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Dec. 23rd, 2004 06:58 pmGods around. I don't want to be this sensitive.
In my expeditions around town this morning, I went by the library. Part of the run was for my parents, but I picked up some crack reading for myself. First, Survivor's Quest, the latest Zahn contribution to the Star Wars novelverse; second, a book I picked up at random called The Touch.
The latter I fully expected to be crap. The pretense is that, in the not-too-distant future, some people will develop a condition where any skin-to-skin contact with them will result in the other party being severely neurologically damaged in one way or another, temporarily or permanently. The condition is not transmissible and appears around puberty - corny enough, right?
Turns out, it's a collection of short stories, as a benefit for HEAL and FACT, charities championing AIDS- and cancer-related causes, respectively. It's a collection of short stories, and each one really hit home. I don't know if it's how it's meant, but I read it as a reminder of how the ill are shunned, and those that need the most help and support get the least, out of fear and misundertanding. Bad science aside, it is a really, really good book. My standard for good fiction is that it makes me forget that it's fiction, and as I read I keep imagining myself into that world, and how bleak and dreary it'd be.
Tomorrow, the terror that is Christmas Eve.
click
In my expeditions around town this morning, I went by the library. Part of the run was for my parents, but I picked up some crack reading for myself. First, Survivor's Quest, the latest Zahn contribution to the Star Wars novelverse; second, a book I picked up at random called The Touch.
The latter I fully expected to be crap. The pretense is that, in the not-too-distant future, some people will develop a condition where any skin-to-skin contact with them will result in the other party being severely neurologically damaged in one way or another, temporarily or permanently. The condition is not transmissible and appears around puberty - corny enough, right?
Turns out, it's a collection of short stories, as a benefit for HEAL and FACT, charities championing AIDS- and cancer-related causes, respectively. It's a collection of short stories, and each one really hit home. I don't know if it's how it's meant, but I read it as a reminder of how the ill are shunned, and those that need the most help and support get the least, out of fear and misundertanding. Bad science aside, it is a really, really good book. My standard for good fiction is that it makes me forget that it's fiction, and as I read I keep imagining myself into that world, and how bleak and dreary it'd be.
Tomorrow, the terror that is Christmas Eve.
click
