commuter books
Prompted by ceciliaregent's nudge, I will mention some brief thoughts on books I've read recently. I have an older, bigger book review entry for the reading I've done the past two summers in Spain; I'll update that when I'm back at my apartment and have the pile of half-dozen or so books I read this summer from her Graduation Box of Awesomeness. :) Might as well start a new entry for the books I'm reading now, post-graduation, on my commute, since as it gets colder, I won't be biking and will actually be reading for a few minutes every morning.
For the past few months, I've had a strong desire to indulge my love of fantasy books. I'd eventually like to progress to reading historical or political books -- pursuing interests I never had time to learn about at Swat, but I still need relaxation and escape for now.
Currently, fyi, I'm reading the Dark is Rising series. Actually gonna make a focused effort to read the whole thing this time, which I've just never managed, despite REALLY enjoying The Grey King ('Brenin Llwyd') and Dark is Rising. [I really wanted to take Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell home with me for Thanksgiving and start it...but...::groan:: I just don't have energy for an 800-page book yet. Maybe once my schedule settles a little (shuddup, it might!) and I have some regular reading time put aside.]
Visiting puzzledance provided the perfect opportunity to ask her for fantasy/sci-fi recommendations (which I know she has :). She lent me the first two books in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. Perhaps through one of the LJ-interests-of-friends' meme, his name had come up before as a recommended author, so I was happy for the opportunity to read one of his books.
JHEREG, Steven Brust, around 220 pages. It was fine. I know exposition at the beginning can drag sometimes, but it also bothers me when world-building/historical events are just mentioned in passing and the reader is left to piece together bits and pieces throughout the book. I became intrigued by the Dragaeran houses and their cycle of power, and I wish I could've learned more about them -- I just noticed from amazon.com that there is a trilogy + prequels about those exact events, so perhaps I'll read those soon. I don't have much to say about the book -- it was fun and I had a reasonable amount of sympathy for Vlad the assassin, but somehow the dialogue jarred. Perhaps with all the powerful nobility involved (and I realize part of the point is that Vlad *isn't* aristocracy, and it was his lines that had the most informality) and both sorcery *and* witchcraft, I expected dialogue that didn't sound so modern. But you should take that comment with an understanding of my bias towards pseudo-epic historical and fantastical prose (e.g., Tolkien).
In the 3 days before the long Thanksgiving weekend, I managed to put in about 25 hours at work. That's not just a higher number of hours than I usually work (I'm only complaining relative to my normal schedule, because I realize that's not as many hours as plenty of other people work on a regular basis), it was all spent on our 16th floor document depository, where I also spent most of the previous week. Thankfully another lawyer (not from my firm, but one on long-term assignment to the case that I spend a lot of time working on) was down there the whole time, too -- we were both working our butts off to get a project done for my lawyer by Thanksgiving, which he'd set as a target date. Ron's lots of fun to work with -- gives clear explanations, easy-going, and periodically sits back for a few minutes' break to talk about movies or tv shows. At any rate, one day I told him I was off to play bridge that night, and he told me a bridge game figures importantly in one of the Bond books -- he knew Bond did something quite clever, but he could never quite follow it since he didn't play bridge. Bridge still completely intimidates me, but I was intrigued. I'd never read a 007 book, so I decided this was as good a time as any.
MOONRAKER, Ian Fleming, 190 pages. I liked it! It was an exciting adventure, but more than that I truly enjoyed reading about James Bond. It's easy to see how the movie-character developed, but he IS different in the books. In this one it's particularly striking how different his interaction with the girl is, so the book!Bond seems particularly different from the movie!Bond. It's true that I've only read this one; however, I'm fairly certain that it's a safe generalization to make that reading the books gives you a different perspective on Bond. You *know* he still projects impenetrable cool and calm, but you can also see his thoughts, when he occasionally fears or the loyalty he feels towards M or his occasional doubts about how a woman feels.
And...the fun part was that I did manage to understand, mostly, the brilliance of how Bond won the bridge game. It was through a lot of higher-end strategy that I can't handle yet, like doubletons and switching between leading from your hand and from the table. Thankfully most of the focus wasn't on the bidding, but on the gameplay, so I could follow it. Nifty! :)
I certainly have no lack of books on my to-read list, but many of them, e.g. the His Dark Materials trilogy, are either a) books that I've been meaning to read for some years or b) recommendations from friends from which I often get book recs. Once in awhile, I want to read a book I've never heard of, or a book recommended by someone whose recs I've never taken before. This post concerning (some of) his favorite novels of 2005, by a Swarthmore alumnus whose social circle overlaps with mine in that conglomerate of SWIL/dancing alumni, came just at the point where I was casting around for such a book.
RING OF SWORDS, Eleanor Arnason, 385 pages. Although the hwarhath culture (the aliens) didn't have the same visceral impact on me as the pequenino culture of Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead did, the hwarhath still illustrated the characteristic I find most striking about science fiction -- a society that is *completely* unlike humans, so unlike us that it is actually hard to wrap one's mind around their values. (I've read so little SF that I've found few examples of this.) In this book, I didn't necessarily find the hwarhath culture hard to understand, but some of the hwarhath themselves (particularly in the second half of the book) expressed pure and utter disbelief at human culture, because it was so foreign to their conception of the universe. So, anyway, I was intrigued to read about the hwarhath.
I felt the book dragged a little beyond the halfway mark, until the last 100 pages or so, but in general the plot and characters developed at a steady pace. I felt somewhat fond of all the main, sympathetic characters. The dialogue kinda reminded me of Hemingway, the only author that comes to mind at the moment for comparison; it was short and structurally simple, and the main heroine didn't elaborate on her fears/worries in direct dialogue.
However, despite a couple absorbing sections (the arrival of the hwarhath for the negotiations; the aforementioned last 100 pages or so), I wasn't too caught up in the story. Overall, it was a pleasant, interesting read, and I wouldn't mind reading other books by that author.
For the past few months, I've had a strong desire to indulge my love of fantasy books. I'd eventually like to progress to reading historical or political books -- pursuing interests I never had time to learn about at Swat, but I still need relaxation and escape for now.
Currently, fyi, I'm reading the Dark is Rising series. Actually gonna make a focused effort to read the whole thing this time, which I've just never managed, despite REALLY enjoying The Grey King ('Brenin Llwyd') and Dark is Rising. [I really wanted to take Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell home with me for Thanksgiving and start it...but...::groan:: I just don't have energy for an 800-page book yet. Maybe once my schedule settles a little (shuddup, it might!) and I have some regular reading time put aside.]
Visiting puzzledance provided the perfect opportunity to ask her for fantasy/sci-fi recommendations (which I know she has :). She lent me the first two books in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series. Perhaps through one of the LJ-interests-of-friends' meme, his name had come up before as a recommended author, so I was happy for the opportunity to read one of his books.
JHEREG, Steven Brust, around 220 pages. It was fine. I know exposition at the beginning can drag sometimes, but it also bothers me when world-building/historical events are just mentioned in passing and the reader is left to piece together bits and pieces throughout the book. I became intrigued by the Dragaeran houses and their cycle of power, and I wish I could've learned more about them -- I just noticed from amazon.com that there is a trilogy + prequels about those exact events, so perhaps I'll read those soon. I don't have much to say about the book -- it was fun and I had a reasonable amount of sympathy for Vlad the assassin, but somehow the dialogue jarred. Perhaps with all the powerful nobility involved (and I realize part of the point is that Vlad *isn't* aristocracy, and it was his lines that had the most informality) and both sorcery *and* witchcraft, I expected dialogue that didn't sound so modern. But you should take that comment with an understanding of my bias towards pseudo-epic historical and fantastical prose (e.g., Tolkien).
In the 3 days before the long Thanksgiving weekend, I managed to put in about 25 hours at work. That's not just a higher number of hours than I usually work (I'm only complaining relative to my normal schedule, because I realize that's not as many hours as plenty of other people work on a regular basis), it was all spent on our 16th floor document depository, where I also spent most of the previous week. Thankfully another lawyer (not from my firm, but one on long-term assignment to the case that I spend a lot of time working on) was down there the whole time, too -- we were both working our butts off to get a project done for my lawyer by Thanksgiving, which he'd set as a target date. Ron's lots of fun to work with -- gives clear explanations, easy-going, and periodically sits back for a few minutes' break to talk about movies or tv shows. At any rate, one day I told him I was off to play bridge that night, and he told me a bridge game figures importantly in one of the Bond books -- he knew Bond did something quite clever, but he could never quite follow it since he didn't play bridge. Bridge still completely intimidates me, but I was intrigued. I'd never read a 007 book, so I decided this was as good a time as any.
MOONRAKER, Ian Fleming, 190 pages. I liked it! It was an exciting adventure, but more than that I truly enjoyed reading about James Bond. It's easy to see how the movie-character developed, but he IS different in the books. In this one it's particularly striking how different his interaction with the girl is, so the book!Bond seems particularly different from the movie!Bond. It's true that I've only read this one; however, I'm fairly certain that it's a safe generalization to make that reading the books gives you a different perspective on Bond. You *know* he still projects impenetrable cool and calm, but you can also see his thoughts, when he occasionally fears or the loyalty he feels towards M or his occasional doubts about how a woman feels.
And...the fun part was that I did manage to understand, mostly, the brilliance of how Bond won the bridge game. It was through a lot of higher-end strategy that I can't handle yet, like doubletons and switching between leading from your hand and from the table. Thankfully most of the focus wasn't on the bidding, but on the gameplay, so I could follow it. Nifty! :)
I certainly have no lack of books on my to-read list, but many of them, e.g. the His Dark Materials trilogy, are either a) books that I've been meaning to read for some years or b) recommendations from friends from which I often get book recs. Once in awhile, I want to read a book I've never heard of, or a book recommended by someone whose recs I've never taken before. This post concerning (some of) his favorite novels of 2005, by a Swarthmore alumnus whose social circle overlaps with mine in that conglomerate of SWIL/dancing alumni, came just at the point where I was casting around for such a book.
RING OF SWORDS, Eleanor Arnason, 385 pages. Although the hwarhath culture (the aliens) didn't have the same visceral impact on me as the pequenino culture of Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead did, the hwarhath still illustrated the characteristic I find most striking about science fiction -- a society that is *completely* unlike humans, so unlike us that it is actually hard to wrap one's mind around their values. (I've read so little SF that I've found few examples of this.) In this book, I didn't necessarily find the hwarhath culture hard to understand, but some of the hwarhath themselves (particularly in the second half of the book) expressed pure and utter disbelief at human culture, because it was so foreign to their conception of the universe. So, anyway, I was intrigued to read about the hwarhath.
I felt the book dragged a little beyond the halfway mark, until the last 100 pages or so, but in general the plot and characters developed at a steady pace. I felt somewhat fond of all the main, sympathetic characters. The dialogue kinda reminded me of Hemingway, the only author that comes to mind at the moment for comparison; it was short and structurally simple, and the main heroine didn't elaborate on her fears/worries in direct dialogue.
However, despite a couple absorbing sections (the arrival of the hwarhath for the negotiations; the aforementioned last 100 pages or so), I wasn't too caught up in the story. Overall, it was a pleasant, interesting read, and I wouldn't mind reading other books by that author.