I just finished a reread of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, yesterday. I actually liked it more this time — I think because I wasn’t thinking about the clever treatment of gender as much, but just about revisiting the world and story. And it did help that I knew what to expect; I’m one of those people who likes spoilers.
What are you currently reading?
Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance. It’s my book club read on Habitica (in the Legendary Book Club guild, if you’re a member). I didn’t actually expect to get sucked into it so quickly — I tend to struggle with Valente’s work because the imagery is just so dense and I’m not visual at all. I thought that’d go double for a book revolving around cinema. But no, I’m intrigued and eating it up.
What will you read next?
I’d like to read Within the Sanctuary of Wings, and maybe start rereading City of Stairs and City of Blades, ready to read City of Miracles once I get back to Britain and my copy has arrived. But knowing me, I might get distracted by something else. I have some books due back at the library, after all.
What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology, Addy Pross
I’m rather underwhelmed by this book. Though it is praised as “uncover[ing] the chemical roots of Darwinian theory, thereby opening a novel route connecting biology to chemistry and physics” (and by a Nobel prize winner, no less!), I think this route is far from novel. It’s always been obvious to me that biology is chemistry in living cells, that all the rules of chemistry derive from properties described by physics, and indeed that physics is based on mathematics and mathematics on logic. This just doesn’t seem revelatory to me — it’s apparent from the first time you understand that enzymes are simply manufactured catalysts and that RNA can replicate itself. And I understood that when I was doing my AS Level in biology, if not before, so that was 2007. This wasn’t published until 2012! So I can’t have unconsciously absorbed the conclusions of this book via somewhere else.
As a survey of exactly how the subjects link up, it works relatively well. The writing is clear and the logic works, and if you didn’t connect the dots for yourself, it allows you to do so. It’s perhaps a little more specific than my 2007 understanding, referencing RNA experiments I hadn’t heard of, but the basic theory has always been apparent to me. I don’t understand how it is considered controversial or groundbreaking.
Perhaps this is more surprising to scientists who have been stuck within their own segregated area, though. As an outsider whose contact with science was limited to New Scientist and popular science books from 2007 to 2014, perhaps my simpler view of things helped me to connect the dots, where an actual biologist just couldn’t accept that biology is simply chemistry when it seems so much more complex. It seems odd to me, but it’s all I can think of. And it’s not as though I’m a chemistry or physics superfan — I’m happy to stay on the level of biology!
I was hooked by the premise of this right away, and though I have some reservations about the transcript/extract format, I think that was part of it as well. It made each section really quick to read, and tantalising as well; the limited nature of each snippet gave as many questions as answers in most cases, and leads on to the next bit — and the next, and the next. Perhaps the best way to sum up my experience with this book is to say that I read a chapter… and then accidentally read another, and another, and then the next morning I got a copy of the book to my wife so we could read it together. (And at one point in the middle of the night, I uttered the words “shit!” loud enough to disturb her. Oops.)
The transcript format doesn’t quite work for me all the time; it does introduce rather a distance between the reader and the characters, and some of the action scenes are extremely awkward because of the way they’re narrated. But overall, particularly for the more static scenes, it worked — I found it tantalising, rather than frustrating.
The characters are not all exactly lovable, but I got wrapped up in them anyway — perhaps most in the one we know least about. Clark Gregg, as he played Phil Coulson, would be my fancast for the unnamed facilitator. And I really, really want to know what’s up with his personal situation, as alluded to by Mr Burns.
(Sorry there’s so many vaguenesses in this review. I tried to preserve as many of the “oh shit!” moments for people who haven’t read it yet, while giving an idea of how intrigued I was.)
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about covers, so here’s some I really love (even if the books don’t always live up to it!):
I can be kind of a sucker for a pretty cover, or a design that really catches my attention, like the butterfly on Natural Histories. (Click it to embiggen; it’s fascinating!)
This is clearly a labour of love: Herrin knows her stuff, and is trying to communicate it to a broader audience. Sometimes this results somewhat in insulting the general reader’s intelligence, and yet at other times she gets deep into minutiae rather than covering the stuff that might really interest people — like the role of mutilation (instead of assassination) in political takeovers. I wanted a lot more of that, and yet this one review explains it much more thoroughly. And yes, that’s a very brief explanation, but it’s more than Herrin did.
Byzantium is a fascinating empire, and we do owe more to it than we often believe. Rome dominates our thoughts, both in religion and in history — especially in Britain, of course, since we were ruled by Romans and then our entire state religion is based on a reaction to Roman Catholicism. But Byzantium has much to teach us about the European past as well.
Herrin definitely has a bias toward Constantinople and their way of worshipping and… just about everything. At times, an apparent hostility to Roman Catholicism breaks through, which is rather odd from a scholar (and yet, might have made the book more interesting if it were a bit more apparent — you have to choose which way to go, and make it clear).
Interesting read, but does get a bit bogged down in details and repetitive.
Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 21st April 2017
I pounced to request this as soon as I saw it. John Scalzi reliably writes solid, entertaining stories, and I usually enjoy his central idea. I didn’t actually read the blurb on this one, so it took me a little while to get settled into exactly what was going on — I think I actually preferred it that way, because it made the opening of the story a little more confusing but in the way where you can start to work it out if you’re interested.
I don’t love the main character; while I like seeing grey areas in fiction, I felt like his character wasn’t explored enough for me to understand why he worked within grey areas and how he felt about it. With a little more of that context, I’d probably have enjoyed the whole story more — I tend to connect to characters before clever ideas, however clever the ideas are. Still, I found the story enjoyable, and though the idea is weird and you don’t know how it could possibly work, it’s a fun intellectual exercise to posit these constraints and then write a mystery story within them. Don’t worry too much about the how and why of the Dispatchers and what they do, because that aspect isn’t what the story is interested in.
My only quibble would be that some of the dialogue wasn’t really signposted well enough. Without knowing the characters extremely well, it’s hard to tell which is speaking, and there were long stretches here where it was just a back and forth of dialogue. Sometimes it worked, but not always.
Definitely enjoyable, pretty much as I’d expect from Scalzi.
In an hour or so, the 24 Hour Readathon begins! We’re all ready here — me, my wife, and our bunnies.
Well, Breakfast is still deciding what he’s going to read.
Not sure how long any of us are going to be reading for, but the wife definitely isn’t staying up overnight. Much as I’d like to, I haven’t for a few years, so I might not make it through the night either. But even a few hours dedicated to reading are well spent. All my updates are going to be edited into this post, so it might get a little long, but at least I won’t be doing tons of posts!
13.59: About to start, but the wife isn’t home from groceries yet and we haven’t set up her update post on this blog (coming soon!) yet. Still, here’s the opening meme:
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Cloudy Belgium! 2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Probably Waking Gods. It’s certainly the one my wife is most looking forward to me having read… 3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? We don’t really have many snacks lined up. No doubt I’ll demand a mug cake at some point. 4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m taking this weekend for reading out of my exam revision time. Cell bio, human bio and ecology, coming up in early June. Save me. 5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? As always, I’m going to take it easy; read if I feel like it, stop if I don’t. I haven’t done the full 24 hours in a long time, and that’s fine by me.
Now I’ll just get laundry on and groceries in and then start — probably with The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery. My stack is here, though I probably won’t be sticking to it very well!
14.58: I’m about 80 pages into The Soul of an Octopus. Paused for a bunny snuggle (with Breakfast, the brown bun pictured above; Hulk, our grey lady bun, is sulking on a shelf, appropriately enough) and to help the wife pick a new book. (Her update post is up here, by the way!)
15.28: We both just totally derailed to eat hummus and cheese doritos, and now the wife is off to get us cornbread, more hummus, and some chilli. If you’re in Belgium and within reach of Leuven, the hot dogs at Wurst are okay, but the hummus is amazing.
16.22: I read more while Lisa was out, but then she came back with a copy of the new volume of Saga, some cornbread still warm and fresh, and a pot each of chilli and a pot each of hummus. Om, nom, nom.
17.16: Almost teared up after the death of one of the octopuses mentioned in this book. Non-fiction is not normally so heartwrenching! And here’s a photo of me and the wife and Breakfast chillin’. Hulk is still on her shelf.
18.14: Just finished The Soul of an Octopus. Fascinating book. In the meantime, Breakfast and Hulk have been exploring the flat together without much supervision, for once. There’s been no violence, yet! I’m going to have a break now and play some Stardew Valley, and then I should get on with reading Waking Gods — before my wife explodes.
19.36: Reading Waking Gods now, have been for maybe half an hour. Annoyingly, my Kindle’s running out of charge, though.
21.07: I just took a break after getting to about halfway through Waking Gods, and we ended up taking the bunnies for a drive (the slight stress helps bunnies bond). Now they’re shockingly quiet…
23.17: Yeah, nope, not feeling it. Which is sad. Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow?
Good morning! How’s everyone this week? I’ve had a busy week, but I have some awesome books to keep me company over the weekend.
New books:
I am so excited to finally have Within the Sanctuary of Wings, but also really sad because I don’t want the series to end. I feel like I’ve been waiting for Strange the Dreamer for a long time, too, so I’m looking forward to that. The others, well, you probably all know my penchant for non-fiction by now. Certain topics just make me all grabby.
Mum, don’t frown at me. It was store credit and gifts all the way, except the Marie Brennan.
Received to review:
I keep meaning to read Conn Iggulden’s work, and this one is fantasy, so why not? And I read April Daniels’ first book, Dreadnought, and I want to know where it goes.
Books finished this week:
Not a very active reading week, as my exams approach and essays are due in. Still, all three of those will receive four-star ratings from me! And luckily, I’m setting aside at least 24 hours this weekend for myself by participating in the 24 Hour Readathon.
It may not be surprising to learn that this collection, featuring articles and features about the human brain, was absolutely right up my street. If you’re interested in the human brain, but you’re not ready to dive into a full book about it, this makes a great, varied collection, focusing on different things like memory formation, the ageing brain, psychology, sleep…
There’s a lot of stuff in here, but it’s all in bitesize chunks. I do recommend this, and the other New Scientist collections — but if you’ve collected issues religiously, there’s nothing new in here as far as I know.
It’s that time again — readathon time! I’m already thinking about my pile, of course, so I thought I’d share some of what’s on my plate…
I usually try to come up with books from a bunch of categories, so here’s a menu…
Rereads
ARCs
Finish-this-book-alreadys
Backlog
New to the stacks
Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin
Waking Gods, by Sylvain Neuvel
The Godless, by Ben Peek
A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
Within the Sanctuary of Wings, by Marie Brennan
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
Sovereign, by April Daniels
Reality 36, by Guy Haley
Legion: Skin Deep, by Brandon Sanderson
The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery
Bloodshot, by Cherie Priest
The Pinks, by Chris Enss
Nova, by Samuel R. Delany
Vengeance Road, by Erin Bowman
The Essex Serpent, by Sarah Perry
Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb
Skullsworn, by Brian Staveley
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, by Christopher Moore
Hero, by Perre Moore
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, by Sarah Monette
Although knowing me, I might digress entirely and go off to read something else.
I also need to assemble some options for my wife, since she’s going to join for a couple of hours. Anyone got any recs for space opera like Lois McMaster Bujold, perchance?
What have you recently finished reading?
