Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2018-06-01 07:53 am
edenfalling) wrote2018-06-01 07:53 am
Entry tags:
book list, March through May 2018
It's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in March, April, and May 2018. (I got slightly clobbered by tax season for a while there, whoops.) Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about. :)
-----
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, by Laura Spinney
-----The problem with this book is that it is not depressing enough. It is ~300 pages long, but it really needs another hundred pages and a lot more gruesome and tragic detail, plus more existential frustration on the part of people trying and failing to understand the nature of disease. Like, the framework is there! It's a good framework! I think Spinney's basic approach and organization work well, and she pulled together a lot of disparate information and presented it in a clear and comprehensible format. I learned a lot! I also think Spinney was betrayed by her journalistic background and breezed superficially over areas that need a lot more depth, even in a book meant to be a big-picture overview. My hope is that now she's provided the framework, someone else will take her basic approach and deepen it into the super-depressing comprehensive version in another decade or two. *wry*
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----Yeah, everyone who raved about this book when it came out? Was absolutely right. :) Lee throws you in at the deep end on the first page -- I had to stop after the opening chapter and sleep on it for a night before going back and starting again -- but once I had even that tenuous sense of familiarity/structure to hold on to, the immersion and figuring out this strange world was a lot of intellectual fun. Also, Cheris and Jedao are great characters, and the military and political stuff is gripping enough it almost successfully smokescreens that the book is really about ethics and choices. (Which is especially funny because Lee doesn't hide those themes at all. Actually there's a whole bunch of things he doesn't hide at all, but which I didn't realize until several chapters after the fact and then felt both glee at finally noticing and annoyance for not noticing earlier. *wry*)
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----And then I promptly went out and acquired the sequel, because I needed to read it yesterday. *wry* This book is a bit less tightly-woven than the first, as the narrative expands to include more characters -- some who'd been introduced in passing before, some only introduced here. The military and math stuff continues to be fascinating, but I feel that... hmm... I really wanted to know more details about how exactly Cheris's new calendar works in practice, why big splashy assassinations/battles work as calendrical spikes, and how Cheris was getting her information about the Hafn. Hopefully some of that will be revealed in the third and final book of the trilogy.
I also feel that the subplot about Mikodez and Istradez was insufficiently set up -- there should either have been a few more hints in the first book, or the equivalent of an extra chapter scattered through this one in order to properly build audience investment for what happens at the climax. And I really hope the offhand mentions of the first black cradle test subject pay off in some fashion in the third book as well, just because I dislike loose ends. But everything with Khiruev is 100% wonderful, and I really liked the misdirection going on with identities through the majority of the book, because I knew what had to be going on with Jedao but Lee still managed to make me doubt that knowledge, which is a neat authorial trick!
...Tangentially I should mention that I also read two published prequel stories -- Extracurricular Activities and The Battle of Candle Arc -- that deal with Jedao's earlier life, which are excellent and of interest to anyone who likes this world and these characters. You should read them too. :)
Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells
-----Aka, Murderbot Diaries part 2, in which Murderbot investigates its past, makes a new friend, uses its favorite media as an anti-anxiety treatment, and grows as a person (though perhaps not in ways it meant to). God, I love this series. :DDD
Mask of the Sun: The Science, History and Forgotten Lore of Eclipses, by John Dvorak
-----A well-written popular science/history-of-science/history book about solar and lunar eclipses. Definitely worth a read if you're into that sort of thing.
-----
I should probably also have listed the textbook for my anthropology course, since I read all but one chapter of it by the end of the course, but I never actually noted the title and I don't have access to the Blackboard course page anymore, so... oh well.
And now I am off to work, because we still don't have a replacement for Miss Cactus so I'm still working overtime. *sigh*
-----
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, by Laura Spinney
-----The problem with this book is that it is not depressing enough. It is ~300 pages long, but it really needs another hundred pages and a lot more gruesome and tragic detail, plus more existential frustration on the part of people trying and failing to understand the nature of disease. Like, the framework is there! It's a good framework! I think Spinney's basic approach and organization work well, and she pulled together a lot of disparate information and presented it in a clear and comprehensible format. I learned a lot! I also think Spinney was betrayed by her journalistic background and breezed superficially over areas that need a lot more depth, even in a book meant to be a big-picture overview. My hope is that now she's provided the framework, someone else will take her basic approach and deepen it into the super-depressing comprehensive version in another decade or two. *wry*
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----Yeah, everyone who raved about this book when it came out? Was absolutely right. :) Lee throws you in at the deep end on the first page -- I had to stop after the opening chapter and sleep on it for a night before going back and starting again -- but once I had even that tenuous sense of familiarity/structure to hold on to, the immersion and figuring out this strange world was a lot of intellectual fun. Also, Cheris and Jedao are great characters, and the military and political stuff is gripping enough it almost successfully smokescreens that the book is really about ethics and choices. (Which is especially funny because Lee doesn't hide those themes at all. Actually there's a whole bunch of things he doesn't hide at all, but which I didn't realize until several chapters after the fact and then felt both glee at finally noticing and annoyance for not noticing earlier. *wry*)
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----And then I promptly went out and acquired the sequel, because I needed to read it yesterday. *wry* This book is a bit less tightly-woven than the first, as the narrative expands to include more characters -- some who'd been introduced in passing before, some only introduced here. The military and math stuff continues to be fascinating, but I feel that... hmm... I really wanted to know more details about how exactly Cheris's new calendar works in practice, why big splashy assassinations/battles work as calendrical spikes, and how Cheris was getting her information about the Hafn. Hopefully some of that will be revealed in the third and final book of the trilogy.
I also feel that the subplot about Mikodez and Istradez was insufficiently set up -- there should either have been a few more hints in the first book, or the equivalent of an extra chapter scattered through this one in order to properly build audience investment for what happens at the climax. And I really hope the offhand mentions of the first black cradle test subject pay off in some fashion in the third book as well, just because I dislike loose ends. But everything with Khiruev is 100% wonderful, and I really liked the misdirection going on with identities through the majority of the book, because I knew what had to be going on with Jedao but Lee still managed to make me doubt that knowledge, which is a neat authorial trick!
...Tangentially I should mention that I also read two published prequel stories -- Extracurricular Activities and The Battle of Candle Arc -- that deal with Jedao's earlier life, which are excellent and of interest to anyone who likes this world and these characters. You should read them too. :)
Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells
-----Aka, Murderbot Diaries part 2, in which Murderbot investigates its past, makes a new friend, uses its favorite media as an anti-anxiety treatment, and grows as a person (though perhaps not in ways it meant to). God, I love this series. :DDD
Mask of the Sun: The Science, History and Forgotten Lore of Eclipses, by John Dvorak
-----A well-written popular science/history-of-science/history book about solar and lunar eclipses. Definitely worth a read if you're into that sort of thing.
-----
I should probably also have listed the textbook for my anthropology course, since I read all but one chapter of it by the end of the course, but I never actually noted the title and I don't have access to the Blackboard course page anymore, so... oh well.
And now I am off to work, because we still don't have a replacement for Miss Cactus so I'm still working overtime. *sigh*