Tag: books

Review – The British Museum

Posted November 24, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilizations

by James Hamilton

Genres: History
Pages: 224
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
James Hamilton explores the establishment of the Museum in the 1750s (from the bequest to the nation of the collections of Sir Hans Sloane); the chosen site of its location; the cultural context in which it came into being; the subsequent development, expansion and diversification of the Museum, both as a collection and as a building, from the early 19th to the 21st century; the controversy occasioned by some of its acquisitions; and the legacy and influence of the Museum nationally and globally.

A product and symbol of the 18th-century Enlightenment, the British Museum is as iconic an expression of that cultural tendency as Johnson's Dictionary, the French Encyclopedie and Linnaean plant classification. Its collections embody the raw material of empiricism - the bringing together of things to enable the widest intellectual experiment to take place.

A concise history of one of the world's greatest and most comprehensive museum collections, from its founding in 1753.

James Hamilton’s The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilizations definitely isn’t the place to go for a critique of the British Museum’s collection practices. It does briefly mention some of the controversies, but mostly it’s a paean to the vision of the whole endeavour, fascinated with how the institution has developed.

And… to be fair, I found it equally fascinating: I didn’t expect to be so interested in the phases of building of the museum, but it really tracks with the way the collections increased, the splitting off of various things like the Natural History Museum and eventually the British Library. Hamilton manages to avoid it sounding too dry, and there are lots of colour photographs and additions which add well to the text (even if I don’t, personally, usually find them very enlightening).

A surprisingly quick read overall, and fascinating. It explicitly discusses (and reproduces) some of the founding tenets and principles, including the ones which are cited in arguments about refusing to return objects etc, so it’s also an interesting primer for discussion of repatriation and decolonisation, even if Hamilton doesn’t dig into that in this book.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, history, James Hamilton, non-fiction

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 23, 2024 by Nicky in General / 23 Comments

Hurrah for the weekend!

I’m a little behind on comments/blog visits, but I’m finally starting to get back on track with my studies, so I’m calling this week a win. Looking forward to spending time today visiting other blogs, replying to comments, etc, etc.

Books acquired this week

There was no library trip this week owing to the wintery weather: first it was too cold for me to cycle without gloves, and then once the gloves arrived, sadly everything’s covered in ice. It’s supposed to warm up a bit this weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.

Nonetheless, I did get some new books! I discovered the Inklings series, from 404 Ink. They’re on a very random range of topics, in a way that delights me, so I’ve snagged quite a few — they’ll serve as quick reads to maybe start catching up with my reading goal for this year.

And I did also get a couple more books from my wife, namely these:

So as you see, it’s been a bookish week, and I’ve inhaled many of them already! (The Inklings books are quite short.)

Posts from this week

First up, the roundup of reviews posted this week:

Speculative fiction: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler (4/5 stars)
Poetry: The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris (4/5 stars)
Crime: Murder at the British Museum, by Jim Eldridge (3/5 stars)
Horror novella: Cold Snap, by Lindy Ryan (2/5 stars)

And other posts:

Top Ten Tuesday: Oldest Books On My TBR (basically a gallery of classic crime)
What Are You Reading Wednesday

What I’m reading

Well, as usual let’s start with a sneak peek at what I’ve finished reading this week…

As for what I’m reading over the weekend, I’m just finishing up with another of the Inklings books, Blind Spot, and then I want to finish Carolyn Wells’ Murder in the Bookshop and Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop. I also want to get back to Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots.

I need to read 80 more books by the end of the year to reach my stretch reading goal, and it’s looking very far away and unlikely… but we’ll see how it goes.

How’s everyone else doing? Reading anything good?

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 – Cold Snap

Posted November 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cold Snap

by Lindy Ryan

Genres: Horror
Pages: 144
Rating: two-stars

Synopsis:
A grieving mother and son hope to survive Christmas in a remote mountain cabin, in this chilling novella of dread, isolation and sinister spirits lurking in the frozen woods. Perfect for fans of The Only Good Indians, The Shining and The Babadook.

Two weeks ago, Christine Sinclaire’s husband slipped off the roof while hanging Christmas lights and fell to his death on the front lawn. Desperate to escape her guilt and her grief, Christine packs up her fifteen-year-old son and the family cat and flees to the cabin they’d reserved deep in the remote Pennsylvania Wilds to wait out the holidays.

It isn’t long before Christine begins to hear strange noises coming from the forest. When she spots a horned figure watching from between frozen branches, Christine assumes it’s just a forest animal—a moose, maybe, since the property manager warned her about them, said they’d stomp a body so deep into the snow nobody’d find it ’til spring. But moose don’t walk upright like the shadowy figure does. They don’t call Christine’s name with her dead husband’s voice.

A haunting examination of the horrors of grief and the hunger of guilt, perfect for readers of Stephen King, Christina Henry, and Chuck Wendig.

Lindy Ryan’s Cold Snap is a horror novella that doesn’t really give many answers, revolving around a shocked and grieving mother (Christine) and her attempt to connect with her equally shocked son (Billy) after her husband’s death. They go away to a remote cabin for Christmas, as her husband (Derek) had originally planned, but Christine is hearing voices, seeing constant intrusive visions of Derek’s death.

There is a creepy atmosphere to the story, helped along by the sense of unreality Christine falls. As a portrayal of PTSD and its repetitive patterns is really well done, in my opinion, and that might be the best part.

The reason I didn’t rate it higher is that I didn’t really feel the creepiness of the actual spirit/monster/whatever it is. I rather liked the final page, though it leaves things very ambiguous, but I think Christine’s fragmented experiences actually sapped the sense of threat. It’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be real; sometimes that can enhance the weirdness, but here it was just hard to tell what was happening.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, horror, Lindy Ryan

Review – Murder at the British Museum

Posted November 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Murder at the British Museum

by Jim Eldridge

Genres: Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 320
Series: Museum Mysteries #2
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
1894. A well-respected academic is found dead in a gentlemen's convenience cubicle at the British Museum, the stall locked from the inside. Professor Lance Pickering had been due to give a talk promoting the museum's new 'Age of King Arthur' exhibition when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Having forged a strong reputation working alongside the inimitable Inspector Abberline on the Jack the Ripper case, Daniel Wilson is called in to solve the mystery of the locked cubicle murder, and he brings his expertise and archaeologist Abigail Fenton with him.

But it isn't long before the museum becomes the site of another fatality and the pair face mounting pressure to deliver results. With enquiries compounded by persistent journalists, local vandals and a fanatical society, Wilson and Fenton face a race against time to salvage the reputation of the museum and catch a murderer desperate for revenge.

Murder at the British Museum follows on from the first book in Jim Eldridge’s series of mysteries based in museums, following the characters Daniel Wilson (retired cop, now private investigator) and Abigail Fenton (archaeologist, now also a private investigator) as they tackle another murder in a museum. There’s a lot of tension in this book between the private investigators and the police, since Daniel’s now working alongside people he knew in the force, but it isn’t just one-dimensional: Inspector Feather is friendly and helpful, and unlike in the previous book, the narrative follows the police as well part of the time, which was interesting.

Overall, I found it more engaging than the previous book, with Abigail’s character feeling a touch more consistent. It’s unfortunate that for plot reasons she had to do something pretty stupid a couple of times, but there’s a couple of interesting scenes between her and Daniel (for instance her gently telling him that he mustn’t act like she’s in danger everywhere she goes, and must accept that she’ll gauge this for herself).

It’s not a series I’m going to read for the characters, I think, but it worked better for me on that front this time.

I’ll spare you any quibbles and thoughts on the subject of Arthurian scholarship, particularly as it was all from a historical rather than literary point of view (since I mostly studied it from a literary point of view). It was good enough for fiction, though I’d have expected a bit better of Abigail than to think Malory was the originator of a lot of it (she should have pointed to the Vulgate Cycle). I did think it was an interesting motive and a good use of actual scholarly arguments to set up the reason for murder.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, crime, historical fiction, Jim Eldridge, mystery

WWW Wednesday

Posted November 20, 2024 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

Wednesday again! Here we go.

What have you recently finished reading?

The Loki Variations, by Karl Johnson, which is a bit of a discussion of the various different portrayals of the Norse god Loki in popular culture (including, but not limited to, the MCU). I quite liked it: Johnson’s enthusiasm for Loki stories and the dissection of Marvel’s influence, treating the whole subject as serious and worthy of discussion (which it is), etc.

Loki stories aren’t entirely my thing, but Johnson makes me want to seek out a couple more just for fun.

What are you currently reading?

Nothing very actively; I have a few books on the go, but all of them have waited at least a few days since I last interacted with them, except for my current Serial Reader choice, The Secret Adversary. It’s Christie’s first Tommy and Tuppence novel. It’s… okay? I’m really not as much of a Christie fan as some.

Other than that, I’m partway through my e-ARC of Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots, which I’m enjoying, but needed to charge my ereader to continue with. I’ve actually done that now, so I’ll get back to that soon.

What will you be reading next?

I’m just starting The Spellshop, because it’s a book of the month on the Bookly Discord. For the same reason I’m about to start The Pumpkin Spice Café, about which I see fairly mixed reviews. The theme was “cosy fantasy”, and as far as I can tell The Pumpkin Spice Café is a romance (and not romantasy, either), but I enjoy romance in general so I’m giving it a shot anyway.

I’m also likely to read some more of 404 Ink’s Inklings series, which are satisfyingly random in topic. Not sure which one, though.

How about you?

Tags: books, WWW Wednesday

Top Ten Tuesday: Oldest Books on my TBR

Posted November 19, 2024 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

This week’s theme from That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday prompts is about the oldest books on your TBR: not the ones you’ve had the longest, but the ones which were published longest ago.

Mine’s not going to be 100% reflective of the oldest books I’m likely to read, because I only put books on my TBR on StoryGraph if I own them, and I’m likely to read old books through Serial Reader/Project Gutenberg and the library, on a whim, rather than add them to my backlog. A few years ago there’d have been a lot of works from, like, the 1500s or something, but that’s not really my field now and I read all the texts I was interested in back then. Sooo given my predilection for classic mysteries, my guess is that this entire list is going to be taken up with those…

Here we go; let’s see if I’m right!

Mr Pottermack’s Oversight, by R. Austin Freeman (1931). This is a classic mystery, reissued recently by the British Library Crime Classics series. I want to get around to it soon, because I rather liked Freeman’s The Eye of Osiris.
The Floating Admiral, by the Detection Club (1931). Also a classic mystery, this one written collaboratively by fourteen members of the famous Detection Club, a group of classic crime writers (which still exists today). The group includes Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, so I’m definitely curious to read this one. It’s a bit gimmicky, though, so it’s not at the top of my list. I suspect it’ll be a bit of a mix in terms of quality/style.
Malice Aforethought, by Francis Iles (1931). I have a couple of others books by Iles/Anthony Berkeley hanging out among the oldest on my TBR, including Before the Fact (1932) and Jumping Jenny (1933). His books are huge classics of the genre and very influential, and I’ve really enjoyed some of them. That said, Iles/Berkeley could be rather misogynistic, and I haven’t felt like risking it yet with the ones that remain. It requires a certain mood and willingness to put up with it.
Death at Breakfast, by John Rhode (1935). John Rhode’s mysteries are always solid, workmanlike and enjoyable. They don’t generally have characters with huge personalities (even his series detective, Priestley, doesn’t really stand out in the way that, say, Christie’s Poirot does), and you basically know what you’re getting into, making them excellent comfort reading. I’ve been holding onto Death at Breakfast for the right moment for a while.
Murder in the Bookshop, by Carolyn Wells (1936). I really should get to this one, because I do love murder mysteries set in and around bookshops, libraries, museums, etc. I know very little about it or the author, as I don’t think I’ve read any of her other works.
Antidote to Venom, by Freeman Wills Crofts (1938). Crofts was really prolific, but I find his work kind of… unmemorable? And a little slow. Still, this one is in the British Library Crime Classics series, and I do want to get round to it.
Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (1942). This stands out from the group by being an American classic, and thus out of my usual wheelhouse. I spotted it in a local indie bookshop recently, though, and was curious about the title/cover. Once I read that it was based on Boucher’s experience of being a pulp sci-fi writer, the collision of genres I love made it seem like an excellent choice!
Death Knows No Calendar, by John Bude (1942). Bude is another of those classic mystery writers who will generally always write something solid and entertaining, without flair. You know what you’re getting into, and therein lies the pleasure.
The Sunday Pigeon Murders, by Craig Rice (1942). About this author and book I know virtually nothing; I got it as part of an “advent calendar” of classic mysteries, and haven’t got round to it yet.
Dramatic Murder, by Elizabeth Anthony (1948). This one’s a Christmas mystery, so I’m saving it for December — I actually only just got it last month, from my British Library Crime Classics subscription. As far as I know, the author is new to me, so I’m quite curious.

Aaand as predicted, it’s classic crime all the way down! I hadn’t realised I had so many hanging around unread, I’ll be honest. I tend to hoard them away from myself “for when I need them”, and then forget I have ’em stashed waiting for their moment.

Now might well be their moment, given my reading slump — where’s that copy of Death at Breakfast? When we move, I swear I’m designing the room layouts to include at least two entire floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for my classic crime collection, so I can keep them all in the same place…

Very curious to see everyone else’s lists!

Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday

Review – The Lost Words

Posted November 18, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Lost Words

by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 112
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary -- widely used in schools around the world -- was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions -- the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual -- became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world.

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a "spell book" that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book -- a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America.

Like The Lost Spells, The Lost Words is a collection of poetry by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris. This one is specifically aimed at children, and tries to bring a little magic back to how we relate to wild creatures, and save some of the words children don’t seem to care about any more (like “conker”).

Both books feel like the poet was having fun; though I didn’t universally love the poems (sometimes a rhyme is too obvious, or a particular word just stuck out as wrong), it was a fun read. And the illustrations are, of course, gorgeous — maybe I even prefer the ones in this book a tiny bit more than the other, though the scale in the library book I borrowed helped to let me study the detail (it was huge!).

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Jackie Morris, poetry, Robert Macfarlane

Review – The Mountain in the Sea

Posted November 17, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

The Mountain in the Sea

by Ray Nayler

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 456
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
There are creatures in the water of Con Dao.
To the locals, they’re monsters.
To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity.
To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation.

Their minds are unlike ours.
Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting.
They can communicate.
And they want us to leave.

When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn’t pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA- a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence – has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research.

But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

Lately, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting immersed in books like I (think I) used to. I’ll read 50 pages and feel like it’s been forever; read 10 pages and get distracted by wondering if that email I’m waiting for has come in; a 500 page book is just daunting because it seems like it’ll take forever. And I know, I know, it’s all the fragmentation caused by mobile phones, etc, etc — but while I was reading Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea, I wasn’t paying any mind to that. My brain was quiet and I was totally focused on the story; I say this by way of introduction because I think it bears saying when a book cuts across that fidgeting and demands attention.

There are essentially three threads to the story, which twine together but never quite meet: there’s Ha Nguyen, a scientist, who is brought to a remote island owned by a company called DIANIMA in order to study octopus behaviour that appears potentially much more intelligent than baseline; there’s Rustem, a hacker with a unique way of thinking, who is given a fascinating task to hack into an extremely complex artificial intelligence in order to use it as a weapon; and there’s Eiko, a captive aboard an AI-controlled fishing ship, forced to clean and sort the catch with no sign of escape.

Of the three stories, Dr Ha’s is the most fascinating, and I admit it could be a little annoying to switch to Eiko or Rustem. Ultimately, I’m not sure their stories were entirely necessary: I admire the overall effect, the details that the other two stories lent to Dr Ha’s, and the satisfying click as things came together, but Eiko’s story didn’t lend a lot to it (and his mind palace is overdescribed for something so ultimately useless to the plot — though I think in terms of themes, it does add to the overall inquiry into how thought works).

Despite how much I liked the reading experience, I think there are still things the book could’ve dug into deeper. Evrim’s cognition is important to this question of intelligence, and yet it’s rather brushed under the rug by Ha, who readily declares them to be human all of a sudden, based on the fact that they can interact with humans on human terms. I’m not sure I agree with that definition, or the simplification of it all. There were tantalising bits of inquiry here about artificial intelligence as well as alien (octopus) intelligence, but it feels like it didn’t quite go deep enough; perhaps Eiko’s thread should’ve been reduced in order to give more space for that.

The same goes for the octopus cognition, really: sometimes Ha comes to conclusions rapidly based on fairly little evidence. Is something built of human skulls necessarily an altar? Does it necessarily mean that they’re worshipping humans or trying to appease them? Are you sure it’s not a war trophy?

That makes the book sound unsatisfying, and I don’t think it is: personally, I found it fascinating and riveting. There’s just so much space to expand, as well.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Ray Nayler, SF/F

Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted November 16, 2024 by Nicky in General / 16 Comments

Oh boy, it’s not been a week for reading. I did carve out some catchup time for my classes, though, and I trust I’m on the way back to an even keel.

Books acquired this week

First off, the books I snagged at the library this week:

I didn’t adore Alix E. Harrow’s work that I’ve read so far, but I did enjoy it well enough, so I thought I’d give Starling House a shot. I’ve been curious about Fathomfolk a while, and I had the idea at the back of my mind that I’d seen someone say good things about Where the Dead Brides Gather, so… another one to give a shot.

I did also get a new book from my wife this week, as well. There’s a couple more coming, but for now it’s just this one:

Looks like a quick read, and I’ve been curious about this series of short books for a while.

Posts from this week

As usual, here’s a roundup of what I’ve been posting this week:

Classic mystery: The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie (3/5 stars)
Chinese light novel fantasy/romance: Heaven Official’s Blessing, vol 8, by MXTX (5/5 stars)
Non-fiction: Overleaf: An Album of British Trees, by Susan & Richard Ogilvy (4/5 stars)
SF dystopia: Arch-Conspirator, by Veronica Roth (3/5 stars)
Classic mystery: Rope’s End, Rogue’s End, by E.C.R. Lorac (3/5 stars)
Non-fiction: The Secret Life of the Owl, by John Lewis-Stempel (3/5 stars)

What I’m reading

I’ve really been struggling to read this week, so I only have one book lined up ready for me to review here at some point soon:

Not sure what exactly I’ll read this weekend, but I’ve made a start on All the Violet Tiaras, and I’m partway through Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots. So those are good guesses for where I’ll start. I’ll probably also try to get back to The Other Olympians, which is a fascinating lookback at the development of sex verification as a concept in sport (and of course all the transphobia that goes with it). I hope to find a bit more time for it this week!

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 – The Secret Life of the Owl

Posted November 15, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Secret Life of the Owl

by John Lewis-Stempel

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 88
Rating: three-stars

Synopsis:
‘Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light.
Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, Hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.’

There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the Stone Age onwards. They are creatures of the night, and thus of magic. They are the birds of ill-tidings, the avian messengers from the Other Side. But owls – with the sapient flatness of their faces, their big, round eyes, their paternal expressions – are also reassuringly familiar. We see them as wise, like Athena’s owl, and loyal, like Harry Potter's Hedwig. Human-like, in other words. No other species has so captivated us.

In The Secret Life of the Owl, John Lewis-Stempel explores the legends and history of the owl. And in vivid, lyrical prose, he celebrates all the realities of this magnificent creature, whose natural powers are as fantastic as any myth.

John Lewis-Stempel’s The Secret Life of the Owl is a bit of a miscellany covering all things owl, mostly focused on owls in the UK. It’s a quick read, less than 90 pages, and includes profiles of the owls that live in or visit the UK, and a bit of an examination of how owls fit into our landscape — both how we react to them, and how other British birds react to them. As such, there are a few poems quoted throughout, in and amongst the facts and figures, and a couple of black-and-white illustrations.

It did feel a little disorganised to me, like Lewis-Stempel was just pouring out anything he could think of about owls. The enthusiasm is endearing, as is the description of his personal fascination with owls, and his interactions with them. Even though it felt a bit badly organised, it was in the way that information can be disorganised when someone is passionately telling you about a pet topic, which I didn’t really mind.

I don’t feel like I knew a lot about owls before reading, other than some vague bits that filter through popular culture, plus a lifetime of living with intelligent people who watch and discuss documentaries and read this kind of book. I learned a few new things from this book, though I don’t know how much I’ll retain — either way, it was fun.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, John Lewis-Stempel, non-fiction, science