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What I read -- June 2011

OWW: 3

“Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson. For some reason I discovered she’d done the MFA program at Seton Hill, so I got this out of the library. She certainly presents a grim view of the future of Toronto, but it was an entertaining read, and not just because I could visualize so many of the locations. The style, especially the dialog, was challenging at the start, but it was really well plotted.

“Behemoth” by Scott Westerfield. The boy got this from my mom for his birthday, and he read like 75 pages while still at her house. Win! Ed read it next (having finally been shamed into reading Leviathan). Finally I got my hands on it. Really good. Totally want the sequel. (September...)

“Aerotropolis: the way we’ll live next” by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay. Recommended on Nicola Griffith’s blog. Got it out of the library. I found the introduction quite a slog, but by Chapter 2 I wasn’t having any trouble getting through it. I guess I’d gotten used to the style – I haven’t been reading much longform non-fiction lately. Some of the sentences were painful for me (too long, and the noun and the verb too far apart to make agreement sound right), but the information was fascinating. More about logistics and local planning than aviation. It makes me worry about Toronto. Though we have a different goal here than perhaps shipping stuff, Toronto is more about email. What this book needs is the far north (like Nunuvut) and heavy lift dirigibles. It did make me wonder, however, about whatever happened with Invest Toronto. I guess I’m not the target audience of whatever they do... I read a few days ago about someone (Philip Roth?) not reading fiction anymore. This book reminded me why I read SF – it connected to Snowcrash and Windup Girl.

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