Author: Nicky

Review – From Elvish to Klingon

Posted November 9, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

From Elvish to Klingon, ed. Michael Adams

This book is along the same lines as Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages, but features multiple authors, and a slightly broader interpretation of invented languages, including Joyce’s linguistic games. Most of the essays are reasonably interesting, but the one on Joyce had me totally lost — I haven’t read Joyce, and didn’t know he was considered particularly linguistically inventive. Lacking the context, that particular essay was just… well, rather boring, for me. (In my defence, my degree didn’t cover much more recent than Shakespeare, except when I did Tolkien or themed courses that dipped into contemporary novels to show the development.) The section on Orwell and Burgess’ use of language to convey their dystopian worlds was more interesting, though a bit obvious for someone who has actually read those books.

I did love the essay on Tolkien’s work; I’ve always admired the sheer amount of work he put into his invented languages, and the way the world he created was made for those languages, and that they had a whole history and evolution within his world. Very few people, if any, have matched that in terms of creating a language for the pleasure of it and creating a way for other people to enjoy it.

The most personally interesting topic for me was about the revival of declining languages like Gaelic, Breton, Hawaiian… Of course, I’ve been trying to learn Welsh (albeit that’s on pause while I learn more Dutch to help communicate while I’m staying with my wife), and I’m very aware that it’s a very artificial way to learn. I don’t have any regular contact with native speakers, and honestly, I think I only know one or two native speakers in my circle. It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a generational gap in many of these languages, and that that raises questions of authenticity, and whether that really counts as connecting with a real Welsh identity. It seems from the coverage here that Welsh is more successful than Breton and such, in that it isn’t discussed in as much detail, except to note that school Welsh is becoming a standard which is swallowing local dialects.

Arika Okrent’s book — which is frequently quoted here — is definitely both more accessible and more in-depth, though that in turn doesn’t do much with Elvish, as I recall, and definitely doesn’t look at revitalising languages like Breton and Gaelic. If the essays I picked out sound appealing, then it’s worth getting, but the other ones weren’t as interesting.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

Posted November 8, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine

I’ve been meaning to read this for ages — I love the idea of a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses set in the world of Manhattan during prohibition. It just sounded fascinating: how could it be transformed, how would it play out? The answer is: fairly loosely. That’s not a criticism — I think sticking too rigidly to the story would have killed this book. Instead of sticking to a particular version, it makes its own, with other fairytale elements coming in: the wicked father, the dead mother, the twelve unwanted and unseen daughters, it’s all the stuff of fables. I think the transformation worked really well.

On the level of the characters and plot apart from the retelling — which can sometimes be enjoyable just for its own sake — I loved the way it picks out a few of the girls and makes them distinct, different, disparate people all trapped together. Most of it is limited to Jo’s point of view: she’s the older sister, and she’s used to making sacrifices for the others, and to her sisters regarding her as the unbending ‘General’, rather than a feeling person. This is done really well, especially in the section after they escape: Jo has to learn how to deal with life without having eleven other people to think of, and she doesn’t know what to do — without them relying on her, who is she?

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot; I think the only thing that would’ve made it better was maybe more time with some of the other sisters, even if it was only the more clearly drawn ones like Lou, Doris and Ella. That would have given a different and closer perspective on the girls, been a way to get to know them in other ways. Nonetheless, it makes sense that there wasn’t space for it — and I wouldn’t want this book to get bloated, since I thought it was perfectly paced.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books

Top Ten Tuesday

Posted November 8, 2016 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is books recently added to the TBR. Which is easy enough to do, since I love my lists and keep very careful track…

Dark Sky, by Mike Brooks. Read the first book, picked this one up as soon as I could. Just the right level of light fun for me.
How to Clone a Mammoth, by Beth Shapiro. Picked up somewhat on impulse, this looks at the science of de-extinction. Points for a sci-fi mention on the first page, even if it was Piers Anthony.
The City of Dreaming Books, by Walter Moers. Technically, this isn’t new to my TBR, but it is new to my actual shelves. Even just the title does it for me…
Behind the Throne, by K.B. Wagers. My sister loved it and devoured it in under a day, so there’s a good chance I’ll find it enjoyable.
The Death of Caesar, by Barry Strauss. It’s been a while since I read anything by Strauss, but I remember enjoying his other books; I think I’ve read two or three now. This is on my Christmas list. Here’s hoping!
I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong. Another non-fiction book, fairly predictably fascinating to me given the topic of microbes and the human body!
The Wolf Road, by Beth Lewis. I don’t even remember what this one is about, but someone reviewed it and it sounded fascinating. So, onto the Christmas list it went.
A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers. I haven’t read the first book yet, but I hear such good things about it, I’m sure I’ll want to pick this one up. …When I’m in the UK, as Fnac do not stock it.
Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf. I think the title makes it sound more generally exciting than it might otherwise be — it’s actually a book about the science of reading. I enjoyed Reading in the Brain, so I’m very hopeful about this one.
The Book of Kells, by R.A. MacAvoy. Technically, this is not new to my list, but it’s another one which is relatively new to my shelves. It was a suggested read for a time travel theme at one of my bookclubs, I think!

So yeah, that’s a sampling of things that might (or might not, knowing me) be coming up to review sometime soon!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – Strong Poison

Posted November 6, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers

I can’t quite remember what the bad mood was that triggered this return to Strong Poison, so soon after I listened to the radioplay version. Fortunately, given Sayers’ witty, clever and allusive writing, it’s never going to be a chore, especially since this is one of the stronger books of the series — and it was a pleasure to realise how strong the fidelity of the radioplay version was, skipping very little of the original novel.

You see, in Strong Poison, Peter falls in love… with a woman who is almost sure to be convicted of the murder of her ex-lover. Knowing she’s innocent, pretty much because he thinks she’s pretty and her character as described doesn’t support the murder theory, he arranges to meet her, immediately proposes to her, and gets her out of the murder charge by finding the real murderer while he’s at it. The banter between them is delightful, as are the moments where Harriet is more vulnerable — she’s not immune to the situation she’s in, as she shows by breaking down in front of Peter.

The actual mystery is fun as well: in retrospect it’s very obvious, because of certain precautions a particular character has taken, but the unfolding of the hows and whys is still interesting, particularly because Bunter and Parker feature fairly strongly alongside Peter. And there’s also the delightful bit where Peter encourages Parker to propose to Lady Mary…

Still a favourite — even if my eyes popped a little at the point where Peter complains how horrible it is seeing Harriet in the dock… to Harriet. And she sympathises with him and says it must be beastly. Gah!

Rating: 5/5

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

Review – Gaudy Night

Posted November 6, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers

Featuring Joanna David as Harriet Vane and Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey

Gaudy Night is the odd one out in both the radioplays and the books. It was recorded later, I think, and it shows — Ian Carmichael sounds almost winded half the time, though it does get better as the book goes on. It’s quite a different tone, too, because it’s from Harriet’s point of view. In the audiobook, this involves a fair amount of first person narration of her thoughts and feelings, which was never a feature of the other audiobooks, which makes it stand out as well.

That said, it’s a pretty good adaptation, drawing together all the key features well and giving clues through the voice acting as well as the plot. In audio, it’s a little hard to keep track of all the female dons, but that doesn’t seem to get in the way too much. And Harriet’s realisation of her feelings for Peter is well done; I think I prefer Sarah Badel’s take on it in Busman’s Honeymoon, but it works.

Rating: 4/5

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

Stacking the Shelves

Posted November 5, 2016 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Good morning! It’s been a weird week for me; kind of slow, but busy too, with class to catch up with and my wife not very well. All’s good now, though, and I’ve made a decent start on my reading goals for November. I’ve also made a list of the books I need to read to meet my challenge goals… yipes.

Anyway, here goes, the weekly roundup:

Received to review:

I’ve enjoyed Carrie Vaughn’s work before, so I’m hopeful about this, even just because it has her name on it.

New books:

A bit of an odd mixture, perhaps! But it really is about time I read On the Origin of Species.

Books finished this week:

Reviews posted this week:
–Anthem, by Ayn Rand. If you’re going to read a book by Rand and you’re pretty sure you’re going to disagree vehemently with her politics, this is a pretty good choice. It’s nice and short. 2/5 stars
–Whispers Under Ground, by Ben Aaronovitch. I still enjoyed this one, but it is a bit of a filler book. Nothing like the impact of the next one. 4/5 stars
–Dinosaurs Without Bones, by Anthony J. Martin. This book is full of information on dinosaurs! And also jokes about all the sorts of traces dinosaurs have left. It doesn’t stop at coprolites — or at least, Martin hopes it doesn’t. 5/5 stars
–In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent. This is a fun read and also very informative about conlangs. I actually found myself wanting to give this to everyone. 4/5 stars
–The Borgias, by Christopher Hibbert. Not as entertaining as I’d hoped; it’s not dry, exactly, but it’s very much a litany of facts rather than analysis. 2/5 stars
–The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers. BBC radioplay. The casting makes it shine, of course; Ian Carmichael is (at least vocally) the perfect Lord Peter. 4/5 stars
–Flashback Friday: The Winter Prince, by Elizabeth E. Wein. I found it an interesting and powerful retelling of the Arthurian story, though I wasn’t 100% a fan of the portrayal of the female characters. 4/5 stars

Other posts:
–Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books if Your Bookclub Likes SF. More or less what it says on the tin.
–ShelfLove November Update & TBR. My progress on my reading goals for 2016, plus a hopeful to-read list for this month.

Here’s hoping this is a good week for reading, for all of us!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – To Explain the World

Posted November 5, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 5 Comments

To Explain the World, Steven Weinberg

This book is ostensibly about the development of science, and particularly the scientific method: the development, in short, of the understanding that we need both theory and experiment to derive natural laws. It goes into a lot of the history of the development of astronomy and physics, and thus necessarily chemistry to some degree as well (since the makeup of an atom affects chemistry)… but neglects biology almost entirely. Since biology is my interest, I’d hoped for a bit more of it, but instead it was more or less including as an afterthought.

Weinberg’s tone is entertaining enough, and he certainly isn’t constrained by anyone else’s ideas of who truly contributed to science — he dismisses most of the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, even within the context of their time, because they didn’t conceive of the scientific method or how to come up with testable theories and follow through. You may or may not find that justified; I was glad, personally, that we didn’t spend too much time on Plato, as I’m not an enormous fan.

There’s a lot of science in here as well, in that Weinberg explains how discoveries were made and proven, or why they weren’t actually consistent with the world and what you can observe. Most of this is very clear, but anything that involves maths is sadly lost on me, and I confess to skipping the back section. There’s a reason my BSc in Natural Sciences is almost all biology — I have neither the head for, nor the interest in, mathematical rules and proofs.

It’s entertaining enough, but it’s narrower than the blurb might lead you to think — the vast majority of it actually deals with astronomy and maths.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction

Review – The Winter Prince

Posted November 4, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Winter Prince, Elizabeth E. Wein

Flashback Friday review from 12th February, 2011

After finishing The Winter Prince, I had to stop for a minute to think about it — do I like it? How much did I enjoy it? The style is very interesting: it seems to be straight first person narration at times, but when Medraut’s mother appears, it becomes apparent that he’s addressing the story to her. It deals with one of the issues that lie at the heart of the Arthurian mythos, often blamed for the fall of Camelot: the incest between Arthur and his sister. It works out the issues, in a way, binding Medraut to his brother, Lleu, and neutralising him, though it’s not an easy road for either of them to walk.

It also deals with the issues of abuse, a horribly powerful link between Medraut and his mother, and even between his mother and his brothers. He has to deal with the tangled feelings that come when at one moment someone will hurt you horrifically and the next comfort you, when they’ll say it’s for your own good or that you did wrong, to excuse them torturing you. Medraut’s confusion is well done: I couldn’t predict what he would do and how, I couldn’t predict whether he would go free of her at the end or not.

With the point of view it took, I suppose it’d be hard to show more of Medraut’s mother and her motivations, but I found that somewhat difficult to swallow, of everything in the book. So casually evil, toying with other people as though they’re not real… Goewin and Ginevra are positive female characters, to an extent, though the latter does very little after the opening of the novel. Goewin hints at a way she could become like Medraut’s mother, so there is a bit of a sense of circumstances making her the way she is, but still… I did want more, I wanted less senseless evil and more a sense of someone made the way she is by being wronged and so on. Turning Morgause and Morgan Le Fay and their like into evil witches is one of those ways of pathologising female power that people don’t seem to guard against.

The Winter Prince can be a quick, easy read, but there’s darkness at the heart of it — which is, I suppose, countered by the end.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Arthuriana, book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, SF/F

Review – The Nine Tailors

Posted November 3, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers

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

The Nine Tailors is a book I think about fondly, although I can’t quite think of why. Some of it is the atmosphere, I think: the Englishness of this little village in the Fens, and the music of the bells woven all through the story — or, not music exactly, but the complex mathematical patterns of British bell-ringing. In a way, that’s how this mystery feels, too: it’s complex, with several mistaken identities and a long unsolved mystery. It’s also a sad one, because a family gets shattered through almost no fault of their own.

And the Reverend and his household are dear characters, of course.

The audio adaptation is pretty good, managing to make all the complex threads come together well. Ian Carmichael’s voice acting is great most of the time, though maybe a trifle overblown during the scene in the belfry. I guess it’s difficult to portray that scene without Peter constantly vocalising, though.

Rating: 4/5

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

Review – The Borgias

Posted November 2, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Borgias, Christopher Hibbert

I have to confess that my interest in the Borgia family comes from playing the Assassin’s Creed games — I love knowing what has been cleverly included in the games, where things diverge, etc. So I knew both that the Borgias were a pretty colourful family, and that Assassin’s Creed probably emphasised that, and was definitely biased against them (other than in acknowledging Rodrigo Borgia’s cleverness, I can’t think of anything else positive about him or Cesare in the games).

Still, this book made them feel rather dry and lifeless, and not because they were actually any less turbulent and power hungry than the Assassin’s Creed games depict. Instead, it’s Hibbert’s style that kills it: rather than analysis, he presents lists of facts. It’s not even that his prose is boring, because it’s perfectly clear and easy to follow. It’s just that lack of analysis, and even a certain impartiality — I have to confess that when a historian writes a pop-history book about a particular figure or family, I want to feel their bias coming through, their interest in the subject. I know I’m fickle, since I do turn my nose up at some books which do too much guessing about what so-and-so was thinking of feeling, but there it is. I don’t just read for the information: I do also want to be entertained. The Borgias rather failed on that, for me.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book review, books, non-fiction