Binti

Looking for some lighter reads for my job-library's collection, I thought that I would have a look at the novellas that were either winners or nominees for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.  I've been meaning to do this for a really long time, but now I had a very good excuse for having a look.
Of course, Nnedi Okorafor's name has popped up here and there for a while in other award lists, and I had also been wanting to read something of hers...  so this was a perfect moment to do so.
Tor publishing will give you a good deal on these novellas for Kindle so I bought the first one not knowing what to expect. 
I was amazed!  I was smitten!  I was grateful that the other two novellas in this series were available right now!  Never have I been so happy about buying something online and getting that instant gratification of reading as soon as possible!  Binti was wonderful, and the following novellas were great too.

I enjoyed them so much that I didn't stop there.  I have bought most of Okorafor's other books as well, and I am going to read as many as possible this year.  I am especially looking forward to reading her comic books.
So, if you just want a quick read, an introductory jolt of African futurism, this is where to start.  I have just read an article recently that supports this idea at Bookriot.  I can't wait to read what comes next.

Makes Me Mad, Mad, Mad!

Scientific experimentation, that is.  To be specific, experimentation on animals and people.

I began listening to We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler last weekend (narrated by Orlagh Cassidy).  This was a really good book.  Cleverly done, and written in such a way as to slowly whip me into a froth about the subject matter, a family experiment: raising a baby girl and a baby female chimp together.  The story is not so much about the experiment but about the aftermath.  What happens to the subjects when the experiment is over? This is my favourite quote from the book:

      “The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true,
only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.” 

Around the same time as listening to this book, I watched a documentary on television called Three Identical Strangers. It is about triplets who are raised separately without any knowledge of each other who reunite when they are nineteen, by accident.  It is a sad, shocking story, with scientific experimentation at the root of it.  There was no reason specified for this study and no conclusion.  

I just finished a book yesterday called  The Pox Party: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson.  Another bizarre story about scientific experimentation.   

All of these mentioned above are just random choices I made to meet certain reading categories, but I am flabbergasted by the co-incidence.   I loathe this topic!  I did all the research when I first became a vegan and I already know what happens in the laboratory to animals.  When I was in college I took developmental psychology (briefly...I was so disgusted by some of the reading, about experiments performed on babies that I chose to skip the rest of the course).  I unsubscribed from PETA because I hated the way they felt they needed to shove this info in my face repeatedly.  That wasn't the only reason, but I don't want to get too deeply in to the politics of it here.  

Going back to We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, whilst Fowler's book rattled the mad-o-meter she wrote a clever, eloquent and uniquely graceful story about what makes a family. Her protagonist, Rosemary Cooke's  conclusions about the experiment were profound.  It gave me food for thought and stuff to get cross about...
At the root of it all experimentation for the sake of it, for intellectual curiosity, makes me angry in several ways, so while the book was a good read, I didn't like how it set me off on a ranty tangent about psychologists etc.,
I was scowling and anxious until the very end.

The Broken Earth Trilogy

Okay...I caved.  I decided that I could read the second book in this trilogy this month and then read the third next month ( I thought that it would be a good idea to pace it out...) but it wasn't a good idea!  I want to read the next book NOW (imagine a grown woman throwing a major wobbly fit because she can't gratify her need to know immediately).
As I mentioned in my other post about N. K. Jemisin, I had read (listened to) The Fifth Season and then promptly bought the rest of her work.

This book is just amazing, different, engrossing.  There's that hint of a bygone terrestrial era (and I have always loved a book about an Earth that is no longer recognizable).  Though it is much more than that.  I really want to know how this world evolved to be what it is now and that is what holds my fascination (and always has!).  Added to that a strong female protagonist (who is a survivor), and a hard, painful backstory and you have The Fifth Season.   It gets exciting at the end however and then we get to The Obelisk Gate:

I loved this book!  It really is epic fantasy (and nominated for both The Nebula and Hugo Awards).  Sometimes the middling book of a trilogy is just filler, but not this one.  It's action packed from start to finish, keeping the story going along at a fast clip with some more backstory thrown in.  I hate to give spoilers, so I can't really say more about this book, except that I wish N.K. Jemisin good luck with the Hugos.  Now, to calculate how soon I can get the next book!

She Kicks Butt

N.K. Jemisin that is... 

I first heard of her last year when I was listening to The Fifth Season (last year's Hugo Award winner) and I loved the book so much I went out and bought everything else she has written.  I had noticed her name on the lists before for the Nebula award (she really gets around!) but hadn't paid any attention to her yet.  I'm kind of glad that I didn't, and that The Fifth Season was my first N.K. Jemisin book. 

 Her books are different, excitingly fresh whilst building a story about her worlds that are believable and rich with history.  It's sometimes hard to go there whenever I start a new book, sometimes you have to wrestle a little bit, really pay attention, and struggle somewhat until you understand the new universe of the book, but I didn't have to do that with any of Jemisin's books.  It was as easy as sitting in my favourite reading chair with a huge cup of coffee and just savoring that first delicious sip of whatever she wants to tell me (and really perking me up!).  

I have read in total five of her books now and I am hoarding what is left like a miser.  There is another two books to be read after The Fifth Season and I am patiently waiting for the third one to come out before I read the whole trilogy.  Nothing to despair about...I had a huge copy of four of her books called The Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods plus the novella The Awakened Kingdom).  It kept me busy for a while.    

I like her characters too.  So far most of them have been women, doing significant things in a world that wants to make them insignificant.  I wouldn't call them feminists... rather they are survivors which gives them a strength more powerful than something that could have been achieved in any other way than adversity.  I can connect with them.
I still have  The Dreamblood Duology ( The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun) to enjoy until the conclusion of her recent trilogy known as The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky) is released in August.

Uprooted

What a treat!  Picked up because it is the 2016 Nebula Award Best Novel recipient, I was pleasantly surprised.  Surprised because lately the award winners I have been reading have been somewhat yucky (yep I think I will stick to that...they were yucky!).  Yucky because these award winners were ugly, corrupt, violent, coarse, and full of bad people.  Uprooted had the same kind of characters and events in it but wasn't yucky.  There was ugliness, corruption, violence and bad people, yet the difference for me, I suppose, is that the coarseness was absent, and of course this isn't realistic fiction in any way.   
Uprooted drew me in immediately, and was an engrossing read all of the way through.  The story was fresh and new (though it was liberally steeped in folklore of the Slavic persuasion).  It was wonderful, exciting and a little romantic (the 'happily ever after' of this new folktale).
I am excited over the resurgence of these kinds of books.   I have students who don't really believe me when I tell a group that the original folktales were not meant for children, and then try to explain why (without traumatizing them with some truly gruesome, or should I say Grimm,  examples).  I love Uprooted, it is like the standard folktale, but with new twists, making what was old, new and fantastic again, giving life to while paying homage to the old... and this time, giving it back to the grown ups!

Blackout/AllClear

Imagine if you were a historian that could travel back in time to observe particular time periods.  Imagine getting stuck there for some unknown reason...

It's not a new idea, and after reading and watching Doctor Who, there are many examples of time travelling gone wrong, and of the sometimes terrifying consequences.

I read the first half of this dynamic duo a few years back as part of a selection of women authors who have won Nebula Awards.  I loved it until I got  to the end, when I thought,"What's going on here, isn't she cutting it a bit close?"  The book begins with a lot of almost harried activity...there is just so much going on, and underlying is this tension and an uneasy sense that things are tragically going to go to pot, the suspense is just building up with no real release.  Anyone who's read my blog knows just how annoyed I get when I make these discoveries (I hate to read a book and then have to wait for the sequel), but I take all the blame because I didn't do the research.  I was left hanging after finishing Blackout!  I have done the research now.  As a matter of fact I have bought several of Connie Willis' books in preparation for reading this pair, and it works to my advantage because in another of her books Firewatch  (a collection of short stories) is one about this particular universe, so it was with a smug feeling that I began the books, first with the short story Firewatch and then on to Blackout and finishing up with All Clear.  

Naturally I chose November to read this as during this month I usually read someting that has some relation to the World Wars, and these two did not disappoint.  I got an unusual education about an era in our history that is already so well documented.  It was a true homage to the English people, those folks who lived through the Blitz and afterward.  If you want to step in to history, this is a good way to do it.  I loved the books from beginning to end, and since there is over 1100 pages, there's a lot to love. 
I look forward to reading more of Connie Willis' books as these two were so well researched and written, I can understand why she has won so many awards for her genre. 

Burning Girls

                       Tor.com advertised on their Facebook page this week two novellas (Tor Originals) that are Nebula nominees, which are free to download.  Naturally I could not pass those up so (happily! joyfully!) they were downloaded with rapid dispatch to my Kindle app.       
Burning Girls by Veronica Schanoes   
I loved this story!  Cast in the early 1900's it was, from the very beginning, an immediately captivating tale.  As with all books (especially if you do not spoil things by doing a little research first), there were questions, and the more I read into it the more questions I had...it began so strongly as something that I could (but probably shouldn't) say was "Grimmesque", but much better than that. Of course, with a novella everything has to be more compact, but this story magically excels in it's ability to lure you into it's web. Exciting connections were made in it to other literature (The Brothers Grimm) and historical events and some of my questions were answered.  I haven't read a lot of Jewish folklore, I don't know much about the religion and lifestyle but this was fascinating, as well as familiar to what I have read, and rich with the traditions and lore of the past.   A fairy tale for grown-ups.  I will be looking for more by this author.
On top of all that nostaligic, folkloric awesomeness is the relationships involved, the strengths of the characters, the love and friendships between women and the artwork is lovely too.  It is, all together, an lovely attractive bundle and I hope might be available in book form someday.

Darwin's Radio

I have always had a hard time with the type of science fiction books which are really more about the science than the fiction.  Understandably there had to be a lot of science for the subjects in this book (evolution and biology), but it felt like a punishment for me to have to slog through it, which takes from my enjoyment and interest. 
Griping aside, this book was food for thought, and made me wonder what we will evolve into eventually.  We have lots of options thanks to popular fiction (Isaac Asimov’s future history is my favourite choice here...when there was robots naturally...) and television shows (the Star Trek universe), but in the actual future, how will we really turn out?  I can’t possibly predict.  Any ideas?

Man Plus

This is my first book by Frederik Pohl, and I am impressed with the thought put in to this particular subject; the processes needed to adapt a human to survive on the surface of Mars.  The detailed metamorphosis is astonishing, and the whole experience is shared by the reader, the shock, the betrayal, the personal relationships and politics behind such an endeavour.  Pohl throws you through a loop at the end though…watch out!

The Speed of Dark

When you are a kid you believe everything that an adult tells you.  What happens from there on in can go two different ways.  Either you can believe it as the truth for the rest of your life, or you will see it as a lie and act accordingly.  That’s a pretty simplistic approach, I could wax poetic about the many different kinds of lies and how, when we acquire wisdom as we grow up, we learn to interpret them and realise our own truths.  I have spent a great deal of my adult life re-interpreting my past and finding new truths every year (every day!) with the changing of my own perspective.
But what if you didn’t question what you were told?  What if you lived your life with blinders on believing that what was said to you was absolute and that  there was no alternate paths to take?  I shudder to think what my life would have been like now if I had listened and followed faithfully what my own adults told me.
That is what is at the heart of this wonderful book.  Beliefs and the ability to change them when they no longer make sense.
When I first started reading this book I was a little worried that it would be like Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, the theme is similar after all.  The journey the protagonist goes through was fascinating
I loved Lou,  and, admittedly I was picturing Benedict Cumberbatch when I was reading it.  I have found this year that reading about the process a person goes through, mentally, the struggles to understand adversity, and the natural conclusions each character made to reach their own ultimate goal, engaged my interest and had me riveted to my reading chair, eager to see what the results where in each epiphany.  I loved this story and will be looking for more by Elizabeth Moon.

Rite of Passage

Yet another of those post-Earth books with a different vision of how we (Earthlings that is…) all manage to survive the apocalypse… except this time there is no Earth (it has been destroyed in an unexplained manner).  Again we have survivors, somewhere in the not too distant future, who have evolved into their own separate cultures, one of the ship people and the other of the Colons (people who made it planet side).  The division is thus, and the protagonist lives on one of these ships, which is a world in an asteroid, a floating, cruising world, that goes between colonised planets, trading knowledge and science for material goods.  It all sounds good, though perhaps a little unfair for those planet side who no longer have the technology of the ships, and we are shown, through Mia (our strong female protagonist), the changing of perceptions, and the evolutionary changes of a people who, despite their advantages in technology, have lost some things  in their place, like art, music and literature.  Rite of Passage was very well written, riveting in fact, and some points were made that I thought were very interesting and applicable today.  Well worthy of it’s Nebula.

The Einstein Intersection

I read this because it won the Nebula Award.  It is actually the second book by Delany to win this award.  If it hadn't been for that reason I don't think I would have attempted it, because after my first experience with a Delany book I haven't felt the need to read another.  He's not a bad writer!  Just an abstract one, which makes you work very hard to grasp what he is portraying.  The story was almost essay-like (the way I write an essay is to plot my thesis, and then map out the points and approaches of my arguments), but it was disappointing to me because the points he was trying to make where not obvious to me even though he had basically laid everything out for you to put together, he just wasn't going to do it for you (this made me think it was unfinished).  Add to this challenge a badly converted e-book, and the confusion is just annoying.  But, there's more!  Misleading popular culture references will point you in the wrong direction and you have the novel in it's  bewildering, annoying whole.  I can see what is going on, but I'm pissed that the chaotic presentation detracted from what I suspect could have been a really good book.  Maybe, if I ever come across this in a second hand book store, I might buy it and give it another go.  Maybe.  Neil Gaiman wrote a foreward for it, so I am guessing for him it was a great inspiration to go ahead and write a novel chock-a-block full of gods from many diverse mythologies, a progenitor for him so to speak to create American Gods.  I recognised the parralels to Earth mythologies in The Einstein Intersection, I just couldn't understand their relevance to the story (even when you are given a weak explanation at the end).

So, my conclusion is this, electronic books are not always what they are cracked up to be, especially conversions from old books, though that isn't always the case... I have read actual books that are that obscure and seem to deliberately make it difficult to connect the dots (Divisadero anyone?). I plan to stick with actual paper books for as long as I can when it comes to older editions.  Oh, and Samuel R. Delaney is an aquired taste, which I don't have.

Blackout

Silly, silly me, I did not find out first if this was part of a series.  Not that I mind... it just means that it will be a re-read at a later date after I have bought the rest.
I read this because it was a Nebula winner, and you can take it from me that this book has earnt it's laurels.  I have never read Connie Willis before and I enjoyed myself so much that I want to collect the rest of her books and read them in the order intended.  While reading this book there were many references to things that I realise now were from past books and not from further along in this one... right up to almost the very end (the third last page!) I had expected this to conclude, and boy was I surprised that it was not so.  It's my own fault... internet access for me is spotty at best and taking the time to do the research before-hand has not been an appealing prospect. 
What is appealing, however is reading the rest of these stories and whatever else Willis has written. 

American Gods

Ever had a favourite mythology?  When I was a girl it was the Greeks.  I ransacked both the school library and the community library in my search for more about the Greek gods and goddesses, and when I was older, because these books were all in the same aisle, my love for other kinds of literature was born.  I loved to read classical literature (Plato and Aeschylus were amongst my favorites), and other plays of interest (Shakespeares tragedies and comedies).
After I read this I wanted to read some more (mythology that is).  Actually ever since The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams I have been meaning to read some Norse mythology, and after reading American Gods I find that there is just so much more out there for me to find out about.  I have heard that there will be a sequel and I will be the first one in line for that.
This is my first grown-up Gaiman book.  I was a little surprised with the colorful language, but reading further into the book, it just couldn't have been any other way.  I loved the god cameos and in particular I was really fond of Mr. Nancy.  The story was intriguing, mysterious, ugly and funny.  I am hoping that this is the literary style for Gaiman's adult books, as I really enjoyed this one and I gleefully look forward to reading the rest.  I can't help but mention (you know me I really can't help it), that I noticed the influence of Ray Bradbury in his style, and I am really impressed.  Oh and I totally knew it was in the klunker!

Camouflage

I had my reservations about reading this one, as I had read that Haldeman was basically a military science fiction author and that has never been a truly strong interest of mine.  But I am glad that I gave this book a chance, because despite all of the military references, it was a good story.  The protagonist was a visiting alien who was trying to adapt to living on Earth.  It's experiences thoughout history where interesting, as well as it's emotional and ethical development.  What was viewed as horrific before, became understandable the more I saw this character develop, and the conclusion of this story was an extremely satisfying one that encourages me to have a closer look at what this author has written (he has won more than one Nebula).

A Time of Changes

There are a few things I am particularly fond of in a novel, a story told in the first person, or one told in diary form.   One of my most favorite storylines are about worlds that have a colony of descendants from Earth, so we have a combination of some of my favorite things.  I love to see how these transplanted humans get along, what way they are different from good old Earthlings, and what they have done to possibly pervert what used to be the norm.  I also like a lot of background information, though you can't possibly put that in one book, especially one of this size, so ultimately I felt that there was a little something missing in this novel, but I try not to let that bias me, because not everyone can be as prolific about their post-earth world like say... Anne McCaffrey. 
There were lots of references to Earth (so apparently this story is not too far in the future).  The story rolled along at a steady clip, kept me engaged but while I'm thinking about it, there was one character, who was a catalyst to the crisis in the story, who just disappeared at a certain point and I didn't see anything about him again.
It was a baffling but interesting romp, in a not too strange world with a uniquely formed culture.  It won the Nebula so there's got to be a good reason for that right?

Dreamsnake

Not the most alluring title...I have been off fantasy ( I am just so tired of the ginormous line of sequels that follow these days) for a while now favoring science fiction over everything, but this one surprised me.  It's another Nebula winner which is why I cracked it open, and mercifully, I was drawn into the story on the first page.  What seems a very fantasy-ish book is just that but even more.   It is about civilization after a nuclear war.  So we are talking way-way-way-post-apocalyptic fiction, with just a few hints of ancient civilization thrown in to make me curious (I just love when it  can or might be traced back to good old Earth!). 
It had a kind of Planet of the Apes feel to it, you know the one where Charlton Heston discovers what is left over of the human race (not the mute Adam and Eve types), the creepy pale mutants who's heads are so far up their own butts they cant see anything but their own tummies?  Yeah... like that.
It was a good story, a pleasant sidetrack from what I have been reading recently, Vonda really knows how to pack it all in to one engaging and satisfying package.

Flowers For Algernon

This is a wonderful book!  I gobbled it up in one day and was crying by the end (a good indicator of how it affected me).
It won the Nebula Award in 1966 which is how it got onto my reading radar (I am working on reading the Nebula winners this year), and it truly did merit the award.  Being more realistic fiction than science fiction because even though science is the catalyst for the story, it is told in progress reports written by the protagonist and they were riveting reads.  I can't really say more than that as I would hate to give away the plot, so just go and get it and read it ok?

Babel 17

 My first Delany!  I am systematically working through all of the Nebula Award winners, and he was next on the list.  Babel 17 was a little murky, but I grew interested anyway.  Babel-17  has, I believe,  been an influence to other authors I have read, which was neat.
 I strongly suspect that Douglas Adams borrowed the concept of Babel 17 for his very own Babel fish and I have to wonder if David Bowie had read it too, because it was the first thing that popped into my mind when, in a part of the book, the audience applauded with finger clicks (remember the video for Blue Jean?).  If I hadn't raced through the story perhaps I might have traced other future influences, but I was in a hurry to see how this story would end.  Delaney put quite a bit of development into his universe,  though I  felt that there was something lacking to this story, there was something not told or finished yet, so many loose ends flapping about.  Which is always a pain in the arse, but it's worth a re-read in the future. 

Among Others

Just finished this gem of a novel this morning!  It has several things about it that appeal to me and they are this; 1. It is written in the form of a diary.
2. The protagonist talks a lot about what she reads (which is mainly science fiction, and because she was excused from doing three hours daily of exercise at her boarding school,  she read a great deal!). 3. It is what it is.  What I mean by that last part is that there isn't, like current popular fiction, a nasty twist at the end.  I seriously was waiting for the other shoe to drop because this story reminded me very strongly of the feel of The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks which had a seriously wicked, twisted ending, so when I was just ten pages from the end I was almost shaking in my boots wondering how this story would end, and then it did end!  The world did not drop out from underneath me, I was pleasantly surprised and I loved it!  What a mindfully suspenseful non-twisty tale.  Of course, I will be seeking out the rest of her books, once I have read all of the ones that were mentioned in this book (which I have not already read).   Jo must have made an extensive  study of the craft,  the knowledge is all there (which I can attest to having read a great deal of the books that were mentioned), I got the references.  If you are a sci-fi book-geek, this is a perfect book for you!    It won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards.