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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,073
- 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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The combination of stories, especially when combined with the ring structure, forces you to consider interconnections, both those which the author draws overt attention to (like the birthmarks on particular characters) and those which are left in th…
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Most of all, surely, it introduces the music which threads through the entire book? And in parallel with the musical themes and motifs which (one imagines) undergird the Sextet, there are ideas here which connect through to the other stories, in par…
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(Quote) Oh! Were these the same young people every time? I had assumed that they were different individuals, but the same kind of group. Perhaps not reading carefully enough...
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I liked it, and recognised the style from other works of historical fiction I have read. In that sense it felt appropriate rather than anachronistic. > @BarnerCobblewood said: >. I was also irritated with Sixsmith providing spoilers in the…
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If everyone's keen on this then we could have Vita Nostra in September + October, then the Binti series in November for Clash's birthday, then I'll pick up December with A Stranger in Olondria, and Apocryphal with something in January. Thoughts a…
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For an overarching plot, see my comments on your other question about the things that connect separate movements of a classical piece of music.
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(Quote) I don't think it would have worked - each story in isolation would not (I think) have been interesting enough to stand alone. Maybe the one exception is the Sonmi section which probably would have held together even if you didn't have the ot…
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Talking of invented languages, I found that this one (the central Hawaii section) worked for me very well, especially after the much more in-the-background language changes in the Sonmi section (eg xactly and so on, with just odd letters work away).…
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> @Apocryphal said: >, are we supposed to read into this that the characters are reincarnations of previous ones? There’s not much hint of that in the book (maybe only when Luisa goes to the sailboat?) But also forward in time in ways tha…
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(Quote) The book - no, not in terms of character or situation. But the same birthmark motif was there (though more in the background and not quite identical each time). It also got me wondering if we were supposed to conceive of the same situation, …
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I'd be very keen to hear that music :) Especially as according to the composer's own (necessarily fictional) assessment it was radical for its time.
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I enjoyed the structure very much - I hadn't been aware of it in Buddhist but studied it in connection with ancient near Eastern literature (mainly Egyptian and early Hebrew) where under the technical guise of chiasmus it is used a great deal. There…
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Time: we seem to have another variation on time distortion here - discrepancies arise not just at the equator but on every inter-island crossing. Not sure what that is intended to signify. Also, in this version of the Archipelago they seem to have c…
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(Quote) What a cool idea! That hadn't occurred to me, but it would certainly move the plot back into the political dimensions of draft vs not
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Again, I remain optimistic about this as a book - CP (as ever) skates over large blocks of time and situation in order to focus on the things he wants, but that's OK. The inclusion of Sandro's parents as significant figures is intriguing, I think…
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I'm good to start whenever suits the group as a whole... I've read it twice over :)
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> @clash_bowley said: > I have completely forgotten Cloud Atlas! Damn! Well worth reading! If you're really pushed for time then film version gives you a fair but not perfect idea what it's like
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I have added my own selection for October - A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar. I have not read it before, but wanted to pick a fantasy book and this one rates highly on several people's all-time greats list. The sample looked good and made me…
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Well, this got me looking for some samples of gregorian chant graduals online, and I found several quite quickly: From the Mass for Christmas Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xzUYdEo8A4 From the Mass for the Dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
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I was struck by the term "Gradual" which I had been curious about before starting the book. Knowing now that the main character is a musician I looked it up, and The Gradual is a traditional sung part of the Catholic Mass. It is so-called …
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On UK Kindle there are three books: Binti, Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade which I imagine (in some suitable order) are the three novellas? They're each about £2. There's also a three-volume set https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/kindle/series/…
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> @clash_bowley said: > I'd like to run Binti - the Afrofuturist SF Nebula and Hugo award winner by Nnedi Okorafor. It's a novella, so it's short. I have not read it, but it looks interesting. > Kindle > I will try to find a print e…
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OK let's go for me in October, @clash_bowley in November and @Apocryphal in December (with @NeilNjae already set up for September) - that should give you a breathing space @Apocryphal while you're getting us into The Gradual
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(Quote) Especially when we learn about troop movements which are routinely repetitive and pointless... lots of tedium but no magnificence.
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OK... looks like @NeilNjae @Apocryphal @clash_bowley and me, plus @BarnerCobblewood who is on the ball for Cloud Atlas (which, by the way, I have hugely enjoyed). @BurnAfterRunning do you feel like organising another read to follow your selection of…
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For me, Dream Archipelago was more engaging, perhaps because I went in to Islanders not knowing anything about the setup. I can easily imagine Islanders being a better read for those who already "know" the archipelago from other books. As…
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(Quote) That's a really interesting thought, and (no doubt deliberately) reminded me of Arthur C Clarke's "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", an assertion I have never really bought into. Clarke, of cour…
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Strictly speaking it's a determinative indicating that the word in question is something to do with a male person (Gardiner sign A1, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_hieroglyphs#A for some more stuff about it). So it's not actually…
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(Quote) Totally! Who would choose this crappy alphabetic nonsense... though to be strictly fair it was better when A still looked like an ox head and all the rest...
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Hi all, rather later than I intended but here is a picture of one of the bird love poems, using hieroglyphs rather than the hieratic in which they were originally put down. This particular one is read left-to-right (ie into the faces of those signs …