My reading order seems to have partially sorted these posts into 'books I really liked' and 'other.'
The Furthest Station, by Ben Aaronovitch. A novella taken out of order because it happened to be on my kindle when I felt like something short and undemanding - I've only read the first of the novels so far. Policeman wrangles supernatural situations related to London's long history. Ghosts on the underground. Pleasant enough. I think I'll be enthusiastic about these when I've read three or four of them, there are clearly bits of overplot being put in place here. It doesn't obviously spoil anything, either - but I think 'short and undemanding' was the wrong prescription, translating to 'requires energy without returning energy'. Most of the books I'm writing about here I read parts of during the third hours of bus rides I'd have preferred to stop at two hours).
Child of a Hidden Sea, by A. M. Delamonica. I only just liked this enough to keep reading it. The main character is immediately whisked to a location which is certainly magical and might very well be another world, while in small flashbacks giving us the circumstances which lead to the whisking. I immediately did not care. The reason I did keep reading was a worldbuilding detail that turned up and made me go 'ooh', and true to promise, those kept on coming. Some of the ways in which this is not set in Default Magic Land are fun and more complicated than usual, and the reasons for both our society in general and the main character specifically being kept from knowledge of magical goings on are more interesting than usual. I'm happy to see a character get to a Magic Land who has the right skillset for it and whose first response is, "Plot? I don't want to have a plot, I want to study those shellfish over there, far more interesting." There was also a romance, pirates, an implausibly wonderful genius sibling, and the bonding of estranged family members - all of which was schematically as I'd have wanted it, and actually left me cold. There kept being bits of dialogue which seemed like what you write when you know you need a bit of dialogue, instead of like either a person speaking or something in a style of its own - which generalises to what I didn't like about the book overall. But the ending jumped out and moved me, and it does have the coolest sea otters ever. I may read the sequel.
Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. This would have been a very different experience if it had been the first thing of his I'd read. It's a version of the Cupid and Psyche story, but so much of what it's doing he also does elsewhere. The relationship of pagan gods to the Christian God. A person's detailed moral decision-making against temptation. An approach to the problem of pain - and to the question, why do gods let themselves be doubted? And for the most part I prefer the workings with those I read earlier, Perelandra and Screwtape and The Great Divorce. In fact I put this down a little way in, because I was finding it stolid, to reread The Great Divorce - which is so much book in so few words. I find it almost as entertaining and almost as insightful as ever, though now that I've assimilated what's beautiful in his vision of Hell, some of the individual sinners whose lives are based on ideas about human nature I don't share pop out at me more than they used to.
Several of those are about the nature of women. Till We Have Faces is written in a woman's first person, which makes it both better and worse than Lewis usually is about that. Orual is strong and clever and flawed, and her flaws
( are spoilers, I suppose )
There are ways in which this is neat, as a version of Cupid and Psyche and as a flawed person engaging with her soul's salvation; there are thoughts and sentences which strike true. But it felt overall less like a book I wanted to be reading for its own sake and more like a collection of evidence about a mind I'm interested in. There are places where Lewis' theology strikes me as so beautiful I wish I believed in it. This is not one of those. This foregrounds some of the reasons I don't. (But I can think: if he was right about the nature of God, and made the right choice, then he has by now understood his own blinkers better than anyone living does, and discarded them. His own thinking allows for that).
The reason I have not been making small posts about being in Prague is that this post has been sitting half finished as a draft, and this device gives me no way to save text, so I can't transfer it to another file and come back to it later, I have to finish or delete. Other books I read in Greece: Song of the Vikings. Nonfiction about the Iceland of Snorri, writer of the Edda from which comes a great whack of the Norse mythology we have. I knew very little about Iceland, which rather surprises me. A harsh landscape, a most storied and storiable politics. I grew up with Norse myths on the shelf, and have powerful dim memories of Volsungs and a man whose enemy has cut his leg tendons slowly forging himself a substitute; before that, there were the Noggin the Nog picture books, which all begin in the Lands of the North, with black rocks and the cold sea and people gathered close around the fire listening to a tale. This is a good book. Its main effect is to make me want to read the sources it's talking about, and though it feels partial enough to Snorri that I want to double-check its claims for him, it doesn't feel partial to the point of leaving stuff out. I wanted its chapter on how ideas about Norseness made their way into European popular and academic thought to influence a) Tolkien and b) Nazism to have been a whole book on its own, but I'm sure that book exists and I can find it.
Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson. Book three of a projected ten. I hadn't expected ever to bother with this, but the bus ride was long, it was on my kindle, why not?
By the end of part one of five, itself book-length, I had come up with some good reasons why not. Characters developing on a schedule of, 'too many books left, need another arc.' Language going thud, thud, thud. And more than that, because I can like Sanderson's charcters and tolerate his style. I remember loving the first book in this series when it came out, and going, 'Need sequel now, need sequel now!' I suspect I'd still like it: interesting world, interesting people making significant choices, so many tempting threads. By book three it has congealed. I suspect this is because Sanderson gives each book only as much time as he has, and the first book got years of loving redrafting because no publisher was calling for its sequel yet. Certainly his prose style can range from the polished transparent to the was-this-even-edited? Also book three of ten is a more difficult proposition than book one of ten. But in book two a whole lot of beautifully set up bits of suspense wilted drably into resolution, and book three is no better - unless it's only the three-hour bus ride talking. (I think that one may actually have been a five-hour bus ride).
So I did what I never do and skimmed it.
( Major spoilers for all three existing tomes )
So when the fourth tome comes along, unless anyone tells me otherwise, I'll be reading the first and last two chapters of every part.
Those are all the books I read in Greece. However: another reason I haven't been posting is that it turns out I can explore a new city and write journal entries, or explore a new city and read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but not all three at once.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seahearth, Justy, leaflemming, you would very likely like this. It's a fan novel available in full online, and viewable with no trouble on a kindle's browser, so it need not be read off a radiant screen. For the first six or so chapters it is merely quite entertaining. Then it starts going places. So very many places. Its premise is that Harry Potter, raised by a family other than the Dursleys, enters the wizarding world as a child genius - imagine what an eleven-year-old Miles Vorkosigan would do upon discovering Diagon Alley, as well as what kind of writer would be required to do that idea any kind of justice, and you'll get a sense of both how clever and how funny this book is. It is considerably cleverer and funnier than the original series, though part of that comes from being able to incorporate into its worldbuilding the full suite of things Rowling probably only came up with as she went along, while telling jokes using the original continuity. This is the longest bit of fanfic I've (half, so far) read, and seems like a good public relations animal for fanfic: complete in itself, yet dependent on the original to the point where the serial numbers are printed on its heart. It also teaches the scientific method rather better than my first two years of university Biology, and does about six things I was wishing had been done when I walked out of The Crimes of Grindlewald. It is probably, when I stop to think about it, ludicrously paced, but I don't care. It just keeps on ticking 'Have you ever wanted someone to take x seriously?' boxes, while making Tolkien jokes, and remaining aware that Hufflepuffs can be wonderful.
The neighbors have stopped singing now, and it is midnight, so I will shortly go to bed. Prague. Delicious food and chamber music this evening, art galleries behind Prague Castle this morning, amazingly convenient trams, mulled wine wherever we look, otherwise quite unassuming restaurants happen to be in the basements of medieval monastic orders, the Charles Bridge flows with tourists morning to night...
Bed. Or just one more chapter, says a voice I must deal with using methods of rationality one way or another.
The Furthest Station, by Ben Aaronovitch. A novella taken out of order because it happened to be on my kindle when I felt like something short and undemanding - I've only read the first of the novels so far. Policeman wrangles supernatural situations related to London's long history. Ghosts on the underground. Pleasant enough. I think I'll be enthusiastic about these when I've read three or four of them, there are clearly bits of overplot being put in place here. It doesn't obviously spoil anything, either - but I think 'short and undemanding' was the wrong prescription, translating to 'requires energy without returning energy'. Most of the books I'm writing about here I read parts of during the third hours of bus rides I'd have preferred to stop at two hours).
Child of a Hidden Sea, by A. M. Delamonica. I only just liked this enough to keep reading it. The main character is immediately whisked to a location which is certainly magical and might very well be another world, while in small flashbacks giving us the circumstances which lead to the whisking. I immediately did not care. The reason I did keep reading was a worldbuilding detail that turned up and made me go 'ooh', and true to promise, those kept on coming. Some of the ways in which this is not set in Default Magic Land are fun and more complicated than usual, and the reasons for both our society in general and the main character specifically being kept from knowledge of magical goings on are more interesting than usual. I'm happy to see a character get to a Magic Land who has the right skillset for it and whose first response is, "Plot? I don't want to have a plot, I want to study those shellfish over there, far more interesting." There was also a romance, pirates, an implausibly wonderful genius sibling, and the bonding of estranged family members - all of which was schematically as I'd have wanted it, and actually left me cold. There kept being bits of dialogue which seemed like what you write when you know you need a bit of dialogue, instead of like either a person speaking or something in a style of its own - which generalises to what I didn't like about the book overall. But the ending jumped out and moved me, and it does have the coolest sea otters ever. I may read the sequel.
Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. This would have been a very different experience if it had been the first thing of his I'd read. It's a version of the Cupid and Psyche story, but so much of what it's doing he also does elsewhere. The relationship of pagan gods to the Christian God. A person's detailed moral decision-making against temptation. An approach to the problem of pain - and to the question, why do gods let themselves be doubted? And for the most part I prefer the workings with those I read earlier, Perelandra and Screwtape and The Great Divorce. In fact I put this down a little way in, because I was finding it stolid, to reread The Great Divorce - which is so much book in so few words. I find it almost as entertaining and almost as insightful as ever, though now that I've assimilated what's beautiful in his vision of Hell, some of the individual sinners whose lives are based on ideas about human nature I don't share pop out at me more than they used to.
Several of those are about the nature of women. Till We Have Faces is written in a woman's first person, which makes it both better and worse than Lewis usually is about that. Orual is strong and clever and flawed, and her flaws
( are spoilers, I suppose )
There are ways in which this is neat, as a version of Cupid and Psyche and as a flawed person engaging with her soul's salvation; there are thoughts and sentences which strike true. But it felt overall less like a book I wanted to be reading for its own sake and more like a collection of evidence about a mind I'm interested in. There are places where Lewis' theology strikes me as so beautiful I wish I believed in it. This is not one of those. This foregrounds some of the reasons I don't. (But I can think: if he was right about the nature of God, and made the right choice, then he has by now understood his own blinkers better than anyone living does, and discarded them. His own thinking allows for that).
The reason I have not been making small posts about being in Prague is that this post has been sitting half finished as a draft, and this device gives me no way to save text, so I can't transfer it to another file and come back to it later, I have to finish or delete. Other books I read in Greece: Song of the Vikings. Nonfiction about the Iceland of Snorri, writer of the Edda from which comes a great whack of the Norse mythology we have. I knew very little about Iceland, which rather surprises me. A harsh landscape, a most storied and storiable politics. I grew up with Norse myths on the shelf, and have powerful dim memories of Volsungs and a man whose enemy has cut his leg tendons slowly forging himself a substitute; before that, there were the Noggin the Nog picture books, which all begin in the Lands of the North, with black rocks and the cold sea and people gathered close around the fire listening to a tale. This is a good book. Its main effect is to make me want to read the sources it's talking about, and though it feels partial enough to Snorri that I want to double-check its claims for him, it doesn't feel partial to the point of leaving stuff out. I wanted its chapter on how ideas about Norseness made their way into European popular and academic thought to influence a) Tolkien and b) Nazism to have been a whole book on its own, but I'm sure that book exists and I can find it.
Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson. Book three of a projected ten. I hadn't expected ever to bother with this, but the bus ride was long, it was on my kindle, why not?
By the end of part one of five, itself book-length, I had come up with some good reasons why not. Characters developing on a schedule of, 'too many books left, need another arc.' Language going thud, thud, thud. And more than that, because I can like Sanderson's charcters and tolerate his style. I remember loving the first book in this series when it came out, and going, 'Need sequel now, need sequel now!' I suspect I'd still like it: interesting world, interesting people making significant choices, so many tempting threads. By book three it has congealed. I suspect this is because Sanderson gives each book only as much time as he has, and the first book got years of loving redrafting because no publisher was calling for its sequel yet. Certainly his prose style can range from the polished transparent to the was-this-even-edited? Also book three of ten is a more difficult proposition than book one of ten. But in book two a whole lot of beautifully set up bits of suspense wilted drably into resolution, and book three is no better - unless it's only the three-hour bus ride talking. (I think that one may actually have been a five-hour bus ride).
So I did what I never do and skimmed it.
( Major spoilers for all three existing tomes )
So when the fourth tome comes along, unless anyone tells me otherwise, I'll be reading the first and last two chapters of every part.
Those are all the books I read in Greece. However: another reason I haven't been posting is that it turns out I can explore a new city and write journal entries, or explore a new city and read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but not all three at once.
seahearth, Justy, leaflemming, you would very likely like this. It's a fan novel available in full online, and viewable with no trouble on a kindle's browser, so it need not be read off a radiant screen. For the first six or so chapters it is merely quite entertaining. Then it starts going places. So very many places. Its premise is that Harry Potter, raised by a family other than the Dursleys, enters the wizarding world as a child genius - imagine what an eleven-year-old Miles Vorkosigan would do upon discovering Diagon Alley, as well as what kind of writer would be required to do that idea any kind of justice, and you'll get a sense of both how clever and how funny this book is. It is considerably cleverer and funnier than the original series, though part of that comes from being able to incorporate into its worldbuilding the full suite of things Rowling probably only came up with as she went along, while telling jokes using the original continuity. This is the longest bit of fanfic I've (half, so far) read, and seems like a good public relations animal for fanfic: complete in itself, yet dependent on the original to the point where the serial numbers are printed on its heart. It also teaches the scientific method rather better than my first two years of university Biology, and does about six things I was wishing had been done when I walked out of The Crimes of Grindlewald. It is probably, when I stop to think about it, ludicrously paced, but I don't care. It just keeps on ticking 'Have you ever wanted someone to take x seriously?' boxes, while making Tolkien jokes, and remaining aware that Hufflepuffs can be wonderful.The neighbors have stopped singing now, and it is midnight, so I will shortly go to bed. Prague. Delicious food and chamber music this evening, art galleries behind Prague Castle this morning, amazingly convenient trams, mulled wine wherever we look, otherwise quite unassuming restaurants happen to be in the basements of medieval monastic orders, the Charles Bridge flows with tourists morning to night...
Bed. Or just one more chapter, says a voice I must deal with using methods of rationality one way or another.
