Author: Nicky

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted October 18, 2016 by Nicky in General / 9 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is about Characters I’d Name A Child/Dog/Cat/Car/Etc After! I’m going to depart from pure book-fandom for this…

Hawkeye, from the MCU. My phone is Hawkeye, actually.
EDI, from Mass Effect. My main computer.
Jarvis, from the MCU. My last ereader.
Friday, from the MCU. My current netbook.
Glyph, from Mass Effect. My current ereader.
Hulk, from the MCU. My bunny. Who is a girl, and was actually named by my wife.
Sir, after John Winchester from Supernatural. I don’t know why, but… I give you, our washing machine.
Paragon, from Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders books. I figured I needed something that weathered storms and wasn’t trash at the first setback, so I had a computer called Paragon for a while. It was the longest-lasting machine I’ve had.
Steve-bear and Tony-bear, named after Steve Rogers and Tony Stark from the MCU. These are my Build A Bears. And yes, they have the outfits, although I have misplaced Steve-bear’s shield.
Helen Hippo, from the Spot books. This one is ancient history, comparatively — the teddy who has been with me since I was two days old is named after Helen! And is also a hippo.

I promise I’ll take the next list more seriously. Maybe.

Tags: Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Epigenetics

Posted October 17, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance, Richard C. Francis, read by Kurt Elftmann

Epigenetics is one area of science that just delights me — even the fact that it really irritates people because of potentially Lamarckian interpretations kind of amuses me. It’s based on solid research about the large scale effect observed from the ‘Dutch Hunger Winter’, and the impact it had on the gene expression of not only children of those who went through it, but grandchildren as well. Given the solidity of that research, it always weirds me out when people want to claim epigenetics is just the latest fad, like it’s not valid. It explains a lot, and we know its mechanisms and can predict its effects: isn’t that enough?

This book is a reasonable introduction to the subject, simple enough for a complete layman to understand. In fact, at times it almost detours away from science into literary criticism, discussing the portrayal of PTSD in different characters in a particular movie. It’s relevant as an example, but there’s so much space spent on it, it was a bit irritating — especially if you know nothing of the movie. It also covers pretty basic science, explaining not only how epigenetics works (in a very basic sense), but also how genetics works.

I actually listened to this as an audiobook, while crocheting, and though I have no specific complaints to make of the narrator, neither did he fill me with any kind of enthusiasm. I’m not sure if that’s how I’ll universally feel about non-fiction audiobooks, since of course, the reader doesn’t need to act. Still, he’s saying these awesome things about how our bodies work, and he sounds like he’s reading out a recipe for bread. It feels weird!

Rating: 2/5

Tags: audiobooks, book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – Have His Carcase

Posted October 16, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Have His Carcase, Dorothy L. Sayers

Featuring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey and Maria Aitken as Harriet Vane

I’ve always loved this book, particularly for the first lines:

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.

The rest of it continues as delightful, and while the BBC radioplay version doesn’t include the narrative stuff like that, it does include a lot of the delightful back and forth between Harriet and Peter — and, beautifully, the wrenching conversation they have when she wants to fight about it. Maria Aitken and Ian Carmichael do an excellent job, and honestly, that partnership is more the attraction when it comes to this book than the mystery plot. Though there are some fun puzzles and red herrings in that too, of course. Still, objectively, Sayers’ books were better when Peter was engaged emotionally, and it isn’t just a puzzle-plot like Five Red Herrings, and that shows with my affection for this one.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: audiobooks, book reviews, books, crime, Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery

Review – Saga Volume Six

Posted October 15, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Saga: Volume Six, Fiona Staples, Brian K. Vaughan

As always, the art is gorgeous: I don’t think I could stand to see anyone else illustrate these books. Fiona Staples has everything just right: the expressions, the sense of movement, composition of the panels and pages… Sometimes she can make me laugh by just illustrating the perfect expression or moment.

This volume is as enjoyable as the rest, and it has big emotional payoff — finally, Marko, Alana and Hazel are reunited, Klara has found a place in the world, Hazel’s old enough to start doing some saving of herself instead of just waiting for her parents… There’s some aspects which felt more like filler, like the journalists and the Will’s weird drug-addicted, Lying Cat-less life, and there are a couple of new characters who we might see quite a bit more of, but who for now don’t carry much weight. But mostly, it was a hugely satisfying volume for me, and I can’t wait for more. Particularly with that last scene…

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, comics

Stacking the Shelves

Posted October 15, 2016 by Nicky in General / 12 Comments

Saturday again already? Ugh. For some reason, it’s been a slow week for me, reading-wise. I’ve got behind on all my goals again, alas. But I did have work, and that means money, and that means being able to pay for books! And, you know, contribute to my wife’s rent, etc, etc. But still, I do hope I can read more next week.

Still, it was not a bad week in terms of my haul!

Books to review:

All of these are exciting — I need to read Lady of Magick so I can jump right into A Season of Spells. And I never finished James A. Moore’s previous trilogy, because I got distracted, but I remember the worldbuilding as being a lot of fun. So I’m looking forward to that. And Dreadnought just sounds awesome.

Books read this week:

Like I said, pretty disappointing week for reading! But here’s hoping next week will be better — and at least these books were all good.

Reviews posted this week:
–Owain Glyndŵr: The Story of the Last Prince of Wales, by Terry Breverton. Unfortunately rather dry, just a recitation of facts. Which is kind of sad. 2/5 stars
–Saga Volume Five, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. For me, this volume isn’t quite as awesome as the others, because Alana and Marko aren’t kicking ass together. But it’s still pretty darn awesome. 4/5 stars
–The Ides of March, by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Totally disappointing, which sucks. So much exposition, so much telling. 1/5 stars
–Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy L. Sayers. BBC audio version. Because this is a murder mystery written to a train timetable, it’s less fun on the second, third and fourth reading. But with the excellent voice cast, it’s still a good accompaniment to some crochet. 3/5 stars
–The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester. Sometimes this isn’t sure whether it’s a biography of a man or a dictionary, but all the same, it’s pretty sympathetic to the people it discusses. 3/5 stars
–Death Claims, by Joseph Hansen. The series continues to be a great reread, and once again I’m caught up in the subplot of the relationship between Doug and Dave. Not to be missed if you’re a fan of classic crime fiction. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Decameron, by Giovanni Bocaccio. An old review of a classic which, in my opinion, you shouldn’t miss if you’re interested in other writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare — and it’s entertaining on its own account too. 5/5 stars

Other posts:
–The Women Women Don’t See. A commentary on Kristine Katherine Rusch’s comments in the introduction to an anthology of work by “forgotten” female writers of sci-fi’s past. (With the unfortunate fact that most of them are not forgotten at all, like Le Guin and Cherryh.
–Top Ten Tuesday: Recommendations. Books I’ve been recommended that were definitely hits.
–What are you reading… Thursday? A slightly belated update on what I’ve been reading this week.

How’s your week been? Picked up anything interesting?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – The Decameron

Posted October 14, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio

Flashback Friday review from 24th April, 2011

The Decameron is obviously a hugely influential piece of literature (actually, it’s just plain huge), so it’s no wonder I’d get around to it eventually. I’m not a huge fan of Chaucer, really, but I did recognise a couple of the source texts he used in this, and I imagine that the choice of frame narrative for the Canterbury Tales might’ve been suggested to Chaucer by The Decameron. Certainly The Decameron was an influence, anyway.

The Decameron also inspired a song by one of my favourite singers, Heather Dale, ‘Up Into The Pear Tree‘, about Pyrrhus and Lydia and their trick on Lydia’s husband. It’s a lovely song, playful and quite in keeping with the tone of The Decameron.

Despite its length, The Decameron is very easy to read. It’s a collection of a hundred short stories — or perhaps a hundred and one, if you count the frame story — split into ten ‘days’ with the conceit that a group of ten young men and women meet outside Florence during the plague years, and to entertain themselves, they elect a king or queen from their number each day, who dictates a theme for the stories that they tell. The stories are quite similar at times, when they revolve around a specific theme, but overall there’s a lot of different stories, often funny, and often to do with sex. You get the impression that no women in medieval Italy (with the exception of Griselda and Zinevra) were ever faithful to their husbands!

Being a medieval work, it’s unsurprisingly not terribly good about subjects like rape or feminine strength. Sometimes it praises women to the skies and at other times blames them for what isn’t their fault, or what certainly isn’t a fault in all women. Still, it didn’t make me uncomfortable most of the time, and there are plenty of clever and strong women in the tales as well.

The Penguin translation, by G.H. McWilliam, is extremely good, in the sense of always being very readable and entertaining, rather than dry, and this edition comes with a wealth of notes on context and on each specific story. There are maps and an index, too. Even if you’re not reading this for study, it’s worth getting — perhaps especially so, because it explains things clearly no matter what your level of expertise on the subject.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: book reviews, books, classics, Flashback Friday

What are you reading… Thursday?

Posted October 13, 2016 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Oops. That’s all I have to say. I blame the fact that I had a tutorial last night!

What have you recently finished reading?
The last things I finished were The Two Towers and Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee. The former, well, it’s interesting how my ability to visualise Tolkien’s world ends with Frodo and Sam entering Mordor. For, of course, I haven’t gone to Mordor in LOTRO. Nothing changes about Tolkien’s writing, or even his ability to evoke atmosphere and mood for me… but the visual aspect is just gone.

As for Rare Earth, it’s very informative (although somewhat out of date now), but honestly, finishing it still hasn’t convinced me one way or another about the likelihood of intelligent life somewhere else in the universe. We just don’t know enough.

What are you currently reading?
Probably too many things that I’m not even thinking of right now, but I most recently picked up Dark Run, by Mike Brooks. It’s very, very Firefly-ish, except more diverse, so there’s a Mexican captain, Chinese and Maori crew members, etc. It’s fun, though I haven’t read that much of it yet.

What are you planning to read next?
Other than The Return of the King, I think I’ll get on with Deadline and Blackout, by Mira Grant. That way I can finish one of the series I’ve had floating around unfinished, heh. ARC-wise, I need to read Winter Tide, by Ruthanna Emrys. And for my next comic, I think it’ll be Dan Slott’s She-Hulk. For some reason, I’m in the mood for that right now.

Tags: books, reading memes

Review – Death Claims

Posted October 13, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Death Claims, Joseph Hansen

The first time I read this, I commented on the descriptions — saying that at times they were laid on too thick — and style, and also that Hansen somehow manages to make you care about the characters, even minor ones. I disagree with the first one now, perhaps because I knew going in what Hansen’s style was like: it still reminds me very much of Chandler, even if he doesn’t have quite the same knack for the well-placed word or reference (no “shop-worn Galahad” here). And I still agree with the second one: a particular character doesn’t show up for most of the story, and yet I very much cared about how things worked out for him, and about what he tried to do.

I also commented on the subplot between Doug and Dave, which I loved: I loved the fact that they’re both damaged and imperfect, that their past lovers (both dead, and therefore idealised) get in the way, and their responses to that. I love that Dave decides it’s time he did some work to keep the relationship going, and then he does — but also that he’s a self-righteous ass about some things, not some paragon of virtue. Their relationship feels real, both in the way they disappoint each other and in how they match.

I can’t remember the individual books well enough to decide where it sits on my mental ranking of the series; I look forward to discovering that in the rereads to come, I think. But it’s solid and I enjoy it, and especially for Dave’s life outside the cases, even where it’s relatively background. He has a life outside the cases — much more so even than another favourite detective of mine, Peter Wimsey, whose life outside cases is mostly spent discussing the case anyway, or touches on it. Perhaps that’s part of why I love Dave Brandstetter so much.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Joseph Hansen, mystery, queer fic

Review – The Surgeon of Crowthorne

Posted October 12, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Simon Winchester

It sounds pretty sensational: a known murderer worked on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary — a murder who was known to be insane and who was kept at Broadmoor for the entire time he was assisting. The book isn’t quite so sensational in outlook; it does describe the murder, but it also treats the man who did it — Dr Minor — with sympathy and respect. It’s surprisingly far-ranging, touching on Minor’s involvement in the American Civil War as well as the work of Dr Murray on the Oxford English Dictionary, and the whole context of both endeavours.

In the end, in fact, it seems to deal so sympathetically with Dr Minor — who without a doubt was suffering from some serious delusions for most of his life — that I didn’t find it sensational at all. It seemed to be as much about the dictionary and about the friendship between Dr Minor and Dr Murray as about the sensationalism of it, which I quite liked. Ultimately, it’s rather ambivalent about the actual subject: is it Minor, or is it the dictionary? But nonetheless, I found it pretty interesting.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – Five Red Herrings

Posted October 11, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Five Red Herrings, Dorothy L. Sayers

Featuring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey and Peter Jones as Bunter

I have to confess I got an awful shock when Inspector Parker made his brief appearance in this book — it’s no longer Gabriel Woolf! I knew it was coming, but gah, I hate the transition every time. And it doesn’t really help that this might be my least favourite of the mysteries: in the original book, it relies on suppressing information that, in the end, wouldn’t actually help the uninformed reader that much. At least that doesn’t happen in this version, but it’s also a murder mystery worked to a very specific timetable, and on a second, third or fourth reading it gets a little tedious. To me, anyway. I’m sure there’s someone for whom Five Red Herrings is their favourite.

Of course, the attraction in Sayers’ clever dialogue and Ian Carmichael’s perfect delivery remains, and with some crochet to occupy my hands, it’s still a pleasant interlude.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: audiobooks, book reviews, books, Dorothy L. Sayers