What Are You Reading Wednesday
Feb. 6th, 2013 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookzombieWhat are you reading now?
The Kingdoms of Dust - Amanda Downum. Third book in the Necromancer Chronicles. Good fun as always, though a bit weirdly paced - I'm over half way through and it feels like everything so far has been prologue. There seems to be a lot of plot resolution to fit in yet!
What did you just finish?
Conversations with Octavia Butler edited by Conseula Francis. Now I've finished this, I have to admit to being a little disappointed. There's nothing wrong with the individual interviews - although some of the questions were frequently very obvious (I gave up on one radio interview transcription where the interviewer hadn't done even the most basic fact checking) - and you get a real sense of Butler's world view. She was not at all afraid to correct misconceptions and it's fun to watch her firmly putting some of the interviewers in their place (frequently variations on the theme of 'No, just because I'm black it doesn't mean that all my books and stories are about slavery.') The problem with the book is that it seems to have been compiled by just finding every interview with Butler they could and printing it. This means that there is lot of repetition. As a piece of literary conversation it's great, as something to actually read it's not very successful. It would have been better to select a handful of the interviews spaced over time.It would have been a slimmer book but a more useful critical tool. And so wanted to really like this one...
What books have you acquired this week?
None.
What did you just finish?
Conversations with Octavia Butler edited by Conseula Francis. Now I've finished this, I have to admit to being a little disappointed. There's nothing wrong with the individual interviews - although some of the questions were frequently very obvious (I gave up on one radio interview transcription where the interviewer hadn't done even the most basic fact checking) - and you get a real sense of Butler's world view. She was not at all afraid to correct misconceptions and it's fun to watch her firmly putting some of the interviewers in their place (frequently variations on the theme of 'No, just because I'm black it doesn't mean that all my books and stories are about slavery.') The problem with the book is that it seems to have been compiled by just finding every interview with Butler they could and printing it. This means that there is lot of repetition. As a piece of literary conversation it's great, as something to actually read it's not very successful. It would have been better to select a handful of the interviews spaced over time.It would have been a slimmer book but a more useful critical tool. And so wanted to really like this one...
What books have you acquired this week?
None.