Review – This New Noise

Posted June 20, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC

by Charlotte Higgins

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 288
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
'The BBC, to my mind at least, is the most powerful British institution of them all, for, as well as informing, educating and entertaining, it permeates and reflects our existences, infiltrates our imaginations, forms us in myriad ways.'

Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian's chief culture writer, steps behind the polished doors of Broadcasting House and investigates the BBC. Based on her hugely popular essay series, this personal journey answers the questions that rage around this vulnerable, maddening and uniquely British institution. Questions such as, what does the BBC mean to us now? What are the threats to its continued existence? Is it worth fighting for?

Higgins traces its origins, celebrating the early pioneering spirit and unearthing forgotten characters whose imprint can still be seen on the BBC today. She explores how it forged ideas of Britishness both at home and abroad. She shows how controversy is in its DNA and brings us right up to date through interviews with grandees and loyalists, embattled press officers and high profile dissenters, and she sheds new light on recent feuds and scandals. This is a deeply researched, lyrically written, intriguing portrait of an institution at the heart of Britain.

The BBC is a British institution, and one which has been agonised over a lot. It sometimes feels like that’s something which happened only in recent years, but Charlotte Higgins’ This New Noise makes it clear that we’ve agonised over the BBC for as long as it has existed — and we’ve never had the halcyon perfect days that I think many people imagine. It’s always been what it is now, and as contentious as it has been now.

At times, I think Higgins tells the story a bit out of order, making references to events she explains properly later. This might work well for someone who has been alive for a bit more of the BBC’s lifespan, but I was not yet very engaged with the news for some of these! I also wasn’t really aware of the various directors-general, so just mentioning their names didn’t really contextualise things.

It’s still an interesting history, especially where it discusses people I didn’t know about at all, whose roles have been forgotten, like Hilda Matheson. She sounded pretty great (though of course it’s easy to make idols of people). All in all, an enjoyable read, and a useful point of view.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Charlotte Higgins, history, non-fiction

Review – A Mirror Mended

Posted June 19, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Mirror Mended

by Alix E. Harrow

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 128
Series: Fractured Fairytales #2
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone.

Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?

A Mirror Mended follows more or less straight on from A Spindle Splintered, and Alix E. Harrow doesn’t give you a lot of background or reminding about the first book — they’re probably best read back-to-back. They don’t follow straight on in time, but they might as well: part of the issue in A Spindle Splintered is that Zinnia hasn’t really thought about what the events of the previous book mean for her. She’s running, still.

I found it all somewhat less, well, charming, without Charm so actively in the mix somehow — her love for Zinnia, her determination to help her, is a really strong part of the appeal. She’s not gone, of course, but for the majority of the story she’s in the background, and Zinnia is trying really hard not to think about her too much.

The romance in this book feels a little too speedy, though I think it could’ve worked for me with a bit more time. I still enjoyed what Harrow did with the meta nature of the story, though, and it’s a fun read.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: Alix E. Harrow, book reviews, books, SF/F

Top Ten Tuesday: Summer Reading List

Posted June 18, 2024 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Well, well, well — it’s been a while since I participated in a Top Ten Tuesday! I’ve been super busy with my exams, but I’m starting to get back on track and have a bit more time to chat.

And read! So here’s a glimpse at some of the items on my summer reading list.

Summer’s End, by Juneau Black. No question, this is the first thought on my mind. It’s out on 11th July (in the UK at least), and I’m going to grab it on release day. I had a lot of fun reading the series so far (check out my enthusiastic reviews!), and it’s going to be perfect light reading.
The Duke at Hazard, by KJ Charles. KJ’s work is an auto-buy for me, so when this comes out on 18th July, I’ll grab it straight away. I did actually request the ARC on Netgalley, but no luck so far. It sounds like a fun romp, and I’m eager to get started.
You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian. This one I already have, and it should be a fun romance read. Cat Sebastian’s work is always a good time.
Necrobane, by Daniel M. Ford. This is, uh, less light reading, since it involves necromancy and all. I’m keen to start on it soon, since I enjoyed The Warden so much. It’s queued up ready on my ereader — I just want to finish one or two more of the stalled books on my “currently reading” list before I return to Aelis’ problems.
A Breviary of Fire, by Marie Brennan. I love pretty much everything by Marie Brennan, and this new short story collection is pretty short, so it should be a nice pick while I’m still steadily recovering brain function after the epic marathon that was my exam period.
The Bloodless Princes, by Charlotte Bond. I quite liked the first book, and I’m curious where this one will go. It should be a relatively short read, as well, which works well with my current attention span, though it won’t be light reading as such — I found the first book surprisingly grim in some ways.
The Undetectables, by Courtney Smyth. With the tagline “be gay, solve crimes, take naps”, this certainly sounds like a fun romp, and I could do with that. Definitely on my shortlist for the summer.
The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst. It had me at the comparison to Legends & Lattes, let’s be honest, and I’ve seen it described as a “fluffy blanket” of a book. Sounds lovely, and just what the doctor ordered right now.
The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard. This would actually be a reread, but I’m holding a place for it anyway because it’s a chonker, and summer’s the perfect time to read those, before the academic year starts again. I’d like to refresh my memory for the other books in this world, and also just spend some more time with Tor and Cliopher. I loved this book. I’ve realised that inexplicably I never posted my review here, so I’ve put that in my queue to post (good thing I have a copy on StoryGraph) — though I might just wait and post a whole new review after a reread.
A Coalition of Lions, by Elizabeth E. Wein. This is also a reread, albeit of a book I read longer ago. I just reread The Winter Prince, and now I’m revisiting the whole series. I feel like I remembered The Winter Prince quite well, but I don’t remember anything of the following books except that I enjoyed them (perhaps because only the first is solidly Arthurian).

It’s a bit of a mixed bag, and I haven’t even touched on any of the non-fiction I might read, because what catches my attention can change so rapidly. I’m looking forward to all of it, though!

How about you? Any plans for the summer, readers?

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – The Lost Gallows

Posted June 17, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Lost Gallows

by John Dickson Carr

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
John Dickson Carr lays on the macabre atmosphere again in this follow up to It Walks by Night in which Inspector Bencolin attempts to piece together a puzzle involving a disappearing street, a set of gallows which mysteriously reveals itself to a number of figures traipsing through the London fog, and the bizarre suggestion that a kind of fictional bogeyman, Jack Ketch, may be afoot and in the business of wanton execution. An early gem from one of the great writers of the genre. Also includes the rare Bencolin short story "The Ends of Justice."

The Lost Gallows is, I think, one of John Dickson Carr’s earlier novels, so I went in with fairly low expectations — the melodrama and bombast of his other Bencolin books isn’t entirely for me, but he’s still a plotter of ingenious mysteries. I don’t know if it was because I went in fully prepared for that, or maybe I’ve learned more sympathy through enjoying his later books, but this one wasn’t so bad.

It is of course very colourful and highly dramatic, with some surprisingly prosaic explanations; it’s full of atmosphere, using the London fog as a device in a similar way (though a very different tone) to Christianna Brand’s London Particular. It’s funny thinking about how ubiquitous that fog was, and yet I can barely imagine fog being so thick, so awful.

If you like a bit of adventure in your mystery novels, this one has that as well — the narrator puts himself in the thick of things, and there are a couple of very breathless scenes.

It all ends up feeling almost too prosaic for the fantastic atmosphere, but it works out interestingly enough.

Rating: 3/5

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

Review – Across a Field of Starlight

Posted June 16, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Across a Field of Starlight

by Blue Delliquanti

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
Pages: 345
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
An epic sci-fi graphic novel romance between two non-binary characters as they find one another through time, distance, and war. An amazing story that explores the complexity of human nature and what brings us together.

When they were kids, Fassen's fighter spaceship crash-landed on a planet that Lu's survey force was exploring. It was a forbidden meeting between a kid from a war-focused resistance movement and a kid whose community and planet are dedicated to peace and secrecy.

Lu and Fassen are from different worlds and separate solar systems. But their friendship keeps them in each other's orbit as they grow up. They stay in contact in secret as their communities are increasingly threatened by the omnipresent, ever-expanding empire.

As the empire begins a new attack against Fassen's people--and discovers Lu's in the process--the two of them have the chance to reunite at last. They finally are able to be together... but at what cost?

This beautifully illustrated graphic novel is an epic science fiction romance between two non-binary characters as they find one another through time, distance, and war.

I really wanted to like Blue Delliquanti’s Across a Field of Starlight a lot, because there’s a lot to like about it. The sheer diversity of body types, the queer normativity, the different types of relationships… there’s so much here, and the art is lovely, and the sheer energy in some of the facial expressions and body language is great.

Unfortunately, I found it a little hard to follow at times — the jumps felt too sudden, so that I wasn’t always sure if scenes were supposed to be connected or not. I adored the whole roleplaying game the two main characters set up between them, and I’d have loved a little more of that context to understand more of why they act the way they do together. A little more world-building would’ve been nice, too, to understand a little more than “evil Empire is evil” and “the resistance can be just as bad”.

I still did enjoy it, and I’m sure some of the deficiencies are mine: I’m not as adept at reading visual media as I’d like to be. But for me, I was left with some questions.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: Blue Delliquanti, book reviews, books, graphic novels, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted June 15, 2024 by Nicky in General / 14 Comments

I’m freeeeeeee! Yes, my exams are over, and the academic year too. I’ll start up again fairly soon, trying to get ahead on studying for the next year, especially since I’ll be sitting one of the hardest modules. But for now I’m taking some well-deserved time off!

Reading-wise I’m not entirely back in the swing of it yet, and I need to do some catchup with comments and saying hi to folks, but I’m back.

Books acquired this week

I haven’t got much new, but I did get this month’s British Crime Classic book from my subscription, the theme of which (academic stories) seems… a little on the nose for me right now.

I’m looking forward to digging into it, though I admit I haven’t read last week’s book yet.

Posts from this week

I didn’t do great at posting this week, missing two days, but here’s the roundup of the reviews that did go live!

Classic short mysteries: Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards (3/5 stars)
Fantasy romance: Den of Wolves, by Juliet Marillier (4/5 stars)
Science history: The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record, by Jonathan Scott (4/5 stars)
History/memoir: Hyphen, by Pardis Mahdavi (3/5 stars)

What I’m reading

I haven’t been reading a ton this week, since I’ve been busy, and at least one of the books I did read I won’t be reviewing on the blog again (since it was a reread). But here’s a glimpse at the books I’ve read that I do plan to review on the blog sometime soon:

I’m not sure what I’ll be reading this weekend, to be honest. I think I’ll probably read more of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Sofi Thanhauser), reread Record of a Spaceborn Few (Becky Chambers), and… otherwise completely follow my whims.

How’s everyone else doing?

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, and the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, as usual!

Tags: books, Stacking the Shelves, weekly roundup

Review – Hyphen

Posted June 13, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Hyphen

by Pardis Mahdavi

Genres: History, Memoir, Non-fiction
Pages: 160
Series: Object Lessons
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate has been a central point of controversy since before the imprinting of the first Gutenberg Bible. And yet, the hyphen has persisted, bringing and bridging new words and concepts.

Hyphen follows the story of the hyphen from antiquity - Hyphen" is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning "to tie together" - to the present, but also uncovers the politics of the hyphen and the role it plays in creating identities. The journey of this humble piece of connective punctuation reveals the quiet power of an orthographic concept to speak to the travails of hyphenated individuals all over the world. Hyphen is ultimately a compelling story about the powerful ways that language and identity intertwine.

Mahdavi - herself a hyphenated Iranian-American - weaves in her own experiences struggling to find her own sense of self amidst feelings of betwixt and between. We meet six other individuals who are each on a similar journey and watch as they find a way to embrace the space of the hyphen - rejecting the false choice of trying to fit into previously prescribed identities. Through their stories, we collectively consider how belonging only serves to fulfill the failures of troubled states, regimes, or institutions and offer possibilities to navigate, articulate, and empower new identities.

Pardis Mahdavi’s take on the Object Lessons series, Hyphen, is part-informative, part-memoir, and it’s a format that works well. I still far prefer the books that focus in on the object in question, but this one alternates the two quite well, using the one to help to illuminate the other. It’s probably one that will make a different kind of sense to Americans, since a good portion of the discussion is about “hyphenated Americans” (a phrasing I haven’t heard before, but which apparently has a history), and it delves into the history around that.

Not that immigrants in other countries don’t have similar stories, but I’d also hesitate to generalise. There are certainly parallels with “hyphenated British” experience, and it’s certainly not better here, just different (though increasingly the same all over, I guess; thanks globalisation).

Anyway, Mahdavi’s take on the hyphen wasn’t perhaps the detailed history of punctuation that I might find fascinating (though I have read a book about hyphens before, if memory serves), but it was interesting.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, memoir, non-fiction, Object Lessons, Pardis Mahdavi

Review – The Vinyl Frontier

Posted June 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record

by Jonathan Scott

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 288
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
The fascinating story behind the mission, music, and message of NASA's Voyager Golden Record -- humanity's message to the stars.

In 1977, a team led by the great Carl Sagan was assembled to create a record that would travel to the stars on NASA's Voyager probe. The Vinyl Frontier reveals the inside story of how the record was created, from the first phone call to the final launch, when Voyager 1 and 2 left Earth with a playlist that would represent humanity to any future alien races that come into contact with the probe. Each song, sound and picture that made the final cut has a story to tell.

The Golden Record is a 90-minute playlist of music from across the globe, a sound essay of life on Earth, spoken greetings in multiple languages, and more than 100 photographs, all painstakingly chosen by Sagan and his team to create an aliens' guide to Earthlings. The final playlist contains music written and performed by well-known names such as Bach, Beethoven, Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson, as well as music from China, India and more remote cultures, such as a community in Small Malaita in the Solomon Islands.

Through interviews with all of the key players involved with the record, this book pieces together the whole story of the Golden Record. It addresses the myth that the Beatles were left off of the record because of copyright reasons and will include new information about US president Jimmy Carter's role in the record, as well as many other fascinating insights that have never been reported before. It also tells the love story between Carl Sagan and the project's creative director Ann Druyan that flourishes as the record is being created.

The Golden Record is more than just a time capsule. It is a unique combination of science and art, and a testament to the genius of its driving force, the great polymath Carl Sagan.

I don’t know how it took me so long to get round to starting Jonathan Scott’s The Vinyl Frontier, because the Golden Record (as included on Voyager 1 and 2) is a fascinating topic. I’m glad I finally got to it, because Scott writes a lovely biography of the Golden Record here (and a bit of a eulogy for Carl Sagan, too). He captures perfectly the naive hope of it, along with the genuine hard graft, and the difficult thinking to find ways to portray humanity that might mean something to an alien encountering it when we are gone.

He covers the human part of it as much as the technical side (or more so even), and his portrayal of the relationship between Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan is tender and sympathetic. I’ve no idea if it was as lovely and inevitable as he makes it sound, and I’m sure Carl Sagan was no saint, not even a pothead saint, but Scott’s clear admiration is actually enjoyable to read.

Thinking about the Golden Records does always make me imagine someone finding them. I often imagine, though, it’s more likely to be our own descendents. Regardless, what would they or those alien to us make of it all? I wonder.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, Jonathan Scott, non-fiction, science

Review – Den of Wolves

Posted June 10, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Den of Wolves

by Juliet Marillier

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 414
Series: Blackthorn & Grim #3
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Feather bright and feather fine,
None shall harm this child of mine...

Healer Blackthorn knows all too well the rules of her bond to the fey: seek no vengeance, help any who ask, do only good. But after the recent ordeal she and her companion, Grim, have suffered, she knows she cannot let go of her quest to bring justice to the man who ruined her life.

Despite her personal struggles, Blackthorn agrees to help the princess of Dalriada in taking care of a troubled young girl who has recently been brought to court, while Grim is sent to the girl’s home at Wolf Glen to aid her wealthy father with a strange task—repairing a broken-down house deep in the woods. It doesn’t take Grim long to realize that everything in Wolf Glen is not as it seems—the place is full of perilous secrets and deadly lies...

Back at Winterfalls, the evil touch of Blackthorn’s sworn enemy reopens old wounds and fuels her long-simmering passion for justice. With danger on two fronts, Blackthorn and Grim are faced with a heartbreaking choice—to stand once again by each other’s side or to fight their battles alone...

Apparently I never posted this review back when I read the book, so here’s a belated one!

Den of Wolves draws the story of Blackthorn and Grim to a close. I waited quite a while to read it, because I didn’t love the direction their relationship was growing in: I adored their bond, but didn’t love that it had to oh-so-typically become a romance. Books with strong bonds between adults that are exclusive and necessary to each member without being romantic are rare enough.

Still, by this point I was ready to accept the direction and enjoy it, and I did: it felt natural for Blackthorn and Grim to find each other and get past their traumas, eventually (much of the book is spent with them apart). I do enjoy that Blackthorn’s feelings about Grim are a good part of the way she manages to rise above her trauma and do the right thing at the right time.

It was also nice to get some answers about Conmael; that was obviously coming, but it could’ve been anticlimatic or weird, and it wasn’t.

The other story of this book features a young girl, Cara, and her relationship with her father… and his decision to send her away while a wild man, a builder, returns to create something called a heartwood house. Blackthorn meets Cara and begins to untangle that mystery with her; I’ll confess that I’d wanted a certain character to be a bit more ambiguous, rather than turning out to be super evil, but mostly other characters around that story had some shades of grey.

It’s a lovely conclusion to the trilogy, but I am glad I waited and let the fact of Grim and Blackthorn’s coming romance settle before I read it, so I didn’t get cranky about it!

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Juliet Marillier, romance, SF/F

Review – Final Acts

Posted June 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 347
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
"… and what a motive! Murder to save one's artistic soul… who'd believe that?"

Behind the stage lights and word-perfect soliloquies, sinister secrets are lurking in the wings. The mysteries in this collection reveal the dark side to theatre and performing arts: a world of backstage dealings, where unscrupulous actors risk everything to land a starring role, costumed figures lead to mistaken identities, and on-stage deaths begin to look a little too convincing...

This expertly curated thespian anthology features fourteen stories from giants of the classic crime genre such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Julian Symons and Ngaio Marsh, as well as firm favourites from the British Library Crime Classics series: Anthony Wynne, Christianna Brand, Bernard J. Farmer and many more.

Mysteries abound when a player's fate hangs on a single performance, and opening night may very well be their last.

Final Acts is another collection from the British Library Crime Classics series, edited as always by Martin Edwards, and this time all themed around the theatre and acting. It’s a fun spread of stories, not all using the theatre in quite the same way, and as usual demonstrating a bit of a spread across time as well.

The one thing to note is that there’s a repeat story in here, by Christianna Brand. I’m not sure which other anthology it appeared in, or whether it was maybe included with one of her novels, and I’m also not sure (because of that) whether this is the repeat or the other is the repeat. Still, bit disappointing.

Still, as usual, a fun handful of stories.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, short stories