high priority, low satisfaction
Sep. 22nd, 2018 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraFor some reason my past self (two different past selves - or, actually, three) thought I *really* wanted to read Who Fears Death and that Star Wars anthology they did last year. Present self not feeling appreciative of past selves' choices.
Who Fears Death is one of Nnedi Okorafor's earlier works - my to-read spreadsheet claims I added it to the list in 2009, although it didn't come out until 2010, so probably that's just a case where my back-dating when I converted to the spreadsheet was sloppy. (Everything on the list before I started writing down dates in fall of 2010 got to be 2009.) It probably then got a priority ranking pretty early in the back-ranking process? (Which is still ongoing... someday I'll catch up... not on reading, I mean, just on spreadsheeting...) If you've noticed that I have more to say about how I came to be reading this book than about the book itself, well, unfortunately, I really didn't get much out of this. Okorafor's writing style doesn't quite seem to land for me... I think when I was newer to reading her work, I was more open to it because it felt novel and that's always exciting, but several books in I may be concluding we're just not a great match of writer and reader. I mean, I did really like and would still recommend the Binti trilogy! But this one... I just didn't feel engaged with the characters and plot developments felt like they came out of nowhere, which is similar to where I was with Akata Warrior but worse. I'm glad that I read it because hey, it's another important work of sff that I've read, but I think I'll be taking a break from Okorafor now (until something ends up on a ballot, probably).
From a Certain Point of View is 40 stories from the point of view of minor characters from Ep.IV. I'm old enough to remember Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales from Jabba's Palace, which I think we thought were so much fun back in 1995. (But also sort of ridiculous?) So, in one sense, it's sort of nice to see them restarting the cycle of franchise-sanctioned elaboration. In another sense I am old and haven't we already done this and also fandom is on the internet now so there is *so much* more interesting (and more transgressive) non-sanctioned elaboration, why do I need to read 40 profic takes when they're not even gonna make anyone interesting kiss. (Ok, Glen Weldon tried, shoutout to Glen Weldon for a little Stormtrooper/officer affair.) There were, as it turned out, a few that I thought were worthwhile - Claudia Grey's Qui-Gon POV "Master and Apprentice" and Madeleine Roux's "Eclipse", about the last days of Breha Organa on Alderaan (which made me cry), because, I suppose, I'm actually much more interested in stories about characters I care about than stories about characters I don't. (And that's Why Fanfic Is Good.) Gary D. Schmidt's "There Is Another" was also interesting, about a Yoda who is keen to start training the promising Skywalker child, meaning Leia, until Force Ghost Obi-Wan shows up and is like noooope you gotta train Luke and Yoda's like shit, really? Frustrating from a "why DOES the story always has to be about some less-deserving chosen-one boy" angle but it's an interesting character beat. Honorable mention to Ben Acker and Ben Blacker's "Bump", about a certain Stormtrooper who belatedly realizes those *were* the droids he was looking for, and Nnedi Okorafor's story (there she is again... I mean, she really is an interesting writer, maybe I just want her to write more shorter stuff than novels) "The Baptist" imagining the dianoga as a Force-sensitive sentient person whose interaction with Luke is an important part of his journey. So, ok, I guess that's 6 out of 40 I thought were worthwhile, which isn't terrible, but did not feel like a great rate of return at the time. If you read this I would maybe recommend reading them one at a time over a period of weeks or months, maybe they're more enjoyable in smaller doses?
Who Fears Death is one of Nnedi Okorafor's earlier works - my to-read spreadsheet claims I added it to the list in 2009, although it didn't come out until 2010, so probably that's just a case where my back-dating when I converted to the spreadsheet was sloppy. (Everything on the list before I started writing down dates in fall of 2010 got to be 2009.) It probably then got a priority ranking pretty early in the back-ranking process? (Which is still ongoing... someday I'll catch up... not on reading, I mean, just on spreadsheeting...) If you've noticed that I have more to say about how I came to be reading this book than about the book itself, well, unfortunately, I really didn't get much out of this. Okorafor's writing style doesn't quite seem to land for me... I think when I was newer to reading her work, I was more open to it because it felt novel and that's always exciting, but several books in I may be concluding we're just not a great match of writer and reader. I mean, I did really like and would still recommend the Binti trilogy! But this one... I just didn't feel engaged with the characters and plot developments felt like they came out of nowhere, which is similar to where I was with Akata Warrior but worse. I'm glad that I read it because hey, it's another important work of sff that I've read, but I think I'll be taking a break from Okorafor now (until something ends up on a ballot, probably).
From a Certain Point of View is 40 stories from the point of view of minor characters from Ep.IV. I'm old enough to remember Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales from Jabba's Palace, which I think we thought were so much fun back in 1995. (But also sort of ridiculous?) So, in one sense, it's sort of nice to see them restarting the cycle of franchise-sanctioned elaboration. In another sense I am old and haven't we already done this and also fandom is on the internet now so there is *so much* more interesting (and more transgressive) non-sanctioned elaboration, why do I need to read 40 profic takes when they're not even gonna make anyone interesting kiss. (Ok, Glen Weldon tried, shoutout to Glen Weldon for a little Stormtrooper/officer affair.) There were, as it turned out, a few that I thought were worthwhile - Claudia Grey's Qui-Gon POV "Master and Apprentice" and Madeleine Roux's "Eclipse", about the last days of Breha Organa on Alderaan (which made me cry), because, I suppose, I'm actually much more interested in stories about characters I care about than stories about characters I don't. (And that's Why Fanfic Is Good.) Gary D. Schmidt's "There Is Another" was also interesting, about a Yoda who is keen to start training the promising Skywalker child, meaning Leia, until Force Ghost Obi-Wan shows up and is like noooope you gotta train Luke and Yoda's like shit, really? Frustrating from a "why DOES the story always has to be about some less-deserving chosen-one boy" angle but it's an interesting character beat. Honorable mention to Ben Acker and Ben Blacker's "Bump", about a certain Stormtrooper who belatedly realizes those *were* the droids he was looking for, and Nnedi Okorafor's story (there she is again... I mean, she really is an interesting writer, maybe I just want her to write more shorter stuff than novels) "The Baptist" imagining the dianoga as a Force-sensitive sentient person whose interaction with Luke is an important part of his journey. So, ok, I guess that's 6 out of 40 I thought were worthwhile, which isn't terrible, but did not feel like a great rate of return at the time. If you read this I would maybe recommend reading them one at a time over a period of weeks or months, maybe they're more enjoyable in smaller doses?
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 01:26 am (UTC)