Books

Listened to a couple of Outlanders then moved on the book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Just finished that last night so I'll jump back into more outlanders for a bit whilst I decide what to read next!

I’m continuing through the Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children series and about to start Red Rising.

There is No Anti-Memetics Division (QNTM) and Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds, book 3 in The Prefect series set in the Revelation Space universe. It’s pretty good. AR is awesome, RS one of my favorite universes.

I just chugged through the last third of The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell so I didn't have to say I was still reading it for the billionth week in a row. I'm conflicted: the story was interesting and well-written, but it never really grabbed me. Normally I'd blame this on pacing, but I didn't find it overly slow, so I'm not sure why I didn't take to it more.

Now to pick out something new!

Listening to The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. About halfway through and enjoying it a lot. Great performance by the narrator Michael Page!

Rereading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin definitely recommend it for its depiction and criticism of a potential utopian anarchist society.

Just finished Moneyball by Michael Lewis. I think the movie adaptation told a better story, but the book was full of interesting tidbits.

Almost done with Canon by Paige Lewis. A fun, madcap adventure about two women charged by God to defeat The Bad Guys.

Just finished The Memory Police today. Thought it was great! Some beats were very clearly telegraphed, but it was nice how it emphasized atmosphere and attitude in the face of loss.

Earlier this week I finished Dragon's Teeth and Thunderstones. Still agree with my initial impression that it's mostly not my jam. But I thought it was a little more interesting near the end.

Headed back to the library today for another couple of books. Between the ones I just read, and my next couple, should be able to wrangle that pretty close to a bingo. Memory Police is written on a different continent, and the fossil book can fill either 'nature elements' square or the 'supplemental info' one (almost any non-fiction fits that last one I think).

Just finished reading Bloom by Delilah S Dawson for the podcast which is a sapphic horror. My teen offspring tells me its called 'cottagecore' whatever the fuck that means. I'll reserve verdict until we record the episode!

Currently dipping in and out for The Real and the Unreal , which is Ursula K LeGuin's short story collection. Brilliant as you would expect. Just about to start King Sorrow by Joe Hill. Got mixed opinions on his previous stuff so we'll see how this one pans out.

I’m about 1/4 into The Aeronaut’s Windlass. Might be my first non-Dresden Butcher book. I’ve had the paperback on my shelf for some years but I picked up an invisible copy from the library to read on my commute. I like it so far. It’s an interesting steampunk setting, action forward, likable main cast.

And my beloved and I are reading the Hobbit to each other. Just got to the spiders

Earlier today I finished reading Call Me by Your Name. Bittersweet and very poetic, I really enjoyed it. The book club I'm in is going to watch the film adaptation later this week.

Next up is Slaughterhouse Five. It's been on my TBR for ages.

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, for the first time in like twenty or so years.

Started 'Till we have Faces', a novel by C.S. Lewis. I quite like this author and reading the first chapter of the book make me think I won't be disappointed this time either.

Lewis is the author of 'Narnia', but he is also (and, imho, foremost) a christian author that has written really deep essays well worth reading even if you're not the religious kind of person (I'm not). A book like 'The Abolition of Man' should be considered a must read to anyone worrying about the type of society we're building today.

It's a (short) collection of 3 (or is it 4?) lectures he did back in 1942 aimed at... British bomber pilots (young people expected to erase entire cities) in which he discusses what it means to educate children and why it should matter how we decide to do it. He also points out how easily education can be used to create... a lesser, smaller, or heartless, kind of humanity, or no humanity. Hence the title of the book. A great book.

Since last week's post I've finished Battle Ground (plus Christmas Eve, Little Things, The Law) & Twelve Months from the Dresden Files, and Risen from Alex Verus. That just leaves the last few novellas from both series to cap them off.

After that, it'll be the latest Incryptid book I missed from earlier this year, then I dunno maybe back to finishing Mercy Thompson before taking a break from urban fantasy for a while.

I'm reading Er mor død by Vigdis Hjorth. I picked it up at the library from a table set aside for staff favorites. It's about a a woman estranged from her parents who returns to her home town at sixty and wrestles with trying to understand her mother and herself. The main character is, however, somewhat hard to like as she starts stalking her mother and sister and quite obsessed. So far the book has been pretty good. I am myself estranged from a parent, and I think I've been processing that on some level lately. No regrets, but these things are always complicated. I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, my parent was also estranged from their parent. I guess it runs in the family.

I started reading Witch Beast by Bernard King, it's a fairly okay supernatural horror, I'm not entirely certain what to make of it yet, I'm in the mystery building section so far. But, folks, I really wanna highlight that a vast amount of this books fiction is dedicated to minutiae of urban development in England in the late 80s, to an absurd degree for a supernatural fantasy horror, it comes out of nowhere and just as suddenly disappears into the background

Eva zu Beck's memoir The Wilder Way. As someone who has occasionally dreamed of leaving my life behind and becoming a nomad, it's interesting to read the story of someone who did just that.

Still reading "the regicide report" by Charles Stross. Almost through, and a great book. Still mot a lot of time to read due to other fun things.

I finished Spook Street (Slough House book 4) by Mick Herron. This is the first book where I found myself wishing I hadn't watched the show yet. The author wrote some beautiful foreshadowing. I wonder how I would have reacted to it if I hadn't already known what would happen.

Just finished this:

People say that writing an anti-war war story is impossible. Even if the patriotism, the institutions, the politics and the propaganda are all revealed to be hollow  excuses to justify sending another generation to their doom, the camaraderie, the sacrifices and heroic deeds of the individual soldiers will make war look glorious. Many have tried to avoid this trap; most have failed. William March’s Company K succeeds in this goal, but at a high price. There are two main techniques that are instrumental for this: First and foremost is the structure of the text. The book is a collection of 113 short vignettes, each one about a soldier of the company. This results in the reader never getting attached to any particular person, since we never have time for that attachment to form. But this also kills any semblance of an objective for the narrative and therefore the tension. Joseph Heller‘s Catch22 has a similar episodic structure, but we stay with Yossarian and his companions for a long time. The objective is clear: Survival. This allows for the narrative to develop stakes and tension. Will they survive? Who will die? In Company K we follow the collective, but a company can’t die, and we already know how the war ended. So there isn't really any objective.  There aren’t any stakes and neither is there tension whether the objective will be achieved or not. 

March's second method of achieving the anti-war war story is the tone of the story. It's remarkably bleak, even amongst its peers. The "good guys" do terrible things and commit horrible crimes, justified only by hollow propaganda that is also portrayed as such. Even the humor is black as night. This makes for a quite depressing reading experience. 

In summary: this might be one of the best tries at achieving the anti-war war story, but it definitely isn’t the most readable try.

I just recently picked up the Honor Harrington series back up.

Clemens P. Suter’s “Rebound”