short book reviews
Jan. 17th, 2007 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anotheranonOne fiction, one non:
I finished Inheritor that I started over the holidays. It's the 3rd in C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" series and like the first two, it's a "slow mover" action-wise but the real art is in the details. Her aliens are really alien, and not in the "paste a bump on their forehead" kind of way (which, I guess, is where books are an improvement over television) - it's their entire outlook and priorities that are strange. The series (so far) describes the experiences of a human ambassador to a species called the atevi, who experience strong heirarchical affinities and obligations but no analog to human friendship. One that really has to be read at full attention, or you'll miss something.
I'm still in the middle of Assassination Vacation (audio book) and I'm surprised that I'm enjoying it as much as I am. Not the subject matter - the author has an obsession with the minutiae of assassinated presidents that I can respect as someone who has her own peculiar and specific interests - but the depth of the background history on each one. Lincoln, McKinley and Garfield were all assassinated in the 19th century and she's gone into enough detail about the politics, history and people that played a role that I think I've learned more about 19th century U.S. politics than I knew before. Sometimes her voice is annoying at a stretch (Sarah Vowell did the voice for the daughter in "The Incredibles") but she's morbidly silly enough to describe her 3 year old nephew's familiarity with the vital vocabulary words "crypt" and "decapitate", so that's got to count for something.
I finished Inheritor that I started over the holidays. It's the 3rd in C.J. Cherryh's "Foreigner" series and like the first two, it's a "slow mover" action-wise but the real art is in the details. Her aliens are really alien, and not in the "paste a bump on their forehead" kind of way (which, I guess, is where books are an improvement over television) - it's their entire outlook and priorities that are strange. The series (so far) describes the experiences of a human ambassador to a species called the atevi, who experience strong heirarchical affinities and obligations but no analog to human friendship. One that really has to be read at full attention, or you'll miss something.
I'm still in the middle of Assassination Vacation (audio book) and I'm surprised that I'm enjoying it as much as I am. Not the subject matter - the author has an obsession with the minutiae of assassinated presidents that I can respect as someone who has her own peculiar and specific interests - but the depth of the background history on each one. Lincoln, McKinley and Garfield were all assassinated in the 19th century and she's gone into enough detail about the politics, history and people that played a role that I think I've learned more about 19th century U.S. politics than I knew before. Sometimes her voice is annoying at a stretch (Sarah Vowell did the voice for the daughter in "The Incredibles") but she's morbidly silly enough to describe her 3 year old nephew's familiarity with the vital vocabulary words "crypt" and "decapitate", so that's got to count for something.
