mostly harmless books

I finished The Dispossessed a week or so ago. I still don’t like Ursula K. LeGuin so much, but I realized the difference 10 years make. Reading stuff like this at ~14 left me with a big “WTF” since I didn’t know what she was talking about and there’s no real story. (Guy lives on a planet, guy goes live on a different planet, guy runs off… wow, fascinating… not.) I really appreciated the balanced view. Everyone’s free to draw their own conclusions, but neither Urras or Annares were made to seem better. All societies have flaws…

The idea of an invented language being used on a large scale like that seemed exagerrated at first (and didn’t feel completely justified in the end either), but the non-possession was interesting to witness in speech. “The mother” instead of “my mother” is weird.

And now I am blown away for the second time by Vellum. Unless you’re a genius (or are able to pay more attention that me), the book begs for a re-read. I am getting more of the parallels than the first time around. However, since I’m almost done and I’m leaving on holiday tomorrow, I won’t take it with me. Carrying a trade paperback for 100 pages’ reading is too much, and I doubt I can read Ink without google at my fingertips. So they shall have to wait for a week a so until I can devote my full attention too all those cultural and historical references.
(It’s funny I love books I don’t understand… and it’s funny - as in weird - that I can read for an hour about the 1919 Battle of George Square because it’s mentioned in about 5 pages of a book but I stay as far away from alternate histories as I can.)

You might also be interested in:

• Amazon reviewer on Vellum
• Back home, still with Vellum
• My first book porn post, aww