Books Read, August-September 2011

[ashnistrike]

Iorich, by Steven Brust. More fun, and less apparently flail-y, on the second read.  Dragaeran law is very strange, but interesting.

Tiassa, by Steven Brust.  Oh man, was it ever worth rereading the rest of the series just before reading this.  It answers many questions that I would otherwise have forgotten how much I wanted the answers to.  It also has many of my favorite supporting characters, and a section written by Paarfi.  (YMMV; Sarah still has a lot less patience for Paarfi than I do.  I thought the section was hysterical.)

Feed, by Mira Grant.  I enjoyed this--I suspect it will date like hell, but the zombie blogging world was fairly plausible (as zombie blogging worlds go).  And I thought the politics were less black-and-white than some other readers have reported.  The ending startled me, not in a bad way, but enough to make me hesitant about reading the sequel.
Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds, by Brian Daley.  I think it was saganth who described this as like Hitchhiker's Guide, but a little more serious.  Since I like my humor leavened with drama, that sounded just about perfect.  And it was.  Daley is just as good here as in the Star Wars radio plays, but he's not hobbled by someone else's universe.  It's funny and sweet and full of sensawunda.  And Alacrity Fitzhugh appears to be what Daley would have liked to make of Han Solo.
Technology and the Future (9th edition), Edited by Albert H. Teich.  Very interesting collection of essays on the politics of technology, spanning from the 50s through... 2003, which is what I get for ordering the second-to-latest edition because it was available on PaperbackSwap.  Which is an interesting cut-off point for intensive discussions of whether the internet is detrimental to, or supportive of, democracy.  It ended up feeling like a very abruptly interrupted conversation.  It is hardly Teich's fault for being in 2003 when everyone else was, and I hope to get a more up-to-date edition at some point to read the rest of the conversation.
Other Media Consumed:

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi radio play (episodes 1-6).  A couple of lines--less than 5 minutes worth of additional material--can make a huge difference.  Specifically, the lines that make Han and Leia's romance make sense, and the ones that give the Ewoks some identity beyond hideously stereotyped teddy bears.  Yay Brian Daley, yet again.

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.  See above.  The Ewoks, dear gods.  Have we left any "primitive native" stereotype unturned?  Except that yes, that is a reasonable-looking textile-based technology, and not as primitive as it originally appears.  Also, "the peaceful forest moon of Endor," hell.  Those guys had weapons and a tradition of cooking their enemies.  The next teddy bear tribe over is going to be very sad when they learn their foes now have blasters and armor.
Time After Time.  Reviewed elsewhere.

Shadow Unit (Season 4, Episode 0: "Walking Back to Houston"). Ouch.  And interesting.  I had to look up the title, and it's nicely ambiguous, and has all sorts of interesting implications.

Peter Pan (2003).  Absolutely amazing--true to the book, while adding some interesting texture and commentary.  Beautiful and creepy as it should be, and making Pan an actual boy makes it much sharper.  I knew it was working for me when I started to look forward to meeting the Indians, just to see how they would handle the problematicity.  (Answer: Jump up and down and point out that it's problematic, give them a specific culture--Iroquois--and have the boys be deeply bored by the ways the Indians aren't movie Indians.) 
Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I give up on George Lucas.  And possibly on watching movies I thought were really awesome when I was 20.

Star Wars Symphony.  But I do not give up on John Williams.  The music is awesome.

Total Books: 5. I know.
Recent Publication: 2/5
Rereads: 1/5
Recommendations: I forget who recommended Feed; the others I got to on my own. 
New Music: 1 album
New Media Produced: A little on the Aphra Marsh story.  A short white paper for work; I've never written one of those before so we'll see how that goes.

Comments

[natlyn.livejournal.com]

You had problems with Raiders of the Lost Ark? ::eyes cabinet with videotape:: But I really liked that movie even though I haven't seen it in over a decade. What's the issue? Gender politics? I always thought they were a bit iffy, but I still loved Marion.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

The problem is that ultimately, the movie only works if no one except for Indy--and maybe Marion--is real. Otherwise the extensive body count, and the number of dark-skinned people who are just there to help Indy and react to things, gets very old very fast. And once I realized that most of the people weren't real, the only character I could care about was Marion, and it wasn't enough to carry the scenes she wasn't in.

S says, "And then there are the snakes," but actually we enjoyed trying to identify all the species. And hoping Indy would be reassured that actually some of them were glass lizards.