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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,080
- 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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It just occurred to me that if this is, as we all suspect, a reference to the Wizard of Oz, then it is a rare example of anachronism. The Wizard was first published in 1900 (to be followed by another 13 sequels of which I had never heard) and so can…
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(Quote) This all has a very local resonance for me - Sara Hutchinson was Mary Hutchinson's younger sister; Mary became William Wordsworth's wife in 1802, and Sara was a frequent visitor, often for months at a time, to Dove Cottage, here in Grasmere …
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Interestingly (and nothing to do with gaming, for which sorry) the statement "Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D" was a point in the book where I thought, "I wonder if that's true?" and went off to check. And, apparently, it isn't…
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(Quote) I wonder where they got that 1000 years from? That seems to me vastly too short a time considering the other parts of the story. I don't recall us reading anything this explicit about a prophecy in the text (if it was there, I missed it :) )…
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Maybe - though relatively short - this would have been a good slow read candidate. I've certainly come to appreciate some facets of Sarah Canary better as a result of this discussion.
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BTW (here is as good a place as any) I really like your technique of using quotes from the book as the discussion seeds :)
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As someone said in another thread, I'm not really sure they changed at the time. We hear a bit more about Chin going back to China, but it wasn't clear to me whether the changes in him were anything specifically to do with Sarah, or generally to do …
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I can't quite remember what I said before, but my current position is that a reader inevitably trails into a book their own presumptions and prejudices. So reader responses to a book vary, and it's important that they do. In that sense, the way peop…
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I saw it as more psychological. The same basic story - the uncommunicative central character around whom an unlikely group of others cluster, attempting to understand what's going on - could be dressed in many costumes without in any essential way c…
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Does it bother me... yes and no. No in that staying with uncertainty is not a bad thing, as a general principle. Yes in that I think the story suffered from the lack of direction that resulted, given that this is in fact a novel. Beginnning, middle …
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> @NeilNjae said: > I felt that wider change was missing from Sarah Canary. Did any of the main characters really change as a result of Sarah appearing in their lives? They were put in interesting situations, and we found out about their ch…
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Actually there is something that I would like to add here, not so much about the questions but the starting quote “The Wild Woman does not recognize herself in a mirror”. Mirrors can come in all forms, and the ones which are most in focus here are (…
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Adding comment so I see what others say about this.
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That's an interesting thought and I shall be intrigued to hear what people make of it.
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Oh! I'd totally missed the Wizard of Oz reference! I guess it's not a story that I know very well at all. However, on the plus side, the quote you started with is another recurrent theme, with BJ frequently drawing parallels between the story being…
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The stand-out one for me was what I mentioned in the Q1 thread, that everyone around Sarah projected their own presuppositions onto her, and they were almost certainly all wrong. I don't mind that she herself remains a mystery, though the novel wold…
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While reading the first 1/3 I kept thinking, wow this is really good. The main thing for me was the way everyone kept projecting onto Sarah their own preconceptions... was she a spirit bride? Mentally ill? A wolf child of the woods? An exhibit? A ru…
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(Quote) And in turn, Yesod is a Hebrew word meaning Foundation, often encountered in the compound plural phrase yesodei hatorah (foundations of Torah), and having particular reference to the Jewish mystical scheme of Kabbala - I suspect this latter …
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Found it thanks
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(Quote) Yes, definitely (Quote) At the risk of repeating myself, I think she is a really interesting character, and one who definitely increases ,my opinion of the Pellerines. For example "[the Claw itself] was only a flaw at the heart of the …
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I agree about the soldier not being Jonas: I'm not altogether sure why Severian would jump to this conclusion. In these chapters I was particularly admiring Gene Wolfe's ability to describe people of different cultures or habits of thought. So t…
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I stopped at ch7 but will hastily read ch8 as well :)
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Great!
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(Quote) Jonas surely has to come back, given the nature of his departure. Back with the narrative, I found it interesting that the Claw took a very long time to get the soldier back from wherever it was that he had gone. It was certainly not an ins…
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(Quote) Interesting to get your perspective. I read this a few months ago and found it on the whole disappointing. George Martin's clear forte is social structures, and for me the book shone in this area. Unlike Game of Thrones, where much of the fo…
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Apropos of nothing to do with the final chapters, I discovered by chance that Star Trek DS9 and Voyager used Autarch of rulers, typically imperialistic and unpleasant (see https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Autarch). Given the dates these were wr…
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(Quote) I'd not heard of it before but the Goodreads blurb and review comments make it sound appealing
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I still only get them for discussions that I have positively contributed to (hence my earlier "Commenting so I get notified of further comments" comment on the Slow Read 2020 thread. I can't find a way to register interest without actually…
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Commenting so I get notified of further comments
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I can't resist it... this is the end for Terminus Est :smiley: But it was a good way to go. Other things I noticed: Even now, Baldanders might not be dead... Severian explicitly notes that he has confronted challenges from all four elemen…