Three books

[alias_sqbr]

I have reserved a bunch of Hugo nominees at the library and today the first two came in. In most cases I know pretty much nothing about them that isn't evident from the title and author.

"What ever happened to the caped crusader" by Neil Gaiman: The Wake, but for Batman. Not bad, but had no overarching plot nor any very interesting message I could fathom, and felt rather generically Gaimanish. I probably would have enjoyed what is basically a love letter to Batman more if I loved Batman rather than just liked the series and character a bit sometimes.

"Wake" by Robert J Sawyer: So, I knew NOTHING about this going in. In the first scene the main character, a disabled young woman who loves maths, updates her livejournal. This was so close to what I'd just been doing I shut the book and felt a little weirded out. But I am definitely intrigued :)
And also on the way home I popped into the second hand bookstore and got a copy of "More than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon, huzzah.

EDIT: Oh dear. Her username is Calculass, and her best friend's is BrownGirl4 aka "Girl who likes maths and her nonwhite/POC best friend"(*). Overall it feels like the author read an article about how teenage girls use livejournal and skimmed some entries but doesn't entirely get it.

(*)I realise there are people who have usernames like that, but for example looking at my friends list there's a few that are relatively informative like leecetheartist or strangedave but the only one that sounds like the sorts of unambigously descriptive yet vague username you get in fiction is goth_grrl...and that's a fictional username from a parody of an IRC channel :)

Comments

[sanguinity]

Aw, that's so Robert Sawyer! "I read some magazine articles! They made me really excited about this!"

(He's a kick to hear speak because of that enthusiasm, but in most of his books, there's a place or four where I'm just, 'What?')

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah that is very much the impression of his personality I was getting :)

[furikku]

I read "Calculass" as "Calcul Ass" and I spent a while to figure out why a teenage girl would pick that name until I realised it was "Calcu Lass."

(I figured maybe she was referring to herself as a Fine Piece of Ass who liked maths.)

The author should perhaps reflect on this in future screenname choices.

Sharing time: My username is a leftover from a high school Mary Sue character. I would change it, but that costs money and remembering a new one would take too much work.

[pseudo_tsuga]

I was confused too! I like that interpretation better though.

Mine used to be kage_onna.

[alias_sqbr]

Now that I think about it, it might be CalcuLass, which would be less ambiguous.

Did you see the poll I did a while ago on the meaning of my username? People come up with some very creative explanations :) Back when I was in highschool I think I mostly used Snowpea.

[fred_mouse]

I actually quite liked 'Wake', although I did get annoyed quite a bit at aspects of the presentation of 'popular' culture. I was reasonably impressed with the writing of a 16 year old - I was able to identify with her quite a lot. And the user name seemed so very 16! (it was the age when I would have thought it was *hilarious*. I wasn't so sure about the believability of the 'BrownGirl4, but didn't think I had any data to base a response on).

I've also acquired some of the others. If you can't get your hands on a copy of "Shambling towards Hiroshima", I'll try and get it to you, because it is one of the books I've really enjoyed in recent months.

[alias_sqbr]

True, my flist doesn't have a great many 16 year olds on it so is hardly indicative. Though I wouldn't have used that username myself. As I recall my two standbys at 16 were Kartoffel and Snowpea (which is a semi-pun based on something about me, but is only evident as such if you already know my name)

if you can't get your hands on a copy of "Shambling towards Hiroshima", I'll try and get it to you, because it is one of the books I've really enjoyed in recent months.

Thanks! I'll see how I go.