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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jul 26 2023, 7:14pm
Post #1 of 11
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It's the occasional reading thread!
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Even though my last post hasn't dropped very far down the board, I'm going to go ahead and do this one. Otherwise my list of books will run off the bottom of the page 
On top of all the books/stories I've listed below, I've been hanging out in the Reading Room enjoying the character discussions. If you have a few minutes take a look! Our scholars know their stuff, and they know how to present it in an entertaining and thought-provoking way.
I listened to the audiobook of My Good Life in France: In Pursuit of the Rural Dream, by Janine Marsh, a British woman who, on impulse, bought a small and dilapidated property in France. I always enjoy this sort of thing, a house renovation and fish out of water story, but thought while this one was pleasant, it was rather ordinary.
I listened to A Pale Horse, by Charles Todd, tenth in his Inspector Ian Rutledge series. As usual, he (or they---"Charles Todd" was a mother/son writing team until her death) tells a leisurely story with many intriguing characters, all shadowed by the very recent War to End All Wars. In this installment Rutledge traces a man found dead in Yorkshire to a village in Berkshire, in the shadow of the famous Uffington White Horse. As usual, Todd develops more threads to the plot than they really tie up at the end, but also as usual, it's worth spending time with Rutledge and the ghost he carries with him.
I'm still listening to Stephen Fry reading the complete Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Since the entire collection runs to 62 hours, I dip in and out of it between other audiobooks. This time I was pleased to encounter Doyle's short novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Its darkness and chill made a nice antidote to the blistering hot, dry weather outside my window. There's a reason the book is a classic: It could be used to demonstrate pacing and plot to wannabe mystery writers. (PS. Like Kenneth Branagh and Michael Palin, Fry does a perfect American accent.)
I finished listening to Dan Jones' history of the Middle Ages, Powers and Thrones, which he winds up with a look at Martin Luther and the Reformation. He writes well (and reads well, too), and I highly recommend his book not least for the attention he pays to how the events of so long ago are still affecting us today. But I still wish he paid more attention to the women who also moved and shook history during the Middle Ages.
I'm now listening to (and enjoying the heck out of) Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes. This is the official biography, written and read by Rob Wilkins, Terry's personal assistant. Wilkins has access to Terry's own notes toward an autobiography, to say nothing of access to many, many other anecdotes, and presents his tale with a humor worthy of Terry himself. Terry and I were born just about the same time---albeit in different countries--- so many of his experiences discovering books (LotR!) and science fiction conventions seem familiar to me.
I both laughed and groaned aloud when I reached the part where Terry and his fiancee, Lynn, have set a date to get their families together to plan the wedding---and Terry discovers this coincides with the broadcast of the final episode of The Prisoner! As Wilkins points out, in 1968, if you missed an episode of a TV show, you MISSED IT! I well remember having to miss an episode of the original Star Trek because of the inconvenience of my high school graduation, and that was just an episode, not the finale.
It's beyond tragic that Terry became ill and passed away at such an early age. 
I'm also now listening to The Wizard's Butler, by Nathan Lowell. Roger Mulligan, an ex-soldier and ex-paramedic, is hired to be the butler of a wealthy man living alone on a posh estate. The man claims to be a wizard, and Roger is beginning to think there's something to that (and the something is NOT dementia), just as he is beginning to side with his employer against the greed of a niece who wants to put him in a nursing home. So far the story is moving slowly, with perhaps more detail about Roger's education as a butler than is really necessary, but I'm finding it entertaining.
I read the ebook of eight short stories by the ultra-prolific Alexander McCall Smith, The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even. As with much of McCall Smith's writing, plot is perfunctory, what matters is the internal dialog of the characters considering finely balanced aspects of life, history, morals, and ethics.
On paper I read The Late Mrs. Willoughby, Claudia Gray. This is actually the second in her Jane Austen-fanfic mystery series, but having already read the unfortunate Death at Pemberley by P. D. James, I wasn't interested in reading yet another version of murdering George Wickham. This mystery works well as a standalone, although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with Austen's cast of characters, who are brought together from different books.
I enjoyed the story even as I grew to suspect the identity of the villain---I could see how the author was throwing so much suspicion on one character they couldn’t possibly be the murderer. She has a very interesting take on the spin-off character of Jonathan Darcy (son of the protagonists from Pride and Prejudice), who is mildly autistic. He is considered “peculiar” but his social standing (heir to Pemberly!) means people cut him a lot of slack. His pov was done very nicely, I think, and contributed to both the mystery plot and the brewing romance between him and another spin-off character, the daughter of the protagonists from Northanger Abbey.
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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DwellerInDale
Rohan
Jul 26 2023, 8:46pm
Post #2 of 11
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This book by Sarah Hart explores the connections between literature and mathematics. There are two references to J.R.R. Tolkien in the book, one direct and one very indirect. Hart relates that Tolkien describes Hobbits as being about three feet six inches tall. In Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a scene where Pippin orders a pint in The Prancing Pony. Remember my essay on scaling from back in the day? Hart points out that since body mass scales as the cube of linear measure, a pint to a Hobbit would equal about five pints to a normal human! The other (very oblique) section that calls Tolkien to mind concerns the poems that are known as sestinas. For these poems, due to their structure only certain numbers of verses are possible, and it turns out that these numbers are identical to Sophie Germaine primes. Sophie Germaine (1776-1831) was a mathematician who first explained how the geometric patterns called "Chladni Figures" are made by vibrating plates- the same figures that are seen in the intro to The Rings of Power.
Don't mess with my favorite female elf.
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DGHCaretaker
Rohan
Jul 27 2023, 4:06am
Post #3 of 11
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I recently finished all books of Asmov's Foundation series.
This is a reread of a first-read years ago. [spoiler] I was thrilled those years ago when the Asimov's Robot series, which I had read before Foundation, was tied to Foundation in "Foundation and Earth" with Daneel greeting Trevise on Earth's Moon.
I'm not going to reread the entire Robot series, but instead jumping directly to "Robots and Empire" to [spoiler] relive how Earth became radioactive, as was the story of a long-lost "mythical" Earth in "Foundation and Earth" that Trevise, Pelorat and Bliss finally confirmed.
I recommended reading both series to my [adult] kids at dinner tonight. They aren't taking my suggestion. They say the old science fiction authors are too "dry" and uninteresting, going too much into their philosophies and politics. I told them to try Heinlein, as he's far from dry with lots of dirty old man sex in his stories.
I did, however, recognize their complaint in Asimov. His sex scenes typically go like this in one lone sentence from "Robots and Empire." -- "And she put her arms about him, even as the seams of her robe fell apart." Wow, saucy - try not to blush.
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Kimi
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jul 28 2023, 1:58am
Post #4 of 11
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Coincidentally, I recently read A Pale Horse, too.
I do know what you mean about "more threads to the plot than they really tie up at the end", but still being worth spending time with Rutledge. In one of the previous books I got quite cross about a real howler with regard to marriage licences and records (particularly since it was an important plot point, and would have been easy to check), but that's partly me being a bit of a train spotter about things like that - and living in constant fear of getting something wrong myself! I did particularly enjoy this one for the memories it brought back of our own trip to see the Uffington White Horse many years ago, when we lived in England.
I'm currently reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them and listening to Donna Tartt's The Secret History - I'm finding the latter in particular quite gripping. But I'm less than halfway through each, so will say more when I'm further on.
For light reading, an early Wodehouse book of school stories, Tales of St Austin's, which is nice to dip into, especially when weary.
The Pratchett biography sounds great. I read a fine review of it in The Guardian, and have it on reserve at the library. I'm well down the list, though - Pratchett is very popular!
The Passing of Mistress Rose
My historical novels
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
- A Room With a View
(This post was edited by Kimi on Jul 28 2023, 1:59am)
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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jul 29 2023, 4:56pm
Post #5 of 11
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I do know what you mean about "more threads to the plot than they really tie up at the end", but still being worth spending time with Rutledge. In one of the previous books I got quite cross about a real howler with regard to marriage licences and records (particularly since it was an important plot point, and would have been easy to check), but that's partly me being a bit of a train spotter about things like that - and living in constant fear of getting something wrong myself! I did particularly enjoy this one for the memories it brought back of our own trip to see the Uffington White Horse many years ago, when we lived in England.
Either I haven't read the Rutledge book with the marriage-license mistake, or I didn't notice it was a mistake. But do I ever know what you mean about being afraid of getting something wrong! As they say, thinking you know something and not looking it up is much worse than knowing you don't know it and therfore doing your research.
And then there's the dratted typo. I mean, every time you proofread you see what's supposed to be there, right?
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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Annael
Elvenhome
Jul 31 2023, 1:21pm
Post #6 of 11
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I have been trying to read Iain Banks "straight literary" books
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I love, love, love the "Culture" novels he wrote as Iain M. Banks, and a friend just handed me four of his non-sci-fi books, but . . . he writes well, but oh they're depressing. I've tried two so far; and they're both kind of last-man-standing (or woman, in the case of "Canal Dreams") featuring people at their worst.
So as an antidote I'm re-reading Mary Stewart's "My Brother Michael."
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Aug 12 2023, 2:38pm
Post #7 of 11
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I wanted some light reading for the train trip out to Chicago and back, so I tucked Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons quadrilogy into my case, and finally finished it. My eldest gifted it to me years ago, but I think I'd never read the last two! She and I love the attitudes of the main characters.
Also Bernard Cornwell's 1356, about the lead-up and battle of the not-often-mentioned victory of the Black Prince at Poitiers. It nicely weaves historical figures with created ones, and details the violence and superstitions of those times. A bit too much violence at times, but written words are easy enough to skip over. It does make one think: there's not much difference between the Prince's chevauchees (total destructions) through France and, for example, Sherman's march to the sea during the Civil War. We really haven't changed much, have we.
Yes, I've been lurking in the RR as well, so much great stuff to read but it's hard for me to find time to craft a worthy response to anything!
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"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
(This post was edited by dernwyn on Aug 12 2023, 2:47pm)
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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Aug 13 2023, 3:05pm
Post #8 of 11
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I love the Dealing with Dragons series
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I've known Pat Wrede for so long that one of the books in that series is dedicated to my son and Lois McMaster Bujold's daughter. I'm not sure if it's Dealing or a later one.
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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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Aug 13 2023, 5:43pm
Post #9 of 11
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I started reading Renegade Immortal by Gen Er on a whim. There are over 2000 chapters, so it's going to take a while. RI is not exactly high literature, but I'm somehow drawn to keep reading. Western fantasy is currently stagnant, so reading a Chinese webnovel is a nice change of pace.
I'm also trying to do a reread of the older Elric stories for a post I promised on the Reading Room forum more than a year ago. I need to make sure that I get the details correct. I'm having a hard time getting into the narrative because Elric has such a teenaged mindset.
Elric and Wong Lin (the protagonist of RI) are kind of similar, except that Wong Lin makes Elric look like a little baby. In fact, I'm interested in seeing how close Wong Lin will progress to an interpretation of Sauron.
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Aug 13 2023, 7:52pm
Post #10 of 11
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that dedication was to your husband, not knowing his first name! It is indeed the first book of the series. 
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"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Aug 14 2023, 5:21pm
Post #11 of 11
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The Setting of Renegade Immortal
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I'm still less than 10% into the story, so I think I can say this, but people who wish to avoid spoilers may wish to skip this post anyway.
I've started to think that the setting of Renegade Immortal does not just have some RPG-like elements but actually takes place on a PVP server in a futuristic MMORPG. The main character takes everything seriously though, so I suppose that means he is an NPC. The game would therefore be advanced enough to have NPCs with thoughts and feelings, allowing for realistic interactions. Meanwhile the player characters are focused on leveling up and getting loot and care nothing for NPCs.
I think that's pretty unique, though it does devalue the seriousness of things.
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