current reading...

[ratcreature]

I'm reading Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, because I've seen it mentioned quite often, but never read it myself. I am currently in the middle of the second book, and still undecided whether I actually like the series, but it's at least interesting enough to keep me hooked.

Though I admittedly found the racial memory thing in the first book very weird and not appealing. I mean, I would have been okay with it if the book was situated a little more towards the fantasy end of the genre spectrum in other respects, but despite the extreme competence of the heroine, and the horse communication and stuff like that, that makes it fun fiction rather than some documentary reconstruction, this Lamarckian memory thing, with added telepathy and regression into past lives no less, seemed far more "out there" to me than the rest. That could be of course because I have no clue about pre-historic living beyond the vague memories of a couple of weeks when we covered it in history class in fifth grade before moving on to Mesopotamia, and a few museum trips where we looked at stuff from local excavations of old poles and pieces of broken stone stuck in some ex-swamp where local neolithic settlements were. Anyway, at least the mental superpowers seem to feature less in the second one.

Also, I am for sure learning a lot of English words I never encountered before, mostly tons of animal and plant species as well as tool names. Now I know that a "Stichel" is called "burin", and that's even a tool I have actually seen and used myself before (though I doubt the steel one I used in wood working class looked much like whatever stone thing they had). One thing that is strange is that I keep looking up the plant and animal names, even though especially with plants it's not as if I have much of an idea what the plant looks like after knowing its German name either. Still for some bizarre reason it is a much less nagging unknown once when I looked up for example that "elecampane" is "echter Alant", that "henbane" is "Bilsenkraut" or that an "dovekie" is a "Krabbentaucher", even though it's not as if I associate actual images or knowledge with either name. It is somewhat weird and ridiculous, but I can't seen to suppress the urge.

Comments

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Anyway, at least the mental superpowers seem to feature less in the second one

It gets worse again later. Though, not in book 3, which is actually my favorite.

Ayla is ALMOST enough to make me reconsider my position on the existence of Mary Sues.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

CANON Sues, not Mary Sues. ::headdesk::

[ratcreature]

Yeah, there's competent, and then there's COMPETENT!!!11!eleventyone!... and of course there's the tragic past and the beloved by all except the evil one thing. Being in the middle of the second one I keep hoping that little cave lion cub will eat her horse once it is well, but I somehow doubt that will actually happen. Or even that the horse will kick the cub's head in while the latter is still unwell while Ayla isn't looking. Though since I never got the whole "I want a pony!" thing, I'm kind of rooting more for the lion. (My best friend in high school had her own horse and tried to get me to grok the whole riding and horse love thing, but the one time I visited it I was afraid and just hoped the huge thing would be placated enough by my apple offerings and certainly didn't try to ride it.)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

book 2 was definitely the most uninteresting, i thought...it's been years decades since i read them, but i never minded the collective memory thing much...it reminded me a bit of the zimmer bradley female vs male thing she has in her avalon and troy stuff...though you're right, a bit of sf/f wouldn't have hurt credibility :D

[ratcreature]

I don't mind pseudoscience in sf (unless it's hard sf) or fantasy, but I found it really jarring here, and rather than reacting with "cool mental powers, yay!" I was gritting my teeth.

[brownbetty]

I've never read it, but my first year Anthro prof recommended it for its description of flint knapping which… just really amuses me.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, flint knapping features rather prominently. And you can picture it well. Though that may be also because I've been explained before the different steps to make a hand-axe several times, and had to look at far too many stone tools in museums. I also vaguely recall one museum visit when I was little when some museum guy demonstrated flint knapping by making a stone tool with reconstructed stone age tools. We didn't do the workshop thing for learning ourselves though.

[brownbetty]

I just like to imagine my Prof reading it for the flint knapping. He was theis little French man who looked like a Cocker Spaniel.

[ratcreature]

*snort* He had to get something else out of it too. I mean, you can't sustain your interest over more than 500 pages just for flint knapping, which even at it's most detailed doesn't fill more than one or two pages at most every time the narrative focuses on the technique...

[ilyena_sylph]

I lurk your journal, hopefully you won't mind me dropping by?

You caught my attention by mentioning some of the books I really like, though I hated the first book, I was madly in love with the second, and adore three and four.

You do, as someone else mentioned, get more 'wierd mental shit' with three for a bit, but... *shrug*

You're right, Ayla can be way, waaay overcompetent, and I spent some time wanting something she couldn't handle to happen just to watch her totallyfreakout...

But then, I probably like the books because I've got this bizzare obsession with prehistory, and hers is a fun version thereof.

I'm also a geek about herbal medicine, which means there's TONS of joy for me in that series.

[ratcreature]

Welcome, I certainly don't mind you dropping by. :)

I was never that interested in pre-history. Perhaps because I found looking at stone age stuff boring as a kid. I mean, getting to see rows and rows of stone hand-axes and remnants of some former settlement that have been preserved in some ex-bog just isn't that exiting (though bog bodies can be kind of cool, but those aren't that old iirc) and the pieces of interesting artwork, like that famous lionman sculpture from that area, seem to be very rare.

I can see the appeal for a herbal medicine geek. Maybe I should suggest the series to my sister who is also a total geek about herbal medicine and its history. She collects books and reprints of old herbal and alchemy compendiums and such, as it overlaps with her interest in European magic and its history. (She into some kind of modern neo-paganism, not Wicca though, which I think is more neo-celtic, but some variant with Germanic (or Norse?) gods, I think its called Asatru? -- I never was much interested what with being an atheist myself -- and apparently herbal stuff plays some role in that as well. Or something.)