Second Quarter 2021 Reading

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Got it. Now I remember, it was comparing views on imperialism with him and Shashi Tharoor. Forgot the name of my Irish friend. Was it by any chance you? 

Nope.

[TheLastWolf]

18 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Nope.

Hmm, I wonder whom. Curse my memory. 

[polishgenius]

Today I read Artemis by Andy Weird. It's not bad, but it falls short of The Martian- partly because it's a smaller-scale, less spectacular equivalent of Ian MacDonald's Luna, and partly because for someone so smart the main character is screamingly dumb.

Before that I read The House of Shattered Wings, by Alliette De Bodard, which was mostly excellent but did slightly stumble with the end not quite living up to the setup, and The Outside, by Ada Hoffman, a recent debut about a machine-ruled space opera dystopia being invaded by lovecroftian horror, which is pretty tidy.

[IFR]

I've started up The Gap Cycle by Stephen Donaldson. The first installment is a very low-key book so far, but a fairly light and enjoyable read.

I'm concurrently reading How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates. I've tried to keep up with his reading list, since he often makes some great recommendations (I would never have encountered the inestimable works of Vaclav Smil without Gates' recommendation), and so it's nice to be able to actually read his original material.

And the third book I'm reading is Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World, by Joby Warrick. His book Black Flags was excellent, and so I had to dive straight in when I found out about this book.

The next book on my list is Circe by Madeline Miller, which I'm told is really good.

[Peadar]

21 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Hmm, I wonder whom. Curse my memory. 

It was me, I believe  Sea of Poppies was a great rec. by the way. Thanks for that. I am sure I will read the rest of the trilogy at some point, but work will not permit it for the moment.

[Ormond]

19 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Today I read Artemis by Andy Weird. 

Sorry, but I am really curious -- are you being deliberately insulting to Andy Weir here or is this just a typographical error?

[polishgenius]

3 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Sorry, but I am really curious -- are you being deliberately insulting to Andy Weir here or is this just a typographical error?

 

 

That was... I can't even blame it on autocorrect. But it wasn't deliberate.

[Wilbur]

I knocked out The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch this week.  Lynch is a good writer, and it was interesting to meet Sabetha, but it didn't really seize my interest with the same intensity as the first two books.

[TheLastWolf]

3 hours ago, Peadar said:

It was me, I believe  Sea of Poppies was a great rec. by the way. Thanks for that. I am sure I will read the rest of the trilogy at some point, but work will not permit it for the moment.

Sheesh. Forget my patchy memory. Lots going on in my personal life. Life changing upheavals. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the trilogy. I'm on a reread now. Cheers! 

Edit, even autocorrect is forgetful. Typed forget instead of forgive in the first line 

[ljkeane]

Since the last time I posted in this thread I've read Traitor's Blade by Sebastian De Castell, Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky and I've started reading Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward. I don't think Traitor's Blade is meant to be taken too seriously but I did find the antagonists a little too moustache twirlingly evil to really enjoy it. Bear Head was really good. I thought Dogs of War was ok but this was a real step up. Legacy of Ash is interesting so far.

[Peadar]

I'm the lucky guy who'll get to interview Maggie Stiefvater for the UK launch of her new book, Mister Impossible.

As a result, I've been on a bit of a reread binge of her work. Right now, I'm reading The Scorpio Races and am being reminded with every page what a really top-class YA should be. Highly, highly recommended.

[Wilbur]

Yesterday I finished Rex Stout's seventh Nero Wolfe mystery novel, Over My Dead Body.  This is probably the book where almost all of the pieces of the traditional Nero Wolfe story are finally in place, and for the next sixty years most of the mysteries will take place in this venue and in this style.

It is also the first of several different stories in which Wolfe is linked to the Balkans, although weirdly he lies to an FBI agent in this one by saying he was born in America.  In any case, this is also the "Tintin novel" of the Wolfe mysteries, as it includes evil financiers, duplicitous minor European nobility, stolen securities, disguises, Nazi agents, a fencing school, British spies, and, of course, murders.  In general it is quite a cosmopolitan cast of characters, and the story faces toward Europe more than any of the Wolfe mysteries except the Zeck Trilogy.

So all the components of a typical Nero Wolfe story are in place, and the plot aspects includes a variety of exciting elements, but it isn't quite up to the really top shelf Rex Stout mysteries.

Still, it includes the very excellent quote from Wolfe concerning bankers:  "When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn't occur to him that a robber might draw the line somewhere."

[williamjm]

I read Ben Aaronovitch's What Abigail Did That Summer novella. Unlike the novels in the series this one focuses on Peter Grant's teenage cousin and as such definitely has a Young Adult feel to it. The stakes are also a bit lower than they tend to be in the Rivers of London series, although still potentially very significant for some of the characters. I thought the different perspective did bring something new to the series, although one thing it has in common is that Abigail seems just as keen to share facts about London with the reader as Peter is. I'm not sure the plot could have sustained a novel but it seemed appropriate for the length. I think the most entertaining part of it was the talking foxes who have shown up in previous books but play a bigger role in this and who all seem to act as if they are characters in a John Le Carre-style espionage story.

I'm now reading S.A. Chakraborty's second Daevabad book, The Kingdom of Copper.

[Starkess]

I finished listening to Turtles All the Way Down. I quite liked it. Not sure how true it is to the actual OCD experience (the plot basically revolves around a HS girl struggling with her illness), but as someone with other mental illnesses I found parts of it very relatable and parts of it like, jeez, glad that doesn't happen to me...it was frustrating just to read about.

The next audiobook I have lined up is The Queen of Nothing, the final book in the Folk of the Air trilogy (at least I think it's a trilogy!). Dying to read this one after the crazy ending to book 2!

[Infidel]

On 4/30/2021 at 12:54 AM, IFR said:

I've started up The Gap Cycle by Stephen Donaldson. The first installment is a very low-key book so far, but a fairly light and enjoyable read.

Are.....are you joking here?

[IFR]

@Infidel

No.

I wasn't speaking to trivialize the content, which I know a lot of people might find upsetting. I mean the book is light in terms of how much concentration is required to parse the content. I think early teens or even pre-adolescents would easily be able to read and understand the book.

And the book itself is enjoyable. It has a decent story with some interesting characters. The content doesn't bother me: this is a fictional work, and much, much worse than anything portrayed in it occurs on an every day basis in the real world.

But I can understand why some people would find it dark, or even distasteful, and that's a valid opinion.

[Starkess]

20 hours ago, Starkess said:

The next audiobook I have lined up is The Queen of Nothing, the final book in the Folk of the Air trilogy (at least I think it's a trilogy!). Dying to read this one after the crazy ending to book 2!

Jk, the loan didn't come through on that one yet, so I'm actually on to The Battle of the Labyrinth, the fourth Percy Jackson novel.

[RhaenysBee]

Audiobook listens of the past month:

The Silk Roads - is an ingenious work I have praised before. I would and will spend 24 hours to listen to it again, because it’s that good. I can only recommend it. (The one criticism I have, because it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have any, is that a large middle portion is heavily west focused even though the whole concept of the book is to tell history from the perspective of the east. But it’s still 5 stars)

A Life on our Planet - If this wasn’t David Attenborough’s reflection on his life, I would have probably returned it, because it’s a bit too all over the place for me in terms of structure. But it is David Attenborough’s reflection on his life and that fills one with a certain level of awe and aw. I remember my grandmother’s teaching me about wild animals from a David Attenborough album when I was in kindergarten. And of course his message is intelligently and beautifully  articulated, no surprises there. 

I relistened The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, and I’m most happy I did because a lot more of the theories and insights stuck with me on a second listen. I still love his style of writing and narration and I still social psychology. 

Talking to Strangers - was absolutely not what I expected it to be. In fact, it was better in the sense that it opened a whole new genre to me. (So far my audible consumption has been 90% history, sociopolitical and psychology non fiction and maybe it’s time to venture out) Talking to Strangers is a collection of case studies brought to the same conclusion: the author’s viewpoint of psychology of interaction between strangers. This viewpoint isn’t discussed in depth or measured up against other viewpoints, but since the novelty of the case studies consumed me, I wasn’t bothered by that. 

Hard copy reads:

The Twelve Chairs - I desperately wanted to like and enjoy this but I simply didn’t. I don’t know if it’s just the particular style I don’t get, or it’s just too far in time and space for me feel the satire and the general atmosphere. But it was a chore to get through and I found the ending profoundly surreal. There was one aspect I enjoyed and sympathized with, that is the tragedy of the old life being ripped from people and the vastly different new reality they had to adjust to. And I also found it very curious that if I didn’t know when the story was set and there weren’t like 10-15 telling throwaway lines, based on the atmosphere I would have placed it somewhere around 50-60s. So weird. 

Before the coffee gets cold - This was very interesting. The story is constructed beautifully, it’s intertwined to an extent that surprises even on the last few pages. In exchange it’s hardly character driven, which is something I often look for in fiction. I have only ever read one other book by a Japanese author and both style and structure is a mindset that one needs to consciously embrace and sink into. It is a culturally and intellectually enriching, albeit challenging experience, which I truly enjoy. Need to read more books that’s aren’t written with a “western” or “European” mind. 

 

[Infidel]

On 5/2/2021 at 11:29 PM, IFR said:

@Infidel

No.

I wasn't speaking to trivialize the content, which I know a lot of people might find upsetting. I mean the book is light in terms of how much concentration is required to parse the content. I think early teens or even pre-adolescents would easily be able to read and understand the book.

And the book itself is enjoyable. It has a decent story with some interesting characters. The content doesn't bother me: this is a fictional work, and much, much worse than anything portrayed in it occurs on an every day basis in the real world.

But I can understand why some people would find it dark, or even distasteful, and that's a valid opinion.

So, I get you. There is something...weird...yet breezy about the prose in the first Gap novel that is not like anything else I've ever read in the genre. Anyone know if it is the same voice Donaldson uses in his fantasy?

But it think it is fairly objectively dark as all hell.

[Wilbur]

11 hours ago, Infidel said:

So, I get you. There is something...weird...yet breezy about the prose in the first Gap novel that is not like anything else I've ever read in the genre. Anyone know if it is the same voice Donaldson uses in his fantasy?

But it think it is fairly objectively dark as all hell.

I would say that the Gap into Conflict is lighter in style and density than The Chronicles or the Mordant's Need books.  The content is very brutal, but the word count used to portray that harsh content is much lower than his earlier work.

The final four books in the Gap Cycle are longer and lengthier, but the entire Gap Cycle suffers from what I think of as "empty universe" syndrome.  By this I mean that the story ignores almost everything outside of the main characters, and there is almost no world-building that doesn't directly involve the main characters.  The books get wider, but not much deeper.  Which is odd, considering that his intent was to reflect The Ring Cycle by Wagner.

I have always thought that Donaldson used the Cap Cycle to address the literary critics' constant harping about how long and detailed The Chronicles were.  I have no evidence of this except that it seemed in the 70s and 80s that the critics couldn't understand why any author would write such long books with so much detailed atmosphere and world-building along with philosophical musings and environmental concerns.  So every review of every book in The Chronicles had to have a whine about length and depth.  Gap into Conflict is short and shallow in comparison.