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Meascán mearaí
There's always a chance that if I hadn't gone to the concert I would have gotten some reading done. It's just not the way to bet since there's nothing too compelling on my plate at the moment.
I did finish off Embassytown a couple days ago, but I had to force myself to. I knew that a non-linguist like Miéville wouldn't be able to craft a linguistic twist that I'd find fully satisfying but I gave him a lot of goodwill for trying. He squandered some of that by trying to shoehorn his solution into a typical thriller ending so awkwardly that even he felt the need to lampshade it.
The whole nature of the crisis he invents naturally lends itself to a more drawn-out resolution. The breakdown of society--particularly when you're part of a vulnerable minority population--is terrifying enough in itself without needing to be amped up with a grand confrontation. Worse, I felt that it had the ultimate effect of making his alien much less intriguingly alien. It's nice to have an unambiguously happy ending in a scifi thriller, I guess, but a less clearcut resolution would've given the work as a whole more depth and resonance.
Now I'm back to more of a palate-cleanser, Finbar's Hotel. It's a collaborative work between Dermot Bolger, an Irish writer I'd never heard of before, and a grab bag of contemporary authors. Of the six, there's one I haven't read (Jennifer Johnston), two I have read and don't really care for (Joseph O'Connor and Colm Tóibín), and three I rather like (Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton).
There are seven chapters to the book, so presumably each took one or at least did the heavy lifting. So far, though, the integration is pretty seamless and I don't know their respective styles well enough to clearly say who wrote what. But sleuthing isn't what attracted me to it and it's not what's keeping me interested. It's an easy read with lots of humour (I've LOLed on the shuttle more than once already), which passes the time on my commute but isn't necessary enough to be pull me away from my phone of an evening.
My other throwaway read is Motherfoclóir, a bestselling work from a Gaeilgeoir known primarily for his tweets. I thought it would annoy me somewhat and it does--the number of errors would be shocking if it were any other official EU language, he tries too hard to be amusing, and I don't really care about his adolescent angst--but I also thought I'd learn some fun vocabulary and gain a bit more insight into Irish culture and I have, so it's all good.
I did finish off Embassytown a couple days ago, but I had to force myself to. I knew that a non-linguist like Miéville wouldn't be able to craft a linguistic twist that I'd find fully satisfying but I gave him a lot of goodwill for trying. He squandered some of that by trying to shoehorn his solution into a typical thriller ending so awkwardly that even he felt the need to lampshade it.
The whole nature of the crisis he invents naturally lends itself to a more drawn-out resolution. The breakdown of society--particularly when you're part of a vulnerable minority population--is terrifying enough in itself without needing to be amped up with a grand confrontation. Worse, I felt that it had the ultimate effect of making his alien much less intriguingly alien. It's nice to have an unambiguously happy ending in a scifi thriller, I guess, but a less clearcut resolution would've given the work as a whole more depth and resonance.
Now I'm back to more of a palate-cleanser, Finbar's Hotel. It's a collaborative work between Dermot Bolger, an Irish writer I'd never heard of before, and a grab bag of contemporary authors. Of the six, there's one I haven't read (Jennifer Johnston), two I have read and don't really care for (Joseph O'Connor and Colm Tóibín), and three I rather like (Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton).
There are seven chapters to the book, so presumably each took one or at least did the heavy lifting. So far, though, the integration is pretty seamless and I don't know their respective styles well enough to clearly say who wrote what. But sleuthing isn't what attracted me to it and it's not what's keeping me interested. It's an easy read with lots of humour (I've LOLed on the shuttle more than once already), which passes the time on my commute but isn't necessary enough to be pull me away from my phone of an evening.
My other throwaway read is Motherfoclóir, a bestselling work from a Gaeilgeoir known primarily for his tweets. I thought it would annoy me somewhat and it does--the number of errors would be shocking if it were any other official EU language, he tries too hard to be amusing, and I don't really care about his adolescent angst--but I also thought I'd learn some fun vocabulary and gain a bit more insight into Irish culture and I have, so it's all good.