silverflight8 | Entries tagged with reading

I've been trying to learn more about natural history, especially deep time, and I've been trying to read general books on the subject. I have a pretty decent grasp of the time scales now - that took awhile to grasp, since we're not great at really understanding the difference between 5 million, 50 million, and 500 million years, not to mention 5 billion. I also read a couple pretty good general popular science books on the subject.

I took a lot of science in high school but although the curriculum very good, we never did cover biological classification, taxonomy, etc. So I tried to find textbooks about cladistics, specifically. I am so interested in this reconstruction of the tree of life - and staggered at how much I don't know (and frankly what the field doesn't know) about the species that populate it. Even leaving aside most the tree, which is bacteria and archaea, where I know almost nothing, even the animal branch is very very full of things I still know nothing about, even when considering phylum level classifications. Cnidaria, I know they're sea dwelling and often jelly, but what are the defining characteristics? My god there are so many worm phyla! (At least I recognize Annelida). I think I've confused brachiopods and bryozoa. I can't deal with the number of species described in Arthropoda - it dwarfs every other animal phyla. And phylum is one step down from kingdom. On the tiniest branch! There is just so much detail that you could drown in.

I don't have access to an academic library anymore - I could get an alumni pass by paying money but I don't even live in the same country anymore - so I turned to ILL, which is one of the best things in the world. The site's kinda finicky to use so I just sorta guessed and ordered a few books. I ended up with Biogeography: an Ecological and Evolutionary Approach by Cox, and Species & Speciation in the Fossil Record edited by Allmon & Yacobucci. Unfortunately I ran out of time to actually read cover to cover but I did enormously enjoy both. I mentioned to someone at work how much I enjoy reading them, and it made me think of the difference in difficulty. Work isn't difficult. There is definitely work to be done, there can be challenges in figuring out how best to do it with the resources available, how we can optimize our processes, and of course lots and lots of detail to absorb, the firm handles billions in assets so risk & control etc blah blah blah, but it's certainly not a challenge in the same intellectual way that thinking about these problems are.

( It was so interesting to read. )

I'd still like to get a good general grasp of the tree of life, as neither of these books actually had a good list. I kind of fear that a real list would just be too much information unconnected to anything - despite all of this, I'm not into this in order to memorize hundreds of phylum names or anything, that's not the point. But they were very interesting reading.

Back to ILL!

Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/422337.html

Trying to write a summary for War and Peace is hard. It's a novel that spans the years 1805-1820, through the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic wars, and follows the interlinking stories of three aristocratic families: the Rostovs, Bolkonskis, and Bezukhov. The novel opens as the old Count Bezukhov is dying and his relations are jockeying for his favour in the will. The major characters are Nicholas Rostov, the Rostovs' eldest, who buys a commission in the army as a cavalry officer; Natasha, his sister, who is just coming of age; Andrei Bolkonski, a young man who also goes into the army, against his idol Napoleon, but struggles with unhappiness; Maria Bolkonskaya, his sister, a deeply religious young woman who is stuck in the countryside with their father, a distinguished retired general; Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate, awkward son of the count who ends up inheriting the title and immense wealth. The novels draw in a huge, sprawling cast of characters that interact with the core families, including both supporting characters that reappear periodically, like the Kuragins and various aristocratic members; and others appear once and are just incidental, but the overall effect is a very dense novel with a lot of elaboration even at the level of small everyday incidents. In addition, especially as the novel progresses, Tolstoy uses the story to illustrate or encapsulate his theories on how history is created: not only how it is recorded, which is not his focus, but what events and people create the headlining events that stand out, like war, the actual influence of historical figures, and especially in the end, the relative impact of free will in the events of history and the way he believes the "science of history" does and should operate.

I read the Duke edition, which was translated into English by Aylmer and Louise Shanks Maude. They worked with Tolstoy on their translation, although that's not why I picked the text. I think I was just looking for an edition that the library had and that was not abridged. If their translation is accurate and faithful to the Russian text, and I have no reason to believe it's not (readers in Russian definitely add your input!) the prose is extremely straightforward and the ornamentation entirely lacking. I would call the prose completely unadorned and that the stories are conveyed with a dry recitation of actions. Sometimes the emotions of the character whose perspective the novel is focusing on at that moment, or else a recounting of various political moves made over some time. This is not a novel with elaborate, indulgent descriptions of landscapes or settings. There are no prose tricks. The depth of the book is really in its many, many, many small stories. There are full-length adaptations in their own right that only use material from a few chapters, like the musical.

I generally enjoyed reading the narrative/story sections, whether it was drawing rooms of the wealthy or the battlefield, or whatnot. Increasingly towards the end, Tolstoy uses the novel to discuss his views on how history works. The novel takes place against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, and of course the person Napoleon as well as the other major leaders - the Emperor of Russia, the generals that lead the armies - are conventionally seen as directing and changing the course of history, a view Tolstoy disagrees with. He argues that the leaders are pushed by the actions of the armies and people that they head, that the chaos of the battlefield and army make it impossible to actually direct them and enforce real orders. And this is supported, of course, by the densely layered stories all piled together in the novel, because no matter how trivial the scene is, Tolstoy handles them with the same kind of prose, point of view, etc, no matter whether it's a snippet of the boredom of the cavalry and going off and having little amusements or Kutuzov meeting with his adjutants. They all get space and arguably the smaller stories receive much more.

The last epilogue (which is several chapters long) is almost entirely devoted to the question of free will and history, how history could be scientifically treated, which I won't encapsulate here, mostly because I found them incredibly uninteresting and disagreed in several parts. I do generally agree that the view of history which only follows the actions of the very top to be pretty incomplete. Tolstoy argues that it's essentially not the genius or vision or whatever other quality of Napoleon (to take the most prominent example of his time) that shaped that era of history; it's just that Napoleon inhabits a highly-visible role that all these momentous events get attributed to him. I agree and disagree - I definitely agree that given communication technology of the day, orders would be relayed with extremely variable reliability and speed. Your couriers could die on the way to delivering your message and you might not find out till much later! But it's not true that Napoleon had no impact, or that his decisions did not have an outsize impact compared to an man who did not have his position or his personal influence. And the army is composed of many individuals, and acts because each of them acts, and they will make their own decisions to some degree - but swapping out someone random into a role like Napoleon's would not present the same choices to individual cavalrymen. Even some of the Russians, like Andrei Bolkonski, are admirers of Napoleon, and it's hard to see how Napoleon's decisions are all inconsequential.

Incidentally, as the novel goes on, the feeling that Tolstoy did not like Napoleon strengthens, which I found amusing.

I also think that history's focus has broadened considerably from his day. There has been a lot more scholarly research into how the rest - the majority - of the population lived, even those who couldn't read or write, who lived away from urban centers, who couldn't leave their individual histories the way the rich could. I know medieval history best, so what's studied are, for example, the manorial court rolls, where the peasantry could seek redress for various grievances, some small and some large. Not a complete picture but at least a glimpse.

One of the things I noticed about the characterization is that it's quite neutral and compassionate. One of the first characters seen in the book is Prince Vasily Kuragin, who is at Anna Petrovna's party in order to curry favour with the wealthy and powerful attending her (not very interesting) salon. Neither his daughter nor son are very nice either, which doesn't suggest good things about Prince Vasily either. But I wouldn't say that the text ever calls or even really implies that he's a slimy little thing. Instead it says that Vasily probably didn't even think of it as a deliberate attempt to climb - just that he was made like that and he felt it was the right, instinctive thing to do. Characterization of Nikolai Rostov was also similarly drawn. I personally think that Nikolai is a spoiled young man who's never had to survive in the world - son of a count, with a commission in the cavalry, he mostly does as he's told and tries to appear dashing and gallant. When his family's finances start to plunge, he returns home, half-heartedly tries to do something about it, and, upon failing after speaking to the estate manager once (once), he just goes back to going to parties and gambling and such. After all, what can he do? If he were competent and good at this, he would be frankly a strange character. Where would he ever learn to have this spine for dealing with distasteful or uninteresting work?

Finally I want to say that I hated a few characters and found them personally repellent. Like the older Prince Bolkonski, the father of Andrei and Maria. Maria lives with her father in the countryside, pretty much buried in obscurity, and she's constantly bullied by her father, who the narrative describes as treating her that way because he loves her. Yes, he may do so - but he constantly berates and belittles her, and makes her life a complete misery, even though she's probably one of the kindest characters in the novels. What is in your heart doesn't matter much when every action you take hurts the person you love! What difference does it make to Maria? Andrei Bolkonski - I tried to come up with a description but an eyeroll interrupted me. He repeatedly cycles through being extremely cynical and depressed, then having this epiphany of his capability of happiness and bliss, and then back again, in a way that suggests that he'll always be in this cycle. He's someone who will keep having the same epiphanies over and over again, and none of them will ever stick. I was honestly cheering for his death midway through the novel (before the shell - just wanted him gone) and the trope of losing the will to live is not my favourite either.

And finally. The treatment of Natasha Rostova. My overwhelming impression is one of "wow, Tolstoy is such a man writing about a young girl becoming a woman". There's no other way I can put it. I could not think of anything else while reading her story. It's not exactly creepy. It just leans so much on the innocence and the unartfulness - Natasha's as-of-yet mostly untaught voice is one manifestation, beautiful and of course never learned, then that would be unnatural - and joy and such. And maybe this is way too much influence of growing up in the recent century, but have you met an adolescent girl before?! We were not so joyously gay and springing of girlish glee. Young girls have a range of emotions greater than wide-eyed happiness. Where Maria Bolkonskaya represents the soulful, pious woman, Natasha is the giggling, child-like dream girl. Natasha does become depressed after the Anatole incident - but bleh, it's caused by a man, of course. There's nothing else that could cause characterization shifts - not war sweeping the whole continent.

So - should you read War and Peace? Well, what do you like in a novel? If you're after a lot of small, interlocking stories, or a novel with decades' worth of scope in a time of a lot of political tumult, probably! Do you want to hear someone's views on the prevailing theories of history and his suggested framework? Skip to the end to save some time, but yes. I don't regret reading it, and there were parts where I liked it and wanted to keep reading because of the storyline, but there were equal parts where I trudged through, hoping something more interesting would reappear.

[Note: the latest review I have ever written. I finished the book in February, started writing the review mid-May. To be fair, there were some extenuating circumstances. But this would probably be more fulsome if I'd written it earlier.]

Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/420479.html

and I feel shattered. It was really, really good. It will stand up to a lot of re-reading and I know I will get a lot out of it. That glacier trek, oh my god. And I can't imagine what it must have been like to read it 50 years ago, 1969.

( spoilers )

Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/417237.html

I have to review some of Sharon Shinn's Samaria novels. I both enjoyed them and am loling greatly.

Here's the series description from her website:

In Samaria, angels raise their beautiful voices to intercede with the god Jovah on behalf of humans. Because their ancestors fled centuries ago from the violence of a war-torn planet, harmony is prized among all people. But sometimes the divine music of the angels is not enough to prevent conflict among mortals—and sometimes the god can’t even hear the angels singing.

I read Archangel, which is about the archangel Gabriel on the eve of his becoming archangel, and he's looking for a wife, who will sing next to him on the Plain of Sharon. Every year the disparate nation tribes gather in harmony and the archangel and spouse open the ceremonial singing. If the singing does not happen, Jovah will first smite the mountain, then the rest of Samaria. His Kiss, which is a crystal embedded in his arm that speaks to Jovah, says his wife is Rachel, who is one of the Edori, who live nomadic lives almost completely separate from Jovah. And she does not want to involve herself in the politics of the angels.

I also read Angelica set before Archangel, which gives strong hints about what Jovah is. There are mysterious strangers that are able to appear and disappear with unnatural speed, and can cause huge destruction with flame. It's about Archangel Gabriel (another one) and Susannah, his wife, and then Miriam, Gabriel's sister, who meets one of the strangers while running away with the Edori.

Finally I read Angel-Seeker, which is two stories. One is about Elizabeth, who takes off from being a housekeeper in her relative's home, where she's treated as a poor dependent, and tries to make her fortune in the city by birthing an angelic child. Mothers of angel children are mostly set up for life, because of how rare the angels are. Then it is the story of Obadiah, one of the angels, and Rebekah, who is a Jansai woman who lives under the extremely restrictive conditions all Jansai women do.

This is the mainstream published wingfic, I swear. It's never been a genre that particularly appeals to me, but lots of the hallmark traits (the temptation that angels present to writers?) is right there and it was incredible to read it in published fiction and have tag names float through my mind. The wings are of course sensitive to touch and angels are twitchy about people (especially clueless humans) touching them. Their metabolism burns hot so they only wear leather. All the angels are beautiful. It followed fandom's wingfic in so many ways - Sharon Shinn's novels are in the fantasy and romance junction, except I would say she leans more fantasy - that I was frequently pulled out of the narrative to laugh. Not that there's anything wrong with wingfic. Iddy stuff is iddy, and I obviously enjoyed the books enough to read three of them in a row! But it made me wonder if theyr'e tropes that just seem to evolve out of angelic literature, or if liking these tropes makes wingfic more appealing, or what. I don't think Shinn is involved in fandom, though I could be wrong.

What I think is a super interesting aspect of the books is the science fiction part. The world of Samaria is like a pre-industrial world, but there are lots of hints that there are more advanced societies. For one, even the religion records that they were not from Samaria originally, that they were carried there "in Jovah's hand" to a new place where there was not so much conflict and strife. The angels, who are able to fly, are able to make intercessions - they can fly up and sing and cause the weather to change, they can ask for rains of medicine to fall, and the medicine that falls are clearly pills. Most fun of all is Angelica. As Miriam first nurses and then starts to teach the stranger how to speak the common language of Samaria, she discovers that they have some words with the same roots, and eventually finds out that he arrived in a spaceship of some kind. And then, when the strangers are trying to destroy Samaria, Susannah can't sleep one night at the oracle's place. Believing herself to be sleeping, she walks to the place where there's an odd interface, and is told to close her eyes for a minute (while Jovah beams her up inside - Jovah is an orbiting spacecraft). She has to reposition Jovah's artillery, which destroys the spacecraft of the strangers who are waging war on Samaria with vastly more advanced weapons. I found this personally super interesting. It's something about the contrast of the deeply fantasy setting and the science fiction. Though Jovah is obviously AI - it speaks, it understands - I don't see why it couldn't reposition its artillery itself.

Personally, I probably dislike Angel-Seeker most. I like that Shinn just took head-on the subject of Elizabeth going to the city to get pregnant with an angel baby. It's an interesting story and also has plenty of terribly prosaic and unromantic attempts - angels are encouraged to be licentious in the hopes that one of their children is angelic, because they're so rare, and they play pretty important roles; in a world so dependent on fairly un-technological agriculture (this is not a world with the Fritz-Haber process), weather control is pretty important, among other things. But Rebekah's society, arrgggh. Men and women live in separate parts of the house, the men have all the outward facing roles and tasks and all the power, the fathers choose marriage and the women aren't even allowed to meet the men they marry. All women are veiled outside the house. And if you are caught outside, the women get thrown into the desert to be stoned, and then die of exposure. It's not enjoyable reading and the women around Rebekah aren't very pleasant to her either; her mother regards her as useless (except Rebekah has to do all the baby-caring because her mother's just "too tired") and the children with her current husband the much more important offspring. It was not fun to read. I hate these plotlines.

I read these three because they were borrowable at the library. Actually that's true of plenty of my reading. I really need to read Alleluia Files, which goes much more into detail of what people believe Jovah is - and some being to suspect it's a ship.

Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/416650.html

(and I'd like to say that I have my computer screen half-and-half with this Create Entries on the right, and an Excel spreadsheet of this year's reading on the left, for reference).

*I think I talked about Mary Beard's SPQR and...uh...I just went back. No, I did not talk about that.

Mary Beard - SPQR
- I really liked this. I only have a glancing, overview knowledge of classical antiquity, so this was extremely helpful. It's a very high level overview, starting all the way from the mythical beginnings of Rome.

- One of the things I really appreciated about SPQR is how clear Beard was about presenting the evidence (this is the observations we have from archaeology) and then presenting her interpretation, as well as other scholars'. I can turn off my brain for fiction, mostly, but it's hard to do in non-fiction that wants to teach, so I appreciate how she really laid out the evidence. Not to mention it's interesting to me to see what kind of evidence exists, how we use it, etc.

Robin Lafevers - Dark Triumph
-This is a YA about young women in a convent dedicated to Mortain, the god of death. They are trained as assassins, and play silent roles in the medieval Brittany in which they live. This is basically so many things I love all bundled up.

- Alas that it is YA. I don't know what it is, but it's some combination of this writing style that seems to be so uniform across the genre, and shallow treatment of everything. I've spilled enough e-ink on how I don't think grittier = realer, but I feel like maybe the length isn't enough, or there just isn't enough treatment, because everything feels superficial. I've mostly given up on YA at this point.

- Also. ( SPOILERS as this is the third book )

- However. Obviously, considering that I read all three books....Can we make these medieval assassination convents a trope themselves? I would read so many...

Seth Dickinson - The Traitor Baru Cormorant
- One of the best fantasy novels I've read this year. Baru Cormorant sees the invaders come to her island as a little girl, sees her mother and two fathers torn apart, goes to the colonists' boardingschool at her island. And she scores exceptionally, and is granted a post as Imperial Accountant at distant Aurdwynn. Aurdwynn is full of rebellion, and she intends to forment it, and use her position to destroy the Empire of Masks.

- It's hard to describe all the things I loved about this novel, not least because there are a lot of twists, and it would ruin the novel if I talked about them in my enticement.

- I thought it was a very clear, unflinching look at imperialism and its expansion. Baru herself is clear-eyed too, and pretty much prepares herself to be just as hard. Such a good character - it's from her perspective, but you don't get that softening as you see the internal thoughts the way you do with a lot of "from the perspective of villain" stories. Which isn't to say Baru is a villain. It's complicated.

- It's also quietly beautiful in prose. It was written in a way that induces rapid page turning because OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED i can't turn pages fast enough, but there was an understated, unshowy gorgeous prose.

- That ending was hard to read. It hurt.

- I'm a huge nerd and enjoyed that monetary policy got a look in. Though...if your economy isn't very developed (as Aurdwynn's is, because it's still mostly agrarian without a ton of loans, the loans are to the nobility mostly), I'm not sure how much of a lever monetary policy is. But I digress. The one part I totally call BS on is Baru reconciling the accounts of a country in one day. I'm sorry HAHAHAHAHA NO. oh my god especially since they're all on paper do you know how long those columns of numbers to add up are?

- But really. I loved the politicking, the characters, the plot, the writing, solid 10/10 would recommend.

Elizabeth Wein - The Winter Prince
- About Medraut, and his relationship basically to Arthur's son.

- Somehow my copy had these illustrations at the heading of every chapter, and they were distracting; they were black and white pen drawings, and they looked amateur. The net result on me was that I would go from emotionally quite engaging and fraught scenes, to un-skippable drawings that reminded me of angsty teenagers, which meant I got taken out of the novel every chapter.

- There's more incest than I expected. And it being Arthurian lit, I expected incest.

- I don't know. I don't feel very motivated to read more Elizabeth Wein, to be honest. I know people rave about Code Name Verity, but meh.

Chris Hadfield - An Astrounaut's Guide to Life on Earth
- Chris Hadfield - Canadian astronaut, commander of the ISS - wrote an autobiography.

- Mostly what I've come away with is that I would love to meet Chris, he really does come across as an incredibly good and humble and persevering person. I also enjoyed learning about what kind of training the astronauts get, mentally and physically, in the real world. I like space opera! It's neat to see what actually happens outside stories. It's as much a story about what happens before anyone can go to space as it is about the fun quirks of what life in space is like. Staggering amounts of work.

Dorothy Dunnett - Niccolo Rising
- Historical novel about Nicholas de Fleury, a dyer's apprentice, set in 15th century Bruges to start. It's part of an eight-novel series that follows him - mind like a whip, full of schemes and ambitions, but irrepressibly cheerful despite the beatings.

- One reviewer described it as "pungently historical" (paraphrase) which I agree with. It's obvious Dunnett did her research. There are also real life figures that appear as minor characters - I saw one of them's portraits in the Met on Saturday! That was like an unexpected Easter egg in real life.

- I also found this to be a slog initially. Until about 40%. You're left to draw your own conclusions a great deal, and there are a lot of names and places and relationships to keep track of, and if you read it piecemeal like at lunch in 5 min snatches between getting distracted, it's kind of hard to enjoy. But then the plot picked up and it flew. Some very good twists, especially with Katalina.

- On the other hand, the next seven books are daunting. I'm not sure I want to start one any time soon...

- These also tie into her more famous Lymond series. Niccolo is an ancestor, I believe.

Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
- Murder mystery, where ten guests are summoned to an island, each by a different person they'd answer a summons for, to attend a party. The host just doesn't show up and the whole party is marooned on the island - deliberately, apparently. And then one by one, they all begin to die...

- I am a wimp and it totally gave me the creeps. It's very much the locked room mystery - one of those characters is a murderer!!!

- If you read too many Christie mysteries (actually, golden age mysteries in general) you notice a lot of character archetypes that crop up frequently. Young society miss, red-faced colonel who rather wishes he was still in the war, the misfit only American there, etc. I offer this observation not as an insult or accusation, but just as an observation.

all of Prospero's War, Dirty Magic to Volatile Bonds by Jaye Wells
- Think police procedural except in novel form, and instead of the war on drugs, potions and magic have taken the place of cocaine and heroin. Kate Prospero is a beat cop that patrols the magic side of the city, but her position is somewhat precarious and unusual; she grew up as the niece of Abraxas Prospero, who was gang leader of one of the three strongest covens that operated in the city. Abraxas is in prison now, she refuses to touch potion cooking, and is raising her younger brother. But her strong desire to do right by the city draws her into conflicts about all this.

- I actually really like Kate as a character. She's complicated and has a lot of conflicting loyalties. She's very against using magic - she attends an AA style magic-rejecting group (people get addicted to potions) - she was a very talented potion cooker as a girl - the police force use 'clean' magic to operate more effectively - 'clean' magic is just what mainstream drug companies use, 'dirty' is street, there's regulation but really it's magic anyway. And her little brother wants to cook potions...

- The internal police politicking sounds quite realistic. And exhausting.

- But let's be real. I am desperately awaiting the next book because I am so interested in Volos/Kate becoming a thing. It's the emotional core of all this, and it's a hell of a magnet.

Nate Silver - The Signal and the Noise
- Non-fiction, about statistical modelling. Nate Silver runs FiveThirtyEight, which rose to fame during the 2008 American presidential elections run-up; his modelling of the electoral college was both very accurate and fairly precise.

- It is a book written to appeal to a broad base of people, so there really was not much math in it. Some graphs, which was nice, but I wanted more statistical treatment (ugh go read a textbook.) He focuses heavily on Bayesian statistics, which, to prosify and simplify hard, means you should make a prediction initially based on your knowledge, then incorporate further evidence and weigh it more heavily depending on how confident you were in your initial prediction and how un-like your initial prediction was.

- Some of the cases, like epidemiology and economics, I found much more interesting than the poker and baseball bits. I just don't care that much about poker and baseball...but Silver does, and sabermetrics is how he got interested in statistics in the first place.

- Silver also references some very random things, and will allude at intervals to isolated historical facts or incidents or pop culture, and I don't really think it adds much to the credibility of the book. It doesn't discredit but I've always hated the way that introductions to subjects - like accounting - must always dive into a poorly researched and not terribly interesting historical diversion to pull as an example 15th c Italian double-bookkeeping as The First Accounting, or worse, pull even more loose examples like shopping lists etched on stone tablets... Stick to your own damn expertise, I am not interested in Your Thoughts On Something You Do Not Study.

Michael Scott Rohan - The Hammer of the Sun
- The third book of the original trilogy, it's a high fantasy set in an interglacial period. The protagonist is Elof Valantor, a smith, and other than the interglacial setting, it's otherwise quite standard high fantasy in technology levels, magic presence, fantastical species, etc. It picks up seven years after the previous Forge in the Forest - I do love the evocativeness of the titles - and Elof tries to chain his love to him. Oh, he has his justifications, he fears the influence of an evil Louhi over his wife, but that's what he tries to do, and it backfires on him spectacularly. She shapeshifts into a bird and flies away, and he takes a boat and pursues...

- This is the third book that I read, so obviously it was not intolerable. But I read this book in a fit of apathy. By which I mean, I would open up Moonreader on my phone, and The Hammer of the Sun would be already loaded and open to the last page, and I wasn't feeling like reading it but also without enough emotional energy to start something new...so I kept reading.

- Seriously, the part where he tries to chain Kara bothered me so much. Obviously the narrative doesn't agree with his decision, since she kind of just flees, but...he also just goes and pursues her, which was eyeroll-inducing.

- The most interesting thing about these books is actually the glaciers and their inexorable advance. It's weird to read it today, because climate change seems to be happening also inexorably, in the other direction, and it's been hot, and in temperatures like this I feel like packing up and moving to Nunavut.

- I do not like Elof. He has never interested me in the slightest. I wish there was a more personable and interesting character to center the books around. I can't believe I read three books' worth of mediocre fantasy for glaciers...

- The prose, bless it, tried so hard. It used big words and grown-up constructions, but it never actually clicked properly. There's an incredibly satisfying feeling you get when you read someone like Diana Wynn Jones' writing, for example - it's a little tongue in cheek, but not arch, and the words and descriptions fit so perfectly, and so unerringly describe sensations and sights that it's a pleasure to just take in the words. Or authors who can give their work a sweeping depth that transports you. This was none of this, and the subtly not quite there constructions were distracting instead.

- It's so trying after Tolkien it's just embarrassing instead. After I finished the book, I went onto Goodreads. I didn't mean to - I just googled first. There's a reason I'm not on Goodreads, and I speedily remembered why. There are many people that I would sincerely like to take a look out their eyes sometime, because I don't understand. So many white men writing glowing praises of the prose and how it's like Tolkien and I think we have read different copies. Oh yes, it's like Tolkien, in that it's a heavily watered down attempt.

- Oh my god it was so slowwwww, the first half, the sea-journey. I just did not care for Elof. I did not care for his journey. I thought his companion Roc was a fool for coming with him. I thought Elof's total fear for the Ice vaguely ridiculous.

OK, I've done a bunch. Gotta sleep. Still a few more to go, including DOROTHY SAYERS ♥

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/413542.html

I considered writing a review of Walden and On The Duty of Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, but I've decided I'm just going to link this: Pond Scum, by Katheryn Schulz, who says it far more eloquently than I do.

But I struggled (and snarled) through it, so I'll say it as succinctly as I can: what a hypocritical, narcissistic, uncharitable and self-righteous worm. How dare you preach from above what you don't even adhere to (hungry, so walk to your mother's place half mile down the road?) How could you even dredge up the self-importance to say humanity's life is meaningless and worthless when you refuse to even live among people, to learn anything about humanity and civilization? How self-absorbed can you be to think living without a doormat makes you more "pure"? Did you lose your empathy, to say "I have tried [Doing-good] fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution", and feel proud of putting those words down?

You idolize subsistence farming because you never had to live it; you don't put manure down because you only expect to plant and harvest once. You look down on young people who have to go off to make their fortunes before they can "go up to the garret to write their poetry", because you're so myopic you can't understand not only poverty, but not even the whole class of people who have to make a living. You draw out sums that feed a single man in good health in good weather who owns his own property, but since everyone else is deaf and blind to all the truths you see, surely this is enough for all other lives and families. And there isn't even internal consistency! Is having an editor also impure, Thoreau?

P.S. a hundred Romantic poets, novelists, and essayists did nature writing better.

Current Mood: infuriated
Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/403146.html

So I am grumpy tonight, but man, Every Heart A Doorway. I should have a tag that simultaneously expresses my love for libraries and annoyance: #backtothelibrarybin #wouldhavethrownagainstwall #exceptlibrarybook #nextreaderbeware #wouldveburnt #exceptlibrarybook

(camelcase, what's camelcase? it doesn't look as good, ok)

Crossposts: https://silverflight8.livejournal.com/402705.html

I really wanted to like this book. It's about the Library, which is an organization set apart in time and space, which agents that go out into various alternate universes to retrieve books. Sometimes undercover, sometimes timetravelling. Irene is suddenly sent out to retrieve a dangerous item, accompanied by a rookie agent she's never met.

One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction...

Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen.

London's underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested—the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something—secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself.

Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option—because it isn’t just Irene’s reputation at stake, it’s the nature of reality itself...

(from Amazon's blurb)

( But oh my god, I think my doneness with steampunk is getting to me. )

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/400648.html

9/10: I joined a book club (women read fantasy!) and so far I've really enjoyed it. I don't know why I didn't try finding one earlier! I used meetup.com. We read fantasy with the stipulation that the main character is a woman (female authors preferred but not necessary), and the book club members tend to prefer high fantasy, I think. Though I've disliked 2/3 of the books we've read so far - the last was Michelle Sagara's Cast in Shadow. That one was not a good book. Though I have to say, it's not completely terrible that the books are bad - it's fun to rip into them anyway. And there's good discussion when half the readers like the book and half don't.

( Cast in Shadow )

8/10 Wonder Woman. There was bits where I was like "WWI DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY" but it's a superhero movie and a power fantasy, and anyway, all the superheros are a fantasy that one person can cut through intractable massive problems. I didn't realize I wanted this movie so bad until I saw it. Oh my god. It wasn't perfect but I loved it.

( this got a bit long )

5/10 mango mousse cake. Batter not beat properly, lil lumps in the mousse. The mango bit was only a thin layer on top. Needs more mango. Still, better than nothing.

8/10 on Sound of Music (half way through). Uh, I discovered that Windows 10 cannot natively play DVD. WTF. I mean, I should have downloaded VLC from the start but really?

It's like consuming a capsule of pop culture references. If for nothing else I'd have liked the movie. I didn't know sixteen going on seventeen is a song! Kind of cute near the end seventeen-going-on-eighteen but not a huge fan. More to come.

3/10 ingress life at present. Six - count them, six - enemy agents came up in probably a car and smashed the whole of my farm while I was out at dinner, and now I'm sad. I'll go out and repair it in a bit. It was so nicely built up, dammit! I am slightly proud it takes so many to take out my stuff though. Sadly, it means I have to be careful for a bit about gear, because I won't have a base to farm stuff from, but it'll build up OK. We will rebuild!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Happy - Marina and the Diamonds
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/400450.html

Uh, I've just discovered that Blofeld's garden of death exists. It is a garden at Alnwick Castle instead of in Japan, but nevertheless. I...would go visit that garden, actually. But the fact that they've had to put a bench in one part of the garden since people sometimes pass out from the smell of one of the flowers is slightly alarming.

book cover of The Wolf Hunt

Anyway! I read The Wolf Hunt, by Gillian Bradshaw. It's based on Bisclavret, one of the twelve famous lays by Marie de France - it's a poem about a man who turns into a werewolf, and he's treacherously betrayed by his wife and trapped in wolf form.

( Review under the cut. Spoiler: I loved it )bo

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: my old Norton recordings
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/392995.html

I did approximately nothing all day except read Connie Willis' Blackout.

She ended on a cliffhanger and I don't have the stamina to turn around and plow through All Clear tonight, but OMG.

Current Mood: drained
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/392567.html

Well, I haven't posted for awhile and this time I have a legitimate reason - my computer crashed really badly and I have just agreed to pay a horrible sum of money to have it fixed. (A comparable new one would be three or four times more expensive D:) It auto updated to the anniversary edition of Windows 10. I don't regret updating to 10 - security, far more efficient space use - I think it was just really bad luck. I've never actually had a hard drive crash on me before.

Also the timing was rather bad -it was RuneScape's double xp weekend! I played only a little on the Saturday evening. Figures, hmph.

I read some O R Melling (don't remember it being so YA but I was actually in that age bracket then), finally Heidi again, though my friend has left Switzerland and is doing a thing in London, and am reading The Secret Country by Pamela Dean. Pretty good but the general bickering, constant simmering of unhappiness of like all the children is preventing me from simply eating it up. I also read The Gilded Age, wick is about Anita Hemmings, the first African-American woman to go to Vassar, and she did it by passing for white. I enjoyed it a lot (maybe I should read more boarding school stories), but I also feel like Anita was never angry. Kind of like how I feel I was sooo angry at her treatment compared to Fanny's own feelings in Mansfield Park.

Carmen at the opera - omg. I enjoyed it a lot, A+ would attend again. Sadly another modern update....as a young person who has not seen a ton of opera, I wish I could see more with original settings. This one was very gritty and the stage very minimalistic. I also was slightly disappointed with the habenera, which should really ooze sex appeal; it was all just sorta restrained. And it's not like the rest of the opera was restrained, which was weird. Maybe the Carmen just wanted a very different interpretation? Also, there was a lot of male nudity for a change! In addition to all the female nudity, more forgivable in this opera... It opened with a man in only his underwear running endless laps around the stage - at least thirty or forty, as punishment I think. The other characters just acted like he wasn't even there. Escamillo was amazing and wore the brightest yellow suit imaginable, and pulled it off. The children had clearly been told to sing at the tops of their lungs for Avec la garde montante and were pretty adorable.

I've also been doing a lot of Ingress and letterboxing. There's a very active ingress group locally and I made level 8 a bit ago, which isn't the highest level but the one where you get access to the best gear available. I like the urban exploration thing a lot (thus also letterboxing).

I did calligraphy with my log and decided to look at all my nibs:

I use all them except the Hunt globe and 102 and the speedball b nibs. OK, the 102 I use for touch up because the top is so fine it catches on everything and then ink splatter, the globe is inflexible and gives me no line variation, and the b ditto - the b all give really thick lines too and no line thickness variation. I used the c-2 for the cover page. I'm not sure I can even write consistently with the c-0, which is even broader - you need so much ink on it you practically have to redip after every stroke. And the line gets thinner as you go down!

I also carved my own stamp! I bought a few cheap pink erasers, scoured the internet for inspiration and guides, and used an exacto knife. Worked out pretty well but I'm not so good at stamping while outside without a table! It's been fairly addicting. I found 3 stamps today (failed to find 2) and really want to go tomorrow too. I have an ingress farm to go to tomorrow morning (almost completely cleaned out of gear - been destroying enemy portals a lot. Lots of fun. What's building compared to getting to smash my nemesis's portal?) But afterwards, more stamp collecting.

Fall is coming in slowly and I want the weather to hold so we get a nice pretty leaf show.

Current Mood: Sleepy
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/389734.html

I finally finished it. I think my tolerance went up as I read it or it got less melodramatic (after that I no longer trust my judgement); I managed to get through to the end with a minimum of eye rolling.

Though when he started writing his suicide note addressed specifically to Charlotte saying basically "you're the cause of my death" and he thinks he loves her? I was more or less boggling while reading anyway, but that takes the cake. How wrapped up in yourself can you possibly be? Yes, obviously, he is not in a fit mental state, but that's amazing. (And then since he had no intention of immediately killing himself, he was obliged to add amendments to it...I assume, probably uncharitably, to twist the knife a little more. Whatever. Intentional or not, it would twist the knife. These things cannot be called love.)

I did not enjoy reading this. It's not even fun to mock because it's so self-pitying and melodramatic. There's bits where he bathes her hand in tears (I hope it was metaphorical; I am not reading it again to check). This is not how you treat someone you love. The condescension towards anyone of lower standing, perceived to be lesser, etc was constant and irritating, and Werther's naivete about children was grating (it's very much Romanticization - capital R and lower case r really - of childhood, which annoyed me when I first studied Romanticism and still annoys me.) There weren't even enjoyable rhapsodies about the landscape - which I still enjoy - because Werther would immediately have to inject his condescending social commentary or cry about Charlotte and his childhood again.

I've never liked woobies and I've never liked frail creatures. (Also I loathe the word woobie.) I've always preferred the hyper-competent people or the Scarlett O'Hara characters. Werther is pretty much the exact type of character I hate.

This is like the least helpful book review ever, but it's been a trying day.

Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/386787.html

I read Games Wizards Play and I was disappointed, to be honest.

Plotwise, it's quite interesting. There's nothing epic or earthshattering this time; instead the Wizards' Invitational is on, a competitive event where young wizards demonstrate their projects to a jury - a big international science fair. They are mentored by older wizards who the Powers think can pass on knowledge. It's meant to be a opportunity to help younger wizards experience without the life and death consequences that errantry usually brings.

( details )

I also read Edge of Worlds, by Martha Wells, which I enjoyed a lot more. It's about the Raksura, a shape-shifters groundlings/skylings in a world full of different sapient species. It's been a few (peaceful) turns since the last book, but the whole court has had a strange, premonition dream linked again to the Fell, shape-shifters that prey on other species. Moon and Jade and some of the other Raksura sail away with a group of strange groundlings to investigate an sea-bound island that the groundlings think that the Fell-and-Raksuras' forerunners might have built.

( more under the cut )

Progress mostly stalled on Sorrows of Young Werther and Here Be Dragons. I am reading a biography of John's rule during my breaks, and it's going well. It'd be going better if people in medieval England had more than like, five names in circulation. I cannot keep track of everyone! The big names, like William Marshal I can remember, but sometimes it's disputes of William vs William.

Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/386230.html

So I extensively read and re-read much of Martha Wells' Books of the Raksura over the past few weeks.

I read the second and third books of the Raksura - The Serpent Seas and the Siren Depths. They were tons of fun and I couldn't put them down though I wish she'd titled them somewhat differently. I can't remember which comes first or both titles!

The Raksura are a species of shape-shifters who can fly. Moon is a Raksura orphaned and trying to integrate into various groundling societies (mostly unsuccessfully). That's a terrible summary but the books are about him discovering the rest of the Raksura and his travels/adventures with them.

The fourth book comes out April 2016 and I'm so impatient. I want it, and I want it now!

( About Raksura )

Then James Bond - several of them now. I read Moonraker and then On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (I have never seen the films, though I regret not buying the nail polish collection OPI put out for Skyfall. I have my priorities!) They have their weaknesses, but as good solid action/adventure novels they deliver, and I am emotionally invested in James Bond the character by this point. I keep going to the library and checking out every Bond book there is - which isn't very many. This library system is big on having duplicates and not on having variety - wrong way round, in my opinion. But anyway!

Moonraker is about the rocket the British government is building, which is being made with the assistance of Hugo Drax, a public war hero and now wealthy businessman. M feels something isn't right when the owner of the club Blades tells him that Drax cheats, and sends Bond to first see if he's cheating (yes - and then Bond dupes Drax into losing an enormous sum of money) and then posts him at the Moonraker to see what's going on. This is leading up to a test-firing of the rocket, so there is a great deal of tension and attention being paid - especially after there is a murder at the site.

( Moonraker )

Then On Her Majesty's Secret Service! Bond is sent on the trail of Blofeld again, one of the major figures behind the creation of SPECTRE and one of Bond's greatest enemies. He is put on the tail of Blofeld when Blofeld puts a request through the College of Arms - he wants legitimacy, and wants it badly enough to leave somewhat of a trail. On the pretext of being one of the College of Arms' researchers, Bond goes off to Switzerland to investigate Blofeld, who appears to be running a very secretive clinic of some kind on top of the mountains, within a ski resort.

( On Her Majesty's Secret Service )

Also I watched Pride and Prejudice (1995), season 1 of Sherlock plus the first two episodes of season 2, AND the first three episodes of Agent Carter season 2. More to follow! (All of them were great, in case you were wondering. In many different ways.)

Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/379541.html

So in the past few days I've read three Agatha Christie novels (and have downloaded from the library about...let me count...fifteen of her novels?) Oh my god I love them. I had a fairly long dry spell of reading no new books and then all of a sudden I read almost one a day.

GREAT HONKING SPOILERS UNDER CUTS.

I read Cards on the Table first.
( Cards on the Table )

Then Death on the Nile:
( Death on the Nile )

Then The Hollow:
( The Hollow )

I gotta stop because I like being surprised by mystery novels (I never do try too hard to solve them, I glance over the diagrams). So now I am putting a ban on the rest of the Christie novels sitting in my calibre library.

I ALSO just devoured Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant and that's why the Christie reviews are so short, I have to talk about these right now too.

( Both novels )
More to come about DWJ I hope.

Current Location: zzz
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/374705.html

I read The Sand-Reckoner the other day (the one by Gillian Bradshaw, not the one by Archimedes) and now I have all these feelings about Archimedes and Syracuse and Hieron.

The novel's about Archimedes as he returns from his studies at Alexandria - it begins with him coming home to a city on the verge of war, his father dying, and a sick sense that coming home will mean he must close off the part of him that lives and breathes mathematics, and do work he hates to support his family. Archimedes comes to the attention of Hieron, the king of Syracuse, as an outstanding and remarkable engineer - outstanding because he can devise new, original, and effective machines that work well from the very outset, because he can derive the basic principles from mathematics. With Archimedes is Marcus, his Italian slave, who looks after his absent-minded master despite conflicting loyalties. Marcus denies being Roman - the affiliation is dangerous - and Archimedes is too * and doesn't think it useful to press.

Like Island of Ghosts, which is about troops of Sarmatians - having been sent west as part of their treaty with Rome - settling into Roman Britain, this book is similarly more internal and character-driven. Which isn't to say there isn't external conflict; the book is set during the first Punic Wars (paging

dhampyresa - though it's not really about Rome or Carthage so IDK if you're interested?) and Syracuse is caught between the two. Hieron is trying to avoid having to fight either or both of them at once, but needs siege engines to prevent either from eating his city. But he recognizes that Archimedes is brilliant - and also not an engineer by choice, merely to support his family; he knows Archimedes loved Alexandria and the Museum and Library there, and wrestles with how or if he can keep Archimedes in the service of his beloved city.

( More discussion with spoilers )

Generally very recommended! I love Bradshaw's writing, the characters are all great and well-drawn (with human, sympathetic motivations), and is set in Classical antiquity if that's a selling point, though it doesn't rely on you knowing anything about it.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Mowgli's Road - Marina and the Diamonds
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/372703.html

I woke up to schadenfreude the other morning, and by schadenfreude I mean the voting results out of the Hugos. HA!

===========

I finished the last book of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel and I have to make a post about it because the ending. Actually the whole thing made me feel like it was partly a retcon and I hate retcons. (See my objections to the Mistborn book - that third book was practically a giant retcon of the entire series, especially the last scene.)

This is the first actual review I've done in a long time I think. Though I am not synopsising this book, that will stall me out. I recommend the Wikipedia article! It is somewhat spoilery though.

One sentence summary: modern-day twins discover they are subjects of a prophecy, Nicholas Flamel and other immortals battle for control of them and their destiny.

( Now: ALL THE SPOILERS )

I have even more things to say but I really need to just post this for now. STAY TUNED. Also, this is not meant to mean I disliked the books; on the contrary I'm still thinking about them (and feeling vaguely empty; I keep thinking that I'll read/listen to the next chapter and then realizing I finished the book...a couple days ago).

Current Music: Electric Lady - Janelle Monae
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/371264.html

Somehow I have internet. The technicians aren't even scheduled to be in till Friday, I wonder if it's something to do with having just disconnected only two weeks ago. Anyway, download speed is 1/3 of what it should be but I HAVE INTERNET. Of course it's the weekend so I don't even have time-sensitive email to answer, but hey.

Before the internet reconnected I finished three books in one day (it was a slow day and some of them were half-finished).

I finally took the plunge and started reading A Princess of Mars from the beginning instead of confusedly stumbling about because I'd only read it in very disjointed chunks. See, sometimes having books on your phone for when you have five minutes to spare is a good thing, and sometimes it's a I-don't-know-what-happened thing.

( Thoughts )

I'm not sure if I want to read the next book; it was a fairly fun romp, but I don't really feel any attachment to any of the characters. Though, I do love books that take place on our solar system's planets where they're habitable, current astronomy be damned (or unknown at the time)--even things like Bradbury's Venus and rain story for all that it's horrifying (are there any Bradbury stories where children are nice/good?), I think it's so cool. I just wish I liked the characters more--felt for them more.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: zzz, pardon the typos
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/366489.html

I reread Over Sea, Under Stone and actually really enjoyed it. I liked Will a lot better when I was a kid (Will has magic powers, Jane Barney and Simon don't) but the story is satisfying in a way I don't know how to describe. I really like the Drews, I think. And anyway, how could anyone not love a nice grail quest? I then read the Greenwitch really quickly--kind of a friction between the Drews and Will, understandable perhaps from Simon's point of view--and then the Grey King. Do you know what part I remembered, out of the whole book? The part where Bran (after explaining Welsh pronunciation) says that Will can't complain, English is full of things like dough and through and thorough. Caradog Prichard was scary; I don't remember him being so scary. It's his unpredictability and eagerness to resort to violence. I don't think he would have that much compunction about shooting humans either.

I know The Silver on the Tree's ending so this shouldn't be a surprise, but there really is a lot of fairly causal mind-wiping. There's the part in the Dark is Rising (when the rector and Paul are frightened out of their minds by the Dark howling outside), then the thing in the Greenwitch. The ending of SotT isn't comparable to the levels of AWFUL ENDING as say The Last Battle--a book I have never re-read because every time I think about it, I get angry--but the mindwipe thing. I hate that trope. It's so casual too. Will and the Old Ones are on the side of the light but Rowlands is right too--they may be "good" but it takes a long view and believes the ends justify most means.

--

I spent altogether too long yesterday and this morning trying to fix the problem of calibre hanging forever trying to get a list of books from my phone. Basically, it was trying to scan every item on my phone--and I have a lot of photos. As well as god knows what files that the various apps produce. It would take 15 minutes to scan through before I could do anything like transfer files. What fixed it in the end was I configured the settings so that calibre only scanned one single folder: the SD card Books folder. Not even the internal storage Books folder (that still made the job hang, for some reason). I'm so relieved. It now takes less than a second to scan through. VICTORY!

I also started finally assigning genres. I decided to use a hierarchical because I want to be able to pull up all the speculative fiction works or specifically high fantasy, which I nested into fantasy and then spec fic. And I gave in and created a Classic top-level category, which is only one layer deep (by language/country)--actually now that I think about it, it's mostly by language except for the English things, which are split British Isles-Canada-USA. Look, I split them up more because I read mostly English-language stuff, all right? (Also, I just can't sort too finely. It would be endless.)

( email )

In other news, the insanity around the Hugos, which I am not even following but is going past my fannish view anyway, is making me cranky. Then there's the ongoing ??? with DA and EC. Aggh, things I don't want to know about the publishing/writing end! But as to the Hugos, no longer going to pick a book up because it has a Hugo.

Current Mood: restless
Crossposts: http://silverflight8.livejournal.com/364531.html

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Entries tagged with reading

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War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

I just finished the Left Hand of Darkness

Archangel series by Sharon Shinn

a very truncated list of what I've read earlier this year

Walden/On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

#totallyunreadablehashtagsbecauseitamusesme

Invisible Library: Genevieve Cogman

in which she rates random things

The Wolf Hunt: Gillian Bradshaw

not a productive day

Update

Sorrows of Young Werther

books catchup

Raksura! James Bond! Other things!

Agatha Christie and Diana Wynne Jones

The Sand Reckoner: Gillian Bradshaw

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

A Princess of Mars

this entry ran away from me a bit