book list, April 2009
May. 3rd, 2009 11:03 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 April 2009. (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.)
New: 3
---Turn Coat, Jim Butcher (fantasy: volume 11 of the Dresden Files, in which Morgan is falsely accused of murder and flees to Chicago to seek Harry's protection. Things get progressively worse from there. I love this series.)
---The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold (fantasy: volume 4 of the Sharing Knife series. After finishing their river journey, Fawn and Dag are still at loose ends in their quest to find a place in their world and alter relations between farmers and Lakewalkers. Fawn begins by wrangling Dag an apprenticeship of sorts at New Moon Cutoff camp, but when that goes sour, they begin a journey northeast on the Tripoint Trace, accompanying a growing wagon train of farmers setting out for new opportunities. Then they encounter a malice, which puts Dag's experimental ground-shields for farmers to a dramatic test.
This appears to be the end of the series; while not all the sociological and magical problems are resolved, things are changing for the better, and the romance half of the story has reached its natural end, with a new home and the birth of Fawn and Dag's first child.)
---The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Niall Ferguson (nonfiction: an overview of the development of modern finance, focusing mostly on the West until the later chapters. Each chapter deals with a different subject -- the development of credit and banking, and the corresponding divorce of notional money from any physical object; the creation of bond markets; the invention of joint-stock limited liability corporations, stock markets, and stock bubbles; insurance and welfare; real estate and the housing market; and the rise, fall, and rise of an interconnected world financial system.
Ferguson assumes a certain basic background in math and business, but this book is aimed at the educated general public, not economists, so one can generally figure out what he's talking about by carefully rereading any confusing passages. His writing is clean and clear, and the story he tells is fascinating. His bias is toward free-market capitalism, but he has a keen sense of capitalism's limits and downsides, and he provides good supporting evidence for his arguments.
Do read this; it's very good!)
Old: 1
---Small Favor, Jim Butcher (fantasy: volume 10 of the Dresden Files, in which Mab, the Faerie Queen of Winter, calls in one of the two favors Harry owes her. She orders him to find and rescue John Marcone, the crime lord of Chicago, who has been kidnapped by the Order of the Blackened Denarius. As if that weren't impossible enough, Harry also has to deal with sporadic attacks from the warriors of Summer, and the involvement of the Archive.)
April Total: 4 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 25 books (10 new, 15 old)
...I have got to stop faffing around online to no purpose when I have nearly 50 books stacked up around my apartment waiting to be read. *thwaps self*
New: 3
---Turn Coat, Jim Butcher (fantasy: volume 11 of the Dresden Files, in which Morgan is falsely accused of murder and flees to Chicago to seek Harry's protection. Things get progressively worse from there. I love this series.)
---The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold (fantasy: volume 4 of the Sharing Knife series. After finishing their river journey, Fawn and Dag are still at loose ends in their quest to find a place in their world and alter relations between farmers and Lakewalkers. Fawn begins by wrangling Dag an apprenticeship of sorts at New Moon Cutoff camp, but when that goes sour, they begin a journey northeast on the Tripoint Trace, accompanying a growing wagon train of farmers setting out for new opportunities. Then they encounter a malice, which puts Dag's experimental ground-shields for farmers to a dramatic test.
This appears to be the end of the series; while not all the sociological and magical problems are resolved, things are changing for the better, and the romance half of the story has reached its natural end, with a new home and the birth of Fawn and Dag's first child.)
---The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Niall Ferguson (nonfiction: an overview of the development of modern finance, focusing mostly on the West until the later chapters. Each chapter deals with a different subject -- the development of credit and banking, and the corresponding divorce of notional money from any physical object; the creation of bond markets; the invention of joint-stock limited liability corporations, stock markets, and stock bubbles; insurance and welfare; real estate and the housing market; and the rise, fall, and rise of an interconnected world financial system.
Ferguson assumes a certain basic background in math and business, but this book is aimed at the educated general public, not economists, so one can generally figure out what he's talking about by carefully rereading any confusing passages. His writing is clean and clear, and the story he tells is fascinating. His bias is toward free-market capitalism, but he has a keen sense of capitalism's limits and downsides, and he provides good supporting evidence for his arguments.
Do read this; it's very good!)
Old: 1
---Small Favor, Jim Butcher (fantasy: volume 10 of the Dresden Files, in which Mab, the Faerie Queen of Winter, calls in one of the two favors Harry owes her. She orders him to find and rescue John Marcone, the crime lord of Chicago, who has been kidnapped by the Order of the Blackened Denarius. As if that weren't impossible enough, Harry also has to deal with sporadic attacks from the warriors of Summer, and the involvement of the Archive.)
April Total: 4 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 25 books (10 new, 15 old)
...I have got to stop faffing around online to no purpose when I have nearly 50 books stacked up around my apartment waiting to be read. *thwaps self*
