Review – White Bread

Posted June 15, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-StrainWhite Bread, Aaron Bobrow-Strain

I wasn’t sure how interesting a book on store-bought white bread could be, but someone recommended it to me and I wanted to give it a chance… and it was everything I could want from the kind of book which takes an everyday part of life and digs into its history and social meaning. Bobrow-Strain lays bare all kinds of things about the US which you wouldn’t necessarily link to white bread. Or maybe, knowing the US you would — wealth, health, religion, race.

It ended up being really fascinating: rather densely written — for 200 pages, it took me a while — but in a good way, informative and considerate. Unlike another recent book on food I read, Reinventing the Wheel, it managed not to sound like it was judging everyone in the world’s bad food choices for causing problems. Instead it really dug into why white bread seemed (and seems) so desirable, and what powerful motivations lie behind the choice.

I’d really love to know more about this whole subject as relates to the UK as well, and I’m eager to explore the references for more books on food, since I’ve been finding them fascinating lately.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

Posted June 14, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Acts of King Arthur by John SteinbeckThe Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, John Steinbeck

I remembered this book very, very fondly — I remember stumbling upon it and being so surprised that Steinbeck had written anything about King Arthur. I made use of it when writing my dissertation to discuss his portrayal of Sir Kay, which is sympathetic and tries to explain some of why Kay could both be a bold knight who earned his place at the table and an apparent coward who couldn’t hold his own against anyone. I also remember finding it one of the few versions of Lancelot and Guinevere which felt real to me.

Overall, I didn’t feel as positively this time. Much of the first part is a fairly straight rewrite of Malory, without working in too much more detail (though there is some lovely stuff here and there). The last two tales do start to bring more detail and sometimes a real sense of pathos to the stories, and they are worth a read… but if you’re familiar with Arthurian stories, much of this will seem pretty flat.

I do still think the portrayal of Kay is good, but I was less convinced by Lancelot and Guinevere somehow. The spark between them did feel real — there’s a very powerful description of the sudden desire they feel — but there was no build-up. Guinevere seemed almost motherly to him before, and then all of a sudden, poof! They’ve gone up like straw.

That’s partly the source material and not Steinbeck’s fault, but he did manage to be so sensitive and willing to adapt things where necessary at other points in the book. Maybe he’d have made more of it if he’d finished the work — it’s worth remembering that this isn’t a completed novel or anything of the kind.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – And Only to Deceive

Posted June 13, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of And Only to Deceive by Tasha AlexanderAnd Only to Deceive, Tasha Alexander

Lady Emily married quickly to get away from her parents — or mostly her mother, who is overbearing and absolutely obsessed with getting her married off safely before she loses her looks. (Ugh.) She barely had time for the honeymoon, though, before her husband went away on an expedition… and never returned, with his friends sending back the news that he was dead, leaving her in possession of all his things, a lot of money, and a lot more freedom.

Over the course of the book it turns out that he was deeply in love with her, and she begins to read his journals and understand the kind of man he was, beginning to explore his interests and what she might have shared with him. This leads to her falling in love with him too, despite knowing he’s already gone. At the same time, strange things are happening and it seems that he may have been involved in something strange, or perhaps even dangerous, a tangle that Lady Emily decides to unravel.

I ended up enjoying this a lot, enough that I immediately got the next book (and by this point I’m gleefully onto the third). I liked the idea of how Emily falls in love with her husband posthumously — it’s feels surprisingly tender and real, and it’s a surprising touch, especially given she does go on to have a new love interest. She’s anachronistic, of course, though not quite so much so as Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell — the book does show some of the ways in which that disturbs people and that makes it feel a bit more real. No surprises that I’d feel a kinship with a heroine who loves books, anyway…

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , , ,

Divider

Weekly Roundup

Posted June 12, 2021 by Nicky in General / 20 Comments

Good afternoon, folks!

General update

As you’ll have noticed, I’ve been queuing up some of my backlog of reviews — mostly written during the Final Fantasy XIV dungeon “The Praetorium”, since you get good items from it at the moment… but it has looooong unskippable cutscenes!

What have I been up to? Mostly playing Final Fantasy XIV, along with the Mass Effect remaster. If any of you play FFXIV, say hi sometime, we can run a dungeon or something! I’m on Cerberus server, and I can let you know my avatar’s name…

I have been reading a bit, though; I’ve gone back to reading a whole bunch of books at once, and I’m using Beeminder to help track them and keep me from putting them down and forgetting about them for ages. Here’s how I’m doing with Maryn McKenna’s Beating Back the Devil, for example!

Stacking the Shelves

This week I don’t have too many new books in — last week’s splurge was actually kind of out of character for me lately. However, I did pick up Tasha Alexander’s A Fatal Waltz in paperback, since it came back into stock, and I’ve just got a new book to review because I remembered one of you guys talking about it recently, and it has a pretty cover.

Cover of A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander Cover of After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

Books read this week

I’ve actually finished a few books this week, which isn’t so common lately!

Cover of Food: The History of Taste Cover of Two-Way Murder by E.C.R. Lorac Cover of Plain Bad Heroines by emily m. danforth Cover of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa RandallCover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Reviews posted this week

So that’s it! What have you guys been stacking up, devouring, or flinging across the room in despair?

Tags: , ,

Divider

Review – Long Live Latin

Posted June 11, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Long Live Latin by Nicola GardiniLong Live Latin, Nicola Gardini

This… turned out to be really not my thing. It’s a passionate defence of Latin as something you should learn just for its own sake, for the beauty and versatility of the language — not because it serves some other purpose, like preparing you for other languages or limbering up your brain or something like that. I don’t disagree with the argument at all; I’d love to learn Latin… but this isn’t the book to convince you. I think this is a book you can enjoy best when you understand a little Latin, and can better appreciate the many, many, many examples of Latin texts that the author draws in to help make his points.

For someone who doesn’t already know any Latin, though, it’s difficult to appreciate the elegance of phrasing, especially when twice-translated (since this book is originally written in Italian, I think? it’s definitely in translation, anyway). Sometimes there would be an interesting insight or two into the writers and texts described and given as exemplars, but there’s just too much “here’s a quotation and here’s why it’s great”.

Rating: 1/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – The Angel of the Crows

Posted June 10, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Angel of the Crows by Katherine AddisonThe Angel of the Crows, Katherine Addison

I took ages to read this book, despite being really eager for it, because… well, I didn’t think I’d love it as much as The Goblin Emperor, which holds a pretty special place in my heart, and also because I heard some bad things about the portrayal of some of the characters which made me a little wary. In the end, though, I ate it up — I read it in a few hours flat, and it was very compulsive.

It’s essentially a retelling of Sherlock Holmes, only what if Sherlock was an angel and Watson was… well, there are a lot of things about the Watson character, which I shouldn’t share too much about for fear of spoiling the surprise. Sometimes the retelling is fairly close, and you’ll recognise a lot of the Sherlock Holmes stories if you’re familiar with them, but twisted into a new shape by the changes to Crow (Sherlock) and Doyle (Watson), and the world around them.

If you’re not a fan of Sherlock Holmes (or Sherlock Holmes derivatives), in the end this isn’t going to bring you joy. I’m lukewarm on Holmes as a character and a phenomenon, though I loved the movies with Robert Downey Jr, and ended up loving this, so it’s not that you have to be a Holmes superfan in order to enjoy it. The context helps, I think, though sometimes the story was so close to the familiar one that I kind of wished I wasn’t as familiar with the source.

That said, by the end I just wanted more, more of these characters and their bond, and more of the worldbuilding surrounding them.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

WWW Wednesday

Posted June 10, 2021 by Nicky in General / 3 Comments

Oof, getting too warm to think in my little office in Yorkshire. Gah, summer is here again, apparently.

What are you currently reading?

I’m reading a lot all at once at the moment. This is normally something I’d feel weird and guilty about because I should be finishing books, right? But I’ve given up on that kind of guilting myself, and this is much closer to the joyful, voracious and random reading I did as a child — which is the kind of reading which made me really happy. So I’m sticking with it.

I’m still reading several of the books from last week; I’ve also picked up The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, by Cat Sebastian, because it sounded like exactly the ticket right now. I’ve also started in on the fifth Whyborne & Griffin book by Jordan L. Hawk, which promises to be the same quick-paced fun as the others — and I’m somewhat reassured that while Whyborne is never going to be a confident man, he has developed somewhat and learned to trust Griffin.

Cover of Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha LeeWhat have you recently finished reading?​

I think the last thing I finished was Phoenix Extravagant, which was very different to Yoon Ha Lee’s series, starting with Ninefox Gambit, which is what really drew my attention to his work. I enjoyed Phoenix Extravagant, but it’s less complex/mind-bending to follow. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing or a good thing; it’s a different thing, and I’m still kind of letting it sit to see what I think when the dust has settled.

I also finished Plain Bad Heroines, which I found to be very lacking in payoff for all those pages of vaguely creepy promises.

What are you going to read next?

As ever, I don’t really know. I have a strong suspicion I’ll be picking up the third Lady Emily book by Tasha Alexander, and I’m quite in the mood to reread some old favourites too — which might be Marie Brennan, Ann Leckie, Becky Chambers, or Vivian Shaw…

We’ll see, as ever. Only time will tell, with my mood-reading and my moods!

What are you reading at the moment?

Tags: , , , , , ,

Divider

Review – A Murderous Relation

Posted June 8, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of A Murderous Relation by Deanna RaybournMurderous Relation, Deanna Raybourn

This review is inevitably spoilery for certain things, so look away now if you want to be unspoiled — I couldn’t think of a way to comment on some of this book without spoilers.

I was wondering what Raybourn would do now that the will-they-won’t-they potential should, in theory, be over with after the ending of the last book. Turns out, it’s actually “go straight into another book with very little time difference, meaning they haven’t had chance to consummate their relationship… and they’ll dither for another book about whether they’re going to do it or not”. Granted, that does give her chance for a good payoff scene near the end which is everything you need for the couple getting together; anything else might have felt a bit flat.

In the meantime, the plot goes ahead and entangles Veronica further with the Royal Family and even Jack the Ripper (of course, given the era). It barrels along at a cracking pace, of course, with some anxious moments for certain characters, and the inevitable emotional complexities of Veronica’s every interaction with any member of her family. I enjoyed it a lot, and raced through the book.

I don’t know if maybe the shine isn’t wearing off a little on this series for me, though. Not because the main characters are together, but just because it’s ever more unrealistic for Veronica to be this deeply entangled in the Royal Family’s affairs, and this trusted to untangle them without question… without much payoff, on her part. I kind of want her and Stoker to tell ’em to sod off, and ride off into the sunset. Somewhere that Veronica can catch butterflies and also screw Stoker silly on the regular, since that’s what she really wants.

Not that I’m stopping reading the series in the least — it’s highly entertaining. but I hope Veronica gets some payoff for her tireless efforts on the behalf of a family who regard her existence as an embarrassment and will never give her any official recognition whatsoever.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , , , ,

Divider

Review – Word by Word

Posted June 7, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Word by Word by Kory StamperWord by Word, Kory Stamper

Ahhh, I really loved this book. Kory Stamper works for Merriam-Webster, the dictionary, and her work has been focused on words. Reading to find context and new usage for words, obsessively logging new usages she sees in the wild, and painstakingly combing through proofs to prepare new editions of the dictionary. She manages to make it sound fascinating, sometimes while breaking down some processes which are probably even more tedious in reality than they sound in her account, and throughout she has a sense of humour and a real enthusiasm for her work and what it means to people that made reading about it very enjoyable.

It’s the kind of book where I found myself reading bits out to my wife, just to share the sheer glee about some of the anecdotes mentioned… like how they figure out whether a verb is transitive (does it fit if you lay over a piece of paper saying “I’mma _____ your ass”, with the ____ being a blank space for the word you’re trying to parse?).

I loved it. Kory Stamper seems pretty great.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Death in Fancy Dress

Posted June 6, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Death in Fancy DressDeath in Fancy Dress, Anthony Gilbert

This is one of the British Library Crime Classics, by an author I’ve read before, under another name — Anne Meredith. I don’t recall loving her other book, but I enjoyed this one a bit more, despite there being a fairly strong note of melancholy in the ending, and some real awfulness between the characters.

The mystery was okay: it took some untangling, and I didn’t call the final twist. I wasn’t in love with the characters and their attitudes toward each other — okay, I disliked it quite a bit — and the narrator is pretty much a non-entity (aside from being a Moaning Minnie about everything), and Jeremy seems like a dick. There is something interesting about the mildness of Dennis placed beside his obvious competence and self-assurance, though. I did find the character of Eleanor to be an interesting study, really: that strange utter selfishness about preserving her relationship with her husband, alongside the narrator’s obvious reverence for her.

In the end, it was an entertaining enough read, but not one that will stick with me in any way.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider