I’m partway through the second half of Asimov’s autobiography In Joy Still Felt. I was going to read something else, but I wanted to get this brick off my “to read” stack, and it’s a surprisingly quick read.
I picked up a copy of Mike Benson’s Space Odyssey, about the making of 2001 surprisingly inexpensively, so that’s next up. When the film came out Jerome Agel wrote The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, a surprisingly thick and in-depth look at the behind-the-scenes story, which seemed pretty complete. It had lots of pictures, and I re-read it numerous times. And four years later Clarke himself released the Lost Worlds of 2001, telling the “making of…” story from his point of view. I’m curious what this new book will have to add to what was in that. Some hidden and previously unreleased stuff, I hope. Together with Stephen Whitfield’s the Making of Star Trek, released the same year as Agel’s book, we got a real-time window into the workings of SF filmmaking. I can’t recall anything quite like it – the Whitfield book came out while ST was still on the air, and Agel’s book coincident with 2001’s release. Most books on The Making Of don’t come out until long after the film, as with Benson’s book.
On audio I finished re-listening to The Iliad and The Odyssey and then re-listened to Gilgamesh. I’m not doing Kenneth C. Davis’ Don’t Know Much About Anything. I’m a bit disappointed, not because of the brevity of the entries, but because of all the errors in it. For someone who prided himself on his accuracy in his earlier books, he’s woefully short on fact-checking here, falling into a lot of the popular misinformation fallacies he used to rage against.
You’re in for a treat. I really, really liked it.
Just finished Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina. It’s the latest winner of the Newbery. Not bad.
Now I’m reading Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen
Imperial twilight : the Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age / Stephen R. Platt.
The Opium War, not well known in the West but quite significant in China, is one of the more sordid episodes in human history. The British (and others) were buying lots of tea and silk from China in the 1800s. The problem was that they didn’t have a lot to offer in return. (History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes) Except opium, grown in British India, which millions of Chinese had become addicted to. But of course opium was illegal in China. For some time, a small degree of smuggling was tolerated, but the Chinese got fed up and clamped down, and the British went to war, to ensure that they could sell opium to Chinese addicts. To be fair, many people in the West were appalled by this, but it happened anyway. China, having no real navy at the time, didn’t have a chance.
The book is really about the decades leading up to the war, focusing on the colorful cast of Western individuals responsible, rather than the war itself.
The book is interesting, well-written and researched, and full of interesting details. Recommended.
There’s a fantasy subgenre comprising fairy tales reworked in historical or modern settings. I love this subgenre, and have both short story anthologies (Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears and its cousins, and Ever After) and novels on my shelves. It’s occupied by such greats as Robin McKinley, Neil Gaiman, Gregory Maguire, Angela Carter, and more. I’ve probably read a hundred short stories and a few dozen novels in this subgenre.
Spinning Silver is my favorite.
I just finished it, and that is a fine damn book: complex, human, magical, lush, clear-eyed. It’s certainly my favorite of Novik’s novels (which are all tremendous fun), and it sets a new bar for how to retell a fairy tale.
Picked up “Tiamat’s Wrath” by James Corey (new novel in The Expanse sci-fi series) yesterday. Enjoying it so far. I probably should have re-read the previous book or two beforehand, though.
Also in the middle of “Anything You Can Imagine,” about Peter Jackson and the filming of LoTR, and “Shoot for the Moon,” about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
Finished Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen. It was very good.
Now I’m reading Empire Games, by Charles Stross.