Books read in November 2019

[nou]

Definitely recommend

• At The Mouth Of The River Of Bees, Kij Johnson. I don't really get along with most short story collections any more — I think partly because they're not hugely conducive to being picked up and put down again at short notice. I didn't have that problem with these. (I skipped “Ponies” because I've read it before and knew it would be upsetting, and I didn’t get on with “Story Kit” because that sort of experimentation doesn’t really do it for me.)

Maybe recommend

• Garnethill, Denise Mina (re-read). It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent read, albeit somewhat distressing in places. Also the twist was explicitly given away partway through, and I’m not entirely sure that was on purpose.
• Touch, Claire North. I do like the idea behind this, but there's a bit too much commentary on minor things the narrator can't possibly know (restaurateur waving goodnight to his favourite customers) and some rather shoehorned metaphors (old men with holes in their cardigans, trains shrieking "like a metal mother-in-law"). And it all has a feel of having been written by someone who really doesn't like women very much.
• Without You There Is No Us, Suki Kim. A memoir of time spent teaching at a college in North Korea. The writing is sometimes a little unclear, particularly when describing physical things like buildings and mountains. And there were perfectly plausible things that the author seemed to think were quite outlandish, like free medical care, free higher education, and the idea that international adoption might not be an unalloyed good. Her failure to explain social security to the students did not feel to me like a failure of the students. There was her ignorance of the fact that not all Americans can use as much electricity as they want or need, and her sneering at CNN Asia reporting on sexual abuse in American college sport. Basically I thought it was noteworthy that she never interrogated her own (extreme in its own way) capitalistic viewpoint.
• The Poppy War, R F Kuang (DNF). There were several things I liked about this, but fundamentally it’s a war story with a side order of abusive schooling, and neither of those is my thing.
• The Man Who Knew Too Much, G K Chesterton. Linked short stories. The mysteries are clever, and the writing is so good, but the characters are super-racist!
• Minor Mage, T Kingfisher. The author insists that this is a children’s book, but I actually found part of it verging on too scary for me.

Wouldn’t recommend

• Promised Land, Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice (DNF). Apparently this is an SF classic? It really hasn't aged well.
• Into Everywhere, Paul McAuley (DNF). Got 5% of the way into this and it just felt like it was going to be exhausting, so I stopped.

Written by friends

• Two Weddings & Several Revelations, L A Hall.

Comments

[selki]

Without You There Is No Us sounds all negative -- what puts it in Maybe Recommend rather than Wouldn't, for you.

I wouldn't have thought of Promised Land as an SF Classic; others of Willis' are much better known, I thought.

[nou]

I found the subject matter of Without You There Is No Us interesting. I don’t think the author handled it very well, but she didn’t do badly enough for me to consider the book not worth reading.

I read the SF Gateway edition of Promised Land, which is an imprint explicitly describing itself as “Your portal to the classics of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Crime”! (I guess they might be exaggerating.)

[selki]

Thanks, I see.