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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,072
- 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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I still think I liked what (I think) CP was trying to do, though I totally agree with you both that there were far too many disparate ideas and strands brought in and toyed with, but not followed through in a pleasing and systematic way. It's clear …
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(Quote) I think that was an interesting twist in the plot, based initially on a misunderstanding of words. Jevick (in my reading) wanted to convey that he felt that he was in communication with someone who had died and moreover her body had not been…
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(Quote) Good question! The early parts establish Jevick's background (personal and social) and his relationships with various folk including Jissavet and Tialon, among others. From those early parts you may well not have had any clear sense that the…
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(Quote) I suppose the writing of the vallon gives Jissavet what you might call a mythic remembrance, whereas what she had in "real life" was a rather prosaic one of truncated failure. So her life in "jepnatow-het, the land of shadows&…
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(Quote) I agree - there is a considerable difference between not having something because it has been consciously discarded, and not having it because you never had it.
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Agree with both of you: it seems to invert the standard love story pattern of encounter-affection-love, seeing as how Jevick does not begin to love Jissavet until well after she has died and given him all kinds of grief. It has to necessarily remain…
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My own associations were with ancient Egypt or India, but I suspect that Sofia Samatar has amalgamated lots of diverse influences.
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(Quote) That's seems to me to be a very good way of explaining it
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(Quote) That's really interesting. I don't detect or consciously respond to most literary devices when listening to a book (eg through Audible) but enjoy and appreciate them in written form. There's an open question in reader reception theory as to …
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(Quote) I first encountered The Worm Ourobouros and (somewhat to my parents' frustration) painted a map of Demonland on my bedroom wall - insofar as I could work it out from the slightly inconsistent clues in the book. I then managed to track down E…
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Discussion starters are now posted in the appropriate monthly category!
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Hi all, quick check... are we all OK for me to post discussion starters this weekend?
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(Quote) That's probably true... it just makes it really hard when someone asks "what's that book about?" :)
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(Quote) Yes, I think you're right, and this is (I suspect) part of the difficulties we are having as a group with the book - it is as though CP's main interest in writing shifts multiple times through a single novel. So we did originally have Sandro…
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(Quote) It occurred to me that this might be another of his inversions - the hand-wavium intuition of the adepts may be incommunicable, but it's genuine (though only relevant to a minority of people). But the formalised bureaucracy of the insurance …
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(Quote) Well, lots of folk throughout history would say no, music reflects something fundamental about the universe itself, which it so happens humans can tap into. Music of the spheres and all that. Tolkien tapped into this with his own creation my…
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Another open question that just occurred to me... if the time gradual stuff only affects a handful of people, then why are their formalised processes such as insurance policies and tour operator licences? Also, I wonder what it signifies that the b…
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Yay! The adepts are not scamming the tourists! I suppose one could see all the payments that Sandro had to make as being basically the cost of tuition fees :) And in any case he never seems to have got totally on his beam ends, though he did, natura…
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@NeilNjae I (finally, after several months) followed your advice and gave it a go, and very much enjoyed it. Thanks for the recommendation!
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It's an interesting and often disturbing exercise, rereading something you liked years ago. A few books really survive the passage of personal time but many don't - I can't ever decide if that's changes in me, changes in social assumptions and accep…
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(Quote) Oddly enough we've just rewatched the Matrix trilogy (in anticipation of #4 later this year) and it doesn't sound too unlike that...
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(Quote) I kind of like it when we don't all agree on a book, and it would be good even if you didn't finish it to contribute what you thought and felt.
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I'll query again in a week or so and see where everyone is
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(Quote) Fair enough
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Let's go for another week then: I'll post discussion starters on the w/e 5/6/7 November
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Hi all, this coming weekend is the last weekend in October (and coincidentally the last weekend of most UK autumn half term holidays). Would people like a bit more time to finish A Stranger in Olondria or shall I post some discussion starters this w…
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Well, I was disappointed by the "it's a scam" revelation - unless the next twist is that regular island folks like Cea think it's a scam, but actually it's legit... we shall see. I find it hard to believe that Sandro would not have heard s…
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With the gaming, would you want to stay on the political level of the various factions (Great Houses, Bene Gesserit, Tleilaxu and so on)? Or the individual struggles on a planet (Paul, Duncan, the Mentats, Ireland etc)? Or the personal development l…
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(Quote) I had completely forgotten Nightfall :)
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I enjoyed The Gods Themselves many years ago (again, I haven't revisited it) and it has the distinction of being pretty much the only Asimov story where aliens are a central part - to be strictly fair, they appear briefly by mention in The End of Et…