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First Quarter 2021 Reading


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Finished Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott, the second in her seven book "Crown of Stars" fantasy series set in an alternate world version of medieval Europe where men and women are more equal than they were in ours (explained by the Christian-like religion being based on a joint Lord and Lady as god and goddess.

The first book was primarily based on just two "viewpoint" characters. Prince of Dogs introduces other viewpoints and does a very good job of making the world and the plotlines more complex, so I can easily see how a very good seven book series will fit into this world. Elliott's fantasy world is sort of an interesting blend of elements more like ASOIAF and more like Tolkien -- she includes a non-human race called Eika that are a cross between Tolkien's orcs and Vikings, and we learn a lot more about their history, culture, and biology in this book. Her villainous woman biscop (bishop) from the first book gets a couple of viewpoint chapters, where one learns new surprising things about her life. A new young "commoner" girl has the viewpoint of the Prologue, Epilogue, and several chapters inbetween. Like ASOIAF, the chapters are written in third person even though each focuses mostly on one particular character's viewpoint.

This tale includes one of the scariest sociopath characters in any fantasy I've read in Hugh, a charming but evilly manipulative and sexually exploitative cleric. In the character Alain I think Elliott makes the "boy raised as a commoner who finds out he really is the heir of a noble house" more believable than most others, perhaps partly because he's son and heir of a count rather than the King. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to going on to the third book in the series, though given how I choose my readings I may not get to that until about a year from now. :)

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Ordered a handful of books I'm looking forward to reading. So add The Field of Blood, Evil Geniuses and On Tyranny to Watchmen and The Handmaid's Tale. I'm still laughing at how small On Tyranny. For starters, is barely over 100 pages and the thing is basically the size of my hand. I'd be shocked if it took more than a few hours to read. 

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On 1/22/2021 at 5:33 AM, RhaenysBee said:

Not sure if I’m allowed to post about audiobooks as well - some are sensitive about the definition of reading applying exclusively for written books. (And then there’s kindle and the like) So, please, let me know if I should post my audiobook experiences elsewhere. 

Yes, do please feel free to use this thread to discuss audiobooks!  Listening or reading--it's about the books. :)

On 1/24/2021 at 10:27 AM, TheLastWolf said:

The Book Thief is achingly great! 

I started that audiobook and couldn't get into it at all. Ended up returning it after maybe an hour of listening. I know it has great hype--maybe I should try actually reading it instead. 

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1 minute ago, Starkess said:

started that audiobook and couldn't get into it at all. Ended up returning it after maybe an hour of listening. I know it has great hype--maybe I should try actually reading it instead.

Surely do it. One of the best debut novels. Markus Zusak shines. Different take on the WW2. Beautiful. Poignant. Melancholic. 

The film adaptation could have been better. If it was directed by Spielberg or Ridley Scott 

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Finished off Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. Famously a forerunner to the spy genre, I went in expecting an Indian Thirty-Nine Steps. It isn't like that. It is simply too opaque, and while there is a spy story buried in there, it isn't the heart of the book. The real meat of Kim is the setting - Kipling's love-letter to India under the Raj - which is incredibly vivid. Yes, it's Kipling, so the setting is presented through an Imperialist lens, but the book conjures a sense of place like few others.

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On 1/22/2021 at 7:33 PM, RhaenysBee said:

My Friend Anna is a most different kind of non fiction and I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to ever start, let alone finish this publication. It is an account of a mediocre New Yorker who was cheated out of a large sum of money by a Russian con artist. I could fill another book with everything that was wrong with this one, so let’s just leave it at: don’t bother. 

I read the longform article about that and it was long enough.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html

There are other articles but I think that one was the best. The personal account by the author of the books is this https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/my-misadventure-with-the-magician-of-manhattan

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13 hours ago, A wilding said:

Another short account by someone who encountered Anna that gives a good idea of what happened:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50662268

 

I also read that! Yes, it's a good one. Is it just me or does Elle Dee really come off as insufferably smug and even mean? That was the only article that actually made me feel sorry for Anna instead of the people she scammed.

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I read Ursula Le Guin's The Farthest Shore. I did like it, but I also think it was my least favourite of the first three Earthsea books. I thought it did work well as the final part in a loose trilogy showing Ged at different stages in his life, as a teenage, an adult and now in middle age and it does a good job of showing how Ged has changed over the years and how he has been shaped by his experiences in the previous books. However, I found Arren to be a less compelling protagonist than Ged or Tenar in the previous instalments. It felt as if the book was telling us a lot that Arren was someone destined for greatness but didn't necessarily show that, he might show plenty of determination and courage but other than that didn't seem particularly special. The plot was decent but again not as compelling as in the first two books, and while it does have the most traditional antagonist of the books so far they don't appear enough in the book to be memorable. I think my favourite bit may have been the interlude with the 'children of the sea' which had the most interesting world-building in the book.

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17 hours ago, Gigei said:

I also read that! Yes, it's a good one. Is it just me or does Elle Dee really come off as insufferably smug and even mean? That was the only article that actually made me feel sorry for Anna instead of the people she scammed.

Yes, I thought the article bought out the pathological side to Anna's behaviour and so made it possible to feel some sympathy for her. (Been there in my own life, when you discover someone is actually mentally ill you feel the obligation to cut them some slack, while still taking care to go on protecting yourself.) That means that Elle Dee, being an obviously level headed person who saw the red flags and kept herself well clear, comes across as cold. In her defence, she seems only to have given her side of the story in self defence after being unwillingly pulled into all the publicity.

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After about a week I was still less than a sixth of the way into C. J. Cherryh's Fortress at the End of Time and wasn't particularly excited to read more, so I've decided to give up on that for now.  Cherryh's always been a bit of a hit-and-miss author for me though: I really like Downbelow Station and Cyteen, but I've never been able to get into the Chanur or Foreigner series.

I read Martha Wells' All Systems Red instead but found that slightly underwhelming as well.  The main character is fun, but the world-building and plot is all pretty minimal.  (To be fair, it's only a novella so there isn't that much room for an elaborate plot.)

Still, more or less on target for January.  For February, the aim is to read four books: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust, Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas & Electric and Lavie Tidhar's Central Station.

 

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Based on recs here:

 

Finished Jade City - pretty enjoyable, looking forward to reading the next books.

Started Half of a Yellow Sun, I’ve been semi-avoiding “serious” books during the pandemic, so it’s good to get back into a different vein.

Other books:

Finished Lit, by Mary Karr.  I really enjoy her narrative books and voice, but this one was really hard to sit with after - a lot of addiction and parenting/relationship dynamic that resonated with where I am in my life.

Halfway into the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf, it’s nice to come back to the story with non-high school eyes.

Halfway into The Art of Living, by Thich Nhat Hanh.  I’m not a Buddhist, but snips and chapters of this type of book have really helped me calm my mind and see things more clearly, in the middle of the worlds chaos.

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I finished Death's End, the last book in Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. I really enjoyed this one, the most of all three books. It was a lot easier to read, more novel-like, and the writing didn't feel quite so difficult to wade through. 

Spoiler

It was depressing as hell in some ways but yet also I actually found it surprisingly hopeful in a way. Maybe I'm a weirdo but it's a bit of a relief to me to know that, even if humanity was somehow perfect, we would never be able to survive forever. So let's not stress over our imperfections.

On the other hand, this book reallllly highlights some of those imperfections...

 

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12 hours ago, A wilding said:

Yes, I thought the article bought out the pathological side to Anna's behaviour and so made it possible to feel some sympathy for her. (Been there in my own life, when you discover someone is actually mentally ill you feel the obligation to cut them some slack, while still taking care to go on protecting yourself.) That means that Elle Dee, being an obviously level headed person who saw the red flags and kept herself well clear, comes across as cold. In her defence, she seems only to have given her side of the story in self defence after being unwillingly pulled into all the publicity.

I think you nailed it. 

BTW, the Netflix series based on her story, Inventing Anna, sounds as exciting as watching paint dry but, who knows, maybe it will be good.

Quote

A journalist investigates the case of Anna Delvey, the Instagram-legendary heiress who stole the hearts -- and money -- of New York's social elite.

 

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I just finished A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.  Very enjoyable.  I can't wait for the sequel to come out this summer, especially after that last line.  In place of that, Novik's Uprooted is next on my reading list.

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I've been re-reading Hal Duncan's Book of All Hours for the first time in a while. Love these books. They should be a New-Sun level genre classic. I understand why they aren't, because they are a little pretentious and also just very very obtuse the first time you read them, but they're so good.

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I enjoyed Paul McAuley's War of the Maps. Very reminiscent of the sort of thing I used to love in my teens -- Book of the New Sun, The Dying Earth etc. -- picaresque adventures in an impossibly far future and mostly post-technological world.

It might be time for some non-fiction next.

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3 minutes ago, Peadar said:

I enjoyed Paul McAuley's War of the Maps. Very reminiscent of the sort of thing I used to love in my teens -- Book of the New Sun, The Dying Earth etc. -- picaresque adventures in an impossibly far future and mostly post-technological world.


Ooh that sounds interesting, goes on the list.

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