Laura’s Comments (group member since Jun 03, 2012)

Laura’s comments from the Not Quite A Topless Robot Book Club group.

(to quote my goodreads review) What is there left to say about The Hobbit? 25 years since I read it last, and there are bits I know like I read them last year. Smeagol. Smaug. The Ring. The Spiders in the Trees. The me-alienating lack of women. And there are bits of which I have no recollection. The man we meet an instant before he draws back the bow and kills the dragon. Beorn the bear. The cognitive dissonance of having the wolves be the bad guys. All these scenes of exclusion and essentialism Terry Pratchett gently, lovingly, and devastatingly critiques in the later Discworld books.

I cannot say that I love Tolkien, though I wish I did. I do love what the humanist English fantasy writers have done with Tolkien.

A seminal text. Slightly bittersweet to re-read, but well worth the time.

(end my earlier review)

My husband is a huge fan of Tolkien. We've slowly been listening to The Tolkien Professor podcasts, http://www.tolkienprofessor.com/wp/, which are generally a lot of fun. It's funny, as much as I'm not a huge fan of Tolkien, I found myself bristling reading Laura Miller's Skeptic's Adventure in Narnia, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/boo... and getting irate when she compared Tolkien unfavorably to Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Crime and Punishment.

I kinda liked Number of the Beast, though I haven't read it in more than 20 years and I suspect it wouldn't age well. I Will Fear No Evil was terrible. At the least, it needed a hard edit. I don't remember Time Enough for Love very well -- was that one of the Lazarus Long books? Those missed me entirely. I didn't get the whole eugenics-to-live-forever thing.

I read this book in middle school and loved it. I identified with Smith. I wanted to save the world. It was one of the first explorations of the Western monomyth I’d read and I fell for it hard. I read it in high school and liked it. I sympathized with Smith. There were some other Christlike heroes I identified with more, but still a good romp. I liked that it took the piss out of the monogamy and Christianity that were making my parents miserable. I read it in college and it disappointed me. The misogyny and homophobia that I didn’t notice as a child just slapped me in the face. I can’t forgive the “grokking a wrongness” in gay men; I can’t forgive Jill’s rape comment.

That said, I still have some affection for it. I haven’t read it for more than 20 years, but still have it in the basement.

Bri wrote: One of the things that really bothered me about the book, and that doesn't get better with subsequent re-reading, is the idea that Only Men Did Anything Cool During The Eighties. Have you guys noticed this? All of the references, all of the clues, 99% of Anorak's Almanac focuses on books, movies, computer games, etc. written and developed by men.
..."

That kinda thing always bothers me. I did think that Cline's framing narrative -- that it was the fantasy life of this socially maladjusted guy -- did make it seem more like just the background levels of social phallogocentrism rather than Cline's particularly.

OMG, WIL WHEATON AS THE BAD GUY, NOLAN SORRENTO. Yes. Internet, MAKE IT SO.

Cline was at the last Emerald City Comicon, and was supposed to be on a panel with Wil Wheaton to talk about the movie and the audio book. Wheaton got waylaid, and my husband and decided to hit a different panel. Anyhoo.

I picked this book up when it came out, read a chapter, and put it down. Growing up in a dystopian landscape? Watching as the ties that once bound us together unravel? Watching as corporations get more and more powerful as the Holocene ends? Having the most emotionally and intellectually meaningful events in your life happen in the geekoverse? I don’t need to read that, Martha. I lived it. But Wil Wheaton did the audio book, and I less than three Wil Wheaton, so I listened during pledge week. And whether it’s just that I’m slightly smitten with Wil Wheaton, or because the metatextualism of having the guy who played Gene Roddenbury’s own Mary Sue insert into Star Trek read a book IN WHICH HE IS ALSO A CHARACTER gets me where I live, I really liked it.

In my old age, I'm not really up on young actors (if they weren't in Buffy, Firefly, or Doctor Who, I probably don't know them) but I think it'd be HILARIOUS to have Patrick Stewart play Wil Wheaton and Leonard Nimoy play Cory Doctorow. Maybe Kevin Smith as Ogden.

I'm not a favorites person. I'm partial to, and have used, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They are not all that subtle." "Out of cheese error" and "librarian poo."

1. Laura Anglin
2. My husband thought I'd find Fan Fiction Friday hilarious He was right.
3. I read lots of stuff. I like mythic humanist stuff the most. Dislike sweet, sentimental jewel box depictions of ordinary life the most.
4. Almost done with Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman. About to start 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
5. Good Omens is awesome.