 Lily Fairbairn Half-elven  Oct 3, 3:15pm Views: 5103 |
On paper I read How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, who is also the author of The Midnight Library. The books both have fantasy premises but are not related---except in quality! In Time, the protagonist is not so much immortal as ages very slowly, so even though he was born in 1581 he appears to be only about forty years old today. We see his life through the years and how immortality is more of a curse than a blessing, especially when he meets up with other "immortals". But Haig does provide us with a happy ending. And there's a passage about political history that I thought so highly of I copied it out and sent it to friends. But---politics. I will not repeat it here. Also on paper I read The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharpe, by Leonie Swann. Agnes and her friends are elderly people living together in her family mansion, forced to come to terms with the issues of their earlier lives when a series of murders occur in the area. I found Swann's depiction of the infirmities of age, both physical and mental, to be accurate (and accordingly depressing) to a certain extent, but as a forty-something herself she attributes more frailties to people sixty and above than is necessarily the reality. I'm now reading An Atlas of Extinct Countries, by Gideon Defoe, a non-fiction collection of short essays about small countries that have come and gone over the years. This is not only informative but written with great wit and style. From the introduction: Countries die. Sometimes it's murder. Sometimes it's an accident. sometimes it's because they were too ludicrous to exist in the first place. Every so often they explode violently. A few slip away unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either "got too greedy" or "Napoleon turned up". Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. I'm still listening the The Other Side of History, a series of lectures from The Great Courses. We're winding up how ordinary people lived in classical Greece. The lecturer/author, Robert Garland, is a good speaker with an appreciation of our modern sensibilities and a subtle sense of humor. I listened to a novella by Ben Aaronovitch, The Masquerades of Spring, which is sort of a prequel to the Peter Grant series. Here, Peter's mentor Thomas Nightingale is on a mission to New York in the 1930s. The narrator is a character straight out of Wodehouse, and the plot is light but entertaining. I also listened to A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsey Davis, ninth in her second ancient Roman mystery series. This one stars Flavia Alba, daughter of Falco, the protagonist of her first ancient Roman mystery series. I think Davis has somewhat run out of steam, and find the Flavia books to be less well-plotted but still entertaining. This one takes place during the excesses of Saturnalia. I also listened to How to Survive History, by Cody Cassidy, a group of essays about dire events of the past---Pompeii, the Titanic---and how a time traveler might survive them. Obviously, this is just an excuse to explore the details of each event, but the presentation is entertaining and the narration by Dennis Boutsikaris is nicely done. So what have you been reading? Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.... |
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Risky Reading
