Third Quarter 2021 Reading

[Zorral]

23 hours ago, dog-days said:

Ravenna by Judith Herrin 

I read that!  Her roots as a Byzantine scholar certainly show.

It was an excellent pairing with Wickham, Chris (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. 

[dog-days]

59 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I read that!  Her roots as a Byzantine scholar certainly show.

It was an excellent pairing with Wickham, Chris (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. 

I recall reading it about nine or ten years ago. Not being a historian, I recall having the impression that, as a casual reader, I would have preferred less ambition and more focus, but the book was undeniably impressive. 

[Ormond]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

The Death of Nnanji by Dave Duncan is the fourth book of The Seventh Sword trilogy.  Yes, the fourth book of the trilogy was written two decades plus after the first three, and having just finished the first three, the differences show up pretty starkly.

Now I don't want to say that this is a bad book.  It isn't that.  But it does depart from the original three in a couple of ways.

The book suffers from the curse of The Children of the Original Cast of Characters, and of course these children are heroic and achieve great things because they are The Children of the Original Cast of Characters.  At the same time, the book treats the original protagonist pretty fairly - he struggles to overcome obstacles, and sometimes he fails and makes mistakes, and other times he makes good choices or works hard.  So the reader gets this tonal contrast, as if the author was forcing a comparo between Existentialism and Determinism.  This is a significant departure from the philosophical conundrum posed in the first three books.

The original trilogy ended on a downer, as all the good work of the Original Cast of Characters appears to be consumed in a growing despotism at the trilogy's conclusion.  In this fourth book, however, the Original Cast of Characters either ignore or aren't bothered by the way the world turned out, which seems to betray the ethos of the first three books.  Twenty-five years was enough to make the original readers forget, I guess?

By itself, The Death of Nnanji by Dave Duncan is fine.  Just don't think too much about what has gone before.

OK, I have to make a pedantic correction. If a fourth book has been written, this is now a quadrilogy and is no longer a "trilogy". 

[ljkeane]

I jumped straight on to reading Naomi Novik's The Last Graduate.

[Zorral]

On 9/27/2021 at 3:34 PM, dog-days said:

I recall reading it about nine or ten years ago. Not being a historian, I recall having the impression that, as a casual reader, I would have preferred less ambition and more focus, but the book was undeniably impressive. 

I quite liked how the book brings in every area, with all sorts of detail I never knew before. For example, in the discussion of Britain, how the "Carolingian Renaissance" came over 100 years later to Alfred's Wessex, through Alfred himself. Another aspect that was significant, that has rolled throughout England's history since the pull-out of the Romans, is the process that made England the first exemplar of private ownership of real estate, which was ever more hardened after the Conquest and Domesday, when so many of the Saxon theigns -- the prototypes of Little England's property owners -- were expelled from their property and it given over to Normans by the Bastard. That sort of thing is historically illuminating, at least to me, who didn't know any of it, or at least not in any coherent manner.

[dog-days]

22 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I quite liked how the book brings in every area, with all sorts of detail I never knew before. For example, in the discussion of Britain, how the "Carolingian Renaissance" came over 100 years later to Alfred's Wessex, through Alfred himself. Another aspect that was significant, that has rolled throughout England's history since the pull-out of the Romans, is the process that made England the first exemplar of private ownership of real estate, which was ever more hardened after the Conquest and Domesday, when so many of the Saxon theigns -- the prototypes of Little England's property owners -- were expelled from their property and it given over to Normans by the Bastard. That sort of thing is historically illuminating, at least to me, who didn't know any of it, or at least not in any coherent manner.

I find In Our Time a bit hit and miss, but I remember liking the episode The Norman Yoke, which included the Harrying of the North. 

7 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I jumped straight on to reading Naomi Novik's The Last Graduate.

Hoping to read that this weekend! 

[Zorral]

8 minutes ago, dog-days said:

the Harrying of the North. 

The harrying of the north is harrowing, all right.  Marc Morris does a very good job with that in his book too. There is so much to like in that book, just beginning with the description of what Harald had to do, and did, before facing the invasion army.  Beyond that, before that, so to speak, describing why William did have a legal / clerical justification for the invasion, as he was designated the heir to England's crown -- maybe, depending on, interpretation of events and actions. But the determined resistance in the North, and what was done there, and then afterwards, well, the Norman invasion and conquest was a really dreadful, catastrophic event for the people, of course.  I also liked how Morris, and also Wicham's book, very carefully treads in company with the what if? counterfactuals, if William had failed, which he could well have done if there hadn't been that Danish invasion at the same time.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I just finished The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer. It was slightly disappointing in that it wasn’t as good as the first 2 books in the trilogy.

Before that I was fully immersed in The Saxon Tales, so now I’m reading The Flame Bearer, book 10 in that series.

[Starkess]

I finished listening to The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. I did not enjoy this one. It's a brutally graphic and yet somehow exhaustingly boring novel that has basically no plot or story. I felt like the author got really excited about early 20th century medicine (particularly midwifery and the Spanish flu) and just wanted to write about it and, well, that's the book. With a few meandering strains of Irish history/politics and WW1. And a very random ending that was not very well set up. Ah well. They can't all be good.

[Astromech]

I finished the second entry in Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, The Day of Battle, covering the Allied Invasions of Sicily and Italy from 1943-44. Just as gripping as the first entry, An Army at Dawn. Not sure what is next. It would be The Wisdom of Crowds, but I still have to purchase a copy.

[williamjm]

I've just finished Joe Abercrombie's The Wisdom of Crowds. I thought it was a good conclusion to the trilogy, while everything follows on logically from events in the previous two books there are some fairly dramatic changes in the state of play through the course of the book. Some of those plot developments are sometimes a bit predictable but there are still some tense scenes in the latter stages of the book. Out of the two main plot threads the battle for control of The North is the most familiar as this is the latest in a long line of such battles, but it was still a satisfying storyline. The storyline in the Union is however significantly different to anything in the previous First Law books and while the books have always had plenty of cynicism in them I think this felt the most dystopian of them. One of Abercombie's strengths is always his characterisation and that continues here with most of the characters getting some good character development and they've change a lot since the beginning of the first book in the trilogy - perhaps with a couple of exceptions since I don't think Jonos Clover or Broad have necessarily changed much although at least the former has been an entertaining character throughout. The ending did feature more set-up for future books than I had been expecting, but a conclusive ending that wrapped everything up neatly perhaps would have been unlikely.

[Peadar]

Wisdom of Crowds was not my favourite Abercrombie, but it was still very enjoyable. Up next, a return to Charlie Stross' Merchant  universe with Empire Games.