Rhi. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhivolution) wrote2015-08-05 10:21 pm
rhivolution) wrote2015-08-05 10:21 pm
Entry tags:
perennially out of can
Well, I am back in Britain and no longer on jetlag time, two weeks later, and mostly just getting by. Glasgow has had nothing approaching 'summer', not even the British variant of summer (e.g. a pleasant temperature and not raining), which is disheartening as we come into August and I think of those Stevie Nicks lyrics* and anticipate the seasons to come.
If you needed to be convinced about climate change--and I'm hoping if you read my journal that you don't--the weather here in Britain for the last few years is quite good anecdotal evidence. Gwyneth Jones wrote a YA book under her Ann Halam pseudhalf a dozen years ago or so TEN YEARS AGO, says Wikipedia (Siberia), where the jet stream has moved due to global climate change, leaving Scotland a tundra, and while I don't buy that exact outcome, I do buy the notion that the weather here is becoming increasingly fucked.(Incidentally, I enjoyed that book a lot more than I have any of Jones' writing for adults. I've written about this before here and elsewhere...her issues with mothering and motherhood creep.me.out. Thinking on it more, Jones sorta is the Christopher Nolan of feminist SF for me, in that her work is very technically interesting and impressive, but I just can't quite get emotionally attached to her characters. They leave me rather cold.)
On reading! I did manage to finish Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword on holiday, and perhaps I was the only person who liked Sword better, I'm not sure. I've sorta parsed out my reasons why and hope to do a blog post one of these evers.
From a foodie perspective, I also finally read Gabrielle Hamilton's 2011 memoir (Blood, Bones, and Butter). While Hamilton's got...some personal issues that I feel could really use some deeper self-analysis...I really identify with her career narrative:
- falling into a job (cooking)
- feeling like she's not changing the world or using her potential, so going back to school (writing)
- finding out that the reality of doing that dream as a career is not great
- going back to old job for productivity and meaning and eventually developing that into a career
And then she ends up writing a top-rated memoir, publishing essays, and winning awards for her writing too, which leads me to, at least, a bit of hope for my media self. I just need to actually Do The Thing.
On fandom--thinking, very vaguely, about getting back into RPing again, becauselizzy is convincing, but that would also mean that my brain needs to be better at not freaking out about reading friend lists/circles, thus not flaking out. I hate flaking out.
So yes, stuff is stuff, hello, tell me interesting things.
* "And the summer became the fall/I was not ready for the winter", from 'Nightbird', though the FM folk here probably guessed that.
If you needed to be convinced about climate change--and I'm hoping if you read my journal that you don't--the weather here in Britain for the last few years is quite good anecdotal evidence. Gwyneth Jones wrote a YA book under her Ann Halam pseud
On reading! I did manage to finish Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword on holiday, and perhaps I was the only person who liked Sword better, I'm not sure. I've sorta parsed out my reasons why and hope to do a blog post one of these evers.
From a foodie perspective, I also finally read Gabrielle Hamilton's 2011 memoir (Blood, Bones, and Butter). While Hamilton's got...some personal issues that I feel could really use some deeper self-analysis...I really identify with her career narrative:
- falling into a job (cooking)
- feeling like she's not changing the world or using her potential, so going back to school (writing)
- finding out that the reality of doing that dream as a career is not great
- going back to old job for productivity and meaning and eventually developing that into a career
And then she ends up writing a top-rated memoir, publishing essays, and winning awards for her writing too, which leads me to, at least, a bit of hope for my media self. I just need to actually Do The Thing.
On fandom--thinking, very vaguely, about getting back into RPing again, because
lizzy is convincing, but that would also mean that my brain needs to be better at not freaking out about reading friend lists/circles, thus not flaking out. I hate flaking out.So yes, stuff is stuff, hello, tell me interesting things.
* "And the summer became the fall/I was not ready for the winter", from 'Nightbird', though the FM folk here probably guessed that.
no subject
Part of what put AS over AJ for me was that I have a very hard time with narratives that indicate up front that Terrible Things Will Happen, then build up to those terrible things in flashback or split narrative (I'm reminded of Gus Van Sant's film Elephant, which gave me a migraine). But also...I feel like the Ancillaryverse is the story of how the Radchaai system is actually completely failing its tenets (Justice, Prosperity, & Benefit), and while AJ is the story of Breq learning to understand and parse that some privileged individuals are being failed, AS opens up her understanding, and the hunch the reader must have, that the whole system is actually systemically broken.
I like that Breq is unreliable in a way that is clear to Me The Reader, also...I have a hard time with unreliable narrators that I want to take at their word.
More on this hopefully--thanks for the doc rec as well, as for some reason I'd not heard about it. Totally sounds like it would be my thing.