Tag: book reviews

Review – A Wrinkle in Time

Posted October 17, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 7 Comments

Cover of A Wrinkle in TimeA Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle

I’m sorry. I don’t get it. I think I might’ve loved it if I read it at a formative age, but the basic concepts of fighting a great evil (and even some of the relationships between characters) reminded me mostly of The Dark is Rising, which I’m afraid has first place in my heart. I didn’t get the sense of wonder and fascination that I think it could’ve invoked, encountered at the right time, and I just felt rather impatient with the protagonists.

I’m not sure if I’ll read the other books or not – I know that if I’d gone on Over Sea, Under Stone alone, I’d never have finished Susan Cooper’s series. On the other hand, I just don’t enjoy the half fantastical, half scientific backdrop, and part of the reason I didn’t connect with the characters was because I couldn’t pin them down – one minute they seem painfully young and naïve, and the next I seem to be expected to root for a romance between them.

Really, it reminds me of so many other books — The Wizard of Oz, The Railway Children, The Dark is Rising, Little Women… It never quite became its own story for me.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong

Posted October 16, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Inferior by Angela SainiInferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, Angela Saini

There’s a lot of science (and pseudo-science) out there about gender differences and how they affect the way we think. Intelligent people, male and female, often disagree about what exactly it all means, and how evolution has selected for male promiscuity, female passivity, and a host of other stereotypes about the sexes.

Saini has a go at untangling some of this, discussing inherent bias in the researchers looking at this kind of thing, and alternate models that are available for understanding gender differences. She’s definitely successful at making the conversation more complex. For example, a lot of theories have rested on similarities between humans and their close relatives, chimpanzees. Saini points out that other research has shown that bonobos are equally closely related to us, and they have an entirely different social structure.

It seems that easy answers aren’t available, but there are many theories, with supporting evidence, that suggest women have been equally important in forming the human race. That would be my belief, simply because (as Saini points out) pregnancy and childbirth are definitely an important point at which selection will act, particularly in humans where we seem to be dependent on having other support.

An interesting read, but nothing that I think is revolutionary or likely to convince people that male and female brains aren’t physically different in structure. Note: if you think of gender as being a spectrum rather than a binary, be aware that this book definitely treats it as a binary with two distinct sexes. It doesn’t touch on transgender men/women at all.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Just One Damned Thing After Another

Posted October 15, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi TaylorJust One Damned Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor

The title pretty aptly describes the book. It is a fun romp, as others have described, but I seriously think the writing needs tightening up — the plot jerks ahead with little sense of time passing (all of a sudden, two characters have known each other for five years — since when?! I thought they met a couple of months ago!) and there doesn’t seem to be a comfortable ending. It sort of goes, “Oh, and another thing.” And a couple of events rely on sexual assault, which… jdnsjgn. The author deals reasonably well with the character’s feelings afterwards, but it’s used twice as a vehicle for “this guy is really nasty, and oh the plot is moving”. Not my favourite trope, by far.

Also, also, the love interest once yells at the main character for very little reason except that someone told him she lost his baby, when she wasn’t intending to tell him she’d ever been (briefly) pregnant. He loses it and calls her a slut, etc, as do other people in the building. It’s more or less out of nowhere and out of character — and she forgives him with shocking ease.

It just didn’t quite come together for me, and honestly at times I wondered if I was reading the same book as other people. I don’t think I’ll be continuing with the series.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Jhereg

Posted October 14, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Jhereg by Steven BrustJhereg, Steven Brust

Ages ago, I read Jo Walton’s reviews of the Vlad Taltos books and resolved to read them immediately. I did pick up this first book, but after that failed to carry on, even though the first book is good and Jo’s reviews fascinating. There’s a lot going on in this world, and I really want to read more of the books to get a better grasp on it. In the meantime, Vlad Taltos himself is snarky, moderately capable, and definitely capable of getting himself into trouble. A winning combination – even without Looish, his jhereg companion.

It’s a fun beginning, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered (and sometimes even barely posed). This time, I mean it; I’ve gotta get on and read the rest!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Lost City of Z

Posted October 13, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of The Lost City of Z by David GrannThe Lost City of Z, David Grann

I’ve been meaning to read The Lost City of Z for ages, especially since I read Douglas Preston’s The Lost City of the Monkey God. I’m not here for the exotic diseases and epic endurance of hacking through the jungle, though: I’m interested in the archaeology, and the resolution of the mysteries. Where are these cities, and did they exist at all? The Lost City of Z is interesting in terms of the exotic diseases, larger than life explorers and hacking through the jungle, along with some history of that drive to explore, and less so in actually finding the archaeology. It’s mostly focused on figuring out what happened to Percy Fawcett and his son on their final attempt at finding Z, as well as tracing their lives up to that point; less interesting to me, though it has its moments.

The last chapter, in which an archaeologist who lives in the Amazon actually explains where he thinks the great vanished cities are, is the most interesting to me. There’s echoes of the ritual landscape of Stonehenge and Avebury in his description of the palisade walls and ditches dug around the settlement — combined with the power of the jungle just reaching up and strangling all those remaining signs. That’s the book I find I really want, written by a Francis Pryor or Mike Parker Pearson of the Amazon.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – How We Got To Now

Posted October 12, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of How We Got to Now by Steven JohnsonHow We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, Steven Johnson

How We Got to Now is a reasonably entertaining and easy to read survey of six topics which shaped the world we live in now, in various ways. The main benefit is that Johnson tries to look across disciplines and from different angles, and tries to capture the whole of the picture. The six topics he picked make sense: glass, (artificial) cold, (the understanding of) sound, hygiene, time (and the accuracy thereof) and (artificial) light — they’re summarised under six headings: glass, cold, sound, clean, time, light. That does sound a little odd with the title, since sound is hardly something we invented. Nonetheless, he makes good points about the way science and technology surrounding those topics has made our modern lives what they are.

Not world-shattering, but entertaining enough!

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Bear and the Nightingale

Posted October 11, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine ArdenThe Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden

I struggled a bit with this book, which surprised me. It’s not the fairytale-like narration, because that worked for me, nor the choice of setting (semi-historical Russia), or the characters, or the choice of fairytales to invoke. Perhaps it’s just that I felt I knew where it was going and how it would unfold, and I am so very tired of stories all about taming a wild young woman who doesn’t belong among her people.

It’s well written, and I enjoyed the Russian flavour – probably helped by the fact that I don’t know Russian well at all, so the words chosen to give a flavour didn’t contradict each other in the way they were Romanised or used. I do enjoy Vasya and her determination, her basic goodness, her love for her family and duty to the people who, unknowingly, relied upon her. I enjoyed the little snippets that joined it to history.

I just… didn’t quite click with it in some way I can’t put my finger on. I’m glad I read it, and I’ll probably pick up the second book to see how I get into that, but… something didn’t work for me.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Man Who Fell to Earth

Posted October 10, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter TevisThe Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis

Ouch. I was sort of enjoying this, but not really bowled over — and then that ending. Of course that’s the way the US government would end up treating an alien. Of course it’s not that easy to save the world.

To start at the beginning, this is a short novel which imagines what would happen if an alien came to Earth with the intent of saving our world, in order to save his own. Newton is from Anthea, which sounds like it’s probably Mars (back when we thought Mars might have had intelligent lifeforms), and his people need a new world. So they send him to Earth to kickstart technology, enough to build an ark to fetch them to Earth. And from there, they’d take over Earth quietly, guiding humans to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, etc, etc.

To no one’s surprise, it doesn’t quite go as planned, but the way that works out is fascinating. The weird thing for me was how much people drank, and how routine alcoholism was for the characters. Just… not a world I’m used to. But it’s an interesting book, and I enjoyed it — and it gets an extra star for that ending.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Machiavelli: A Man Misunderstood

Posted October 9, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Machiavelli by Michael WhiteMachiavelli: A Man Misunderstood, Michael White

Like White’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, I’ll confess I picked this up mostly because Machiavelli is an important character in the game Assassin’s Creed 2 (and at one point he even makes a reference to The Prince in the game). I haven’t read The Prince, but I had a certain idea of the content. White’s key point in this biography is that despite the aura of disreputable scheming around Machiavelli, that wasn’t his intent in writing The Prince, and he served Florence well and faithfully. Mostly, he was a shrewd strategist and diplomat, and an observer of human nature, who doesn’t seem — at least in White’s account of it — to have got the respect he deserved.

White’s biographies all seem to be pretty well sourced, and they’re very readable. I’d recommend them.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – A Very British Murder

Posted October 8, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of A Very British Murder by Lucy WorsleyA Very British Murder, Lucy Worsley

A Very British Murder is an extremely readable, sometimes gossipy survey of the development of crime/mystery literature in Britain, up to the Golden Age of Sayers and Christie. It examines why people loved a good murder story, and what kind of murder story they wanted, while also reflecting on some of the real murders that occurred and the anxieties surrounding them.

I especially enjoyed Worsley’s sympathy for Sayers and Christie, and her defence of Gaudy Night against a male critic’s boredom about it. Quite right, too!

It’s not deep lit crit, or a totally in depth micro-history, but there’s interesting stuff and it’s entertainingly written.

Rating: 4/5

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