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 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?)