What, another post so soon?
Well, I have THINGS I want to share and I might just explode if I don’t.
I finished reading Tash Aw’s The South, also Strangers on a Pier. I’m just so haunted by the worlds within worlds he’s revealed in his fiction and by his compelling authorial voice. While I found We, The Survivors to be a stronger work than The South, it is no less important and unique for what it is doing. In short, I’m going to be haunted by both novels for a very long time. I wrote in one of my paper journals that The South is a Malaysian novel with the vibes of a post-Age of Adz Sufjan Stevens song (Carrie & Lowell era and beyond); if you know you know. Reading it so close to my completion of We, The Survivors has me asking questions about certain elements in the book. Apart from that, I tore through Strangers on A Pier in one sitting last night and highly highly recommend it if you’ve read his novels. Aw’s memoir gives such valuable insight into the world of his stories. I really hope someone makes a tv series out of one of these books and I’m going to be very impatiently waiting for the sequel to The South.
I also finished reading Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others. I’ve read some of these stories before in various venues and have taught his stories in more than one course. However, this year I’m systematically rereading short stories in his collections because of that one PhD student of mine who is completing this year and because of three co-authored articles on Ted Chiang. It’s excellent work, as always and is providing me with insight not just as a reader, and an SF scholar, but as an author. It’s making me ask questions about my SF short fiction and my worldview as an SF author as well.
Weekend Reading: I think this weekend is probably going to be all about Patricia McKillip. I’m recuperating from a bad asthma attack I had this week — probably brought on by my GERD issues but also the high stress of having midwifed two PhD dissertations submitted recently. ALSO, submitting a fistful of co-authored articles because of my Uni’s requirement that supervisees publish with us. So I’m taking it easy to re-regulate and wind down while listening to mellow indie folk music and just sinking into the beloved comfort of McKillip’s prose.