Finished reading Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead, a followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.
Finished reading Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead, a followup to Harlem Shuffle, and equally delightful.
Finished reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky does the same thing as he did in his previous, but with an additional element and resulting different themes. There was also a bit of horror — beyond the previous book’s simple arachnophobia triggers — such that I didn’t want to put the book down in those sections.
Finished reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the only book he’s written solo that I hadn’t read (other than The Big U — is that any good?). Some amazing imagery, and carefully-thought-out social impacts of nanotechnology and post-scarcity that rhymed in some ways with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series.
The book has some vestiges of its time (e.g. some really dated stereotyping), and an abrupt ending characteristic of his earlier work, but the ending worked and overall I really liked the book.
“One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning….” — The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson, 1995.
Finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. I had dragged my feet on this book because the marketing had put me off; this was apparently a Very Important book with Things to Say. I shouldn’t have paid attention: This was Stephenson’s most fun book since at least Reamde, and a very characteristic one, with hijinx, unlikely characters, passages where Stephenson showed off the cool research he’d done — the only thing missing was the badass Russian with a heart of gold.
Two notes: ① One exposition dump early in the book dragged a bit, though at least Stephenson had the character acknowledge it. ② The climax felt similar to those in Seveneves and Reamde, and possibly others further back that I’ve forgotten.
Finished reading Fall by Neal Stephenson. I can’t even start to analyze this through the lens of Goethe’s three questions: I couldn’t tell what Stephenson wanted his book to be (about uploading consciousness? a retelling of Paradise Lost? a fantasy quest? mad about the internet and/or religious fundamentalism?), and so I can’t even judge whether he succeeded, much less whether it was worth doing. And I can’t tell if it ended up more or less than the sum of its parts. I will say that I was kind of tired of the book around the ⅘︎ point (though the ending picked up a bit), and I feel pretty sure this wasn’t his best work. My opinions of his books tend to shift over time, though, so we’ll see how I feel at (let’s say) the end of the year.
Finished rereading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. I still find the first two-thirds of the book intensely compelling. I had trouble connecting as well as with the last third, though. I wonder if it should have been expanded and broken into a second book? It’s an important part of the story, but I feel like it wanted a little more space to breathe, and a little less recounting of history.
Finished reading Translation State by Ann Leckie. I’ve loved her other Imperial Radch books, and enjoyed this one, but felt like it could have used a more vigorous edit: One character kept shifting between “disturbingly alien” and “distressed teen”, and there was a plot contrivance that bothered even me (normally fairly blasé about that kind of thing). That aside, there was lots to like, including the aforementioned disturbing aliens and Leckie’s usual explorations of personhood and empire.
Leckie fans should read this; newcomers should start at the start, Ancillary Justice.
Finished reading The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel, the final book of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. This was a huge book, and reading it felt a little bit like work, but it was absolutely worth it by the end: We know how the story must play out, even if we haven’t read the history, but it remains compelling to the last page.
Just a couple years slow, I finally had the upsight that Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz is structured like a jazz tune: The overall history of the music is the melody, and the occasional biographies of important figures are the solos.
Finished reading Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, followup to Wolf Hall. I very much enjoyed this. It feels like the political parts of A Song of Ice and Fire, but with a wry sense of humor, and without the fantasy elements (obviously) and glorified cruelty that became increasingly central to that series. (Or, rather, probably vice versa: That series clearly drew some of its inspiration from these historical events.)
Amusingly, the stylistic tic of Wolf Hall was transformed into a different tic which eliminated almost all pronoun ambiguity. It felt forced at the beginning, but it gradually won me over.
Finished reading Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This was a charming story about two academics — the titular Wilde, junior and diligent and quite possibly neurodivergent, and a tenured professor, lazy and charming and (Wilde suspects) prone to falsifying his research. Seasoned with little bits of horror, but still quite fun and cozy.
Finished reading The Language of Power by Rosemary Kirstein. This is clearly not the end of the series, though it ends on an adequately-satisfying note, but it’s the most-recently published. (Kirstein is apparently continuing to write.) Less Le Guin–esque than the others, but still reminiscent. I’ve enjoyed all these books.
Finished reading The Lost Steersman by Rosemary Kirstein. This was a little more harrowing than the previous two, but (or thus?) a little more compelling.
These books are self-published, and could have used another pass from a copyeditor, but nothing that ruins the read.
Finished reading The Outskirter’s Secret by Rosemary Kirstein. Confirms the Le Guin vibes I got from the first book: ecology and sociology are core to the story.