What are you reading? Fourth Quarter 2023

[LongRider]

13 minutes ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

Since it's October, I felt that it was the appropriate time to reread World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. 

I recently reread that book, enjoyed it again as it's an interesting approach to the Zombie Apocalypse.   Hope you like it as much as the first time.   

[RhaenysBee]

Small roundup from a not reading heavy couple months: 

I read A Line to Kill which was an okay whodunnit but I do feel like I’m beginning to tire of the series and the overarching character story of Hawthorn is dragged out way too much. It was okay, I’ll finish the series. 

I listened to Dopamine Nation which did nothing for me, I guess I went in with too high and too strong expectations. It’s a collection of case studies about various addictions from the author’s clinical psychology practice. The book is trying to make the point that dopamine and other hormonal imbalances and reactions are the shaping forces of addictions but it doesn’t really say anything overly useful, practical or revolutionary. Not my favorite listen by far. 

But then, I listened to Persians by a gentleman called Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and that one was, is and forever will be one only my favorite listens. It was so much fun, it’s such a deep and rich story of the Achaemenid empire and its culture and customs and struggles, it’s 19 hours of pure epic bliss , it reads like a story, it feels the gaps of between the snapshots you learned in history class, it includes the international context. I can liken it to the Genghis Khan book by Jack Weatherford which I also absolutely loved. Wonderful. One of the best. And yes, now I think about the Achaemenid Empire every day

I nearly finished Doom by Niall Ferguson. You wouldn’t think I like a book about catastrophes, the hypochondriac worry worm I am, but the truth is, cognitive understanding and structured information work very well on my brain. It makes me feel secure and comfortable because if I understand something I don’t fear it. What an unpleasant deep dive into my mind. Anyway, the book is about natural and manmade catastrophes (accidents like Chernobyl or Titanic, volcanic eruptions like Pompeii, wars, pandemics, epidemics, etc) and how humanity handled and managed them. Works with a lot of data but not boring at all, insightful, no conspiracy theories or rewriting history, just a side of the coin we don’t think about. The momentum for the book is obviously the Covid pandemic and it does come back to it multiple times to juxtapose against previous pandemics. Really enjoying it. It’s also my gateway drug to Niall Ferguson, because I want to listen to a few more of his books, including the one about the history of money.
 

I seem to be in the age where I have favorite historians and watch biopics of famous women while I do needle point stitching projects. I have prematurely become both of my grandmothers. 

And I’m also reading Frankenstein because I’m still a millennial at heart who desperately wants to be influenced by the US YouTube autumn and Halloween culture. I do like Frankenstein, much more than I expected, but I don’t enjoy Halloween culture. I just don’t. 90% of spooky season content recommendations of the internet do nothing for me. Autumn culture, yes, Halloween, I’m too old and European for that one. Anyway, Frankenstein reads like a classic, being one, and explores topics far deeper and more meaningful than oh it’s spooky season, read and watch spooky stuff because it’s spooky. Why am I rambling on like this in the book thread? Sorry. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Nearly finished Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. A Geopolitical Tragedy, in the most classical of senses. Hubris gets you every time...

[Fragile Bird]

I mentioned some time ago that a friend of mine and I were talking about old books that were really popular when we were kids, and we should get the audio books and listen to see if we still find them as interesting. Cheaper by the Dozen and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn are both sitting in my library account now but I’m finding a reluctance to open them up.

Another old book popped up, The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, and I got right into it. Tey wrote a series of murder mysteries featuring Inspector Allan Grant of Scotland Yard. Grant is confined to hospital with serious injuries, having fallen through a trapdoor while pursuing a criminal. Bored out of his mind, staring at the cracks in the ceiling (no TVs in the room in 1951) friends make suggestions for things to occupy himself with, and one brings a series of pictures of people for him to study and contemplate. Grant has a reputation for being able to judge characters of people just by looking at their faces. One man, unfamiliar to him, dressed in medieval manner, looks like a judge to him, and then he’s shocked to see it’s actually someone who should be standing in the docket, not sitting on the bench, King Richard III, notorious murderer of his two nephews in the Tower. The longer he looks at the picture the more he wants to know about the actual tale, and starts getting history books brought to him or bought for him by the nurses and his friends and colleagues. By the end of the book he’s pretty sure he knows who the actual murderers were and who was behind it,

Spoiler

Henry VII, after the Battle of Bosworth put him on the throne. 

He sets out the reasons at the end of the book in methodical fashion, and I remember how the book convinced me more than 50 years ago when I first read it that Richard was innocent of his nephews’ deaths. I think Tey makes very sound arguments for her thesis.

A number of things leapt out at me while I read the book, first that Richard was only on the throne for two years and yet has made such an indelible impression on people, and secondly what fucking bastards the Tudors were. Henry certainly was, and we all know what an sob the 8th was. Grant points out some of the achievements of each man as defining their character, Richard agreed to the institution of bail and passed laws against harassing juries, Henry created the Star Chamber. Simplistic, yes, but it’s a slim detective novel, not a history book.

All three books I’ve mentioned were in the small library at the RC high school I attended, and I certainly can see now why Daughter was there, with the picture of how ruthless and cruel Henry VII was. Shakespeare sure bears a lot of blame with his need to suck up to Elizabeth. Understandable, but sad.

I’ve gone on to refresh my memory about the discovery of Richard’s skeleton in the car park, located over the choir stand in the dissolved Greyfriars monastery. It is amazing to see how one woman’s determination led to the discovery of his bones, how she even dreamed they were located under the letter R painted in the parking lot (they were), how the lead archeologist who they hired got pissed off and went home so another archeologist followed her directions and dug there. And then how the lead archeologist tried to take all credit and tried to push Philippa Langley to the side. Now there’s an old story! And a new-ish movie, which debuted at Toronto’s International Film Festival in 2022, that I now want to find and watch.

Tey only wrote 5 Grant books, she wrote other novels and plays. Sadly she died in 1952 at the age of 56. In 1990 the British Crime Writers Association named The Daughter of Time as the greatest mystery novel of all time.

eta Tey died of liver cancer, quietly, telling no one, and I wonder if she had been in hospital staring at cracks in the ceiling when she came up with the plot of the novel. Maybe only the setting, a lot of research went into the book.

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Fragile Bird
added the spoiler!

[dog-days]

My mother's a confirmed Ricardian, loyaultie me lie and all that. I'm actually quite fond of Henry VII in so far as I am of any late medieval/early modern ruler (and am now going to hide). The biography of him by Thomas Penn The Winter King was a very enjoyable read, though it almost certainly overemphasised his sympathetic qualities. 

Anyway, I read Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins back in 2021 and enjoyed it. It was dense, psychologically acute and had a great snobbish and sinister Oxford that was interesting to think of in comparison to Philip Pullman's (somewhat) cosier version.

I picked up Windmill Hill, her next book, when I saw it in the library; in part because of my memories of her earlier work and in part  because it promised eccentric old ladies and miniature dachshunds. And bloody hell, it definitely delivered on the second half of that sentence. When I read the acknowledgements at the end, it wasn't a huge surprise to learn that Atkins has a dachshund of her own; some of the most vivid writing in the book is about them and the feeling of loving them:

Quote

Gordon was back at the window already, nose sponging the glass to come in. Had he even gotten to the bottom of the plank? If he did his business on the kitchen floor again, Mrs Baker would be furious, but Astrid couldn't bear his 'Cathy Come Home Look'. 

Astrid is a former actress, now 82, having once been the more successful half of a theatrical couple. Her career ended and his took off, following a Stewart of McKellen-like trajectory, and in murky circumstances, the details of which the author holds out as bait for the reader to keep them going through a lot of less plot-driven material.

As the main point-of-view character, Astrid is scatty, interested in humans, and generally sympathetic. Much of the novel's present is set in an airport and her background is told entirely through her reminiscences, and sometimes through memories within memories. Each chapter begins with a letter, either from a nineteen twenties bohemian who once inhabited the titular windmill or from someone angry with her for being a nineteen twenties bohemian living in a windmill. Many are funny: 

Quote

..she stumbled across Daphne <...> painting a young male poet (she is recreating The Birth of Venus. The poet was unclothed). <...> It did not help that the East Sussex Mothers of Choir Boys group happened to be passing on their annual wildflower walk just as she came upon the scene. Hearing her screams, the young man leapt up and, well, you can probably guess in which direction he turned.

Despite all the good things, of which there are many, the book rambles much like its main character does. At times, it was a little hard to believe that the same novelist produces both this and the intense Magpie Lane, and made me wonder if she'd changed her editor. The main villain, a working class mobster, isn't very convincing – very cardboard. He even gives a short 'and that's why I'm an evil bastard' speech. I think Lucy Atkins may have even less experience of the rougher side of life than me. Also, the end is rather too pat – Victorian, almost, in its neatness and in its slightly heavy-handed symbolism. 

I don't think it's a disaster: I'm still asking myself – "Was this a romantic novel, or was it an anti-romantic novel? Or a mixture of both? What was it saying?" with the sense that it was saying something more complicated than:

I’ll put no trust in men, not in my own brother
so maids if you would love, love one another

It also left me wanting to watch documentaries about windmills and to visit the Jack windmill in Sussex, the inspiration for the one here.

However, it does need a stricter editor. 

Edited October 24, 2023 by dog-days

[Zorral]

Richard III did have the greatest publicist of all time, Shakespeare.

He was also the last Plantagenet, the dynasty that had held the crown, by one rose or another, since Henry II.  The Battle of Bosworth Field was not going to be forgotten, particularly by Tudors (whom Shakespeare did have to flatter, after all). Then the mystery of the Princes, and disappearance of his own corpse ... juicy stuff.

[maarsen]

On 10/23/2023 at 8:27 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

Nearly finished Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. A Geopolitical Tragedy, in the most classical of senses. Hubris gets you every time...

So did I a few years ago, only to find that the last few bits of the book is lost to time. If anything it does show we really have learned nothing in the ensuing millenia.

[unJon]

4 hours ago, maarsen said:

So did I a few years ago, only to find that the last few bits of the book is lost to time. If anything it does show we really have learned nothing in the ensuing millenia.

I thought he died before he could finish?

[ljkeane]

I've built up a bit of a backlog of books by authors I haven't read that looked like they might be interesting and I picked up because they were available on kindle deals so I'm trying to get through a few of them before I buy more books.

The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan wasn't great. He's trying to fit too much different stuff into the one book and it doesn't really work. Also having main character be a teenage girl when the author's a middle aged man didn't feel like a great choice. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree wasn't bad. It's a nice, cosy read which is obviously what the author's going for but it was a little bit too nice and cosy to the detriment of the story for me.

Next up I'm trying The Hand of the Sun King by J.T. Greathouse.

[Iskaral Pust]

8 hours ago, ljkeane said:

I've built up a bit of a backlog of books by authors I haven't read that looked like they might be interesting and I picked up because they were available on kindle deals so I'm trying to get through a few of them before I buy more books.

Similar for me.  In search of novelty and new authors, I pick up most of my books on Kindle daily deals or else Kindle Unlimited.  It has been freeing to just take a gamble, and I don’t feel bad if I DNF anywhere beyond 20% into a given book.

[Iskaral Pust]

The Gladiator by Simon Scarrow is historical fiction set in the Roman legions during the empire.  Years ago I read a couple of the early volumes in this series as Vespasian’s legion started their campaign in Britannia and then shifted to Germania.  My recollection was that the history and military action were better than the characterization and arc. This volume must be quite a bit later in the series but I wasn’t much impressed.  Perhaps it requires the readers to be heavily invested in the characters at this stage of the series, which I just was not.

Innocent Blood by PD James, who is famous as a prolific writer of murder mysteries although this one feels more like a slow-paced psychological thriller.  It was too detached and ethereal to for my taste, and the characterization of the murderer felt misplaced.  I’ll concede it’s pretty well written, just not a style I was in the mood for at the time.  Others may enjoy it more.

The Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow is a non-fiction anthropology that wants to elevate the perspective of indigenous peoples that were colonized in recent centuries.  That lens is valid and certainly drew me to this book but it strains a little too hard to lionize the noble savage — a reductive trope in itself for serious academics to pursue so naively.

[Fragile Bird]

I tried listening to The Witch King again, and this time around I followed it much better than the first time around. It actually started growing on me. There are obviously more books coming.

But I decided that I’d pick up the paperback and read it, and I was surprised to see the paperback won’t  be out until next summer! The hardcover is on sale on Amazon, but I am not buying hardcovers anymore. I think there’s a Kindle addition, but when I look it up on my iPhone it doesn’t tell me, it just says my phone doesn’t support the format.

The bookstore clerk told me The Witch King paperback date is longer than usual. I have to charge up my Kindle and get the book.

[Wilbur]

On 10/6/2023 at 9:04 AM, Wilbur said:

unJon had recommended Claire North's Songs of Penelope in the Q3 thread...

The second of Claire North's Songs of Penelope is House of Odysseus, and it is a terrific story.  I listened to the audiobook read by Catrin Walker-Booth, who does excellent work to read this with feeling, but not to interject herself into the story.

When I read the first book, I thought it was very good, and I enjoyed the way the author entwined the Oresteia into the story.  It seemed like an excellent ornamentation of the story of Odysseus, told through the viewpoint of the goddess Hera and focused on Penelope as the protagonist.

Having read the second book, I have to revise my opinion of what these books actually are.  Now, I believe that the author is retelling the Tragedy of Orestes with the setting in the Western Isles and the ostensible protagonist as Penelope.  But it is very clearly the Orestan tragedy which is driving these books, and I may need to go back and re-read the first one with this in mind.

In the first book, Clytemnestra changes her outlook and embraces a mature, if tragedic, act to bring the story to a conclusion.  In this second book, Elektra and Orestes reach points of psychological and personal maturity and self-knowledge that enable them to move forward over the real obstacles, their own personal demons, and overcome them.

On the surface, Penelope and Laertes and their friends, teammates, servants, allies and enemies work together to defeat the overwhelming opponent, Spartan King Menelaus, preserving the King of Kings Orestes and the independence of Ithaca.  And there is plenty of plotting and secret women warriors and acolytes of Artemis and hidden boats and poisoned wine, etc.  But the real action is the personal growth in the relationship between Queen Penelope and the old Argonaut Laertes, and even more so the self-actualization of the King Orestes and Princess Elektra.  It is these scions of the House of Atreus who must move out of the mental detent created by the curse of the cannibalistic Atreids and repent to pacify the Erinyes.

All of that working out of the Oresteia is terrifically well realized in a convincing story.  And to enhance it, the viewpoint of the book is that of the goddess Aphrodite.  At the beginning, I was not excited about this, since it was quickly obvious that the parallel to the Three Spartan Queens (cousins/sisters Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra then Elektra, and Penelope) would be the Three goddesses of the Judgment of Paris: Hera (the POV for the first book), now Aphrodite, and likely Athena for the final one.  I really liked the way the author used the fading power and glory of Hera to emphasize the powerlessness of women in the first book, but Aphrodite is not a POV that really interested me.  However, Aphrodite's definition of "love" expands as the plot works its way out, and she grows to embrace (ha ha) acts of love that are more than just sexual ecstasy.  Excellent character development, and it is presented in a way that I can understand it without being excessively overt.

The use of Helen, including her physical presence and her psychological presence on Ithaca is powerful.  If you know anything about the Trojan War, you will have A LOT of questions about how her life must have looked after her return to Menelaus.  This story answers those questions, although you may not like these answers.  Very GRRM.

As a cherry on this delicious sundae of classical literature mixed into historical fiction, the plot even encompasses a murder mystery half-way through.  And the characters use the murder as leverage for their plots within plots to enable weak political players to achieve their ends, independence and victory over strong political players.  This is in addition to the overall question of who is poisoning Orestes and why, but intermixes with it very satisfactorily.  All the political machinations of ASOIAF, but at much closer quarters, since all the players are literally inside the House of Odysseus.

So I want to reiterate this as a kind of Mary Renault historical fiction of pre-Bronze Age Collapse Mycenean Greece, set in Homeric Ithaca after the Trojan War and before the collapse, incorporating the Oresteia AND a murder mystery with the sort of political complexity that would make GRRM proud.  Fantastic stuff.

I am very much looking forward to the final book, which is scheduled for publishing in 2024, The Last Song of Penelope.  Will it now center on the traditional story of Odysseus, or step off in some other, new and exciting, direction?

I strongly recommend that fans of ASOIAF get and read both of these books, as I think you will appreciate their complexity.

 

[RhaenysBee]

I finished Doom. I recommend, it was an insightful and entertaining listen. But I do crave the magical lands of distant past and I wish there were more installments of the Persians book, or the Genghis Khan one.

@Zorral if it’s not a bother, might you have a recommendation for me on the topic of Ancient Egypt? I really enjoyed the Mongol women perspective you recommended after I raved about Genghis Khan. Thank you thank you thank you in advance for any idea! 

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

if it’s not a bother, might you have a recommendation for me on the topic of Ancient Egypt? I really enjoyed the Mongol women perspective you recommended after I raved about Genghis Khan. Thank you thank you thank you in advance for any idea! 

I'm pretty useless for this, alas! Most English speaking writers/publishers seem to think Egypt is essentially Nefertiti, Tut and Cleopatra. Alas, some of the best ones that aren't that don't seem to be in print any longer.

The history of Ancient Egypt is so ancient, so long and extensive, and so vast, as historians see it as a unified, recording state already in 3150 B.C. E., concluding in 30 B.C.E. with the Ptolemies. Dynasties are instituted at least in 4000 B.C.  Without a specifically targeted time period and subject, then, I'm flummoxed. The works on Egyptian mythology alone!

Egypt was always a significant, and often the most significant player, often the only significant player, in the current events of whatever empire going, from the time of Ur and the later Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians, Hittites and Persians, the Mycenean and Crete, the mysterious Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians, not to mention Hellada (Greece). 

This continued, even in the time of Classical Greece, and in Ancient and Classical Rome, the Byzantines, to the Indian Ocean trade, the Arabs, the Muslims, the Mamluks, the Mongols, the Crusaders, he Ottomans, the Italian city states, the colonial invasions of Europe, including Napoleon's (just a single fascinating story of Egypt in itself!), early archaeology, WWI, WWII, and right this minute (to speed up) Israel and Gaza.

One of my friends is professional, academic, Egyptologist, reads hieroglyphs -- but her subject is Ancient Egypt marine/nautical archaeology, so her works wouldn't be useful to you. 

You might look online for books on the history of the Nile River and the Nile Valley.  It's not so easy to find one that isn't specifically targeted to European exploration and the rivalries to find the source, though.

I think ... maybe the best recs I can make personally, are The Nile (2014), by Toby Wilkinson and I really like it. His earlier book is The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (2011).

But here are reviews, that may give you an idea if this resembles anything you are looking for: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-nile-a-journey-through-egypts-past-and-present-by-toby-wilkinson/2014/07/18/61cf0558-df66-11e3-810f-764fe508b82d_story.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/sep/26/ancient-egypt-history-myths-legends

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/books/the-rise-and-fall-of-ancient-egypt-review.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/toby-wilkinsons-the-rise-and-fall-of-ancient-egypt/2011/03/28/AFgEM07G_story.html

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Zorral

[RhaenysBee]

Thank you so much, I’ll check these titles out! 

[briantw]

Recently read The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.  I really loved it.  I appreciate a good fantasy novel with plenty of political machinations (II assume we all do given that we're posting here), and that's pretty much all this one was.  There's almost no action and I never cared a bit.  The only complaint I have is a minor quibble.  The naming conventions in the world Addison created are really annoying and too many characters have similar sounding names.  It made it a chore to follow who was who at times.

But that's a very small complaint in an otherwise excellent fantasy novel.  I'd heard plenty of good things about this one prior to reading it and it exceeded my expectations.

I've moved on to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and I have to say that dystopian capitalist hellscapes feel a whole lot less ridiculous and a whole lot more inevitable in 2023.  I'm only about a fifth of the way into this one, but Stephenson writes some excellent prose.  

Edited November 6, 2023 by briantw

[Fragile Bird]

11 hours ago, briantw said:

Recently read The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.  I really loved it.  I appreciate a good fantasy novel with plenty of political machinations (II assume we all do given that we're posting here), and that's pretty much all this one was.  There's almost no action and I never cared a bit.  The only complaint I have is a minor quibble.  The naming conventions in the world Addison created are really annoying and too many characters have similar sounding names.  It made it a chore to follow who was who at times.

But that's a very small complaint in an otherwise excellent fantasy novel.  I'd heard plenty of good things about this one prior to reading it and it exceeded my expectations.

I assume you listened to an audiobook? I made the same complaint about The Witch King by Martha Wells. I expect having the actual book in your hands makes things much better.

The Goblin Emperor and The Murderbot Diaries were really my favorite books from the last couple of years. If you enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, I strongly recommend you read her off-shoot series about Thara Celehar, The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones. I expect a third book will come out in due time. I sort of half wish there was a sequel to The Goblin Emperor, but the way Addison (Sarah Monette) wrapped things up I don’t think she meant there to be a sequel, which is why she chose Celehar to write about. It’s obviously hinted that there was going to be more to his story, hindsight being 20/20.

Although I could imagine seeing Maia again 10 years later, full of grief because his beloved wife died in childbirth, and Maia deciding he’s going to make peace with the nomadic people the Empire has been at war with for a 100 years. I’d read that.

[briantw]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I assume you listened to an audiobook? I made the same complaint about The Witch King by Martha Wells. I expect having the actual book in your hands makes things much better.

The Goblin Emperor and The Murderbot Diaries were really my favorite books from the last couple of years. If you enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, I strongly recommend you read her off-shoot series about Thara Celehar, The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones. I expect a third book will come out in due time. I sort of half wish there was a sequel to The Goblin Emperor, but the way Addison (Sarah Monette) wrapped things up I don’t think she meant there to be a sequel, which is why she chose Celehar to write about. It’s obviously hinted that there was going to be more to his story, hindsight being 20/20.

Although I could imagine seeing Maia again 10 years later, full of grief because his beloved wife died in childbirth, and Maia deciding he’s going to make peace with the nomadic people the Empire has been at war with for a 100 years. I’d read that.

Nah, I read the actual book for this one.  It’s just that so many of the names have multiple ways to say them and a lot of them have the same prefix but different last names, but aren’t mentioned enough to clearly establish who they are in my head.  I felt like I was just getting it all straight and then the book ends. 

Definitely plan on reading the next one soon, but wanted to knock out some of my backlog first before buying another new book. 

Edited November 6, 2023 by briantw

[williamjm]

I finished Josiah Bancroft's new book The Hexologists. I thought it was an entertaining mystery. To begin with I felt it was perhaps trying a bit too hard to be wacky at times but it felt like it calmed down a bit once the plot really gets underway. Some of the weirder things in the early chapters also make more sense in retrospect. The mystery part of the plot works well, there are definitely hints as to what the resolution but also enough misdirection so that things aren't too obvious. It's in a different setting to Bancroft's Babel series and the setting isn't as memorable, it feels a fairly standard fantasy city but there are still a few nice touches in the world-building. It does wrap up the main plot satisfactorily at the end but there are also some plots obviously being set up for later books.

1 hour ago, briantw said:

Nah, I read the actual book for this one.  It’s just that so many of the names have multiple ways to say them and a lot of them have the same prefix but different last names, but aren’t mentioned enough to clearly establish who they are in my head.  I felt like I was just getting it all straight and then the book ends.

I agree that the Celehar books are also definitely worth reading, although they do have a bit of a different tone to them. However, don't expect the names and titles to get any easier.