Ooooooo got it in just under the wire – at least in my time zone!
So are we all cooked enough? I hope no one here has been severely impacted by all the fires raging around the world! Might be time to start reading dytopian fiction and brushing up on our survival skills… Just sayin.
So whatcha all readin?
Print:
The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher Loving it just as much as I did when I read it 10 years ago!
Audio:
The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connely. I really like Mickey a lot more than Bosch, I just hope Connelly doesn’t keep the sad sack persona on Mickey much longer.
Kindle
Dog Bless You by Neil Plakcy. The 4th in his long running cozy series about a golden retreiver with a knack for finding bodies and the college professor/ex-felon who has to solve te mystery. Lots of fun and a nice New England small town vibe.
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of SDMB, and he was well-known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive.
Finished Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species, by Sang-Hee Lee with Shin-Young Yoon. I’d already read almost all of the material it covered, which of course isn’t the author’s fault. It’s a good introduction to the subject. Also finished Children of Promise: African-American Literature and Art for Young People, edited by Charles Sullivan. The most powerful poem was Gwendolyn Brooks’ “To the Young Who Want to Die.”
Next up: The Cadaver Princess, by Chuck Rothman; and Arch of Bone, by Jane Yolen.
I just finished Everybody’s Perfect, by Jo Walton. It’s a good book that was a real slog for me.
It takes place in a liminal city based on Venice and inhabited by beings from a variety of worlds, all of whom look like traditional Venetian Carnival masks (except the humans, who call themselves Venetians). Each chapter is told from a different perspective, all about the same day or two time period, with very little plot.
The ideas are interesting, the prose is well-crafted, but the book lacked sharp edges in a way that made it difficult for me to stay focused. Some books you finish with regret, like you’re coming down from a high. Others you finish with relief.
I can certainly imagine other folks adoring this book. It wasn’t really for me.
Still working my way through Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. She does seem to emphasize Athena more than other translators, and she uses other ways to get around the standard “Rosy-fingered Dawn”, but for the most part her translation does not stand out from others I’ve read.
The thing that struck me the most were the times she abruptly uses a word or phrase that seems anachronistic. The Suitors, for instance, are described as spending time “playing checkers”, which is as jarring as Robert H. van Gulik saying that Judge Dee plated “chess”, when it was clearly go that he was playing. You might want to make the game seem more familiar and homely, but saying they played checkers just yanks me out of the period, rather than appearing normal and expected.
Another example is when Nausicaa ass her father King Alcinous for the use of the mule cart to go and do the laundry, and she addresses him as “Daddy,” which makes me cringe. Even worse, Alcinous agrees, and adds that “The slaves can fit the wagon with its cargo rack,”, a modernism that makes it sound as if she’s asking to borrow the royal pickup truck.
I finished my second reading of The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher. SO much I had forgotten in the last 8 years since I first read it; enjoyed it even more this time. I really do adore her many paladins.
Now I’m ready for Daggerbound’s release this month.
Finished The Cadaver Princess, by Chuck Rothman; and Arch of Bone, by Jane Yolen, both of which I enjoyed, especially for their settings.
Next up: A Summons to Memphis, by Peter Taylor; and A Phule and His Money, by Robert Asprin with Peter J. Heck.
I have Swordheart on my Kindle, thinking I’d read it next time we go on a trip. However, it doesn’t seem like that trip is going to materialize! I need to just read it and get Daggerbound already.
Swordheart is one of my favorites, so many great characters. I’m bouncing waiting for Daggerbound to release.
I finished Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly today. I had not realized it had been TEN years since I’d read a Mickey Haller book. I enjoyed this one very much and was completely glued to the ending.
I was able to read a lot on vacation. Recently finished:
Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University by Richard White. It’s about the 1905 poisoning of the imperious widow of robber baron and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, and the (purposefully, it seems) abortive investigation which followed. The author has to speculate quite a bit, due to the passage of time and the loss or destruction of records, but it’s a well-researched and mostly interesting book.
Yorktown 1781 by Brendan Morrissey, one of the excellent Osprey short military histories, about the last major campaign of the American Revolution. There’s more nitty-gritty about the organization and structure of the American, French and British armies than I’ve seen elsewhere. Good stuff.
Spock Must Die! by James Blish, a 1970 novel that’s much sillier and inconsistent with Star Trek canon than it should be, considering that Blish was the guy who wrote the novelizations of all the original-series episodes. Among other annoyances, McCoy is referred to as “Doc” and not “Bones,” Scotty’s accent is much thicker (and almost incomprehensible in print), and Kirk handles a shipboard crisis with incredible carelessness. Two thumbs down.
I’m now reading:
We the People by Jill Lepore, a Pulitzer-winning history of the U.S. Constitution, focusing particularly on the process and examples of amending it. Lepore argues that the country would be better off, and the people better-served, if the Constitution were more frequently amended. She hasn’t quite convinced me yet, but I’m glad to let her try.
War at Sea in the Ironclad Age by Richard Hill, about the remarkable half-century of naval innovation from 1855-1905. Quite a bit about the American Civil War and the late Victorian era’s Royal Navy, as well as the rapid rise of Imperial Japan as a blue-water power.
I started on Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. It was okay, but it never really grabbed me. Still, I was willing to put up with it until an Elon Musk character showed up. A quick perusal of the reviews revealed that this guy was supposedly a hero and the story dropped off a cliff shortly after so into the return to library bag it went. The main character was starting to piss me off anyway and her family was a gang of idiots.
Sadly, since it was a Nigerian novel, it made me hungry. I really need to find a recipe for jollof rice. Every single African novel (and the Rivers of London series) mentions it. They make it sound like the best thing ever. There is a Nigerian (?) restaurant that makes wonderful jollof rice that one of my friends recommended but it’s in Cary NC and I’m four hours west of there. The only time I’m in that part of the state is Thanksgiving and Christmas to visit my Oldest Sister and the restaurants are closed then. Sad face.
But anyway. To take the bad taste of crap novel out of my mouth I turned to Lindsey Davis’ The Graveyard of the Hesperides which is another wonderful Roman murder mystery capped off with a hilarious wedding scene when Uncle Baebius brings his own pig to the sacrifice. I literally lol’ed in the correct sense of the adverb. If I haven’t said so before, heartfelt thanks to whoever it was here who recommended Davis’ novels to me. They’re un-putdownable.
Finished listening to No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall. A decent mystery about three estranged sisters who are re-united against their wishes 14 years after their parents were brutally murdered in a still-unsolved crime. A lot of plot twists that shifts the focus from one suspect to another. The story is told from the viewpoints of each of the sisters, revealing what each of them know and don’t know about their siblings and the deaths of their parents.
I believe it was me, so YOU’RE WELCOME!
Finished A Summons to Memphis, by Peter Taylor. Not recommended. Also finished A Phule and His Money, by Robert Asprin with Peter J. Heck, which was okay.
Next: Bogeys and Bandits: The Making of a Fighter Pilot, by Robert Gandt; and Thurber on Crime, by James Thurber, which is a collection of stories, articles, essays, and drawings.
Titanium Noir, by Nick Harkaway, is a gem.
The protagonist is a detective who works on spec for the cops, investigating a very particular sort of crime: those involving Titans, those rare privileged few who’ve received one or more doses of a medication that rejuvenates their bodies and sends them through a second growth spurt that leads them to tower above the untreated masses.
Harkaway writes in pitch-perfect noir detective prose–like, Chandler and Hammett would have no notes–except without all the cringy racism and misogyny. The SF metaphor is pretty on the nose, but Harkaway explores it in a nuanced, thoughtful fashion. The mystery at the heart of the book is well-handled. And it has a sequel, which I just learned while finding a link for the book!
Recommended.
I’m in the middle of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, because I liked her other book Piranesi so much. In particular I’m enjoying how she treats magic and the supernatural in this routine and matter-of-fact way that makes it feel that it’s supporting the main story (though there’s no real story without it).
I like a writer who is able to quietly emanate their skill and mastery without overtly calling attention to it, Clarke is definitely that writer. Somehow her writing ability just radiates off the page without calling attention to itself, in fact she seems perfectly content to add a lot of subtle cleverness that’s likely to be overlooked if the reader is moving too fast (which I do at times, she’s definitely made me slow down).
The Last Astronaut David Wellington
A mysterious alien spaceship approaches Earth and a group of astronauts are sent to make First Contact. A remake of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, more or less.
Pretty good book (but not as good as RwR)
I enjoyed Titanium Noir also. Thanks for the heads up about a sequel!