thistlechaser (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thistlechaser) wrote2011-10-11 09:23 am
thistlechaser) wrote2011-10-11 09:23 am
Entry tags:
Best TV show ever, best author ever
I am so very in love with Homeland, for so many reasons. I'm loving the story, loving getting it bit by small bit. But the best thing is also the most scariest: It shows how different groups can see the same situation as meaning opposite things. The CIA/anti-terrorists folks expect to see certain things, which very much colors how they interpret a situation. It's so satisfying not to even know what the reality of the situation is -- are the CIA folks right? Or are they seeing terrorists under the bed?
The show also does a handy trick of giving the viewers just a little more information than the CIA people have, which allows you to make more guesses (more accurate guesses?) than them.
I said this of last week's ep, but it holds even more true now: I love how little we know. I love how much the viewer keeps having to guess. You get a little (or not so little) clue and you have to put all the pieces together again. Sometimes one little clue changes everything. I have no idea at all if the rescued marine was really turned or not, and I love not knowing.
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Elizabeth Moon is my new most favorite author. Remnant Population was the first book of hers that I read. The protagonist is a 70 year old woman, and while this is a scifi book, she's really 70, not "people live to 300 now so 70 is like 20". She's old, has liver spots and wrinkles, her joints hurt, all that. 40 years ago, she was one of many colonists sent to a new world. Her colony failed, and so the company who sent them there came to pull them all out. She didn't want to go. The story is about how she lives on the planet alone (and then not so alone). It's such a unique POV! Imagine a 70 year old woman alone on a planet, growing her own food, having to do all the care of buildings and the few animals on her own, and how she deals with things when she's no longer alone and untrained her is handling first-contact with an alien species.
As soon as I finished that book, I bought more of Moon's work. (Thank you, Kindle, for being able to read a new book literally seconds after buying it.) The protagonist in The Speed of Dark is actually even more interesting and less likely of a first-person main character than in Remnant Population (he is autistic). The author did a ton of research before writing the book, and it shows. To be inside the head of an autistic person is so different and really interesting. I just started Speed of Dark last night, so I'm not sure what the plot is like, but I suspect I'm going to love it even more than Remnant Population. (Amazon reviews compare it to Flowers for Algernon, which I'd second.)
Initially my review of her books was going to be totally different. The first line of Remnant Population made me frown muchly.
"Between her toes the damp earth felt cool, but already sweat crept between the roots of her hair."
Clunky, 'between' was used twice in the same short sentence. I'd rewrite the second half as "but already sweat ran through her hair", something like that. I've always been told (and agreed) that the first sentence in a story is one of the most important ones (the other being the last). I really dislike that sentence, enough that I stopped reading and frowned at it. But happily then I continued on, and I had zero further issues with the writing. (In fact, I did a rare thing: I almost never use Kindle's highlighting feature, but in Remnant I marked a few sentences that were so well written that I wanted to be able to find them again.)
So anyway, I highly recommend her books! She also has a LJ,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
e_moon60.
The show also does a handy trick of giving the viewers just a little more information than the CIA people have, which allows you to make more guesses (more accurate guesses?) than them.
I said this of last week's ep, but it holds even more true now: I love how little we know. I love how much the viewer keeps having to guess. You get a little (or not so little) clue and you have to put all the pieces together again. Sometimes one little clue changes everything. I have no idea at all if the rescued marine was really turned or not, and I love not knowing.
---
Elizabeth Moon is my new most favorite author. Remnant Population was the first book of hers that I read. The protagonist is a 70 year old woman, and while this is a scifi book, she's really 70, not "people live to 300 now so 70 is like 20". She's old, has liver spots and wrinkles, her joints hurt, all that. 40 years ago, she was one of many colonists sent to a new world. Her colony failed, and so the company who sent them there came to pull them all out. She didn't want to go. The story is about how she lives on the planet alone (and then not so alone). It's such a unique POV! Imagine a 70 year old woman alone on a planet, growing her own food, having to do all the care of buildings and the few animals on her own, and how she deals with things when she's no longer alone and untrained her is handling first-contact with an alien species.
As soon as I finished that book, I bought more of Moon's work. (Thank you, Kindle, for being able to read a new book literally seconds after buying it.) The protagonist in The Speed of Dark is actually even more interesting and less likely of a first-person main character than in Remnant Population (he is autistic). The author did a ton of research before writing the book, and it shows. To be inside the head of an autistic person is so different and really interesting. I just started Speed of Dark last night, so I'm not sure what the plot is like, but I suspect I'm going to love it even more than Remnant Population. (Amazon reviews compare it to Flowers for Algernon, which I'd second.)
Initially my review of her books was going to be totally different. The first line of Remnant Population made me frown muchly.
"Between her toes the damp earth felt cool, but already sweat crept between the roots of her hair."
Clunky, 'between' was used twice in the same short sentence. I'd rewrite the second half as "but already sweat ran through her hair", something like that. I've always been told (and agreed) that the first sentence in a story is one of the most important ones (the other being the last). I really dislike that sentence, enough that I stopped reading and frowned at it. But happily then I continued on, and I had zero further issues with the writing. (In fact, I did a rare thing: I almost never use Kindle's highlighting feature, but in Remnant I marked a few sentences that were so well written that I wanted to be able to find them again.)
So anyway, I highly recommend her books! She also has a LJ,
e_moon60.
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It totally ruined the entire thing for me. I won't go into any detail, but it really made me angry for rather personal reasons.
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My Elvaan WHM was named Paksenarrion. I chose Elvaan specifically for height (Since she was described as taller than average.) and because one of the models has a braid. My one regret is that I never leveled PLD, but that was in the works before I quit the last time. She hit 13 before I quit.
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(She wrote Speed of Dark in part because her kid's autistic.)
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(She wrote Speed of Dark in part because her kid's autistic.)
I should have guessed that. It feels really personal. Also, unfortunately I'm liking it less the more I read. Slow, slow, slow buildup, hopefully we'll reach an action point sometime soon.
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Speed of Dark is quite slow, but I just loved the mindset. (I had a lot of arguments with the ending; I'll be interested to see your opinion.)
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Exactly, yep! It's a wonder that other people didn't think to do this sooner.