Posted August 5, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What It Teaches Us, Leonard Mlodinow
This book was a bit of a disappointment. It covers basically the same ground as dozens of other books which purport to explain the irrationality of the human brain, including the same experiments discussed with more or less the same conclusions. I’m wary of the way Mlodinow decides that certain anatomical areas of the brain are solely and uncomplicatedly involved in specific emotions. For example, he identifies the “ventromedial pre-frontal cortex” as being all there is to it when it comes to preferring Coke over Pepsi because of the brand-name. This isn’t my area (alas) so I’m not going to say he’s definitively wrong, but I’ve read around enough to be cautious when someone decides that a bit of brain anatomy means x or y universally. It smacks of going for a simple, catchy answer instead of acknowledging the actual complexity of the brain.
Anyway, it’s probably a good read if you haven’t read one of the dozens of other books covering the same topic, and in its favour I did find myself snorting in amusement at some of Mlodinow’s commentary. It’s nothing new, though.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science
Posted August 4, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Have His Carcase, Dorothy L. Sayers
As ever, a beloved reread. Okay, the cypher bits can be kind of annoying unless you’re really interested in figuring out, but this time I paid close attention so I could use the Playfair cypher to write a daft message to my wife, so there’s that. I love the care Peter takes to try and be fair to Harriet, not to push her, and to do his best by her. I do think sometimes he’s rather self-pitying, but mostly his sense of humour about it alleviates that.
The mystery itself is a fun one to break: if you figure out the key to it too soon, the back and forth as Harriet, Peter and the police try to break the wrong alibis can be a bit infuriating, but it’s also pretty clever. If you don’t love Peter and Harriet (and mostly their banter), I can’t imagine it being a favourite, but for me… yeah. <3
Rating: 5/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery, romance
Posted August 3, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Invisible Library, Genevieve Cogman
Another reread! Mostly because I felt like it, and partly to refresh my memory of the series to read The Lost Plot. It remains tons of fun: heists, steampunk trappings, magic, dragons, fae and most importantly, books. I love Vale and Kai and the way they interact with each other and with Irene, and Alberich remains a creep-as-heck villain (come on, he impersonates people by wearing their skin). The whole lore of the worlds, the way Fae work and the way that chaos/order affect magic… that all makes a good background for a story that ticks along at a fast clip. It feels like Cogman’s put everything and the kitchen sink into these books (especially with the more sci-fi trappings of some of the other worlds) and it works.
Above all, I think, I love the fact that the people who work for the Library genuinely love books. That’s one of their chief motivations in life. They’re not after keeping the worlds in order, just after books — on the surface, at least, and definitely for the junior Librarians like Irene — and that’s just… fun, nice to read, because in that secret kid part of you that hoped for a Hogwart’s letter (if you’re that kind of person), maybe you could be a Librarian…
So yeah. No surprises I’m giving it a high rating again. It’s not perfect, perhaps, but it’s so much fun.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Genevieve Cogman, SF/F
Posted August 2, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Planet Factory, Elizabeth Tasker
If you’re interested in planets outside our solar system, this is obviously going to be for you. It explains how planets form and the different ecosystems (of a sort) that different types of planets form in. Like the other Bloomsbury Sigma books, it’s readable and fairly light in tone. I think it could actually have used some more diagrams: sometimes, Tasker explained something and my brain just couldn’t grab hold because I couldn’t do the imagining she was suggesting. (If you start with “imagine an ellipse”, I’m afraid I fall at that first hurdle, so I’m a bit of an outlier here — but I still think some more diagrams could have clarified the more technical stuff.)
I do also have some issues with terminology, although this isn’t Tasker’s fault so much as an issue with astronomy in general: hot Jupiters and super Earths and so on all start to blur together for me. Once you say “it’s like Jupiter only x and y and z and a and b” then I don’t know why you’re still calling it a Jupiter-like object. Some of the hot Jupiters are pretty close to Jupiter, of course, but… I don’t know, it felt like a meaningless phrase that got in the way of me actually following what sort of planets were being discussed. “A gas giant on a close solar orbit” seems more informative…
Anyway, that’s probably mostly down to personal taste. It’s an informative book with which I have no scientific quibbles.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, science
Posted August 1, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Gallows in the Greenwood, Phyllis Ann Karr
This novel does a surprisingly good job of weaving together a lot of disparate threads of Robin Hood folklore, while putting its own spin on the story, given that it’s so short. It’s a fascinating attempt at exploring what a female Sheriff does to the story, while also including a romantic plot that’s straight out of that kind of ballad without being directly like any of the ones I can think of. I really enjoyed noticing the references to the traditional ballads, but I also really appreciated the way the female Sheriff became part of the story and explained various aspects of it by her presence.
There’s quite a lot going on below a deceptively simple plot: an attempt to reconcile the Robin Hood folklore into a whole story that makes sense. Whatever Karr says in her notes on the text, I find the figure of Robin quite interesting — he’s not a straightforward villain, as the epilogue shows (and as the loyalty of Maid Marian suggests too).
There’s also Denis and Midge, and I just ended up loving Denis — the kind of honourable idiot of a character I can really get involved with. He has principles, but he’s not so honourable he won’t break them in order to do what is actually the right thing. His romance is a little sudden, but it makes a certain amount of sense, especially in the context of the Robin Hood ballads the story uses and echoes.
Nonetheless, it is all comparatively light and the most interesting/valuable thing to me was the inclusion of Karr’s notes on the text, including a letter to her agent in which she categorically (and correctly, in my view) refused to change a lot of key parts of the story. I loved her firm emphasis on things being believable: she’s not just doing lip-service to feminism by completely inventing a role for a woman that doesn’t exist: she found records that supported the position she put her character in.
All in all, enjoyable and interesting, and I’m a little disappointed I never read it in time to work it into an essay for the tutor of mine who really had me digging into the oldest ballads.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, historical fiction, romance
Posted July 31, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Zoo, Isobel Charman
The cover promises the “wild and wonderful” tale of the founding of the London Zoo, but it isn’t really very wild, though you might decide it’s still wonderful in its way. It certainly was a heck of a task, and the fact that the London Zoo still exists is amazing considering some of the difficulties they had. The style is rather fictionalised — mentioning exactly what Charman imagines the protagonists of the story think and feel — and it doesn’t always stick very closely to the founding of the zoo itself. For example, there’s a whole chapter on Darwin, at least as long as the others, and yet of all of them he has almost nothing to do with the actual business of the zoo.
It’s not all about the zoo, then, but the story it tells is an interesting one, and I did enjoy the stories of men that might have been left out of the story in another time — the first vet, the keepers, etc. The people who did the day to day work on the ground, not just the people who designed the buildings or paid for things.
A little slow, really; it was a bit too fictional to give me the sort of details I want in my non-fiction, but too dry for my tastes as a work of fiction.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction
Posted July 30, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Murder of my Aunt, Richard Hull
The narrator of most of this book is, by design, pretty repugnant — and honestly, I find the other characters so too, even when we get a little glimpse of the other side of the story. The satisfaction here is in seeing their plans come to grief, and waiting for everyone to get their comeuppance. There’s something satisfying in Hull’s skill about putting together these characters, but at the same time it feels like it would’ve worked better as a short story. Enough time to get the gist, without enough to start getting truly frustrated by the general horribleness (and stupidity, too).
It’s an entertaining enough read, but I was glad when it was over, too!
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery
Posted July 29, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments
The Battle of the Sun, Jeannette Winterson
I remember quite enjoying Tanglewreck, so I was somewhat surprised to be rather unhappy with The Battle of the Sun. The opening is fairly promising — the description of Jack being so, so eager for his spaniel, so full of thoughts of the spaniel, that he’s practically a spaniel himself, it really works and paints exactly the picture it needs to. Not that vivid imagery has ever been a problem for Winterson, and it’s so surprise that her writing is poetic and vivid and phantasmagoric.
However, it’s also quicksilver, jumping from thought to thought, and things aren’t explained — they just happen, one after another, and who knows why? I can’t remember if I found Tanglewreck to be like that, but I can’t say I enjoyed it in this book. In the end, I zipped through to the end on my ereader and put it down with a sigh of relief. Just not one that worked for me.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F
Posted July 28, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments
Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo
It took me a while to get into this — around 50% of the book, actually — because it all felt like Kaz was being driven by Van Eck, instead of the crew banding together and calling the shots, which I badly wanted after the ending of Six of Crows. Kaz felt too cold and distant for a lot of it, and his POV took a long time to come round. Still, once it did, I did enjoy the way Kaz’s need for vengeance was handled, and his difficulties in touching people and expressing his feelings, etc. There’s a great bit which just describes perfectly how those OCD behaviours get established if you don’t fight them every step of the way.
And once you hit that 50% mark, the crew really start to take back what’s theirs and fight back, and it’s a lot of fun. Wylan and Jesper’s relationship is adorable, and I rather enjoy Jesper’s father’s part as well. The comeuppance is great, and the end of the book did not go quite exactly as I’d pictured. Gah, some of the last imagery of Nina and Matthias… But ahh, Inej’s ending is everything I needed, and Wylan’s position at the end is awesome.
If you enjoyed Six of Crows, you’ll probably enjoy this, and if you find it slow at first you probably just need to hold out for about 50% of the way through.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F
Posted July 27, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Gorgon, Peter D. Ward
If you’re looking for information on the gorgonopsids and their world, this book is rather thin on that. Instead, it’s mostly about Ward’s career and some of his excavations and initiatives. Admittedly, much of that is in the service of getting information about the gorgonopsids, but the book is rather thin on what was actually found. There is some interesting stuff on pinning down that mass extinction and figuring out how fast it happened, but the gorgonopsids in life — how they lived, what they did — are absent.
So pretty interesting in terms of understanding Ward’s career as a palaeontologist, with the appropriate set pieces about how hot it was and how difficult, etc, etc, but low on actual pre-dinosaurian monsters ruling the Earth.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction
