A couple of weeks ago, C told me I wasn’t allowed to read post-apocalyptic science fiction anymore. I had recently read Green Angel by Alice Hoffman (sort of a YA post-9/11 parable about lost souls in a destroyed world) and Pretties by Scott Westerfeld (the sequel to Uglies, about a post-apocalyptic “utopia” in which everyone is made perfectly beautiful). Then I finished City of Ember by Jeanette DuPrau (YA novel about a city built underground to escape some nameless catastrophe and the kids who find their way out to the aboveground world they’ve never seen) and spent the night curled up in C’s lap sobbing about how we’re going to destroy ourselves and I don’t want to live underground and eat soylent green. He talked me off the ledge and then gently suggested that maybe I should quit stoking the fires of this particular neurosis.
Well, duh, I suppose. It’s my favorite genre and it used to have an odd sort of comfort for me, but clearly not anymore. So off to find other things to read!
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach - This was recommended to me by M — thanks! I loved it. The premise is that there’s a planet on which the entire economy is based on hair-carpet makers, men who spend their entire lives tying one carpet out of the hair of their wives and daughters. The carpets are supposedly for the god-emperor of a multi-galaxy empire, but where are they really going? And why? It’s a 300 page shaggy-dog story, in a way, but somehow that just makes it all the more brilliant. (Also, I’d never spent that much time looking at the word “carpet” before. It started to look like “car pet” after awhile, which brings cute images of dogs hanging out car windows.)
Right now I’m reading Across the Wall by Garth Nix, which contains a novella set in the Abhorsen Trilogy world, as well as other short stories. I want another whole book set in that world! Also reading Water Mirror by Kai Meyer, because my mom asked if I’d heard about it and the journal I review for happened to have a spare copy. It’s not bad, but way too much like The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke (German fantasy set in Venice about orphaned kids, including a master thief), so it’s giving off Harry Potter Syndrome (”this made lots of money; we need tons more like it!”) vibes. The Thief Lord was better, or at least was translated better. Water Mirror is kind of stilted.
Also, movies:
Good Night, and Good Luck - So well done that they’ve probably already engraved the Oscars. But as ACM said, it needed more about the people. A movie about Edward R. Murrow should maybe show us something about Edward R. Murrow, beyond “it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Super Journalist, fighting tyranny in a single broadcast!” But I felt all virtuous and educated in my Friday night, so it was money well spent.
Million Dollar Baby (SPOILERS) - C and I both agreed it was way over-rated. The first two-thirds were your standard underdog sports movie, and in the latter part the two-dimensional hick characterization of Maggie’s family bugged me so much I lost track of the great acting by Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank. Poor people suck and just want your money, dont’cha know. And of course the final scenes were right out of Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman voice-over and all. It wasn’t a bad movie, but I really don’t get the big deal.
Once Were Warriors - The winner of this recent Netflix crop, definitely. One of the most realistic portrayals of a family with an abusive father that I’ve ever seen. I actually got why the mother stayed, why even after she knew she needed to leave she was still torn, and that’s an impressive thing for a movie to pull off.
6 responses so far ↓
1 fairdice // Oct 27, 2005 at 10:48 am
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed it.
Your synopsis of City of Ember reminds me of an eerie book from my childhood, a story of two kids trying to escape from a gigantic underground city with hundreds of levels, where the surface-dwellers deposited all the poor people to get them out of the way, or something like that. The girl has lived there all her life, and the boy accidentally got in from outside; neither knows it’s underground. They eventually escape because the door out/up has a written description of what keys to press to open it, and the girl is illicitly literate, unlike even the cops chasing them.
There, something depressing and fatalistic with no apocalypse required! Feel better?
2 Sam // Oct 27, 2005 at 11:50 am
Oh my god! You have no idea how excited I was reading your description of that book - that’s This Time of Darkness by H.M. Hoover, and it was my favorite book when I was a kid! That’s what started me on the whole YA post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre! (You’re right that there was no explicit apocalypse, I don’t think, but the reason the City was built was that the world was horribly overpopulated…I think. There must have been some sort of disaster, right? I’d have to re-read it. Which you can also do, if you want - it’s sitting on my bookshelf at home. :) )
Yay! That’s one of those books I didn’t think anyone else had read.
3 fairdice // Oct 27, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Wow! And I’d just resigned myself to the notion that there was no plausible way to track down the book from what I remembered about it.
Yes please, I’d be happy to borrow and reread it — when you’re done.
4 martini_corona // Oct 27, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Mm, post-apocolyptic YA sci-fi. I was a big fan of anything by John Christopher. The Tripods… and then he had all these other ones, like one with mutants (Beyond the Burning Lands was the first one in that trilogy) and one about a walled-off city of civilized people and the people who are stuck outside the walls in the woods, which I can’t remember the name of. They were all relentlessly depressing and I LOVED them. Actually if you want a more adult post-apocolyptic read, you should borrow my copy of Vanishing Point by Michaela Roessler.
May I recommend that you balance the depressing post-apocalyptic food group with the telepathic horses/dragons/”special friends” food group?
5 fairdice // Oct 27, 2005 at 5:48 pm
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Oh wow — WordPress replaced my double hyphen &45;&45; with an em-dash! Okay, that just beats LiveJournal to pieces…
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6 » Sequel Summer: People of Sparks, by Jeanne DuPrau Parenthetical.net: Musings and snark about YA lit, libraries, and geekdom, from an overly opinionated middle school librarian. // Jul 6, 2008 at 9:08 am
[...] of Sparks is the sequel to City of Ember. The entire population of dying Ember (…yeah) follows Lina and Doon aboveground for their [...]