nishatalitha

So, I handed in my final Te Reo Māori assessment at the weekend and of course now I'm convinced I did something horribly wrong in the written. But it's too late and I haven't been able to make myself review it to check.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of moving into this house. It's still a good house, we still like it and we are slowly doing the necessary maintenance. Hopefully this year the front and back door. I do a lot with the garden (hopefully the alliums I planted out the front will come up).

Following a talk at work last week, I'm experimenting with mindfulness. The app provided by the people who did the talk is clearly designed for use with headphones because the first time A and I sat down to concentrate on our breathing for ten minutes, we did way longer than that as it kept timing out on my phone. Now I set a timer. Doing an actual ten minutes—as opposed to the however long but at least twice that—is actually not too bad. I'm not 100% convinced by this particular app generally, so if anyone has one they'd particularly recommend, let me know.

My grandad (my mum's dad) was recently moved to the hospital section of his care home (he had been in an assisted living apartment for the last 18 months or so). He's rallied a bit with the higher level of care, but the general estimate is that he'll last maybe a couple of months. And you know what, I'm okay with that, as are the family members I've talked to. He's 89, he misses Grandma, he wants to go home but can't look after himself properly and he's in a place where people are taking good care of him. Mum and the aunts visit regularly and have all necessary power of attorneys, so everything is undercontrol on that front. All appropriate plans are made and they know where things are.

When Grandma died, I found out via Whatsapp, which was fine at the time, but less so for a few months after when everytime I saw Whatsapp messages that had arrived overnight I was wondering who had died now! I forgot to make it clear to Mum last time we spoke that if possible I'd rather be woken in the middle of the night than wake up to a text message. I need to do that.

It's dinner time - steak & chips & gravy in response to it being shark week. Kua rite te kai.

My first Christmas day with the in-laws was both more low-key and more intense than that with my parents. It's fairly relaxed and low-energy, but at the same time there's not really any downtime, so there's a lot of looking at phones and attempting to make conversation at the same time.

We got home on Thursday and crashed and I have since been sucked into Yuletide. Worked Friday. Glad it's the weekend as am still decompressing from people.

Figured I would work through this list, which is James' list of 100 books to consider reading in 2019 turned into a meme. Italic = read it. Underlined = not this, but something by the same author. Strikethrough = did not finish.

( Read more... )

I am going to abandon my LJ and stick to Dreamwidth. I won't crosspost and I'm certainly not going to be actively following LJ anymore— I still haven't decided whether I will actually delete my LJ. This is the final impetus for my final move.

I'm rubbish at updating regularly, despite promising myself I'll be better each year. Maybe next year?

Feel free to subscribe etc - I'll almost certainly grant access.

The more observant of you will have noticed that I haven't been posting reviews for the last couple of months. This is due to a couple of reasons:

1. my head kinda broke a bit—mostly reaction from stress. The workstress is pretty much over, but I'm still reacting to it, and the homestress is ongoing, although with a lower intensity level. As a result I cut back on some committments and also online communicating. It was all a bit too much.
   
   
2. LOTNA, the SF group in London that the_eggwhite and I go to, has a bimonthly fanzine produced by and for the members. I've given them a my review of A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, but my thought is that I will give them two reviews for each magazine, which I will then post here, so there will be a gap whilst I move to the new schedule.

My criteria will remain the same for choosing the books.

I am late this month, thanks to organising a mini-gaming con, and also getting distracted into reading both Wolf Hall and Bringing Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (the latter two occupied nearly a week of reading time each).

Still, after racking my brains for what I did read this month, I do have a review offering for you. And it's a good one!

Title: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Author: Becky Chambers
Copyright:2014
Publisher: self-published but has been picked up by Hodder & Stoughton - see below
Obtained: e-book from Amazon
Author Website: Other Scribbles
Reason for review: This is an ensemble cast novel and only one of the least-used viewpoints is a white male (and he is hardly heroic). The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is self-published and was shortlisted for best debut in the Kitschies Awards, but has since been picked up by Hodder & Stoughton, been given a new cover and will be out in hardcopy in August this year (I plan to pick up a hardcover too). I read it twice in a week, made the_eggwhite read it—and he enjoyed it.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry, Planet is readily available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and I believe also from Kobo.

Blurb:Welcome aboard the Wayfarer.

Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. This is an everyday sort of ship, just trying to get from here to there.

But all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling. A Martian woman, hoping the vastness of space will put some distance between herself and the life she‘s left behind. An alien pilot, navigating life without her own kind. A pacifist captain, awaiting the return of a loved one at war.

Set against a backdrop of curious cultures and distant worlds, this episodic tale weaves together the adventures of nine eclectic characters, each on a journey of their own.

So, this is a delightful romp of a sf novel. As the title suggests, it is all about the journey not the destination (although as could be anticipated the destination isn't ideal and is then final climax of the book). Essentially the main job of the crew of this ship is creating wormhole tunnels for other ships to use (handwaved generally with enough plausible-seeming info for this non-sciency person) and with the arrival of their new clerk, submit a bid for and win the tender for creating a major new wormhole. They just have to travel for a year to get to the start point first! Ensembles are far more common in TV than books and it is nice to see a true ensemble book.

Our cast include several humans: Ashby the Captain who keeps the show on the road, who has to be friendly with his employees since he's living on a tin can in space with them, but also has to be their boss; Kizzy, the engineer, who reminds me of a cross between Kaylee in Firefly and Abby in NCIS; Jenks, the computer software engineer who also does some electrical engineering; Corbin the awkward white male algae farmer who makes the fuel and is obsessed with making it the best possible mix (almost but not quite the most minor viewpoint); and Rosemary, the ship's clerk who is new to the ship and to space which gives lots of good excuses for info-dumping. She is also the primary recurring viewpoint character (if this book could be said to have one),. The non-humans crew include Lovey, the ship's AI; Sissix, the reptilian Aandrisk pilot; Ohan, a Sianat Pair, an alien, who, because of a virus, is basically a wormhole calculator; and Dr Chef, a Grum, who is both the ship's medic and the ship's cook. Given the long trip they are on, reasons are found to meet family of, visit planets or learn backstory for most of the crew but particularly the non-humans.

First of all, I love that their clerk is the one that makes this possible. Paperwork is important guys! It isn't quite competent bureaucracy porn but it's respectable. I could stand to see more of Rosemary being a competent ships clerk. In addition, being print rather than screen, Chambers is not limited in how her aliens should look, and like James White, takes advantage of this. Also, humans are not the most powerful species in the galaxy which is often nice, and earth is ruined thanks to humans—the latter seems quite realistic to me.

This book is a slice-of-life novel. Nothing wrong with that—I quite like slice of life novels, particularly when they are done as well as this one is. For those of you who read fanfiction, it reminds me a bit of fic; for those of you who don't, the reminder is not a bad thing. I considered whether it reminded me of the Nathan Lowell Quarter Share series (another slice-of-live living-on-spaceships book, originally published in audio) and concluded that it didn't: whilst I enjoyed Quarter Share, later books in the series were a bit too creepy for me and I gave up on them. Also, they were all first person from one character's perspective, neither of which The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet are. Nor is it creepy, which yay.

On this ship, the crew works on the legit (but blue-collar) side of the law; they have a job, which they are good at; and the rest of the book is about the crew's relationships to each other. We do not quite go on a tour of each person's background, but throughout the book we do learn about some of the history for each character, but also what is important to them now. It focuses on the relationships between each character, and Chambers keeps things going with a deft hand. The relationships are not entirely what you would expect, and clearly illustrate the sf romance trope that humans can fall in love with any being (it is important to note that these loves are not all the eternal-love type of romance, but they are important now and it is worth trying).

One of my favourite quoteable bits is Sissix complaining to Dr Chef about humans and how they smell, Dr Chef saying he'd put odor neutralising formula in their soap and the humans hadn't noticed!

Language and use of gender is important. There is an underlying message about respecting people and how they wish to be perceived and called. Thought has also gone into body image both internal and external and how to be comfortable with yourself.

If elements of this book, upon reflection, seem a bit formulaic, moralistic or predictable I am fine with that, particularly since it fits in generally with left wing views. The storytelling is engaging, with a fairly light hand and it is, quite frankly, just a fun book to read. It never gets heavy or overwhelming and that sense of fun and the authorial light hand with drama makes it an easy and enjoyable read.

I will be keeping an eye out for more fiction by Becky Chambers.

If you like Firefly or Farscape or ensemble slice-of-life stories, then this is the book for you.

Other books I could have reviewed instead this month: Half-Life and Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang, Talk Sweetly to Me and Trade Me by Courtney Milan,

Title: Lagoon
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Copyright: 2014
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Obtained: from tombola lot at Worldcon from either BSFA or a London SF group
Reasons for reviewing: science fiction written by an American of Nigerian descent, which is set in Nigeria
Author Website: Nnedi.Com—which looking at says she has won a number of fantasy awards for some of her other books (I'm now embarassed that I haven't read more of her fiction and will rectify this).

Lagoon can be obtained from Amazon.co.uk and Amazom.com; I've also seen it in Waterstones, so hopefully is generally around in bookstores and libraries, do check locally

Book blurb: When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself.

Lagoon is a first contact novel set in Nigeria. A former housemate of mine came from Nigeria, but that's the closest I've been. This means that I have to take on faith that Lagos is like the description, but that doesn't matter—until I came to London, London was fictional— the Lagos of the book is an engaging and interesting place. It was fascinating reading the descriptions and trying to picture it in my head, feeling the energy and busyness of the place. Readers may also note the prevalent use of mobile phones; I gather this is true for much of Nigeria.

It is very clear from the beginning that Lagos is as much a character in the novel as the main POV characters. Ditto the sea for that matter; in many ways the book revolves around contact with the sea. But in brief, aliens come to earth. They would like a nice environment to live, one which their neighbours like too. Seriously, why would you land in the US or the UK where you would get found and probably locked up for scientific experiments by the government, when you could land in Nigerian waters where there is no such strong governmental control? The three main characters meet the alien, and events escalate and then rapidly spiral out of control. Not all the events are bad, not all are good. Overall, there is rapid and swift change, as well as resistance to change, before coming to a final conclusion which ultimately ends on a positive note for society as a whole.

One of the interesting things about this book, although there are three 'main' point of view characters, there are many minor points of view, most of whom only turn up once or twice. These include a road, a priest, an accountant and a singer amongst many others. In addition, there are quick perspective switches just after something major has happened in the book (I was particularly fond of the road and the tarantula). The characters do drop into pidgen English and some of the several other languages spoken in Lagos besides English are also used (generally with a translation and there is also a glossary at the end if you are the sort of person who reads those). Sometimes the use of multiple languages can be an author being clever, but in this case, it's a reflection of the city. It's the same of the points of view aspect: it's an example of authorial control and intent, rather than carelessness. All the point of view shifts tell the readers add an element or piece information.

In terms of pacing, which I am rubbish at describing, the first time I read this it kept me engaged the whole way (I wanted to know what happened next). The reread for this review took me a little while to get past the slower prologue, into the increasingly energetic rest of the book, but once I had, I raced through and quickly reached the can't-put-down point. Structure wise, I think it's relatively standard for a novel (from my dimly remembered high-school English classes), but there is nothing wrong with that. The narrative style and the location are more interesting about this book.

Overall, and without wanting to give anything away, this story is about change, both internal and external. And hopeful change at that. Even though some of the events in the book are quite awful, if not particularly graphic, the end is hoping for a positive future for Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

If you liked The Lego Movie, Pyramids (or other early works) by Terry Pratchett, or Farscape, give Lagoon a go. It's worth it. (Also, I was trying to come up with first contact books or TV that had positive change endings for this bit and really struggled!) I have reasons for choosing each of these comparisons, so if you find them a bit odd I'm happy to discuss.

Rating: 8/10

Next up: I haven't decided yet but am currently contemplating The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu or Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho.

Some months ago, my livejournal account was going to be renewed and thanks to my bank being overprotective, the payment was declined. I decided not to renew my paid LJ account and have finally set up one at Dreamwidth instead. I will still read in both places.

Haven't posted since May, but oh, well. In the intervening time, we have booked flights to New Zealand for January and done some of the booking for our travels around too. We still need to book accommodation for a night in Fox or Franz Josef, decide whether we are staying an extra night in Queenstown (and if so, book accommodation for that night) and also book flights back up north afterwards. It is in pretty good shape.

Since I have voting rights, I have dutifully been reading my way through all the Hugo nominations. There are some outstanding entries and some that left me cold. I will vote this week - I think it closes on Thursday! My bonus came through so I have also picked up a few new ebooks, including The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison which I have been resisting because it's 9GBP for the e-book! Also a couple of new James Hetley books - tamarillow you may be interested in checking them out (same universe as Dragon Eyes etc).

We came back from a week away with friends in Somerset on Friday and it is back to work tomorrow. I am not quite ready to be going back to work tomorrow—there is so much to do in the next two weeks! The week away was lovely; glorious weather, I cooked dinner for 21 once, ate and drank to my heart's content (and body's occasional displeasure) and swam daily. Also did lots of crosstitch and am making good progress on the wedding present for May.

In a couple of weeks there are two science fiction and fantasy geekery conventions: Nine Worlds and LonCon3. I feel more prepared to face them now (but have still not brought myself to look at the programme).

I have spent most of my spare time for the last couple of weeks trying to install Alice, trying to upgrade Annabelle so that I can install Alice (possibly I need to upgrade my motherboard, dammit), reading books both physical and electronic, and editing metadata. I also woke up every workday morning over that time desperately wishing I didn't have to go to work. So I arranged to take today off.

I slept in, hung out in the lounge in the sun, was sat on a lot by Jemima (who was determined to sit on me even when she was grumpy about it), read some and finished editing H in Calibre. The book I spent most of the day reading is The Madness of Angels: Or the resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin. I think N. K. Jemisin recommended her books at some point.

It's interesting — quite disjointed in places and for a while I wasn't sure if some of the disjointedness, particularly in terms of spacing on the page was due to coding or if it was intentional. Having read most of the book now, I think it's intentional, but I would be interested in seeing a hardcopy for comparision. Main character slips between I and We a lot, even in the same sentence, and the grammar changes depending on where he's using I or We, and this is also where the spacing tends to change. Urban fantasy and a sorta a classic one man alone against the night, but not, and in a completely different way from Rivers of London — for one thing, it's his own death that Matthew is looking into.

I need to go to sleep before 3am tonight. I bet that will help.

Boosting the signal received from sraun: the fourth book of Diane Duane's Tales of the Five.

AKA The Door into Starlight, the fourth in the series starting The Door into Fire and continuing in The Door into Shadow and The Door into Sunset - go read Diane's post on it. And then pass along the word.

Also, she just released a newly updated e-book version of the omnibus here.

Billing day is over, we managed not to kill annoying team member, and tomorrow should be much easier.

Also, I finished my kiwifandomsfest fic so I can post it tomorrow night.

Time for bed.

Over the course of this last week, I have concluded that what I had last weekend was probably a minor bout of the 'flu rather than a cold. Mostly because while my nose pretty much stopped running on Monday, I still had to come home from work around half eleven and spend the rest of the day in bed, and it took 'til Friday before I felt that I didn't need a lie down after work. Plus, I looked at flu symptoms on the Ministry of Health website and could tick most of them off (not, interestingly, the cough nor the body aches).

Gaming on Thursday night was lots of fun. GM's non-sentient characterisation of the week was a grandfather-clock. Still not as entertaining as the time he broke the game being an oak tree. Ended on a cliff-hanger, of course ('most everyone back in England and my coke-addict seventeen-year old changeling who grew up in the fantasy world back in England and apparently pregnant) and now I am really looking forward to next week's game.

Last night, having managed to drag myself away from the internet, I went to bed and reread Fate by Mary Corran. I last read it back when I was in high school and I had completely forgotten just how rampantly feminist it is - reminded me quite strongly of some of the Darkover books. tamarillow is discarding it, but I don't think I will keep it either - I doubt it meets my reread once in five years criteria. Besides, I always liked Imperial Light more.

Today was sunny and warm enough that I opened the deck doors in the morning. Didn't see many birds, but heard a lot, particularly tuis singing and the kererū flying. I swear kererū are the only birds I know of that sound like their wings are rusty! Got my summer cotton sheets mostly dry outside, too.

maudlinrose and I wandered into town where I bought a sports bra that will do (the underwire on the bra I was using having poked through) and she bought other stuff. Caught the Wilton and walked home from there rather than catch the Mairangi (25 minutes instead of 10) and that was lovely; air was crisp and cool, but there wasn't any breeze and we got home about an hour before sunset.

Now, unsurprisingly, I am sitting on the couch in the lounge, catching up on Bujold ML emails, editing metadata and reading fic, and it is warm enough in here that I don't need a jersey and we are cooking kumara in the fireplace for dinner.