Well we made it… 2016 was a hellacious year for all, politically, financially and socially, but we’re still here and we’re still carrying more books than the straps of our backpacks can handle! January 2017… and do I need to go have WORDS with Ben Aaronovitch about the latest Rivers of London book? taps toes
I’m stillworking on The AmuletofSamarkand by Jonathon Stroud. I came down quite ill just before Christmas and all I wanted to do was lay in front of my computer and watch CinemaSins But I’ll get it finished yet!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Khadaji was one of the earlier members of the 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, and he started these monthly book threads. Sadly, he passed away in January 2013, and we decided to rename these monthly threads in his honor.
Still 2017 here in Hawaii.Going on 9:30pm. We’ll wander down to the beach a couple blocks away after 11:00 to watch the fireworks.
Meanwhile, I’m halfway through Rogue Lawyer, by John Grisham. A series of stories featuring Sebastian Rudd, the lawyer in question. It’s okay. Rudd seems to be a low-rent version of Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller.
Finished up one book this morning after several days of reading - If Britain Had Fallen by Norman Longmate, a very interesting, quite horrifying look at the Nazis’ 1940 plan to invade the UK, Operation Sea Lion, and what might have happened if they’d pulled it off. The author pays a lot of attention to the experiences of the inhabitants of the Channel Islands, the only British territory actually occupied (including the near-starvation they endured in the winter of 1944-45).
Also zipped through, just today, Bertrand Brinley’s The Mad Scientists’ Club, a collection of YA short stories about a bunch of clever nerds in a Sixties small town who use science and engineering to pull off hoaxes and even sometimes help the town fathers. Good fun.
I finished up the year with the new Robert Charles Wilson novel, Last Year. I love a good time travel book, and this was fun. Opportunists from the year 2032 have established a tourist destination in 1887 Ohio. History buffs from the future come to gawk at 19th century America, while the locals come to marvel at a careful selection of futuristic wonders. The book stands out partly because of the lack of concern over altering history: apparently there are endless parallel timelines, so nothing done in this 1887 will affect this version of 2032. Hence there are only cursory guards against smuggling and political activism, which of course get out of hand.
Christopher Brookmyre of Tartan Noir fame is writing Jack Parlabane novels again, and I enjoyed the newest one, Black Widow. It’s a twisty mystery/crime story, a page-turner about a surgeon accused of murdering her husband of 6 months.
I finished up Daniel Abraham’s fantasy series,The Dagger and the Coin, and it got better with every book; a solid work of fantasy. Abraham is one of the writers of The Expanse sci-fi series, and this fantasy has the same kind of core group of close-knit characters that I find appealing. It’s not that the books are at all cozy, but they do have a reliable set of relationships which anchor the story.
I just wrapped up John Cleese’s autobiography of his early years, Well, Anyway. I found it marvellous. It’s got the required account of English public schools. It also has a heart-wrenching account of his difficult relationship with his mother. (Well, it would be heart-wrenching, except that wasn’t the English style, a theme he plumbs repeatedly).
It’s not a tell-all about the Pythons - more of “how I became a Python”, with repeated little digs at Terry Gilliam and a clear, heart-felt love for Graham Chapman (fraternal love, I should clarify), Cleese’s long-standing writing partner both before and during the Python era.
He originally planned to end it with the telecast of the first Python show, when he watched the first sketch off-stage, saw the audience’s reaction, turned to someone and said “This might work!” He added a final retrospective chapter about the O2 shows.
His occasional digressions into the creative process and the nature of comedy are fascinating. I howled at his description of one bitter dispute amongst the Pythons, going to the knife whether a chandelier in one sketch should be made from a goat or a sheep. (Cleese was firmly pro-goat.)
He also gave the provenance of the cheese shop sketch. It involved projectile vomiting.
If you’re interested in things Python, I recommend it.
Finally finished The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathon Stroud. It wasn’t a bad book, by any means, and certainly not on par with the Lockwood & Co. books, I just burned out on reading and combined with being laid low by a sinus infection just before Christmas, I wasn’t inclined to read until this weekend.
Up next is Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff, a NaNo aquaintance recced it to me, so we’ll see how it goes.
I also need to finish up Two Necromancers, an Army of Golems and a Demon Lord by L G Estrella. Comedy, necromancy and bureaucracy
I’ve begun rereading (for the first time in 20-some years) June Thomson’s The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes, an excellent collection of pastiches of cases that Conan Doyle made passing references to but never wrote.
Still browsing through the third book of Shelby Foote’s magisterial The Civil War, esp. the last chapter, about Lincoln’s assassination and Jefferson Davis’s imprisonment.
I whipped through the new Tana French book in her series about the Dublin Murder Squad, The Trespasser. I love this series and this was satisfying as anticipated.
Speaking of whom, I’m still reading The Lincoln Lawyer. I’m not sure how far into it I am – 30%? 40%? – but it just got a little more interesting. Good stuff.
I started the first one of these today, In the Woods. It’s been on my shelf for a while, but I kept hearing that it was bleak and depressing, so I’ve been waiting until I was in the mood to handle that. So far, so good: the writing in the first chapter is impressive.
I just finished “The Hidden Keys”, by Andre Alexis. It’s good, but not as good as his “Fifteen Dogs”. Still, well worth the couple of days it took…
I’m about fifty pages into “The Last Day”, by Glenn Kleier. I’m rather ‘meh’ about it so far, but it will take me longer to make my mind up about it than it will take me to just finish it. “Mandibles” by Lionel Shriver, and “What the Dog Knows” by the appropriately named Cat Warren are next up.
Actually, I was looking for a different book, and “The Last Day” isn’t it. I remember Rick Green on the science fiction book show “Prisoners of Gravity” talking about a book (maybe a short story?) where the second coming of Christ happens, only - it’s a girl! That’s supposedly going to be the plotline of “The Last Day”, but - “The Last Day” was published in 1997, and I stopped watching “Prisoners of Gravity” back around '91 or '92, so this can’t be the right story/book/whatever. Does that subject ring a bell with anyone here? Let me know, if you’d be so kind…
Because new year means zilch attention span… or something :smack:
I started Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff. I am deeply amused at all the “otakus” on Goodreads who are absolutely LIVID that he DARED write a book based on Japan but it ISN’T JAPAN! And he’s not even upset that they’re offended. I’m inclined to love the book even if it’s garbage…
And this afternoon, I started Carter & Lovercraft by Jonathon L Howard. It’s very different in tone from the Johannes Cabal books but I’m hooked!
Just started A Woman’s Job is Never Done by M. Phyllis Lose, DVM and Deborah L. Fritz. It’s a sequel to her autobiography No Job for a Lady, about becoming one of the first women veterinarians for large animals, which was fascinating. This is about her job as a vet for the Philadelphia police horses and dogs. She thinks Mayor Frank Rizzo was great.
Lately, I’m re-reading my family’s memoirs, in the process of proofreading the OCR scans I just made. But even aside from the task needing to be done, they’re fascinating reading, a lot of nice slices of life from various points in the past century.
Finished Rogue Lawyer, by John Grisham. A series of interconnected stories involving one Sebastion Rudd, sort of a low-rent Mickey Haller of Michael Connelly fame. It was okay, but the protagonist is not very likable. I can do without more.
And speaking of Michael Connelly, next up is The Crossing.
Started today on an anthology, Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow. I always read these, but I can’t say I’m very excited about it. There are always a lot of stories that are pointless and bizarre, like boring icky dreams. That’s not horror, to me. But I’ll sift through this batch in hope of a few gems.
I like her because the meat of the thing is about the people working on the case, moreso than the actual crime. I’ll be curious to see what you think, ultimately.
Paper-book-wise, I’m rereading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. It’s been on my list for a few years: when I first read them, seven were out. The eighth one came soon enough that I still remembered who was who and what plot was what. By the time book nine came around, I’d forgotten too much to enjoy it, and book ten has been sitting around in my bedroom unopened, because I knew it would be the same deal unless I went back. I’m currently on Deadhouse Gates.
On the internet front, I’ve been reading the webnovel Worm. I’m about 5/6 of the way through now.
January 2017… and do I need to go have WORDS with Ben Aaronovitch about the latest Rivers of London book? taps toes