Has anyone else read "The Slow Regard of Silent Things" by Patrick Rothfuss? It's a short- only 176 pages long and is just character development about Auri.
I find myself hating it. I mean, just because Auri is a cute girl, it's OK that she's so mentally damaged? Does the author think it's CUTE? if the character were an ugly guy, all the idiosyncrasies would be icky. In fact, the more I think about it (and I'm only about halfway through) the more she reminds me of Gollum.
Really.
We are, of course, listening to it in audible format as often as I can stomach it, and I keep having to stop myself from interjecting a guttural "gollum" or "my precious!" as some new facet of her existence is exposed.
I wish Rothfuss had just worked on the third Kvothe book and not gotten sidetracked by this.
I've read it...loved it! Really did. The title not only applies to the character, it applies to the way the novel is written. Unusual approach, very contemplative.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
Maria, I want to apologise for what looks like a hit and run post that seemingly runs all over your contention without giving any quarter.
Because I was checking HoF on my phone, I read only your first sentence and then responded without seeing that you were troubled by the book. I find reading on my phone enormously frustrating, which is why it happened.
I don't think that Rothfuss wrote it so Auri would be 'cute'; I think it was written in a way that acknowledges the enormous damage that has been done to her (by still unknown means) and yet her innate strength and rare gifts of character and personality are still apparent. It is a quiet, contemplative, self-revealing (of Auri) book; it is all about her inner life, unseen, unknown, yet still so strong. She has the ability to see things outside the normal human range (not a spoiler; seeing here is used as a synonym to intuit, grasp, understand, feel).
I don't know whether the audible you were listening to includes the author's very extensive note about the story - he felt very ambivalent about publishing it, and thought it would be rejected, or at least very disliked, by most readers and critics not least because it doesn't have anything like an orthodox story arc.
As I said above, I liked it very, very much indeed, but it is not the kind of book/story that I would recommend without a word of explanation.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
Yes, the audible version does have Rothfuss's warning, and I'm just one of the ones who doesn't like it, I guess.
I still haven't finished listening to it. The mental comparison with Gollum is just too annoying. The scene where she dives in the water for junk on the bottom has her all but saying "My Precious!" afterwards while gloating over her find. Emaciated, pale, phobic, obsessed underground dweller .... she's a Gollum.
I strongly recommend Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels (there are three, with the fourth and final book to be published later this year), starting with My Brilliant Friend.
Translated from Italian, they follow the intense friendship between two women from the time of their girlhood in post-war Naples. Both girls are born to very poor working class families; both show academic and intellectual brilliance; only one manages to fight her way out of the rough and ugly poverty of her youth. The narrative follows the lives of their immediate circle, those who leave and those who stay, not flinching from describing the grinding degradation of life in the neighbourhood and the sense of belonging that connects those who manage to escape, like an umbilical cord that cannot be cut.
The translation has some rough spots when it comes to grammar and sentence construction, but the language is clean and skewering, and the story is gripping.
I suspect there are autobiographical elements because there is that quality of half-remembered realism in the squalor, in the rawness of the emotions, but we don't know because the author has maintained a high degree of privacy - Elena Ferrante is her pen name and her true identity remains unknown, though she is a woman, and she is Neapolitan.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
I will look out for it on NyPL. I just finished all of Elizabeth Fraser's novels - all, Amelia, Vicky Bliss, Kirby and the non-series ones. Am ready for a change, they were becoming predictable...,
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Please bear with my typos & grammar mistakes. Sent from my iPhone - Palantirs make mistakes too.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
It recommends books by letting you set up to four out of twelve sliders to your preferences on categories such as happy vs. sad, beautiful vs. disgusting, and no sex vs. lots of sex. There are also searches by character, plot and setting, and preset lists.
Now, my to-read list is still well over ten deep, but their suggestions definitely have potential, and are not the usual bestseller list stuff.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
I would be happy to post some recommendations for people looking for good hard-ish, intelligent, character-driven SF. Not including my books (if anyone thought that fit ). But there's a lot of it out there right now, I'm very glad to report. I'm having a lot of fun keeping up with my sub-sub-sub-genre.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I've subscribed to the Kindle Sci-Fi list, which has unearthed some interesting material. Admittedly, there's a lot of dross, but I have also stumbled onto some gems. If it sounds interesting, I download a sample, and if I get to theend of that, I usually find the book is worth the purchase.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
Inanna, I think you would really enjoy The Expanse novels by James Corey. They are 'soft' scifi, very much character driven and have an element of nor detective fiction. They also remind me a little of Firefly, in that the core cast of characters are mavericks that come together to form a family-like team.
I think it was Prim who recommended these books in another thread.
The first book is Leviathan Awakes.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
Holy smoke, that was what I was thinking of when I posted above—I'm rereading them because the fourth in the series is coming out next month and I want to be up to speed. I'm glad you've enjoyed them, Impy. I'm appreciating them even more the second time around. As I think I said in my earlier recommendation, they do have some strong horror elements, though much more in the first book than the next two. But there is an elusive note of hope, of believing in the essential goodness of (most) people, that means a lot to me. The violence isn't porn. It horrifies the characters and it's meant to horrify, not titillate, the reader. Yet the threat isn't inherently evil.
And you put your finger on something there, Impy, with the Firefly comparison. Mavericks and misfits thrown together on a spaceship, becoming a family through trial and terror and a lot of shared meals. I always find that kind of a story compelling.
There's more I will have to recommend, but I'm away from home at the moment and need to collect books and thoughts.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Hoo, boy! Just finished Nemesis Games (the fourth of The Expanse series). Have you read it yet Prim?
I was very happy to see that the characters that had been left aside in the previous novel have come back to the core narrative again. Some very strong females in these books, which is another thing I like about the series.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
I think it's actually the fifth—Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate (which I'm on now), then Cibola Burn and then Nemesis Games. I just really want to be back with the characters completely before I read the new one. I remember missing some people in Cibola Burn; I'm glad to know they're back!
Another thing I like? People have families, with children, and family is important. Even the tough guys are protective of children and concerned for their welfare, even if they don't have any (yet).
And religious faith still exists. The usual with SF is never to mention it at all, or to assign it to stupid people. In these books intelligent and likable people also believe. Certainly not all of them, but that's true now.
I'm not saying there's anything overtly or even subversively religious about these books—far from it. But acknowledging the existence of religion and that it will not suddenly vanish in the next 100 years—that it was, is, and will be important to a lot of people—that's another aspect of these books I really appreciate. It's good world-building.
Hoping to make fast progress toward Nemesis Games once I get through this weekend—two immovable deadlines and my daughter's college graduation.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
They're on Kindle, but they're really expensive right now.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Prim, you are correct, of course, it's the fifth book.
I also find it so interesting that you would say that they are expensive for kindle at the moment; in Oz, $10 for a book is cheap (unless it's in the discount bin, of course). You are so lucky in the US to have such a huge market that allows for economies of scale.
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
Well, the new one is $12. I'm more used to around $8, and I don't buy that many at that level; month by month I get a pretty good crop at $2 or $3 from various sales and daily deals.
I did buy THE MARTIAN in trade paperback, because I just suspected I was going to want to have it on my shelf, and I was right. It isn't for everyone (see Wednesday's XKCD), but it sure was for me.
A lot of what I do buy on Kindle is books I already own and have on my shelf, but want to also have in my pocket wherever I am, forever.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I buy for kindle unless I absolutely have to have it on my shelf, and a great deal of willpower is required because we simply can't p u t up any more shelves; out of wall space.
So what is this The Martian of which you speak?
Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.
). But there's a lot of it out there right now, I'm very glad to report. I'm having a lot of fun keeping up with my sub-sub-sub-genre.