'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Ooh, The War of the Worlds. I should have thought of that. It does have that last-minute bacterial reprieve.
Day of the Triffids goes with all those other early '50s "this is the way the world ends" books. J.G. Ballard practically made a career of destroying the world in different ways for a while.
Hmm there was a sort of post-apocalyptic sci-fi war novel that was published pre WWII, may pre WWI. It was sort of a WW-I that just goes on forever and spreads throughout the world. No nukes needed because no civilian territory left to grow food on, no place free of the horrors of war, disease spreading everywhere as it does in the case of war. Also the soldier all hate the civilians because it was the civilans that created the war. So it looks like the military on all sides will get together and create a giant military dictatorship based on hatred and contempt for civilians. Very chilling, prose kind of leaded, characters two dimensional, world building frighteningly convincing. Based on actual experience of Crimean war or WW I?
Wish I knew the title or author.
The DH and I used this as our dinner topic last night. He immediately mentioned War of the Worlds and Time Machine.
His contribution was that WWI was the genesis of some types of modern horror (see James Whale as an example) including the beginnings of an apocalyptic outlook. Usually people think of the gas attacks, and the fact that localities were assigned together so whole towns could be wiped out, but strategic bombing was developed in WWI. The ability to destroy a civilian center from high altitude, with no possibility of defense had a definite psychological impact (although not as big as the implementors hoped).
The ability to destroy a civilian center from high altitude, with no possibility of defense had a definite psychological impact (although not as big as the implementors hoped).
I had an art history class in college that spent a good long time on the impact of WWI on art - and the reprise of danger from the skies as a topic (Max Ernst & Picasso being her main displays)... both from gods & angels (anything winged, actually) as well as man-made sources. Her point almost to the word matches your DH's, Raq.
Since Spook Country is listed as "on hold" online at my library, and since I DO NOT have an email indicating that it's being held for me, I have to assume I'm somewhere down on the list. Pooh.
I think I'll just pick up Blood Music tonight and ask where I am on the wait list.
I liked Water for Elephants so much that DH read it as soon as I'd finished - which is quite unusual here at Chez Bee. Turns out we don't share a lot of books - only Harry Potter and anything by Dan Simmons. The end of Elephants = best payoff ever. Go read it. Get a smile. And then run off with the circus, why doncha?
Steph, I want to thank you for pimping Kiki Strike. I picked it up on Tuesday (while buying the newest Stephenie Meyer book for the kid) and I'm loving it! So fun!
I don't know how I'm supposed to take that seriously when the writer says things like: "...she seems unaware that all innovative language derives its impact from the contrast to straightforward English."
Really? All innovative language follows that rule? Isn't that more like a formula? Which is to say, not innovative?
eta: Jesus! Then the negative comparison of Cormac McCarthy to Ken Follett. Yeah, Cormac needs to take a clue from Ken. That'd make his novels better.
And this presumption:
We have to read a great book more than once to realize how consistently good the prose is, because the first time around, and often even the second, we're too involved in the story to notice. If Proulx's fiction is so compelling, why are its fans more impressed by individual sentences than by the whole?
Just seems nutty to me. I know plenty of people read primarily for plot, but that's extremely reductive to hold every novel to that standard.
eta: Here's another sweeping generalization that seems insupportable: "But novels tolerate epic language only in moderation."
Tolstoy? Tolkien? Melville? Pynchon? We know them for their moderation?
Oh, good, I'm not alone in finding modern "literature" turgid.