Moon Over Soho is incredibly entertaining. I've got a big gay crush on the Peter Grant. I enjoy his wide eyed enthusiasm for everything. I'm also enjoying the side commentary about being dark skinned in England. My experience with the country was there was little to no overt racism that I ever encountered, but I could easily see the Proper British Stiff Lips giving constant mild derision and silly kinds of phrases to darker folks. Racial issues in most literature I've read is either from the perspective of The Majority, or is a major part of the narrative in and of itself. Approaching the topic from an angle makes it compelling. I winced a little when Peter talks about how his skin is going to mark him in certain areas, and when he met the Muslim policewoman and he commented that as they were both minorities they would of course have to talk about that.
Just finished Desert of Souls which was a fun Arabian-nights style fantasy. Well written and also had the advantage of not using the stale medieval fantasy or Tolkein-esqe settings. Recommended for fantasy and historical fiction fans.
I've started reading The Rook on the recommendation of SwitchKnitter and Athryn. I have to be honest, the writing is like a golden retriever puppy...earnest but clumsy. The story feels like it's going to be fun and awesome, but the prose doesn't feel very smooth. The weird interactions at the beginning are very expository, the protagonist's reactions seem a little odd, just doesn't feel very believable yet. Yeah, yeah, I know I have specific weird complaints about writing style. I also started on Wool: 6 and so far not digging the prequel discussions nearly as much as I did the main part.
So I finished Krampus, The Yule Lord last night. Brom is an excellent artist, as you can see, and he's a pretty decent writer as well. The best way I could describe the book is "Justified meets American Gods." It is highly entertaining, but definitely not the kind of Christmas book you would read to your kids. It was certainly appropriate for the season, in a dark way.
Finished Rook last night. My reaction was similar. I enjoyed it, it was a new twist on some derivative material.
Taking a break from my standard Sci Fi and Fantasy for some old school Alistair Maclean. Currently reading Fear is the Key. I really do love reading his books.
Finished Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie today. I know most of you have read it ages ago, but y'know how most books get to the last hundred pages or so and get really exciting? This one got really exciting for about the last 400 pages, and the first 200 pages weren't bad either.
After finishing and thoroughly enjoying The Fractal Prince, I decided to pick up Roadside Picnic, the book that inspired the movie that inspired S.T.A.L.K.E.R., although not out of any love for S.T.A.ohfuckit, but out of love for the film Stalker. Aww yeah russian.
Read the latest Wen Spencer short story, set in the Tinker setting. ... kinda creeped out. Would not read again, do not recommend you make the same mistake even if you like the TInker setting. It threw away a plotline that could have been so much fun. :(
Finished Ready Player One. Now, I know a lot of you guys like this book, and a lot of my friends like this book, (including my SO, who absolutely loved it,) but I ultimately didn't like it. I think what it comes down to is that despite being a nerdy human who was born in the mid '70s, I am not the books target audience, because I'm not male. The book is pure male nerd wish fulfillment fantasy, with the princess at the end waiting for him to sweep her off her feet. The flimsy characterization of women (which I can't really go into without being more spoilery) is really what killed it for me, and that includes the cliched story and constant stream of '80s pop culture name dropping. Wil Wheaton does do a decent job narrating it, though. He's much better than he was narrating Redshirts. Now, I am listening to Born to Run, which I believe is the book that launched a thousand barefoot runners. I'm also reading a pretty fascinating book called Opium Fiend, which is about a guy who started collecting Opium pipes and ended up getting addicted to smoking it. The history of the drug is pretty fascinating -- it was basically the Meth of the late 19th and early 20th century in the US.
For me it was simpler than that -- it just wasn't a good book. The characters -- all of them -- were incredibly flat and one dimensional. The plot wasn't that good. I think its popularity is just the two pronged attack of aspirational power fantasy coupled with carpet bombing of nerd references.
Currently in the middle of Obsidian and Blood, an omnibus of three books by Aliette de Bodard. It's a series of clever and engaging mysteries set in pre-Cortez Tenochtitlan. It follows the classic mystery conventions, but integrates them quite well with the Aztec empire. It's a fine line between just poorly grafting a generic mystery onto Mexica and diving so deeply into the setting that the plot isn't engaging, but de Bodard navigates it well. The setting complements and contributes to the plots without overshadowing them. I'd highly recommend it if you like mysteries in a high-magic, historically based setting.
Just finished The Bones of the Old Ones which is the second Dabir & Asim Arabian-nights style fantasy by Howard Andrew Jones. I liked the first book, The Desert of Souls, and this was even better. A good quality high-magic fantasy romp set in a fun mileau that has not yet been bludgeoned to death by bad-fantasy-series-spam.
Finished The Rook. Loved it. It simultaneously feels cliched/overdone (yet another urban fantasy setting a la Gaiman, Lukyanenko (Night Watch), or Midnight Riot/Rivers of London) but was well executed. The initial prose was really clumsy feeling, like the author hadn't discovered his voice yet. The first person narrative portions were great, but then when he'd shift to third person it would feel...awkward. Once I got past the 20% mark it really took off. Highly recommended if you like that genre.
I know, right? Don't be that impressed though, he's got a new favorite phrase: "Baring his/her teeth in a smile" I'll search, but it seems like that's used a lot in the book. Both male and female characters are described with this though, so its equal-opportunity minor annoyance/lazy writing. Overall, the book is what it says on the tin; if you didn't like The Dresden Files after about book 3* then you won't like this one. If you do like the series, you'll enjoy it more than Ghost Story. There are 2 major problems I have with the book that is in the spoiler below. *I think he got the book deal and had the first two or three in the can when it happened. The books got a lot more interesting/better written after that point IMO, although book 3 is where some pretty important stuff happens with the metaplot.
Just finished The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell's book about the English Puritans who founded Massachusetts. It was enjoyable, if not as good as some of her other things. I mean, four stars instead of five. So still great reading. Now I've got to figure out what to read next. So many books....
Yesterday I read the first third of Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh and didn't like it. Reasons here if you're curious -- I don't feel like ranting all over again. I have discovered the best way to pick what book to read next: random number. Because unless there's something I'm desperate to read right away, I have too many titles I want to read to just choose one.
Last night I finished Opium Fiend by Steven Martin (not the comedian.) It was quite good! Basically, Martin is a Southeast Asia expert who collects opium paraphernalia. As a side effect of this collecting, he managed to get addicted to opium, which is highly unusual and rare in this day and age. It wasn't just about his addiction story though -- he has an interesting history of opium use as well. It's funny to think how ubiquitous it was, particularly in the United States. It's also an example of the one time a drug eradication program was (sorta) successful, although I think that the rise of heroin, which was much easier to use than the fiddlyness of opium. he does make smoking opium awesome, though.
I just finished Little Star by John Lundquist, the writer of Let the Right One In. I don't even really know what to say but the Swedish people are F'ing psycho. I couldn't stop reading the damn book, even though it disturbed me mightily. Damn.
I finished reading Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. I was a little dubious at first about reading this book, since I'm not a runner myself, but it's a very entertaining read, part gonzo journalism, part anthropology/history book. It's definitely a compelling read, even if you aren't someone who has any interest in running. It *almost* made me want to take it up myself.
Forgot to post this one two days ago when I finished it. Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes is a look at Darwin's home life and how it affected his work, but the author wasn't very good at making any of the personages within seem like real flesh and blood people. It's one of those books I'll have forgotten I ever read by next week.
I want to say I read an interview with the author on Longform, but I don't recall the name offhand. This sounds exactly like the interviewee, though, so it's gotta be the same guy. (How many experts on opium consumption who are collectors and former addicts can there be, really?) It sounded really interesting and the pictures of the pipes, lamps, and associated tools were gorgeous.
Today I picked up Katherine Boo's Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, a narrative nonfiction account of live in a Mumbai slum. Based on the first twenty or so pages this is a really magical piece of writing. edit: this book is pretty amazing; when I'm done I'll start a thread for it. Also I don't know how the book club works, but this is a worthy candidate for that.
Just devoured The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I started it at bedtime last night and couldn't put it down until my eyes closed involuntarily four hours later. Holy cow, and it is so good in so many unexpected ways, and it's just so damned well-written. I don't know when I last read a nonfiction book as engrossing as this one was. Maybe never. Read it!
Am I missing something with respect to Wool? There are a few clever ideas and vignettes in those books, but the overall tone is just grinding and oppressive. Perhaps I'm overly conditioned to expect happy endings, but the books just wore me down with no real takeaway. They're not poorly written, they're just poor writing. Maybe. I can't quite put my finger on it.
I think a huge part of the appeal of Wool is...Fallout. =) The first two chapters in Wool 1 depressed the bejeezus out of me, but by the end I was really digging it. It was an interesting setting. A huge part of the appeal was the mystery of it and seeing how everything was done. With the prequels, the mystery is taken away. It would be like playing a Fallout game taking place when civilization was still around...it's not really Fallout at that point.
