{"id":803,"date":"2009-09-06T19:51:30","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T19:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2009\/09\/06\/the-last-three-books-meme\/"},"modified":"2009-09-06T19:51:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-06T19:51:30","slug":"the-last-three-books-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/06\/the-last-three-books-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"The "Last Three Books" Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Tor.com<\/a>, a meme that I thought looked really interesting.
\nWhat were the last three genre books that you purchased? Why did you purchase them?
\nAnd do they feel comfortable together?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \nDaniel Abraham,The Price of Spring (The Long Price Quartet)<\/a>\"\"<\/b>: This is the conclusion to
    \nAbraham’s Long Price Quartet, which is a wonderful<\/em> set of novels. Each
    \nvolume of the quartet is a self-contained story – but the pieces also fit together
    \ninto a larger story-arc. The volumes each take place over the course of a season,
    \nand each is separated by about 20 years. It’s fantasy with very rare but incredibly
    \nhigh-powered magic. Certain people can, after significant training, cause an
    \nabstract concept to become a real physical being, called an andat<\/em>
    \nwhich they can control. For example, the first book in the quartet focuses
    \non “Seedless”, aka “Removing the part that continues”, which is the embodiment
    \nof the idea of removing children – whether that means removing the seeds from
    \na bale of picked cotton, or performing an abortion by removing and killing the
    \nunborn child. The last book doesn’t quite<\/em> live up to the promise of the ones
    \nbefore, but it’s still excellent. Why’d I buy it? Because I picked up the first one
    \non a whim a while ago, and got hooked. I couldn’t wait to get the last volume. And
    \nyou wanna talk cliffhangers? The last volume of this left every single woman<\/em> in the home nation of the main characters, and every single man in the home nation of their enemies, completely sterile.<\/li>\n
  2. Vernor Vinge, The Peace War<\/a>\"\"<\/b>: I haven’t started reading this one
    \nyet. Why’d I get it? Because Vinge is a genius. I’ve loved everything of his
    \nthat I’ve read. But some of his early stuff, I was never able to find. Then a friend
    \nmentioned that it had become available for the Kindle! So I immediately ordered it.
    \n(And I do mean immediately – I didn’t even wait to get back to my desk – I pulled
    \nout my Android phone and ordered it from Amazon right in front of the coffee machine.)\n<\/li>\n
  3. China Mieville, The City & The City<\/a>\"\"<\/b>: I just started this one;
    \nI’m about 70 pages in. It seems decent so far. The story of why I bought this
    \none is interesting. Y’see, I don’t like Mieville. His writing always seems to
    \nme to be self-consciously but unsuccessfully stylistic – like Mieville sees
    \nhimself as a brilliant prose stylist, while being unable to really pull off
    \nthe brilliantly styled prose that he imagines he’s writing. But I keep getting
    \nhis books – because I keep seeing reviews from people that I really respect
    \nthat talk about how wonderful his prose is. I just don’t see it. He’s a decent
    \nstoryteller – but I can’t see the beautiful prose that everyone talks about.
    \nIt’s not that I don’t like artistically styled writing; I actually love things
    \nwhere I’m struck by the beauty of a phrase, and need to stop reading for a
    \nwhile just to bask in the beauty of the words; Brust’s “The funniest thing
    \nabout time is when it doesn’t. I’ll leave that hanging there for the moment,
    \nand let you age while the shadows don’t lengthen, if you see what I mean.”
    \nfrom Yendi blows me away every time I read it. But Mieville just seems to be
    \ntrying<\/em> to write that way. Anyway, “The City and the City” is based
    \non a wonderful idea, so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s a murder mystery set
    \nin a city which is spatially overlapped with another city. In some places (called
    \n“crosshatched regions”), you can see both cities at the same time unless you
    \nwill yourself to “unsee” the other one; in other places, you’re solidly in one
    \ncity or the other. And the two cities are actually different nations<\/em>,
    \nso to cross from one to the other requires going through customs. Even
    \nnot “unseeing” the other city is actually a crime. Brilliant idea; I’m really
    \nhoping he carries it off.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As for “are they comfortable together?” No, not really. We’ve got one
    \nhistorical high-fantasy from an alternate earth; one gritty current-time
    \npotboiler in a setting that has fantasy elements; and one far-future
    \nhard science fiction. They really don’t make for comfortable neighbors.<\/p>\n

    So. What’s your three latest? Post ’em in the comments, or post ’em on
    \nyour own blog, and then link from the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Via Tor.com, a meme that I thought looked really interesting. What were the last three genre books that you purchased? Why did you purchase them? And do they feel comfortable together? Daniel Abraham,The Price of Spring (The Long Price Quartet): This is the conclusion to Abraham’s Long Price Quartet, which is a wonderful set of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-cX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}