Fourth Quarter 2019 Reading

[Ormond]

10 hours ago, Starkess said:

Off topic but, what?

He's making a distinction between ancient Roman authors who wrote in Latin and authors who write in modern Italian. 

[Maia]

On 12/8/2019 at 7:41 PM, Peadar said:

I'm starting A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

So, what did you think of it?

 

21 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Agreed, excellent book and my qualm is similar to yours in that I wished it were longer or part of a series or something because i wanted to spend more time in the world (and the final act is a bit rushed). I guess some more stand alones in the same world is always a possibility.

Yea, I very much hope for at least one more in this world, because some important things fundamental to the setting remained  unexplained.

A weird thing happened with my reading - you know how sometimes certain ideas kinda permeate the air and a number of books/movies with similar premises gets conceived at the same time independantly of each other? In my case, I picked 4 books where I knew nothing about the premises of the 3 of them except that they were supposed to be SF and it somehow turned out that all 4 of them deal with similar concepts.

"Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O" by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Takes on a hoary trope which I normally despise - the conflict of magic and technology and why they can't coexist, in an interesting way. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a slog that is twice as long as it needed to be and also commits the sin of carefully establishing limitations on it's time travel only then to gleefully throw them all away for the sake of some dubiously humorous   action. Limitations on what can and can't be changed without causing a catastrophe are arbitrary and don't make much sense, IMHO. Also the ending is unsatisfying because they seemingly  want to write a sequel.  

"Permafrost" by Alistair Reynolds - more time travel! Also, surprisingly, even more badly justified and logically flawed  than in the above. The problems they have either could have been solved with means much simpler than the time travel or couldn't be helped even with it. What is more, the ending just doesn't work at all. Massive disappointment, since I really liked his "Revenger".

"The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North - the only one of the bunch where I knew the premise in advance - basically "Groundhog Day", only stretched to a whole life - and kinda resisted picking it up until now because of it, in spite of all the praises. Needless to say, I was a fool and it was excellent. 

"Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch. 2/3 of it is a forgettable "Sliders" imitation, then there is an interesting twist which is ultimately dealt with in a problematic manner IMHO. Also, this is touted as a story about love, among other things, but it really is more about a dangerous obssession, IMHO, only the author doesn't realise it. 

[Astromech]

Finished the audiobook of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. Covers 55 years of the history of the Pilgrims and Native American tribes they encountered from the initial planning and voyage of the Mayflower through King Philip's War and its aftermath. 

[Starkess]

14 hours ago, Ormond said:

He's making a distinction between ancient Roman authors who wrote in Latin and authors who write in modern Italian. 

Aah, thanks!

9 hours ago, Maia said:

"Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch. 2/3 of it is a forgettable "Sliders" imitation, then there is an interesting twist which is ultimately dealt with in a problematic manner IMHO. Also, this is touted as a story about love, among other things, but it really is more about a dangerous obssession, IMHO, only the author doesn't realise it. 

I had the same feeling with that book. It was entertaining but damn he was OBSESSED.

[Isis]

9 hours ago, Astromech said:

Finished the audiobook of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. Covers 55 years of the history of the Pilgrims and Native American tribes they encountered from the initial planning and voyage of the Mayflower through King Philip's War and its aftermath. 

I started reading this earlier in the year and I stalled at 45%. Interesting but not quite gripping enough to hold my attention.

[Peadar]

16 hours ago, Maia said:

So, what did you think of it?

I quite liked A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. 

It was a bit like a cross between C.J. Cherryh and Ann Leckie. I didn't really connect with any of the characters, but the worldbuilding was fun. I also appreciated the way she dealt with the love/hate relationship between those from a minor state and their nearest superpower.

[IlyaP]

Reading Michael Lewis' 'The Big Short'. Goddamn it's fantastic. And not a door-stopper, like most of the books I read.

[Iskaral Pust]

Finished Dream Land by Sam Quinones, a non-fiction history/exploration of the opiate epidemic and associated heroin boom in America from the mid 1990s until now.  Very well researched and extremely well written.  Definitely worth a read.  My only criticism is that, similar to many non-fiction books, it goes on too long in order to keep adding more near-identical situations.  An editor should scrutinize critically the marginal value of each additional page.  I think authors are too invested in their research and want to share every single nugget, or else they want to deliver more pages as if that’s what readers want.

OK, I do have a second criticism which is that the author wants to end on a note of hope and suggest the trend is improving and the rust-belt (oxy-belt now) is improving, but that seems hasty.  And he doesn’t even touch on fentanyl.

But this is an extremely well-written account of the history of the morphine molecule, the formulation of oxycodone, the business of big pharma, the huge swing in perception of pain in medicine and the supposed non-addictiveness of new opiates for pain, the Purdue marketing machine, the incentives of doctors for insurance reimbursement, the rise of pill-mills, the new generation of young pill-addicts who progressed to cheaper, more potent heroin. 

And then separately he tells the story of the emergence of cheap Mexican black tar heroin, which reached America’s second and third tier cities to bypass the violent heroin gangs in the traditional entrepôts like New York and Baltimore for less potent (because it is cut or stepped on many times) white powder heroin from central Asia.

These two threads converge inevitably with disastrous results.

This book makes the case that the new generation of young pill addicts mostly started from comfortable middle class boredom and ennui amid a declining culture in the rust belt, rather than the despair of crushing poverty in that economic decline.  That clashes with other narratives and I would like to see the difference discussed, debated and reconciled. 

[Starkess]

Finished listening to the audiobook of Legendary, the second Caraval book. It was...not good. And not in a charming sort of way like the first one. The author doubled down on her ridiculously purple prose, came up with another horrible main character, and didn't even bother with a very interesting story this time around. Was not impressed.

I also finished my re-read of The Black Prism. It was as fun and easy to read as I remembered, although I was surprised by how many of the plot points happened earlier than I remembered. Looking forward to continuing this re-read over the holidays.

I needed a new audiobook for runs so I picked up The Curse of Chalion. I'm really liking it so far (after one 2 hour run), although I have trouble keeping names/characters straight when listening to books, so a dense fantasy book isn't always the best choice. Think I'm starting to get it straight, though.

[Peadar]

I'm reading Veronica Roth's Divergent for a workshop I'll be teaching in new year. I can see why this would work like crack on a certain segment of teens.

[Pecan]

Just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson about a week ago. Like others have said in reviews and probably on here as well, it's basically a very well-written but still somewhat conventional techno-thriller. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but I would place it firmly behind Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Snow Crash, and The Diamond Age. I haven't finished The Baroque Cycle or Seveneves yet, so those stay out of the rankings. 

And it wasn't until about 2 days after I finished the book that I realized "Egdod" is "Dodge" spelled backward.

[Pecan]

On 12/19/2019 at 4:29 AM, IlyaP said:

Reading Michael Lewis' 'The Big Short'. Goddamn it's fantastic. And not a door-stopper, like most of the books I read.

One of my favorite books. I wish that, instead of a move, they had done a series on HBO instead - maybe 8 episodes or something like that. 

[williamjm]

13 hours ago, Pecan said:

Just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson about a week ago. Like others have said in reviews and probably on here as well, it's basically a very well-written but still somewhat conventional techno-thriller. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but I would place it firmly behind Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Snow Crash, and The Diamond Age. I haven't finished The Baroque Cycle or Seveneves yet, so those stay out of the rankings. 

And it wasn't until about 2 days after I finished the book that I realized "Egdod" is "Dodge" spelled backward.

It felt that Reamde started off trying to be a thriller focused on the MMORPG, but then seemed to largely get bored of that and instead seemed to turn into a rejected plot for a season of 24. It was still entertaining, but I'd rank it below the other Stephenson books I've read.

[Peadar]

I will probably start Joseph O'Conner's Shadowplay this evening. He's the author of one of my favourite books, The Star of the Sea, so I have high hopes.

Both are historical novels. The Star of the Sea is about a coffin ship during the famine here in Ireland, but large sections of it take place in London. Shadowplay is about Bram Stoker, I believe.

[williamjm]

I read Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I thought it was a very cleverly plotted murder mystery. It's taking the classic set-up of a big country house filled with dysfunctional people all with their own dark secrets, the twist here is that the protagonist who is trying to solve the murder is reliving the same day over and over again. Eight times through the book he wakes up, each time in the body of a different one of the guests, each of whom has their own abilities and limitations and whose own personalities shape his approach to solving the murder. In case it wasn't complex enough already someone seems to be trying to kill off his hosts to stop him solving the murder, and he has another potential ally/rival who he is not sure whether he can trust.

It is intricately plotted, as well as the murder mystery itself (and a number of other mysterious subplots) there are also the movements of the eight hosts as they try to collectively track down the clues under a tight time limit while trying to protect themselves. I thought the solution to the murder was one of those where I think it makes perfect sense in retrospect and there were enough clues for the reader to work out most of it, even if it would be tricky to do so. I was a bit less convinced by the explanation for why the protagonist was in this time loop situation in the first place, it did feel like the author maybe came up with the murder plot and the timeloop concept first and then had to come up with some way to make it seem vaguely plausible.

[Iskaral Pust]

17 hours ago, williamjm said:

I read Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. I thought it was a very cleverly plotted murder mystery. It's taking the classic set-up of a big country house filled with dysfunctional people all with their own dark secrets, the twist here is that the protagonist who is trying to solve the murder is reliving the same day over and over again. Eight times through the book he wakes up, each time in the body of a different one of the guests, each of whom has their own abilities and limitations and whose own personalities shape his approach to solving the murder. In case it wasn't complex enough already someone seems to be trying to kill off his hosts to stop him solving the murder, and he has another potential ally/rival who he is not sure whether he can trust.

It is intricately plotted, as well as the murder mystery itself (and a number of other mysterious subplots) there are also the movements of the eight hosts as they try to collectively track down the clues under a tight time limit while trying to protect themselves. I thought the solution to the murder was one of those where I think it makes perfect sense in retrospect and there were enough clues for the reader to work out most of it, even if it would be tricky to do so. I was a bit less convinced by the explanation for why the protagonist was in this time loop situation in the first place, it did feel like the author maybe came up with the murder plot and the timeloop concept first and then had to come up with some way to make it seem vaguely plausible.

Sounds really interesting.  I just bought a copy.  Thanks for the rec.

[IlyaP]

On 12/26/2019 at 10:37 AM, williamjm said:

It felt that Reamde started off trying to be a thriller focused on the MMORPG, but then seemed to largely get bored of that and instead seemed to turn into a rejected plot for a season of 24. It was still entertaining, but I'd rank it below the other Stephenson books I've read.

Fall or, Dodge in Hell, is infinitely better. And has fewer typos. 

[IlyaP]

On 12/25/2019 at 9:24 PM, Pecan said:

One of my favorite books. I wish that, instead of a move, they had done a series on HBO instead - maybe 8 episodes or something like that. 

This needs to happen. I would be so damn happy, as there's so much material to cover - including helping the non-financial services person understand the linguistic nightmarishness that is CDOs, synthetic CDOs, etc. (The movie does an admirable job, but the book does it one better.)

Have been told to read Boomerang, as it's apparently a spiritual sequel to The Big Short. (It's on the list, but only after I've finished Tyerman's 'How to Plan a Crusade' and Tuckerman's and Serrat's 'Fixed Income Securities'.)

[ljkeane]

I actually finished it a while ago but the last book I read was Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House which is a pretty dark urban fantasy. I'm a little surprised to find out she went to Yale considering how down on both Yale and New Haven the book is.

Next up I think I'm going to read The Calculating Stars.

[Ormond]

I just read two books over Christmas vacation.

The first was the nonfiction The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer. This was about John Duval Gluck, Jr., a con man who managed to convince the U.S. Post Office in New York City to give him the letters to Santa Claus mailed by children for about 15 years in the early 20th century. He set up a charity that allowed people to buy gifts for poor children who had written the letters. Though some actual help was given to the poor, a great deal of the money raised went to support Gluck in a lavish lifestyle. He was also involved with the United States Boy Scout (yes, singular, not plural), a rival organization to the Boy Scouts of America. US Boy Scout also had very questionable fund raising practices. At one point Gluck wrote a 16 page letter accusing the Boy Scouts of America of all the bad practices the US Boy Scout was actually guilty of in order to confuse the critics of his organization. In the end Gluck's Santa Claus charity was shut down when the Post Office, convinced he was questionable, stopped sending him the letters. But although he was driven out of his most lucrative scams, Gluck was never criminally charged and lived out the last decades of his life in a fairly comfortable retirement in Miami. He reminded me a lot of Trump, though he was less nasty.

https://www.alexpalmerwrites.com/santa-claus-man

 

I then read The Glasswright's Progress by MIndy Klasky, the second in her five book fantasy series. The "Glasswright" series has a fairly conventional Renaissance-like fantasy world setting. (Klasky has since turned to writing "urban fantasy".) 

The book on one level resembles a YA as the main protagonists are still teenagers. Though there are a lot of references to sexual activity, there aren't graphically described sex scenes. However, Progress is in many ways as dark as ASOIAF. There is an evil king who literally raises a "LIttle Army" of child soldiers.  Though at the end of the book you find out about ulterior motives, young boys starting at age 8 are forced into this group and given tough military training. The violent death of children is a regular feature in the story, as is the acceptance of sexual relationships among "middle school" aged kids. There also is a secret society which turns out to be much less benevolent than Rani (the 15 year old girl Glasswright) and Hal (the 17 year old newly crowned King of Morenia, (a nation fighting against Amanthia, the country ruled by the evil king) initially believed.  Klasky creates an interesting contrast between Morenia and Amanthia -- both are societies with fairly rigid caste systems, but the organization and meaning of the castes is very different in the two countries.

The Glasswright books aren't going to compete with ASOIAF on a literary level, but their surprising grittiness may make them worth a try for GRRM fans looking for something to pass the time.

https://www.sfsite.com/09a/gp111.htm