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landofnowhereShades of Grey, Jasper Fforde. Reread -- the sequel just came out (15 years later!) so I am rereading this. Plotwise this is a fairly standard dystopia plot, where a naive young man comes of age, learns more about the world, and falls in love. Worldbuilding-wise, this is doing some interesting things -- it's set well in the future, after a mysterious Something That Happened convinced people that technology and progress was a bad idea, and society was restructured around a new Rule Book that proposed, among other things, a color vision-based class system. In particular there is a scheduled series of Leapbacks designed to undo technological progress -- the protagonist complains that when he was a kid a Leapback outlawed gearing on bikes. Because of this, the technology level in the books mostly seems roughly early twentieth-century, except that there's clearly also some highly advanced technology operating behind the scenes underlying the society. The last time I reread this book I was struck by its LARPiness, which is definitely there, but I'm not noticing it as much this time. Still have the last quarter of the book to go before I start on Red Side Story.
Faust, translated/adapted/abridged by Howard Brenton and Christa Weismann.selena_k recommended this translation, and I hope to do it as a Discord group play reading in the spring, so I thought I'd read it first. I can better see what the big deal is -- there is some excellent language (that must be even better in the original!) But also -- I had some vague cultural awareness of what happens with Faust and Gretchen, but I was not prepared for the sordidness of it all. It left a bad aftertaste, so I read on to Part II, which is just incredibly WTF, I am not even sure what all happened, but wow it was *something*.
Faust, translated/adapted/abridged by Howard Brenton and Christa Weismann.
selena_k recommended this translation, and I hope to do it as a Discord group play reading in the spring, so I thought I'd read it first. I can better see what the big deal is -- there is some excellent language (that must be even better in the original!) But also -- I had some vague cultural awareness of what happens with Faust and Gretchen, but I was not prepared for the sordidness of it all. It left a bad aftertaste, so I read on to Part II, which is just incredibly WTF, I am not even sure what all happened, but wow it was *something*.