book list, June and July 2018
Aug. 8th, 2018 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingIt's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in June and July of 2018. 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.
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Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----The conclusion of the Machineries of Empire trilogy. I enjoyed it a lot! As always, my main criticism is that I wanted to see more of the actual math -- look, if you are going to write a universe based on the premise that careful manipulation of math and calendars lets you do magic, I want to see the math, dammit -- but all the character, war, and political stuff is excellent. I would also have cheerfully murdered to see more of Cheris and moth!Jedao interacting, and also to get more of Cheris's POV, but I hear that Lee is writing a story collection including a post-trilogy novella featuring the two of them, so. :D
The Flowers of Vashnoi, by Lois McMaster Bujold
-----A novella (ish?) featuring Ekaterin doing botanical research in the Vashnoi exclusion zone, and running into some of the sociological scars that still cut through the Vorkosigan district decades after the Cetagandan war. Great stuff. :)
We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution, by George William Van Cleve
-----Pretty much what it says on the tin: namely, an analysis of all the ways the Articles of Confederation failed to create a functional government (and the ways people's arguments to the contrary fall apart under careful examination) and the circumstances that led early American leaders to call the Constitutional Convention even though many of them intensely disliked the idea of such a convention and a stronger national government. This is not exciting stuff, but definitely worth reading. (Note: the author mentions Native American land rights and the general illegality and immorality of white settlement in passing but then tends to ignore those issues and take an extremely white-centric POV, which is understandable in a book focusing on the European colonial society, but still unfortunate.)
Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South, by Diane Duane
-----A really neat sort of... hmm... magical realism story, set in the Romansch-speaking parts of Switzerland in the late 13th century, leading up to the beginning of the Swiss confederation. Apparently this was intended as book one of a trilogy, but I have been unable to find the other two books. Perhaps they were never written due to lack of interest and thus commercial value? If so, that's a shame. I found the setting fascinating, and would really like to see more of Mariarta's story.
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
-----I had to read this for my English class. I don't like it any better now than when I had to read it in high school. I mean, I admire it as a piece of craft, but that's entirely different from asking whether I enjoyed reading it and/or would like to read it again. *sigh*
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I also read thirteen chapters of a textbook on childhood developmental psychology. I don't think it was the entire book since we cut off around age twelve (ch. 13) and there were hints within the text that the book should have had several more chapters dealing with adolescence. But that was still a fair bit of reading.
---------------
Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee
-----The conclusion of the Machineries of Empire trilogy. I enjoyed it a lot! As always, my main criticism is that I wanted to see more of the actual math -- look, if you are going to write a universe based on the premise that careful manipulation of math and calendars lets you do magic, I want to see the math, dammit -- but all the character, war, and political stuff is excellent. I would also have cheerfully murdered to see more of Cheris and moth!Jedao interacting, and also to get more of Cheris's POV, but I hear that Lee is writing a story collection including a post-trilogy novella featuring the two of them, so. :D
The Flowers of Vashnoi, by Lois McMaster Bujold
-----A novella (ish?) featuring Ekaterin doing botanical research in the Vashnoi exclusion zone, and running into some of the sociological scars that still cut through the Vorkosigan district decades after the Cetagandan war. Great stuff. :)
We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution, by George William Van Cleve
-----Pretty much what it says on the tin: namely, an analysis of all the ways the Articles of Confederation failed to create a functional government (and the ways people's arguments to the contrary fall apart under careful examination) and the circumstances that led early American leaders to call the Constitutional Convention even though many of them intensely disliked the idea of such a convention and a stronger national government. This is not exciting stuff, but definitely worth reading. (Note: the author mentions Native American land rights and the general illegality and immorality of white settlement in passing but then tends to ignore those issues and take an extremely white-centric POV, which is understandable in a book focusing on the European colonial society, but still unfortunate.)
Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South, by Diane Duane
-----A really neat sort of... hmm... magical realism story, set in the Romansch-speaking parts of Switzerland in the late 13th century, leading up to the beginning of the Swiss confederation. Apparently this was intended as book one of a trilogy, but I have been unable to find the other two books. Perhaps they were never written due to lack of interest and thus commercial value? If so, that's a shame. I found the setting fascinating, and would really like to see more of Mariarta's story.
Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller
-----I had to read this for my English class. I don't like it any better now than when I had to read it in high school. I mean, I admire it as a piece of craft, but that's entirely different from asking whether I enjoyed reading it and/or would like to read it again. *sigh*
---------------
I also read thirteen chapters of a textbook on childhood developmental psychology. I don't think it was the entire book since we cut off around age twelve (ch. 13) and there were hints within the text that the book should have had several more chapters dealing with adolescence. But that was still a fair bit of reading.
