Third Quarter 2020 Reading is a Joy

[williamjm]

21 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

I didn't really get the impression that he was promoting that type of society, since he goes to pretty great lengths to show how crummy the moon is for the people who live there. The lack of laws makes it easy to be screwed over, and the physical conditions are so harsh on top of that that I can't see how the majority would accept that lifestyle. A few families make trillions, while their workers die in the vacuum on a daily basis or barely survive in cramped quarters underground? And all their security is engaged on a contract basis, with no police? Doesn't seem like conditions fostering any kind of stability to me. The worldbuilding was neat, but I felt that it lacked in positive aspects. A reason for anybody to want to live there, or to be so fanatically loyal to their employers.

I think he might have said at some point that the lunar libertarian society is partially inspired by Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - it's not a book I've read but perhaps McDonald was trying to show a different vision of how a libertarian society might look.

I agree that I don't think he's advocating for that kind of society, I've read many of his other books and heard him talk many times and I've never got the impression he was a libertarian.

[Iskaral Pust]

Finished Still Waters by Viveca Sten, the first in her Sandhamn Murders series of Scandinavian noir mysteries.

It really wasn’t great.  The writing is ok but the construction is pretty poor.  The (supposedly) main character is incredibly dull, with nary a glimpse of personality or mental process.  He’s just handsome and nobly tragic (baby daughter died) so that female characters all love him and want to be the one who fixes him.  And as a detective he just plods along without imagination or insight. 

But the majority of pages are spent on a POV character who is his female best friend and who is a pretty blatant self-insertion by the author.  This character has nothing to do with the crime, or with the solving thereof, but we get to hear an awful lot about her marital problems (which stem from expecting her husband to suddenly become a completely different person because that’s what she wants now — perhaps don’t marry and spend a decade plus with someone who is entirely opposite to everything you say you want) and her political worldview, which manages to be scornful of anyone not exactly like her.  She’s an upper middle class with a white collar career.  Any SAHMs in her circle are vapid, banal and pointless.  All blue collar characters are sullen, alcoholic troglodytes.  Anyone wealthier than her is either a tasteless, tacky arriviste or a reactionary blue blood.  Anyone not wealthy enough to own a summer house on the island and enjoy sailing like her is just a nuisance and irrelevance.  All men (all except the hero) are selfish, coarse louts.

The whole effect was just really unlikable. And Amazon claims this series is a best-seller?!

[Kyll.Ing.]

15 hours ago, Peadar said:

I don't think he's endorsing the society he's describing, but he clearly loves writing about its food, fashions and its many beverages.

Oh, definitely. Although it's kind of strange the fashions always hover around the middle of the 20th century, and when a character announces "the forties are back!" she means the 1940's and not the much more recent 2040s. 

Oh, and the bit about beverages remind me of another abandoned plot line:

Spoiler

There's a running gag in the third book that Luna keeps trying to invent a new drink. We see a few failed attempts, until it's suddenly not mentioned anymore. Would it be too much to show her either succeed, give up, or declare to be determined to keep trying, or at least reach some conclusion to it?

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Finished Robert Burns' poems. Going from Byron to Burns was a bit of a swerve to say the least - we go from Byron's grandeur to poems about lice, mice, and haggis  (oh, and the two on the death of Burns' pet sheep). Felt pretty rewarding though - I live in a city where a statue of Burns sits in the city centre, and it felt wrong that I'd never sat down and actually read him properly.

The most interesting moment was realising that a song from the 1973 Wicker Man film is just a Burns poem set to music. Never knew that before.

[polishgenius]

On 7/30/2020 at 12:26 AM, RedEyedGhost said:

There's a huge subplot about a guy who's basically described as a werewolf - a strange physiological condition that makes him behave all weird.

I haven't read the third book yet so I don't know where it goes, but if I recall correctly the second book explicitly states that the wolves are basically bipolar people, swinging between manic and depressive phases. Why they're in sync with each other or the moon I'm not really sure and I did feel it somewhat trivialised what is a pretty serious thing for people to deal with.

I've enjoyed the series other than that but there is a slightness to it, and there is something to the criticism that Macdonald is so focused on the fun of clashing families that he somewhat overlooks making it seem like a place people might actually want to and be able to live.

[HoodedCrow]

Taming of the shrew is hard because of all the, so funny, abuse. Think in terms of a gossips bridle. The writing is superb, of course. Line break. I liked Sense and Sensibility, including the movie with Alan Rickman. Wuthering heights is a great one, but the dialect is tough.

[dog-days]

On 7/31/2020 at 4:52 PM, The Marquis de Leech said:

Finished Robert Burns' poems. Going from Byron to Burns was a bit of a swerve to say the least - we go from Byron's grandeur to poems about lice, mice, and haggis  (oh, and the two on the death of Burns' pet sheep). Felt pretty rewarding though - I live in a city where a statue of Burns sits in the city centre, and it felt wrong that I'd never sat down and actually read him properly.

The most interesting moment was realising that a song from the 1973 Wicker Man film is just a Burns poem set to music. Never knew that before.

I read a biography of Burns a couple of years ago, having been brought up on his songs, and later appreciating his poems - Holy Wullie's Prayer in particular! 

I remember being particularly gripped as the end neared - afterwards I had to go for a walk to get rid of the feeling of enveloping pressure. It contextualised Oh Wert Thou In the Cauld Blast very well - one of Burns's final compositions in his last illness created (typically) for the seventeen year old family help Jessie Lennox. 

Or were I in the wildest waste

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare

[Peadar]

Since we were speaking of Ian McDonald's Luna series, I have found my copy of The Menace from Farside. Starting it today.

[Kyll.Ing.]

Re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the ... n-th time.

It's always fun to discover new things when re-reading that series. It's a joy to read, but so many things don't make a lick of sense when you think about it. Spotting those things is half the fun.

This time, I've realized that the way Hogwarts classes are described, the teachers must be overworked to heck and back. Take Transfiguration, for instance. Every class is taught to only one year of students of one house alone, and it's mandatory for the first five years. For the last two years, all houses presumably have the class together, as is customary in other sixth- and sevent-year subjects. This gives Professor McGonagall, the only teacher to teach the subject, at least 22 classes to attend every week. However, it's shown that students have Transfiguration several times per week, that adds up to 44 classes if we assume a minimum of two. And Prof. McGonagall is fond of giving her students lots of homework. The problem is, she teaches every student at Hogwarts for at least five of their seven years. On top of teaching 44 hours per week (wait, 44 classes per week. I'm not sure if we ever see how long each class is, but it could possibly be longer than an hour), she must also grade hundreds of pages of homework. That position better be dang well-paid.

Another problem is that the time schedule only contains two classes before lunch and two after lunch every day. That's 20 classes per week. How are the teachers fitting in 44 classes? Most of them are taught in only one classroom, which means Time-Turners can't be used. Even if the teacher could be in several places at the same time, they would need to be in the same place at the same time, teaching two separate classes. A special shout-out to Astronomy, whose classes are all at midnight. Does the Astronomy teacher work weekends? We never see anybody do Astronomy in sixth or seventh year, but would they have to have classes on Saturdays or Sundays? Is that the reason we never see anybody do Astronomy in sixth or seventh year?

The books are a great read (controversies around the author notwithstanding...), but whenever you try to do the numbers, they fall apart like a sandcastle in a hammock on a windy day. And that in itself is great fun, because it means there's always more to discover and discuss about the franchise.

[Caligula_K3]

3 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the ... n-th time.

It's always fun to discover new things when re-reading that series. It's a joy to read, but so many things don't make a lick of sense when you think about it. Spotting those things is half the fun.

This time, I've realized that the way Hogwarts classes are described, the teachers must be overworked to heck and back. Take Transfiguration, for instance. Every class is taught to only one year of students of one house alone, and it's mandatory for the first five years. For the last two years, all houses presumably have the class together, as is customary in other sixth- and sevent-year subjects. This gives Professor McGonagall, the only teacher to teach the subject, at least 22 classes to attend every week. However, it's shown that students have Transfiguration several times per week, that adds up to 44 classes if we assume a minimum of two. And Prof. McGonagall is fond of giving her students lots of homework. The problem is, she teaches every student at Hogwarts for at least five of their seven years. On top of teaching 44 hours per week (wait, 44 classes per week. I'm not sure if we ever see how long each class is, but it could possibly be longer than an hour), she must also grade hundreds of pages of homework. That position better be dang well-paid.

Another problem is that the time schedule only contains two classes before lunch and two after lunch every day. That's 20 classes per week. How are the teachers fitting in 44 classes? Most of them are taught in only one classroom, which means Time-Turners can't be used. Even if the teacher could be in several places at the same time, they would need to be in the same place at the same time, teaching two separate classes. A special shout-out to Astronomy, whose classes are all at midnight. Does the Astronomy teacher work weekends? We never see anybody do Astronomy in sixth or seventh year, but would they have to have classes on Saturdays or Sundays? Is that the reason we never see anybody do Astronomy in sixth or seventh year?

The books are a great read (controversies around the author notwithstanding...), but whenever you try to do the numbers, they fall apart like a sandcastle in a hammock on a windy day. And that in itself is great fun, because it means there's always more to discover and discuss about the franchise.

Amazing post. I never put these numbers together. I would love to read a Harry Potter book about the teachers unionizing with Dumbledore as the villain.

[Kyll.Ing.]

7 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Amazing post. I never put these numbers together. I would love to read a Harry Potter book about the teachers unionizing with Dumbledore as the villain.

Want another one? Everything in the books appears to make sense from Harry Potter's perspective, and we get that he's a bit unique and many things happen to him that don't happen to other people, but part of the appeal of the series is the world he participates in; to see his point of view as he passes through the system and gets the experience of what life is like in the wizarding world. I mean, everybody wants to be a Hogwarts student, right? Even if you aren't The Boy Who Lived, the school would be an amazing experience for everyone.

But things that happen to "everyone" need some logistics to be pulled off smoothly. What works nicely when one person does it, doesn't necessarily scale well to a lot of people doing it.

One such example is the Hogwarts Express, departing from Platform 9¾ at King's Cross station on September 1st every year, at 11 AM sharp. Harry Potter and his friends tend to arrive at the platform a few minutes before the train departs, by passing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 on the Muggle side of the station.

But then you start running the numbers again: Exactly how many students there are at Hogwarts is a matter of some dispute, but there are 40 students in Harry's year, which suggests a total student mass of around 300. However, Rowling herself has said she intended there to be around 700-800 students in total (and ... 12-ish teachers? Oh my.). It appears customary for Hogwarts students to be accompanied to the Hogwarts Express by their entire living family: both parents, possibly grandparents, and as many siblings as can spare the time. Let's be conservative and estimate one family member accompanying each student to the train. This would mean around 1500 people would fill Platform 9¾ around 11 AM every September 1st and at the end of the semester, half of them carrying a large suitcase each.

However, the platform apparently has only one entrance and exit: the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. Even if one person were to pass through it every two seconds, it would take the best part of an hour for everyone to pass through. One person every ten seconds, it'd take more than four hours. How is this accomplished without forming a huge crowd on the Muggle side? It is mentioned at the end of the books that an attendant makes sure to let people out of Platform 9¾ in small groups, so as not to alert the Muggles. But that's easy to organize when the crowd is on the magical side. What about arrivals? Here you have several hundred students and their families arriving to take the same train, while discreetly passing through a massive bottleneck, and as we see in case of the Weasleys, everyone is stressed to the gills on the day of departure, and conceivably there'd be plenty of other families arriving to King's Cross station just in time. To pull this off smoothly, there would have to be assigned time slots for arrivals, where some people would have to show up several hours in advance. Everyone would have to comply and be ready well ahead of time for Harry to be able to arrive only a few minutes before departure without having to queue to pass the barrier. And the families would have to wait on Platform 9¾ for hours after the train leaves, while the crowd slowly trickles out through the barrier.

 

Or maybe it all works because magic.

[Ormond]

4 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

One such example is the Hogwarts Express, departing from Platform 9¾ at King's Cross station on September 1st every year, at 11 AM sharp. Harry Potter and his friends tend to arrive at the platform a few minutes before the train departs, by passing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 on the Muggle side of the station.

But then you start running the numbers again: Exactly how many students there are at Hogwarts is a matter of some dispute, but there are 40 students in Harry's year, which suggests a total student mass of around 300. However, Rowling herself has said she intended there to be around 700-800 students in total (and ... 12-ish teachers? Oh my.). It appears customary for Hogwarts students to be accompanied to the Hogwarts Express by their entire living family: both parents, possibly grandparents, and as many siblings as can spare the time. Let's be conservative and estimate one family member accompanying each student to the train. This would mean around 1500 people would fill Platform 9¾ around 11 AM every September 1st and at the end of the semester, half of them carrying a large suitcase each.

However, the platform apparently has only one entrance and exit: the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. Even if one person were to pass through it every two seconds, it would take the best part of an hour for everyone to pass through. One person every ten seconds, it'd take more than four hours. How is this accomplished without forming a huge crowd on the Muggle side? It is mentioned at the end of the books that an attendant makes sure to let people out of Platform 9¾ in small groups, so as not to alert the Muggles. But that's easy to organize when the crowd is on the magical side. What about arrivals? Here you have several hundred students and their families arriving to take the same train, while discreetly passing through a massive bottleneck, and as we see in case of the Weasleys, everyone is stressed to the gills on the day of departure, and conceivably there'd be plenty of other families arriving to King's Cross station just in time. To pull this off smoothly, there would have to be assigned time slots for arrivals, where some people would have to show up several hours in advance. Everyone would have to comply and be ready well ahead of time for Harry to be able to arrive only a few minutes before departure without having to queue to pass the barrier. And the families would have to wait on Platform 9¾ for hours after the train leaves, while the crowd slowly trickles out through the barrier.

 

Or maybe it all works because magic.

I am no expert on the Harry Potter books, having just read them all once back when they first came out --

But I never had the belief that 100% of Hogwarts students all got on the train at Kings Cross station. Wouldn't that just be where students who lived in or near London got on? I know the London area has the biggest share of the UK's population, but nowhere near all, and surely there are Hogwarts students whose homes are in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Liverpool, Manchester, etc. etc. They would be getting on the train at different places or even have completely different trains, wouldn't they? Or did Rowling somewhere actually write that 100% of Hogwarts students have to get on at Kings Cross every year? 

[Kyll.Ing.]

2 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Or did Rowling somewhere actually write that 100% of Hogwarts students have to get on at Kings Cross every year? 

If so I haven't heard about it, but I'm pretty sure she never mentions an example of students getting there by any other means. Well, except that flying car in the second book, of course.

[john]

Given the plethora of travelling options in the wizarding world (broomsticks, fireplaces, invisible horses, magic buses, portal shoes and ultimately teleportation), you’ve got to imagine that travelling by train on the first day of school is just an ancient tradition that it pleases them to keep. Like in Westminster school in London where they toss a pancake over a metal bar in the ceiling and the pupils scrabble over it, the holder of the biggest piece winning a golden guinea (true story).

[williamjm]

I finished Robert Jackson Bennett's Shorefall. I enjoyed it a lot, it does build upon the characters and plot from Foundryside but it accelerates the pace significantly, I think the entire book takes place within a few days and a lot happens in it while the stakes are raised significantly from the first book. I thought it did a good job of slowly revealing some of the backstory behind the main antagonist, while a couple of developments were clearly foreshadowed there were also some surprises as well. The plot was compelling, particularly as it becomes clear how difficult it will to be to have a good outcome with even defeating the villain having its own dangers. The fast pace does mean that the characterisation does largely have to rely on the foundations established in the first book (there aren't many new characters in this one) but they do get some interesting character development. I'll be interested to see what happens in the final book of the trilogy.

I've now started David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue. I've not read much so far, the beginning seems to be a relatively simple tale about an aspiring musician in late 60s London but from past experience with Mitchell's books I'm sure the plot will get much more complex as it goes along.

[Leofric]

The second half of July started with The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow.  Liked this a lot as January grows up and learns who she really is and her place and role in this world and the others she finds her way to.

Then read the novella All Systems Red by Martha Wells, very fun introduction to the Murderbot, definitely will be reading further stories.

Then read the Themis Files trilogy (Sleeping Giants, Waking Gods, ad Being Human) by Syvain Neuvel, about the discovery of sections of a giant robot that had hidden around the world thousands of years ago, the work done to find the pieces and bring them together for study and the ramifications of one nation having control of a vastly superior weapon and solving the mystery of where the robot had come form.   The entire trilogy is told through letters, reports, transcripts, and recorded interviews.   Some interesting ideas, not sure I liked how it concluded.

Now reading Kindred by Octavia Butler, been meaning to read it for years, finally getting around to it.

 

 

[Kyll.Ing.]

46 minutes ago, Leap said:

Next up, all this talk of Harry Potter makes now a good time to finally pick up my copy of The Cursed Child, which has been sitting around since release (still a relative newcomer to the owned-unread pile). I have a horrible suspicion that I'm going to regret reading this.

*cackles maniacally, then breaks down into crying sobs*

[Vaughn]

Just read 'Foundryside' and enjoyed it a lot. A ripping yarn.

[Kyll.Ing.]

24 minutes ago, Leap said:

nothing will ever be worse than Harry and Ginny's adolescent son repeatedly kissing 40-year old Hermione while Polyjuiced as Ron. 

Don't say that until you have finished the book.

[Starkess]

I finished The Starless Sea and found it to be a disappointment. The meandering story lacked a solid throughline and ended up being super confusing and not engaging in the end. The central romance was totally illogical and unearned in its importance in the latter portions. I really liked The Night Circus, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with Morgernstern's style, but this was a miss IMO. I did finish it, it wasn't awful, but meh.

I've started listening to Finale, the third Caraval book by Stephanie Garber. I really enjoyed the first book in the series and kind of hated most of the second, so I didn't really plan to read this one, but I saw it at the library and thought why not...I'm already regretting it after only 30 minutes of listening. It's a YA fantasy romance book and the writing is just so fucking purple it's aggravating. Similes and metaphors every other sentence, many of which are just stupid and try-hard. I was hoping the POV character wouldn't be Donatella again because she suuucks, but so far it is. I already have wanted to slap her several times. I'm planning to soldier on, though...