Fair enough.
I recently read The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas which is a wonderful little collection of essays. It's a great entry (if probably slightly outdated, it was published in the 1970s) into biology for the less-scientifically minded, and touches on themes of philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics among other things. Really terrific.
Neverwhere: Ace
The Secret Lives of Cows: Weirdly calming
Rivers of London: Fun and dumb
The Wandering Earth: Great hard sci-fi
The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies
This is essentially an update on the progress of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in light of latest science, 50 years since it started scanning the skies for radio signals. It examines the steps needed for intelligent life to form (the Drake Equation) and concludes that the two main hurdles are those that remain dimly understood - biogenesis and evolution of intelligence from lower forms. It also reviews the searches performed by SETI thus far and concludes that while we've only scanned a small portion of the sky, our capabilities to do so are accelerating and the longer we go without detection the more rare it appears that life is. More radically, he suggests that the field has been hampered by anthropomorphism and that even the focus on radio may be misguided, as it's possible that this is a technology that will have peaked in the late 20th century. Instead Davies suggests that we conduct our search more widely to include such things as lasers and directed neutrinos.
In general, Davies implies that things are looking somewhat more pessimistic than they were and as a scientist (even one at the forefront of such activity) his tentative opinion is that we are perhaps the only intelligent life in the observable universe.
It's an interesting read and a welcome update to the topic for someone who read much of Carl Sagan's output a couple of decades back.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff
This one hardly needs an introduction, being the inside story of the first year of Donald Trump's presidency. It led to much controversy upon release.
The book appears to be derived from direct access that Wolff had to meetings in the White House as well as accounts from participants. He has taken the material collected and edited it into a form something like a novel, narrating the story. There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly that this narration is presented as omniscient when it ought to be a lot more tentative and call attention to its sources and biases much more often. Secondly that it tends towards the gossipy and the salacious. There is very little serious politics here.
Unsurprisingly Wolff portrays Trump as a shallow narcissistic blowhard, uninterested in and incapable of performing his duties. What's more interesting is the picture presented of his staff - how chaotic it all is, with various factions competing with each other. Those factions are represented by Steve Bannon (the fascistic outsider), Rince Preibus (nominally the chief of staff and representing the Republican mainstream) and "Jarvanka", consisting of the presidents daughter and son-in law. It's a bizarre and deeply shocking spectacle, the small mercy being that even the participants seem to recognise how unstable it all is, and that it may end before long.
Misgivings about how any of the particulars are open to questions aside, it does present a picture that rings true in general and is essential reading in our current historical moment.
What is it about writing book reviews that makes you forget how to properly format paragraphs?
I said that book would be a novel weeks before it was released. The man can't help but make shit up.
Now reading 'Nomad' on some of your recommendations, it's brilliant. Books of that type are so hard to get right as well but there's a laugh basically every paragraph.
The thriller? That's all I can find by that name.
Alan Partridge.
Oh, right. That makes more sense.
I’m not sure why that exchange was funny, but it was.
I use Audible every day so don't know why I didn't think of that. Might switch mid-book.
So I was re-reading Lord of the Rings between things while waiting for payday to buy something and was quite enjoying it. Some of the lines are funnier than I recalled (despite the dialogue being very of it's time, what with groups of people apparently speaking in perfect unison and the like) but I'd forgotten that the films made some of the good guys massive dickheads. I reckon at least half of the prominent characters who aren't on the side of Sauron get one act of shitheadery given to them for the films, or just a more obnoxious personality.
Anyway, I'm onto the back end of it now where things are less interesting (and obviously I'll have all 17 endings to get through) so it can go back to being my book for reading on the loo or when I want to read before bed but don't want to risk forgetting new stuff because I'm knackered.
Otherwise it's onto Night Watch, by Pratchett. Vimes.
I've had it in mind to try Pratchett for a while, I've always been put off by a) hating it when I read one at age 8 or something (I always used to start certain things far too early because my reading age was way above average but my 'emotional age' was the same as anyone else) and b) the fact that mainly weirdos like it.
Would I like it?
I'm not sure but it would barely cost you to give them a bash. I'm a "read them in publishing order" man but if you wanted to give yourself the best chance of liking them you probably start with Guards! Guards! , which is the first of the City Watch books.
They get less outright funny as the series goes on and Pratchett focuses on certain themes and toying with specific sets of genre tropes rather than just laughs but they're no less enjoyable for that to my mind.
This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate by Naomi Klein
This is a worrying book, documenting how we are in the process of changing the climate of our planet in dangerous ways and how our current economic system is incapable of accommodating the substantial changes required to mitigate this. Klein first notes the behaviour of energy companies, environmental groups and the effect that "free trade" agreements have had on them over the past three decades. This has been to prevent alternative energy sources from being developed and will at present lead to five times more carbon being dumped into the atmosphere by 2050 (including from such technologies as fracking and oil extraction from tar sands) than can be accommodated while keeping temperature rises to 2 degrees.
She then moves on to calling out green billionaires such as Richard Branson, environmentalist organisations that are (or have become) essentially fronts for polluters, and debunking "magical thinking" - proposals to fix the problems through geoengineering - suggesting that all of these things serve to delude the public and stall any real change. Finally she turns to activists (including native Americans) who are making progress through court challenges and other activism. Throughout, Klein ties all of this to her left-wing political perspective.
While the dangers are real, the book is too long and a bit too preachy, reading quite a lot like a manifesto. This is a shame because this kind of thing needs to be read much more widely than it is.
Criticism of the 'magical thinking' of geoengineering from someone who preaches the 100% renewable magical thinking is pretty lol. I agree that kind of stuff needs to be read much more widely than it is, but unfortunately it is hard to find sources that don't lean too much towards either side of the idealism spectrum.
My current pet peeve is cities calling themselves 'powered by 100% renewable energy' when they most definitely aren't.
Alone in the Universe by John Gribbin
This is another speculation on the possibilities of alien life, albeit from a different angle. Gribbin examines the Fermi paradox and the lack of evidence for life and concludes as a result that we are alone. He then criticises the Drake Equation as insufficient, obscuring as it does many of the factors required for the development of intelligent life and spends the rest of the book examining these.
Such factors range from the availability of heavy elements, safety from cosmic radiation (only a small region of our galaxy meets these two criteria and no region of many other galaxies do) to some unusual features of our Sun, the arrangement of our Solar System and the Earth itself. For the earth, those further include our large moon, our magnetic field, the existence of plate tectonics, the dimly understood events of the Cambrian Explosion, and a set of remarkable climactic and geological events that transformed "monkey into man" in the recent past. The conclusion is that while life may arise rarely, intelligent life requires a series of confluences so vanishingly unlikely that they will not have been repeated within our galaxy at least, and perhaps anywhere. It ends with the warning that our species seems unlikely to last and that even without our deleterious impact, our planet is unlikely to remain hospitable for life for much longer.
It's powerfully argued and persuasive, at once presenting a picture that is gloomy and yet starkly beautiful.
Finished Night Watch. Good stuff, as per. This possibly does less with time travel than Pratchett does with the things he's taking the mickey out of in other Discworld books but it's still a good read and Vimes is still a great character.
Moving onto 'The Twelve' by Justin Cronin.
I'm 200 pages into Mandela's autobiography and it's brilliant. The oppression and outright racism they faced in South Africa is just incredible.
Got a book on the history of Budapest.
The fact dropping at the boarding gate sure will be embarrassing for those stag parties.
I'm not very smart, and I haven't read it since 9th Grade.
Wasn't that the point of the book? Mans inhumanity to it's own creation?
I read that on Twitter as well.
In my university the idea floating around is that it is about climate change.
Not that there isn't promise, but this Malazan stuff is hard to get into. I'm having trouble keeping track of all the characters and their motivations in my head. And the magic system is bewildering.
A normal reaction to the first book, apparently. I'm about two-thirds through.
There's a lot to it and I'd be lying if I said I don't occasionally have to dip into the wiki to remind myself what a certain character did last time I saw them but I still love it.
As for the magic, I'm sure there are people who understand all this shit about decks and warrens and holds and whatnot but I've realised that a very loose understanding is all I need.
I'm currently on the Wee Free Men, the first of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books. There's nothing notably "young adult" about it other than a young protagonist and I guess he pulls the odd punch regarding language or specific details of the story but otherwise it's just more Discworld. Which is a good thing.
I really enjoyed Nelson Mandela's book "Long Walk to Freedom". An excellent, incredible and amazingly told story of his life and his resilience despite the society he was in. Really recommend it.
Next up - The Spider Network.
Decided to use audiobooks to get start knocking down these Wheel of Time books so I've been putting book 4 on in the car.
Kramer and Reading are great narrators, so much so that they make all the female characters to be about 10 times worse than I thought they were.
Elayne and Egwene have gone from marginal dickheads to full on cunts.
Jordan weirdly worships women and can't write a likeable one at the same time.
I may re-read the last three again soon.
The only one that I still like is Nynaeve.
Angry women
If she'd just stop tugging on her fucking braid.
Lan has some badass moments that you're still to experience for the first time though. What a man.
Sean Penn's book sounds like an absolute must read.
An excerpt.
I might burst that's so delightfuly bad.
That reads like it was produced by a neural network
Anyone read The Devil in the White City?
It's good. I recommend it.
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
This is the first book in a well-regarded epic fantasy series about the Malazan Empire. It concerns an attempt by the Empire to conquer the city of Darujhistan, and the attempts of various other powers - including those within the city, various gods and other non-human races to thwart it. It's a challenging read, opening in the middle of the action and giving the reader little opportunity to grasp what is going on in terms of either the motiviations of the very large cast of characters or in terms of the complicated magical world that they exist in. Results are mixed - in one sense you identify with the characters themselves who often have limited knowledge of their situation. In another it's frustrating to be halfway through before you have a remotely clear picture of what's going on. By the impressive ending - Anomander Rake has got to be one of the coolest characters I've encountered in some time - I felt that I could do with a re-read.
At over 700 pages, I don't think I'm going to do that right now, but it probably would be quite rewarding. And since Gardens of the Moon sets things up very well for the rest of the series, I suspect that subsequent books will be more so.
Last edited by Henry; 04-04-2018 at 09:31 AM.
It's worth saying that your feeling of the first book not giving you a clear picture of the wider story until halfway through basically applies to the series as a whole. One book has about 150 pages at the start where you've got no idea of the relevance and the fourth appears at first to be somewhat tangential.
Fucking love them though. Only three to go.
Anomander Rake is one of the most beloved characters among fans, for sure.
I'm actually reading one of Esselmont's Malazan books at the moment, after finishing the original Thomas Covenant trilogy (very good series). It's sad how much better Eriksson is than Esselmont but this one (Blood and Bone) does seem to have some potential at least.
Coincidentally I came in here to say I just started the first Malazan book as I'd finally finished off the end of the Magician series.
Will I incur the wrath of the fanbase by just reading them in the order they were published?
That's how I'm doing it. I didn't know there was a reason not to.
I've been told the books jump around the timeline so they can be read in some sort of chronological order. I couldn't be bothered with that though.
If you're reading Esslemont's novels in addition to Erikson's main series then the order is a bit more important, but if you're just reading Erikson's series then by publication date is the obvious choice (which Erikson has said himself).
Read quite a lot recently. Read the Millenium series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), which was decent. The writing isn't necessarily amazing but the plot is interesting enough. Also finished The Name of the Wind, which is the first book in the Kingkiller Chronicles. Really, really good and would recommend. Maybe a little slow at times but it works, especially in terms of characterisation. Rothfuss adds in loads of little details which just make it that little bit more realistic and immersive. Straight onto the second book for me.
I read everything with these things in publication order.
I've enjoyed the first two Kingkiller books and like them despite thinking the main character is a total arse.
I need to find a map, the drawback of the kindle is you can't easily flip back to the beginning to have a look.
Might buy one.
Another Malazan book down, Toll the Hounds.
I can see why upon Googling it when finishing this morning it seems to be one of the more decisive ones among the fanbase. I can see why some people aren't impressive about the amount of Kruppe POV but that didn't bother me that much. I really liked the extra depth it gave some characters like Kallor. Not the best in the series but still good.
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