September To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers (4/5)
October Matilda by Roald Dahl (4/5) Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman (1/5) Middlegame by Seanan McGuire (1/5) A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer (4/5) Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (1/5) The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley (2/5) The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (3/5) Healing Back Pain by John E. Sarno (1/5)
November A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer (1/5) We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal (1/5) Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (5/5) King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (4/5)
December Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel (5/5) The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw (1/5) The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington (3/5) Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel (1/5) The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso (1/5) Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter (4/5) Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (3/5)
Michael Pollan's This is your Mind on Plants, the chapter on Opium was surprisingly boring (very self-referential and focused on how he was paranoid about growing poppies in the 90s) so I skimmed most of it but he's a good author so I'm hoping the caffeine & mescaline chapters will be better.
Annihilation - I liked it, but I sorta felt like I was missing something, given how much people seemed to be raving about it. I didn't get what all the fuss was about. The movie was fine, too, but again I felt like other people were enjoying it much more than I was (78 on Metacritic; 88% on Rotten Tomatoes) and I wondered if I was missing something. Oh well.
A Memory Called Empire - Martine's writing style just doesn't sit naturally in my brain, for some reason, but once I got on her wavelength, I really enjoyed it. Also, I'd seen a few people call this space opera, but I thought it was cyberpunk. I've started A Desolation Called Peace and once again my brain is fighting Martine's writing style, even moreso than with the first book. She goes way overboard with the hyphenated interjections in the middle of sentences. Some of them are entire thoughts/sentences in themselves, like she's interrupting herself all the time.
I love The Murderbot Diaries. I read a bunch of them all in a row, and they kind of blurred together, like I was binge-watching a tv series. I can't remember which one I read last, but I think you're ahead of me.
Hail Mary - Weir's writing style is the opposite of Martine's for me. I hardly even have to read his books, they kind of just slide into my eyeballs. I thought Ryland's decision at the end of the book was abrupt, and didn't make a lot of sense to me.
The Golem and the Jinni - I loved the choice of the setting, which made me think of The Alienist. I picked up The Hidden Palace on sale over the holidays, but haven't started it yet.
I also have The Raven Tower and The Way of Kings, but haven't started them yet. Sanderson's Elantris is one of my favorite fantasy books of all time, if you haven't read it yet.
Perdido Street Station is another of my favorites. I think it's one of the few books I've ever read three times. This book absolutely screams for a screen adaptation (Amazon's Carnival Row was clearly written by someone who loved Perdido, and I worry it might have stolen some of its thunder). Meiville never quite reached the same heights, but I think I'd probably recommend his other books, to varying degrees. And if Perdido floated your boat, I'd also recommend Robert Jackson Bennet, particularly Foundryside and City of Stairs, for their settings and characters.
Blake Crouch is another guy whose books seem to be written with eventual screen adaptations in mind. Someone did Wayward Pines already, which wasn't awesome. Still, I liked Dark Matter and Recursion well enough that I'd watch them.
You're also ahead of me in The Expanse books. I haven't read Tiamat's Wrath yet. While watching the latest episode of the show, it took me a second viewing to realize that the guy with the beard is Admiral Duarte. 'Light dawns on Marble Head...'
EDIT: Also, I don't see any N.K. Jemisin in the list above. Maybe that's because you've already read her stuff. If not, I think she might be up your alley. I read The City We Became earlier this year, but can also recommend The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Fifth Season. All three are the first book in a trilogy, although The City only came out in 2020. (On the bright side, it seems like once she gets going, she writes like a maniac. The 2nd and 3rd books of her previous two trilogies all came out pretty quickly on the heels of the 1st book. I wouldn't be shocked if the sequel to The City is published this year.)
Unlike the other two, The City We Became is set in our contemporary world, but is still high fantasy. One thing I like about it is that it presumes a certain level of nerdiness on the part of the reader. I can't be more specific without a massive spoiler.
If you've read The City We Became, I'm referring to...
Spoiler:
R'lyeh. iirc, this book never explains what it is or why it's dangerous. I can't remember if Cthulhu is ever named, but I don't think he is. I can't even remember if the book's protagonists recognize the name. This book is so matter-of-factly set in Lovecraft's mythos, and presumes the reader is at least passing familiar, in a way that I thought was genius. It's almost Lovecraft fan fiction, except that it runs off in its own direction. It's like the scene in Richard Donner's Superman where young Clark runs past the train, and we see Noel Neill, and the little girl waves at Clark. Like Donner, Jemisin is speaking directly to the nerds, without any subtitles or explanation for the Normies, who might not even realize that something is being communicated below their level of hearing. What can I say, I felt seen.
Really obsessive about women's bodies, but otherwise fine enough reads. The author really went out of his way to portray Anderson as an objectifying sleaze. I'm not sure why, either. It was totally irrelevant to the plot or the character. Besides that, no huge complaints except for Deception, the fourth book, which was a lore mess and just bad. Fans actually made a doc of all the errors in the book.
Annihilation - I liked it, but I sorta felt like I was missing something, given how much people seemed to be raving about it. I didn't get what all the fuss was about. The movie was fine, too, but again I felt like other people were enjoying it much more than I was (78 on Metacritic; 88% on Rotten Tomatoes) and I wondered if I was missing something. Oh well.
I found it more technically sound than anything resembling good on the story front. Its length makes it a super easy read, and I'll check out the sequel just to see if it becomes more than a demonstration of talent.
- Martine's writing style just doesn't sit naturally in my brain, for some reason, but once I got on her wavelength, I really enjoyed it. Also, I'd seen a few people call this space opera, but I thought it was cyberpunk. I've started A Desolation Called Peace and once again my brain is fighting Martine's writing style, even moreso than with the first book. She goes way overboard with the hyphenated interjections in the middle of sentences. Some of them are entire thoughts/sentences in themselves, like she's interrupting herself all the time.
I actually DNF'd it. It felt like it was trying to be difficult to read, and I'm so far behind in my reading that I don't have the patience to force through things.
I love The Murderbot Diaries. I read a bunch of them all in a row, and they kind of blurred together, like I was binge-watching a tv series. I can't remember which one I read last, but I think you're ahead of me.
- Weir's writing style is the opposite of Martine's for me. I hardly even have to read his books, they kind of just slide into my eyeballs. I thought Ryland's decision at the end of the book was abrupt, and didn't make a lot of sense to me.
I loved it! Better than the Martian. MUCH better than Project Artemis. Weir is better at writing aliens than women. There's something meaningful in that observation, I'm sure.
- I loved the choice of the setting, which made me think of The Alienist. I picked up The Hidden Palace on sale over the holidays, but haven't started it yet.
It is well written, but the pacing is off IMO. It took forever to get anywhere, and the events just weren't... hrm... interesting to me. It's not so much fantasy as it is literary, story wise.
I also have The Raven Tower and The Way of Kings, but haven't started them yet. Sanderson's Elantris is one of my favorite fantasy books of all time, if you haven't read it yet.
I think I read Elantris in 2020. And yes, it's fantastic. I really enjoyed Mistborn and Elantris, but couldn't make it through the first book of Stormlight Archives. The news that every subsequent book would be even longer put me off from trying to power through, crossovers be damned. I'll probably give in again eventually, and just start from where I left off last time.
I just picked up a couple of strategy guides for the original Colonization game. The game is old enough that the strategy guide is more than a rewriting of the game manual with more fluff. Give me a couple of weeks and I might be able to say more of what's in it! I'm looking for numbers and stuff that I could probably find by looking through the game files.
It's also interesting that these games were published around the dawn of the internet era. There usually were not updates and hotfixes. Exploits were exploitable. The internet allows many thousands of brilliant minds to communicate and come up with incredible strategies the game designers never thought of.
I posted this 2021 list elsewhere. Let's see how the formatting holds up.
1 The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone
2 The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War (Gladwell) Thought-provoking
3 Peril (Woodward) Important but not fun
4 Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway Important to understand what really happened.
5 Technician Class 2018-2022: Pass Your Amateur Radio Technician Class Test - The Easy Way (EasyWayHamBooks Book 1) I got my Ham license
6 Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service Both chatty and important
7 My Memoirs (Volumes I & II) Alfred von Tirpitz Not for amateurs. The man simply lies.
8 Harry: A Study of Teenage Mass Murderers Disturbing
9 The Age of Fighting Sail: The Story of the Naval War of 1812 C. S. Forester
10 Conclave: A novel Robert Harris Novel of the year. A procedural of how they elect the Pope.
11 An Officer and a Spy: A novel Robert Harris A fine novel that explains the Dreyfus affair
12 The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence This is the story of how they rebuilt the White House. Technically interesting.
13 Essays in Persuasion John Maynard Keynes He wrote well.
14 Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin A murder mystery set in Berlin in 1944
15 MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman Important
16 Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle A fascinating look at a very troubled police department. Worth your time.
Yesterday I finished the softback version of a Sci-Fi book:
Chilling Effect
by
Valerie Valdes
which I paid list price for at Norwich's Waterstones.
It is basically modern space opera with women and aliens as the
heroes, against an intergalactic mafia and a sex mad alien.
In practice it is better than one might expect from that description; and I am
happy to read the follow on, but paying for that at full price is not a priority.
The Florida Author has a habit of chucking in Spanish expressions that
gave me a hard decision, get out of bed to google translate or ignore them.
I decided to ignore them and see if the book still made sense. It did.
Cloud ****oo Land by Anthony Doerr A wonderfully satisfying story that stretches across time and place from 1453 Constantinople to decades in the future across a ravaged earth and a space ark to save humanity.
Good book, interesting how describes relations between Persia an Greece from Persian point of view, also interesting how describes main character's travels to India and Catay. However I think it fails describing religions and creation's view in each place, does not deepen and it is a little bit foggy
Starting A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
I also........and The Way of Kings, but haven't started them yet. Sanderson's Elantris is one of my favorite fantasy books of all time, if you haven't read it yet.
Start The Way of Kings now! I demand it! It will suck you in big time, and you will really enjoy the characters. Stormlight is a great massive series. Elantris is fantastic. Read it after the first Mistborn trilogy (Great!) years ago, and then read it again last year. Very good epic standalone first novel by Sanderson, but I hear there will be a new Elantris book in the future. I recommend Warbreaker as well...fun little novel that you can download for free. Interesting little ties-ins between his books as part of the Cosmere. (I recommend reading Warbreaker at some point before Oathbreaker.
My latest reading: Return to Rainbow Country, by William Davidson. It's a novel based on the old TV show Adventures in Rainbow Country - family show about a mom, her two kids, and some of their friends in Ontario, in the late '60s. The family runs a hunting lodge and the kids get into some interesting situations. The scenery is spectacular, as it was shot on location. This was my 7-year-old self's favorite TV show, and I still watch it when I can find episodes on YT or some channel on TV (it's sometimes on YTV or APT). One of the episodes' guest stars was a very young Margot Kidder, before she was Lois Lane.
The Rise of the Alt-Right by Thomas J. Main. It's an interesting exploration into the intellectual origins and development of the alt-right that goes beyond the conventional narrative of "***** gamergate rare pepes" and the author does his best to engage with their ideas in good faith, but it's held back at times by the author's attempts to criticise or refute the ideas even as he is describing them. I'm not sure that if it's a lack of discipline on the author's part or a "reading Mein Kampf and shaking my head" response to quoting white nationalist intellectuals at length, but it tends to detract from the broader narrative he's laying out.
The Scottish Nation: 1700–2000 by Tom Devine. An interesting book because while it fits the format of the sort of broad, layman-friendly national history, the book has a core argument in a way which most such books don't: it is an in-depth argument for Scottish distinctiveness- cultural, economic and institutional- and a refutation of the "Our Island Story" narratives which tend to predominate in Britain. At the same time, Devine is consistently careful to pick out the difference between distinction and exception; that Scottish distinctiveness from England has identifiable historical causes rather than emanating from an intrinsic national character. At least, this is what I'm teasing out of it; most of what is actually on the page is about textile manufacture or Presbyterian schisms, so I might be over-interpreting a little.
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I really enjoyed Mistborn and Elantris, but couldn't make it through the first book of Stormlight Archives. The news that every subsequent book would be even longer put me off from trying to power through, crossovers be damned. I'll probably give in again eventually, and just start from where I left off last time.
