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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Dec 30 2023, 4:09pm
Post #1 of 13
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It's the occasional reading thread!
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A very happy new year to us all! May 2024 be a kinder and gentler year all around the world. (Yeah, I know, but---there's always hope!  )
Audiobooks:
Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch. This is the second book in the Rivers of London/Peter Grant series, police procedurals with vivid supernatural elements such as wizards and river gods. I read it on paper some years ago but couldn't resist enjoying the story once again now that I've read the rest of the series. Listening to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, the narrator, is a delight from start to finish---he is superb not just with Peter's very strong voice, he presents everyone else with great skill and distinction. Aaronovitch's world is funny, adventurous, and tragic by turns.
The Secret History of Christmas, by Bill Bryson. This is just what it says, short explanations of many of our Christmas customs, written with Bryson's usual wry perspective and read by himself---which means we get the humorous inflections but also the nasal tone, sigh.
Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, by Jenny Colgan. This is a pleasant, comfortingly predictable, romance set in Edinburgh at Christmas. The city is beautifully evoked, and there's enough wry humor---and downright sarcasm---to keep the story from being overly sweet.
Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price. I've just started this and have a long way to go, but that's all right. I love a good, solid, chewy history tome. Price states right up front that he's examining the Vikings in the context of post-Roman Europe---politics, climate science, mythology are all playing a part in the epic story.
The Corpse in the Queue, by Josephine Tey. This is the first in an Audible collection of Tey's novels, six Alan Grant mysteries and two standalones, about sixty hours of listening. A man is stabbed to death in a line waiting to get into a theater and Grant investigates. I'm enjoying a Golden Age mystery set well before the phones, computers, and forensics of contemporary stories. Plus the narrative is very straightforward compared to the contemplations and diversions of such contemporary writers as Anne Cleeves and Louise Penny.
On paper:
The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams. This book has unfortunately smallish print so it took me some time to read it, but it was worth straining my eyes to do so. It's beautifully written, in language appropriate to the time period---the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the the twentieth centuries. (I mention this because I've read a couple of historical novels recently that stopped me dead with contemporary words and usage.) But then, Lost Words is about language. The main character is the daughter of a man helping put together the Oxford English Dictionary who eventually works for the dictionary herself. She also accumulates her own collection of words peculiar to women.... I realize this doesn't sound like much but I was enthralled.
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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Annael
Immortal
Dec 30 2023, 4:35pm
Post #2 of 13
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Currently have "Dopamine Nation" by Anna Lembke, MD, a specialist in addiction, and "Rewire Your Anxious Brain" by Catherine Pittman, PhD, a specialist in addiction & anxiety disorders, on the bedside table. The first is about how we can get addicted to anything that helps us "chase dopamine," the feel-good chemical. I'm a sugar addict for sure but also, I realized I'm carrying my phone everywhere and looking at it even when watching a show I really like on TV. Seems like learning how to un-addict myself will be a useful skill. The second book is about how to undo what Jung would call our complexes - which come about when we associate an event or thing with an emotion, for instance if you got bit as a child by a dog and from then on, any dog triggers those feelings of pain and fear even when the dog is not doing anything - and those feelings then only reinforce your fear of dogs. The idea of neuroplasticity, that we can actually change how our brains react, is very appealing to me.
I've now read the second Claudia Gray novel set in the world of Austen, "The Late Mrs. WIlloughby," and I won't be going on with her. It's a fun conceit, coming up with ways to gather several Austen characters in one place and then have a murder mystery to solve. But it's too contrived. The characters rarely behave as Austen wrote them and often come off as far less admirable; her plots require our favorite couples to have stupid fights and misunderstandings, and while she acknowledges the social constraints of the day, she ignores them when they're inconvenient. Also, everyone speaks alike (a bugaboo of mine: different characters should have different speech patterns). Harrumph. Apart from "Longbourn" I have yet to find a book set in the Austenverse that feels true to Austen - and P.D. James, I'm looking at you!
Still on my chapter-a-day of LOTR. Today we encountered Shelob (shudder).
I loved "The Dictionary of Lost Words."
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
(This post was edited by Annael on Dec 30 2023, 4:38pm)
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Kimi
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Dec 30 2023, 10:26pm
Post #3 of 13
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Lily and Annael, thanks for your comments on The Dictionary of Lost Words, which sounds just my thing. I've reserved it from the library.
In magazine form: NZ Heritage magazine, and "The London Review of Books", the latter passed on from a friend. Lots of good reading in both.
Books
Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes, by Terry's long-time assistant Rob Wilkins.
I'd been looking forward to reading this, and it did not disappoint. It must be very difficult writing a biography of someone you cared for as much as Rob clearly did for Terry. He does a fine job, and for the most part I enjoyed it immensely. Odd though it might sound, I was particularly impressed at how well Rob left himself out of the story. It's clear that he was *there*, and an increasingly essential presence, for a large part of Terry's life, but only towards the very end does Rob allow himself a bare few paragraphs to speak of his own feelings (deep grief, which must have been intensified by the level of support Terry required from him by then, down to helping him with dressing). The book is about Terry, not about the biographer.
The early sections appear to be based on notes towards a memoir that Terry himself wrote, and I found that section unputdownable, and frequently laugh-out-loud. A section after that, before writing became such a huge part of Terry's life, and when not a lot out of the ordinary was going on (though Terry's own words could make even the mundane laugh-out-lout funny) dragged a little for me. But that was the only part I found slow, and felt could perhaps have been a bit shorter.
I very much enjoyed following his writing journey, and vicariously delighting in the early successes that piled into triumphs. There were lots of interesting tidbits, such as just how far back he and Neil Gaiman became acquainted (a 20-year-old Neil wrote one of the very first reviews of Terry's work), and possible inspirations for various characters.
Rob was clearly very fond of Terry, and was friend as much as assistant, but he admirably avoids any tendency towards hagiography. In fact I almost felt that in avoiding hagiography he went a little too far in the other direction. Terry had a loving family and deep, long-lasting friendships, but the portrayal (perhaps in an attempt to avoid the "jolly elf" assumption) often makes him sound difficult to get along with. Well, we all can be at times.
I learned a good deal about Terry's writing journey, and about his life, but at the end I'm not sure I knew much more about him as a person. The anger that frequently drove him is mentioned, but to find the source of that anger I needed to turn to this very moving piece by Neil Gaiman.
Probably my favourite piece of all is a passage when Terry spoke of the birth of his daughter Rhianna. He recalled driving home from the hospital by himself that night, in a sort of dazed wonder and the happiest he had ever been in his life. Later, when he got the dreadful diagnosis, he felt that if he ever lost that memory, who would he be? For he would no longer be himself. I had to pause at that point, because tears were filling my eyes. From Rob's account of Terry's final days, he never did lose that precious memory; never forgot his loved ones.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell.
I very much enjoyed her Hamnet, and this is equally well-written. I did find the time-line confusing once or twice, but that was a brief stumble. It's based on what little is known of the short life of Lucrezia de' Medici, inspired by Robert Browning's chilling poem "My Last Duchess". Little is known for certain over what happened to Lucrezia, but O'Farrell makes an engrossing story out of her own version of it.
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim.
This appears on the surface to be a missing person/murder mystery, but is really more an exploration of what makes happiness, and how families work (and don't work). Very well-written, with interesting characters, especially our bright, prickly, and fiercely loyal narrator, a young Korean-American woman. Due to a tragic experience in my own extended family I found one aspect of this book distressing - I can't really detail this without a massive spoiler, but it relates to communication problems people with a particular disability may have. This is not a criticism of the book, just my personal response, but it did colour my experience of the story. We bring ourselves and our own lived experiences to what we read.
Wifedom by Anna Funder.
Oh, so good! I devoured this. I first read of it in "The London Review of Books", and knew I had to read it. It's a biography of Eileen Blair, first wife of George Orwell, and is written in a mix of "straight" biography and dramatised scenes. Beautifully written, utterly engrossing. Eileen was a remarkable woman, brave and gifted and all but invisible, and having read this I doubt that Orwell's most famous works would exist without her - especially since Orwell might not have survived the Spanish Civil War without Eileen.
The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks.
The first of her books I've read, and I'll definitely be reading more. Magnificent writing, and a fine telling of the life of King David through the eyes of the prophet Nathan. Brooks uses what details we have of David's life, extrapolating very credibly to make fully drawn characters when all we have are snippets. I found this book so powerful that about halfway through, when the story of Michal was just too tragic to bear, I had to set it aside for a time, and read a particularly silly (in a good way) Wodehouse book to recover. I then returned to this book and was soon thoroughly immersed again.
Looking back over this list, I see that I've been particularly fortunate in my reading choices of late.
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
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Kimi
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Dec 30 2023, 10:54pm
Post #4 of 13
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I completely agree. I very much enjoyed Longbourn, while being disappointed in the P.D. James book.
Two Austen-verse books I truly enjoyed: Darcy and Anne and Maria, both by Canadian writer Judith Brocklehurst. The author concentrates on minor characters (Anne de Burgh from P&P, and Maria Bertram from MP), and gives them fuller stories, while being faithful to what Austen actually wrote.
Disclaimer: I became an alpha-reader for Judith, after encountering and enjoying an early draft of the first book on an Austen site, so I can't claim to being completely dispassionate, especially as Judith became something of a friend before her untimely death. She was working on a third book, about Jane Fairfax, when cancer claimed her.
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
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Annael
Immortal
Dec 31 2023, 1:20am
Post #5 of 13
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I will look for those books!
I must add that there are three PLAYS that are wonderful additions to the oeuvre: the "Christmas at Pemberley" trilogy, set two years after P&P.
https://www.christmasatpemberley.com/
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Dec 31 2023, 4:13pm
Post #7 of 13
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I, too, enjoyed the Wilkins book...
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...and I, too, thought it was very well done. That passage about the birth of his daugher has stayed with me as well.
I have the audiobook of A Slip of the Keyboard, Pratchett's essays, but haven't yet listened to it.
I agree with you and Annael about The Late Mrs. Willoughby. The premise is entertaining but the execution lacks just a bit. Still, it's better than the very disappointing Death At Pemberley, which was riddled with amateurish turns not worthy of a writer like James.
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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Ataahua
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jan 3, 2:14am
Post #8 of 13
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Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - 5/5
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A hard SciFi with humour and heart, and an unusual story structure: man wakes up in a spaceship with amnesia but piece by piece, his memory returns as he works out who he is, where he is and why he's there. An excellent read and hard to put down.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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Kimi
Forum Admin
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Jan 3, 2:50am
Post #9 of 13
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I especially liked the fact that at a certain point I found that (spoiler) I'd completely misunderstood the main character's motivations - he hadn't *chosen* to go at all. Nice misdirection! (end spoiler)
I didn't find his Artemis nearly as engaging as The Martian, so was pleased to find this one had more in common with the earlier work.
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
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Ataahua
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jan 3, 4:32am
Post #10 of 13
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I didn't pick up on that revelation either - but boy did it fit with Stratt's personality.
Weir did a great job building Grace's character, starting with a blank slate then 'filling him in' with the returning memories, then him finally making an atypical (for him) choice at the end. It was really well done - as was Weir's...
*big spoiler below*
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...creation of a new sentient species and how to develop an understanding of language. Weir clearly puts a great deal of thought into his speculative science. (I've seen a comment that he enjoys the research and planning more than the writing.)
I've read reviews for Artemis and I think I'll skip it. I'm glad that Weir came back on form with Project Hail Mary, and I'm looking forward to seeing what his next novel is like.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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Felagund
Rohan
Jan 3, 3:39pm
Post #11 of 13
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Love this thread, thanks for starting it!
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I nearly missed this great thread and will defo remember to keep an eye out for Off Topic content from now on! In fact, this might be the first time I've posted here. Otherwise, it's been ages!
I've had a pretty geeky December when it comes to reading, covering lots of bases, in a leisurely (lazy) way, without finishing much at all. Geeky reading isn't unusual for me but I've been making more of an effort with non-S/F titles of late, alternating every month - it just so happens that December was a geeky one :)
I'm not yet much of an audiobook person but I started one over the break and have been enjoying the experience a lot. It's Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, which I read a few years back and which I loved at the time. An added bonus (for me, at least!): it's Wil Wheaton doing the narration. I still don't reckon it's the best-written book and defo recognise that much of its appeal for me is in its obsession with 1980s S/F - reflecting my own teenage years in that decade. That said, it's a lot of fun as a story and it's reminded me that there's a sequel out and I should take a look this year. And that I've still yet to run the D&D module The Tomb of Horrors. PS I thought the film adaptation of this book was pretty ordinary!
In December, I finally finished reading Polgara the Sorceress, wrapping up my curiosity about what David and Leigh Eddings did with the characters I loved so much in the 80s and early 90s. Back then, I felt The Belgariad and The Mallorean series were enough for me - I still remember the thrill of rushing to the bookshop to get my first-day release of each volume of The Mallorean, as they were published (my Harry Potter equivalent, I suppose). So, the stuff that came later passed me by, until early in 2023, decades after my last trip to the world of the Alorns & Angaraks, a friend gave me his battered copies of the eponymous Belgarath and Polgara titles. It was enjoyable 'going back'. Comfortable and easy to plough through the 800 pages or so, the Eddings' style very recognisable and adept at moving things along at pace. The diachronic sweep through millennia was an interesting take, and I usually didn't feel like I was literally reading a reprise of earlier, companion material. I did conclude though, similar to how I felt by the end of The Mallorean series, that I was reading a very well-trodden formula. The authors pretty much own that, through having main characters make the same, in-universe comment - it's all about patterns etc. Even so, formulaic is still formulaic! The Eddings team didn't particularly challenge themselves with these books, in my view, but maybe that wasn't the point. Anyway, very comfy reading and my mild Alorns & Angaraks curiosity is now definitely sated! PS although Google tells me that they wrote one more...
Perhaps due to the Eddings revisit, nostalgia was in the air for me, as next up (and still reading) is Tanith Lee's The Book of the Damned, the first volume in her The Secret Books of Paradys series. I had a short-run addiction to Lee's books in the 80s but I ground to a halt in the early 90s, for no substantive reason that I can recall. So, when I saw volumes 1 & 2 in this series in a second hand bookshop a few weeks ago I couldn't resist. Until then, I hadn't thought about Tanith Lee in years, so it was one of those nice random prompts. Still making my way through the book and very much enjoying it. Classic Lee, with rich, evocative prose that languidly walks a dark fantasy line between the sensual and the erotic. I wonder sometimes whether she's trying to seduce her readers into drowning in the richness of it all! Out of curiosity, I googled whether she was still writing or had passed on to Paradys, learning that it was the latter, in 2015. One of the UK's best fantasy authors, in my view, and while I feel sad to have lost track of her career, post 90s, I'm very glad to be taking another look now.
I spent some of the break catching up with some comic book reading. In preparation for reading Monstress volume 8 ('Inferno'), I re-read volume 7 ('Devourer'). Written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda and lettered by Rus Wooton, this series is one of my faves of all time currently sitting on my extensive graphic novel & comic shelf. It's such a great writing/illustration partnership, bringing to life a complex, rich fantasy world (or worlds... spoiler alert!). I find the exposition about the world subtle but pleasingly dense, the action dramatic but not overly reliant on mega-violence set-pieces, and the stakes for the various characters and factions gripping (if you love multiple factional squabbles, you'll love this!). The series has attracted a few category monikers online and I don't disagree with any of them, other than to say that it's all of them, at various times: dark fantasy, dark sci-fi, steam punk etc. I'll even add my own!: mechanised sorcery and sorcerous machinery plus geneforgery = Monstress :)
I'd set aside a couple of debut comic book series for ages and finally got round to them: Starhenge and Dead Romans. Starhenge is by Liam Sharp, who writes and illustrates the series. I know he's been around as a comic book shaker & mover for ages but I'd never picked up any of his stuff before. In fact, I may not have noticed this title at all if I wasn't browsing through Star Wars at the time! (Note to budding writers: use the word 'star', the letter 'X' etc in your title and you'll inevitably scoop up a few random sales from the likes of me! Provided the store alphabetises its merchandise, of course!). Anyway, the cover art reminded me of Ben Templesmith's work, a writer I have followed over many years (Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse, The Squidder etc). Indeed, Templesmith did draw one of the covers for Starhenge, I learned on closer inspection. All of this to say, I was intrigued and picked up issue #1 on an experimental whim. It's a beautifully illustrated series, with a rich, dark colour pallette, regularly jumping out of the panel and breaking the fourth wall. There's an Arthurian framework, spliced with an inter-stellar war and advanced tech. Just in case you miss the parallels, the main character literally shouts out analogies every now and then, eg. Terminator, The Matrix and so on. That feature can be mildly grating at times but it didn't detract from the overall enjoyment. At the risk of making grating analogies of my own, it did remind me a little of the comic book series Decorum, by Jonathan Hickman (writer), Mike Huddleston (artist) and Rus Wooton (letters; & of Monstress fame - see above), which does its thing better, in my view. Still, it's a nice bit of story-telling and a fun take on Merlin & Company.
On to Dead Romans. I'm a Classicist by background, although far from a Rome specialist. Nevertheless, perhaps that makes it even easier for me to enjoy a bit of ancient world adventuring and drama, brought to life in the comic book medium. This is by Fred Kennedy (writer) and Nick Marinkovich (artist), and sets its drama squarely within the brutal and tragic Clades Variana or 'Varian Disaster', also known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, towards the end of the reign of Augustus. Think early Roman Empire at its prideful, seemingly unstoppable peak, three legions confidently marching deep into Germania only to be slaughtered by the locals, inflicting an unprecedented blow to Roman prestige. And losing three precious legion eagle standards to boot. I was excited by the cover and interior art when I saw this in the shop. Successful, straight out 'ancient world' story-telling is relatively rare in the world of comic books, in my experience (please pile in if your experience is different, as I'd love to read more!), and I hadn't seen anything on the shelves of this ilk that grabbed my attention since Kieron Gillen's absolutely awesome Three, published across 2013-14. Although I rate Three higher (it's ancient Sparta, so will always be tough to beat!), Dead Romans is one of my fave series for 2023. The story is basic, in a good way, it builds the dread very well, even if you know what's coming (spoiler alert: Varus and his legions still lose), and it does a good job at avoiding both the Roman = bad or 'barbarian' = bad tropes.
And finally...! I managed to get a bit closer to finishing a non-fiction book I started in the mid-90s as a student and returned to when I managed to find a nice hardback copy of my own, many years later. It's The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350, by Robert Bartlett. I'm often structurally lazy when it comes to non-fiction, picking up a title for 10-15 pages at a time, and then taking months or even years to finish, depending on what else is going on. Because Bartlett's thesis is, in my view, so compelling and well-argued, I find it easy to pick up where I left off, memory & content-wise. In a nutshell, if you're interested in how and why European states were so ruthlessly 'good' at colonial expansion, you need look no further than what was going on, on the European frontier of the early Medieval period and the way territories and populations there were engaged with, eg. east of the Elbe and the wider Eastern Baltic, in Outremer, Anglo-Norman Ireland, Reconquista Spain and Portugal and so on. Bartlett has a great style, crossing over from but remaining grounded in academia, and organises his themes and arguments in a compelling, thought-provoking way. Yeah, this is all fairly mainstream in terms of methodology and theme these days but this is published in 1993 and, at the time, Bartlett was pushing the envelope, in my view, thinking back to when my own youthful academic interests were then veering in a Medieval direction.
I've enjoyed browsing the recommendations from 'Ringers elsewhere in this thread - the perfect reading list in waiting!
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Jan 4, 3:34pm
Post #12 of 13
(374 views)
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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
Immortal
Jan 6, 5:15pm
Post #13 of 13
(335 views)
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I read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and enjoyed it a lot: great premise, great characters, plot nicely thought out (with a fun twist!). My only quibble is that her writing style is suited to YA or "cozy" books, and is occasionally a bit twee, even--but her themes are quite dark, there's a lot of f-bombs, and there's a bit of explicit sex. So there was an inherent contradiction in tone that bothered me, like someone trying to sing a mournful aria as an upbeat folk song. I'm not sure if I would have preferred her to make it more "cozy" or to have her really dig into the darker themes.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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