Blurt! — Sben

Blurt! — Sben
pile.org

Finished rereading The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, part one of The Lord of the Rings as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, for something like the twentieth time.

One thing that strikes me from this reading is how economical it is — seriously! — with the important exception of the poetry, which felt self-indulgent. Pay attention to how much happens in any given chapter, and how short that chapter is compared to how it would have been written by a modern author. Inner lives of the characters, and even much of the outer lives, are pared down, leaving us with the scope of an epic.

Also

Finished reading Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead, a followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.

— 8/14/2023 9:42am ∞
Finished reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky does the same thing as he did in his previous, but with an additional element and resulting different themes. There was also a bit of horror — beyond the previous book’s simple arachnophobia triggers — such that I didn’t want to put the book down in those sections.

— 8/11/2023 7:24pm ∞
Finished reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the only book he’s written solo that I hadn’t read (other than The Big U — is that any good?). Some amazing imagery, and carefully-thought-out social impacts of nanotechnology and post-scarcity that rhymed in some ways with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series.

The book has some vestiges of its time (e.g. some really dated stereotyping), and an abrupt ending characteristic of his earlier work, but the ending worked and overall I really liked the book.

— 8/4/2023 1:04pm ∞
“One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning….” — The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, 1995.

— 7/25/2023 10:09pm ∞
Finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. I had dragged my feet on this book because the marketing had put me off; this was apparently a Very Important book with Things to Say. I shouldn’t have paid attention: This was Stephenson’s most fun book since at least Reamde, and a very characteristic one, with hijinx, unlikely characters, passages where Stephenson showed off the cool research he’d done — the only thing missing was the badass Russian with a heart of gold.

Two notes: ① One exposition dump early in the book dragged a bit, though at least Stephenson had the character acknowledge it. ② The climax felt similar to those in Seveneves and Reamde, and possibly others further back that I’ve forgotten.

— 7/18/2023 7:22am ∞