What have you read lately?

[hmaria1609]

That's a librarian for you!  Awhile back I temporarily salvaged a multi-volume Oxford set on British writers from Bede through the Victorian era that we had weeded from Reference and read through parts of it.  It was funny to see Anthony Trollope being dismissed as a minor novelist.  Evidently his reputation has grown since the early 1900s.

*Grins* Thanks! The book was in our general collection. There aren't many books written on the subject.

I've nabbed books that have been weeded from the library collection that interested me and didn't have to drop $ on them.
My all time find: a Croatian language book about the history of Croatia by Ivo Goldstein.

[apl68]

Say, how are your library operations shaping up as we head into a new academic year?

[hmaria1609]

Say, how are your library operations shaping up as we head into a new academic year?

I work in a large public library system. We have limited number of our branches open to the public and limiting how many can be inside the library at a time. It's closed stacks to the public.
I've seen some of our school aged kids (usually accompanied by adult) to check out books since we reopened in June. I saw the city public school system expanded the number of distribution sites for free meals and fresh grocery program heading into the new school year.

[apl68]

Say, how are your library operations shaping up as we head into a new academic year?

I work in a large public library system. We have limited number of our branches open to the public and limiting how many can be inside the library at a time. It's closed stacks to the public.
I've seen some of our school aged kids (usually accompanied by adult) to check out books since we reopened in June. I saw the city public school system expanded the number of distribution sites for free meals and fresh grocery program heading into the new school year.

We were just discussing this morning how we're getting fewer patrons, but they're often needing more involved service (To say nothing of the need to wipe frequently-touched surfaces down after them).  We did a LOT of faxes and scans yesterday, and photocopies of things that couldn't be readily run through the fax. 

Looks like we're going to need an upgrade on scanning equipment.  The pandemic has made it almost impossible for people to get photocopy and fax service locally anywhere else--right when more and more people are having to do business remotely.

[apl68]

Been reading through an omnibus edition of Booth Tarkington's works, including The Magnificent Ambersons.  Tarkington was both a bestselling selling novelist and a critical success a hundred years ago.  In the 1960s the academy seems to have decided that he was no longer worthy of serious study.  Nowadays he seems on the verge of being forgotten entirely.  I've seen it alleged that the critical neglect is due to his works containing no social criticism.  I've found them to hold quite a bit of criticism of contemporary society's preoccupations with money, status, and economic growth at all costs.  He was also an early critic of automotive culture and its effects on society and the environment.

Magnificent Ambersons is in some ways a kind of saga of suburbanization.  The Ambersons made their name and fortune after the Civil War by developing an upscale suburb called the Amberson Addition.  For roughly a generation the Addition served as an idyllic, genteel enclave for its privileged residents.  During the same period the Ambersons reveled in their status as the richest and most prominent family in town.

But continued urban growth and the rise of the automobile cause the Ambersons and their Addition to be left hopelessly behind.  In only a decade or so the posh Addition becomes a has-been neighborhood of spec houses, apartments, and the occasional run-down mansion turned boarding house.  Protagonist George Minafer, only son of old Amberson's daughter, spends his twenties watching bewildered and helpless as the glittering world of his youth, and his family's fortune and status, all vanish before his eyes like a puff of cloud.  Readers today know that in the years to come the new suburbs that stole the Amberson Addition's thunder will be left behind in turn by still further waves of change.

Since Tarkington was himself a child of a rich family that lost much of its fortune--though not to the point where they couldn't support his ambition to become a writer--it might be tempting to write all this off as simple nostalgia for lost privilege and an imagined golden age.  There's more to it than that.  The reference to the Ambersons as "magnificent" is clearly ironic.  There's nothing admirable about their foolish pride in their wealth and the way they let it be frittered away.  Tarkington is pretty merciless in depicting young George as a vain rich kid who's spoiled so rotten he practically stinks on ice. 

The novel ultimately comes across as a meditation on the fleeting nature of wealth and status in a society where prolonged rapid population growth and economic change repeatedly condenses a century's worth of economic and social change into a few decades.  Poor George's plight could even be seen as emblematic of millions of Americans of today who, raised to consider prosperity and security their birthrights, find it all evaporating now.  Maybe Booth Tarkington is more relevant now than we give him credit for.

[Parasaurolophus]

August's haul:

Sue Burke - Interference: This is the sequel to Semiosis, and it's also very good. I quite liked the premise--militaristic re-colonists arrive from Earth to re-establish contact--and very much enjoyed the bleak glimpses of Earth, with hints of another sentience on the planet. The names of things were better balanced in this one.

Larry Niven, Steven Barnes, and Jerry Pournelle - Starborn and Godsons: Coincidentally, the premise is basically identical to Interference's. It's OK. We don't get much in the way of new critters, which is a disappointment. The foreword makes it clear that the cool ecology in the other two was entirely down to an outside biology consultant, which sort of raises the question why we aren't reading that guy, instead, since he did such a bang-up job before. Pournelle died 3/4 of the way through, and it shows: there's much less misogyny (although it's still there). Much less cruelty to animals, too, although it's also still there. What's missing, which made the other two really fun, are the Grendel POVs. Also, however, there's a bunch of stuff that seems to go against events in the first two novels, suggesting at least one of the three didn't bother re-reading them before starting this one. The transitions are weird and hackneyed, and much of the novel feels... unpolished and perhaps incomplete.

Angus Donald - Robin Hood and the Caliph's Gold: I was delighted to discover this, since the Robin Hood series was supposed to be over (it is: this is an interlude). It's self-ish published (via Amazon), so it's full of typos, but it's good fun. It's a delight to revisit the characters. I'd be happy to read more of these--indeed, it looks like at least one more is planned, in addition to a new series (with vikings!).

Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless: Fenchurch disappears for a plot point and isn't heard from again, and her absence from the story is pretty conspicuous (not in a good way). On the whole, I think it was mostly better than the previous two. It ends abruptly without ending, however.

Eoin Colfer - And Another Thing...: This is a sequel to Mostly Harmless. Colfer mostly just goes for random and zany, although he occasionally gets the tone just right (and when he does, it's great, and as close to Adams as I think you'll get). Vogons and Thor are prominent, and well-rendered; Wowbagger, too. But mostly, it just plods on without much rhyme or reason, and with a distinct sense of trying too hard. Fenchurch is just about totally absent, although she's referred to a fair bit, and the absence is just weird. Like, I don't mean that she should be a character again. Just that she's a plot point not driving any plot, and that's pretty unsatisfying (not to mention boring).


I nearly finished Defoe, too, but am still a few pages short, so that'll be for September's report. Haven't found my Watts posts yet, but I'll keep looking. I definitely have them somewhere.

[hmaria1609]

Apl68, there were two adaptations of The Magnificent Ambersons. There was a black and white movie in 1942. I watched the 2002 version on A&E in college, starring Johnathan Rhys Meyers as George.

[ergative]

Parasaurolophus, what do you think about the plants' plans? Benign well-wishers, like (probably) Steveland, or incipient dictators just biding their time? I really can't tell.

I've been enjoying Seth Dickinson's Masquerade series very much. The first book, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, was a perfect reading experience: rich world-building, twisty political maneuverings, lots of bureaucratic competence porn, and a twist at the end that, in retrospect, was pretty obviously telegraphed but somehow came out of nowhere. Now I'm reading the sequel, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which is not quite as good in some ways: the competence porn is breaking down a bit, and the characters who were so perfectly in control of all the threads of their shenanigans are beginning to lose control, not just of their plots (which is fine), but also of their own composure, which seems a little bit out of character for them. But that's a very personal preference. The book itself is lots of fun and the world-building is being expanded and enriched in new ways. The third book in the series came out last month, and I'm looking forward to finishing it. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes this sort of rich twisty political stuff.

[nebo113]

Re-reading Dorothy Sayers.  Just finished "Gaudy Night" and now immersed in 'Nine Tailors" though will never truly grasp bell ringing.

[apl68]

Apl68, there were two adaptations of The Magnificent Ambersons. There was a black and white movie in 1942. I watched the 2002 version on A&E in college, starring Johnathan Rhys Meyers as George.

That's interesting.  I saw the Orson Welles adaptation on Turner Classic Movies some years ago, but don't remember a great deal about it.  I didn't know about the more recent version.  I'd like to see them both sometime.  I'd also like to watch the 1930s version of Alice Adams.

[Parasaurolophus]

Parasaurolophus, what do you think about the plants' plans? Benign well-wishers, like (probably) Steveland, or incipient dictators just biding their time? I really can't tell.

I think it's generally the latter, although there's some hope for the bamboo who's had a foot in the other shoe. Stevland's mentions of the bamboo seem to lend credence to the latter interpretation, although the groves on Pax seem to indicate that Stevland's not alone in its beneficence.

TBH, I found Stevland pretty terrifying and dictatorial for most of the first book, and I think I was right to do so. The push for moderator, in particular, seemed to bode rather ill. I thought it would be the culmination point. But I was wrong, because Stevland... grew? Matured. Genuinely changed. I thought it was well done, and a nice twist on the usual way of resolving conflicts. So, anyway: I think all that is true in the story.

[nonsensical]

I am close to finishing Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, which I just started last night. It usually takes me a few weeks to read through a book, but this one was ... engrossing. And just wonderful in so many ways. It's a book about the intersecting lives of two families and follows members of these families over several decades. It has interesting things to say about redemption and navigating pain across long periods of time. In general I like novels that focus on families and relationships, and I like being able to follow the same characters over many years. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite novels of this type. (A Prayer for Owen Meaney and A Little Life are other favorites in this genre, though these are both books I read a while ago.]

[paultuttle]

She doesn't go into the factories with Hardy, or visit London's low-rent tenements as Dickens later did, but her characters are not all playing tea party games; many, in seeking viable marriages, were fighting for their lives, as things were then.

M.

Which, from what I understand, is what keeps her from being regarded as just a forerunner of the romance novel genre, as some of her less in-the-know fans seem to imagine.  A woman in her society had to make the best marriage she could, or she was likely condemned to a lifetime of being a poor relation or worse.  There really is a lot at stake in her novels.  That was clear even in Northhanger Abbey.

I've just reread Pride and Prejudice (and rewatched the 2005 film twice or three times--it's on Netflix). Each time, I was struck by how strongly Liddy's elopement with Wickham affected the entire family, and how notable it must have been in that time period for not one, but two, wealthy gentlemen to offer marriage to the two oldest sisters in the family.

Mrs. Bennet's character's question in the 2005 film was particularly poignant: "Who will have you now, with a fallen sister?"

It just underscored to me how narrow the line was between "respectable" and "not," and how much our cultural mores have changed since that time.

They really were "fighting for their lives"; there was indeed quite "a lot at stake" in a time when the actions of one person could well be seen as revealing the fundam(n)ental immorality of the entire family.

[ab_grp]

We finished Chaos Vector (O'Keefe), second in a trilogy.  It was nearly as good as the first book.  I am wondering if I liked the first one so much because it was so different from other space operas I've read, plus I think it was her first novel, so I was very impressed.  She writes with charisma and has constructed some really well-built and enjoyable characters.  I like the mix of political intrigue and action and the way that the story arcs intertwine.   I'm definitely looking forward to the third book and am interested to read the sneak peek at the end of the current one.  I fell asleep during the final two pages of the book last night (naturally, not the book's fault) so didn't get to read the sneak peek yet.

Next on the list is one of the other books I got for husband's birthday: Leviathan Wakes (Corey, which I now see is a pen name).  I tried to get several first-in-a-series, highly rated sci fi novels so that we have some further paths to explore if we like the writing.  I didn't realize until just now that this one is part of The Expanse, which I have heard good and less good things about.

[mamselle]

Re-reading Dorothy Sayers.  Just finished "Gaudy Night" and now immersed in 'Nine Tailors" though will never truly grasp bell ringing.

Ah, Sayers!

I've re-read Gaudy Night several times; probably due for another one soon.

PM my with your questions about bell-ringing. My god-sister directs the bell-ringers at a colonial church with a full peal, and I used to ring with them.

M.