Author: Nicky

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 10, 2024 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

It’s WWW Wednesday time! That’s:

What have you recently finished reading?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

What have you recently finished reading?

I’ve mostly been reading Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail, a manga series which is a bit male-gazey and focused on fighting, but has been fun enough and low-stakes enough to keep my interest when I’m feeling a bit meh and having trouble getting into the swing of things again.

Before that, it was A.J. Demas’ Honey & Pepper, which is a standalone romance set in an alternate Ancient Greece. I loved the way the relationship between them develops and how thoughtful Nikias (one of the two main characters) is about his own kneejerk reactions.

What are you currently reading?

Like I mentioned, I’ve been a bit fidgety, but last night I did pick up A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth last night, which is by Samantha Weinberg. It’s not just about coelacanths: there’s a good amount of info about the guy who described the first recently-dead specimen found, J.L.B. Smith. I’m not always a fan of more biographical stuff, especially when I’m more interested in popular science, but there’s a good amount of context for the importance of coelacanths and what they can tell us. I’ve found it surprisingly absorbing.

I’m also partway through The Ha-ha Case, by J.J. Connington, which is a pretty classic mystery, nothing special.

What will you read next?

Possibly I’ll get back to one of the books I have on the go — for example Clive Oppenheimer’s Mountains of Fire. On the other hand, I’m really trying not to nail myself to anything, and just read whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. So we’ll see!

What about you? Reading anything good?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Posted April 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

by James Suzman

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 464
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
Work defines who we are. It determines our status, and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hard-wired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like?

To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are. Drawing insights from anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, physics, and economics, he shows that while we have evolved to find joy meaning and purpose in work, for most of human history our ancestors worked far less and thought very differently about work than we do now. He demonstrates how our contemporary culture of work has its roots in the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Our sense of what it is to be human was transformed by the transition from foraging to food production, and, later, our migration to cities. Since then, our relationships with one another and with our environments, and even our sense of the passage of time, have not been the same.

Arguing that we are in the midst of a similarly transformative point in history, Suzman shows how automation might revolutionize our relationship with work and in doing so usher in a more sustainable and equitable future for our world and ourselves.

James Suzman’s Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time didn’t really go where I expected. It takes a very long view of work and starts before humans even evolved, down at the level of cells doing “work” and life acting ultimately to increase entropy (even as it appears to create order). He spends a long time discussing the early evolution of humans and human society, discussing hunter-gatherer societies (extrapolating back from currently existing ones to make guesses about earlier ones, which is always dangerous though probably justifiable).

When he eventually got round to farming societies, half the book was already gone, and he dashed madly onward to do industrial societies at a gallop. I felt like half of this book wasn’t on topic, and some of his promises weren’t kept in terms of what he was going to discuss. Either a lot of the first part needed to be cut, to keep things at a relatively surface-level throughout… or he needed to go just as in-depth on the second half.

There were some interesting titbits here, including contradictions to received wisdom about sexual selection that’s intriguing and which I want to look into further, but it just doesn’t come together well.

Also, the editing was very shaky in some places. Typos galore! Ouch.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, James Suzman, non-fiction, science

Review – A Telegram from Le Touquet

Posted April 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Telegram from Le Touquet

by John Bude

Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
With some trepidation Nigel Derry approaches the country house of his enigmatic and unpredictable aunt Gwenny for an Easter holiday visit. After a tense few days in which her guests’ interactions range from awkward dinners to a knife fight, a disgruntled aunt Gwenny departs for Europe. Receiving a telegram from Le Touquet inviting him to join Gwenny in the south of France, Nigel finds himself on a vacation cut short by murder as a cold shadow of suspicion eclipses the sunny beauty of the Côte d’Azur.

Enter Inspector Blampignon of the Sûreté Nationale, whose problems abound as the case suggests that the crime may have occurred hundreds of miles away from where the victim was discovered. Undeterred, the formidable French detective embarks on a thrilling race to discover the truth in this rare and spirited mystery novel, first published in 1956.

A Telegram from Le Touquet is pretty much what one expects of John Bude: a mostly competent mystery without flair, with a few thumbnail sketches of characters but not great psychological depth. It starts with a section from the point of view of someone who eventually becomes a suspect, Nigel, allowing Bude to set the scene for Gwenny and her web of jealousies and secrets. After that, we turn to the mystery proper, with the scene set with a few unpleasant people and a few nondescript generic character types.

Certain aspects of it I had worked out pretty quickly, but the pieces didn’t all fit together right away, which kept me occupied for a while, but mostly I didn’t get super interested in the cast and who might be the killer, and I kind of suspected the alibi thing pretty early on. Inspector Meredith makes a tiny cameo, but it’s mostly Blampignon (who also appeared in Death on the Riviera). Meh either way, really.

This all sounds like damning with very faint praise, but it was reasonably well paced, it sowed clues and didn’t spend too much time belaboring them, and sometimes in the very predictableness of mysteries of this era there’s a sort of comfort.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Bude, mystery

Review – Book Love

Posted April 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Book Love

by Debbie Tung

Genres: Graphic Novels, Non-fiction
Pages: 136
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Bookworms rejoice! These charming comics capture exactly what it feels like to be head-over-heels for hardcovers. And paperbacks! And ebooks!And bookstores! And libraries!

Book Love is a gift book of comics tailor-made for tea-sipping, spine-sniffing, book-hoarding bibliophiles. Debbie Tung's comics are humorous and instantly recognizable--making readers laugh while precisely conveying the thoughts and habits of book nerds. Book Love is the ideal gift to let a book lover know they're understood and appreciated.

Debbie Tung’s Book Love is an easy enough read which blithely presents a certain picture of what it is to love books. There are definitely pages I relate to — like the one where she’s in the middle of one book, can’t wait to start a new one, and just lets herself read the introduction… which leads to reading the whole thing.

On the other hand, I feel like she leans into a particular sort of loving books where it’s as much an aesthetic as anything, to the point of being an affectation, and one that I think has become ever more popular because of phenomena like “bookstagram”, where half the time people want books to take pictures of them (hence, probably, the page where she insists on returning a movie edition of the book, and hence definitely the page about checking out book-related social media to “inspire” you to read more).

I’m not immune from the aesthetics of books, to be clear. A flat or a house isn’t a home to me until I’ve brought my books in, and I continue to love reading dead-tree books even as I adore my sleek and comfortable ereader. I love getting new books, and I love the smell of books. But I don’t get so precious about it: I’m fine with lending books or giving books away, with reading the movie tie-in edition, with being less conscious all the time of being a person who reads, and my ereader is a constant companion even though it doesn’t look as bookish.

Sure, I knew going in that this one would be all about books, but it’s suspiciously full of bookshops, coffee shops and fairylights too, and that grates a bit.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Debbie Tung, graphic novels

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted April 6, 2024 by Nicky in General / 19 Comments

Hurrah, the weekend!

Last weekend I got my assignments all handed in, so the last week has been all about catching up with life stuff. Unfortunately that hasn’t yet included comments on my blog or visiting people back yet — sorry! I got stressed out and I’m digging my way out of that now, but I plan to do some commenting and visiting tomorrow.

Right, time to talk about books. As usual, I’m linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz.

Books acquired this week:

As is my wont when I’ve been a bit stressed, I went totally overboard, so I’m going to split up my haul over the next couple of weeks. It’s hard to choose what to show off, so I’ll just pick a bit randomly. First off, here’s some of the non-fiction I picked up:

A bit of a mix, as ever! I wouldn’t have been that interested in The Ship Asunder, except that on a pure whim I read Seashaken Houses (a history of lighthouses in the UK) a while ago and really loved it. I wasn’t that interested in lighthouses, either, so I thought I’d give this a try.

And here’s some of the fiction I picked up:

Always love KJ Charles’ work, and I’ve heard really good things about If Found, Return To Hell. The other book is more of a whim, based on someone on Mastodon describing it as “garden fantasy”. Sounds perfect for a certain friend of mine, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Posts from this week:

Here’s the usual roundup of reviews:

Classic mystery: The Eye of Osiris, by R. Austin Freeman (4/5 stars)
Ecological non-fiction: Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit, by Tom Moorhouse (3/5 stars)
Fantasy novella: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, by Seanan McGuire (3/5 stars)
Philosophy: Spacecraft, by Tim Morton (1/5 stars)
YA romance novella: Nick and Charlie, by Alice Oseman (2/5 stars)

I skipped Top Ten Tuesday this week, so there was just one other post:

What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading:

First of all, let’s start with the books I’ve already read this week.

It’s been a lovely reading week. Howl’s Moving Castle was a reread, but my first time listening to the audiobook narrated by Kristin Atherton. It was lovely; highly recommended. I also had great fun last night with Honey & Pepper, and was sad when I finished it.

As for what I’m reading this weekend, I’m not sure. I’ve started on Lapidarium, one of my new books, and also If Found, Return to Hell. But where my whims will take me, no one can tell…

How’s everyone else doing?

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Nick and Charlie

Posted April 5, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Nick and Charlie

by Alice Oseman

Genres: Romance
Pages: 176
Series: Heartstopper
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
"CHARLIE: “I have been going out with Nick Nelson for two years. He likes rugby, Formula 1, dogs, the Marvel universe, the sound felt-tips make on paper, rain and drawing on shoes. He also likes me.”

NICK: “Things me and Charlie Spring do together include: Watch films. Sit in the same room on different laptops. Text each other from different rooms. Make out. Make food. Make drinks. Get drunk. Talk. Argue. Laugh. Maybe we're kind of boring. But that’s fine with us.”

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple – that they’re inseparable. But now Nick is leaving for university, and Charlie will be left behind at Sixth Form. Everyone’s asking if they’re staying together, which is a stupid question – they’re ‘Nick and Charlie’, for God’s sake!

But as the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie question whether their love is strong enough to survive being apart. Or are they delaying the inevitable? Because everyone knows that first loves rarely last forever…"

I wish I’d really loved this novella, Nick and Charlie, set in Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper universe and following the period just at the end of year 13 and the beginning of university for Nick. We’ve seen the foreshadowing of this in volume five of Heartstopper proper, so it felt a bit superfluous (though of course this was actually written first, I’m just speaking of the reader’s experience here) — and unfortunately switching to this format rather than the graphic novel makes it feel… well, a bit too YA for me.

I don’t know why it’s okay in the graphic novel and less so here: perhaps because we have more direct access to Nick and Charlie’s thoughts, and probably also because the conflict feels compleeeetely manufactured. It grows out of Charlie’s insecurities in a totally normal sort of way, sure, but his drunk outburst and their refusal to then communicate properly with one another doesn’t match up with the way they normally interact.

Pile on top of that the stupid coincidence of Nick’s phone supposedly being unable to receive picture messages due to being dropped even though everything else works okay (??? not the way it works), and it just feels like needless drama, manufactured so there’s even a story at all.

I really hope the final volume of Heartstopper is better than this. Charlie and Nick do need to reckon with their relationship, and what it means to be the unit that is Nick-and-Charlie… but this novella doesn’t work for me beyond some of the cute moments between them.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: Alice Oseman, book reviews, books, romance

Review – Spacecraft

Posted April 4, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Spacecraft

by Timothy Morton

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 144
Series: Object Lessons
Rating:

Synopsis:
Science fiction is filled with spacecraft. On Earth, actual rockets explode over Texas while others make their way to Mars. But what are spacecraft, and just what can they teach us about imagination, ecology, democracy, and the nature of objects? Why do certain spacecraft stand out in popular culture?

If ever there were a spacecraft that could be detached from its context, sold as toys, turned into Disney rides, parodied, and flit around in everyone's head-the Millennium Falcon would be it. Springing from this infamous Star Wars vehicle, Spacecraft takes readers on an intergalactic journey through science fiction and speculative philosophy, revealing real-world political and ecological lessons along the way. In this book Timothy Morton shows how spacecraft are never mere flights of fancy.

I really like the concept of the Object Lessons books — and it’s true that they don’t promise each book will be factual, just saying that each book is about the hidden life of an everyday thing. Nonetheless, the ones that aren’t really histories are often disappointing to me, and that’s so with Timothy Morton’s Spacecraft.

See, I’m not a big Star Wars fan. I saw the originals, and I saw the prequels, and I enjoyed them well enough, but I’ve not seen any of the more recent stuff, because I don’t watch many movies or TV shows at all and Star Wars just doesn’t draw enough enthusiasm from me. If it took me months to watch Good Omens (both the original series and then, after it came out, the second series), Star Wars has a “no hope” (see what I did there?).

This book is not about spacecraft. It’s about the Millenium Falcon, mostly, and a little bit about hyperspace, and a lot about object-orientated ontology (in which I have vanishingly little interest). I hoped I could get into it all the same, but… nope. To me, this is a waste of an option to write about what we understand about real spaceships, how they’ve impacted on our real lives.

Besides which, Morton’s narration just… went places. So many places. At seeming random. One topic would flow into another and I just couldn’t keep hold of the point.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, Timothy Morton

WWW Wednesday

Posted April 3, 2024 by Nicky in General / 4 Comments

It’s WWW Wednesday time! That’s:

What have you recently finished reading?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

What have you recently finished reading?

I just finished up listening to the audiobook of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, narrated by Kristin Atherton. I loved her narration, because she did all the voices, and did a good job of making Howl sound Welsh (which, minor spoiler, he is). I know the book well and have read it several times before, but I wanted something familiar to listen to while my hands and eyes were busy with something else. I’m not always great with audiobooks, tending to get fidgety, but this one was great.

What are you currently reading?

A few books at once, as usual. Most actively, I’m halfway through one of the Edible series, this one Heather Arndt Anderson’s Chillies. Is it making me crave more tex-mex food than I normally already crave? Youuu betcha.

The other thing I’m partway through is Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body, by Caroline Vout, which is non-fiction and a bit heavier than I have braincells for just now.

What will you read next?

If Found, Return to Hell by Em X. Liu is top of my list right now. It’s a short one, and very tantalising. But as usual I plan to follow whatever passing whim shows up.

How about you?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Review – Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Posted April 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

by Seanan McGuire

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 146
Series: Wayward Children #9
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.

When the school’s (literally irresistible) mean girl realizes that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, Antsy is forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.

Along the way, they will travel from a world which hides painful memories that cut as sharply as its beauty, to a land that time wasn’t yet old enough to forget—and more than one student's life will change forever.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

For a book that promised me dinosaurs, Seanan McGuire’s Mislaid in Parts Half-Known felt like a bit of a swizz. The dinosaur world was only a tiny part of the story, which was really the end of Antsy’s story, as begun in Lost in the Moment and Found. There are bits of other characters’ stories (a little here for Sumi, a little there for Kade, a drop for Cora), but it’s really about Antsy’s story, and a little bit about expanding the world as we know it, showing us what a nexus is and what it can do.

Honestly, it feels like we’ve got a little further from the idea of a school for children who fell into other worlds than I like? The rotating cast of characters feels like “monster of the week”, but we’re spending so little time actually at the school, and Eleanor doesn’t always appear. And I’m deeply ambivalent about Kade’s position here, always the best man and never the groom.

So I’m wondering where our questers will go next, but I also wonder if I’m tiring a bit of the formula?

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Seanan McGuire, SF/F

Review – Ghosts in the Hedgerow

Posted April 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Ghosts in the Hedgerow

by Tom Moorhouse

Genres: Mystery, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 271
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime - and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades?

Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, the gardener ..? Who could possibly have it in for a hedgehog? In poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. And yet their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. But he can also see a solution.

Tom Moorehouse’s Ghosts in the Hedgerow tries to use the whodunnit format to interrogate what might be causing the decline in hedgehog numbers seen in the UK in recent years. It does undermine the whole premise right from the get-go by explaining that the decline is only really known anecdotally: hedgehog numbers aren’t really properly counted, and we rely on a bunch of estimates which aren’t really comparable between decades (e.g. between hunters trying to kill hedgehogs before they became a protected species, who would specifically seek them out, and now birdwatchers who may incidentally spot hedgehogs).

Nonetheless, he makes a convincing case that their numbers are declining (which I didn’t really doubt in the first place), and then trots through the suspects: road traffic, badgers, farmland bereft of hedgerows (in contrast to traditional farming), and home/garden design. None of the suspects are surprising if you’ve been at all awake to hedgehog ecology (which I have, as my parents have a hedgehog-friendly garden, and my garden is as well), and of course the final answer isn’t surprising either: it’s all of those things.

It’s a fun idea for a format, but if you’re already interested in hedgehogs, there isn’t much new here. The exact details of how hedgehogs and badgers interact were new to me, but that was about it. However, if you don’t know much about hedgehogs, other than finding them cute, then this could very well be a fun and easy way to learn more, and learn about how to make a difference to them.

To sum it up very quickly: cut holes in your fences so hedgehogs can pass through, use strimmers with caution, don’t use autonomous lawnmowers, rewild your garden, put out some supplementary food for them and a bowl of water, and try to convince other people to do the same (while writing to your MP etc etc about making changes in law). And don’t drive a car, especially not as it starts to get dark and through the night, when hedgehogs roam.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, mystery, non-fiction, science, Tom Moorhouse