[books 2007] science fiction, travel
Nov. 6th, 2007 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro62. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula le Guin (no "K" on my copy)
This month's Bibliogoths selection. General consensus was that there are some good ideas in there but it's not very well executed. I've not read a lot of her stuff before, but I definitely remember that I liked The Dispossessed a lot more than this.
63. Lost Cosmonaut: Travels to the Republics that Tourism Forgot by Daniel Kalder
Obscure ethnic groups and empty places on the map are two things that are sure to grab my interest, so I got quite excited when this book came out. The author, a Scotsman living in Moscow, picks four of the "independent" ethnic republics in the European part of the Russian Federation to visit - he's fascinated by the thought of places that are geographically European but that no Western European has ever heard of. (Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El and Udmurtia, for the record).
This could have been a really good book, but Kalder has a bad attitude (the "anti-tourist manifesto" in the introduction is a give-away) and hates everything. There's some interesting factoids, but this guy is really annoying.
Same conclusion as for The Long Exile - Interesting subject matter that deserved a better writer.
Having said that, I'm not keeping this one so if you want it, it's yours.
This month's Bibliogoths selection. General consensus was that there are some good ideas in there but it's not very well executed. I've not read a lot of her stuff before, but I definitely remember that I liked The Dispossessed a lot more than this.
63. Lost Cosmonaut: Travels to the Republics that Tourism Forgot by Daniel Kalder
Obscure ethnic groups and empty places on the map are two things that are sure to grab my interest, so I got quite excited when this book came out. The author, a Scotsman living in Moscow, picks four of the "independent" ethnic republics in the European part of the Russian Federation to visit - he's fascinated by the thought of places that are geographically European but that no Western European has ever heard of. (Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El and Udmurtia, for the record).
This could have been a really good book, but Kalder has a bad attitude (the "anti-tourist manifesto" in the introduction is a give-away) and hates everything. There's some interesting factoids, but this guy is really annoying.
Same conclusion as for The Long Exile - Interesting subject matter that deserved a better writer.
Having said that, I'm not keeping this one so if you want it, it's yours.
