Bleak, But Beautiful | Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ

Deftly, Delicately Done. This absolutely makes me want to read everything she's read, so thank you BookTube for telling me I had to read her.
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[@dpattn12]

That’s amazing! I love emotional depth.

[@B0BsBooks]

I was getting emotional because I was remembering what happened in the second half of the book. It's very good.

[@sethball2475]

Wow, I think I’ll have to seek this one out. When it comes to Russ, I read The Female Man decades ago for a university course on dystopian fiction, and it blew me away. It is not my all time favourite Feminist time-travel SF novel - that’s Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy - but it’s close. I certainly love Russ’s obliteration of basic rules of structure designed to keep a reader comfortable…goodbye to all that. I finally got back to Joanna Russ a year or two ago, when I acquired We Who Are About To…; I think of it as a really disturbing Psychological Horror book, as much as SF. Again, just shredding expectations, total rupture of the formula other writers follow with a similar premise. Disturbing, and - you used the word - bleak. I loved it, though. I’ve run the formula so many times with writers, I know to go to Russ for the best shake-ups.

[@B0BsBooks]

I will keep an eye out for Marge Piercy, and I appreciate you sharing that with me. I agree that Russ absolutely does her own thing, and it's quite impactful.

[@bookssongsandothermagic]

It's interesting that you say the beginning was tough - I'm reading The Female Man at the moment and it's a strange and deliberately impenetrable beginning, I think. She clearly likes doing that - I'm guessing that by the end of the book she may win me over.....Daniel Keyes does it brilliantly in Flowers for Algernon!

[@B0BsBooks]

I think she wrote the way she thought/talked. She had her own internal voice that didn't follow conventions and went with it. Thank you for the heads up about the Female Man. I saved a copy to read for myself and I'm excited to get to it.

[@stephanieh7967]

Thanks for the review! I’ll be on the lookout for this one! 😄

[@B0BsBooks]

I hope you find a copy. It's well worth the read.

[@pufles65]

Wow how cool to hear how someone can use that technique so subtly I will definitely be looking out for her😊💐Fantastic review 💐👍

[@B0BsBooks]

Thank you Donna!

[@skeller61]

You said you hadn’t read a book where the world changes like this. I have Flowers for Algernon on order, and I understand that it is written from the perspective of a low IQ person who gets surgery to make him smart, but then it might fail. It tells the story in journal entries from the main character, which change according to his mental prowess. I think I’ll get this in a Library of America collection of Sci-Fi from 1968-69, 4 stories including this and Nova by Samuel R. Delany, which I’d like to get, as well. That way, I can read both this and Flowers for Algernon together. Flowers was written as a short story in ‘58, and made into a novel by the author in 1966. Thanks for your review!

[@B0BsBooks]

I need a copy of Nova. It is a Delany that gets constantly recommended to me, but eludes me.

[@genxjason]

I totally don't read enough, especially scifi. I ain't gonna lie, this book sounds mad cool. Your review is alluring to the non fiction reader. In my opinion.

[@B0BsBooks]

This is high praise thank you.