I finished Rick Pearlstein's Nixonland at the start of the month. Found it an enjoyable read though it frequently made me mad as all hell. Partially due to my politics, mostly due to my enforced hatred of Richard Nixon. I found it a very good overview of the period but wished it had lingered on Johnson and McGovern more. After that I read Philip II of Macedonia: Greater Than Alexamnder by Richard A. Gabriel. I had been looking for a good text on Philip's life and this was the only affordable option for my kindle. At $10 I'm very happy for my purchase. It is a concise (less than 300 pages) military and political biography of Philip. Chapters are arranged to give particular emphasis to history of ancient Macedon; Philip's military innovations and improvements; the reorganization of the Macedonian military; the expansion and security of Macedon; the Sacred War; the War with Athens; Philip's brilliance with regards to using politics instead of warfare; and finally his historical importance. Gabriel is one of the rare breed of military historians who knows that an economy of words is more likely to convey a point and while he does repeat things upon occasion the narrative structure of his book is always moving forward. Tooting my own horn I think it's the perfect follow along guide to my Hegemony: Gold LP.
Current I'm most of the way through The Middle Parts of Fortune by Frederic Manning. It's a quasi-fictional First World War account of the Somme. Right now I'd consider it my favorite book of the year. A small sample... On occasion Manning's narrative is interrupted on a bit of philosophical discourse and while I was initial unnerved by these they are really at the heart of this book. There is a particularly long passage which should appeal to anyone who will find Manning appealing - it deals with individuality, mortality, and mud. Since the book was published so long ago it is a free ebook - though manybooks.net is currently down and that is the only place I've found a copy. Edit: Here is the book.
Finished Stephen King's Wind Through the Keyhole, which is a Dark Tower book that he kinda slipped in there. It's not necessary for the main narrative since it's a side story within a side story within a side story, but I actually liked it quite a bit. I love the Midworld setting, Roland, gunslingers, and the magic meets Western concept. This book features Roland telling a story about his youthful self, during part of which his youthful self tells a fairy tale to another character. It works out fine and I found both tales engaging. Loved it a lot more than his other recent book, about the JFK assassination. I'll take more Dark Tower side stories, please. Next up I have The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. I don't know anything about this other than I must have gotten a recommendation for it and ordered it from the library. Can't remember from where, but it sounds interesting.
Finished The Sisters Brothers over the weekend. I fully enjoyed it, although I'm not entirely sure if I can put my finger on the *why* part of that. Still, it's hard to argue that I didn't get value out of my $1.99!
It is a fantastic read...everyone should read it! Yeah it is hard to put a finger on but I am so glad that it was recommended I am currently 450 pages into The Terror. Part of me agrees with the "this guy needs an editor" feeling and the rest of me, and the part that is really enjoying the book is, "nope, he definitely does not". It is a minute by minute, second by second account of Antarctica...with some horror and magic thrown in the mix. Sometimes I wonder if I can get through it but then I realize that I just read WAY past my bed time. 500 pages to go. :/
Occult America: The Secret History Of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz was really good. It's not pro- or anti- occult; rather, it's a scholarly history written for a popular audience. It doesn't talk about whether the mystics were right or not, and the author's personal beliefs are never made known. Which is awesome. It's how a good history book should be. The writing style is enjoyable and not even slightly dry, and it was fascinating to read how American occultism rippled out and affected the rest of the world. (Like, the Theosophical Society founders were responsible for helping save native languages and cultures in India and Sri Lanka at a time when Western missionaries were trying to wipe all that out in those lands. I had no idea.) It also explains why Americans are obsessed with being wealthy. (I wrote a blog post about that part of the book, if anyone's interested.) It was a neat book, and I definitely recommend it.
Finished up the omnibus edition of Hugh Howey's Wool, which was unremarkable but serviceably entertaining popcorn, that kept the pages turning briskly. You could just about hear the cliffhanger score hits on each volume's ending line.
Daniel O'Malley's The Rook was possible the best paranormal adventure story I've ever read. Like, five stars. Read it read it read it.
Awesome! I downloaded and started to read this over the weekend. It's surprisingly modern in tone. Manning has a deft touch with dialog and vernacular and the characters and setting are well realized with a ring of authenticity. A very fitting read for the Remembrance Day weekend. Thanks for the recommendation and the link,
Thank you for this! I've had it sitting on my Amazon wishlist for a few months now and had sort of forgotten about it. It'll now be next up after Joe Abercrombie's Red Country, which was finally released in the USA yesterday.
Finally have gotten around to starting Steven Erikson's latest Forge of Darkness - his first in a new trilogy taking place long before the Malazan series when the Tistie were still a whole people and not three different races apparently. Only 5 or so chapters in so it's still early, but not bad so far. I'm recognizing many names, but still trying to place who they ended up being in the main series again in my mind beyond the easy ones (Draconis and Annomander Rake or Ossric)
Finished the last of the Night Watch series. Really enjoyed it, but I have some gripes. I don't feel like writing up too much about it because it would turn into an HRose epic essay, but I'll summarize as: Anton gets manipulated a lot and never seems to get clued into this The concept of "Dark" and "Light" seem really naive. This is something the author sort of figures out at some point (or expresses better) later in the series where he settles on "Dark" does not necessarily mean "pure evil puppy slayer" and that "Light" doesn't mean altruistic, ascetic monk. Since each story is a kind of mystery, it's disappointing that there's no setup and reveal, it's more like "important information is being withheld from you until I decide to show it to you". So you never get an "a-ha!" moment with many of the stories, more like "Oh, huh". Still enjoyed it a lot, in particular because of the vivid portrayals of Moscow.
Finished The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham, which is the second book in the Dagger and Coin series. This is one of the guys who wrote Leviathan Wakes. Second books are hard. Parallels to Martin's ASoIaF continue, though I can't really talk about them without spoiling things. Our Grizzled Hero Who Has Seen Too Much has finally started on a quest, but it took him over half the book and a bonk on the head to set him on the path. Overall, I think it's a set up book for better things ahead, so I'll give it a pass until the next book comes out. Then I went on to The Best Mystery Stories of 2011, which surprised me because most of them didn't have mysteries in the traditional sense of the word. The intro says that all of them revolve around crimes, which is more or less true, so there's that. I think my favorite story was about a Mexican grandmother dealing with her grand daughter running wild and "solving" the shooting of a toddler in the neighborhood. The voice of this woman was phenomenal. It's funny because I don't much like the Miss Marple kind of mysteries, but this was a put-upon cafeteria worker grandma who's neighborhood has gone to shit. Probably my least favorite was a Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer story that was "written" by the guy who got all of Spillane's files and fragments after his death. I like hard boiled, but this felt like hard boiled parody. I don't know, I'm not much into Mike Hammer, so maybe they're all like that.
I figured both Dark and Light were equally shitty in most respects. My feeling is that he had a perception in his head and was having a hard time telegraphing that. Or, something was lost in the translation. There were a few scenes, if I recall, where Anton would mentally digress and think about dark/light dichotomy. His own perception was that there were not enormous differences between them.
Well, I don't think they were equally shitty, but the author tries to demonstrate that the Light Ones were incredibly naive and how the road to hell was paved with good intentions (I believe the books alluded to the fact that many of our greatest evils were the result of Light One experiments that ran out of control, in particular Stalin and Hitler). You bring up Anton's digressions -- I forgot to mention those as one of my gripes. Page long treatises on the meaning of evil and good that could have been better expressed with action instead of essays. Oh, and the songs. WTF is with authors that feel like embedding song lyrics -- real or fake -- adds to the value of a story? Those are my cues to just skip until I see a normal paragraph again.
I'm fine with them if they're actually telling me something new. But page after page (over the course of the series) of "maybe good and evil isn't that cut and dry?" seems a little trite.
I liked Abraham's fantasy novels more than his sci-fi collabo, generally speaking. Even when he's writing to the tried-and-true formula in fantasy I never felt like I was constantly one step ahead of him in the plot. Unlike Leviathan Wakes, where I realised where it was heading 1/3 way through and had niggling feelings of deja vu throughout
John Scalzi has been hit or miss for me: I didn't like Old Man's War as much as all the hype made me expect, but I did like Redshirts quite a bit. I just read a Scalze short story called "Election" which made me laugh so hard tears came to my eyes. I can't really explain what made it so funny but it was really pretty great. YMMV of course.
Finished Donald E. Westlake's Kahawa last week. Really good. I'd been saving it for a rainy day since it's widely regarded as one of the best books by one of my personal favorite authors, and it didn't disappoint. Westlake doesn't always do so well with the social commentary, especially when it's such a prominent part of the book, but he really pulled it off here. Recommend. Followed that up with Playback by Raymond Chandler, which is his last finished novel. It's good, because you can't really go wrong with Chandler, but it's pretty low-tier for him. I thought this made me a Chandler novel completionist but then I remembered that against all odds I never finished The Big Sleep, so I should do that pretty soon. Next is Westlake's Drowned Hopes which is fun so far as the Dortmunder series always is, interspersed withTraffic (thanks SwitchKnitter!) which I have not yet started.
So, I finished Rin Tin Tin, the Life and the Legend, and it was good but also disappointing. It starts off well, with a good subject and some decent framing, but then it kinda goes off the rails near the end of the TV show run, probably because the story peters out -- Rin Tin Tin has been in legal wranglings for a while. The author also kept inserting herself into the story, which frankly, became irritating. I want to read about the biography's subject, and not your obsession with your grandfathers statue. That's what introductions/afterwords are for.
Hydrogen Sonata feelings, spoilerized in spite of the apparent lack of same in-thread because I'm mostly talking about ending stuff.
I finished The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine. Yeah, it's life coach-y perky shit, but it did have some useful tips on scheduling my time, so it was worth reading.
Started Wool a few nights ago. I was really not that into it for the first couple stories but once shit starts to hit the fan I was having a hard time putting it down.
I just finished Second Shift, which is the just released second book in the Wool prequel trilogy. If you enjoyed Wool both First Shift and Second Shift are well worth reading. They are essentially the origin story and then characters dealing with the origin story. It's kind of an 'anti-LOST' in that mysteries and questions get solid reveals and explanations. The only downside to this is that, while satisfying, it gets just close enough to real-world plausibility to induce some melancholia. The Wool universe is definitely one of my favorite pieces of world-building I've read in quite some time.
I finally finished Reamde. It took me 6 weeks in audiobook format -- 39 hours! I think that it's probably the best book he's written since Cryptonomicon, so if you liked that book and were kinda meh on what he's written since (like me,) you will likely enjoy it. One caveat, though: This is not a Science Fiction book. A lot of people tend to assume that it is, and I think that sets them up with false expectations and they get disappointed. Without giving too much plot away, this is much more of a techno/spy thriller type book. It's a great book, full of a memorable ensemble cast, great locations, complex story. It would make a great movie or limited run miniseries. Starting now on Ben Mezrich's Sex on the Moon, which is about the heist of the moon rocks from NASA. It's not bad so far, a bit of groundwork laying for the background of the main guy. It's written as a novelization, which makes it an easy listen. Oh, and I finished my book reading goal for the year -- I've read/listened to 95 books this year! That's 32 more books than the previous year, I attribute some of this to listening to audiobooks, and some of it to not getting sucked into playing Wow this year. I read/listened to 34,566 pages (Goodreads counts audiobooks as an hour per 'page.') I thought about upping my goal to 100, but I figure I'll just cruise on through and see how many I just end up with without feeling any particular constraint, and see where that ends up.
I just finished Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema, which was basically Little Brother only British and about copyright instead of American and about terrorism. It kind of made me feel guilty for reading it on a Kindle and giving into The Man by using his DRM infested hardware. I love both these books to bits, but I don't think for a minute that a teenager could do the fabulous things that Doctorow's teenagers do. I guess that makes me old and grumpy. But I bought it on the Humble Bundle, so that was cool. Then I went and downloaded a bunch of other Doctorow books from his website and converted them to Kindle use so I can read them there, so I think I'm still half sucky. I told my father-in-law that Doctorow gives away all his books for free on his website, and he was astonished that Doctorow could make a living as a writer. I think I'm going to give him a book of Doctorow's essays for Christmas (he doesn't go in much for fiction) to show him that: a) This Doctorow fella has some interesting ideas. b) Giving away content leads to more sales. Also, I think that will assuage my guilt for being a Kindle owner. I know I should jailbreak my Kindle, download my books, strip the DRM from them, then put them on my jailbroken Kindle. I just can't be bothered.
Getting very close to the end of Naked God. This book grabbed me fairly early on, as a lot of the endless setup was transitioning into doomsday and adventure. Then, about 75% in, he spent 40+ pages on tedious characters doing tedious things and saying tedious things and going tedious places and being tedious. As the book is already a true doorstop, I am hoping that there is a payoff for reading about Al Capone repeatedly get confused and resentful and generally be a complete psychopath.
Finished Wool (Omnibus edition of 1-5), really liked it. Slow start for me, but about 25% of the way in it really picked up.
I inhaled this on Sunday. A great take on westerns without guns. Then I started The Mongoliad and well . . . uh . . . I made it through the prelude "Sinner", not caring much and 16 pages or so in Book One proper, I'm not caring a whole lot more. I know it's collectively written by several authors, but the first bit reads to me as if it were their D&D group. (Related: Joe Abercrombie and several fantasy authors whose works I've never heard of or seen in stores playing D&D).
I have no idea how Brandon Sanderson writes so prolifically, but I just nabbed one of his short stories that was just released (Emperor's Soul).
Finished Randy Mosher's book on beer tasting. It took me over a month to read it because it was impossible to read the descriptions without drinking a brew at the same time. So I could only read it in little bits here and there, because otherwise I would have been getting drunk at 10am on a weekday or something just to be able to read a freaking book.
Finished Look to Windward, which I think was probably my favorite of the Culture books so far. It's a much more straightforward story than some of the others, and mainly one setting. I really liked the themes of things like colonialism that were going on in it. Next up is Ken Dryden's The Game. If I can't watch some hockey, I can at least read about it.
I read Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, to get a better handle on what's happened there in the last 20 years - somewhat relevant with the current M23 thing. It did the job, without getting too lost in the details. Obviously not a happy book, though.
Finished Cthulhurotica. It was, sadly, not as interesting as it sounded like it would be. There were a few decent stories, but most of them were boring.
