Test and Book Foo
Jan. 29th, 2004 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Had my test. Went fairly well I think, only a little unsure on one question. Got flustered/distracted at the beginning because of something the prof did though and so wrote down the wrong student number at first (which is what he did, warned about 'not knowing your name'. :P. If he hadn't mentioned anything I would have been fine), which caused him to point that out to me aloud, at the start of the test (since I was the very first person he asked and barely had time to write it down before he looked at it). Bah.
Anyway, book foo. I decided to go with Alas, Bablyon because I was carrying my textbook for the test, and when I've got a textbook in the bag there's more chance for books to get damaged by jostling, and I didn't want to do that to Ender's Game. So, without further ado...
Finished: Downbelow Station, by CJ Cherryh
Started: Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
More thoughts behind the cut tag.
Okay, DS was okay, although it was slow going first. Cherryh is a fairly dense writer, and there were a number of plotlines going on at once... which can be okay, but I was only interested in a couple of them (mainly about the son of the station commander and a possible enemy agent who had been 'adjusted' (ie, mindwiped for the protection of others) at his own request. For a numbe rof the others, every time it switched to them I had to struggle to remember who these people were, what side they were on, and anything else that might make their actions understandable.
Wasn't too enthralled with the alien race in the book either, could take it or leave it. Still, as I went on, I became a little more engaged, and I did like how the book ended up.
Alas, Babylon is a apocalypse/post-apocalypse novel written in the late 50s,dealing with Nuclear War. This is one of the sub-genres that I like to read a lot of (another being the 'person or especially city transported out of time' genre). I especially like the classic apocalypses and ones written in the 50s and 60s... not sure I'd be all that into a brand new apocalypse novel. There's a certain charm about that it's written in the past. Anyway, this one is set in Florida. It's one of the more optomistic ones, although radiation is a danger it's an avoidable one, the people in the novel are described as fairly lucky in terms of where they're situated, and more significant problems are supplies and the human element.
More thoughts after I finish rereading it.
Anyway, book foo. I decided to go with Alas, Bablyon because I was carrying my textbook for the test, and when I've got a textbook in the bag there's more chance for books to get damaged by jostling, and I didn't want to do that to Ender's Game. So, without further ado...
Finished: Downbelow Station, by CJ Cherryh
Started: Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
More thoughts behind the cut tag.
Okay, DS was okay, although it was slow going first. Cherryh is a fairly dense writer, and there were a number of plotlines going on at once... which can be okay, but I was only interested in a couple of them (mainly about the son of the station commander and a possible enemy agent who had been 'adjusted' (ie, mindwiped for the protection of others) at his own request. For a numbe rof the others, every time it switched to them I had to struggle to remember who these people were, what side they were on, and anything else that might make their actions understandable.
Wasn't too enthralled with the alien race in the book either, could take it or leave it. Still, as I went on, I became a little more engaged, and I did like how the book ended up.
Alas, Babylon is a apocalypse/post-apocalypse novel written in the late 50s,dealing with Nuclear War. This is one of the sub-genres that I like to read a lot of (another being the 'person or especially city transported out of time' genre). I especially like the classic apocalypses and ones written in the 50s and 60s... not sure I'd be all that into a brand new apocalypse novel. There's a certain charm about that it's written in the past. Anyway, this one is set in Florida. It's one of the more optomistic ones, although radiation is a danger it's an avoidable one, the people in the novel are described as fairly lucky in terms of where they're situated, and more significant problems are supplies and the human element.
More thoughts after I finish rereading it.
