Lunchtime reading

[ksmith]

"Kings and corporations scribbled IOUs on the backs of napkins and promised to sort everything out once the heat was off."

Back to reading BLINDSIGHT by Peter Watts--it's lunch break, ok?--and enjoying the hell out of it. Tracking the POV changes, or the changes that turn out not to be, is proving a bit of a challenge, but I still like it a lot and frankly, I usually don't go in for harder SF.

Funny how you can come to care for characters. Putting someone in a vulnerable position doesn't always do it--I've read crying and wailing and death in the wings and set the book aside after a few chapters. Niceness is not, Not, NOT a prerequisite. Don't need to want to have a beer with them. Need to want to *read* about them. Two completely different things.

Maybe it's the internal tension, and the hint of frustration. Resignation. Anger. It's inexplicable as any other sort of attraction, when you come right down to it, and why shouldn't it be.

Must go read now...

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Can I ask you to try and pin down (if possible) what you're digging about Blindsight? This'll probably be a post once I start posting again. I'm at the end of the Theseus section and still mostly indifferent, and so trying to figure out a) whether to continue on and b) where all those smart people who love it are coming from.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Pondering question now for response later--must get back to work...

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

OK. I'm still in the Theseus section as well. For all I know, the book may fall apart in the end, but here's what I like about it so far:

I love the brain/neuro stuff. I researched and used some things in the Jani books, but not to anything approaching this extent.

I'm enjoying what I would call the overall voice, or tone. Fatalistic flippancy? The humanizing of the machines.

I'm enjoying Watts' take on vampires.

I like Siri.

Did I mention vampires?

The little touches. Sirasti clicks his teeth, and Sascha, who'd been arguing, falls silent.

Maybe I'll be able to explain more at the end. It's just that a whole lot of little things are adding up. I've read a *lot* of books in the past year where they didn't.