting your caveats about the later volumes) the premise sounds interesting
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(Quote) Speaking as a bystander, wouldn't that be a problem in lots of areas outside specifically military ones? In a modern setting, most individuals can't just saunter off for long periods of time without life-consequences like losing your job. An…
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(Quote) Yah, this is why indie historical fiction writers feel aggrieved - the successful trad published ones like Cornwell seem to make shedloads of money by repeating a pattern over and over again through a series, while the indie guys and girls a…
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Adding a comment so I get joggled when other people comment!
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"A fun read which rattles along - don't expect too much character depth or beauty of writing, but just take it as it comes."
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Not a lot to add to wat @NeilNjae said
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There was also maybe a bit too much of Kirk's Enterprise vs Khan, with Spock saying "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking." [Edit I think the Hornblower comparison is a really interesting …