Catching up..

[carolynwhite2]

--- In HPFGU-Catalogue at yahoogroups.com, Barry Arrowsmith 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
> 
> Erm ... don't think I did.  IIRC the penguini was looking for some  
> modern hard SF -  which CW ain't; she's more into gentler 
speculative stuff.
> 
> No matter what folk like Attwood say, over the past 20-30 years SF  
> has mutated into a legion of sub-classes, some very subtle indeed.  

Um..I think that's the problem. There are some sorts of SF that I 
don't have time for, I agree, the sort that are essentially car 
chases in space with improbable monsters, sonic screwdrivers and 
wearisome missions to save the universe. Oh, and women wearing little 
else but their space helmets..

But something that plays with history in an interesting way, if you'd 
count that as one of the new sub-genres, that can be interesting. I 
just finished Ian MacLeod's the Light Ages, for instance, which you 
recommended, and was intrigued. The Dickens/Gormenghast style was 
fascinating - although the industrial revolution plotline somewhat 
predictable and hence I thought it limped a bit at the end. But the 
trolls/people who'd had too much aether were very good and believable.

BTW, if anyone wants extremely fast-paced SF techie meets pixies and 
goblins amusement, try the Artemis Fowl series. Bit like a compulsive 
bag of crisps when you are hungry.


> I'm averaging 12 - 15 new books a month from  
> Amazon [non-fiction - generally about half the order - is too 
damned  
> expensive anywhere else] plus whatever I happen to come across in  
> charity shops, plus regular raids on an SF specialty bookshop in  
> Brum, plus weekly library visits. I've run out of bookcase space 
long  
> since; now I'm running out of floor-space as well. I blame it on 
the  
> TV companies for pushing out an incessant load of tripe.)

I have a (Amazon.com) bookmark with an alleged quote from Erasmus -
 'When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy 
food and clothes.'

I just picked over my shelves and here's some stuff I've read in the 
last year that I enjoyed:

-Silk (Alessandro Baricco). A scant 100-page tale of sensuous 
imagination about someone voyaging to China in the 1860s to try and 
save the French silk trade. The end, an unexpected love letter, is 
like a very sharp knife drawn across the skin. Suddenly you feel the 
pain and see the blood start to seep.

A.N Wilson's biography of Iris Murdoch. Only for IM fans, obviously, 
but it explains a good deal.

Claire Tomalin's biography of Katherine Mansfield. I've always been 
intrigued that there is a Mansfield on JKR's bookshelf on her site. 
What that tells us about Potter boggles the imagination. Maybe the 
slash fics are spot on after all.

Ella minnow pea by Mark Dunn. Has not interested his Kneasiness, but 
I maintain it's a very brilliant story. An island community slowly 
give up letters of the alphabet for various sub-Orwellian reasons, 
and their struggle to communicate with each other becomes haiku-like 
in intensity.

Biography of Fanny Trollope by Pamela Neville-Sington. She's the 
mother of Anthony Trollope and one hell of a lot more interesting. 
Whilst her tiresome husband slowly killed himself by taking arsenic, 
she travelled half round the world, setting up theatres in America, 
literary salons in Italy and, in passing gave Anthony all his 
plotlines. Completely revises what you think of the Jane Austen 
period and what women were allowed/or chose to do.

Carolyn
Currently reading a Rose Tremain.