Books read, late March

[mrissa]

Pat Cadigan, Patterns. Reread. One of the strange things about keeping a booklog is that you can discover that you had the urge to read the same book exactly eighteen years apart. In that time, these stories have gone from mildly dated to tales from another era. Unfortunately for my tastes, nobody seems to like each other very much in them-they’re

Comments

[txanne]

I have a friend whose great-grandmother was part of the Oneida colony! She has similar stories. And it turns out that they weren't supposed to have favorite partners, but everybody did, and they mostly marrried each other when the colony broke up.

[mrissa]

Wellll...from the research this author did, that was definitely part of it. Telling people not to be partial to each other as romantic/sexual partners or as friends just did not work. But another part was that the women had a scramble to get married so that they weren't thrust out into the judgmental world as the mothers of what would at the time be called bastards. Some of them were marrying the partner they had wanted most all along, but some of them were marrying someone decent who would understand them and shield them from social penalty.

[asakiyume]

Really looking forward to reading American Street. I'm glad to hear it's not hopeless; I saw a comment online that it wasn't a happy read, and while I wasn't expecting it to be all kittens and daisies, it hadn't sounded from the description like it was unrelentingly grim, either. Your remark puts the other comment in some perspective.

[pameladean]

Oooh, Paul Gruchow sounds right up my alley. Sadly, this does not meant that I can walk along to Classic Coaches and find him sitting in a bewildered state in the waiting room, or even find a book of his amongst the pamphlets.

P.

[mrissa]

Library though. I bet you'd like.

[ashnistrike]

Ooh - Maresi sound interesting - and I think this is the second time I've heard it recc'd. When you say it's like The Steerswoman, is that in the {worldbuilding spoiler redacted} way, or the centering strong female friendships way? Because the first is fun and interesting, but the second is astonishingly rare and awesome.

-Nameseeker

[mrissa]

BOTH