In front of every silver lining
May. 6th, 2005 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI wasn't at work today. My body chose last night to react really violently to something I ate - very possibly the latest lot of antibiotics. On the plus side I got some reading done - that being the most energetic thing I was capable of. In the last couple of weeks I have not got much reading done so it was a chance to catch up.
First up was Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson.
Wilson writes stories of physical or temporal dislocations and the impact that this has on the people affected. This time a group of scientists, writers and workers are trapped in a scientific research institution/observatory. Unlike previous books where the dislocation has bee Clarke's Law magical, Wilson has chosen the prosaic government quarantine mechanism to cut these people off. There is mystery and there is evident stress on the characters. As the mystery unfolds, the characters change and grow or unhinge as the case may be. The story eventually is one of transcendence realised in a convincing manner.
Wilson is another of my top ten authors. He never fails to provide compelling reading. This may be his best constructed and subtle book yet. It has believable characters and more importantly these characters go through believable progression. Highly recommended.
A couple of friends strongly recommended Raw Spirit by Iain Banks so between naps I read that as well.
I am a fan of Banks' fiction, but this book is a travelogue of his pilgrimage around the Whiskey distilleries of Scotland. For the most part it is a bland recitation of the places he went, the people he went there with, the cars he drove and the whiskey he drank along the route. Since I'm not a single malt aficionado, the entertainment had to come from the story of the journey. But there was no engagement for me. The prose never added any colour to the story in the way that, say, Bill Bryson manages.
But the book wasn't a total snore. Every so often Banks would take a diversion into his personal history to tell an anecdote from his past. These were much more engaging - particularly the bits about writing and being a writer. Still it wasn't really enough to keep me engaged and stop those naps catching up on me.
First up was Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson.
Wilson writes stories of physical or temporal dislocations and the impact that this has on the people affected. This time a group of scientists, writers and workers are trapped in a scientific research institution/observatory. Unlike previous books where the dislocation has bee Clarke's Law magical, Wilson has chosen the prosaic government quarantine mechanism to cut these people off. There is mystery and there is evident stress on the characters. As the mystery unfolds, the characters change and grow or unhinge as the case may be. The story eventually is one of transcendence realised in a convincing manner.
Wilson is another of my top ten authors. He never fails to provide compelling reading. This may be his best constructed and subtle book yet. It has believable characters and more importantly these characters go through believable progression. Highly recommended.
A couple of friends strongly recommended Raw Spirit by Iain Banks so between naps I read that as well.
I am a fan of Banks' fiction, but this book is a travelogue of his pilgrimage around the Whiskey distilleries of Scotland. For the most part it is a bland recitation of the places he went, the people he went there with, the cars he drove and the whiskey he drank along the route. Since I'm not a single malt aficionado, the entertainment had to come from the story of the journey. But there was no engagement for me. The prose never added any colour to the story in the way that, say, Bill Bryson manages.
But the book wasn't a total snore. Every so often Banks would take a diversion into his personal history to tell an anecdote from his past. These were much more engaging - particularly the bits about writing and being a writer. Still it wasn't really enough to keep me engaged and stop those naps catching up on me.