Book round-up: September 2023

[sixthlight]

 

September 2023

As I mentioned in my last post, September this year was just a haze of being miserably unwell (not COVID) as well as like…five other things going on at once. I’m genuinely surprised I read five whole books. Otherwise my principal recreational activities were 1) misery and 2) Baldur’s Gate III. 

Fiction

The Ten Percent Thief (Lavanya Lakshminarayan)

Satirical speculative fiction novel (it’s more literary than SFF in its concerns to my eye) about inequity and revolution in a future city-state but really about social media and how technology can divide us. To my personal tastes a bit lacking in characters to give a damn about, but I wasn’t bored. 

Winter's Gifts (Ben Aaronovitch)

Another Rivers of London novella outside of Peter Grant’s sphere; this time FBI Agent Kimberley Reynolds is trapped in a snowy town on the Great Lakes and evil spirits are afoot. As usual well-plotted and executed, and I thought it did a fairly good job of handling the Native American/Indigenous elements of the story, in terms of both characters and invented history, which the worldbuilding/setting kind of requires but which would be very easy to muck up. As always it’s very fun to see glimpses of Peter through other people’s eyes, too. I think I like it the most of the three non-Peter novellas so far. 

Non-fiction

Prehistoric Australasia (Michael Archer et al)

Lavishly illustrated coffee-table book showing prehistoric ecosystems of mostly AoNZ/Australia, as well as a couple of Pacific islands. Unfortunately they used only one palaeoartist and I am not a huge fan of his style; it’s a bit muddy and lifeless except when he’s drawing crocodiles. Someone please commission this man to do a whole book of crocodiles. 

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals (Steve Brusatte)

Fairly comprehensive account of the evolution and divergence of mammals in the post-Cretaceous world. I don’t retain a lot of detail (I think the aforementioned illness is responsible for that) but it was a very easy read, if this is a topic that interests you. 

Takahē: Bird of Dreams (Alison Ballance)

Natural history of the takahē and conservation efforts since its rediscovery in the 1940s. Also  a coffee-table book with many beautiful photographs. Obviously a work of love with extensive effort spent interviewing many of the people involved in takahē conservation over the years. The major takeaway for me was that the recently re-founded wild population in Kahurangi National Park is not actually doing very well, not disastrously but it’s a long way from being self-sustaining - I don’t think that’s been particularly well-covered in the media, although since it’s neither a success story nor a disaster that’s probably not surprising.