What the Cat Dragged In Wednesday
Mar. 7th, 2018 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
Tarka the Otter is a remarkable book. It might actually be a little too resolutely non-anthropomorphic to be entertaining in the way you expect a novel written for humans to be entertaining, but it was also completely riveting, in a strange way, in that I was riveted even when I was bored.
Williamson set out to write a book about otters, and he didn't mean fantasy otters with language and a mythology, making plans and having conversations all day like a bunch of weirdly-shaped human dudes, he meant otters. Tarka and his kind spend their days eating, playing on the ground, learning to swim, playing in the water, learning to hunt, catching and eating fish, sleeping, running and hiding, raising cubs and forgetting them. The otters communicate in yips, hisses, licks and nips, but they don't converse. They don't analyze or wonder. They're otters. They occupy a disorientingly specific physical landscape, and they have a hell of a lot of fish to eat.
Did you know that there was an otter-hunting season? That people used to hunt otters with a pack of dogs? I didn't, but it's true. According to Wikipedia, the practice ended in the 1970s when otters got too scarce. I don't get the impression that Williamson is a fan, though he doesn't vilify the hunt, either. The dogs and the hunters are characters in this book, as much as any one of the animals is a character, and are treated exactly the same as the trees, fish, owls, badgers, roads, grasses, and so on, as features of the environment. A few of the more memorable otter-hounds, like the more memorable birds, get names; the humans don't, though they speak from time to time.
I was delighted to learn both that there is an audiobook narrated by David Attenborough, and that Gerry Durrell wrote the screenplay for a movie version.
C is for Corpse is an almost completely satisfying detective story right up through the brilliant reveal when all the pieces (including the title) come crashing into place. Unfortunately, this moment is immediately followed by Kinsey Millhone getting chased around a morgue by a syringe-wielding villain, who reveals his ax-craziness by, well, showing up with a syringe and chasing Kinsey around the morgue. It's all a little too Yakity Sax for me. The rest of the book is great, though, and Kinsey is great. I finished feeling glad that there are 24 more in the series.
If you like frequent reminders that a book was written in the 1980s, you'll find a yogurt-and-quiche-laden smorgasbord here: there are health food jokes, tracksuits as formal wear, microfilm-machine-induced nausea, "Chinese food syndrome," and my all-time favorite, the Obscene Phone Call.
What I'm Reading Now
Stardoc by S. L. Viehl. This is such a silly, exuberant space opera that I initially thought it was about thirty years older than it is (first published in 2000). That's not a criticism, it's exactly what I wanted out of a book called Stardoc. Cherijo Grey Veil is a young human physician who runs away from her overbearing mad-scientist father and a disappointingly space-racist future Earth to work in a SPACE HOSPITAL. The concept of a multi-species SPACE HOSPITAL was explored in some depth by James White's Sector General series, and the appeal of Stardoc is similar, though with less loving attention to alternative evolution and its discontents. Here there's a lot of focus on medical drama staples: red tape, interpersonal drama, and bizarre medical emergencies- but the asshole colleagues, gossipy nurses, administrative tools, and love interests are an assortment of non-humans, ranging in size from colossus to snail, all of whom have low expectations of Cherijo's ability to cope with diversity because she comes from the DNA-purity-obsessed space backwoods. In this world, Terrans are primarily known outside Terra for spitting on the ground when non-Terrans walk by. Cherijo is not a spitter, but her co-workers are wary just the same.
What I Plan to Read Next
Love and the Loveless is here! I also celebrated a minor book-reducing victory (all books off the floor, only two books lying flat on top of a row of shelved books) by immediately going out and buying three more books. One of them is A for Alibi by Sue Grafton.
Tarka the Otter is a remarkable book. It might actually be a little too resolutely non-anthropomorphic to be entertaining in the way you expect a novel written for humans to be entertaining, but it was also completely riveting, in a strange way, in that I was riveted even when I was bored.
Williamson set out to write a book about otters, and he didn't mean fantasy otters with language and a mythology, making plans and having conversations all day like a bunch of weirdly-shaped human dudes, he meant otters. Tarka and his kind spend their days eating, playing on the ground, learning to swim, playing in the water, learning to hunt, catching and eating fish, sleeping, running and hiding, raising cubs and forgetting them. The otters communicate in yips, hisses, licks and nips, but they don't converse. They don't analyze or wonder. They're otters. They occupy a disorientingly specific physical landscape, and they have a hell of a lot of fish to eat.
Did you know that there was an otter-hunting season? That people used to hunt otters with a pack of dogs? I didn't, but it's true. According to Wikipedia, the practice ended in the 1970s when otters got too scarce. I don't get the impression that Williamson is a fan, though he doesn't vilify the hunt, either. The dogs and the hunters are characters in this book, as much as any one of the animals is a character, and are treated exactly the same as the trees, fish, owls, badgers, roads, grasses, and so on, as features of the environment. A few of the more memorable otter-hounds, like the more memorable birds, get names; the humans don't, though they speak from time to time.
I was delighted to learn both that there is an audiobook narrated by David Attenborough, and that Gerry Durrell wrote the screenplay for a movie version.
C is for Corpse is an almost completely satisfying detective story right up through the brilliant reveal when all the pieces (including the title) come crashing into place. Unfortunately, this moment is immediately followed by Kinsey Millhone getting chased around a morgue by a syringe-wielding villain, who reveals his ax-craziness by, well, showing up with a syringe and chasing Kinsey around the morgue. It's all a little too Yakity Sax for me. The rest of the book is great, though, and Kinsey is great. I finished feeling glad that there are 24 more in the series.
If you like frequent reminders that a book was written in the 1980s, you'll find a yogurt-and-quiche-laden smorgasbord here: there are health food jokes, tracksuits as formal wear, microfilm-machine-induced nausea, "Chinese food syndrome," and my all-time favorite, the Obscene Phone Call.
What I'm Reading Now
Stardoc by S. L. Viehl. This is such a silly, exuberant space opera that I initially thought it was about thirty years older than it is (first published in 2000). That's not a criticism, it's exactly what I wanted out of a book called Stardoc. Cherijo Grey Veil is a young human physician who runs away from her overbearing mad-scientist father and a disappointingly space-racist future Earth to work in a SPACE HOSPITAL. The concept of a multi-species SPACE HOSPITAL was explored in some depth by James White's Sector General series, and the appeal of Stardoc is similar, though with less loving attention to alternative evolution and its discontents. Here there's a lot of focus on medical drama staples: red tape, interpersonal drama, and bizarre medical emergencies- but the asshole colleagues, gossipy nurses, administrative tools, and love interests are an assortment of non-humans, ranging in size from colossus to snail, all of whom have low expectations of Cherijo's ability to cope with diversity because she comes from the DNA-purity-obsessed space backwoods. In this world, Terrans are primarily known outside Terra for spitting on the ground when non-Terrans walk by. Cherijo is not a spitter, but her co-workers are wary just the same.
What I Plan to Read Next
Love and the Loveless is here! I also celebrated a minor book-reducing victory (all books off the floor, only two books lying flat on top of a row of shelved books) by immediately going out and buying three more books. One of them is A for Alibi by Sue Grafton.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 05:02 pm (UTC)David Attenborough as narrator is so inevitable that it came as a surprise, just because perfection is rare. <3
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 03:34 pm (UTC)I did know there used to be otter hunts and nowadays otter hounds are either endangered or extinct as a dog breed because they is no use for them anymore. Also in the UK there was a famous wildlife presenter called Terry Nutkins was sent off by his parents to live with Williamson when he was a teenager. Nutkins was also missing the tops off two of his fingers after otters bit them off. It's pleasing Williamson has written a novel about animals that isn't anthropomorphic. Not that there is anything wrong w/ anthropomorphic animals;) I get annoyed by books in the animal section of book shops really being about the writer's journey: human element begone please!(!).
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 04:55 pm (UTC)Terry Nutkins was sent off by his parents to live with Williamson when he was a teenager.
It was Gavin Maxwell, actually! (as I have just now learned). It turns out there's more than one otter nut in the 20th c. UK.
I am glad you've chosen to illustrate this comment with Anthro Lion John the Worst. <3 I don't want to say No Anthropomorphic Animals; I also loved the hell out of The Wind in the Willows where all the woodland creatures were somehow simultaneously Oxford dons and no one had a problem with it. But it is refreshing and fascinating to see a writer really camp out long-term with the idea of writing about animals as themselves.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-08 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-08 04:29 pm (UTC)I don't know how to make a robot otter, but I'm sure the readers of Make Magazine would enjoy the challenge. The problem of getting enough land is a little harder. :(
Otters seem to have had a bit of a moment. Though Tarka and Maxwell's book were written several decades apart, they were both made into movies in the 70s.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-09 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 05:46 pm (UTC)I think I'm kind of grateful that you have read this for all of us, even though I grew up in the Land of the Tarka Trail, so probably by all rights it should have been me.
Kinsey Millhone getting chased around a morgue by a syringe-wielding villain, who reveals his ax-craziness by, well, showing up with a syringe and chasing Kinsey around the morgue.
Perhaps the author had been reading Tarka and felt the need for some very human excitement?
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 06:14 pm (UTC)I'm glad to learn there's a Tarka Trail! In the book, there is an italicized heading at the top of nearly every page, noting the location of the action JUST IN CASE you want to wander all over the countryside following the footsteps of otters. It's nice that the parks people were able to take a hint.
It's possible! (Tarka does end with an otter being chased all over the world by a pack of otterhounds, so who knows?)
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 10:22 pm (UTC)Of course, now my nice bare floor is covered in papers. . . but that's temporary. At least, these specific pieces of paper are temporary.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-07 11:37 pm (UTC)We don't have any Little Free Libraries, but there's an Adopt-A-Book shelf at the library where I leave books sometimes. Sometimes I've even left a book without taking three! And there's a similar shelf at one of the cafes that also gets populated with zines from time to time.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-08 02:17 pm (UTC)