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What I've been reading: Books No. 33 & 34
Jul. 25th, 2019 04:11 pmBook No. 33 was "A Door Into Ocean" by Joan Slonczewski. This classic feminist sci-fi novel was a delight. It was a little slow to get going, but once I was a couple chapters in, I was hooked. It tells the story of the planet Valedon and its moon, Shora. Valedon has long been under the control of a galactic ruler, The Patriarch, but he has mostly left the moon of Shora alone. On the moon world, the all-female population breeds by parthenogenesis and appears to live primitively, but they have some of the most advanced "lifeshaping" sciences in all the 90-some ruled worlds. A noble woman named Nisi and young commoner man from Valedon named Spinel gets pulled into the increasingly fraught politics between the stone world and the water moon, as troops are sent in to quell the population of Shora and the commandant seeks to learn more about their life sciences.
The world-building and the character development are both wonderful on this, and it's clear the author has a good grasp on biological sciences. Most intriguing to me, however, was the theme around how a pacifistic society can resist terrible violence and domination in a peaceful way. This isn't a theme that I find common in sci-fi, and less commonly well done. The only other example that springs to mind is "The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk. Highly recommended!
Book No. 34 was "The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border" by Francisco Cantú. Cantu had studied public policy in college but wanted to have a firsthand experience of the border between Mexico and the U.S., so he took a job with immigration enforcement. His mother, proud of her Mexican heritage, was worried the job would warp him, and in many ways it did. He finally leaves after 4 years on the job, to go back into academia, but his experiences haunt him, especially after an immigrant friend goes back to Mexico to see his dying mother and is unable to get back safely to the U.S.
I thought this book was beautifully written. Cantu's prose just glows, throughout. However, I agree with a couple of criticisms I've seen of this book. Firstly, it does feel choppy, especially in the first 2/3 of the book. I am guessing that is why the title calls it "dispatches". Also, he lays out his experience with the border patrol in a fairly unemotional, dispassionate way most of the time. You can see it wearing on him, but he doesn't talk directly about how he feels about it much. Maybe that's a protective mechanism. The last third of the book, where a friend's disappearance shows him the ugly side of border enforcement he never had to deal with on the job is the most powerful. A little flawed, but beautiful and memorable. Recommended.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
The world-building and the character development are both wonderful on this, and it's clear the author has a good grasp on biological sciences. Most intriguing to me, however, was the theme around how a pacifistic society can resist terrible violence and domination in a peaceful way. This isn't a theme that I find common in sci-fi, and less commonly well done. The only other example that springs to mind is "The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk. Highly recommended!
Book No. 34 was "The Line Becomes A River: Dispatches from the Border" by Francisco Cantú. Cantu had studied public policy in college but wanted to have a firsthand experience of the border between Mexico and the U.S., so he took a job with immigration enforcement. His mother, proud of her Mexican heritage, was worried the job would warp him, and in many ways it did. He finally leaves after 4 years on the job, to go back into academia, but his experiences haunt him, especially after an immigrant friend goes back to Mexico to see his dying mother and is unable to get back safely to the U.S.
I thought this book was beautifully written. Cantu's prose just glows, throughout. However, I agree with a couple of criticisms I've seen of this book. Firstly, it does feel choppy, especially in the first 2/3 of the book. I am guessing that is why the title calls it "dispatches". Also, he lays out his experience with the border patrol in a fairly unemotional, dispassionate way most of the time. You can see it wearing on him, but he doesn't talk directly about how he feels about it much. Maybe that's a protective mechanism. The last third of the book, where a friend's disappearance shows him the ugly side of border enforcement he never had to deal with on the job is the most powerful. A little flawed, but beautiful and memorable. Recommended.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
