christopherdrew > Recent Status Updates

- it's...okay, but, man: 1000 pages is a lot of homework to highlight that Stephenson has a hard time talking to girls.

- I like worldbuilding as much as the next patsy, and this is ambitious, but sometimes less can be more.

It's not bad, but I don'r really care. Maybe if I skip the section of essays about people I know nothing about/don't care to learn more about?

- space archeology is fun
- there's something here about the absurdity of interplanetary species never truly understanding each other; perhaps that's why it seems to have a satirical bend
- wonder if the gender roles of Wu and Teela could be switched, so that we didn't have the usual narrative of 'wiser, older male instructs silly little girl'; I could be reading too much into that

I skipped the Poppy Z Brite story. I think what I'm finding, rereading this, is that I really don't have as much of a thirst for horror anymore.

This book reminds me of a friend I worked with at the coffeeshop - and what I mean by that is that Guiron acts with such a confidence of purpose, almost a single-minded righteousness, one that my friend was often capable of. That's a lot of big words for 10 am.

(Maybe it's just the nature of this genre, but I'm finding a lot of male fantasy action hero cliches in, like, every story; almost every protagonist is ex-military, has a 'deep-seated code of honour' but has a problem with authority, likes to work 'outside the law', etc. It's like Vigilantes-R-Us.)

This book is GREAT. Does it say something about me that I always root for the juvenile delinquents?

I told myself that this would be my treat when I finish that godawful fantasy novel, but 2020's almost over and I wanna. I WANNA. So, um, here goes.

No, really, I'm TRYING.

I’m TRYING. Honest.

Omg there’s close to a thousand pages to go. Guh.

Dead Astronauts is a tremendous exploration of identity and ‘self‘ and the scaffolding we build around ourselves to help define those terms. It doesn’t so much continue the story set out in Borne, but rather retranslates it through a psychedelic multiversal lens. Also: maybe you should stop poking that fox in the eye with that stick, it’s not nice. 9/10 would eat here again, but no salamanders, please.

I think I lost my copy.

Although it might be that I just have to just give up on this one. I love the subject matter, but, holy CRAP is it dry.

Meh. We'll see.

Shelving this for now. Might attempt at a later date, but I'm starting to think that Danielewski's ambition exceeds his reach; I do appreciate the effort, I know he's trying, but, man. MAN.

And there's supposed to be 25 volumes of this? I dunno, man.