![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
53) "Only You Can Save Mankind" - Pratchett
It's so hard for me to read a Pratchett book and not start out my review "I just <3 this book!", but especially this one. See, this is why I don't usually post my review as soon as I finish the book - sometimes I need a day or two to disengage and not just gush. Or just tear the thing apart, if I hate it. Adults are really on the sidelines in this book. Yo-less has a mother who is a nurse, and she helps out when requested, but off screen. Another mom shows up with tea and cookies at one point, and Johnny's Dad tries to talk with him, awkwardly, for a minute, but adults do not get air time in this book.
This book is about Johnny, who it seems is a sort of natural shaman who lives partly in the world most people call real and partly in a dream state that he can share with other people on occasion. Except it's also about the fact that everyone has their own reality. And it's about the way people dehumanize other people in order to make war. And holy shit I can't talk about this book.
Also, it's from the '80s and is attempting to right some of the wrongs of sexism at the time. Which was a little tricky. Near the end Johnny tells the girl who is driven to win at everything that his secret to having friends is to be a little bit stupid. Yeah, we shouldn't have to dumb ourselves down for other people, but I think his 'stupidity' is a sort of kindness. You know, don't point out to people that they're just not as good as you. That one bit might have done with a little more explanation.
It had been so long since I had read this one that it was all new to me.
Oddly, I also read one of the 'Fleet' short stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch today, "Lieutenant Tightass", and actually liked it. I have never liked them before, but maybe because I usually skim through them. I was reading more slowly and carefully, today, because I was in the mode of reading this Johnny book, and found that it was not about the by-the-book guy being better than the sloppy crew he was assigned with, as I had expected it would be, but about him having to learn that there are times when procedures are useful and times they should be tossed to the winds. And that a sloppy appearance doesn't mean that people take their jobs less seriously, or are less good at them. Maybe I'll try giving her Fleet stories another chance.
I do a lot more reading than I claim in my 'books' posts, because I'm abiding by the rules and only claim full books or full issues of Asimov's. So when I don't finish the issue, because I skip one story because I can't stand that author, or when I read short stories, I often don't mention them.
It's so hard for me to read a Pratchett book and not start out my review "I just <3 this book!", but especially this one. See, this is why I don't usually post my review as soon as I finish the book - sometimes I need a day or two to disengage and not just gush. Or just tear the thing apart, if I hate it. Adults are really on the sidelines in this book. Yo-less has a mother who is a nurse, and she helps out when requested, but off screen. Another mom shows up with tea and cookies at one point, and Johnny's Dad tries to talk with him, awkwardly, for a minute, but adults do not get air time in this book.
This book is about Johnny, who it seems is a sort of natural shaman who lives partly in the world most people call real and partly in a dream state that he can share with other people on occasion. Except it's also about the fact that everyone has their own reality. And it's about the way people dehumanize other people in order to make war. And holy shit I can't talk about this book.
Also, it's from the '80s and is attempting to right some of the wrongs of sexism at the time. Which was a little tricky. Near the end Johnny tells the girl who is driven to win at everything that his secret to having friends is to be a little bit stupid. Yeah, we shouldn't have to dumb ourselves down for other people, but I think his 'stupidity' is a sort of kindness. You know, don't point out to people that they're just not as good as you. That one bit might have done with a little more explanation.
It had been so long since I had read this one that it was all new to me.
Oddly, I also read one of the 'Fleet' short stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch today, "Lieutenant Tightass", and actually liked it. I have never liked them before, but maybe because I usually skim through them. I was reading more slowly and carefully, today, because I was in the mode of reading this Johnny book, and found that it was not about the by-the-book guy being better than the sloppy crew he was assigned with, as I had expected it would be, but about him having to learn that there are times when procedures are useful and times they should be tossed to the winds. And that a sloppy appearance doesn't mean that people take their jobs less seriously, or are less good at them. Maybe I'll try giving her Fleet stories another chance.
I do a lot more reading than I claim in my 'books' posts, because I'm abiding by the rules and only claim full books or full issues of Asimov's. So when I don't finish the issue, because I skip one story because I can't stand that author, or when I read short stories, I often don't mention them.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject