I haven't done an actual "recent reading" post since summer, though I've been recording authors and titles as I went. So, here's a somewhat sketchy three-month book writeup, including books I realized I didn't need to finish.
Daniel Abraham's The Price of Spring is the fourth and last book of the Long Price Quartet. It's very good, and hard to say much about without spoilers, for the previous books if not this one. The background here is of an odd kind of magic, which is both useful in many ordinary ways, and potentially a powerful weapon. (For example, "stone made soft" is mining and some kinds of manufacture: and the andat that embodied it was seen, earlier, using it to trap someone in a normally solid wall.) Abraham shows us characters dealing with difficult things, and serious and sometimes violent disagreements in which both sides are working toward good ends, sometimes the same good ends. Not only that: some of the conflict is twisted by jealousy and revenge, or the desire for power, but more is about trying to save, if not the world, their part of it. It's also refreshing to see a story in which childlessness is an issue, and not presented as specifically or primarily a women's issue: the desire for children is a human desire. (It's not one I personally feel, but I recognize its importance, to both women and menl.)
I picked up Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family because![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rivka posted about it, and when I mentioned having it out from the library, adrian_turtle tucked More All-of-a-Kind Family into my bag as well. This is a series of stories about a Jewish family living on New York's Lower East Side around the turn of the 20th century. Problems range from a lost library book to a case of scarlet fever (at a time when the main medical/societal response was quarantine). The title and family nickname are because the parents have several daughters who look much alike except for size, and are very close. I found the mixture of past as a foreign country and very specific locality a little odd, but I suspect that if you've never lived in New York that won't be an issue. The people, and possibly the author, assume that of course everyone wants and should have a heterosexual marriage, and characters do pine for lost loves, but neither looks nor money are the primary reason for choosing a partner. There's some gender stuff that I didn't notice at the time, but when Adrian and I were discussing the first book and she said she liked it, despite the gender stuff [in particular chapter], my reaction was yes, that is blatant, why didn't I notice it when I read that? On the other hand, all the characters agree that books are good and important. Overall, these are fun, even if you don't have a child to read them to.
Maureen McHugh's collection Mothers and Other Monsters isn't exactly cheerful (no surprise, with that title), but most of the stories are good. The one that comes to mind at the moment is about a teenager, and his mentally retarded cloned sister, and what the focus on that so-wanted child does to him and to the family dynamics. [If I'd written this post as I read, you'd be getting more than this.]
Peter Beagle, We Never Talk About My Brother, also a short story collection: the title story is a man's reminiscences about his brother, who had been a network news/anchorman, a little too fond of reporting disasters. There are a lot of good stories in here, some of them rather odd. "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rivke and the Angel" is about an artist, and the angel who insists on modeling for him, told largely by his nephew who hangs around his studio after school. "Stickball Witch" is what it says, and maybe not what you'd expect, and "The Last and Only, or Mr. Moskowitz Becomes French," is just odd.
Henry Petroski's book To Engineer Is Human looks at a variety of famous disasters and uses them to present principles of good engineering, including but not limited to the value of failure analysis, and that one point of designing in more strength than you expect to need is that parts will fail. I read this over a few months during visits toadrian_turtle; it's more or less sequential, but it works to put down and come back to, it's not the sort of thing where you find yourself wondering "now, who was Count Joseph?" or "wait, Hyatt walkways" because he reminds you as needed (of the walkways, not random aristocrats).
Terry Pratchett, The Night Watch, reread. One of the best Discworld books, I think; a lot of Vimes, a little Vetinari, some on-the-ground politics, and the History Monks trying to untangle things and get Vimes back to his own time before it's too late. Good footnotes.
Mary Gentle, Ilario: The Lion's Eye. This is either the first half of something, or the first of a multi-part series; I have book two now. Ilario is intersexed--a hermaphrodite, in zir own usage and those of the people zie deals with--a foundling raised by foster parents who sold zir to be the King's Freak,then recognized but not reclaimed by zir real parents, at court. Ilario's overwhelming desire is to be an artist, and we see zir traveling around North Africa and southern Europe in a world that is very much not ours, and is at least close to the universe that Gentle's book Ash takes place in, with Carthage under a supernatural darkness, and a historical Jesus who was Emperor in Rome. "Alternate history" isn't quite right, but there isn't the odd secret history frame of Ash, either. Ilario is seduced, betrayed, and sold into slavery again early in the book, but as much as possible focuses on zir art. That Ilario is physically both male and female is important to the story, and not just because it makes zir subject to harassment on the streets. Gentle evades the "what pronoun do they use" question by telling the story in Ilario's voice, so it's "I" unless we're seeing a specific other person's view of zir. After years as outcast and "king's freak," Ilario is prepared to dress and present zirself as either gender, but very suspicious of any sort of acceptance. Much of the plot is driven by who Ilario's parents are, and are seen to be. I liked this enough to order the second volume from the library as soon as I finished the first. [I am not actively doing the fifty-book challenge, but I have been counting, and this makes 50 for 2009, not counting rereads.]
James Thurber, The Years with Ross A memoir of Harold Ross, founding editor of The New Yorker, of the magazine from the time Thurber started working on it until Ross's death, and to some extent also of Thurber's own life, and of some of the other people who were involved with the magazine, or who Ross knew socially. Thurber was a good writer, not only as a humorist, though there is some humor in here, along with the facts about various aspects of publishing, and a magazine run by a man with almost no head for business. This book was on my parents' shelves all the time I was growing up, and I was never tempted to read it; on the subway a few days ago I askedcattitude if he had a spare book, and he handed me this, from the library. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it at 15, but bits would have felt less distant had I read it at 25. There are names that Thurber assumes his readers will know, likely a valid assumption in 1957, at least for the readership of such a book. But some I did, some are explained, and some can be dealt with from context (someone is clearly a reporter, or a socialite, and the details aren't germane to the story). Sometimes even knowing who they are makes little difference: Harpo Marx turns up, but mostly as a man Ross played cards with. Ross was an odd man, odd in ways that make me wonder why he wanted to run the sort of magazine he clearly did: he lacked interest in, and curiosity about, music, poetry, and most fiction, and published a magazine known in significant part for its poetry and fiction. Ross read most of the stories before publication, and had the habit of writing "Who he?" or "Who she?" in the margins of galleys about any name he didn't recognize. Some of those specific questions are startling, though Thurber also records him, instead, walking over to the fact checkers and asking them who William Blake was. Not quite in the "if you enjoy this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like," but I'm not sure how to predict who else will like it.
Books I didn't finish:
Richard Fortey, Earth: An Intimate History This started promisingly, with an on-the-ground discussion of geology as seen in and around Naples, with the nearby volcano, and Roman columns whose damage from underwater organisms shows the fall and rise of the land over the last two millennia. But Fortey couldn't, for me, keep it up. It's not easy being John McPhee, even for McPhee. I gave up partway through the chapter about Iceland, at the point where Fortey says that Iceland is like Hawaii would be, if Hawaii were in the northern hemisphere. If you're writing an "intimate" book about Earth, that's a nontrivial error. Doubly so if your previous chapter was all about the Hawaiian islands, the chains of seamounts, and coral reefs. Life is too short for boring books.
Melinda Wells, Death Takes the Cake. A mystery novel grabbed semi-randomly at the library when borrowing other things. Amateur sleuth whose actual job is hosting a cooking show on cable television, fine. Throwing her in with someone who she hasn't seen in 25 years, but who threatened her the last time they met—and who then turns up dead, fine. Della's motive for investigating is that a friend of hers becomes a suspect. But I got tired of a plot that seems to be driven mostly by people finding excuses not to tell their friends and loved ones anything. About the fourth time Della realizes that if the killer realizes she knows certain things, she's the next target, and then does not use her cell phone to call the police and say "hey, guys, I have this file that I think you need, and that I need the world to know you have," I stopped. Yes, maybe they'll take it as more evidence your friend is guilty. Even if you're sure he's innocent, are you prepared to die for this? Maybe, but it feels more like she doesn't quite connect what she's afraid of with the idea that she can actually do something to protect herself. (We the reader know she'll get through, because it's first-person narrative, but that doesn't make it less annoying; if anything, the reverse.
Daniel Abraham's The Price of Spring is the fourth and last book of the Long Price Quartet. It's very good, and hard to say much about without spoilers, for the previous books if not this one. The background here is of an odd kind of magic, which is both useful in many ordinary ways, and potentially a powerful weapon. (For example, "stone made soft" is mining and some kinds of manufacture: and the andat that embodied it was seen, earlier, using it to trap someone in a normally solid wall.) Abraham shows us characters dealing with difficult things, and serious and sometimes violent disagreements in which both sides are working toward good ends, sometimes the same good ends. Not only that: some of the conflict is twisted by jealousy and revenge, or the desire for power, but more is about trying to save, if not the world, their part of it. It's also refreshing to see a story in which childlessness is an issue, and not presented as specifically or primarily a women's issue: the desire for children is a human desire. (It's not one I personally feel, but I recognize its importance, to both women and menl.)
I picked up Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family because
rivka posted about it, and when I mentioned having it out from the library, adrian_turtle tucked More All-of-a-Kind Family into my bag as well. This is a series of stories about a Jewish family living on New York's Lower East Side around the turn of the 20th century. Problems range from a lost library book to a case of scarlet fever (at a time when the main medical/societal response was quarantine). The title and family nickname are because the parents have several daughters who look much alike except for size, and are very close. I found the mixture of past as a foreign country and very specific locality a little odd, but I suspect that if you've never lived in New York that won't be an issue. The people, and possibly the author, assume that of course everyone wants and should have a heterosexual marriage, and characters do pine for lost loves, but neither looks nor money are the primary reason for choosing a partner. There's some gender stuff that I didn't notice at the time, but when Adrian and I were discussing the first book and she said she liked it, despite the gender stuff [in particular chapter], my reaction was yes, that is blatant, why didn't I notice it when I read that? On the other hand, all the characters agree that books are good and important. Overall, these are fun, even if you don't have a child to read them to. Maureen McHugh's collection Mothers and Other Monsters isn't exactly cheerful (no surprise, with that title), but most of the stories are good. The one that comes to mind at the moment is about a teenager, and his mentally retarded cloned sister, and what the focus on that so-wanted child does to him and to the family dynamics. [If I'd written this post as I read, you'd be getting more than this.]
Peter Beagle, We Never Talk About My Brother, also a short story collection: the title story is a man's reminiscences about his brother, who had been a network news/anchorman, a little too fond of reporting disasters. There are a lot of good stories in here, some of them rather odd. "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rivke and the Angel" is about an artist, and the angel who insists on modeling for him, told largely by his nephew who hangs around his studio after school. "Stickball Witch" is what it says, and maybe not what you'd expect, and "The Last and Only, or Mr. Moskowitz Becomes French," is just odd.
Henry Petroski's book To Engineer Is Human looks at a variety of famous disasters and uses them to present principles of good engineering, including but not limited to the value of failure analysis, and that one point of designing in more strength than you expect to need is that parts will fail. I read this over a few months during visits to
adrian_turtle; it's more or less sequential, but it works to put down and come back to, it's not the sort of thing where you find yourself wondering "now, who was Count Joseph?" or "wait, Hyatt walkways" because he reminds you as needed (of the walkways, not random aristocrats).Terry Pratchett, The Night Watch, reread. One of the best Discworld books, I think; a lot of Vimes, a little Vetinari, some on-the-ground politics, and the History Monks trying to untangle things and get Vimes back to his own time before it's too late. Good footnotes.
Mary Gentle, Ilario: The Lion's Eye. This is either the first half of something, or the first of a multi-part series; I have book two now. Ilario is intersexed--a hermaphrodite, in zir own usage and those of the people zie deals with--a foundling raised by foster parents who sold zir to be the King's Freak,then recognized but not reclaimed by zir real parents, at court. Ilario's overwhelming desire is to be an artist, and we see zir traveling around North Africa and southern Europe in a world that is very much not ours, and is at least close to the universe that Gentle's book Ash takes place in, with Carthage under a supernatural darkness, and a historical Jesus who was Emperor in Rome. "Alternate history" isn't quite right, but there isn't the odd secret history frame of Ash, either. Ilario is seduced, betrayed, and sold into slavery again early in the book, but as much as possible focuses on zir art. That Ilario is physically both male and female is important to the story, and not just because it makes zir subject to harassment on the streets. Gentle evades the "what pronoun do they use" question by telling the story in Ilario's voice, so it's "I" unless we're seeing a specific other person's view of zir. After years as outcast and "king's freak," Ilario is prepared to dress and present zirself as either gender, but very suspicious of any sort of acceptance. Much of the plot is driven by who Ilario's parents are, and are seen to be. I liked this enough to order the second volume from the library as soon as I finished the first. [I am not actively doing the fifty-book challenge, but I have been counting, and this makes 50 for 2009, not counting rereads.]
James Thurber, The Years with Ross A memoir of Harold Ross, founding editor of The New Yorker, of the magazine from the time Thurber started working on it until Ross's death, and to some extent also of Thurber's own life, and of some of the other people who were involved with the magazine, or who Ross knew socially. Thurber was a good writer, not only as a humorist, though there is some humor in here, along with the facts about various aspects of publishing, and a magazine run by a man with almost no head for business. This book was on my parents' shelves all the time I was growing up, and I was never tempted to read it; on the subway a few days ago I asked
cattitude if he had a spare book, and he handed me this, from the library. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it at 15, but bits would have felt less distant had I read it at 25. There are names that Thurber assumes his readers will know, likely a valid assumption in 1957, at least for the readership of such a book. But some I did, some are explained, and some can be dealt with from context (someone is clearly a reporter, or a socialite, and the details aren't germane to the story). Sometimes even knowing who they are makes little difference: Harpo Marx turns up, but mostly as a man Ross played cards with. Ross was an odd man, odd in ways that make me wonder why he wanted to run the sort of magazine he clearly did: he lacked interest in, and curiosity about, music, poetry, and most fiction, and published a magazine known in significant part for its poetry and fiction. Ross read most of the stories before publication, and had the habit of writing "Who he?" or "Who she?" in the margins of galleys about any name he didn't recognize. Some of those specific questions are startling, though Thurber also records him, instead, walking over to the fact checkers and asking them who William Blake was. Not quite in the "if you enjoy this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like," but I'm not sure how to predict who else will like it.Books I didn't finish:
Richard Fortey, Earth: An Intimate History This started promisingly, with an on-the-ground discussion of geology as seen in and around Naples, with the nearby volcano, and Roman columns whose damage from underwater organisms shows the fall and rise of the land over the last two millennia. But Fortey couldn't, for me, keep it up. It's not easy being John McPhee, even for McPhee. I gave up partway through the chapter about Iceland, at the point where Fortey says that Iceland is like Hawaii would be, if Hawaii were in the northern hemisphere. If you're writing an "intimate" book about Earth, that's a nontrivial error. Doubly so if your previous chapter was all about the Hawaiian islands, the chains of seamounts, and coral reefs. Life is too short for boring books.
Melinda Wells, Death Takes the Cake. A mystery novel grabbed semi-randomly at the library when borrowing other things. Amateur sleuth whose actual job is hosting a cooking show on cable television, fine. Throwing her in with someone who she hasn't seen in 25 years, but who threatened her the last time they met—and who then turns up dead, fine. Della's motive for investigating is that a friend of hers becomes a suspect. But I got tired of a plot that seems to be driven mostly by people finding excuses not to tell their friends and loved ones anything. About the fourth time Della realizes that if the killer realizes she knows certain things, she's the next target, and then does not use her cell phone to call the police and say "hey, guys, I have this file that I think you need, and that I need the world to know you have," I stopped. Yes, maybe they'll take it as more evidence your friend is guilty. Even if you're sure he's innocent, are you prepared to die for this? Maybe, but it feels more like she doesn't quite connect what she's afraid of with the idea that she can actually do something to protect herself. (We the reader know she'll get through, because it's first-person narrative, but that doesn't make it less annoying; if anything, the reverse.