I liked it, but I was in the mood for weird. Also I was getting sick of all the fox hunting chapters in my current Victorian novel (Phineas Redux) so the over-the-top gore was a nice change from the more horrifying reality of the real hunts. Poor foxes. What did they ever do?
Absolutely. The Mercy of Gods started off with me being like, “Huh, academic politics, only in space. Cool cool cool.” My wife, who works in academia, nearly noped out at that point. Fortunately, we both stuck with it, because it’s flippin awesome.
I’ve read two books (I think) since my last post:
- Last Exit, by Max Gladstone. At a slim 200 pages, it’s a taut thriller about the apocalypse and alternate realities. Unfortunately, I lied: it clocks in at nearly 400 pages, not 200 pages, because it’s completely bloated with characters’ internal monologues. If the monologues changed, it would be fine; but every character thinks basically the same thing every time they monologue, and it’s dreary as hell. An editor should’ve sliced a couple hundred pages from the book, and it would’ve been terrific: Max Gladstone writes excellent, evocative prose, and it’s a great idea for a book. Too bad the good two hundred pages are buried under the bloat.
- Nicked, by MT Anderson. In 1087, the Italian city of Bari decided to increase tourism revenue by hiring adventurers to steal the corpse of St. Nicholas from a nearby town. This is true. The author fictionalizes the heist in a wry, comic tale, less Danny Ocean and more John Dortmunder. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud, but it was really well-written and tightly plotted. Recommended!
Yeah, well, I have to admit I didn’t put it down!
Started a little while ago on The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, by H.G. Parry, as recommended by @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness. Really good so far.
Yeah it’s funny, I was like, “whelp, I guess all that stuff doesn’t matter any mo-- Ooh.”
I tell people to at least read to the 25% mark, when the “thing” happens. Trust me, you won’t have to guess what the “thing” is.
My other thought was, “There’s no way they could adapt this to film.” Well apparently they found a way because it’s going to be a TV series. I’m interested to see how they do that.
Finished Who Owns the Moon? And Other Conundrums of Exploring and Using Space, by Cynthia Levinson and Jennifer Swanson. It’s YA and is a solid introduction to the topic. I learned quite a bit. Also finished Quantum Leap: Search and Rescue, by Melissa Crandall. Not recommended.
Next up: Ripley’s Believe It or Not!: Dare to Discover, edited by Jordie R. Orlando, and Ron Goulart’s A Talent for the Invisible, a science fiction novel.
Finished it. A worthy sequel, despite the blah title. I thought I saw the plot heading towards one twist, or maybe, just maybe, another, but then Turow had yet another, very different one in store - nicely done.
I recently zipped through The President’s Brain is Missing, a sf/political novella by John Scalzi, and a rare misfire for him. Meant to be funny, but wasn’t.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey, however, is excellent - a lyrical, engaging novel about astronauts on the International Space Station in the near future, and how they both can and cannot escape the beautiful, mesmerizing world just outside their bulletproof-glass windows. I’m about three-quarters done.
Idjits:
Yeah.. that one didn’t quite stick the landing.
Finished Ripley’s Believe It or Not!: Dare to Discover, edited by Jordie R. Orlando, which I enjoyed, and Ron Goulart’s A Talent for the Invisible, a science fiction novel, which really didn’t age well, (it was written in 1973) although it had some humorous moments.
Next up: Call Me Joe, by Poul Anderson and Gunfight on Europa Station, edited by David Boop.
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Simon Winchester
The interesting story of the collaboration between the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary James Murray and retired U.S. army surgeon William Minor who was a volunteer contributor to the dictionary. (In an idea ahead of its time, much of the dictionary was ‘crowd-sourced’, although that term was only coined in 2006). Dr. Minor suffered from schizophrenia, and was confined to an asylum for killing a random stranger when he worked on the dictionary.
Well-written and well researched book.
I quite enjoyed the book as well! Very well written.
I finished James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes at last. It really is like “Game of Thrones” as a space opera, which makes sense for a lot of reasons. I then watched the first season of The Expanse (which I had never finished before) and was disappointed that they didn’t finish the story. It was also interesting to see the changes the made, and how they brought in stuff from later in the series.
After that I quickly read Frontier Rangers of Colonial New England: From King Philip’s War t the American Revolution by Anthony Philip Blasi. I bought the copy from the author after listen to a talk he gave two weeks ago at The Fort at Number 4 in Charlestown, N.H. Interesting book on an unjustly overlooked topic, although it got dry near the end.
Now I’m working through a stack of books I picked up, starting with a re-read of Tarzan the Invincible by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I haven’t read most of the Tarzan novels since I first read them some – my God – 48 years ago!
On audio I finished up Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Volume I. If any of the other volumes ever came out on audio, I haven’t seen them.
I then went on to Fire Strike, an Oregon Files novel using characters created by Clive Cussler. Since he’s dead, Mike Maden wrote this one. But it’s solidly in the mold, and Scott Brick, who read the Cussler novels when the author was alive, read this one, too, so you might miss the fact that this is a zombie series.
After that I read Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World by Edward Dolnick. I’ve been a dinosaur fan since I was a kid, so most of the story here was familiar to me. What made it stand out were the biographies of the people involved, which was an eye-opener. I knew that Mary Anning had discovered the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton (and the first plesiosaur, too) – my Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs had a painting depicting it. But I had no idea how seriously she pursued her research. What I’d read earlier could have suggested that she simply found the thing, and was a dogged fossil hunter. But she copied out complete scientific papers, complete with accurate drawings, in those pre-photocopier days, and sought out the relevant journals. No easy task for someone not connected with a university and not living in London. She struggled to support her family, and was routinely denied credit for her discoveries, which were definitely not by chance.
I knew that Francis Buckland was an eccentric from James Burke’s series Connections, but he was even odder than I knew. And so was his family.
I had no idea that Richard Owen and Gideon Mantell hated each other, or how heart-breakingly unlucky Mantell’s life had been (and that much of Owen’s work derived from Mantell’s fossil finds, and who got no credit from him). A work worth reading.
Now I’m re-listening to some Nero Wolfe while I look for something else.
I just finished The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door this morning. I really enjoyed it! It soaked up my thoughts like a sponge, an experience I’m always hoping for when I read. I’ll be getting more books from this author.
Tomorrow I will be starting on Stephen King’s newest, Never Flinch. That is, unless Amazon screws me over like they tend to do on deliveries I want very much.
This stuff is gonna be classic, I think. I haven’t read a Corey book yet that disappointed.
Just finished Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman. Another good Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis thriller in which they find and catch the Bad Guy.
Next up: The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson. The first Longmire book, none of which I’ve read.
Hope I like it, as there are about 20 more in the series.
Finished Call Me Joe, by Poul Anderson, which was excellent, and Gunfight on Europa Station, edited by David Boop, which had some very good stories, of which the best was Wil McCarthy’s “Doc Holliday 2.0”.
Next up: For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga, by Robert Sobel, an alternate history.
Were you aware of this recent movie?: Ammonite (2020) - IMDb
Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve read a couple other things by the author. A Declaration on the Rights of Magicians was fine, but didn’t do a ton for me. The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, however, was some bonkers fun, good enough that it got me to read David Copperfield soon afterward.
I just finished reading Celestial Monsters, a YA novel that was the sequel to The Sunbearer Trials. My younger daughter loved it and couldn’t wait until I read it so we could talk about it. Which I did, enthusiastically, with her.
I hated it.
It’s derivative of much better works. Queer representation in it is so in-your-face that it feels like the author forgets the story sometimes. An interesting metaphor for dysphoria is conveniently disposed of and forgotten. A major character redemption arc happens off-screen because the author apparently couldn’t figure out how to portray it. The action scenes are muddy nonsense, full of sentences like “A spectacle of lights filled the arena” instead of anything specific. The mystical powers feel like knockoff Avengers, substituting energy blasts for anything that could be interesting. If the book was edited, I can’t tell: in one case, an entire sentence was repeated verbatim. It feels like a great premise squandered.
And I’ll never breathe a word of that to my daughter. All she knows is that I was enthusiastic and excited about it when I talked with her.
Anyway, it was great to talk with her about a book she loved!
Currently reading I’ll Be Waiting, a twisty ghosty thriller. Pretty good so far, but I’ve not reached the conclusion, and this is definitely a book that’ll be made or broken on the conclusion.
Good, I’ve got that one and A Far Better Thing on the way already.
I may give I’ll Be Waiting a sniff as well!
Heads up my fellow T. Kingfisher fans!
We have a third book coming out from her this year!