I’ll check the details; probably can’t reply until tomorrow.
I never thought I would like Pratchett - Discworld sounded very silly to me - but I really loved Guards! Guards!. I’ve since read several of the Night Watch books, and they have all been fun.
I finished the third and last book of a light sci-fi/fantasy series by Doris Egan: her Ivory books, published from 1989-1992, which are the only novels she’s written save one. (More recently Egan is writing for television drama, including House.) These are not great literature, but they’re pretty fun: a vacationing academian is stranded on the violent and low-tech planet Ivory, where she meets an aristocratic sorcerer. It’s an unusually agreeable mix of sci-fi and fantasy, with an understated romance. Recommended if you like ‘80s soft sci-fi.
I liked C.J. Cherryh’s *Cyteen *so well that I’ve picked up a few more of her books. The only one I’ve read yet is Forty Thousand in Gehenna, and I wasn’t so crazy about it.
I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, then watched the 1969 movie starring Maggie Smith (she looks fantastic!). The book is short and mildly interesting: after a bland beginning it turns into a rather sinister story.
I read Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie, by Barbara Goldsmith. It’s an easy read, about 230 pages, and serves as a good introduction to Curie and her work - which is described at a very high level, with no in-depth explanation of the science. The prose does feel a bit condensed sometimes, as if the author struggled to keep the book under a maximum word count, perhaps to fit the format of this “Great Discoveries” series.
I’ve started reading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and while I don’t dislike it, it’s very long and slow. Not as engaging as Middlemarch.
I recently saw the British National Theatre’s 50th anniversary special. They included a B&W clip of a very young Maggie Smith playing a sly, flirtatious socialite - nice to imagine that was what her Downton Abbey character was like, back in the day!
Gah, I just read The IPO by Dan Koontz, yes I know, my bad. I hadn’t read anything by him for decades but was enticed by the rave reviews and low price $1.99 when I bought it for the kindle*. It is the worst book I’ve read in, well decades. I almost stopped in the first 15% because is was so implausible. Unfortunately I almost never give up so I slogged on to about 2/3 of the way thru, where one of the characters discovers she had a tubal ligation when she was 13, based on the twin scars on her abdomen. WHAT??? You didn’t even get scars like that when I had my tubal in 1981. And yet, I still plowed thru to the ridiculous end.
It was so bad I did something I’ve never done before…I wrote a review that spoiled the ending cause it was sooooooo stupid. Again, my bad.
*It was free yesterday and it’s up to $3.99 today.
Do not read this book, I lost brain cells that will never be replaced, not to mention several hours of my life.
I read all of the Cyteen books by Cherryh and like them except for Forty Thousand… Try Down Below Station. BTW all of her stuff is very “angsty”.
Reading Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Its pretty good, certainly its subject is interesting enough.
That said, it’s very focused on TR, and so it only really explains the people and institutions he comes in contact with by saying how Teddy viewed them. So there’s a lot of talk about how Teddy worshipped and adored his father, but not very much on what the elder Roosevelt was doing other then interacting with his son. And we get a lengthy summary of TR’s grades for almost every semester he was in Harvard, but not a lot of what Victorian-era Harvard was like outside of the parts that interested TR.
I loved Morris’s book. Theodore Rex, about his Presidency, is also fantastic (and yes, very focused on T.R., about whom there is even now so very much to say). I have the third and final volume, Colonel Roosevelt, which runs from his leaving the White House to his death, gathering dust on my shelf but haven’t gotten to it yet. Someday!
It’s hard to say how far along plans were; Irving says they were almost complete but others apparently disagree. Captain Jonathan Carver suggested an expedition to the west coast in 1763, which would have made it’s way west at around the 43rd-46th parallel, or a bit south of the later border with Canada.
Later, in 1774, he got the backing of a wealthy English MP, Richard Whitworth, for a broadly similar plan involving ‘50 or 60 men, artificers and mariners’ ascending the Missouri and finding a route to and then down the Oregon (Columbia) river. Once there they would establish a fort and trading post at the mouth of it. According to Irving their plan ‘had the sanction of the British government, and grants and other requisites were nearly completed, when the breaking out of the American revolution once more defeated the undertaking’.
Irving doesn’t mention him but this link says a Robert Rogers was also involved.
I’d read about Clark Thomas Carlton’s Prophets of the Ghost Ants in the Shelf Awareness newsletter last December, and went as far as DL’ing the Kindle sample, but didn’t pull the trigger until I found it was available as part of Amazon Prime’s Lending Library.
It reminds me a bit of James Blish’s short story “Surface Tension” with a touch of George R.R. Martin’s “Sandkings” - in a post-apocalyptic world, humankind has shrunk to insect-size, and has domesticated certain species (ants & roaches) to live in a symbiotic relationship. Society has reverted to a primitive level of technology - with a caste system in place in some ways almost as rigid as that of their hillmates. However, one young half-caste man - Anand - dares to dream of something different.
The story is basically sword and sandal - no real magic (some mystic elements are explained by science, kinda-sorta), but still quite compelling within the established world. Carlton seems to have done his research on the insect world; ant society in particular - and the action adventure elements, along with the court intrigue, kept my interest nicely. There are multiple tribes - each well-described and believable within the world-building and the characters are engaging. It felt in some ways like a Robert E. Howard story, set in an alien environment. I enjoyed it, and may re-read it someday in the future - supposedly there are plans to make this into a motion picture trilogy - I’d go see it.
I read Helen Fielding’s “Mad About the Boy,” and, well, it was acceptable as something to read in fits and starts on the Metro. I liked Bridget Jones when I was younger, but I have a lot less patience for the character now that she and I are both older.
I’m now about halfway through David Brin’s “Glory Season”, a sci-fi book originally published in 1993. It takes place on a world where 80% of the population are female clones, who hold the highest position in society. I’m enjoying the exploration of the social structure in such a different set of conditions. I’m less enthusiastic about the characters, but overall a thumbs up to this point. I’ve never read anything by Brin before - I’ll have to check out some of his other books.
Thanks for this info. Good to know!
Thanks, I rather like angsty. I actually did read Downbelow Station earlier this year, and I liked it pretty well, but not as much as Cyteen. I have *Regenesis *queued up, and Serpent’s Reach, and Merchanter’s Luck.
Polished off Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 last night. Nice brisk read. The thing that I have trouble wrapping my head around is that many of the communists apparently fully believed in the project at the time. Perhaps it’s just hindsight, but it’s difficult for me to comprehend how you could reconcile the views with the actions… argh.
Anyway, I’ve been building up some comics to read, so I’ll be catching up on those before I figure out what the hell I’m going to read next.
Recently finished:
More Than This, by Patrick Ness. I love Patrick Ness. I loved a lot of aspects of this book. It didn’t quite all hang together for me as a story, but overall, I enjoyed reading it.
The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, by Manuel Gonzales. Short stories, in an urban fantasy/absurdist vein. I can see why these have received strong reviews, but it’s not really my thing. It was the kind of book that made me feel that I would really like the author personally, more than I liked the book itself.
Two YA titles - Before I Die by Jenny Downham, about a teenage girl dying of cancer which was both sad and a little “teenage girl satisfying drama”, and Where The Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller, about a girl who goes to live with her father after a life of living on the run with her mentally ill mother, it’s a story about having to figure out what your “normal” is. They were both okay, nothing genre-breaking.
I picked up, and put down, Duplex by Kathryn Davis. This was getting some terrific reviews, but somehow I missed the part about how it’s very much a magical realism novel, so I think I was initially confused and then irritated with it when I started. I will probably come back to it someday, I get the feeling I might click with it better after a fresh start.
Okla Hannali by R. A. Lafferty.
I was sure it was recommended in the November thread but I can’t find the post. A big fat THANK YOU to whomever suggested it. It’s one of those books that makes me glad I lived long enough to discover it.
It’s the mostly true story of a Choctaw man who lived through most of the 19th century. More than any other book I’ve read about Native Americans, it makes me realize what was lost. It’s also surprisingly humorous. I bought a copy for friends who live in Oklahoma, and when we visit them next year, we’re going to look for some of the places mentioned in the book.
Marvelous, wonderful book.
Well, something has percolated to the surface of my mind: Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek: An Afterword. I’ve never finished his City of Saints and Madmen, but I do love the city of Ambergris, and this is an “afterword” to the part of the book I liked the best, the heavily footnoted history of the city. (Which, in reference to a debate on the merits of rats, points out that “their fur is pleasant to stroke”, which for some reason has stuck in my head and refuses to go away.)
Checked out the e-book of The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida based on ChinaGuy’s recco and a general interest in the topic. The author basically explains why he does what he does and how he feels about his life, with some fictional interludes. It’s very different from Temple Grandin in both style and content, yet with some similarities. For example, they both discuss difficulties in dealing with people, and how they feel much more connected to animals/nature.
There’s plenty of skepticism about whether or not Higashida is really the author & how much his assistant really just “assisted” in getting the words down versus adding to the text, but I’m not sure it matters too much. A lot of the basic explanations held true with what I’ve heard and read about people with autism; and the extra little stories included felt very Japanese to me. It was an intriguing read - and I’d recommend it if you have an interest in the topic.
Oops. After a Wiki search, I’ve learned that it’s not one man’s story, that Lafferty combined real people and real events to tell the story of the Choctaw people in an original way. There was no Okla Hannali, but there were people who did what he did. Or who did most of what he did. It doesn’t diminish the story.
I need to start reading Intros and Prefaces. 
I’m re-reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
I have finished Guards Guards and have started Men at Arms. I’m enjoying it so far. I read the patrician in Alan Rickman’s voice.
How is Anansi Boys a work book and can I have your job?