Re: What Have You Read Lately? (2024 Edition)

[Hegemony]

Recently finished Martha Wells' All Systems Red, the first in the Murderbot Diaries. There's a reason people are addicted to this series. Despite the title "murderbot," the actual murderbot is not murderous — it's quite personable — and the books are not gory. Very nice world-building. I'm now on the second in the series, Artificial Condition, which is occasionally confusing, but I think that's because I'm listening to it as an audiobook, whereas I read the first one on the page. The audiobook format is also less than ideal because it's a man reading the text, which is in the first person, and that makes one think of the murderbot as male, although it is technically genuinely genderless. (Interesting to wonder what its voice sounded like in the world of the story — what would a genderless voice sound like?) When I get to the third book in the series (Rogue Protocol) I'm returning to the printed page.

[spork]

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak. Liked it. Short novel, easy to read, two parallel plot lines set about 700 years apart. A colleague uses it in a literature course and says the students adore it.

[hmaria1609]

From the library: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly
In a new cozy mystery series, Emma Knightley helps her husband with solving a murder in Highbury. It's a fun "sequel" to the original novel by Jane Austen. Think Murder Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James but lighter tone.

[Puget]

Recently finished Martha Wells' All Systems Red, the first in the Murderbot Diaries. There's a reason people are addicted to this series. Despite the title "murderbot," the actual murderbot is not murderous — it's quite personable — and the books are not gory. Very nice world-building. I'm now on the second in the series, Artificial Condition, which is occasionally confusing, but I think that's because I'm listening to it as an audiobook, whereas I read the first one on the page. The audiobook format is also less than ideal because it's a man reading the text, which is in the first person, and that makes one think of the murderbot as male, although it is technically genuinely genderless. (Interesting to wonder what its voice sounded like in the world of the story — what would a genderless voice sound like?) When I get to the third book in the series (Rogue Protocol) I'm returning to the printed page.

It's a great series! I do like the audiobooks a lot, but that's an interesting point about gender. I guess a bot could be programmed to use any voice, just like you can choose the voice for digital assistants, so it doesn't really bother me.

Since you're liking those, you might also like these:

Ancillary trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy) and Translation State (which is set in the same world, but stands alone), by Anne Leckie. These won Hugo and Nebula awards but I somehow missed them when they first came out. Took me a little while to get into the first one but then I was hooked. Great world building and complex characters. Won't say to much more because figuring out what is going on is part of the fun.

[hmaria1609]

From the library: The Legacy of Arniston House by T.L. (Tendai) Huchu
New and #4th installment in the "Edinburgh Nights" series

[apl68]

Let Us Consider One Another, by Josephine Lawrence.  Reviews of two of Lawrence's novels at the "Neglected Books" web site introduced me to her work several years ago.  They were both quite good.  Let Us Consider One Another, both set and written toward the end of World War II, is a very earnest social problem novel about Prejudice.  The protagonist, herself the product of a controversial Catholic-Protestant marriage, follows in her daring mother's footsteps by marrying a Jewish man.  In the course of the story we meet Lawrence's usual large cast of primary, secondary, and incidental characters, almost all of whom keep casually expressing prejudices of one kind or another. 

Lawrence portrays American society in her day, probably fairly enough, as riddled with religious, ethnic, racial, class, occupational, and gender prejudices.  Yet everything on display appears not so much vicious as the product of lazy thinking by people universally too preoccupied with their own concerns and challenges to try to consider other perspectives.  The hope is expressed toward the end that society will gradually outgrow it all.  We're still waiting.

It's a commendably nuanced treatment of a subject all too often dealt with in a ham-fisted and self-righteous manner (As witness all the recent displays of people preening themselves on being superior to the ignorant, mouth-breathing, etc. so-and-sos whom they will never be able to forgive for the crime of voting for the wrong candidate).  However, Lawrence's dialog and characterizations aren't as sharp here as elsewhere. 

Also, she seems not to understand that reservations about marriage outside a family's faith tradition might involve much more than simple unthinking prejudice.  Lawrence seems to consider religious identity to be essentially unimportant--nothing more than a kind of inherited hobby or tribal marker.  For many adherents of all faiths that may indeed be the case, but there are others for whom the spiritual life is of the deepest importance.  So it's understandable that a loved one's departure from the path that one had hoped he or she would follow could be of equally deep concern.  People might or might not handle these concerns in a constructive manner, but it is in any case going to be a major challenge.

Not a bad novel, but not the best the author has shown that she can do.

[TeaHuntress]

Just finished Artemis by Andy Weir.  Compared to The Martian this was a huge let down.

[hmaria1609]

From the library: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen

[apl68]

The Plug-In Drug:  Television, Children, and the Family, by Marie Winn.  This sociological study of the effects of television on children and families was a big deal when it came out in 1977.  Only a couple of years later I saw a paperback edition of it, with its cover photo of glassy-eyed children gathered around the Lobotomy Box, at the school library.  It was probably the first serious piece of sociology that I ever tried to read.  I didn't get through all of it, but in re-reading it I see that I must have covered a good bit of it.

The title pretty much sums up Winn's finding--that television can easily become a kind of addictive "drug" with detrimental effects on children and families.  In the early 2000s Winn published a revised version, which I have not seen, that argues that computer usage is as much as, if not more than, a "drug" to young minds than TV.  The author no doubt sees the recent movement to try to pry children away from their devices during school hours as a long-overdue vindication.


Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton.  Hamilton was a noted classicist who published this in 1942 to serve as a kind of primer on classical mythology.  She shows a rare knack for discussing a big subject in a concise, accessible manner.  The book's a joy to read, and even boasts nice illustrations by Steele Savage.  It proved so hard to beat as an introduction to the subject that it remains in print.  You can find copies in almost any place that carries a wide variety of used paperbacks. I found my copy some years ago for about a buck.

I got off on a Greek mythology kick after a childhood viewing of the old Ray Harryhausen movie Jason and the Argonauts on TV.  I couldn't find very many books about it in my home town, but the few I did find included such classics as Robert Graves' The Siege and Fall of Troy.  Hamilton's Mythology was the best.  I've re-read it several times over the years.  I'd recommend it to anybody with an interest in classical mythology.  Or literature in general.

[Parasaurolophus]

Late update, as usual. Here was the October/November/December haul:


Vernor Vinge – A Fire Upon the Deep: I decided to give it a spin, since it's been on my shelf for years (found it in a book box). I figured I wouldn't be likely to attach, so could give it away again. But actually, it's quite good. There are some shades of nineties misogyny, but it's not too bad. Vinge did a really good job of imagining a set of different worlds and their weird inhabitants, and that's to his credit. Especially for a nineties hard scifi novel. Though it's pretty hilarious that the aliens are all communicating via what is effectively usenet.

Vernor Vinge – A Deepness in the Sky: I didn't have any interest in developing Pham Nuwen's nonexistent character, but I was wrong; Vinge does a great job, mostly by way of developing the Qeng Ho culture we hear mentioned in A Fire Upon the Deep. At the same time, his alien world, and his alien character development, are quite good. You might think a prequel sequel is going to be a dud, but this is far and away the best of the trilogy.

Vernor Vinge – The Children of the Sky: This one takes place on the world discovered in the first novel. I didn't think I necessarily wanted to revisit it, but actually, it's quite well done, and I enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, it ends without ending, clearing the way for more novels—which he can't write from the grave.

James Herriot – All Creatures Great and Small: Read it to the hatchling. He enjoyed it, though his taste for it waxes and wanes. He likes the (new) show, too. I quite like these myself.

Simon Scarrow – Rebellion: A return to form with Boudicca's rebellion. The template worked just fine this time, although there were continuity issues again (but nothing like as bad as in the last couple).

David Hone – How Fast Did T. Rex Run? Unsolved Questions from the Frontiers of Dinosaur Science : This is okay. It's not really what it seemed to promise, which was a deep dive into unresolved issues. Instead, it's a lot of pointing in general directions, without much of substance to say. Even the titular question gets short shrift. Also, Hone is not a great writer. He's all over the place; this was true of The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, too, but that book, at least, had a real focus. This one doesn't. Too popular, not enough science.

Adrian Tchaikovsky – Spiderlight: Standalone high fantasy satire about a transmogrified spider on a quest to kill the evil lord. This is what Hearne and Dawson's Kill the Ffarmboy was trying to be, and failed so miserably at. It was great, as usual. Highly recommended.

Adrian Tchaikovsky – Days of Shattered Faith: Another very strong installment in the Tyrant Kings series, taking place on a new continent. These stories are so good, I don't know what else to say. I want more. Oh, but there was rather a lot of the expression "honestly" in the last third.

Octavia Butler– Dawn: This is absolute garbage, and I'm sorry I read it. It's a BDSM fantasy with none of the guardrails and absolutely no understanding of consent. It's a book filled with rape, most of it excused by the pleasure it brings. It's made worse by the fact that there's some violent rape/threat of it, and that's clearly recognized as bad. Also, it's nowhere near hard science fiction, even for the eighties, despite its labelling. I know there was a lot of this shit in the eighties, but this went above and beyond. I'm not touching anything else by her with a twenty foot pole. It can rot.

Stephen Jay Gould – The Structure of Evolutionary Theory: This was a year-long reading project, because it's a massive brick (~1400 pages), and not at all aimed at a popular audience. I imagine I'm one of very few people who bothered to read it all, though I readily confess I understood maybe ~60% of it. It's Gould's last book, posthumously published, and the work of twenty years. Some of it was clearly rushed (because he was dying, obviously), and it's decidedly not accessible. Long stretches are fairly navel-gazing. But for all that, it was very informative, and helped me to make sense of a number of questions I'd long had about evolutionary theory, but didn't know how to answer/where to look for answers. It was gratifying to learn that my questions were not, in fact, stupid, and had been going concerns at various times, and even led to some reappraisal. And the main navel-gazing bit actually explained why it was that Simon Conway-Morris, in his execrable book, accused Gould of being a Commie, as though that somehow made him wrong. (That was so utterly weird, and I had no hope of ever finding out what the hell it was all about.) I've since read a number of reviews. Most gave it a good kicking, but I have to say that most of those seem to have come from reviewers who either didn't actually read the book or, worse, read it poorly. Quite a few claim Gould says the exact opposite of what he does, in fact, say; sometimes they even quote at length from passages where he says the opposite, only to claim he's saying something else. It's pretty weird; I guess  he had a fair few enemies.

E.B. White – Stuart Little: Read it to the hatchling, who enjoyed it. I thought it was crap. It's a disjointed series of anecdotes with no structure whatsoever, and it just ends without being finished. White apparently even said as much when he pitched it to his editor. Worse, Stuart Little is a right prick. Fuck him.

Charles R. Knight – Life Through the Ages (commemorative edition): The forewords by Gould and Currie are interesting, the images and accompanying text pretty typically Knight. Lots of worrying about intelligence; the choice of illustrations is perhaps not what you'd expect from Knight, but it's always a pleasure to see his work.

David Bainbridge – Paleontology: An illustrated history: Nothing new, really. The pictures are okay, but I dunno, I think they might have been better chosen. It's a fine, easy read, and I have no complaints about it, but if you already know the stuff then there's not much to sink your teeth into.

[FishProf]

I went back and finished The Liveship Traders trilogy.  I wrote about the first book Ship of Magic HERE.  I was ambivalent after the first book, but the series really took off in the 2nd (Mad Ship) and 3rd (Ship of Destiny).  The one issue(?) I had was that, after 2 1/2 novels threatening sexual assault of a main character, it occurs out of the blue, from an unexpected quarter.  But the aftermath was the problem.  I have no idea if the aftermath was handled well, or realistically, nor whether it was a necessary event.  I recommend Robin Hobb, but I wouldn't let Smolt read this, yet.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Finishing up Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood by Edward Zwick - direct of films such as Glory, The Last Samuri, and Blood Diamond. Fun read with good insights on filmmaking and the movie business.

[Minervabird]

Started from the library: The Manuscripts Club by Christopher De Hamel (NF)
I enjoyed the author's award winning book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2017 US release) so I was delighted to see he'd written a new book. It's a thick tome with lots of full color images and archival material throughout the text.
This book was first published in the UK in 2022 and released here in the US last year.

It is a great book...he retired from being librarian at the Parker Library in Cambridge, gifting us with such wonderful works.  I loved the passages about Phillipps' manuscript hoard at Middle Hill and the parties where he would bring out his treasures for his guests to admire.

[Minervabird]

Books in the Reaktion animal series are great.  I've read Ant, Snail, and Goldfish. The latter is a fun exploration of an animal that is ubiquitous and explores how it became that way. The same author of Goldfish wrote another natural history book: Martin Lister and His Remarkable Daughters which received decent reviews.

The Light Years by Seb Falk is a great exploration of medieval science.

I'm now reading Jenny Uglow's biography of Edward Lear which is wonderful so far. I had no idea he had epilepsy nor that he started as a natural history illustrator, drawing all the animals at the Knowsley menagerie for Lord Darby.