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sixthlight) wrote2019-03-01 08:18 am
sixthlight) wrote2019-03-01 08:18 am
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Book round-up: February 2019
I thought this was going to be a much slower year than last for reading due to the planned lack of time at sea, which bumped up my total to heroic heights last year because I was out there for two months. But I just agreed to go on a three-week mid-year voyage (which means mid-winter, not a good omen for calm seas and good diving weather), so...time to start stocking up on new reads! Until then...
Non-fiction
A New Cloak for Matiu - Janet Hector Not a rec exactly because most people would have trouble tracking it down - it's a small book, more of a booklet really, published by Forest & Bird detailing the history of their work helping re-forest Matiu/Somes Island in Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington Harbour. I was gifted a copy, and while it is of very specific interest it's a lovely local history. Also apparently the re-forestation work was partially saved by the introduction of the Gold Card, which got all the retired F&B volunteers who were doing it free transport to Matiu. An argument for free public transport for everybody, in my book.
Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall<First book by a man I've read this year - not a deliberate strategy, just the way things have worked out. Chosen for book club, not by me. The thesis is essentially that all current political conflict can be explained by geography; it makes some good points and is an easy read but suffers heavily from an Americocentric viewpoint (even though the author seems to be British), the assumption in some instances but not others that modern political borders are the way things were always going to be, and generally having a hammer and thereby seeing all geopolitical questions as nails. Mostly it's one of those books that should have been a long-form essay.
Fiction
The Kingdom of Copper - S A ChakhrabortyThe City of Brass was one of my stand-out new reads of last year and I was thrilled when I heard the sequel was due in January. It picks up five years after con artist Nahri was taken from Cairo to Daevabad, the city of djinn, to claim her place as the last daughter of its former ruling family, after which things got Very Complicated. Unlike many sequels it doesn't suffer from middle book slowdown at all and I spent most of it making delighted cackling noises. It has the rare knack of making almost all its characters not just comprehensible but deeply likeable even as they clash (sometimes murderously) over power, history, and the right thing to do. The only bad thing about this book is that it ends on several cliffhangers and I have to wait a WHOLE YEAR to find out what happens next
Space Opera - Catherynne Valente Humanity meets aliens; aliens require humanity to compete in Space Eurovision to prove their sentience; humanity's only hope of competing in space Eurovision is two-thirds of a washed-up queer brown English glam rock band; humanity is doomed? Except not, because that's not how Eurovision works. I wanted to like this a lot, instead of just a bit, but it was very much in the style of Douglas Adams and I kept bouncing off long descriptive passages and only touching down just often enough to maintain a grip on the plot. Highly recommended to anybody who likes 1) Eurovision and 2) Douglas Adams, instead of just one of those things.
The Duchess War - Courtney Milan Tried this in my ongoing attempt to read more romance novels, as the author came highly recommended. It's a historical (allegedly Regency England), and the voices were just off enough that I couldn't sink into it as a historical. Taught me two important lessons - that I'm really that picky about historicals, and that I strongly prefer romance where the possibility of romance doesn't come up until a lot further along in the story. DNF, but that's not an anti-rec.
Rogue Protocol & Exit Strategy - Martha Wells Everybody loves Murderbot, right? Final two novellas in the four-novella sequence about a partially-organic, partially-robot Security Unit which breaks its governor module and immediately settles in to watch 36,000 hours of media instead of murdering anybody, because murder is tiresome. (Of course, it doesn't get left in peace.) I love everything Murderbot chooses to be, and especially its deep distaste for people who make it have feelings. There's a novel coming, I believe, and I can't wait.
Deep Roots - Ruthanna Emrys <Also a sequel, this time to a novel (Winter Tide), following a young woman who was kidnapped from Innsmouth and interned by the US government during the 20s, and is now trying to rebuild her community post-WWII in a world where she and her brother may be the only Deep Ones left on land. This is a deeply thoughtful re-working of the Cthulhu mythos as a hopeful intersection of people from very different cultures and backgrounds, even in a world where humanity is a tiny, impermanent spark in a vast cosmos. It's the exact antithesis of the Charles Stross Laundry Files novels in modernising the mythos, but equally good and equally clever in its use of the original stories. Highly recommended.
Non-fiction
A New Cloak for Matiu - Janet Hector Not a rec exactly because most people would have trouble tracking it down - it's a small book, more of a booklet really, published by Forest & Bird detailing the history of their work helping re-forest Matiu/Somes Island in Te Whanganui a Tara/Wellington Harbour. I was gifted a copy, and while it is of very specific interest it's a lovely local history. Also apparently the re-forestation work was partially saved by the introduction of the Gold Card, which got all the retired F&B volunteers who were doing it free transport to Matiu. An argument for free public transport for everybody, in my book.
Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall<First book by a man I've read this year - not a deliberate strategy, just the way things have worked out. Chosen for book club, not by me. The thesis is essentially that all current political conflict can be explained by geography; it makes some good points and is an easy read but suffers heavily from an Americocentric viewpoint (even though the author seems to be British), the assumption in some instances but not others that modern political borders are the way things were always going to be, and generally having a hammer and thereby seeing all geopolitical questions as nails. Mostly it's one of those books that should have been a long-form essay.
Fiction
The Kingdom of Copper - S A ChakhrabortyThe City of Brass was one of my stand-out new reads of last year and I was thrilled when I heard the sequel was due in January. It picks up five years after con artist Nahri was taken from Cairo to Daevabad, the city of djinn, to claim her place as the last daughter of its former ruling family, after which things got Very Complicated. Unlike many sequels it doesn't suffer from middle book slowdown at all and I spent most of it making delighted cackling noises. It has the rare knack of making almost all its characters not just comprehensible but deeply likeable even as they clash (sometimes murderously) over power, history, and the right thing to do. The only bad thing about this book is that it ends on several cliffhangers and I have to wait a WHOLE YEAR to find out what happens next
Space Opera - Catherynne Valente Humanity meets aliens; aliens require humanity to compete in Space Eurovision to prove their sentience; humanity's only hope of competing in space Eurovision is two-thirds of a washed-up queer brown English glam rock band; humanity is doomed? Except not, because that's not how Eurovision works. I wanted to like this a lot, instead of just a bit, but it was very much in the style of Douglas Adams and I kept bouncing off long descriptive passages and only touching down just often enough to maintain a grip on the plot. Highly recommended to anybody who likes 1) Eurovision and 2) Douglas Adams, instead of just one of those things.
The Duchess War - Courtney Milan Tried this in my ongoing attempt to read more romance novels, as the author came highly recommended. It's a historical (allegedly Regency England), and the voices were just off enough that I couldn't sink into it as a historical. Taught me two important lessons - that I'm really that picky about historicals, and that I strongly prefer romance where the possibility of romance doesn't come up until a lot further along in the story. DNF, but that's not an anti-rec.
Rogue Protocol & Exit Strategy - Martha Wells Everybody loves Murderbot, right? Final two novellas in the four-novella sequence about a partially-organic, partially-robot Security Unit which breaks its governor module and immediately settles in to watch 36,000 hours of media instead of murdering anybody, because murder is tiresome. (Of course, it doesn't get left in peace.) I love everything Murderbot chooses to be, and especially its deep distaste for people who make it have feelings. There's a novel coming, I believe, and I can't wait.
Deep Roots - Ruthanna Emrys <Also a sequel, this time to a novel (Winter Tide), following a young woman who was kidnapped from Innsmouth and interned by the US government during the 20s, and is now trying to rebuild her community post-WWII in a world where she and her brother may be the only Deep Ones left on land. This is a deeply thoughtful re-working of the Cthulhu mythos as a hopeful intersection of people from very different cultures and backgrounds, even in a world where humanity is a tiny, impermanent spark in a vast cosmos. It's the exact antithesis of the Charles Stross Laundry Files novels in modernising the mythos, but equally good and equally clever in its use of the original stories. Highly recommended.
no subject
I really wanted to like Space Opera too! I do like both of those things, even! The feeling I had while reading was that it kept trying very hard to be Douglas Adams-y while mostly not...quite succeeding? The tangents weren’t quite as absurd or as biting or as funny as they could’ve been, imo, so they just felt unnecessary a lot of the time. I don’t know, it was a somewhat frustrating reading experience for me. I kept waiting for the book to click and it never did.
And Murderbot ♥
no subject
That's exactly how I felt about Space Opera - I wanted to love it, and it was trying so hard, and not quite landing...I have the sneaking feeling it might have been a better novella or long short story; the plot and concepts didn't feel quite sturdy enough to support a novel.