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RichardAbbott
About
- Username
- RichardAbbott
- Joined
- Visits
- 6,360
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Administrator, Moderator
- Games I like
- Sundry, mostly board
- Books I like
- Science fiction, fantasy, some historical fiction
Comments
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I'm curious about the various transformations into stone (this may well be something we have not yet had explained, and if so I'm happy to wait and see). We have a number of different events through this book which may or may not be related to each …
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(Quote) That sounds really interesting. Are the changes in description voluntary ("I want to trade strength for charisma" or whatever) or the consequences of action and so not directly willed for (kind of like a character in a Star Wars ga…
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(Quote) Well, it seems to me that this is clearly the focus of the more polemic parts of their description. They segregate men and women, regard women and girl-children as property rather than persons, require women to be veiled when outside their o…
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I thought that "dualistic" typically meant that good and evil were essentially independent and opposed forces, whereas the classical Christian position, and the one adopted by JRRT for his universe (implicitly but not explicitly Christian)…
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(Quote) Most of the individual stories within ACH involve conflict, sometimes cultural (as in StoneTeller) sometimes rooted in personal choice. Even the Pandora episode I have just read (Gently to the Gentle Reader), which is scarcely even of flash …
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(Quote) I persist in thinking that she did a better job of communicating this in The Dispossessed :)
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A mere £4.99 on UK Amazon Kindle :)
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This may not be directly related to your question, but it was spurred on by your words so I'll post it anyway :) On one level the (human) people in ACH ought to have every opportunity to be individuals - they are not just given one name, but severa…
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Aha right got it thanks
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MCU? I'm not familiar with the acronym?
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I'm afraid I'm still meandering through the many chapters and (other than my kindle navigation marker, which says 62%) have no real sense if I've got anywhere or not! In her Creation Myth section she says "Certainly the Valley doesn't share tho…
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(Quote) There is a certain irony in that our Ursula was on occasion very outspoken against indie publication in this world, while both in ACH and The Dispossessed she seems totally in favour of it in other worlds...
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Thanks @Apocryphal for the listing... I'd assumed that ACH was quite a late book, and I think this supports that conjecture. It made me realise that much of what I like is her early phase work up to mid 70s. Though I do like Tehanu, and love the fol…
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Out of idle curiosity, I looked up the etymology of "lynch", and apparently it considerably predates the main era of abolitionists vs slaves, and is instead linked to either William or (more probably) Charles Lynch... in both cases relatin…
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Thanks both (of course I had to look up who on earth Don King was). As well as having no previous idea what to imagine, I also feel that she uses the word far too many times, and some alternate descriptions would have helped in both visualisation an…
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I have to admit that I didn't realise at first reading that Nassun had killed all the orogenes at the Antarctic Fulcrum (AF) - it took @NeilNjae 's commentary and a reread to get it. I had just assumed Umber and Schaffa had done the deed while Nassu…
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I'm sure that even in these covid-19 straightened days I can run to £10.50, and the pleasure of reading it with the club will vastly outweigh that. But as a matter of abstract principle, charging that much for an ebook feels wrong :)
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> @Apocryphal said: > To everyone, > I have the July pick. I’ve already given it some thought and I’m leaning strongly toward The Great Eastern by Howard Rodman. Looks good though weirdly expensive, and apparently not on the second han…
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> @NeilNjae said: > (Quote) > That's an interesting thought, but we've not seen anywhere in the Stillness for an Underground Railroad to transport people to. The US one moved slaves from where they were slaves to where they could live fre…
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Another comment... Hi all, I was thinking today about these books during a long painting session at the pub (when we're finally allowed to reopen we shall be the smartest we've ever been :) ). In particular about the whole prejudice / lack of moral…
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> @clash_bowley said: > Oh oh! "For fans on NK Jemesin?" THAT does not bode well! :o Perhaps I should have put that on my cover :o though said fans might be a tad disappointed at the end result
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Hope you like it :)
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At least things happened... I'm still not clear about the state of intelligence in this world (in the military sense, not the cleverness one). So far as I can tell, there seem to me multiple methods - these may be connected, but then again they may…
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Oddly, my most-liked review on Goodreads is of Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, which dates from 1666...
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Some thoughts on the syllabic metre used by Ursula LeGuin in some of the poems in "Poems, Second Section" ACH largely chooses syllabic metre (SM) for the poems in this section, made explicitly obvious in Four/Fives, and The Sun Going Sout…
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(Quote) Of course the archetypal circular motion is the cycle of the seasons (as anciently conceived) and the modern equivalent, the orbital movement of the planet around the sun. Both of which are well-understood to be near-repetitions but not exac…
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> @BarnerCobblewood said: > (Quote) > More like unstudied gazing at a picture than following a narrative? I don't think I'd put it like that... picture and narrative sort of go together in my mind. More like looking at something more l…
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> @NeilNjae said: > (Quote) > Broadly true, but I think that reading both sections in parallel is informative, and perhaps even the intended way. There are snippets of worldbuilding information that appear in the "front" stories…
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I have enjoyed the various short stories (romances, cautionary tales etc) a bit more but am still rather baffled by the whole thing, except as a personal project. My kindle says I am now 28% of the way through but I'm not quite sure how that compute…
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Must be a US euphemism... I haven't come across it on this side of the pond...