Willis, Connie - Bellwether

[oyceter]

Jonquil showed up at the bookstore!! Squee!!

Back to your scheduled post...

I don't think I get the Connie Willis thing. Either that, or I need to read Impossible Things.

Anyhow, much like Passages, Bellwether is on a scientific/scholarly mystery and how it gets solved, along with the minutiae of corporate life. I liked it much better than Passages, most likely because Bellwether is about trends and fads and chaos theory, which I find much more interesting and much less personally threatening than near-death experiences. So I had a great deal of fun reading about the various fads in the beginning of each chapter, along with the main character's various observations of trends and fads all around her. It was also interesting because the book was published in 1996, and it was fun to see what fads had become mainstream and what had faded away and become painfully outre (can anyone pronounce outre? It's one of those words I learned from books).

ETA: oo-TRAY. Weird. Always thought it was OH-trah.

Much like Passages, I didn't much like the conclusion of the book and the solving of the scientific/scholarly mystery. I also enjoyed it more because I was much more amused by the poking fun at corporate fads and stupid acronyms and paper work, as compared to the relatively low interest level in the workings of a hospital.

So. Things so far I dislike about Connie Willis -- there are certain characters who are Wrong. Flip, in this one, and anyone who believed in metaphysical stuff or religion in Passages. It sort of annoyed me, that all the heroine's friends and anyone she knew would all commiserate over the wrongness of these characters, and I felt they were more stereotypes than anything else.

She feels more like a stereotypical sci-fi read to me, more idea based than character, and in general, I tend not to go for those types of books unless I find the idea very interesting.

ETA:
rilina's review

Comments

[oyceter]

Blech. Kind of interesting ideas, but I think one would get a much better look at said ideas in MUCH better prose in Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels.

Did I mention the terrible prose and the pseudo-feminism and the sheer Mary-Sue-nes/Marty-Stu-ness of Robert Langdon?

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I'd read a few of the wonky Christianity conspiracy theories and am pretty much content to leave things where they are. Thanks for the link. I shall avoid it assiduously.

[oyceter]

Sure thing -- the sad thing is that a lot of the history that he talks about in the beginning re: the canonization of certain books into the New Testament and the exclusion of others is really interesting. But then, Pagels is a much better intro to that than him anyway!