What Are You Reading? Second Quarter, 2023

[baxus]

Bought Joe Abercrombie's The Wisdom of Crowds yesterday evening and read some 80 pages or so. I've been struggling to get back into reading habit and Abercrombie's books have been easiest to keep reading. If he is still lurking around the board, I'd like to tell him his work is much appreciated.  

[Ser Not Appearing]

I finally finished the Shadowmarch series by Tad Williams.

This was both a great series and a dud at the same time, somehow. World building was really cool and there were a lot of elements I liked in the story but I think the pacing was poorly done in terms of reveal of information. Way too much was revealed right at the very end and, while this could work sometimes, I don't think it worked here. Instead of feeling curious about what was going on, I often felt that I was completely disinterested in what was going on. Had I known more about the various pieces and motivations, I likely would have been more engaged with the wider arcs. On top of that, one of the main characters was one of the most annoying that I've ever read. He actually led me to put the series down for multiple months and I really only decided to pick it back up because I had nothing else on my plate.

The 10-year-old and I are getting maybe a quarter of the way into book six of the Harry Potter series. I have become quite firm in my belief that Rowling leans quite hard into the fact that Dumbledore is demonstrably a bumbling moron, even if a magic super whiz.

Edited June 22, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[Gaston de Foix]

8 hours ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

On top of that, one of the main characters was one of the most annoying that I've ever read. 

The 10-year-old and I are getting maybe a quarter of the way into book six of the Harry Potter series. I have become quite firm in my belief that Rowling leans quite hard into the fact that Dumbledore is demonstrably a bumbling moron, even if a magic super whiz.

Which one?

Dumbledore has a pretty poor track record of spotting what's right under his nose - from Voldemort hanging out on the back of Quirrel's head to Barty Crouch Jr. passing himself off as one of his closest friends for a year. 

I get that it's necessary for plot purposes so Harry can be the hero, but perhaps Dumbledore could have done something more in the 15-16 year interregnum to prevent Voldemort's second rise and all those pointless deaths? 

[Ser Not Appearing]

2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Which one?

Dumbledore has a pretty poor track record of spotting what's right under his nose - from Voldemort hanging out on the back of Quirrel's head to Barty Crouch Jr. passing himself off as one of his closest friends for a year. 

I get that it's necessary for plot purposes so Harry can be the hero, but perhaps Dumbledore could have done something more in the 15-16 year interregnum to prevent Voldemort's second rise and all those pointless deaths? 

It was in the Shadowmarch series - Barrick Eddon.

[Ser Not Appearing]

2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Dumbledore has a pretty poor track record of spotting what's right under his nose - from Voldemort hanging out on the back of Quirrel's head to Barty Crouch Jr. passing himself off as one of his closest friends for a year. 

I get that it's necessary for plot purposes so Harry can be the hero, but perhaps Dumbledore could have done something more in the 15-16 year interregnum to prevent Voldemort's second rise and all those pointless deaths? 

Not only that but the guy is so passive.

Shit! Voldemort is back. I'll have to tell all the students at the end of year great and then ... well ... I guess it's ok if bumbling morons blackball me from society and lull everyone into complacency. It's fine if they do all the stuff I feared, like allowing everyone to escape from Azkaban. I'll just keep my mouth shut and let it happen. Oh, but I'll set up a secret group of about five people. Yes, five us about all we need.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[JGP]

Finally got my hands on Anna Smith Spark’s A Woman of the Sword. Only about halfway in. It’s pretty good. Lidae is an interesting lead, and the love/hate/frustration paradox of parenting is well wrought so far, if sometimes painful and wince inducing. Spark’s kind of gone a different way than other fantasy authors [Erickson, etc] where women are warriors and/or fight alongside men in that she appears to be delineating it between being a mother or no. So far, anyway, we’ll see how it pans out.

Got to say though, rather incredible how many line edit issues made it through to the final on this one [in the ebook]

[Gaston de Foix]

On 6/23/2023 at 7:09 AM, Ser Not Appearing said:

It was in the Shadowmarch series - Barrick Eddon.

Yeah, I struggled my way through that series too.  Cool concept, but way too windy in execution.  I would consider a career as a book editor just so I could publish an abbreviated version of Tad William's novels.  

[Teng Ai Hui]

I finally finished the Starship for Sale series by MR Forbes.  Now I’m planning to read Rachel Aaron’s DFZ trilogy, which is set in the same universe as her Heartstrikers series.

[IlyaP]

Doing my usual two-books at once schtick (one during the day, one at night in bed), this time with Fire and Blood by GRRM and Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey. Both are magnificent texts, for different reasons. The level of depth and detail in Martin's imagined history book is awe-inspiring, and the structural design of the text and characterisation within what is now the seventh! book in a series never fails to impress the hell out of me. 

[dog-days]

Has anyone read Andrew Caldecott's Rotherweird books? My library service has all of them. I remember Waterstones pushing them heavily a few years ago, and the covers are certainly beautiful, but I can't recall seeing them mentioned with praise or otherwise here. 

I mean, I guess I could just read them myself and make up my own mind...

Wait. 

Nah. 

ETA: Finished the audiobook of Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf. I enjoyed it deeply, though didn't feel it was quite as effective as her 2015 biography of Alexander von Humboldt. It kicks off in 1793 with Karoline Böhmer widowed, pregnant out of wedlock, and imprisoned at Burg Königstein for her support for the French army and Mainz Jacobins, and finishes with the Battle of Jena in 1806. In between, we follow the lives, disputes, liaisons and squabbles of the loose gang of philosophers and poets who for a time came together in Jena, for a while the leading liberal university town at the dog-end of the Holy Roman Empire. 

So we meet Goethe, a voice from an older and more measured generation, as well as the Schlegel brothers, the von Humboldt brothers, Novalis, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schiller. There is no one central character, but the heart of the book is probably owned by the translator and salonnière Karoline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling. 

Wulf wants to convince you of her subjects importance – of the significance of their work – but often the work pales in comparison to their loud, busy lives, even if the insecurity and touchiness of their feuds is absolutely reminiscent of 21st century digital communities. (Friedrich Schlegel wrote a negative crit of Schiller. Schiller never spoke to him again, and froze out his brother for good measure). 

There are some wonderful fragments that I expect will stay with me, often bits more of social history than literature. In the epilogue, Wulf describes how inconvenient the ladies of Weimar found it when Goethe finally married his lower-class mistress: they would be obliged to invite her to their entertainments at the same time as her famous husband. Smelling salts all round. Johanna Schopenhauer was an exception: "If Goethe gives her his name, we can surely give her a cup of tea." 

I wanted it to go on and not to end, and I think that's one of the best things you can say of a book. 

Edited June 26, 2023 by dog-days

[Starkess]

I listened to Mister Monday by Garth Nix, the first in the Keys of the Kingdom series. I picked it up because his Abhorsen trilogy is wonderful. This one is not quite as good, but I still enjoyed it. Very quick read (it's YA or maybe even MG) and the MC Arthur is a great blend of clueless and plucky.

I am now listening to The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill, which I am not enjoying very much. The MCs are a pair of sisters and one of them, Elaine, is driving me bonkers. I'm trying to tell myself it's possible that she's going to get a comeuppance and grow and learn, but I'm a quarter into the book and no sign of it. Also the entire book is dripping in "good salt of the earth farmers vs big bad evil business people" condescension.

[ljkeane]

Witch King was okay. It's split into two story lines the present and the past, after a dramatic start the 'present day' story line sort of peters out a bit so I get the feeling the 'past' will be more significant for the series. It does feel quite similar to Murderbot with the sort of but not quite human protagonist.

I also read Rachel Aaron's By a Silver Thread which was a fun easy read as all her DFZ books tend to be.

Next up I'm going to read M.R. Carey's Infinity Gate.

[Starkess]

Ended up being so unenthused about picking up The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill again that I just decided to return in. Started on Children of Eden, a post-climate-disaster dystopia from the sound of it? We'll see.

[Wilbur]

I listened to the entire run of Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast, including both appendices (Roman Spain and Literary Sources).  What a terrific show.  If any of you know of an analogous version for Ancient Greece, please let me know.

So as a palate cleanser, I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Expert System's Brother as a first taste of this author who so many of you have recommended in this forum.  It was fine.  It didn't break any new ground or provide me with characters with whom I strongly empathized, but it was fine.  Is there another book by this author that you would recommend as a stronger performer?

[Consigliere]

10 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Is there another book by this author that you would recommend as a stronger performer?

Children of Time trilogy is probably his most well known work. I started off with Guns of the Dawn and then Cage of Souls. Dogs of War was also good (its sequel Bear Head was decent but not as good imo). Some of his novellas that I've enjoyed: Walking to Aldebaran, One Day All This Will Be Yours, Firewalkers and Ogres.

Currently reading The Doors of Eden - I'm enjoying the interlude sections of this one more than the main story - not really feeling the characters on this one. Tchaikovsky's characters aren't always the strongest but his books tend to be jam-packed with ideas.

[Ser Not Appearing]

I just bought a book called How To Invent Everything, advertised as a the number one thing to take with you when time traveling ... that way, if you ever get stuck in the past, you'll have a resource that teaches you how to invent everything needed for a vibrant civilization; from electricity to penicillin.

It might be the coolest, most effective sales strategy (for me) that I've ever heard. I'm going to try doing some experiments with the kids to see how many of these things actually work.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[dog-days]

8 hours ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

I just bought a book called How To Invent Everything, advertised as a the number one thing to take with you when time traveling ... that way, if you ever get stuck in the past, you'll have a resource that teaches you how to invent everything needed for a vibrant civilization; from electricity to penicillin.

It might be the coolest, most effective sales strategy (for me) that I've ever heard. I'm going to try doing some experiments with the kids to see how many of these things actually work.

That does sound brilliant! May check it out myself. I'd like to be prepared for any problems with the spacetime continuum. 

[TheLastWolf]

Finally worked my way through all of the Jack Reacher books, novellas and stories, the collaborations included. He's just the best.

[dog-days]

Read The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor. It's the second in the Marwood and Lovett series set in Restoration London. Started with the second book because my library didn't have the first.

Nothing about it was terrible; at the same time, it did feel by-the-numbers. Rather as if someone had told ChatGPT to write a historical detective novel. 

Everything had a baseline level of competence, but there was a lack of depth, a shallowness to it that made me long for Sansom to take over and do it better. 

Edited July 1, 2023 by dog-days

[williamjm]

On 6/30/2023 at 4:40 AM, Wilbur said:

So as a palate cleanser, I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Expert System's Brother as a first taste of this author who so many of you have recommended in this forum.  It was fine.  It didn't break any new ground or provide me with characters with whom I strongly empathized, but it was fine.  Is there another book by this author that you would recommend as a stronger performer?

Guns of the Dawn, Children of Time, Dogs of War and City of Last Chances were some that I particularly liked by him. I haven't read The Expert System's Brother.

21 hours ago, Consigliere said:

Currently reading The Doors of Eden - I'm enjoying the interlude sections of this one more than the main story - not really feeling the characters on this one. Tchaikovsky's characters aren't always the strongest but his books tend to be jam-packed with ideas.

There were things I liked in that book, but I agree it didn't really come together as well as it could have done. It's probably one of his weaker novels, although still reasonably good.

Edited July 1, 2023 by williamjm