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Second Quarter 2021 Reading


williamjm

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I saw War and Peace with Anthony Hopkins. I then read the books. Then I read Anna Karenina. I used to have a paperback in hand at our large high school to kill the break time between starting and stopping classes, as we didn’t sit beside the same people after 40 minute sessions. My history teacher noticed and said “ that is good”, about  AK and me reading it!”however, I was shy.

The school librarian sternly liked me reading classics and forgave fines...and it was cheap to borrow them. So, I read Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Dumas, Emily Carr, Margaret Lawrence, Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens, the Bronte’s and continued that habit with Vanity Fair, the Inferno, etc. later I also read some books for classes. 
 

I also looked up fruit fly genetics and chemical reactions for classes:)
 

Most boring, Frankenstein, and Gulliver’s Travels. I didn’t get it till later. I just didn’t get Huckleberry Finn and now I know why. I don’t remember Solaris by Lem, but I read it. 

Most fun. The Crysalids, Brave New World, the LOTR, the Fionavar Tapestry, and Vanity Fair. I liked SF in general, as long as it wasn’t too martial. Dune was not my favorite and the followups went too far for me, as did Enders Game.( except as a psychological investigation of the author and his world)

Of course, the SOIAF is my favorite! History, language, insights, fantasy, psychological depth, mythology, new stuff, cool animals, a little magic, horror, cliff hangers,  detail, Shakespeare. Wow.

 

 

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I always preferred W&P over AK, but it’s twenty years since I read them.  I liked Dostoyevsky both more and less than Tolstoy, and I know that sounds weird.  Dostoyevsky is more philosophical and psychological and modern, but Tolstoy has a greater sense of epic narrative where individuals are just playing their minor roles in a tapestry that far transcends them.

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Right. Finished the terrible, terrible slog (not really of slogs, that would imply some kind of quality) that was Ian Irvine. 

Started Killers of the Flower Moon. Think @Fury Resurrected reccomended that once. First third is ... well, infuriating. Content-wise, not writing-wise.

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I enjoyed Shards of Earth. It's more of a space opera style book than Tchaikovsky's usual sci fi fare which was quite a good change of pace. I'm looking forward to seeing were the series goes.

I'm going to read Mark Lawrence's The Girl and the Mountain next.

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I finished N. Bruce Duthu's American Indians and the Law. Fairly brief (219 pages) treatment of the subject. A sociological study as much as a legal one. 

Now reading Roger Daniels's Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life.

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I read Anna Karenina a few years back, I enjoyed it overall despite struggling with several long digressions about Russian farming methods and the like. Tried War and Peace and couldn't finish it.

I finished listening to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Disturbing parallels with my life aside, it was okay. I found it rather trite and simplistic and thought it would have worked better as a short story, given that important happens in the middle 2/3 of the entire book. Now I'm listening to Recursion by Blake Crouch. Kinda funny that I randomly managed to read two books in a row about reliving alternate lives due to regret...I'm enjoying it so far. It's very similar in style to his book Dark Matter which I read a year or two ago, leaning heavily on technobabble and quantum physics to produce a MacGuffin that drives the plot he wants to tell. Not really a complaint, I like that just fine! For some reason I find his style of sci-fi to be like "sci-fi for men" which I can't totally explain.

I also finished reading Empire Ascendant, the second book in Kameron Hurley's Broken Empire trilogy. It was brutal and gruesome and yet somehow boring and detached? I understand wanting to make every character morally gray but it just managed to make me hate all the characters and feel indifferent to their inevitable bloody deaths. I guess if you think "I murdered millions of people because I love my wife" is an acceptable motivation to make you root for someone, that works, but for me I just think "maybe you should have accepted death, then."

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Just finished Peter V. Brett's forthcoming The Desert Prince, which comes out in August.

A little too much teenage angst for my taste and too YA in style and tone, but it sets the stage for what should be an interesting set of sequels.

You can read my spoiler-free review here.

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14 minutes ago, Leap said:

Ryszard Kapuściński, which I thought was excellent. It's the perfect sort of book to read if you don't know much about a place. It combines geography, history, social commentary and thrilling adventure.

You might very much enjoy this great journalist's Travels With Herodotus (2004), the tale of his life-long reading of this first historian and geographer, in many countries of the world.

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Just read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a real page-turner, at least for the engineering-minded. I finished the book within 24 hours of starting it.

I really liked it, although it is definitely bleaker and larger in scope than The Martian and Artemis. Those two books were more about the struggles of one person while society ambles on in the background, but this one is about an extinction-level threat that permanently upheaves society while the main character is desperately trying to find a solution.

Despite the change of scope and size, the book still includes all those physics minutiae Weir has such a knack for, and I really like that. What would a Weir book be without in-depth descriptions of how to measure the mass of an object in zero-G, or what it's like to move around in non-standard gravity while under rotation?

Oh, and I like the unique take on killer aliens.

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Is Weir accessible to science-hopeless types?

I finished a few things in the last month or so:

  • The Mirror and the Light:  A strong conclusion overall to a beloved series. With the Boleyns out of the picture, I didn't find this final instalment as engrossing as its predecessors. But the prose was easier to read and it's still a masterpiece. Mantel's Cromwell is one amazing character.
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: Finally got around to reading this sci-fi classic. There were a couple of plot developments that weirded me out, but the world-building is incredible and I liked the philosophical elements.
  • Mansfield Park: My second-to last book to read in Austen's main canon. I didn't enjoy the pacing of this one compared to her more well-known works, but it was still incredible. Amazing characters (both good and evil) and many memorable lines as always (“We do not look in great cities for our best morality.”)

I think going to read Call Me By Your Name next. And perhaps Obama's autobio. 

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19 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Just read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a real page-turner, at least for the engineering-minded. I finished the book within 24 hours of starting it.

I really liked it, although it is definitely bleaker and larger in scope than The Martian and Artemis. Those two books were more about the struggles of one person while society ambles on in the background, but this one is about an extinction-level threat that permanently upheaves society while the main character is desperately trying to find a solution.

Despite the change of scope and size, the book still includes all those physics minutiae Weir has such a knack for, and I really like that. What would a Weir book be without in-depth descriptions of how to measure the mass of an object in zero-G, or what it's like to move around in non-standard gravity while under rotation?

Oh, and I like the unique take on killer aliens.

I just read it, too, and largely agree with your take. I think I still prefer The Martian over this one, and haven't read Artemis

There were a couple of things I didn't quite like about this one.

Spoiler

The beginning wasn't that good, though you learn later why the book starts that way. I was annoyed about having to read so many pages about the protagonist trying to figure out where he is and why he's there. The synopsis and cover page kinda give it away. It's not like The Martian, which starts brilliantly with Mark saying he's stranded on Mars and he's fucked.

But once I got through the first 10% of the book, I found it engrossing. There were times when I found myself speaking with the narrator, questioning the character's choices, only to get the answer a few pages later. I loved the refreshing take on first alien contact. Very unique aliens, and it was cool to see that they weren't necessarily more advanced, in fact they had a lot of catching up to do.

I wish we had seen Earth's reaction to Ryland's contact with the Eridani, and what had happened on Earth. It would be nice if he wrote another book in this universe.

 

6 hours ago, Paxter said:

Is Weir accessible to science-hopeless types?

I think so. The Martian is a pretty easy read, and it's no surprise it got made into a movie. Probably the easiest book adaptation ever. Project Hail Mary is a bit tougher, but you can gloss over the science heavy moments and enjoy the rest of the plot without missing much.

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8 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

There were a couple of things I didn't quite like about this one.

I definitely agree with that first point. It's a bit frustrating that the opening spends so much time on the main character finding out he's on a spaceship, treating it as some sort of twist, since this fact would be included in literally every description of the book. It is impossible to describe even the basic premise of the plot without giving that "twist" away. That being said, it's a minor thing and it passes quickly.

As for the second point, well, I think it's one of those things where the reader's imagination does a better job filling in the blanks than the author could. It would take a lot of time to portray, and disrupt the pace of the story as it was wrapping up.

Another irk I had that I don't think was particularly well explained in the book:

Spoiler

Why did the Astrophage come to Sol and Eridani now? The book describes Astrophage as having evolved around Tau Ceti for millions of years, fitting nicely into an entire ecosystem that evolved alongside it. Presumably it has always had those incredible physics capabilities since it's kind of the whole MO of the lifeform.

In other words, it could have spread to other stars this entire time. Yet the solar dimming was only observed over a few decades, simultaneously at Sol and Eridani and many other stars, so it must have spread recently. Why didn't it before, if it always had the means to travel interstellar distances? The usual explanation of "space is big, so the odds of stray Astrophage arriving at a star are astronomically low" could have applied, but the Astrophage hit multiple stars at nearly the same time only recently. If it had exhibited the same behaviour for millions of years, it wouldn't have spread to so many stars within only a few years - or it would have done so millions of years ago.

It's as if something recently made the Astrophage spread beyond its ancestral home of Tau Ceti, and being remarkably efficient in doing so, but the book spends no time at all indicating any such event. It could have undergone a recent mutation, I guess, but would that have allowed it to suddenly start super-spreading all over the galactic neighbourhood? 

 

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38 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Another irk I had that I don't think was particularly well explained in the book:

  Reveal hidden contents

Why did the Astrophage come to Sol and Eridani now? The book describes Astrophage as having evolved around Tau Ceti for millions of years, fitting nicely into an entire ecosystem that evolved alongside it. Presumably it has always had those incredible physics capabilities since it's kind of the whole MO of the lifeform.

In other words, it could have spread to other stars this entire time. Yet the solar dimming was only observed over a few decades, simultaneously at Sol and Eridani and many other stars, so it must have spread recently. Why didn't it before, if it always had the means to travel interstellar distances? The usual explanation of "space is big, so the odds of stray Astrophage arriving at a star are astronomically low" could have applied, but the Astrophage hit multiple stars at nearly the same time only recently. If it had exhibited the same behaviour for millions of years, it wouldn't have spread to so many stars within only a few years - or it would have done so millions of years ago.

It's as if something recently made the Astrophage spread beyond its ancestral home of Tau Ceti, and being remarkably efficient in doing so, but the book spends no time at all indicating any such event. It could have undergone a recent mutation, I guess, but would that have allowed it to suddenly start super-spreading all over the galactic neighbourhood? 

 

Spoiler

Star drift? 

There is one mention of the astrophage not being able to travel further than 8 light years I think. Tau Ceti is 12 light years. It came to Sol by way of another star.  But yes, once Ryland realizes that Tau Cei is the home system of the astrophage, he doesn't pause to wonder why their migration didn't take place sooner.

 

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Since I'm apparently now incapable of not having an audio book on the go, I've been getting into The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman. I wasn't that impressed by the first book, but kept going, and either they're getting better or I'm just adjusting to the characters/author/world the way you do. The characters still feel a bit flat, but at the same time, the author clearly loves her world/systems building, and there are signs the character writing is deepening as the series progresses. But basically so far they're fun, fairly self-contained adventure stories, and they make good listening material. 

I'm also slowly working my way through A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. I'll post about it properly when I reach the end. Amazing book. 

Today, when not working from home really really hard, I've been reading a lot about Hamish Henderson, and listening to songs like John MacLean's March while reading the lyrics, since Henderson often wrote in Scots. 

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On 6/6/2021 at 4:11 PM, Lord Patrek said:

Just finished Peter V. Brett's forthcoming The Desert Prince, which comes out in August.

A little too much teenage angst for my taste and too YA in style and tone, but it sets the stage for what should be an interesting set of sequels.

You can read my spoiler-free review here.

Is the rape turned up to 11 in this one?

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Just started The Galaxy, and the Grounds Within by Becky Chambers, the fourth installment in the Wayfarers series. I would have posted this in the dedicated thread, but in yet another example of this forum having some of the stupidest technical policies I've ever had the misfortune to come across on the Internet, that thread is archived and locked because it hasn't seen a post in a while. It was never the most active of threads, but I'd rather add activity to it than creating another barely active thread to cover the exact same subject. This also makes it a lot harder to refer to earlier posts about the subject, requiring me to repeat things already said. 

Oh well, rant over. 

As I said in that thread, I really liked the premise of the series and the two first books are great, but I didn't like the third installment in the series. It went all in on the characters, and all out on the plot. It was a "slice of life" tale of five characters whose stories barely interact, or for that matter, happen at all.  The only character whose story has any sort of arc in it is killed in an accident halfway through the book. All in all, "Wayfarers 3" was a sci-fi book about job satisfaction on a colony ship. It didn't help either that the strongest bits of the first two books - exploring the conflicting needs and views of aliens of many different species and cultural backgrounds - were largely omitted. All the characters were humans who have lived on the same ship for all their lives.

So I went into "Wayfarers 4" with mixed expectations. Would Chambers bring together interesting and highly different personalities like in the first two books, or continue with the meandering "nobody does anything and there's no plot at all" style of the third book? Fortunately, it seems to be the former. In the first few chapters, we're introduced to six characters of four different species, none of them human but all known from small roles in previous books, and an event happens that traps them together in what is essentially a small-business roadside motel along an interstellar highway. As is usual for these books, most of the characters are new (although we know one from a small role in one previous book), which lets them start with fresh character arcs to explore. The arcs seem interesting too. There's a lone mother with a business, but no mention of a mate or what happened to him (assuming that species even mates for life, of course), a teenager whose species doesn't manifest a gender until puberty, an exiled outcast of a species previously only seen in a villain role, facing a deadline he's willing to sell all his belongings to meet, a poor scavenger separated from her close-knit sibling relationship for the first time ever, and a freighter pilot facing an enormous cultural taboo in the way of the love of her life. In short, there are all sorts of knots to untie here.

So far, the book is playing on all the strengths of the earlier books. I had to put the book down after reading the first few chapters over breakfast today (gotta go to work, after all), but I'm intrigued to pick it back up this afternoon. 

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Killers of the Flower Moon was well worth a read. Being reminded that human beings throughout history has been regarded as less-than-human based on race, and also being reminded of what consequenses may follow, is important. 

Big switch now, as next up is Stephen Mumford's Football. The Philosophy Behind the Game

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9 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Just started The Galaxy, and the Grounds Within by Becky Chambers, the fourth installment in the Wayfarers series.

So far, the book is playing on all the strengths of the earlier books. I had to put the book down after reading the first few chapters over breakfast today (gotta go to work, after all), but I'm intrigued to pick it back up this afternoon. 

I read this a couple of months ago and I did think it was a lot better than the third book.

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On 6/7/2021 at 4:08 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Just read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a real page-turner, at least for the engineering-minded. I finished the book within 24 hours of starting it.

I just started Project Hail Mary.  It's a real page-turner for me as well, even though I'm science-hopeless (as @Paxter put it).  

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