{"id":214,"date":"2007-07-16T23:24:37","date_gmt":"2007-07-16T14:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/16\/books-ian-m-banks-excession\/"},"modified":"2007-07-16T23:24:37","modified_gmt":"2007-07-16T14:24:37","slug":"books-ian-m-banks-excession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/16\/books-ian-m-banks-excession\/","title":{"rendered":"Books: Ian M. Banks’ Excession"},"content":{"rendered":"

I generally have a few English books on my shelves that I am saving for transcontinental flights to pass the time. On this past trip to Italy, before getting on the plane on an impulse I purchased SAGA Jun’ichi’s Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan’s Underworld<\/a> (translated by John Bester.) It was a fast read, lots of fun, but not heavy reading overall. I don’t know much about the Yakuza, so I can’t comment on that aspect, but it is an interesting character study. I’m now a bit more interested in that side of Japan, but I don’t know that I’ll pursue that interest with any intensity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On the flight from Italy to Japan, and then Japan to New York via Chicago, I started reading Ian M. Banks’ Excession<\/a>, a complex science fiction novel set in his Culture universe<\/a>. It was a very interesting read, focusing mainly on the response of the large scale artificial intelligence system of the Minds of the Culture ship to an unexpected impossible-seeming phenomena.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve read a few other Culture novels, Consider Phlebas<\/a> (good, but not great), The Player of Games<\/a> (also good), Use of Weapons<\/a> (this one was very memorable, very good), and now Excession. There are a few more novels in this universe which I’ll try to track down; Banks is a very enjoyable author and he really has quite a wide range of plot types. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While in New York I picked up five additional books, so I should have plenty to read on the trip home. Once I get back to Japan though, I had better concentrate on trying to finish Murakami’s Kafka by the Sea, which I’m slowly reading in Japanese. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I generally have a few English books on my shelves that I am saving for transcontinental flights to pass the time. On this past trip to Italy, before getting on the plane on an impulse I purchased SAGA Jun’ichi’s Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan’s Underworld (translated by John Bester.) It was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}