If It wasn't for Disappointments, I wouldn't have any Appointments.
So, no posts in a while here, and, correspondingly, very little writing-type activity either. Because right now it's more reading season that writing. So I thought I'd post a few extremely short reviewlets of recently read books.
The common theme linking these reviews is, mostly, 'good but disappointing': there are largely books for which I had held so fairly high expectations that did not reach them at all. On the other had, the authors are, largely, still worthy enough of those same expectations that even a disappointing effort is still well above the level of the pack. So: onward.
The Execution Channel, By Ken MacLeod. I was expecting a pointed, telling Geopolitical Nightmare Scenario, as told from the left-side of the spectrum, which is more or less what I got, but the presence of MacLeod's confederate communist dead-enderism, with it's endearing-but-pathetic faith that the South East will Rise Again really planted itself firmly in the way of the narrative.
Bad Monkeys, By Matt Ruff. Honestly, Set This House In Order may be too much for anyone to live up to, fully. That said, still a good book, about which it is difficult to talk without tipping off too much.
I Am A Strange Loop, By Douglas Hofstadter. Part of my problem with this one may fall into having read Blindsight immediately prior, and thus spent much of the reading-time wishing to see the ideas Watts brought to the table addressed. But I expect I would have found the pro-Vegetarianist essays and views-of-afterlife that hinge upon conflating maps and territories weak regardless.
Crooked Little Vein, By Warren Ellis. Which is, honestly, nothing more or less that one might expect from a novel written by Warren Ellis. Apart from the length, which is quite undersized in today's market. But I was hoping he would 'break out' in pure prose like Gaiman did. But this one isn't going to be bringing home a Hugo. Maybe an Prometheus or an Edgar, but not Hugo.
The common theme linking these reviews is, mostly, 'good but disappointing': there are largely books for which I had held so fairly high expectations that did not reach them at all. On the other had, the authors are, largely, still worthy enough of those same expectations that even a disappointing effort is still well above the level of the pack. So: onward.
The Execution Channel, By Ken MacLeod. I was expecting a pointed, telling Geopolitical Nightmare Scenario, as told from the left-side of the spectrum, which is more or less what I got, but the presence of MacLeod's confederate communist dead-enderism, with it's endearing-but-pathetic faith that the South East will Rise Again really planted itself firmly in the way of the narrative.
Bad Monkeys, By Matt Ruff. Honestly, Set This House In Order may be too much for anyone to live up to, fully. That said, still a good book, about which it is difficult to talk without tipping off too much.
I Am A Strange Loop, By Douglas Hofstadter. Part of my problem with this one may fall into having read Blindsight immediately prior, and thus spent much of the reading-time wishing to see the ideas Watts brought to the table addressed. But I expect I would have found the pro-Vegetarianist essays and views-of-afterlife that hinge upon conflating maps and territories weak regardless.
Crooked Little Vein, By Warren Ellis. Which is, honestly, nothing more or less that one might expect from a novel written by Warren Ellis. Apart from the length, which is quite undersized in today's market. But I was hoping he would 'break out' in pure prose like Gaiman did. But this one isn't going to be bringing home a Hugo. Maybe an Prometheus or an Edgar, but not Hugo.