Finished Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, just before the month ran out (told you I was going slow). Not sure what’s going to be next yet. I’ve been listening to tons of podcasts instead of audiobooks, so I probably won’t get to the next Dresden Files book for a couple weeks.
Just finished Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. In future Oxford, Kivrin prepares to return to 1300s England to observe the culture for two weeks. When the drop goes awry, she gets considerably more than she bargained for. Back in Oxford, attempts to locate and retrieve her fall to a deadly influenza epidemic. These twin narratives immerse you in period detail with ever-increasing tension. Quite poignant at times too. While reading this on the porch swing yesterday, I looked up astonished to find myself in neither Oxford nor England. Masterful and stunning!
I recently got a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I’ve been reading various “free” books of varying quality (i.e.: mental junk food to utter trash, with a hidden gem or two). I’ve taken a shot on lots of stuff I might not have tried out otherwise, and I’m more willing to throw it aside if it sucks. This is stuff I’ve read in the last month or so, since I haven’t been keeping up with the threads.
Pretty good:
[ul]
[li]The Last Girl — Post-apocalyptic dystopia from the point of view of a young woman who may be one of the last females left. Owes a lot to A Handmaid’s Tale, but is not a copy of it. [/li]
[li]Telekinetic — Idea-driven story written by a decidedly amateur writer, but surprisingly readable despite its flaws. Does a great job of “realistically” exploring what you could do with very limited telekinetic powers (and the required ancillary abilities). There are other books using the same setting. Haven’t read them yet.[/li]
[li]The Second Super was something that I tried on a whim just because it was “free” and found that it was actually a pretty decent YA book. The other two books (so far) are also on Unlimited. If you like superhero origin stories, you could do worse. Readable, kind of dark sometimes, and has some interesting treatments of old familiar elements.[/li]
[li]Caverns and Creatures The Simpson’s would riff on this: “Don’t you mean Dungeons and Dragons, sir?” “Quiet, boy, d’ye want tae git us sued?!” Serious nerd humor. I swear he was rolling actual dice for resolving plot elements. Disgusting. Stupid. Funny as hell. The blurb captures it well: What if you and your friends got to live the game for real? What if you and your friends were assholes?[/li][/ul]
Avoid:
[ul]
[li]The Rho Agenda — I thought the ideas were promising, and the plot moves things along fairly well, but holy shit are the characters poorly drawn. For some reason I still don’t fully understand, I actually felt the sick compulsion to find out what happened at the “end” (there is another trilogy <sob>) and skim-read the three books thinking it was going to kinda get better. Nope. Wasted my time, even at my full-on ridiculous-speed pace. None of the characters have an actual thought, or characterization, or believable motivations, and the ideas are not good enough to make up for any of it.[/li]
[li]Imitation — The first book starts out interesting and she knows how to hook you and string you along, until things to drag, it gets more and more unbelievable, until finally you’re hate-reading it and you realize what you’re doing. Then you put it away and return the other books in the queue. I’m not the target audience (teenage girl romance readers) so I guess she did a decent job just to get me to read the first and most of the second just on the premise and narrative hooks.[/li][/ul]
Actually paid for:
[ul]
[li][— What It Says On The Tin. Waiter writes about restaurants on his blog, finally gets his shit together and edits and repackages some of that content, and adds some new pieces for his publisher. Entertaining look behind the scenes at a New York bistro restaurant.[/li]
[li][url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009QU6V94/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title]The Machine](]Waiter Rant[/url) — Good idea, solid execution, needed some editing. Ironically, while I thought it dragged and read like a short story padded to novella/novel length, comments often mention good pacing. It also felt like two stories were fighting for primacy. There’s the dystopian UK affected by climate change setting, and the mysterious machine often described in Lovecraftian language that has become the focus of Beth’s obsession following the loss of her husband. Well-written in many ways, but longer than it should have been.[/li]
[li]Dawn of Wonder — One of the better epic fantasies I’ve read lately. A word of warning, however, the opening scene is shite. I almost returned it halfway through the bucolic description from the point of view of various forest creatures as some dude rides hard through the forest. It’s relevant to what happens next, but I would either cut that or re-write that opening. I skipped to the second chapter — what should have been the real opening — which grabs you with a great description-through-action of the main character. Much better. The book as a whole is 700+ pages of decent writing and fantasy world building. I had access to this through Unlimited, but chose to buy it anyway because he did a damn good job for a first book, and I want hime to keep working on the next one. Totally worth the extra $5 for this book alone, a bargain for keeping the prospect of a sequel alive.[/li][/ul]
Of the dead-tree carcass variety, I’m mostly through The Signal and the Noise by Joel Silver of 538 fame. He’s managed to make it pretty interesting reading for something as dry as statistical analysis would normally be. The reason I haven’t been able to just plow through it in a couple of days like a normal book is partially mood/motivation lately, and it’s like, heavy, man. I really really prefer reading non-fiction in traditional paper format because of footnotes, flipping back to re-read sections, greater context from having a two-page spread, better sense of pace and placement, among other benefits. But it also means that I can’t take it everywhere, so I don’t necessarily have access to it all the time.
I can read a few pages of a Kindle book while making coffee (hand grinder + Aeropress = 5–7 minutes multi-tasking) or on the toilet just by pulling out my phone if I don’t have the actual Kindle with me. Physical books, on the other hand, may be left at home if it’s a medium-thick large-format paperback like this one, especially during Japan’s rainy season when it’s likely to get wet. Anyway, I’m about 2/3 of the way through and would recommend it to anyone interested in stuff like predicting earthquake frequency, handicapping bets, playing poker, predicting election outcomes, or Bayesian reasoning since he presents things in a very readable way while still giving you a decent amount of information (plus copious footnotes for details).
This reminds me of something I noted when I finished reading Passage several months ago. She is an excellent writer, but many of her books and stories are very weak SF. for example appears to have been marketed as SF only because Willis is considered to be an SF writer. If it had been written by Crichton it would have been marketed as a medical thriller. There is no discernible fantastical element or cutting-edge technology in the book.
The Domesday Book could have been straight historical fiction. Time travel plays no part in the main plot other than to place a character with different knowledge from the locals in a place and time as a stand-in for the audience. Make Kivrin a traveler with knowledge from the Middle East separated from her traveling companions and the plot would be virtually the same. I actually disliked the future sections and thought it would have been better in some ways if those were omitted completely. Contrast it with The Man Who Folded Himself or All You Zombies where time travel is absolutely central to the plot.
Not that Connie Willis is a poor writer. Far from it. She manages to make comedy of manners plots — which I usually dislike — entertaining, but only a handful of the “SF” stories and novels I’ve read by her are actually SF. The short story “All My Darling Daughters” is one that is definitely SF in both setting and plot (and is very disturbing).
I don’t want to exclude Willis as an SF writer — hell, the genre needs all the female authors we can find — but most of her output is only very tenuously SF.
Please note the new thread for June: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=794366