2014 Bookpost #7
Continuing the slow catch-up, here were August's reads:
51. The World to Come , Dara Horn
52. Last Harvest, Witold Rybczynski
53. The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
54. The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks
55. Digital Divide, K.B. Spangler
56. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
57. Tales from the Archives: Collection 7, K. T. Bryski, Michael Spence, Suna Dasi and Sandra Wickham
58. Deception's Princess, Esther Friesner
59. London: A Biography, Peter Ackroyd
If you notice a thread running through the list, recall that we spent the middle week-and-a-half of August in London and Dublin and I wanted to bring appropriate books to read. Hence, three books by British authors (Pratchett, Banks and Aaronovitch), one book set in ancient Ireland (Deception's Princess), one book tied to a series based largely in England (Tales from the Archives), and one history of London. Which I started late in July, technically finished a couple of days into September, but decided to credit to August.
Of the fiction in that list, I liked Moon Over Soho. I'm not usually a fan of police procedurals, but it's hard to argue with a novel in which jazz music (and musicians) figure prominently. Plus, I'm a known sucker for a story with a strong sense of place.
Meanwhile, The Player of Games, my first attempt at a Banks, left me cold. Perhaps what is essentially a gaming story isn't my thing? Or the characters mostly didn't grab me (though the snarky AI was amusing). If I can slice off a bit of my TBR piles, maybe I'll see if the county library has other Culture novels.
I had seen a number of recommendations for both Digital Divide and A Girl and Her Fed, the webcomic whose universe it inhabits. To summarize as best I can, the government implanted chips in the brains of 400 agents, said agents can see the ghosts of dead presidents and Ben Franklin and also hack into any computer, an agent and the woman he's observing fall in love, and there's a wisecracking, sex-crazed homicidal koala. (Think Bun-Bun, but Australian.) Both the webcomic (which I'm almost caught up on) and the (self-published) book are a lot of fun.
London: A Biography I'd gotten from filkerdave a few years ago and only got around to reading in preparation for Loncon, specifically for the academic session I was moderating. It's a unique chronicle of a city that goes back 2000 years, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of city life - food, crime, economics, culture and so on. An excellent portrait of one of the world's great cities.
51. The World to Come , Dara Horn
52. Last Harvest, Witold Rybczynski
53. The Long Earth, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
54. The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks
55. Digital Divide, K.B. Spangler
56. Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
57. Tales from the Archives: Collection 7, K. T. Bryski, Michael Spence, Suna Dasi and Sandra Wickham
58. Deception's Princess, Esther Friesner
59. London: A Biography, Peter Ackroyd
If you notice a thread running through the list, recall that we spent the middle week-and-a-half of August in London and Dublin and I wanted to bring appropriate books to read. Hence, three books by British authors (Pratchett, Banks and Aaronovitch), one book set in ancient Ireland (Deception's Princess), one book tied to a series based largely in England (Tales from the Archives), and one history of London. Which I started late in July, technically finished a couple of days into September, but decided to credit to August.
Of the fiction in that list, I liked Moon Over Soho. I'm not usually a fan of police procedurals, but it's hard to argue with a novel in which jazz music (and musicians) figure prominently. Plus, I'm a known sucker for a story with a strong sense of place.
Meanwhile, The Player of Games, my first attempt at a Banks, left me cold. Perhaps what is essentially a gaming story isn't my thing? Or the characters mostly didn't grab me (though the snarky AI was amusing). If I can slice off a bit of my TBR piles, maybe I'll see if the county library has other Culture novels.
I had seen a number of recommendations for both Digital Divide and A Girl and Her Fed, the webcomic whose universe it inhabits. To summarize as best I can, the government implanted chips in the brains of 400 agents, said agents can see the ghosts of dead presidents and Ben Franklin and also hack into any computer, an agent and the woman he's observing fall in love, and there's a wisecracking, sex-crazed homicidal koala. (Think Bun-Bun, but Australian.) Both the webcomic (which I'm almost caught up on) and the (self-published) book are a lot of fun.
London: A Biography I'd gotten from filkerdave a few years ago and only got around to reading in preparation for Loncon, specifically for the academic session I was moderating. It's a unique chronicle of a city that goes back 2000 years, with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of city life - food, crime, economics, culture and so on. An excellent portrait of one of the world's great cities.