Book round-up: April 2022
May. 22nd, 2022 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sixthlightRevisited some old favourite authors, found a new favourite, and comprehensively wiped out on a popular favourite - April had a little bit of everything. Also, lots of ecology.
The Untold Story (Genevieve Cogman)
Eighth book in the Invisible Library series. I have been relying on my local library getting ebooks and it turned out I skipped one because they hadn’t got it, but this was written as a series ending-for-now so it didn’t really matter. A lot of Chekhov’s Guns went off in a satisfying way; would love to see Irene and co. come back for more adventures, will not begrudge it at all if this is where they stop.
Amongst Our Weapons (Ben Aaronovitch)
Ninth in Rivers of London. I talked about this more fulsomely on Tumblr but in brief, it is very hard for me to be sure because I was in the WEIRDEST of emotional places for False Value (the last Rivers of London book) but I think this is better, with a more coherent plot and the series having settled into its new normal post-the end of the Faceless Man arc. The pre-Brexit setting (though only just, with the book winding up in April 2016) feels positively nostalgic.
Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie) (re-read)
Re-read this meaning to watch the new movie; still mean to do that; Christie is as reliable as ever, particularly with thumbnail character sketches to populate her mysteries.
Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
To be reluctantly charitable, any book starring a microbiology PhD ex-academic with an astrobiology focus was going to earn a high degree of nitpicking from me, but I hated this and DNF’d with prejudice. Neither the author nor the lead character are smart enough for the story the book wants to tell, and the academic conflict it sets up is flatly ludicrous. The portions I got through read like a video game (not a compliment). How it got a Hugo nomination in this modern climate I cannot fathom.
The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky (Terry Pratchett)
In what is probably somewhat surprising news: I haven’t actually read the Tiffany Aching series before now. That is, I read The Wee Free Men when it came out and didn’t enjoy it as much as the other Discworld books, and then never caught up, and then Pratchett died and The Shepherd’s Crown came out and I wasn’t ready to read the last new Pratchett books there’d ever be yet. And for about seven years I still wasn’t ready, and then this month I needed something new-but-familiar and I knew it was time. Anyway, it’s Pratchett and it’s very good and I will be reading the rest as I can get them from the library.
Seraphina (Rachel Hartman)
A friend recommended this to me ages ago. It’s secondary-world fantasy YA about a half-dragon girl in a society with an uneasy peace between humans and dragons, trying to make her way as music mistress at a human royal court. Which sounds very cliche but it’s not at all; the dragon society is believably alien but accessible, the complications for the protagonist are not straightforward, the world has weight and history. Lots of these people like each other. I believe there are sequels, and I need to go find them.
Non-fiction
Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
Published in 2013, this is a very well-known book of essays by a Native American (Potawatomi) ecologist on traditional ecological knowledge and environmentalism. I wrestled with it a little because I found some of the generalisations too broad for the very specific North American context the book is centred in, but it’s an extremely gentle and non-radical introduction to indigenous knowledge for non-indigenous people who haven’t engaged with the concept at all. The essay format also makes it easy to dip into a piece at a time.
This is How the World Ends (Nicole Perlroth)
The cyberweapon market in the 21st century; not a book for easy sleeping. I think this is pretty accessible if you don’t know much about cybersecurity, but I’m definitely coming at it from the position of “some of the sources are people I’ve met”, so no promises. What I can say for sure is that the stuff I know about is reported accurately enough that it gives me high confidence about the rest of it.
The Last Butterflies (Nick Haddad)
One of those ‘the author is an expert on and loves the topic and wants you to love it too’ books, on the world’s rarest butterflies (with an admitted North American-centrism). I particularly enjoy his commitment to naming and giving space to the many people he’s worked with, including lots of women and grad students/technicians, which is rarer than it should be in science books written by men. Also a really great window into the complexities of conservation work; goals are easy, courses of action are hard.
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Date: 2022-05-24 08:49 pm (UTC)