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Jul. 29th, 2002 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI am currently taking bets as to whether the kittens will actually manage to eat my Wolfwood wall scroll. We put it up when I moved in, because it's one of those things that Goes With Me Everywhere (some people have security blankets. I have a security bishounen.) but we had to take it down after getting the cats because they couldn't believe we'd given them this incredible huge swinging toy. Except I started twitching, because of not having it up. We couldn't find anywhere to put it except where it had been previously, because we do not want the wall scroll to dominate the entire room; Wolfwood has enough of an ego as it is. So it's back up where it was, but this time securely taped to the wall so that it can't swing, and just out of kitten-jump range. As long as no stuff gets piled under it to give them a leg up, it'll probably be all right, although Lucien has been eyeing the scroll and the television table in a method that suggests some not-so-surreptitious plotting. If the cats destroy this wallscroll, I am going to take up the violin. And yes, I know the 'catgut' in violins is really sheep intestine, but it's such an enjoyable threat.
In other ramblings: for some reason or other, one of the questions people ask me most often in life is to recommend books to them. I don't know why. I've read a lot, and thought about it, but why this should give me any ability to judge what other people might like is beyond me. Especially since if I didn't like something it never occurs to me to recommend it to anybody. However, there are a few books out there that I would unhesitatingly recommend to anybody even if I thought the querent would hate them, just because they are so inherently thought-provoking and rich. My favorite books, in other words. The ones that shaped my head. The ones I carry with me everywhere and never leave for so much as a weekend without. The ones I read over and over and over and never come to the bottom of, nor will. So I figured I'd write up short descriptions of those and post them to LJ, so that anyone who is interested, or anyone who asks me for recommendations, can find them here, and I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining the same things over and over. However, I don't intend to subject this sort of thing to people who aren't interested in it, so
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. This book made my head explode when I was twelve years old. It's the middle one of Lewis's Space Trilogy, also containing Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength , but it is decidedly the best of the three; I enjoyed and still reread the other two, but they do have significant flaws. Lewis was probably the world's greatest writer of specifically Christian fantasy, and one of the few writers to have any interest at all in joining Christianity with fantasy. I am not a Christian, never was, never will be, but this is the book that caused me to honestly sit down and think about what I was and who I was and what I actually believed. Writers of didactic fiction tend to either hide the points they are trying to make so thoroughly that nobody notices them, or else shove them down the reader's throat at every opportunity. This book simply is its message. You can read it as a gorgeous, suspenseful, and beautifully entertaining fantasy novel, which it is-- and not a difficult read, either-- or as a description of both the strong points and the weak points of Christianity and to some extent religion in general, which it also is-- or as an amazing synergetic compound of the two that will never cease to inspire new questions. This book is so rich and so well-written that for much of my life I called it the finest novel I had ever read. That was before I encountered:
Engine Summer , by John Crowley. I took my LJ name from this book; Rush-That-Speaks is the protagonist. Probably the most incredibly well structured book I have ever seen. No matter what you think it's about, until you get to the end, you're wrong. Crowley is the best writer I have encountered on memory and dream, and here, in a world vaguely like ours might be post-holocaust, he gives us a selection of the possible ways to remember. This book is crammed with cultures and people and a few memorable cats, along with Rush, and his people, who are the only people in the world to Say What They Truly Mean And Truly Mean What They Say, continually. This is a novel of atmospheres and places, and there's a quiet joy to the tone, in some parts, that I've never seen duplicated. There is also an incredible, and even more quiet, sadness, as well as other emotions that I do not think English has words for, and redefinitions of words we do have that are truly fascinating: to Rush and his people, a thing is holy if it makes you laugh.
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin. The reason I don't call this the best novel I've ever read is that it isn't a novel. It's a collection of cultural artifacts-- songs, dances, plays, narratives, maps, histories, descriptions-- of a people who, according to LeGuin, "might be going to have lived some time from now, in Southern California". There are narratives in it, small and large, and one novelette, but they are no more important than the rest of the book. The outlook of the people of the Valley, the way things go, the way time works, the way other people are to be treated, seeps in gradually through the pages. This is the book that literally patterned the way my mind is shaped, and the way I see humans as fitting into the world. It also has some wonderful poetry, and I highly recommend the stir-fried eggplant and zucchini recipe. Oddly enough, though I'm on my third copy of this, I've never managed to come across the version that was packaged with an audio tape containing orchestrations and performances of the music and drama. If anyone stumbles over it, please let me know.
The Female Man , by Joanna Russ. WARNING: if you are male, this book may cause you to feel lousy about yourself, whether you deserve to or not-- and if the book produces that reaction, you probably don't deserve to. If you are female-- well, I put a fist through a wall. An incredible feminist science fiction novel, and a scream of righteous rage on the part of the author against a great many things that really do go on in our culture. Definitely not for the squeamish, however, as it contains non-linear narrative structures, some really scary people, examples of the day-to-day sexism of society that caused me to burst into exhausted tears, and a heckofa lot of lesbians. It also contains some of the great moments of joy and revelation that I can recall in fiction, and a Utopia that I would not wish for, but am glad to be able to imagine. I am still waiting for the day when the book's frontispiece will go out of date: "There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress."
More of these later, but probably not regularly. Feedback request: does anybody care, or should I stop writing about books?
Angst-O-Meter: zero.
In other ramblings: for some reason or other, one of the questions people ask me most often in life is to recommend books to them. I don't know why. I've read a lot, and thought about it, but why this should give me any ability to judge what other people might like is beyond me. Especially since if I didn't like something it never occurs to me to recommend it to anybody. However, there are a few books out there that I would unhesitatingly recommend to anybody even if I thought the querent would hate them, just because they are so inherently thought-provoking and rich. My favorite books, in other words. The ones that shaped my head. The ones I carry with me everywhere and never leave for so much as a weekend without. The ones I read over and over and over and never come to the bottom of, nor will. So I figured I'd write up short descriptions of those and post them to LJ, so that anyone who is interested, or anyone who asks me for recommendations, can find them here, and I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining the same things over and over. However, I don't intend to subject this sort of thing to people who aren't interested in it, so
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. This book made my head explode when I was twelve years old. It's the middle one of Lewis's Space Trilogy, also containing Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength , but it is decidedly the best of the three; I enjoyed and still reread the other two, but they do have significant flaws. Lewis was probably the world's greatest writer of specifically Christian fantasy, and one of the few writers to have any interest at all in joining Christianity with fantasy. I am not a Christian, never was, never will be, but this is the book that caused me to honestly sit down and think about what I was and who I was and what I actually believed. Writers of didactic fiction tend to either hide the points they are trying to make so thoroughly that nobody notices them, or else shove them down the reader's throat at every opportunity. This book simply is its message. You can read it as a gorgeous, suspenseful, and beautifully entertaining fantasy novel, which it is-- and not a difficult read, either-- or as a description of both the strong points and the weak points of Christianity and to some extent religion in general, which it also is-- or as an amazing synergetic compound of the two that will never cease to inspire new questions. This book is so rich and so well-written that for much of my life I called it the finest novel I had ever read. That was before I encountered:
Engine Summer , by John Crowley. I took my LJ name from this book; Rush-That-Speaks is the protagonist. Probably the most incredibly well structured book I have ever seen. No matter what you think it's about, until you get to the end, you're wrong. Crowley is the best writer I have encountered on memory and dream, and here, in a world vaguely like ours might be post-holocaust, he gives us a selection of the possible ways to remember. This book is crammed with cultures and people and a few memorable cats, along with Rush, and his people, who are the only people in the world to Say What They Truly Mean And Truly Mean What They Say, continually. This is a novel of atmospheres and places, and there's a quiet joy to the tone, in some parts, that I've never seen duplicated. There is also an incredible, and even more quiet, sadness, as well as other emotions that I do not think English has words for, and redefinitions of words we do have that are truly fascinating: to Rush and his people, a thing is holy if it makes you laugh.
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin. The reason I don't call this the best novel I've ever read is that it isn't a novel. It's a collection of cultural artifacts-- songs, dances, plays, narratives, maps, histories, descriptions-- of a people who, according to LeGuin, "might be going to have lived some time from now, in Southern California". There are narratives in it, small and large, and one novelette, but they are no more important than the rest of the book. The outlook of the people of the Valley, the way things go, the way time works, the way other people are to be treated, seeps in gradually through the pages. This is the book that literally patterned the way my mind is shaped, and the way I see humans as fitting into the world. It also has some wonderful poetry, and I highly recommend the stir-fried eggplant and zucchini recipe. Oddly enough, though I'm on my third copy of this, I've never managed to come across the version that was packaged with an audio tape containing orchestrations and performances of the music and drama. If anyone stumbles over it, please let me know.
The Female Man , by Joanna Russ. WARNING: if you are male, this book may cause you to feel lousy about yourself, whether you deserve to or not-- and if the book produces that reaction, you probably don't deserve to. If you are female-- well, I put a fist through a wall. An incredible feminist science fiction novel, and a scream of righteous rage on the part of the author against a great many things that really do go on in our culture. Definitely not for the squeamish, however, as it contains non-linear narrative structures, some really scary people, examples of the day-to-day sexism of society that caused me to burst into exhausted tears, and a heckofa lot of lesbians. It also contains some of the great moments of joy and revelation that I can recall in fiction, and a Utopia that I would not wish for, but am glad to be able to imagine. I am still waiting for the day when the book's frontispiece will go out of date: "There are more whooping cranes in the United States of America than there are women in Congress."
More of these later, but probably not regularly. Feedback request: does anybody care, or should I stop writing about books?
Angst-O-Meter: zero.
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Date: 2002-07-30 09:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-07-30 09:55 am (UTC)L.
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Date: 2002-07-30 05:03 pm (UTC)