Books Completed April 2023

 

Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley - I got this after reading Bea Wolf last month, based on the afterward. And then I had to skip the forward, because I realized I'd never actually read the whole story, and I was spoiling the oldest story in English for myself. Sort of astounding. Anyway, I really enjoyed this translation/treatment, and I hope anyone who harrumphed over it chokes on their pearls. I found myself slipping into kenning a bit after reading this: "Ten-years tenured" was probably the best that slipped out, sad as that is.

 

Bro!

Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard - A novelette that should have worked for me: There are five characters, real specific goals, starkly contrasted. Something kept tripping me up though and around two-thirds through I realized what it was. And this is petty, I admit this. The main character had something undefinable happen in her chest every few pages. "Something hitched in her chest", "Something thawed in her chest", "Something exploded in her chest", and so on. Those are not exact quotes, but that was the pattern that threw me out of the story. Cool fire elemental, though.

Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Well I'm editing this in after hitting publish, which is a shame because this was one of the best books I've read in a long time. I saw another blog post somewhere recommending a series by this author and I think I will check that out next, once I get through a backlog a little. Two main characters playing off each other over generations, lovely worldbuilding woven into the storytelling, and an approach to mental health I've never seen before.

American Vaudeville, by Geoffrey Hilsabeck - I wanted to learn more about vaudeville after a conversation with my wife meandered there one morning, so I picked this up off bookshop.org as the top result. Not at all what I was expecting but a compelling way to approach the subject. Rather than a formal history, this is a long narrative that borders on a prose poem. The chapters on the individual stars were compelling portraits. I was expecting a little more on how vaudeville affected the early movies that replaced it, and how it continues to echo through our culture, such as it is. The layout of this book was wild, with photographs of vaudeville ephemera split across several pages of chapter headers.

Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers - The human-focused installment of the Wayfarers series. It's been a long time since I read a whole sci-fi series, I think. No, wait, I read Book of the New Sun last year. Anyway. 

• The series continues an admirable expression of progressive values into the sci-fi arena. I haven't read any interviews with Chambers but I suspect she is trying to manifest something lovely into the world. It's not a perfect space, but it's grounded in ecological efforts, patience, cross-cultural understanding, sex positivity... all that good shit.
• There's a solid "kill your darlings" that lands and doesn't go to waste. I don't think that's a spoiler.
• Perhaps a spoiler, a bit: The human fleet is revealed to have been built on the bones of cities, ripped apart and restructured by people who knew they would never fly on the ships they were building. Again, I don't like that we're normalizing "well, Earth is fucked, better get to space" stories, but if we can't even all agree to wear masks in hospitals anymore, this is the hardest aspect of the story to believe.
• Not sure how to put this, but sometimes the story feels like writing. Nobody chuckles this much. Nobody serves this much tea, or sighs so often. 

I did still enjoy it and would recommend it. I've finished the last of the series since starting this post.

The Stories of Ray Bradbury, introduced by Christopher Buckley - I thought I had read a lot of Bradbury, but there were stories I'd never heard of in this collection of 100 short works. Now, I decided to skip the stories included in The October Country, because when I started this tome in November 2022, and had just completed that annual read. So, yeah, I have been plinking away at this for months at bedtime, maybe three stories a week.

Someone with more time and/or intellect than me has probably analyzed Bradbury's relationship with Mexico. It struck me as his Martians are written more human than his Mexicans. And you get to pick your favorite "awful husband journeying through Mexico with traumatized wife" story. I know there are others that aren't even included here.

Also I have no idea who Christopher Buckley is but his introduction made both him and Bradbury out to be joyless bastards so I'm not much interested in finding out.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton - Before trying to write this post, I talked with my wife about words other than "enjoy". It'd be wrong to say I enjoyed this book. I was impressed by it, and moved by it. Beaton is a storyteller of the first degree always, and here she is telling part of her own story.