Bookish Thoughts

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.

 I've been meaning to read Sarah Gailey every since I heard about their very first novella, River of Teeth. I finally bought Magic for Liars and then Tor.com made Upright Women Wanted one of the free books of the month. I'm so glad I finally read it, because now I'm even more excited for all of Gailey's work. Good thing I've already got one of her books sitting on my shelf. I went into this book assuming it took place in the far past. I have no real justification for that assumption except that this book reads like a western, and westerns are generally a past thing. But this book actually takes place in a dystopian future, where all the trappings of the wild west have come back. The Librarians are slowly revealed as outlaws, hiding in plain sight. And Esther's desire to join up with them gets turned on its head when she finds out the sort of work they really do. I absolutely loved this book, and I wish it had been fleshed out into a full novel if only because ...

Reading a novel by Ursula K LeGuin is rarely as simple as reading a novel. When I first started reading her work, it always felt like an argument. She is someone who has thought deeply about what she believes and her work considers a lot of different points of view. I never agreed with her fully, but she was so knowledgeable and sharp that her writing forced me to become more knowledgeable and sharp. Her work never let me be complacent in my beliefs. I always found myself having to defend my own point of view against the one she presented, because she made me consider things I hadn't before. Reading LeGuin is work, but good work, work worth doing. Her books have always made me a smarter, better person. Always Coming Home is a departure in that it felt like a conversation but not an argument. I'm not sure if that's because I've come around to LeGuin's way of seeing things as I've aged or if it's just that this book is so gentle. It's incredibly radical, ...

This is my second time through Station Eleven.  The first time I read it, I inhaled the entire book in a day. This time I made an effort to stretch it out (by juggling a few other books at the same time) so I could absorb it a little more slowly. This is the sort of book that rewards deeper thought, and it definitely gave me a lot to think about. Station Eleven  is very concerned with home and with interrogating the idea that you can't go home again. It opens with a flu that kills over 99% of the world's population in a few days, leaving the remaining few to find a way to live in a vastly changed world. Small settlements pop up here and there, but the post-apocalypse story focuses on a traveling theater troupe. In a very real sense, these people can't go home again. There's no home to go to, and the main characters have chosen to make their home on the road. Even the pre-apocalypse characters, Arthur and Miranda, have left behind their hometown in favor of making a ...

I first read this book three or four years ago, and it has really stuck with me. My thoughts return to it again and again, especially with the current political climate, not to mention the actual climate. I've recommended it to more people than I can remember and loaned my copies out enough times that I have no idea what happened to them. So when they announced a re-issue with a new introduction by NK Jemisin, it was all the excuse I needed to buy new copies and re-read them. Having now re-read the first book, I'm seeing how much the two blurred together in my mind. And I think it was actually the second one that impacted me the most. This one started out a lot more slowly than I remembered. They weren't on the road for nearly as much of the book as I thought they were, and a lot of things that I thought were in this book weren't. But I think I actually liked it more this time around. I've lived and learned a lot in the past few years, and I have a greater appre...

Every now and then you come across a perfect piece of literature. The Only Harmless Great Thing  was Tor's free download this month. Once I'd downloaded it, I cracked it open to peek at the first sentence (as I do nearly every time I receive a book). I then proceeded to inhale the entire thing in one long gulp. It's a good thing it's short. This story re-imagines history a bit to explore labor rights and animal rights and the power of a story. It jumps between two different timelines and at least four different perspectives, two of which belong to elephants. Each section is short, but they pack a punch. There isn't a single word wasted in this incredibly tight, affecting story. The Only Harmless Great Thing  is beautiful and sad and haunting. It's about the mistakes humans make that are so much bigger than a single life. And the attempts to rectify those mistakes that fall impossibly short. And the catharsis of grand gestures. And the way history gets re-wri...