Idlewild / Music for a New Society
Jul. 26th, 2005 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishAfter some serious data corruption a couple months ago I've given up on a coherent booklog. So, just the things that strike me. Which makes more sense anyway.
Nick Sagan, Idlewild
Very neat. The first half feels cribbed from Zelazny's Amber books: the protagonist with amnesia, the world-warping, the limited number of siblings of comparable power. Halloween's a much more developed character than Corwin, though, and events diverge pretty sharply from Amber about midway through the book. Oddly, the second half isn't quite as good as the first . . . I suppose that might just be personal preference. The resolution works out well enough. I understand there's a sequel; I'll be checking that out.
John Cale, Music for a New Society
By the end of side one I was cowering under the kitchen table. -- Tim Bradstock
I reflexively describe this album as "unlistenable" when I go through my CDs, but that's really unfair. I mean, the man tends to descend into screaming at the end of his songs, what's the bar for unlistenable here?
Listening to MfaNS is like watching someone else slit your wrists with a very cold, ivory-handled silver-bladed straight razor.
"Thoughtless Kind" is about your friends. The main character in "Chinese Envoy" might as well be a ghost. The music quietly drifts around the words, synthesised somethings, except when the piano crashes down around "Damn Life" or "Risé, Sam, and Rimsky-Korsakov." Beautiful, haunting.
I couldn't listen to this every day, but at times it's the right music.
Nick Sagan, Idlewild
Very neat. The first half feels cribbed from Zelazny's Amber books: the protagonist with amnesia, the world-warping, the limited number of siblings of comparable power. Halloween's a much more developed character than Corwin, though, and events diverge pretty sharply from Amber about midway through the book. Oddly, the second half isn't quite as good as the first . . . I suppose that might just be personal preference. The resolution works out well enough. I understand there's a sequel; I'll be checking that out.
John Cale, Music for a New Society
By the end of side one I was cowering under the kitchen table. -- Tim Bradstock
I reflexively describe this album as "unlistenable" when I go through my CDs, but that's really unfair. I mean, the man tends to descend into screaming at the end of his songs, what's the bar for unlistenable here?
Listening to MfaNS is like watching someone else slit your wrists with a very cold, ivory-handled silver-bladed straight razor.
"Thoughtless Kind" is about your friends. The main character in "Chinese Envoy" might as well be a ghost. The music quietly drifts around the words, synthesised somethings, except when the piano crashes down around "Damn Life" or "Risé, Sam, and Rimsky-Korsakov." Beautiful, haunting.
I couldn't listen to this every day, but at times it's the right music.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 03:08 pm (UTC)You, too, seem to have been working your way through John M Ford's works. Some strong stuff there as well. From my general feelings with what you've said about the books I have read, I might investigate some of the others you recommend. Thanks for going to the trouble of putting this all 'down on paper'.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-18 07:10 pm (UTC)I'd read JMF's more famous and in-print stuff by the end of last September, but at that point it seemed to warrant a re-read, and a serious attempt to Get It All. *sigh*
Posterity
Date: 2007-06-08 01:33 am (UTC)http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009050.html#190936