The Nancy Drews I read were all my sister's. She was born in 1959, so they were probably mid- to late-60s imprints. So I've no idea what the originals were like.
Harriet Vane, from the Dorothy Sayers books in the 30s, seemed pretty spunky. I like the beginning of Have His Carcase:
The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.
Sounds good to me. Although I wouldn't mind having both cures.
Mmm, that reminds me it's been over a year since my last Wimsey re-read.
Does anyone know how on or off Neal Stephenson is with the theology/anthropology/linguistics behind Snow Crash? I'm finding myself incredibly distracted.
ita, my general impression of
Snow Crash
was that it was a pile of inelegant hooey, badly infodumped, but I can't break that down into details. (I didn't like the book enough to remember which parts felt like hooey and which didn't.)
"Beauty" is a pretty limp heroine IMHO, McKinley's version or no. Even if she is a bibliophile.
This is why I think her re-visiting of the trope in
Rose Daughter
is so much better.
Still, for me,
The Blue Sword
will forever remain the OTMcKinleyNovel.
So far we are of one mind on this, Nutty. I can't work out why I didn't hate it the first time, so I'm reluctant to cut bait on it.
I'll make my way out of this particular piece of exposition (how could your protagonist (sorry -- Protagonist) sitting around talking to an AI (of limited I) for yonks
not
kill a story?)
Oddly, I'm rereading
Snow Crash
right now. I'm liking it better than I did the first time, but a lot of that is because I am reading it in small chunks, rather than slamming through it trying to get to the story, and then being cranky when the story didn't really get all the way onstage, and wasn't clearly resolved. Now I'm just enjoying the writing choices for each scene and character and the social commentary.
As far as there being no direct lingual descendant of Sumerian, I believe that's true. The Enki and Inanna stuff is also pretty much accurate. What I DON'T buy is that every hacker in the world thinks in binary to the point that they've built new neural pathways in their brain and know every power of 2 ad infinitum.
What I DON'T buy is that every hacker in the world thinks in binary to the point that they've built new neural pathways in their brain and know every power of 2 ad infinitum.
No shit. I know some geeks, and part of the magic of high level languages is that you don't need binary. I'm too lazy to be a cracker, but you can do some amazing things without needing to know 2^17 in decimal.
Yeah, Sumerian gods do seem to have behaved in some radically non-linear ways. Interestingly enough, their non-linearity bears some odd resemblances to the behavior of the early dynastic Egyptian gods and the Meso-american pantheon. Apparently, building pyramids makes your gods crazy.
I don't think the brain works quite the way he seems to think it does, though. Kinda reminds me of Jaynes' Bicameral Mind schtick. Very elaborate, utterly wrongheaded.
The story's kinda chopsocky fun, though. And I'm a fan of Raven's personal violence deterrent.
No shit. I know some geeks, and part of the magic of high level languages is that you don't need binary. I'm too lazy to be a cracker, but you can do some amazing things without needing to know 2^17 in decimal.
(blinking)
I thought you said there was no direct lingual descendant of Sumerian?
