Reading while I was in Montreal

[redbird]

Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms, by Richard Fortey. This is a book about “living fossils”—and the author critiques that framing in a couple of directions. What he wrote about here are some species that look very much like Paleozoic or earlier ancestors, or that seem to be more like early members of their clades than are other extant species, so the tinamou for birds. He offers coelacanths and wollemi pines as “living fossils” in the sense that the fossils of distant ancestors were described before the extant species.

Nation, by Terry Pratchett (reread, because I remembered a particular bit and that made me want to get the book out)

Tsalmoth, by Steven Brust. The most recent of the Jhereg books. I was less sympathetic with the jerk narrator/protagonist than in previous books. I also didn't find the bits where the narration skips things because either Sethra Lavode, being addressed, knows them, or because Vlad has had part of his memory of the events removed, to work well. Probably worth reading if you've been following the series, and a bad place to start.

The Duke Who Didn't, by Courtney Milan. Romance between two Britons of Chinese ancestry, set in a small town in 19th-century England. A little odd, and I had trouble getting into it, but I liked it.

The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (finished rereading this, after (re)reading the first two-thirds on a previous visit to Montreal)

Trouble in Triplicate, by Nero Wolfe (reread, three novellas, I had a vague recollection of one and no memory of reading the other two)

Comments

[carbonel]

I read The Duke Who Didn't last year on someone's recommendation, but it didn't inspire me to read other Courtney Milan works.

What I said on Goodreads:

This was pleasant but (as many people have said) very low stakes. There really wasn't any historical feel other than the modes of transportation. I seriously eye-rolled when one character talked about "privilege."

[mindstalk]

Whoah, I hadn't heard that Tsalmoth came out!

[redrose]

I just finished the entire Nero Wolfe series. It's been a rough few months.