Don’t spoil the ending, okay? 
Recently finished Shoot For The Moon by James Donovan, about the US space program up through Apollo 11. I thought it was pretty good, but I was a little peeved that it stopped as soon as Apollo 11 touched back down on Earth. It already went through the Mercury and Gemeni programs, surely the author could have included the rest of Apollo?
Also finished Anything You Can Imagine by Ian Nathan, about the making of the Lord of the Rings movies. Very good book. I wish the author had skipped the chapter about the Hobbit movies and written a whole book about them instead, because I have a feeling the trials and tribulations of developing and filming those could easily fill one. The one Hobbit chapter in this book glossed over it all.
Right now I’m in the middle of Directorate S by Steve Coll, an exceptionally well researched and detailed account of the United States’ clandestine actions via the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11. I believe I have Coll’s previous book, Ghost Wars, which details the CIA’s pre-9/11 activities, kicking around somewhere; I’ll have to reread it.
Started today on the second book in the Bobiverse series by Dennis Taylor, For We Are Many. The first book was We Are Legion (We Are Bob). This is a great series, about a guy who dies, but is brought back to life as a sentient computer and sent into space to find new worlds.
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster Adam Higginbotham
The complete story of Chernobyl from its planning in the 1970s to the disaster to today, featuring a minute by minute account of the terrible night in April 1986 when a safety test went very, very badly wrong.
Two things stand out to me after reading this - first, this was a disaster waiting to happen. Sloppy construction, low quality materials, and (particularly important) poor design almost guaranteed that something like this would happen somewhere in the USSR. Second, as bad as it was, it could have been much worse.
The author has done extraordinary work digging through archives and doing interviews to create this book. It is well written and clear even for a non expert reader like me.
The book is compelling, dare I say, riveting to read.
Highly recommended
I finished The Poppy War. It’s set in a fictional analogue to 19th-century China, and has the TOTALLY NEW AND NEVER BEFORE SEEN PLOT of a poor student who goes to a school for the wealthy elites and is better than all of them at their own games. No, it’s not Harry Potty; no, it’s not Name of the Wind.
Anyway, that’s the first half of the book. Then in the second half it turns into Jesus Christ grimdark, with pages on pages of descriptions of the most brutal torture, murder, and genocide. I believe it’s loosely based off the Rape of Nanking, but again, Jesus Christ. One review on Goodreads summed up my feelings: “It started all Harry Potter and ended with Saw.”
It’s nominated for a Hugo. While it’d be cool for some book set in fantasy-19th-century-China to win sometime, I hope it’s not this book.
Well, then, you’ll probably be surprised to learn that
Cornwallis turns out to be an alien with a taste for whist, port and human flesh.
You may have heard there’s an HBO miniseries coming up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8
Oh… ummm… YIKES! Yeah, I’d love some fantasy set in China, at any time period, but without the Saw elements
Finished Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik. Brilliant–one of the best books I’ve read this year.
Next up: Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente.
Finished it this morning. Pretty good, although I think I might still give the edge to Ketchum’s book on the Yorktown campaign. Philbrick’s postscript, describing what happened to the major players after 1781, was particularly interesting.
Next up: American War by Omar El Akkad, a near-future sf novel of America ravaged by global climate change, plague and another civil war. Not crazy about it yet, but I’ll give it my usual 50 pages.
Have you read “Bridge of Birds” by Barry Hughart?
Yes! So so good.
This, however, may be the goofiest science fiction to come along since Space Balls. It was ridiculous and fun.
I just looked again at the Hugo Nominees for 2019, and realized I’ve read all but one. My rankings:
- **Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers **: my definite favorite. It’s some of the warmest, most character-driven SF I’ve ever seen, and is absolutely lovely and funny and perfect. Highly, highly recommended.
- Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik: Also excellent, and a really really good melding of fairy tale, history, and literary fantasy. I’d also be thrilled if this one won, even though I liked Chambers’s book better.
- The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal: this is more traditional SF, a solid alt-history. Enjoyable enough, but not IMO anywhere near as good as the first two nominees.
- Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente: Valente is a master of words in the same way Jackson Pollock was a master of paint. She’s messy and exuberant, and here she’s having a grand old time, and it’s infectious, but it’s not near her best work. Still I love her, so I’m happy to have read it.
- Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse: I read this immediately after All the King’s Horses, so it may have suffered by comparison, nowhere near either as beautiful or as sickeningly racist as AtKH. Post-apocalyptic Native American utopian demon fantasy isn’t a genre with a whole lot of other entries, and I’ll absolutely read the next one in the series, but it wasn’t spectacularly written.
I haven’t read Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee, but the previous two books in the series were super weird in a great way: intergalactic warfare by an evil empire that creates reality-breaking weapons (e.g., bombs that make every doorway, including eyelids, ooze deadly radiation) by changing mathematical principles via the use of ritual calendars. I just put this one on hold at our library and am hoping it’s as freakazoid as the first two.
Turns out Poppy War was nominated for a Nebula, not a Hugo, and I haven’t read two of those: Witchmark and Blackfish City. Putting them on my list now, and hoping I enjoy them more than Poppy War.
Went a bit beyond 50 pages but then chucked it. Simultaneously grim and boring.
I’m now about a third of the way through an audiobook of Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 hardboiled private-eye novel Red Harvest. The Continental Op solves a murder case and then resolves to clean up a crooked town. Pretty good stuff.
I love Hammett. He was the real deal, a Pinkerton detective in his early life, and he brought a touch of realism to the genre.
Myself, I finished The Fear Index, by Robert Harris. It covers about 24 hours in May 2010. American physicist Dr. Alexander Hoffmann left his job at CERN in Geneva eight years before became a hedge-fund manager. He uses an advanced algorithm to maximize investors’ money. The latest version has just gone online and incorporates self-learning artificial intelligence. Has the physicist created a new species that will threaten humankind? Harris is one of the most intelligent writers around. My new signature, “The two most interesting things in the world: Other people’s sex lives and your own money,” comes from the book. The title is a reference to the Chicago Board of Exchange’s S&P 500 Volatility Index.
Nex up is anothe one by Harris: Munich.
Finished Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente. I enjoyed it.
Next up: The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal.
Continuing the series with All These Worlds.
I just finished reading Live Free or Dragons, a collection of fantasy stories involving (and mainly set in ) New Hampshire. It includes one by me, George Washington and the Dragon. I was curious to see what other people came up with that fit the collection description. As with any anthology, it’s a pretty mixed bag.
I finished Benson’s Space Odyssey, which had a lot more about Kubrick, his personality, and his filmmaking, as well as much more about the other contributors. Fascinating stuff that went well beyond previous material I’ve read on the topic. Benson also had the advantage of multiple interviews with Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick’s widow and others directly involved.
Now it’s onto some small-press books I picked up a couple of weeks ago. Ebenezer Mudgett and the Pine Tree Riot by Connie Evans, about a pre-Revolutionary War revolt in New Hampshire.
Also Convergence of Valor by Guntis Gonvarous, about the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley.
Both books are fictionalized accounts of true events, but heavily researched.
On audio, I’m halfway through Clive Cussler’s Sea of Greed. The title sounds liker one of the Seas they skipped over in the movie Yellow Submarine. It’s Cussler’s usual blend of high-tech absurdity and weapons porn. He’s my guilty audiobook pleasure.
Yes, I thought it was terrific. I posted about it here (posts 124 and 125): 2001: A Space Odyssey - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I know.
Others here might not.