The Afterword in my edition claim that for that story, and you remember correctly, she felt “they” was too confusing.
Ahhh, that might be where I read it. It’s been a loooooooooooooooooooooooong time since I read the book.
Yay!
Le Guin wrote, years later, about her thoughts on the book, and how she would have written it differently at a later point in her life. I have no idea how to track that essay down, though.
Finished Into Unknown Skies: An Unlikely Team, A Daring Race, and the First Flight Around the World, by David K. Randall, which was very interesting to read. My favorite bit of trivia in it was that in World War I American pilots were required to wear spurs. (Gives new meaning to the phrase “Gitty-up.” Also finished Janissaries, by Jerry Pournelle, which was okay.
Next Up: Blood of Tyrants, the eighth book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire dragon series, and Cry When the Baby Cries, by Becky Barnicoat.
Close to Home: The Wonders of Nature Just Outside Your Door Thor Hanson
How to learn about and appreciate the natural world in your yard, or local park, especially invertebrates. Enjoyable book.
Just zipped through The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming, which is very different from the later James Bond movie (the book is about a beautiful French-Canadian woman ensnared in an arson plot in an upstate New York motel, not an evil genius who wants to trigger WWIII and then hide out under the ocean). The book is dated and sexist but still a decent 007 tale, all in all.
I’m now reading two sf books:
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi is a re-read with my son; it’s about an Earth prospector on an alien jungle world who discovers a catlike maybe-sentient alien race which gets in the way of the megacorp exploiting the planet’s resources. Not Scalzi’s best, but still worthwhile.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is a terrific distant-future political/military thriller. It’s about a former soldier of a galactic empire who, appalled by a massacre on a subject world and then the murder of a respected superior officer, decides to seek revenge against the empire’s ruler. Leckie creates a detailed, highly advanced but credible interstellar society and then pulls you right into the story. I’m about two-thirds through it and am very impressed.
Finished Precipice, by Robert Harris. It’s the start of World War I, and top-secret telegrams keep turning up in parks and along the roadside around London. It soon transpires that it’s Prime Minister HH Asquith callously tossing them out his car window after showing them to his confidante Venetia Stanley. Normally a perp would be tossed in jail for what amounts to violating the Official Secrets Act, but since it’s the prime minister it has to be handled delicately. The Special Branch sets up an operation to intercept all mail between the two, they want to monitor it before deciding what to do exactly, and it turns out the PM is not only routinely confiding state secrets to Venetia but also sending her sensitive documents for her perusal. In real life, the two were in a relationship. Historians are divided as to whether it was sexually consummated, but Harris strongly implies it was. In an Author’s Note at the beginning, Harris writes, “All the letters quoted in the text from the Prime Minister are – the reader may be astonished to learn – authentic, as are the telegrams, newspaper reports and official documents . . .” Well, yes, I was indeed astonished that all these are part of the actual historical record. Asquith was a prolific letter writer, sending Venetia about three letters a day every day and demanding she do the same, so there’s a lot there. (All of his letters here are real, but none from Venetia still exist, so those at least are fictionalized.) An interesting read.
Next up is The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens’ first novel.
Started today on Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang. Two rival students of magick travel to Hell to rescue their professor.
I shall be eagerly awaiting your opinion.
I started Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold.
So far I think it’s a hoot. This poor kid just inherited the equivalent of nine busybody Aunts.
I haven’t read any other books in the series, but I’m a die-hard Vorkosigan fan, so I know I’m in good hands.
Finished Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. It’s solidly YA so even with human sacrifice it wasn’t overly gory. It’s biggest issue was the pacing, the plot didn’t really start rolling until around the 55% mark. The characters were good, the word building excellent and the humor delightful.
That sounds like it could hold my attention better than Babel. I read about two thirds of that book but I couldn’t close the deal (this is common with me.) I love stories that deal with mythological afterlife stuff.
I confess that I don’t really get what makes something YA. I remember when I read Hunger Games, I thought, okay, I guess it’s about some kids in a competition–holy shit that kid just threw an axe into that kid’s skull!
But heaven forfend they start kissing.
There was kissing at the end..
But yeah, I don’t understand why some things with excessive violence and or a lot of death are marketed as Young Adults books.
I finally finished The Silent Patient. I enjoy the dual narration style but dislike stories where they purposefully withhold a time jump. I get that the ending would be projected too easily - and I’ll admit that it was a pretty good payoff.
Finished Blood of Tyrants, the eighth book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire dragon series, which had its good points, but wasn’t as good as the earlier books. Also finished Cry When the Baby Cries, by Becky Barnicoat, which is powerful. (My favorite page was the “Choose the Battles You Will Fight With Your Toddler”. There was a cartoon showing him defending himself with a sword and shield against his mommy, who wanted to apply sunscreen.)
Next:Scale, a science fiction mystery by Greg Egan and History Matters, by David McCullough,
I will get the ne thread up later this evening.
I finished Penric’s Demon.
I quite liked it.
I am now reading Penric and the Shaman.
February thread: Can it warm up now?