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August '18 Reading- (Insert Clever Subtitle)


Garett Hornwood

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12 hours ago, aceluby said:

About 1/4 through Eye Of The World and am enjoying it much more than the first time I tried going through it.  May finally find out what all the hub bub is about with this Wheel of Time series.

Much of the WOT fun is finding the deep story hidden under the nominal story. As with Rothfuss, whom I am re-reading because I am a masochist.

I'm also working through the extremely amateurish and lightweight Wandering Inn. It's caught my interest and is mildly amusing.

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I read Killigrew Of The Royal Navy by Jonathan Lunn, another naval historical fiction and first in a series.  I would not recommend it and won’t be reading any further in the series. 

I decided I needed a change in genre and next read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari, a non-fiction history of the development of human society.  A very good read and highly recommended.  No new historical facts revealed but his organization of over-arching themes and cultural progression was very interesting. 

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Finished Anna Smith Spark's The Tower of Living and Dying, the second book in her Empires of Dust trilogy. She's elsewhere cited R Scott Bakker as one of her influences (along with Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault) and I can see it, I suppose, as but she has a lot less of the empty loaded wankery Bakker does. Enjoyed the ride, even if I'm still not entirely sure where it's going. Strange.

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Having forgotten both that I'd repurchased it months ago, and that it was coming up, I got a ninja download of Robert Jackson Bennet's Foundryside, the other day. So, expecting a less hazy narrative I'm diving into that next. 

 

 

ETA: busy today, just saw the error

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On 8/5/2018 at 10:24 PM, kairparavel said:

I'm about 45% into Spinning Silver and am enjoying it. It has a different sort of charm from Uprooted, which I thoroughly loved.

I finished Spinning Silver and I loved it a lot. The three female leads were wholly different in personality and motivation and all were very strong characters. The ending had me in tears. I needed the charm of it all. 

For a change of pace I listened to The Trespasser by Tana French during my commute and it was great. I've now read 4/6 Dublin Murder Squad books and it's my second favorite after In the Woods. But based on the Introduction of Frank Mackey in The Secret Place I expect The Faithful Place will be a decent story/main character as well. 

I'm now onto Ruth Ware's In a Dark Dark Wood and I think I've sussed out the culprit though I've about a third to go. And I greatly dislike the narrator and side characters except for maybe Nina. It's not bad if a little repetitive - restating things/ideas in spots to keep up the mystery. 

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I just finished Redemption's Blade which had a bit of a different tone than I was expecting for a book about the aftermath of an apocalyptic conflict against a dark lord but it was still good.

I'm undecided what I'm going to read next. I've got Record of a Spaceborn Few but I'm on holiday in a couple of weeks and I'm thinking that could be a good holiday read. I'm leaning towards The Furthest Station with Lies Sleeping coming out soon but how expensive it is for a novella has been putting me off for a while.

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Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Very interesting. I found it digressed from its central theme a little towards the end of the book with 20th and 21st C history,  but very interesting take on history focusing on the importance of the Middle East and Central Asia and following history through various commodities from silk through oil. The last third of the book had me itching to read Daniel Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power.

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Finished the last two books in Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle, overall enjoyed it.  The last book got a little bloated with bringing back some characters I'd almost forgotten about, but it wrapped up nicely.

Now onto Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames.   Loved the first Band book, so looking forward to this one.

 

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Got some reading done over vacation. Mostly books that I grabbed at the library at the last minute, so I was pleased that I enjoyed them all. I read Artemis by Andy Weir, Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson, and The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand. 

And just in time for getting back, got notice that my hold on The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet had come through, only to realize I'd already bought the book a while back when it was on sale in anticipation of the series finishing. Ah well, hopefully my holds on the sequels won't lag too far behind!

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A quick end of the month wrap up of what I've read since my last post.

I finished Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny on the 16th, it's not perfect but I enjoyed the book and would read it if I ever get through my TBR pile.  I finihed Laying Down the Law by Keith Augustus Burton on the 18th and found it an excellent Bible study book over the course of two weekend.  And earlier this week I finished Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, this was a book of philosophical and theological material from the late 1000s/early 1100s by the aforementioned Anselm; the least said of this the better.

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I just finished Record of a spaceborn few by Becky Chambers, second "sequel" to The long way to a small, angry planet mentioned above.

I think I liked this less than the two first books. While the first one didn't have much of a central story (it's basically all laid out in the title of the book), it had very interesting characters who all went through an arc of sorts, and each chapter had me wondering what happens next. It was very much a book of philosophy, more about exploring the concepts than telling a story, but it struck a good balance between those things. The second book, A closed and common orbit, was very focused on two different character arcs, while again exploring different perspectives and concepts about what it means to be human. Again it kept you wondering what happened to the characters next, as their ordeals kept straining them towards the breaking point.

By contrast, Record of a spaceborn few has hardly any story at all. It has five main characters who go on in their daily lives for 360 pages or so, and in the end they have changed marginally. There is hardly any interaction between the main characters, they live entirely separate lives except for a couple of encounters with each other. The aliens whose different outlooks on life made the first and second books very interesting, are hardly present. One alien is brought on as an outside observer, literally present just to observe the ways of humanity in an academic context and serve as a sixth narrator of sorts, but other than that all main characters are humans born into regular families and behaving in decidedly human ways. There's only one character who has anything interesting actually happening to them, two spend the whole book building up to a mundane decision taken at the very end (whether to move to another planet, and what career to choose, respectively), and the two last ones don't change at all between the first chapter and the epilogue.

The philosophical musings are still present, and there is a lot of interesting reflections on the ways of humanity in this setting, but ...again, there is no story. Each chapter is another slice of life. Life in an exotic sci-fi setting, yes, but Chambers great strength of making the exotic sound mundane also means there's nothing to be curious about. Only one of the main characters come into the setting as an outsider, excited about all the wonderful things and new experiences (which were tremendously enjoyable to read about in the first two books), yet the stuff he keeps reflecting about is the same stuff described mundanely by the other four throughout the whole book.

...So, yeah. Excellent setting, excellent musings on life, but a weaker story than the two other books. That being said, I hope the author keeps writing books in this series. I just hope she goes back to the style of character arcs from the first two books, instead of the character rails from this one.

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7 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

To answer my own question I went to her web site and she says she plans to keep writing books in this series pretty much forever, so no, it’s not a trilogy.

Okay thanks, good to know! Not sure where I got that notion from. I'll go ahead and start reading them then, I guess!

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10 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

By contrast, Record of a spaceborn few has hardly any story at all. It has five main characters who go on in their daily lives for 360 pages or so, and in the end they have changed marginally. There is hardly any interaction between the main characters, they live entirely separate lives except for a couple of encounters with each other. The aliens whose different outlooks on life made the first and second books very interesting, are hardly present. One alien is brought on as an outside observer, literally present just to observe the ways of humanity in an academic context and serve as a sixth narrator of sorts, but other than that all main characters are humans born into regular families and behaving in decidedly human ways. There's only one character who has anything interesting actually happening to them, two spend the whole book building up to a mundane decision taken at the very end (whether to move to another planet, and what career to choose, respectively), and the two last ones don't change at all between the first chapter and the epilogue.

The philosophical musings are still present, and there is a lot of interesting reflections on the ways of humanity in this setting, but ...again, there is no story. Each chapter is another slice of life. Life in an exotic sci-fi setting, yes, but Chambers great strength of making the exotic sound mundane also means there's nothing to be curious about. Only one of the main characters come into the setting as an outsider, excited about all the wonderful things and new experiences (which were tremendously enjoyable to read about in the first two books), yet the stuff he keeps reflecting about is the same stuff described mundanely by the other four throughout the whole book.

I did like the book, but I suspect this isn't going to be an uncommon reaction to it. I did find the characters and setting interesting enough to make up for the relative lack of plot, but perhaps a few more major events happening could have made this an even better book.

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13 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Finished City of Brass last night.  Fantastic read.  Where is the thread about it? 

The way the narrative tried to depict a jerkass romance love interest(tm) who is also a mass murderer as likable was grating.

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