Have you read...can you recommend...

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Alatar »

Are you reading the English translations Frelga?
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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Alatar wrote:Are you reading the English translations Frelga?
Yes. My Polish is too rusty. I'd like to find a Russian translation, though, because I kept translating into Russian in my head. This is not the first time I've seen a translation from a Slavic language that has the same, very particular style. I can totally see how the translator arrived at it, but it's not at all how native speakers of those languages write in English.

It's a good translation, though.
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.

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Inanna »

In this weekend’s WSJ there were great book recommendations. These looked particularly fascinating...Image
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Frelga »

Listening to Mark Oshiro read Science of Discworld II. The chapter on time travel cites a number of ST books, all by male writers, which caused Mark to ask why women writers weren't cited. I can't think of any that wrote about time travel, unless I count Le Guin's Hainish cycle, where space travel results in apparent jumps forward in time. Any suggestions?
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.

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

The jumps forward in time were caused by relativity. If you travel fast enough relative to the speed of light, you experience less passage of time than if you were not traveling so fast. This is the tragedy of Le Guin’s story “Semley’s Necklace,” where


SPOILER


the young woman doesn’t realize that when she returns home after her urgent errand, everyone she knows and loves will be dead.
“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
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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Also the subject of Brian May's '39. This is what happens when you let an Astrophysicist into your rock band.

In the year of '39 assembled here the volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen
And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew

In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey, little darling, we'll away
But my love this cannot be
For so many years have gone though I'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes, from your eyes, cry to me

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand for the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew
Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand
For my life
Still ahead
Pity me
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Frelga »

"In the land that our grandchildren knew" is a title of some story I read. Don't remember anything about it.

Prim, I remember Le Guin's short story set on the world of Winter from The Left Hand of the Darkness, where the King had to flee, leaving her baby, and spent years among the weird, always sexual, people on another world, and then returned to take over, still young, from that same baby, now an aged tyrant. It was mostly remarkable for Le Guin switching the pronoun for Gethenians from he to she, and the effect it had on the narrative.

But can anyone think of a woman writing about classic time travel, grandfather paradox and all?
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.

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

There's The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis, about time travelers visiting the years of the Black Plague; I never finished it, it was so grim.

I also found an article in Kirkus Reviews from last March: 7 Recent Time Travel Novels You Should Know About. At least two are by women.
“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
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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Thanks, Prim. Although it looks like the stories by women are crossing over into fantasy.

All Our Wrong Todays looks really interesting, though.
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.

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

That's the one I bought. Not sure when I'll get to it, but it looks really interesting.

Not on the topic of time travel, but I highly recommend the Vulture profile of N. K. Jemisin (https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/nk-jemi ... ilogy.html), who is my current SFF writer deity; it's a really interesting look at a fascinating and immensely talented writer who is a woman of color and a powerful commentator on culture and matters of race and class. And she writes books that will destroy you, in a deeply absorbing and satisfying way, to the extent that anguish can be satisfying. But there's also humor and love and hope.

I buy all her books on Kindle (so I can read them fast) and in physical form (so they will live on my shelf—I particularly like her trade paperbacks, as they're large and soft and light and comfortably floppy on the lap; good for a book you're going to live with multiple times).
“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
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Frelga »

Primula Baggins wrote:That's the one I bought. Not sure when I'll get to it, but it looks really interesting.
Ooo, let me know how you like it, when you get to it.

I suppose Prisoner of Azkaban has elements of time travel, but again, in a fantasy verse.

Speaking of time travel - my favorite book with that trope is Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb (not Discworld). It has closed loop AND parallel worlds AND killing your grandfather (kinda), and it's just an amazing story about ordinary people.
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.

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The BBC did a great adaptation of Johnny and the Bomb Frelga. If you haven't seen it, its worth a look!
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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Alatar wrote:The BBC did a great adaptation of Johnny and the Bomb Frelga. If you haven't seen it, its worth a look!
I can't remember if I did. :help: I know I watched Johnny and the Dead, which I think was also BBC. Only You Can Save Mankind is my favorite of Johnny Maxwell books, but Johnny and the Bomb is probably the best.

Johnny and the Dead speaks to Gaiman's Graveyard Book in interesting ways.
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.

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Maria »

Diana Galbadon's "Outlander" series is time travel. Most books in the "time travel romance" category are by women.
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

I've read 2.5 of her Outlander books. They are really good romances. They're just so long I have to stop every 500 pages or so and read something else for awhile.
“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
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Maria »

I waited until the first season of the TV show came out, and really liked it. Then I got impatient for the next season and read the plot summaries of the books and decided I didn't like the way the stories were headed. So I quit the series. The end of the first season was a better stopping spot for me.
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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They aren’t romances after the first 3 books, they are just historical fiction with the time travel bit thrown in. I’ve read them all, 2-3 times, I really like them.
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

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They are romances but not annoyingly so. What I enjoy:
- good writing; compelling and immersive
- the characters are so well drawn and multi-dimensional; they cannot be pigeon-holed as either hero or villain
- historical accuracy - not just to major historic facts but in the small domestic detail (such as what did people do before toilet paper?). I've learnt more incidentally than I could have expected.
-

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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Inanna »

I just finished reading " A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel" by Amor Towles.
Absolutely amazing book. Blew me away.
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

That’s interesting. Our church has a reading group and that was just announced as their next book.
“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
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