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It's a new year and I have a new goal! While I met my goal of 75 books for last year, it was really stressful and I only managed it by reading a bunch of short books. So this year I'm just going for 50. Hopefully I'll read more than that, but if not, I won't stress it.
Title: Nation
Author: Terry Pratchett
Number of Pages: 367 pages
Book Number/Goal: 1/50 for 2010
My Rating: 4/5
Mau is the only one left after his entire village is washed away by a giant wave. The wave also washes up Daphne, who is the only survivor of a shipwreck, and the two of them have to learn to survive on their own and to help rebuild the island once other survivors start arriving.
I was hesitant about this because Pratchett is one of those white writers who tries to write about race but doesn't realise how faily he sometimes is about it. And man, I almost set this down for good quite a few times because it seemed like it was heading to a bad place. But in the end, while there were some things that didn't sit right with me (everything European/white is pretty much real/historical, but Mau and his people and that whole part of the world are made up; I could really do without any more cannibal natives in stories, even if they are the badguys and there are plenty of non-cannibal people of color; though the book is anti-colonialist, there is still some "what these people need is a honky" that slips through; etc), I'm glad I stuck with it because he totally turned around what seemed like a major fail.
I didn't enjoy this as much as his Discworld stuff, but I did like it a lot and thought Mau and Daphne were great (and I loved that they both got equal pagetime, too, so it wasn't all about the white girl, but it also wasn't all about the boy).
Title: Nation
Author: Terry Pratchett
Number of Pages: 367 pages
Book Number/Goal: 1/50 for 2010
My Rating: 4/5
Mau is the only one left after his entire village is washed away by a giant wave. The wave also washes up Daphne, who is the only survivor of a shipwreck, and the two of them have to learn to survive on their own and to help rebuild the island once other survivors start arriving.
I was hesitant about this because Pratchett is one of those white writers who tries to write about race but doesn't realise how faily he sometimes is about it. And man, I almost set this down for good quite a few times because it seemed like it was heading to a bad place. But in the end, while there were some things that didn't sit right with me (everything European/white is pretty much real/historical, but Mau and his people and that whole part of the world are made up; I could really do without any more cannibal natives in stories, even if they are the badguys and there are plenty of non-cannibal people of color; though the book is anti-colonialist, there is still some "what these people need is a honky" that slips through; etc), I'm glad I stuck with it because he totally turned around what seemed like a major fail.
I didn't enjoy this as much as his Discworld stuff, but I did like it a lot and thought Mau and Daphne were great (and I loved that they both got equal pagetime, too, so it wasn't all about the white girl, but it also wasn't all about the boy).