What Have You Read Lately?

[hmaria1609]

Started: The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
I'm reading the Barnes & Noble special edition with an afterward by the author.
In 1947, Elinor White is living in the English countryside when she's pulled back into her previous work of spy craft. The story alternates between Elinor's work during war time years and 1947. This novel isn't part of the popular Maisie Dobbs series.

[Juvenal]

Trash, mostly, including Baldacci's "Novel of the Month,"  In "Simply Lies," where there were echoes of Mark Twain in a couple of places, but nothing came of them.  Time for me to get some guys to help me whitewash a fence.  Then navigate the Mississippi.

[FishProf]

After listening to a bunch of people wax poetic about Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, I finally got round to reading it/them.  I thought it was fine, but hardly world altering.  Perhaps I had already ingested the key parts in the summaries and citations I'd already read.

For Smolt, I've been reading Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey (1st book in the Dragonriders of Pern series(es).  I loved the books as a youngster and Smolt is really into the story as well.  There are a few parts I didn't remember that don't sit so well with me now (the main characters have sex/relationships because their dragons do, and there is some ruminations on whether that constitutes rape or not, but only in passing).  The male protagonist sure likes to shake the female protagonist whenever he's angry.  Not so cool nowadays (maybe less of an issue in 1968, I wasn't around to know).  I expect Smolt will want to continue the series.

[apl68]

The Talisman, by Walter Scott.  It's the story of a Scottish knight who served in the Third Crusade.  The presence in a major role of King Richard "the Lionhearted" makes this something of a prequel of the earlier Ivanhoe.  As with Ivanhoe, though not to the same extent, we see a theme of characters in a tribal culture trying to rise above their prejudices.  Crusaders and their foes are depicted as finding common ground in their shared culture of chivalry, with its recognition of respect for worthy foes and limitations on warrior violence.

Scott portrays the Crusader protagonists, fairly enough, as people most of us wouldn't want to meet today.  For all that they profess their Christian faith, they are prideful barbarian warrior-nobles who show very limited acquaintance with such New Testament virtues as humility and compassion.  Their Muslim opposite numbers tend to come off looking pretty well.  Saladin in particular ends up looking like quite the Renaissance man.  This makes Scott something of a forerunner of the standard modern practice of drawing invidious comparisons between the Crusaders at their worst and the Middle Eastern Muslims at their rare best.  There are a few cringe-worthy descriptions of black African slaves--the Muslim world was already in the Middle Ages developing a strong connection between black Africans and slavery, which they would subsequently export, along with vast numbers of enslaved black Africans, to the West.  Scott also sadly depicts a pair of dwarfs more as grotesque curiosities than as human beings.

I didn't enjoy The Talisman nearly as much as Ivanhoe.  It's still quite a readable and intriguing historical novel.  You can see why Scott is still recognized as a master of the historical novel form that he did so much to pioneer.  I read a copy from a 1970s leather-bound collectible edition published by the Easton Press that I found for a very reasonable price awhile back.  It's a beautifully produced book, nicely illustrated with etchings.

I first learned of the existence of this title many years ago when I met a fellow grad student with the given name of Talisman.  Her father was apparently a big fan of Scott.  I last saw her sometime after she finished earning her PhD--and was considering giving up on what was already a chronically poor job market.  Seeing a fellow student who was better and more successful at grad school than I was in such a situation contributed to my decision to cut my losses and drop out ABD.

[jimbogumbo]

The Deconstructionists, by Dana Milbank. Little that I didn't remember, but laid out well with copious citations.

[apl68]

A Yank in the R.A.R., by Harlan Thomas.  There was a fairly well-known World War II-era movie by this title starring Tyrone Power and Betty Grable.  This is the book it was based on.  It must have been quite popular in its day, as it was turned into a major motion picture shortly after its release.  I read a vintage 1942 reprint of it by Triangle Books, a popular publisher of cheap cloth-bound editions of successful fiction.  The book jacket lists still-remembered titles by such still-remembered authors as Daphne du Maurier, Earle Stanley Garner, and Max Brand.

There were actual American volunteers serving in the Royal Air Force before Pearl Harbor.  It's doubtful any of them had a career much like what we see here.  The protagonist joins the RAF on impulse to impress his girlfriend, is flying bombers over Germany within a few weeks, narrowly survives being shot down, and days later is flying a fighter over Dunkirk.  Then he gets the girl.  After all that, one supposes he really deserves it.

The dialog and characterizations are as sloppy and silly as the plot.  It's at best mediocre pulp-magazine quality stuff.  The book was hacked out in such a hurry that the cover artist couldn't even put the right aircraft on the book jacket--we see a twin-seater Bolton-Paul Defiant fighting over Dunkirk, not a Spitfire or Hurricane.  Rather than keep this in my small collection of vintage books, I think I'll put it in a Little Free Library and let some fan of so-bad-it's-good fiction have a try at it.

[Parasaurolophus]

September (I was busier than usual, so just a small haul):


Suzanne Collins - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: The Hunger Games prequel focused on the rise of President Snow. Thematically, much closer to Mockingjay than the other two novels--it's dark, sad, haunting, and wrongfooting. It's also basically two novels slightly abridged and rolled into one; I think the pacing would have been better served by two. This isn't the story of a bad guy being bad, or of a good person being corrupted; it's the story of a self-centred child fed a steady diet of imperial and elite cultural (e.g. family honour, etc.) propaganda, and the cascade of increasingly worse choices he makes. You,ll recognize incel formation all the way through. He's clearly a sociopath, but just as clearly didn't need to end up that way (not all sociopaths are monsters, after all!); it's just that his actions end up reinforcing that path. The writing here works well because he's constantly presented with off-ramps which can counterbalance his nascent sociopathy, but doesn't end up taking them--right up until the end. As with Mockingjay, I had some quibbles, but I was left thinking about it for days and days afterward, and feeling haunted.

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War: Pretentious twaddle; scifi for those whose snobbery sees them prefer Literature to scifi/call scifi 'speculative fiction'. You've seen this time travel plot better executed by many, many authors, perhaps most recently by Adrian Tchaikovsky in One Day All This Will Be Yours. Read that instead.

HJCS Scholars - Paleoart Predictions: Some elementary school children were provided with skeletal drawings and asked to reconstruct the creature they belonged to. A cute little self-published volume, although I'd have liked it better if they had seen the skeletal but not been able to draw over it! I was looking forward to rather more speculative creatures.

Greer Stothers - Kaleidoscope of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life: Their colors and patterns explained: Stothers is a fab artist (I have one of her riso prints), and this is a superb book. It's mostly a picture book on what we know about the coloration of dinosaurs and other extinct animals--including sections on various kinds of paleolithic drawings, living fossils, and mediaeval bestiaries. Light on text, but superbly illustrated in her signature style. It's a visual treat, and unsurprisingly the hatchling likes it very much (though I got it for myself, not him!). A lovely piece for the collection.

[jimbogumbo]

September (I was busier than usual, so just a small haul):

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War: Pretentious twaddle; scifi for those whose snobbery sees them prefer Literature to scifi/call scifi 'speculative fiction'. You've seen this time travel plot better executed by many, many authors, perhaps most recently by Adrian Tchaikovsky in One Day All This Will Be Yours. Read that instead.

I'm going to push back gently against the alleged "snobbery" of those who refer to sf as speculative fiction. The term was pushed by science fiction authors who were trying to expand the type of fiction that magazine editor/publisher types would publish, as well as to get more money per word. Not snobbery at all.

But a question- I've never read The Hunger Games or Twilight. The Twilight thing is admittedly a somewhat hypocritical manifestation of snobbery (I thoroughly enjoyed the True Blood series), but The Hunger Games deal is more a feeling that I won't be able to buy in to the super kids aspect of it. Thoughts?

[Parasaurolophus]

I dunno, it seems to me like that appeal only works because it hinges on snobbery--and when I read what people like Atwood have to say on the subject, I feel confirmed in my assessment! But I wouldn't want to die on that hill.

I heartily recommend the first Hunger Games book. I don't think it's too childish at all--it's rather closer in spirit to [ii]Lord of the Flies[/I] or White Fang, and I think adult readers are better rewarded than teens. The prequel and the third novel are, I think, largely over the heads of teens (and probably most adult readers too), but really rather interesting. They're ambitious projects, and the execution is mostly adequate to the task, though not phenomenal.

So, yeah. Read the first one, for sure. You'll see the teen lit threads, but they're not a problem--and actually, you'll have a better and more lectorally interesting/rewarding perspective on them (specifically,the love triangle) than teens do.

[apl68]

"Speculative fiction" is a little like "graphic novel."  Sometimes the way it is used in place of a term like "science fiction" or "comics" does raise a suspicion of pretension or snobbery.  But they're both fairly mainstream terms, embraced their respective communities.

[Morden]

Assorted Adrian Tchaikovsky, including some (but not all) of the Apt series (He really does like bugs, doesn't he?) and some of his novellas.
Gareth Powell: Stars and Bones
--75 years in the future, aliens have exiled the human race from Earth for the good of the planet; humans then encounter another alien being.
I haven't read any of Powell's work before. The premise was interesting, the writing OK, but I am getting tired of books where different chapters are told from the perspective of different characters. Is this a larger trend? (sparked perhaps by the success of the Corey Expanse series?) It just seems sloppy to me, and you wind up with characters who could be really interesting, but who just get to give their bit of exposition and then fade out. Even Ann Leckie does it in Translation State.
Terry Pratchett: Mort--it's cute, and you can certainly see his influence on Gaiman. I also started (but didn't finish) Elly Griffith's mystery Bleeding Heart Yard--where the sophomore university students are described reading Terry Pratchett. Mort did seem like something I would have enjoyed a lot more earlier. And Griffith's novel is another example of the each chapter has a different narrator style--which might be why I stopped.

[Parasaurolophus]

Assorted Adrian Tchaikovsky, including some (but not all) of the Apt series (He really does like bugs, doesn't he?) and some of his novellas.

He really, really likes bugs.

I am getting tired of books where different chapters are told from the perspective of different characters. Is this a larger trend? (sparked perhaps by the success of the Corey Expanse series?) It just seems sloppy to me, and you wind up with characters who could be really interesting, but who just get to give their bit of exposition and then fade out. Even Ann Leckie does it in Translation State.

I'm sure it's been around for ages and ages and ages, but I do think it became extra popular once people discovered George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (i.e. "Game of Thrones," for the uninitiated). (Robert Jordan did it for his enormous cast of characters in The Wheel of Time, but I think it was Martin's popularity that made it so.) I don't mind it, really, but it's hard to pull off well, and often the story just isn't complicated or extensive enough to merit it.

[hmaria1609]

The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1915)
This children's novel is new to me.
I've read and own her three best known novels (The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy).

[apl68]

The Last Fort, by Elizabeth Coatsworth.  It's an historical novel for younger readers about a young French colonist from Quebec who, in the aftermath of the British occupation of Quebec in 1763, heads for the Illinois region where there remains a French trading post that the British have not yet occupied.  He has a series of adventures along the way.  Elizabeth Coatsworth was a highly regarded historical novelist back around mid-century.  I read some of her work growing up during the 1970s.  I didn't read this one back in the day, but do recall a classmate doing a report on it.  It's a pretty well-written historical tale, but its sympathetic portrayal of colonists of European origin wouldn't pass muster today.  French-Canadian readers might also object to the way the protagonist eventually decides that maybe the hated English speakers aren't really so bad after all.


Also reading a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's lesser-known short stories.  Readable enough, without being some of his better work.  He wrote a lot of forgettable potboiler stuff.  Also a scholarly work on the experience of Germany in 1945, as the nation moved from final, catastrophic defeat to trying to get back on its feet under foreign occupation.  For all that they brought it upon themselves by following wicked leaders, it's impossible not to sympathize with what the German people went through when their efforts to conquer their neighbors finally went down in flames. 

[apl68]

The Last Human:  A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans, by Esteban Sarmiento, et. al.  Most popular treatments I've seen about human evolution tell a pretty simple and straightforward tale.  First, there was Australopithecus--basically a chimpanzee that walked upright.  Then Homo Habilis, who could use very simple stone tools and had a bit more brain capacity with which to figure them out.  Then Homo Erectus, about our size and shape, with enough brains to use (but maybe not make) fire.  Then Neanderthal Man, who was our direct ancestor...or maybe just a close cousin?...or maybe a sub-species of ourselves who interbred with early modern humans?  The conventional wisdom on Neanderthal seemed to change every decade or two.  And then, finally, fully modern humans.

The Last Human makes it clear that the story was a lot messier than that.  It's a kind of field guide to hominidae of the past.  First, a clutch of maybe-hominids from a couple million years back.  The scantness of the fossil record found so far makes it hard to tell which were actually hominids, and even exactly how many species there were.  Then we had several--exactly how many is still debated--of species of Australopithecus.  And several others, like Paranthropus Robustus that have gone back and forth on being considered Austrolopithecines. 

Then Homo Habilis and some other maybe-related hominids.  Then some very early Asian members of the genus Homo, including "Peking Man"--whose only known remains disappeared in shipment during World War II--and the dwarf Homo Floriensis, aka "the Hobbit," whose discovery some years back made everybody's jaws drop.  Then several more genus members, including Homo Erectus, and the Neanderthals, whom Sarmiento says probably had speech and the beginnings of culture, but were not our ancestors.  No mention here of the Denisovans, who are the latest wrinkle in the hominid story.

There were anywhere up to half a dozen or so hominids alive on this Earth at the same time for long stretches of prehistory.  And so much about them is still being debated, as new finds are being made and new methods turned to the evaluation of what we already have.  I guess it's another example of how the more we learn the less we know.  Which happens a lot in science.  It's kind of how science works--in answering questions, more questions come to light.

At any rate, it's a fascinating field of study, and Sarmiento and company give a good idea of its sheer complexity.  There are many full-color photos of elaborate, imaginative, but scientifically grounded (on the basis of current evidence) reconstructions of these earlier hominids.  The study of human origins and other prehistoric life will no doubt remain fascinating as long as new finds keep being made, and data keeps being crunched in new ways.  No wonder some scientists seem to love working in the field.