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What Are You Reading Wednesday
Sep. 10th, 2014 10:03 am"
Reading Meme:
What Have You Just Finished Reading:
Well...um...huh. Haven't read all that much (did finally see Capt. America: Winter Soldier last night OnDemand). I suppose the most recent thing I've completely read was a sweet little novella by Courtney Milan titled Talk Sweetly To Me
Set in the late Victorian era it's a romance between a brilliant young black woman who works as a 'computer' for an astronomer at the Royal Navy Academy (apparently in her research Milan found that in that era 'computers' were literally people who computed calculations for scientists. These were frequently women and almost wholly unacknowledged in scientific papers as ever having existed... even though they may have done a great deal of the yoeman's work). Anyway, she falls in love with an Irish (lapsed)Catholic suffragist publisher (or rather suffragist pamphlet publisher who also writes newpaper columns and satirical novels). In late Victorian England either of these two would have faced social obstacles, together they would face challenges. But, as Milan points out, there were more black women in Victorian England than there were Dukes, so any cries of "not historically accurate" can speak to the hand. Romance novels are full of dukes, why not a brilliant black woman and an Irish Catholic author?
Very brief read. It's a novella after all.
What Are You Reading Next:
Dunno.
I have John Scalzi's new futuristic murder mystery Lock In on my Amazon/Audible 'wish list', which sounds intriguing.
It takes place after an epidemic eventually named Haden's Syndrome which killed loads of people and those who survived frequently remained "locked in" their own bodies -- awake but unable to move or communicate. The size of the epidemic took so many people that society as a whole had to adjust. After 25 years they developed social avatars (android-like bodies) that their minds can link to and walk around/function, a virtual reality they can 'visit', and -- if rich enough - people (called 'integrators') who have had their neural synapses altered such that they can allow a Haden's victims to "borrow" their bodies for a bit. When an 'integrator' is murdered, FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Shane (one of whom is a Haden's sufferer) are sent to investivate the crime...
Reading Meme:
What Have You Just Finished Reading:
Well...um...huh. Haven't read all that much (did finally see Capt. America: Winter Soldier last night OnDemand). I suppose the most recent thing I've completely read was a sweet little novella by Courtney Milan titled Talk Sweetly To Me
Set in the late Victorian era it's a romance between a brilliant young black woman who works as a 'computer' for an astronomer at the Royal Navy Academy (apparently in her research Milan found that in that era 'computers' were literally people who computed calculations for scientists. These were frequently women and almost wholly unacknowledged in scientific papers as ever having existed... even though they may have done a great deal of the yoeman's work). Anyway, she falls in love with an Irish (lapsed)Catholic suffragist publisher (or rather suffragist pamphlet publisher who also writes newpaper columns and satirical novels). In late Victorian England either of these two would have faced social obstacles, together they would face challenges. But, as Milan points out, there were more black women in Victorian England than there were Dukes, so any cries of "not historically accurate" can speak to the hand. Romance novels are full of dukes, why not a brilliant black woman and an Irish Catholic author?
Very brief read. It's a novella after all.
What Are You Reading Next:
Dunno.
I have John Scalzi's new futuristic murder mystery Lock In on my Amazon/Audible 'wish list', which sounds intriguing.
It takes place after an epidemic eventually named Haden's Syndrome which killed loads of people and those who survived frequently remained "locked in" their own bodies -- awake but unable to move or communicate. The size of the epidemic took so many people that society as a whole had to adjust. After 25 years they developed social avatars (android-like bodies) that their minds can link to and walk around/function, a virtual reality they can 'visit', and -- if rich enough - people (called 'integrators') who have had their neural synapses altered such that they can allow a Haden's victims to "borrow" their bodies for a bit. When an 'integrator' is murdered, FBI agents Chris Shane and Leslie Shane (one of whom is a Haden's sufferer) are sent to investivate the crime...
