Weekly roundup

Posted August 25, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Well hey, guys! It’s been an eventful week here, but as of right now the bunnies are in Britain and my wife has a job in the UK, and I turned 29 safely. And instead of buying books (well, mostly) I bought us a mattress.

Normally I wouldn’t post a pic of the bunnies when I’m actually in the same place as them, but I thought you all might want to admire their new two-storey condo, with spacious living area and a nice and private bedroom. Welcome to Rose Cottage!

And also, shoutout to my wife for being totally badass and getting a job offer within like… three hours of the interview.

In the meantime, here’s some books that I bought or received sometime in the last couple of months but haven’t featured yet!

Received to review:

Cover of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker Cover of War Cry by Brian McClellan

Both of these sound fascinating, so hopefully I’ll get chance to dig in soon in between all the moving stuff!

New non-fiction:

Cover of Gods, Graves and Scholars by C.W. Ceram Cover of Seeds of Science by Mark Lynas

Gods, Graves and Scholars looks like exactly the kind of general book on archaeology I like to just soak up and relax with, so I’m looking forward to this, even if it’s not the most up to date resource!

New fiction:

Cover of The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White Cover of Austral by Paul McAuley Cover of Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre Cover of At the Table of Wolves by Kay Kenyon

I’ve been meaning to pick up all of these except Austral, and Austral tempted me in a buy-one-get-one-half-price deal in Waterstones. Oops?

Books read this week:

Cover of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Cover of Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm by Gil North Cover of Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs Cover of Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene Cover of A History of Ancient Egypt Volume 2 by John Romer

Reviews posted this week:

Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. I wasn’t totally won over by his opinions on the political divides in the world (the US, mostly), but he does write well about how to understand an argument and put one together. 3/5 stars
Delusions of Gender, by Cordelia Fine. A fascinating read, though not (of course) free of bias in its own direction. 4/5 stars
A Study in Honor, by Claire O’Dell. It’s a retelling of Sherlock Holmes with two black women in the lead roles — two queer black women. There’s something awesome about that, no matter what. Actually, in many ways I think this is more a homage than a retelling. Either way, I found it enjoyable but maybe not quite there. 3/5 stars
The Z Murders, by J. Jefferson Farjeon. Not my favourite of his sets of characters, but fun and an early serial killer novel, so interesting on that front too. 4/5 stars
Circe, by Madeline Miller. I enjoyed this a lot, especially because it made me sympathise with Odysseus while not making him some paragon of virtue. 4/5 stars
Rosemary & Rue, by Seanan McGuire. Hindsight is difficult — as a reread, Toby’s (lack of) judgement about people drove me nuts, but it’s still a fascinating world and I muuust read more. 4/5 stars
Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm, by Gil North. Just… skip this one. Unless you’re titillated by repeated descriptions of sullen women’s breasts — yes, mostly just descriptions of their breasts, including the nipples of a corpse. Gross, thanks. 1/5 stars

Other posts:

Discussion: Half Stars. About how I rate books!
WWW Wednesday. The mid-week update on what I’ve been reading and what I’m going to read. Usually about as accurate as the 10-day weather forecast.

Out and about:

Once Upon A Blue Moon: ‘Opportunity Only Knocks Once (Cats, However…)’. A silly and hopefully funny short story. And yes, it includes a cat.
NEAT science: Human interbreeding. Scientists have analysed the DNA of some ancient human remains to find that the girl was actually the daughter of two different human subspecies, something that scientists have usually thought unlikely to occur. I explain a bit more about what this means in the post!

So how’re you guys? Anything big and exciting going on for you?

Tags: , ,

Divider

3 responses to “Weekly roundup

Leave a Reply to chucklesthescot Cancel reply

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.