Book round-up: April (and March) 2019
May. 1st, 2019 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sixthlightI didn't do one of these for March because I barely read anything, due to travel followed by the events of March 15th, which derailed pretty well everything in New Zealand, including any mental space I had for reading. But I made the most of the Easter-Anzac Day week to take a week and a bit off work, so a lot more reading (and sewing, something I haven't had any motivation for in months) happened in April.
Non-fiction
How to Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog (Chad Orzel): What it says on the tin; the book's conceit is that the writer's dog Emily can talk and he's explaining quantum physics to her in terms she cares about (squirrels, treats, opportunities to go on walks). It didn't quite work for me but if you can get past that - or like it - it's an accessible explanation of a complex topic, for values of 'accessible' that assume you have an interested layperson's understanding of physics and maths already under your belt. Given the topic, there's probably no way to get around that.
Humble Pi (Matt Parker): Billed as a 'comedy of mathematical errors', many of the anecdotes are...er...not terribly comedic (children dying horribly in stampedes, anybody?) nor precisely mathematical - unless you think coding errors qualify inherently as maths - but it's extremely readable and will provide an endless source of good anecdotes about how small fuck-ups can lead to very large problems. A note of caution: the author is Australian/British and employs basically non-stop sarcasm, which even for me was a little bewildering until I realised how all-encompassing it was. If you think he can't possibly be being serious, he's not.
Bad Blood (John Carreyrou): The inside story on the rise and fall of Theranos, the Silicon Valley start-up that purported to be revolutionising blood testing, by the journalist who revealed the fraud behind the glamorous press. Fascinating both as a portrait of rich people behaving extremely badly, of the terrifying ease with which venture capital can be solicited if you're the right person with the right story, and of scientists and engineers confronted with an ethical dilemma that wasn't killing anybody....yet. I wonder about the untold stories of all the people who must have known what was going on and didn't quit or whistleblow.
Fiction
Empire of Sand (Tasha Suri): Mughal Empire-inspired epic fantasy about the cloistered daughter of a nobleman, kidnapped for her magical powers, forced to figure out what she is willing to risk to do the right thing and for her own freedom. A really excellent rebuttal to the idea that if women are not a large part of public society, there must be no interesting stories to tell about them, and a fascinating secondary world and magic system. Fell down for me only in its (heterosexual) romance - the hero seems perfectly nice and someone should definitely get him a blanket and a cup of tea, but the relationship didn't do it for me. Recommend for everything else.
The Alpennia series (Heather Rose Jones) - Daughter of Mystery, The Mystic Marriage, Mother of Souls: F/F Ruritanian historical romance set in a fictional Central European principality. All three share characters but each focuses on a different couple. I read the first and liked it last year, but not enough to hunt down the sequels. I liked them a lot more - the worldbuilding is deeper and the character interactions stronger. Then I went back and read the first one again. Really good for anyone who particularly enjoys quasi-scientific study of magic (RoL fans!), and lots of great family-of-choice and queer lady solidarity feels. I hope she writes more.
The Terracotta Bride (Zen Cho): Novella about a Malaysian Chinese woman negotiating the afterlife, when her husband brings home a 'terracotta bride' - not another dead soul, but a created offering. Fasincating use of mythology to ask questions more usually found in science fiction.
The Guns Above (Robyn Bennis): Derring-do on an airship in a vaguely Napoleonic War-era secondary world. The lead is the first woman promoted to captain an airship, and - I didn't finish, because the grinding gauntlet of misogyny from the other PoV character, a fop sent by his admiral uncle to find gossip to bring her down, and her own internalised antagonism to every other woman she interacts with made this no fun for me, as much as I enjoy derring-do and airships. WHERE IS MY MILITARY SFF WITHOUT BRUTAL MISOGYNY. I've been looking for years and I'm still looking.
Re-reads
After bouncing off The Guns Above, I badly needed some reads where people actually like each other, so I went back to reliable favourites The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) (a young man unexpectedly becomes an emperor and slowly makes friends and starts to make things better) and Band Sinister (K J Charles) (Georgette Heyer's Venetia except with m/m polyamory, a lot more non-white people, and a lot less sexual assault, just delightful all around). If anybody has any other recs in the vein of these two, I will gladly take them. I'm in the mood for comfort in my reads right now.
Non-fiction
How to Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog (Chad Orzel): What it says on the tin; the book's conceit is that the writer's dog Emily can talk and he's explaining quantum physics to her in terms she cares about (squirrels, treats, opportunities to go on walks). It didn't quite work for me but if you can get past that - or like it - it's an accessible explanation of a complex topic, for values of 'accessible' that assume you have an interested layperson's understanding of physics and maths already under your belt. Given the topic, there's probably no way to get around that.
Humble Pi (Matt Parker): Billed as a 'comedy of mathematical errors', many of the anecdotes are...er...not terribly comedic (children dying horribly in stampedes, anybody?) nor precisely mathematical - unless you think coding errors qualify inherently as maths - but it's extremely readable and will provide an endless source of good anecdotes about how small fuck-ups can lead to very large problems. A note of caution: the author is Australian/British and employs basically non-stop sarcasm, which even for me was a little bewildering until I realised how all-encompassing it was. If you think he can't possibly be being serious, he's not.
Bad Blood (John Carreyrou): The inside story on the rise and fall of Theranos, the Silicon Valley start-up that purported to be revolutionising blood testing, by the journalist who revealed the fraud behind the glamorous press. Fascinating both as a portrait of rich people behaving extremely badly, of the terrifying ease with which venture capital can be solicited if you're the right person with the right story, and of scientists and engineers confronted with an ethical dilemma that wasn't killing anybody....yet. I wonder about the untold stories of all the people who must have known what was going on and didn't quit or whistleblow.
Fiction
Empire of Sand (Tasha Suri): Mughal Empire-inspired epic fantasy about the cloistered daughter of a nobleman, kidnapped for her magical powers, forced to figure out what she is willing to risk to do the right thing and for her own freedom. A really excellent rebuttal to the idea that if women are not a large part of public society, there must be no interesting stories to tell about them, and a fascinating secondary world and magic system. Fell down for me only in its (heterosexual) romance - the hero seems perfectly nice and someone should definitely get him a blanket and a cup of tea, but the relationship didn't do it for me. Recommend for everything else.
The Alpennia series (Heather Rose Jones) - Daughter of Mystery, The Mystic Marriage, Mother of Souls: F/F Ruritanian historical romance set in a fictional Central European principality. All three share characters but each focuses on a different couple. I read the first and liked it last year, but not enough to hunt down the sequels. I liked them a lot more - the worldbuilding is deeper and the character interactions stronger. Then I went back and read the first one again. Really good for anyone who particularly enjoys quasi-scientific study of magic (RoL fans!), and lots of great family-of-choice and queer lady solidarity feels. I hope she writes more.
The Terracotta Bride (Zen Cho): Novella about a Malaysian Chinese woman negotiating the afterlife, when her husband brings home a 'terracotta bride' - not another dead soul, but a created offering. Fasincating use of mythology to ask questions more usually found in science fiction.
The Guns Above (Robyn Bennis): Derring-do on an airship in a vaguely Napoleonic War-era secondary world. The lead is the first woman promoted to captain an airship, and - I didn't finish, because the grinding gauntlet of misogyny from the other PoV character, a fop sent by his admiral uncle to find gossip to bring her down, and her own internalised antagonism to every other woman she interacts with made this no fun for me, as much as I enjoy derring-do and airships. WHERE IS MY MILITARY SFF WITHOUT BRUTAL MISOGYNY. I've been looking for years and I'm still looking.
Re-reads
After bouncing off The Guns Above, I badly needed some reads where people actually like each other, so I went back to reliable favourites The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison) (a young man unexpectedly becomes an emperor and slowly makes friends and starts to make things better) and Band Sinister (K J Charles) (Georgette Heyer's Venetia except with m/m polyamory, a lot more non-white people, and a lot less sexual assault, just delightful all around). If anybody has any other recs in the vein of these two, I will gladly take them. I'm in the mood for comfort in my reads right now.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-03 09:08 pm (UTC)L.
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Date: 2019-05-03 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 08:50 pm (UTC)B) I'm not sure if you'd mentioned Alpennia on Tumblr or if it was someone else, but having seen a rec, I picked them up and -quite- enjoyed them. Overlapping main characters is a nice series mechanism (make new friends, but keep the old!).
FYI book 4 is out this fall, I believe.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 08:26 am (UTC)