Books: Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time

Finally read this - it was a birthday gift from my aunt that's been stacked next to my bed for ages. And I was looking at it thinking yet another space opera, and just generally underestimating my aunt. Because it is really good. There's no humanity left on earth, a terraformed nightmare planet, a crazy techwitch in a pod. And a bunch of humans floating endlessly in a ship. So there's plenty of clues there as to how it pans out, but it's done in a very clever and well-written way. It raised interesting issues in a not-too-annoying fashion and was still fairly gripping right up to the end. Definitely a good holiday read - I have a copy you can borrow, but I believe ashlyme wanted first dibs.

Films: Searching

 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7668870/

I thought I might also review the odd movie. Not most of the dross that I go to with the kid (who has good taste, but still - kid films).

Searching is really good. I wasn't sure it was until I got out the movie and it was still ticking through my brain. Apparently it's by the same people who made Unfriended which is a more disturbing story told in a similar medium via webcams and screenshots and mostly online methods. Searching is the story of a Dad raising a teenage girl alone after mum dies of cancer, losing that teenage girl when she disappears, and the hunt to track her down. It's tense (probably more so if you're a parent looking at the WORST DAD EVER stories they show on Twitter under the #missingmargot hashtag) and it's wryly funny when they show how an essentially friendless girl suddenly becomes everywhere. What I didn't realise is there were a lot of virtual subplots going on behind the main windows of the plot, and I'd really enjoy rewatching it. There are a couple of pretty good twists and it's definitely worth a Netflix watch.

Books: The Country Child - Alison Uttley

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1782775.The_Country_Child

I remember being besotted with this as a kid. Sadly my own 21st Century Sprog finds these sorts of books twee and disinteresting, but whatevs. It's a semi autobiographical story of a year in the life of a strange little girl growing up in Derbyshire, focusing on the details of nature and the hard farm life in what must have been around the 1900s. I think to my kid it would seem very much old fashioned, and to a 70s child it was a little too, but there were traces of old childhood games that still survived in the rural Cotswolds and there's an eternal nature to the fey child anyway. There probably still are small people sniffing trees and befriending streams out there, just my child isn't one of them.

This edition has lovely woodcuts. I think it would work well for you if you're fond of the "older" psychogeographical nature writers (i.e. before psychgeography was a thing). Or if you liked Cider with Rosie, maybe?

ashlyme has my copy but you're welcome to borrow it when they're done.

Books: Woman on the edge of time - Marge Piercy

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_on_the_Edge_of_Time

A friend gave me a copy of this - they loved it so much that they get spare copies and give them away. Which is the kind of awesome friends I have. Anyway, this book may be triggering if you have mental health issues / domestic violence triggers. Other than being grim, it's also good. I didn't realise it was 40 years old. It's written about a mother who's lost her child, been sectioned, and travelled to the future.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Ursula Le Guin - it hits the same themes of gender, society and sexuality. It's a different perspective on it all though, as the person telling the story is split between two worlds rather than actually living in the future utopia. That gives it an edge.

Piercy has written a cyberpunk novel and some poetry that I quite fancy trying, so this book has been memorable and good for sparking other interests. Welcome to borrow my copy.