warriorofworry

Writing a review that just said “Wow” over and over again would be pathetic.
Never let it be said that I wasn’t tempted.
 
There is nothing sentimental about this coming of age story.  Morwenna – or is it? – moves through a world which is simultaneously sparkling magic and soul-stultifying mundanity. Endless possibility and bottomless grief, encompassing wonder and bone deep fear.
Crippled by the car accident that killed her twin, she makes a place for herself in the boarding school to which she’s sent, beyond the library and the books she loves.
I have tiptoed through the forests of Lothlorian, shrugged the mothball scent of old coats into the crisp air of Narnia’s winter forest, and muddied my toes herding pigs with Taran, but I have never stepped into a world so much like the magic of my own childhood imaginings.
I first encountered Jo Walton on livejournal, where some cogent comment or poem spoke to me out of the electronic flow.  She began reviewing books on Tor, where she always saw something in a work, even those I’d disliked, that made me rethink the story in new ways and often sent me to my bookshelves or the library.
Among Others partakes of that critical sense of wonder, and one should read with a pencil handy.  It has expanded my reading list, and ended with a tiny tribute to one of my favorite books ever. 

And there’s a grandfather with a cat named Chairman Meow.   

This a book I'll be re-reading, for years. 

Mr. Miéville just can’t get no love from me. I tried. I really did. 

An opening quote doesn’t usually set up the premise of a novel as well as this:

“The word must communicate something (other than itself).”

Walter Benjamin “On Language as such and on the Language of Man”

But, must it? The science fictional story is always in the interfaces, is it not? In the friction between humans and humans, between humans and less human, between aliens and human, between aliens and aliens.   And yes, sometimes between humans and machines. Those stories are all about the endless slips and catches of communication, translation, connection.

At the edge of the known galaxy, an enclave of humans inhabits Embassytown, a machined/mutated city on the planet held by the Hosts. Communication is difficult at best – humans see language as a symbol. The Hosts do not.  Nor do they necessarily recognize the individuality of humans.  

The protagonist, Avice, was a precocious child chosen to become part of the Host’s language, a simile. (And really, do you think that the author, playing with words as he does constantly here, didn’t name her knowing what parallels we’d draw? A Vice? Avarice? Do you have to telegraph that your narrator is unreliable so strongly? Or, is that just a feint?) But – that isn’t the story, or isn’t even much of the beginning.  

Readers first meet Avice as a grown woman.   Scorning temporal framework created difficulty because on one level this novel is all about slippage, but illustrating that with time as the medium meant that Mr. Miéville demanded more work from me right from the start than I felt he’d earned.

On another level, Embassytown is about slippage in language –shifts in meaning. And on yet a third, slippage in culture/behavior, the natural outgrowth – or is it?– of confronting the unknown, or formerly unseen.

The second difficulty was that while the premises aroused my cold intellectual interest, the story was interesting, but not engaging.  A bit arch. Twee, even. Like the really good-looking kid in class who knows it – and might share a wink or a joke or even an afternoon, but will never, ever go to the dance with you. 

I liked the winks and jokes, but I won’t go looking for another afternoon. It’s not a matter of making myself emotionally vulnerable – Avice, and Scile, Bren and the Hosts all were just the other side of a window, but not where they could touch me, or me them. I wasn’t in any danger of losing my heart, but they frequently lost my interest.  

I confess I liked the textual nods to authors as disparate and talented as C.J. Cherryh, Frank Herbert, Mary Gentle, and Karen Traviss, among others. And that I was moved to write such a long review of a book I disliked is a tribute to the author’s ability to challenge readers.

I can look at a work like this and admire the thought process that birthed it, the complexity of the plot, the baroque touches and writerly affectations even as I reshelve it for something more – congenial. 

This book is precisely as advertised – a simple to read, well organized primer on the basic elements of an estate plan.

Each chapter begins with a short overview of the topic to be covered – beneficiaries, children, and wills for example. The language is relatively simple, yet not patronizing.

Within each topic, more concise subheadings introduce a short discussion of that subtopic. None of these are very long, ranging from a single paragraph to a couple of pages. Specialized related topics are discussed in highlighted boxes. Resources for further information – usually Nolo products - are also lined out. 

Nolo’s underlying philosophy is that consumers usually don’t need attorneys. Instead, through fill-in-the-blank forms and checklists (offered, of course, by Nolo online, for a fee), the consumer is told repeatedly that an attorney is unnecessary for “most” estate plan situations. From time to time, the author will opine that a reader with a certain type of problem or needing a specialized kind of legal document needs to see an attorney.

I’m a huge fan of demystifying the law. I believe that legalese isn’t necessary (and that some attorneys use it to appear learned), and that most people can represent themselves or draw up a simple will.  

On the other hand, law is full of pitfalls, even for those of us who passed the bar exam. A consumer who fails to study this very carefully may make a problem, rather than solve one.  A concern for me is that I don’t believe that the information in this book is always sufficient for a consumer to *identify* an issue that could be problematic.

Otherwise, I have only one little quibble with the content. That was the author’s failure to even mention the existence, let along the effect, of Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs) on the distribution of retirement funds post-divorce.  

[Full disclosure: I am an attorney, at least on my better days. One of the things I really liked about this volume was that it covers the same topics as a first-year law student’s probate class, vastly simplified. I’d forgotten how much ground gets covered!]

This caught my eye the last time I swung through the library because I really didn’t know the story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. Mary Doria Russell’s Doc piqued my interest in the subject.

Doc was a fictionalize exploration of a man usually portrayed as a cold-blooded killer. Ms. Russell traced his childhood, young adulthood and the course of his tuberculosis and alcoholism, and questioned whether Doc Holliday wasn’t motivated by friendship and self-preservation far more than ill tempered malice. Doc focused on a period preceding the O.K. Corral gunfight by a number of years.

Mr. Guinn’s slant is much more traditional, and presents the “Shootout” as his centerpiece. His attention is on the Earps, whom he presents as complex, ambitious men. He dismisses Doc Holliday as a gun-toting brute. Ike Clanton, on the other hand, is portrayed as a blowhard – a stupid and cowardly drunk who inadvertently set the massacre in motion yet escaped with his skin whole. The political aspirations, feuds, ambitions and greed of these and other men precipitated the gunfight, Guinn argues.

Many of the primary sources were familiar from Ms. Russell’s volume. This volume offers a background of the forces that created the “Wild, Wild, West”, and of the (mostly men) that populated the deserts and cow-towns – miners, farmers ranchers, drovers, merchants, bankers – and Wells Fargo. Tombstone itself was founded by a prospector who made a big strike after being told that he was prospecting for his own tombstone.  

In Guinn’s view, the main motivator of the actors – male - was raw ambition. Women barely exist except for whore and wives (who are sometimes the same women),and  lack all agency. The sole exception is the “difficult” (a familiar caricature) Josephine, who took up with Wyatt Earp in a tempestuous relationship after he left Tombstone.

I found the extensive discussion of the legal repercussions of the shootout fascinating (I would) and the post-history engaging. It’s a detailed look at how the machinations of publicity seekers can change the perception of an event and the people involved. (“Cow-boy”, for example, began as a potent insult implying criminality, not a description of a hardworking ranch hand or good guy.) Guinn traces how Wyatt Earp emerged as a kind of hero post-Tombstone, the “source” for many a cowboy story and movie.

I need this book for its introduction, which reviews and summarizes the elementary school to college building blocks of grammar and writing in a mere 38 pages!

This really is a reference work, not a “read”, but I found it very informative.

Covering fiction and non-fiction, Turco first reviews the historical basis of modern forms of writing, and explains and defines those forms and literary ideas. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that all English majors have a copy of this work on their bookshelves!

3.5 of 5

It’s been decades since I read this author’s “Floating Worlds”, which I remember as a favorite. I correctly recalled how excellently Cecelia Holland portrays the conditions and cultures of a particular time, but had forgotten just how detached her characters seem to me. 

Raef, a magician of uncertain powers; his teacher; his Viking friend/shieldman Leif; and Laissa, a young woman that they rescued during an adventure – or misadventure – in Constantinople, are traveling through the Norman country side of the early 1000’s, bound for what would become England. Before her death, Raef’s teacher reveals that she had released a demon, a stealer of souls, whose power is growing.

Raef, Leif and Laissa become embroiled in the politics of England, the tug of war, literally, between the Normans, Vikings and Danes. The soul-stealer has possessed the king’s wife, and added her own lust for power to the maelstrom. 

Good eventually trumps evil, but not without cost.

Holland’s language is more rhythmic than lyrical. Her characters are examined in an almost sterile third person, and I never felt close to them at all. 

Wow. And wow again. Deathless explores the biggest ideas of all.

Horror and bright hope twine together in this powerful saga of Death and love.   Valente’s prose is sonorous, yet not ponderous, and certainly not oblivious to the profane.