The Reading List for August 2024

 

In spite of being driven off course by a couple of books I couldn't finish, I still managed to read eight books this month. I had attempted to read books 3 & 4 in Octavia Butler's Patternists series but I found the two books unreadable. I wouldn't attempt book #5.

I've written blog posts on six of the eight I did read

 The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
A Question of Belief  by Donna Leon
The Silkworm  by Robert Galbraith (J.K.Rowling)
Rogue Male  by Geoffrey Household
Patternmaster  by Octavia Butler.

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler made the list - but no blog post

To get back on track, I finished the month with another by Donna Leon - Drawing Conclusions. Leon is my "go to" when I really need a good book.

Octavia Butler's Patternist Series

 

When originally published in the late 1970s/early '80s, Octavia Butler's Patternest series consisted of five volumes:
1) Patternmaster (1976)
2) Mind of My Mind (1977)
3) Survivor (1978)
4) Wild Seed (1980)
and - 5) Clay's Ark (1984)

Having read the first two, I was faced with a dilemma. Butler would go on to disavow Survivor - calling it her worst novel and referring to it as "my Star Trek novel". She would not permit reprints of the novel. It is not available in any omnibus collection of the series.

Although out of print, Survivor is found in ebook format - Everything lives on in the Internet. My dilemma was, should I follow Butler's wishes and skip over book 3, or should I read Survivor in the order it was originally intended in 1978?

I began reading the book.

I immediately realized my decision was a mistake. The book most definitely does not belong. I could not get beyond the 25% mark.

I'm setting it aside and will continue on with Wild Seed.

Pattermaster by Olivia E. Butler

I first discovered Octavia Butler in 2022 when I read two of her remarkable stand -alone novels, a time travel novel, Kindred and her final novel, a so-called sci-fi vampire novel, Fledgling. I had written at the time that I had downloaded everything published by Butler and would read the collection "in the not too distant future". That was two years ago, and well things tend to get away from one. I've only just now finished Butler's first book, Patternmaster. Not only was this Butler's first novel, it was also the first in her Patternist series.

This first book depicts a distant future where the human race has been sharply divided into the dominant Patternists, their enemies the "diseased" and animalistic Clayarks, and the enslaved human mutes.

The Patternists, bred for intelligence and psychic abilities, are networked telepaths. They are ruled by the most powerful telepath, known as the Patternmaster. Although the first book to be published, Patternmaster is the last in the series' internal chronology. It is an amazing "debut novel" though, of course not flawless, by any means.

Never the less, I'm looking forward to completing the series.

The April 2022 Reading List

 

As I mentioned before, after two months of reading strictly time travel novels, I decided that for April, I'd head off in a different direction. I wanted to read non-time travel books by some of the writers who had made my time travel list. For the most part, I've stuck with that.

There are two exceptions, however.

After having read an article at CNN.com on a report of Harvard University's legacy of slavery since it's founding in 1636, I wanted to read the actual report. A link to the report as a pdf is below. The pdf is 134 pages. I'm counting that as a "book". That report led me to the Booker T. Washington "book" - also linked to below. Next month, I will follow up on this theme with something by W.E.B. Du Bois (to be determined later).

I've reviewed 6 of the books (not including the Washington or Harvard works) and links to those reviews are given below as well.

Declare                                         by Tim Powers
Fledgling                                      by Octavia Butler
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater     by Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds                  by H.G.Wells
The Massacre of Mankind            by Stephen Baxter
The Story of Slavery                      by Booker T. Washington
Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery
Her Fearful Symmetry                  by Audrey Niffenegger

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

At the first of this month, I concluded my  two month  adventure with time travel by choosing to head off in a different direction with my reading. I decided to look at some of the writers that I'd read in those time travel days, and read some of their novels which are not related to time travel. The writers include - but are not limited to - Tim Powers, Octavia Butler, Kurt Vonnegut and Audrey Niffenegger.

Having finished reading Powers' Declare I continued on to Octavia Butler's science fiction vampire novel, Fledgling. I enjoyed Butler's time travel novel, Kindred so there was no question but that I'd be reading more of Butler's novels. The majority of Butler's novels are parts of multiple series. Although I will one day get around to reading Butler's Patternist, Xenogenesis and Parable series, I wanted to read a "standalone" novel this month and the only other novel, besides Kindred, that fits that category is her final novel, Fledgling.

The wikidedia description of the plot of the novel is much better than I could write :

The novel tells the story of Shori, a 53-year-old member of the Ina species, who appears to be a ten-year-old African-American girl. The Ina are nocturnal, long-lived, and derive sustenance by drinking human blood. Though they are physically superior to humans, both in strength and ability to heal from injury, the Ina depend on humans to survive. Therefore, their relationships are symbiotic, with the Ina's venom providing significant boost to their humans' immune systems and extending their lives up to 200 years. However, withdrawal from this venom will also lead to the human's death.

Butler had a unique take on the idea of vampires......I can't recall reading anything quite like this. It's very different from the standard Dracula legend.

Of course, other than the plot description posted above, I've no intention of providing "spoilers". Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of Octavia Butler, and I highly recommend Fledgling to those who enjoy Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction.

Kindred

As I went deeper into my quest to read exclusively time travel novels for the next few months, I became somewhat weary of what I had gotten myself into. I've read 19 time travel novels since the first of February, and frankly not all of these have been winners. I was becoming more and more burned-out on the genre and was longing for something different.

Not at all certain that I would go into April still willing to continue the quest, I looked at the books I wanted to read before I stopped reading time travel books all together. One such novel was Octavia Butler's Kindred . I had looked into the work and was looking forward to reading this one - I've also downloaded everything written by Butler, to be read in the not too distant future.

The novel incorporates time travel and what is known as Neo-slave narratives. It is a novel that should be read - although it certainly isn't comfortable reading.

The methods writers have used to transport people through time fall into two basic categories. One method involves some sort of machine or device which transports the protagonist either forward or backward (or both) in time. Examples of this are, of course The Time Machine by H.G.Wells, it's sequel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, and the "Oxford Time Travel series" by Connie Willis.

The second category involves "spontaneous" time travel by individuals without the use of machines. Examples of this type include Slaughterhouse-Five ,The Time Traveler's Wife and There Will Be Time . Kindred falls into this category. Like Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler's Wife  and Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, Kindred's Dana Franklin has no control over when she'll time travel. But resembling Jack Havig from There Will Be Time, Dana Franklin can bring objects and/or people along with her, as Franklin and her husband discover.

There are several complex themes in the Butler novel; a realistic depiction of slavery and slave communities and the "master-slave power dynamic", a critique of the official history of the United States, and the concept of "race".

As I stated earlier, Kindred is an uncomfortable read, but it deserves to be read.