Annie's 2022 Reading Diary

Welcome to my thread. I am Annie - a Bulgarian who moved to the Valley of the Sun (aka Phoenix, Arizona, USA) in 2010. The current plan do not include another move but then had you asked me in 2009, there was no plan to move either so... you never know.

As usual I plan to not fall off the face of LT mid-year (or earlier) but if you had been around long enough, you know that this will be a miracle so we shall see.

I read pretty much everything but I prefer speculative fiction, crime and mystery novels and stories and well written non-fiction. I love graphic novels (and comics, cartoons, manga and so on), plays and short fiction although in the last years I had not been reading a lot of it. I also read poetry, literary journals and anything else that catches my eye. And I am a serial series reader who rarely drops series once she starts them.

I also listen to audio-drama and rarely audio fiction and tend to talk about them as well.

I am hosting the Victorian thread(s) and the Graphic Novels thread in Club 2022 this year (and I already have a few works that will connect them so stay tuned). But that combination kinda tells you all about my reading - I can read pretty much anything at a given time.

I don't usually make plans (because following them does not work) but I have a few general categories in which I always read so may as well list them and pretend that they are a plan of a type:
- Speculative fiction and non-fiction nominated for the major awards
- Crime, mystery, PI and so on fiction nominated for the major awards
- My "Reading through History" project which keeps getting sidelined although I finally got to the Sumerians (Dan, stop laughing -- I did manage to get away from sliding back to Universe creation... I think)
- The Tudors
- Catch up with a few more series and read through the works of a few more authors.

In addition, I have a few smaller projects that I want to make somewhat of a dent into this year:
- The legend of King Arthur through history
- Keep up with the bulk of the magazines I like reading.
- My own TBR, the size of which is scary.
- Read at least 12 books in Russian and 12 in Bulgarian (and record all I read in them, including stories).

Welcome to my thread. Feel free to chime in with any comments, observations and so on at any time or just say hi.

A few links if you want to see a bit more focused diary of what I read (this thread will be pretty much all in one - even if at also fits elsewhere):
The multi-year threads:
The Global Challenge: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337283 (5 books from authors of each country with some additional conditions)
50 States: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337408
Short fiction: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337456
The 2022 magazines: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337457 - this one will have a pre-2022 version as soon as I read a magazine not dated 2022 :)

And one pure 2022 thread: 2022 Category Challenge https://www.librarything.com/topic/337406

Books read in 2022.

A book is defined as a single ebook file, a single issue of a webzine (which publishes issues) or a single paper book/magazine so this list will contain short stories published separately, omnibuses, separate plays, collections of plays and anything in between.

=== JANUARY ===
1. Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh -- Foreigner (3)
2. Wish You Were Dead by Peter James -- Roy Grace (16.5)
3. Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden
4. Edward VI: The Lost King of England by Chris Skidmore
5. England's Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, 1547-1553 by Jonathan North and Edward Tudor
6. War Women by Martin Limón -- Sueño and Bascom (15)
7. Wayward Souls by Devon Monk -- Souls of the Road (1)
8. Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2022, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
9. Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn
10. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
11. Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates -- Ice and Crime (2), Guðgeir Fransson (5)
12. The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts -- Sunflower cycle
13. Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
14. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain
15. The N'Gustro Affair by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
16. The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
17. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
18. In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu
19. The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe
20. Stone and Steel by Eboni Dunbar
21. The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories by Erle Stanley Gardner
22. Wayward Moon by Devon Monk -- Souls of the Road (2)
23. Mystery Magazine, January 2022, edited by Kerry Carter
24. Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh -- Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order (20)
25. Robert B. Parker's Bull River by Robert Knott -- Cole and Hitch (6)
26. Hoodwink by Bill Pronzini -- Nameless Detective (7)
27. The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout, translated from Arabic by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil
28. Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 140, January 2022, edited by John Joseph Adams
29. Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot
30. The Lais of Marie de France
31. The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004), edited by Michael Bigelow Dixon and Liz Engelman

=== FEBRUARY ===

32. Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson
33. Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2022, edited by Sheila Williams
34. Bug by Giacomo Sartori, translated from Italian by Frederika Randall
35. Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett
36. We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart
37. Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford
38. The Dark Magazine, January 2022, edited by Sean Wallace
39. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
40. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January-February 2022, edited by Janet Hutchings
41. Divine Right by C. J. Cherryh -- Merovingen Nights (5)
42. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 1981
43. Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
44. Jekyll & Hyde Inc. by Simon R. Green
45. History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Gregory S. Aldrete
46. Exile's Gate by C. J. Cherryh -- Morgaine (4)
47. Life of Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth
48. The Celts: A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe

=== MARCH ===
49. Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization by Amanda H. Podany
50. The Fall of Koli by M. R. Carey -- Rampart Trilogy (3)
51. Death and Relaxation by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (1)
52. Dues and Don’ts by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (0.5)
53. By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
54. Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena, translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore
55. Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from the French by Alexia Trigo
56. A Short History of Monsters by Jose Padua
57. Spidertouch by Alex Thomson
58. A History of Modern Oman by Jeremy Jones
59. The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb -- Konrád (1)
60. The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
61. Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett
62. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
63. Billy Summers by Stephen King

Series I am either waiting for the next novel from or I had read at least one novel/story from in 2022; there may be stories in some of these that I had not read yet but the novels are completed.

Crime/Mystery/Detective/PI
- Alex McKnight by Steve Hamilton. Read 1-11
- Cassie Dewell by C. J. Box. Read 1-4
- Gabriel Allon by Daniel Silva. Read 1-21.
- Harriet Gordon by A. M. Stuart. Read 1-2.
- Hollow Man by Mark Pryor. Read 1-2.
- Hugo Marston by Mark Pryor. Read 1-9.
- Ice and Crime by Sólveig Pálsdóttir. Read 1-2.
- Jesse Stone by Robert B. Parker and others. Read 1-20+5.5;
- Michael Parson by Tom Young. Read 1-6.
- Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton. Read 1-2.
- Reykjavik Wartime Mysteries by Arnaldur Indriðason. Read 1-2.
- Roy Grace by Peter James. Read 1-17+16.5
- Samuel Craddock Mysteries by Terry Shames. Read 1-8.
- Spenser by Robert B. Parker and then Ace Atkins. Read 1-49+prequel.
- Sueño and Bascom by Martin Limón. Read 1-15 (plus story collection).
- Sunny Randall by Robert B. Parker. Read 1-9+5.5+6.5.

SF/Fantasy/Horror
- Alex Benedict by Jack McDevitt. Read 1-8.
- Eric Carter by Stephen Blackmoore. Read 1-6.
- In Death by J. D. Robb. Read 1-53.
- Shadow Police by Paul Cornell. Read 1-3.
- Sorcerer Royal by Zen Cho. Read 1-2.
- Souls of the Road by Devon Monk. Read 1-2.

Others

Catching up (series):
- Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order by C. J. Cherryh -- science fiction. Read 1-22+29. Next can vary...
- Cole and Hitch by various -- western. Read 1-6. Next: 7. Robert B. Parker's The Bridge by Robert Knott. Latest: 10. Robert B. Parker's Buckskin (2019)
- Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh -- science fiction. Read 1-3. Next: 4. Precursor. Latest: 21. Divergence (2020)
- Nameless Detective by Bill Pronzini -- PI. Read 1-7. Next: 8. Scattershot. Latest: 41. Endgame (2017)

Novels (regardless of where I read them - online, in an omnibus and so on).

=== JANUARY ===
1. Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh -- Foreigner (3), 143k words
2. War Women by Martin Limón -- Sueño and Bascom (15), 58K words
3. Wayward Souls by Devon Monk -- Souls of the Road (1), 52K words
4. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, 121K words
5. Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates -- Ice and Crime (2), Guðgeir Fransson (5), 72K words
6. The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts -- Sunflower cycle, 41K words
7. The N'Gustro Affair by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, 48K words
8. On the Beach by Nevil Shute, 94K words
9. Wayward Moon by Devon Monk -- Souls of the Road (2), 61K words
10. Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh -- Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order (20); 332K words
11. Robert B. Parker's Bull River by Robert Knott -- Cole and Hitch (6), 65K words
12. Hoodwink by Bill Pronzini -- Nameless Detective (7), 69K words
13. The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout, translated from Arabic by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil, 110K words

=== FEBRUARY ===

14. Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson, 72K words
15. Bug by Giacomo Sartori, translated from Italian by Frederika Randall, 78K words
16. Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton, 75k words in English
17. Jekyll & Hyde Inc. by Simon R. Green, 82k words
18. Exile's Gate by C. J. Cherryh, 133k words

Plays

=== JANUARY ===

1. "Aimée" by Erin Blackwell (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
2. "The Roads That Lead Here" by Lee Blessing (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
3. "Three Dimensions" by Jerome Hairston (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
4. "Favorite Lady" by Leanne Renee Hieber (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
5. "The Office" by Kate Hoffower (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
6. "Swan Lake Calhoun" by Yehuda Hyman (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
7. "Classyass" by Caleen Sinnette Jennings (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
8. "Airborne" by Gib Johnson (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
9. "The Some of All Parts" by Mrinalini Kamath (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
10. "The Right to Remain" by Melanie Marnich (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
11. "Triangle" by Jane Martin (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
12. "178 Head" by C. Denby Swanson (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
13. "Bake Off" by Sheri Wilner (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
14. "The Human Voice" by Carlyle Brown (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
15. "Hurry!" by Bridget Carpenter (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
16. "Now We're Really Getting Somewhere" by Kristina Halvorson (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
17. "Fit for Feet" by Jordan Harrison (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
18. "Always" by Jon Jory (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
19. "No More Static" by Kevin Kell O'Donnell (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
20. "The Second Beam" by Joan Ackermann (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
21. "The Glory of God" by Carson Kreitzer (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
22. "The Grand Design" by Susan Miller (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
23. "The Joy of Having a Body" by Julie Marie Myatt (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
24. "The New New" by Kelly Stuart (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
25. "The Thief of Man" by Kevin Kling (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))
26. "Pleasure Cruise" by Kira Obolensky (10-minutes, The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004))

=== FEBRUARY===

27.

Stories

For speculative fiction: short story (under 7.5K word), novella (17K-40K words), novelette (7.5K-17K words).
Non speculative fiction: similar but not as strict, go by the publisher/author definition more often than not.

=== JANUARY ===

1. (2021)"Wish You Were Dead" by Peter James (24K words, chapbook)
2. (2021)"The Haunting of Hajji Hotak" by Jamil Jan Kochai (?? words,The New Yorker, November 8, 2021)
3. (2021)"Lu, Reshaping" by Madeleine Thien (?? words, The New Yorker, December 20, 2021)
4. (2021)"A Lot of Things Have Happened" by Adam Levin (?? words,The New Yorker, December 27, 2021)
5. (2021)"Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters" by Aimee Ogden (23K words, chapbook)
6. (2021)"Marriage Quarantine" by Kate Walbert (?? words, The New Yorker, December 6, 2021)
7. (2022)"Ennead in Retrospect" by Christopher Mark Rose (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
8. (2022)"Full Worm Moon" by Paul Lorello (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
9. (2022)"Proximity Games" by M. L. Clark (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
10. (2022)"Salt Calls to Salt" by Maiga Doocy (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
11. (2022)"doe_haven.vr" by Cara Mast (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
12. (2022)"The City and the Thing Beneath It" by Innocent Chizaram Ilo (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
13. (2022)"There Won't Be Questions" by Joe Baumann (?? words, short story, F&SF, January/February 2022)
14. (2022)"Animale Dei Morti" by Nick Dichario (?? words, novelette, F&SF, January/February 2022)
15. (2022)"Bone Broth" by Karen Heuler (?? words, novelette, F&SF, January/February 2022)
16. (2022)"Prison Colony Optimization Protocols" by Auston Habershaw (?? words, novelette, F&SF, January/February 2022)
17. (2022)"The Gentle Dragon Tells His Tale of Love" by J. A. Pak (?? words, novelette, F&SF, January/February 2022)
18. (2022)"The Art of Victory When the Game Is All the World" by Eugie Foster (?? words, novella, F&SF, January/February 2022)
19. (2021)"Flowers for the Sea" by Zin E. Rocklyn (?? words (20K-25K as an estimate), chapbook)
20. (2021)"Fireheart Tiger" by Aliette de Bodard (20K words, chapbook)
21. (2019)"The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday" by Saad Z. Hossain (30K words, chapbook)
22. (2021)"The Past Is Red" by Catherynne M. Valente (39K words, chapbook)
23. (2021)"In the Watchful City" by S. Qiouyi Lu (37K words, chapbook)
24. (2020)"Stone and Steel" by Eboni Dunbar (23K words, chapbook)
25. (1948)"The Case of the Crimson Kiss" by Erle Stanley Gardner (?? words, The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories", originally in "The American Magazine", June 1948)
26. (1933)"Fingers of Fong" by Erle Stanley Gardner (?? words, The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories", originally in "All Detective", March 1933)
27. (1930)"The Valley of Little Fears" by Erle Stanley Gardner (?? words, The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories", originally in "Argosy", September 13, 1930)
28. (1928)"Crooked Lightning" by Erle Stanley Gardner (?? words, The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories", originally in "Detective Fiction Weekly", December 29, 1928)
29. (1939)"At Arm's Length" by Erle Stanley Gardner (?? words, The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories", originally in "Detective Fiction Weekly", December 9, 1939)
30. (2022)"Nothing Nefarious, Just General Badassery" by Daniel C. Bartlett (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
31. (2022)"Noble Vista Blues" by Joseph S. Walker (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
32. (2022)"In the Beginning, the End" by Stephen D. Rogers (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
33. (2022)"Bad Times at Big Rock" by John M. Floyd (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
34. (2022)"All the Love You Can Handle for a Dollar" by Lamont A. Turner (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
35. (2022)"Superficial Appraisals" by K. R. Segriff (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
36. (2022)"A Perfect Spiral" by David Bart (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
37. (2022)"Out for Delivery" by Gregory L. Norris (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
38. (2022)"Drive Through" by Keith Brooke (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
39. (2022)"Man Overboard" by John H. Dromey (?? words, Mystery Magazine, January 2022)
40. (2022)"Dissent: A Five-Course Meal (With Suggested Pairings)" from Aimee Ogden (724 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
41. (2022)"Up Falling" from Jendayi Brooks-Flemister (3,560 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
42. (2017)"On the Ship" by Leah Cypess (6,468 words, Lightspeed, January 2022, originally in Asimov's, May-June 2017)
43. (2022)"Cale and Stardust Battle the Mud Gobblers of Hudson Valley" by Lincoln Michel (7,751 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
44. (2022)"In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird" by Maria Dong (5,446 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
45. (2022)"In the Cold, Dark Sea" by Jenny Rae Rappaport (716 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
46. (2022)"An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words" by Vanessa Fogg (3,383 words, Lightspeed, January 2022)
47. (2019)"Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death" by N. K. Jemisin (2,513, Lightspeed, January 2022, originally in A People's Future of the United States)
48. (2022)"Snowflake" by Nick Wolven (novella, Asimov's January 2022)
49. (2022)"Goldie" by Sean Monaghan (novella, Asimov's January 2022)
50. (2022)"River of Stars, Bridge of Shadows" by A.A. Attanasio (novelette, Asimov's January 2022)
51. (2022)"October's Feast" by Michèle Laframboise (novelette, Asimov's January 2022)

=== FEBRUARY ===
52. (2022)"Fasterpiece" by Ian Creasey (novelette, Asimov's January 2022)
53. (2022)"Welcome Home" by Jendayi Brooks-Flemister (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
54. (2022)"The Roots of Our Memories" by Joel Armstrong (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
55. (2022)"Unmasking Black Bart" by Joel Richards (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
56. (2022)"The Beast of Tara" by Michael Swanwick (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
57. (2022)"Long-Term Emergencies" by Tom Purdom (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
58. (2022)"The Boyfriend Trap" by Stephanie Feldman (short story, Asimov's January 2022)
59. (2022)"Werewolf" by U. M. Celovska (Daily Science Fiction, 3 January 2022)
60. (2022)"The Devil You Don't Know" by Dave Henrickson (Daily Science Fiction, 4 January 2022)
61. (2022)"The Ansible Light" by Chloe Smith (Daily Science Fiction, 5 January 2022)
62. (2022)"Cures for Hiccups" by Rachel Rodman (Daily Science Fiction, 7 January 2022)
63. (2022)"Leader of the Pack" by Alter S. Reiss (Daily Science Fiction, 10 January 2022)
64. (2022)"Shattered Petals of Celadon" by M. K. Hutchins (Daily Science Fiction, 11 January 2022)
65. (2022)"Help Her Fit in" by Tamlyn Dreaver (Daily Science Fiction, 12 January 2022)
66. (2022)"Invasion" by Candice R. Lisle (Daily Science Fiction, 13 January 2022)
67. (2022)"A Stirring of Wings" by Ken Altabef (Daily Science Fiction, 14 January 2022)
68. (2022)"Flesh of My Fin" by Shannon Fay (Daily Science Fiction, 17 January 2022)
69. (2022)"Commuting" by S. A. McKenzie (Daily Science Fiction, 18 January 2022)
70. (2022)"Last Flight" by Bret Parent (Daily Science Fiction, 19 January 2022)
71. (2022)"Mind the Meniscus" by Jason P. Burnham (Daily Science Fiction, 20 January 2022)
72. (2022)"Counterparts" by Andrew Hansen (Daily Science Fiction, 21 January 2022)
73. (2022)"God 47" by Laila Amado (Daily Science Fiction, 24 January 2022)
74. (2022)"2021" by Sean Vivier (Daily Science Fiction, 25 January 2022)
75. (2022)"Teleportitus" by Mark S. Bailen (Daily Science Fiction, 26 January 2022)
76. (2022)"Turning the Tide" by Dawn Vogel (Daily Science Fiction, 27 January 2022)
77. (2010)"Faith" by Mario Milosevic (Daily Science Fiction, 1 November, 2010)
78. (2022)"Tourists" by Marlan K. Smith (Daily Science Fiction, 28 January 2022)
79. (2022)"The Future History of Your Body" by Davian Aw (Daily Science Fiction, 31 January 2022)
80. (2022)"Shadow Helper" by Eric M. Witchey (Daily Science Fiction, 1 February 2022)
81. (2022)"Space Unicorns and Magic Ovens" by Liam Hogan (Daily Science Fiction, 2 February 2022)
82. (2022)"She Died As She Lived" by Riley Tao (Daily Science Fiction, 3 February 2022)
83. (2022)"Rock Hard Place" by Don Redwood (Daily Science Fiction, 4 February 2022)
84. (2019)"Vigilance" by Robert Jackson Bennett (32K words, chapbook)
85. (2021)"We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep" by Andrew Kelly Stewart (~40K words, chapbook)
86. (2020)"Out of Body" by Jeffrey Ford (33K words, chapbook)
87. (2022)"Thermophile” by Jack Klausner (The Dark Magazine, January 2022)
88. (2022)"Intrusions” by Margot McGovern (The Dark Magazine, January 2022)
89. (2022)"Funny Faces” by Seán Padraic Birnie (The Dark Magazine, January 2022)
90. (2022)"The Lending Library of Final Lines” by Octavia Cade (The Dark Magazine, January 2022)
91. (2022)"Bad News" by Steve Hockensmith (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
92. (2022)"Paleolithic" by K. L. Abrahamson (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
93. (2022)"The Death-Camp Angel" by Doug Allyn (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
94. (2022)"Stone Still" by B. A. Paul (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
95. (2021)"A Psalm for the Wild-Built" by Becky Chambers (34K words, chapbook)
96. "The Scarlet Box" by Alex Grecian (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
97. "Best Served Cold" by Alice Hatcher (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
98. "Their Last Bow" by Josh Pachter (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
99. "The Sound of Laughing" by Jack Fredrickson (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
100. "True Companion" by Libby Cudmore (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
101. "On the Side of the Angels" by Merrilee Robson (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
102. "The Wind" by Bill Pronzini (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
103. "The Musgrave Ritual" by Terence Faherty (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
104. "The Favor" by Michael Z. Lewin (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
105. "It's All in the Telling" by Ariel Dodson (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
106. "Into Thin Air" by Karen Jobst (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
107. "The Policeman and the Dead" by Raghu Roy (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
108. "Double Fly Rocket 87" by Eli Cranor (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
109. "The Crime" by Olavo Bilac (EQMM Jan/Feb 2022)
110. "The Day of the Losers" by Dick Francis (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
111. "Eyes That See, Ears that Hear" by John H. Dirckx (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
112. "You Don't Need an Enemy" by Rose Million Healey (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
113. "Every Little Bit Helps" by Patricia McGerr (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
114. "Every Little Bit Hurts" by Michael Avallone (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
115. "The Wrong Murder" by Lionel Booker (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
116. "Swann's Song" by Frank B. Roome (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
117. "The Straw That Broke" by Mary Sullivan (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
118. "The Varmint Killer" by Jay Murphy (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
119. "The Man with Ideas" by John Abbott (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
120. "The Sole of the Foot" by Shizuko Natsuki (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
121. "Game Show" by Gary Alexander (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
122. "Talk Show" by Gary Alexander (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
123. "Nine Strokes of the Bell" by John F. Suter (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
124. "What a Treasure!" by Celia Dale (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)
125. "The Spy Who Didn't Defect" by Edward D. Hoch (EQMM Sep 9, 1981)

Audio drama

=== JANUARY ===
None. :(

=== FEBRUARY===

Reading through history (before the Greeks)

1.

Other non-fiction (not related to the Arthurian project)

1. Edward VI: The Lost King of England by Chris Skidmore
2. England's Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, 1547-1553 by Jonathan North and Edward Tudor

The Arthurian project
* Some dates below are approximate; order by known dates - for my reading order see >2 AnnieMod:

(1136) "The History of the Kings of Britain" by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe (Arthur)
(1150)"Life of Merlin" by Geoffrey of Monmouth
(late twelfth century) "Lanval" in "The Lais of Marie de France" (Arthur)
(late twelfth century) "Chevrefoil" in "The Lais of Marie de France" (Tristan and Iseult)

Graphic novels, comics and so on

1. Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot

Magazines (completed only; for partial ones and just stories from random magazines see the list of stories in >6 AnnieMod:)

=== JANUARY===
1. Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2022, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas
2. Mystery Magazine, January 2022, edited by Kerry Carter
3. Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 140, January 2022, edited by John Joseph Adams

=== FEBRUARY ===
4. Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2022, edited by Sheila Williams
5. The Dark Magazine, January 2022, edited by Sean Wallace

The Awards...

Happy New Year, Annie! Looking forward to following your reading this year, and I'm especially excited about the graphic novel thread.

>13 labfs39: Ditto. I used to read a ton of graphic work/comix and fell off over the past couple of decades, but am getting enthused about it again (and fortunately kept grabbing collections that appealed to me), so I'm def looking forward to that thread (and following yours of course).

I'll certainly be following along here and over in the Grpahic Stories threads. Happy reading in 2022!

ok, I'm going to try to keep this year. Also, thanks for sparking and guiding the Victorian themes. Happy 2022!

Happy 2022 Annie! I'm curious about graphic novels, so I'll be dropping in on that thread as well as this one.

Happy new year!

Happy reading 2022 :-)

Happy New Year, Annie! Looking forward to your reading in 2022.

Looking forward to following your reading this year Annie. And thanks for setting up the Victoria threads!

Happy New Year, Annie. I’ve starred your thread and look forward to your reading comments. I see quite a few crime/mystery writers up in post #3 that I haven’t tried. Maybe this year…

I'm sure you'll be reading a lot of interesting and varied books--looking forward to your reviews!

Happy New Year, Annie. I look forward to see what you read in 2022.

>13 labfs39: >14 lisapeet: >15 stretch: >16 dchaikin: >17 markon: >18 Julie_in_the_Library: >19 Ameise1: >20 AlisonY: >21 arubabookwoman: >22 NanaCC: >23 DieFledermaus: >24 BLBera:

Happy new year! Sorry for the late response - I was somewhat hiding from internet in the few days I had off work :)

>22 NanaCC: I like all of them although some of them can be a bit weird and may not work for everyone. And more will be added so stay tuned :) If you want any comparisons/details on any of them, let me know (some are quiet and almost cozy, some are anything but).

Hi, I'm here dropping off my star, Annie. And I want to tell you that I am looking forward to the Victorians stuff--I don't know enough about this.

Happy New Year!

Hi Annie, I enjoyed reading about your reading plans! I also love books about the Tudors and the Arthurian legends.
I read a lot of crime fiction as well, but I only started doing so five years ago, so there is so much for me to discover. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface.

>9 AnnieMod: Annie, how have you decided to attack the Arthurian cycle? I want to encounter it earlier, too, but I really don't know where to start.

>27 MissBrangwen: If you had read crime novels all your life, you still will have a lot to discover :) But it is fun.

>28 sallypursell: I don't really have a complete plan (because me and planning...) but I have a few cornerstones. The current idea is to start with History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth) or at least the Arthurian part of it, pass through The Complete Romances of Chretien De Troyes and get to Mabinogion (maybe - only a small part is relevant but I never read the whole thing so may as well I guess), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur which gets me to early Modern English literature and from there it gets complicated. I fully expect to detour through Welsh legends and poems at some point, go back in time for the earlier Latin writings, spend some time on less-popular medieval and early modern versions and pick up a history of the Arthurian mythology (or 3) so who knows when I will actually get to Malory.

I tend to go down on tangents when I get interested so we shall see where this one will get me. The ultimate idea is to get me to Tennyson, Mark Twain, The Once and Future King and the rest of the modern novels but I am in no hurry to get there :) Plus the whole Arthuriana is part of the larger Matter of Britain which includes some unrelated parts (think King Lear and Cymbeline (Shakespeare did not invent them), Nennius (well, kinda) and Holinshed). So I plan to just go where my reading takes me and occasionally remember where I am heading... Kinda like my history project :)

1. Inheritor by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1996
Series: Foreigner (3)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: DAW, DAW Collectors #1018
Reading dates: 30 December 2021 - 1 January 2022

Finishing the first trilogy inside of the much longer series, Inheritor picks up 6 months after Invader finished. The human ship is now part of the normal life of everyone, the second interpreter is steadily learning the language and Bren is back to trying to do his job. Except nothing is the same really - Mospheira don't even talk to him and Deanna Hanks is up to no good again.

The relative peace does not last long and Bren (now with Jason) is thrown back in the middle of the machinations of Hanks and her supporters. Ilisidi gets to pull one of her tricks again, we get to see even more of atevi society, a love affair or three finally get to happen and the reason for the ship being back after 200 years is finally revealed (thus setting the stage for the next novels).

As usual with this series, it took me awhile to get into the style - Bren's constant doubt in anything that happens and his own actions can be annoying. On the other hand, he is a translator and the world literally depends on his work - one wrong word and things can crash down - just see what happened when Hanks mentioned FTL. Making a translator the main character and giving us the story from his viewpoint makes this series a bit different. And we are not talking about translations between languages and cultures only but between species - different brain wiring makes it impossible to find commonalities (or makes it very hard anyway). And looking at the society from outside while becoming part of it (in some ways) is going to always be interesting.

Cherryh specializes in writing humans as the outsiders - her Chanur and Mri series did the same. But this one is somewhat different - in both Chanur and Mri, there is only one human (and when others appear, they are there just marginally), here Bren is alone in the atevi world but the rest of humanity is still there (and getting everyone in trouble). The whole idea is as much dealing with a different culture as it is smoothing the way for the two cultures to meet. Plus he had been trained for that (unlike the Chanur and Mri cases).

I also think that with getting more familiar with the atevi helps the series - the first book was a hard read - worth it but still hard one. This books feels a lot lighter in some ways - mainly because things finally make sense. I almost want to go back and reread the first book now - but then I have a lot more left. But I can see myself returning.

Don't even try to read this novel on its own - it is very much a part of its series and even though a lot of the background is repeated, it won't work if you never read the previous 2 novels. On the other hand, if you are up for an adventure, you cannot really go wrong with this series (unless you bounce off the style anyway).

Have you read the King Arthur books by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison? She wrote a series of books about King Arthur in space that weren’t bad, although it sounds crazy. I read them years ago.

ETA: The first is called The Hawk’s Gray Feather.

2. Wish You Were Dead by Peter James

Type: Short fiction, 24k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: Roy Grace (16.5)
Genre: Crime
Format: e-book
Publisher: Pan, Quick Reads
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 1 January 2022

Part of the Quick Reads Initiative, it is a short entry for a series of long books.

Roy Grace and his family go on a vacation to France - and everything goes wrong. The chateau, which looked as paradise in the pictures, ends up being an almost falling down ruin and the hosts appear to be anything but welcoming. And then things go really wrong - nothing is a it seems, even worse than what it looked like initially.

It is a good story of a nightmare vacation but... it is not a Roy Grace story - you could have replaced the name with any English policemen and nothing would have changed. Yes, Cleo and Bruno and the few other side characters are there but again... you don't need them. And by making it a Grace story, James lost some of the intrigue - you know that none of them can die which takes away from the atmosphere and the sense of danger. Plus I never understood how adding stories into long running series fits the point of the Quick Reads initiative - the idea is to get reluctant readers, ones that had stopped reading and the ones who never read to read and you don't do that with adding a story to a 17 books series... Although maybe that explains the remoteness from the series - it HAD to work for non-series readers after all. And arguably, it will actually work better if you don't know Roy Grace (although Bruno may annoy even more than he does usually).

Despite all that grumbling, I actually enjoyed the story for what it was. I wish James wrote stories a bit more often - I like his novels but he is not that bad at the shorter forms either if this is any indication.

>31 labfs39: No, they are somewhere in my list of modern novels though. I had not read much about Arthur really - a few novels, a few legends, a few textbook excerpts - but I keep bumping into the legends all over the place so figured it is time to get to the bottom of them (kinda why I am reading some weird pre-Greek literature as well this year - writing does not happen in isolation and I enjoy tracing stories and concepts back and forth through history). I did not really grow up with that mythology - I've probably read a children book with the basic legends at some point in elementary school but I was in the wrong part of the world for that to really matter much. As for what sounds crazy - I am about to talk about a talking badger elsewhere so your crazy and my crazy may not be exactly the same ;)

>33 AnnieMod: I thought you might have since you like to read sci-fi.

As for what sounds crazy - I am about to talk about a talking badger

LOL

I'm up for a talking badger! Wind in the willows? Narnia? I love the Foreigner series, hope it holds up well for you.

Redwall?

>35 markon: Grandville :) I am preparing something for the Graphic novels thread ;)

>29 AnnieMod: Do you know there is an Arthuriana group here on Librarything? I was going to go there for a suggestion of where to start, but I haven't seemed to get there yet, even though I have plans (inchoate plans). I didn't consider your first choice, but it sounds good. In the last few years I made sure I had a lot of the stuff you mention.

>38 sallypursell: There are groups about everything. How active they are is a different story. :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_King_Arthur is probably a good start - I don’t plan to read everything on it but it gives you ideas and options. And there are a few sites elsewhere such as http://www.arthuriana.org/arthurbrl.htm with links to some of the anthologies (plus most of the wiki pages have sources and notes so you can find them that way). So the real question is how deep you want to get into the rabbit hole really :)

Happy New Year Annie.

I also need to get back to reading more of the series I adore. Roy Grace is certainly one of those and I have about four of them on the shelves still to read.

> 30
I find Cherryh hard to read. That committment to making the reader figure out the world makes for great stories, but not exactly easy plots. So I've been eyeing the Foreigner series, now at twenty or so books, and thinking probably not. Will be interested in your take, of course.

>30 AnnieMod: >41 dukedom_enough: I bailed on Cherryh because travel, endless travel through the desert.

>30 AnnieMod: This reminds me, I've got the second trilogy in this series waiting to be started (among other things). I have to be in the right mental space for them, though, because Cherryh's style does require a certain amount of mental work on the part of the reader.

>41 dukedom_enough: I won't disagree - her style makes "dense" take new meanings sometimes. But once I get into a novel, it works out (although I read her slower than I read novels usually). I like Foreigner although it has one issue - the first one is not the best of the lot (not a bad book but it takes a lot of world building and introducing the characters and figuring out what is what that it is much slower than the usual novel even by her - until it is not of course) and you cannot start later. I still think they are worth it though (well - after the first 3 anyway - we shall see how it goes from there) - the viewpoint and the world are refreshingly different even if they do sound familiar (you realize very fast that the surface similarity is the worst thing to rely on). Although I am coming from the Chanur novels and at least here you do not have 20 races to keep in mind, half of their names unpronounceable (and don't take that wrongly - I loved the Chanur novels - but they do take some concentration) :)

>42 majkia: The Mri novels? Try something else by her - while I do like the Mri books, they can be a bit challenging (although there is stuff happening while you travel through the sands.

>43 shadrach_anki: Yup. Which is why it took me almost a year to get back to them - although I had been reading other Cherryh in between.

So what do you do when you had started a few books? Apparently you go and read something else. Continuing with the speculative novellas from late last year.


3. Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

Type: Short fiction, 23k words, novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: paperback
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 5 January 2022 - 5 January 2022

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived under the sea with her father, the king of the sea people. She met a man from the land and fell in love and asked a witch to make it possible for her to live on land. The witch helped and the princess walked the land.

We all know how that tale ends (well, Andersen and Disney had different ideas but most people know both endings). But this is not a retelling of either version.

So let's start this tale again. Once upon a time humanity dispersed among the stars, with genetic engineering and technology on a level allowing them to adapt to anything they find out there. Different groups settled on different planets and sometimes in different places on the same planet and changed. Fast forward some time and a princess who lived under the sea fell in love with a man from the land on one of those planet. Add 20 more years and the happy couple and the whole land people clan are in trouble - a plague had struck them and they are dying off. But despite her change and living 20 years with them, our princess, Atuale, is the only one that seems immune - because she is still not the same. And that's where Aimee Ogden opens her tale.

Atuale resolves to go to the World Witch who helped her change all those years ago. Except that they used to be lovers and they had their own agendas at the time, using each other. Add the 20 years of never meeting and some interesting biological processes happening in the clans (apparently people change gender involuntarily under certain conditions although they can also do that on purpose with technology) and things are a bit more complex than one would expect. The World Witch decides to help of course - but they want their price paid - and part of it is Atuale coming with them to a different world to find the cure.

Despite the names and the overall fairy tale feeling of these early pages, this is a science fiction tale - the witch works with nannites and other pieces of technology; all of the magically sounding happenings are really tech-related. And once among the stars, the past comes to haunt both of our heroes - in flashbacks and in conversations.

The end comes a bit too... perfect. It makes sense in the context and it does make sense if you take that as a modern fairy tale but... it misshapes the story a bit - it feels like a balloon getting filled with air and then left to just lose all of it with no attempt to tie it up. I would not have minded it as much if there was a gradual slow down I think but it went from "and now what?" to "and they lived happily ever after" in no time - not abruptly or as if the author did not know what she want to do (it felt planned and it was well done) but it is not how I like my stories to finish. But it works for the story and I cannot be upset that it is not the story I wanted. Part of it I think is that it first lulls you into the fairy tale, then shows you that it is anything but and then throws you back into the fairy tale.

Aimee Ogden's world (and galaxy) building is fascinating - I wish she had expanded that to a full novel (and I don't say that often for novellas), exploring the multiple threads and hints she just throws out there. Maybe she will revisit the world? The fact that we don't even get proper descriptions of the people we see, not even the main characters (we get elements, you can almost make a picture in your mind and then a new element throws you off) and it still works makes that even more interesting.

Whatever Ogden does next, I want to read it (and I plan to go back and read her already published short stories).

=== Some Running 2022 Reading Statistics ===
Owned paper books: 0
Owned Kindle books: 1
Library Books: 2

And then I finished one of the ones I was already working on :)


4. Edward VI: The Lost King of England by Chris Skidmore

Type: Non-fiction
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2007
Series: N/A
Genre: Tudors, Biography, History
Format: paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009
Reading dates: 28 December 2021 - 5 January 2022

When people think of the Tudors, they often remember only 4 monarchs - the two Henrys (VII and VIII) and the two princesses: Mary and Elizabeth. But sandwiched between them, there are two more reigns: the minority of Edward VI and the extremely short reign of Jane Grey.

Skidmore decides to tell the story of the third male Tudor monarch - the boy who was crowned king when he was only 9 and who did not live to see his 16th birthday. That history had often been told in the tale of the Seymour and Dudley families fight for supremacy, with the king almost as an afterthought. Skidmore disagrees - the king, albeit young, is an active participant in his own reign, especially in the later years. The history got even more muddled after his death, when Mary tried to push the country back to the old religion and the historical Edward and the mythical banner of the Reformation got mixed, losing the picture of who Edward was or what he really did (and did not do).

The introduction sets the tone of the book - it is attempting to show the king as a boy and the king as a real sovereign and not just as a hapless poppet for his protector(s). Skidmore uses Edward's diary, correspondence and other written artifact liberally, citing them often (and sometimes in length); he adds the notes of different ambassadors and his own court to try to paint a picture which is a bit different from we all know (if one knows anything at all).

He partially succeeds. The problem is not the author though - the problem is that it did not matter how bright and zealous Edward was, he was still a boy. Skidmore makes quite a few good arguments for his independence and own decisions (including the act that tries to change the succession in order to save the Reformation and the new faith) but no matter how you read and write that whole story, it is not dominated by Edward but by the men who were supposed to help him lead his country - his two maternal uncles and Dudley (and his whole private council).

And herein lies the story. History is written by the winners and the next monarch has all the reasons to try to convince the world that her brother was misguided and used and that he did not mean what had been done. One wonders how different history would have been if Edward had lived (or if Mary had lived longer). Elizabeth coming on the throne put the country back on the Reformation path but she did not need her brother's humanity either - she needed him as an icon and a banner. Truth mattered very little.

In a way, that's probably the best we can get in terms of biography for the boy who never grew up. Skidmore manages to add more details in some places and to show Edward as a boy and a human being - a very religious one, with his own views on how the church and the country have to be ran. How much that was influenced by everyone around him will never be known but I can see the argument that he did not just act for others (or others acted for him) and that what is known as the Edward VI reformation indeed happened because he wanted it, not just because his protectors did.

I am not sure how accessible this book will be if you are not familiar with those years. Just keeping track of who is who can be daunting (Skidmore starts using the new name as soon as it is bestowed). There is a useful mini-biographies section at the start of the book with the names of the main players (including all their name changes and what's not) but unless you pay attention and look for them, things can get confusing. And yet, it should work as an introduction to a monarch who tends to get forgotten. Although as is usual for the modern historians, Skidmore over-promises a bit - despite it showing Edward as his own man, the book is still the Seymour and Dudley show - and they still overshadow their young charge (and pretty much die for it - only the youngest ones survive to live another day under the last Tudor monarch).

I learned a few new things about Edward (although I knew the story of Jane's succession from Eric Ives' Lady Jane Grey and I think that this is the part where history had judged the whole mess wrongly - Dudley may have grasped the moment and possibly influenced Edward but Skidmore does show the story a bit differently, with Edward driving it (and Ives corroborates) and not just being used).

We will probably never know the complete history - too much time had passed, too many interests had muddled the story. And Skidmore serves the young king well - showing him both regal and still being a child; enjoying life and trying to be what everyone expected him to be.

=== Some Running 2022 Reading Statistics ===
Owned paper books: 1
Owned Kindle books: 1
Library Books: 2

And a few more stories (I am technically trying for a story-a-day but we shall see how long that will last). I had not decided if I want to add these to my catalog yet (probably not...) so reviews only here.

"The Haunting of Hajji Hotak" by Jamil Jan Kochai, The New Yorker, November 8, 2021. Read 2022-01-02

One of those strange stories told in the second person - without ever revealing who the "you" the narrator talks to is. Hajji Hotak is an ex-Afghani mujahid who had settled in USA with his family after escaping and trekking across the world to safety. His grown up children and wife live with him (with a few exceptions) and the "you" is assigned to watch them -- in a way that is so obtrusive and complete that one starts wondering if we are talking about human observers or something altogether different. We never learn that - but what we get is the story of a family in distress. The end is as ambiguous as the story's "you" but at the same time it has a really awful finality in it.

"Lu, Reshaping" by Madeleine Thien, The New Yorker, December 20, 2021. Read 2022-01-03

Lu had moved to North America from Hong Kong and found a good job in Supply management but she never really learned the language. Her thoughts and speech are full of Chinese expressions translated literally and she keeps her older daughter up late at night so the child can assist with her written presentations. She sleeps with whoever she fancies, cooks for her Husband and daughters and keeps working the same job. Until one day things collapse -- an internal investigation unsettles her world and makes her take a look at her own life. She ends up changing - but maybe not where a reader expects. It is an immigrant story in a world that gets less and less tolerant of immigrants (both hers and ours - her story is set at the last decade of the last century) and the different.

"A Lot of Things Have Happened" by Adam Levin, The New Yorker, December 27, 2021. Read 2022-01-04

I am not sure I understood the point of the story. The narrator, a man named Adam Levin (just as the author) talks about his life in the last 20 years - from a mouse chasing with an old girlfriend to missing the death of the sister of a woman he once loved (and being surprised that she was upset by that) to a parrot in our pandemic world. It is a slice of life story (or stories really - the story is even split into parts) and it is well written and enjoyable to read 9the author can tell a story) but left me with the "so what?" feeling that a lot of modern mainstream story do. It seemed to try to lead to something but either it eluded me or that was the whole point. And it matches the title in a way.

>46 AnnieMod: I know very little about Edward, but reading about Cromwell, learning the fates of some of his colleagues during Edward’s, Mary’s and Elizabeth’s reign made me curious. Enjoyed your review a lot.

>40 PaulCranswick: The latest Roy Grace novel annoyed me a bit - I still need to post a review. And the whole Bruno story makes me want to hit someone on the head. Oh well. I still enjoy the writing and the cast of characters so there is that.

>48 dchaikin: Thanks Dan :) I think I may be sticking with Edward VI for a bit this year - some things in Skidmore's narrative made me take a second look at some of the later actions and happenings (mainly during Elizabeth's reign) so we shall see where that will lead me (besides down another rabbit hole) :)

>29 AnnieMod: - The Arthurian project sounds interesting. And 4 books already! Good review of the Edward VI biography--thumbed. I'd probably get lost with all the names and titles.

Hello ! Dropping my star...

>50 DieFledermaus: Well, 2 of them are novellas and 2 were the ones I started before New Year so if anything, it is a slow start for me (mainly because I have a few very long ones going at the moment so they won't get finished quickly)

You get used to the names if you read enough from the period I guess - but when you have Earl of Warwick in the same chapter and they are 2 different men (because the old one became Duke of Northumberland on page 3 and his son was made the Earl on page 4, it can get a bit... weird). Medieval and Early modern history can be... interesting that way (or annoying if you prefer that) :) In a way Skidmore's book was easier than some others because his narrative stayed linear so it was possible to keep track (authors who jump in time cause a lot more issues)

>51 Dilara86: Hey there :)

>47 AnnieMod: OK, off to read "Lu, reshaping." I loved Thien's novel Do not say we have nothing.

>46 AnnieMod: Enjoyed your review of Edward VI and with Cariola's thread we are all getting an English History Lesson, which can't be bad.

The changing of names of the nobles who get to be Earls and Dukes is confusing, especially as the family name is the most important for readers to understand the political situation. It would be useful if authors/editors would include the family name in brackets when the titles are referred to only. It would save me keeping my own pen and ink chart. I have not read any of Chris Skidmore's books, but I had similar problems when I read Ian Mortmer's series on the plantagenet kings

>54 baswood: Or even the full names (although both Earls of Warwick are John Dudley...) because it matters if it is the father or the son to understand what is really going on. That will make the whole medieval and early Modern European history (it is not just the English that do that...) a lot easier to be read/understood by someone who had not spent too much time with it.

On the other hand, it can get tedious quickly if the real name is always there - and it will add to the number of pages significantly in some cases... And it feels wrong not to use the titles and just stay with the names only (because the titles also mean something and are important for understanding the story occasionally).

But at least Skidmore does not jump back and forth in time. Reading a book that uses the names as they are at the moment they write about AND jumping back and forth in their timelines are much more annoying and a lot harder to sort out occasionally and connect with the rest of the people in the story. And I knew most of the players - enough Henry VIII and Elizabeth I books had made most of them familiar. And herein lies the problem maybe - the historians don't need the help to figure out who is who so they assume that a family tree and mini-biographies should be enough...

>46 AnnieMod: Every book I read from this time period sends me down those rabbit holes too. But I really enjoy it. So interesting.

5. England's Boy King: The Diary of Edward VI, 1547-1553 by Jonathan North and Edward Tudor

Type: Non-fiction
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2005
Series: N/A
Genre: Tudors, Diary/Chronicle, History
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Ravenhall Books
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 6 January 2022

Edward VI was lucky enough to live at a time when keeping documents was a matter of course. A lot got lost - but a lot managed to survive and his diary was one of those that managed to make it in tact to the late 1600s when it was first reprinted and though to our days (the complete manuscript is kept at the British Library). It had been reprinted often - sometimes in its full length, sometimes just as excerpts and had become of the best known primary documents both for the reign of Edward VI and for the history of the Reformation in England.

Knowing all that, one would expect a long diary - despite its writer's short life. And one would be surprised to learn that the whole manuscript is just 68 pages. It is more of a chronicle than a diary (at least in the way we use the word now) - its format is closer to the chronicles of the past than anything else. The (almost) daily records start in March 1550 and end in November 1553; before them are a summary of his life before that and of important events since he became king, split per year. Early in the diary, Edward refers to him as "the king" but as time progresses, he switches to "I" (although there are a few entries later on that revert to the third person).

The first part (before the daily entries start) reads like a story - and that's what it is - there is no glimpse of the boy behind the throne - Edward is just a chronicler. What he includes is as important as what he skips although it is unclear how much should be read into it - he writes these later after all and time changes anyone's perspective.

The daily records on the other hand are a lot more useful for that. Some are one-liners about domestic affairs and his movements. Some are long descriptions of battles and occurrences in court (and in Europe). As time progresses, we get more and more entries about wars in Europe and less about court games (although these never disappear completely). And the diary is not linear - Edwards backtracks to add a back-dated entry now and then. Most of these are about Europe or an action outside of the court so it is possible that he just wrote of them when he learned about them from the letters/ambassadors. But there are exceptions. Some may be things he did not think important but changed his mind later. Some may be just a tired boy forgetting to add something. And some are just unexplainable - the final fall of Somerset is in the diary but it is one of those back-dated entries. One would think that this would have been important enough to add on the day it happened but for one reason or another, it is added days later, after entries for later events.

This edition reprints the complete diary but not in its original form. North modernized the spelling, the punctuation and in some places the language. It made for a much easier read than this would have been - I was reading Skidmore's biography of Edward VI at the same time and comparing the cited passages there with the ones in this edition shows a lot of differences. North also adds notes when a weird name is used or when Edward made a mistake in a date or a name. Other from that, the reader is left to their own devices (Except for a short list of names and titles at the end of the book). If one does not know the history of these years, they won't learn it from this chronicle; if they do, it will add some color and some amusing anecdotes to the story. Edward's notes about his quarrel with Mary over religion and mass doctrines had been used by anyone studying the Reformation but here, seen in the context of his life, they shine in a way which is just not there when you pull them out on their own.

The book also contains quite a lot of images and a few letters written by Edward - none of them are really necessary but they take enough space for the book not to be too slim.

If you are interested in the period, it is a curiosity you may want to want to read. It is not critical though - historians had mined it for data for centuries so the important passages had been cited over and over. Although important and amusing are different things - there are things that may not matter much but they show the boy behind the king. Had some of that diary/chronicle been written under dictation? Possibly. Had there been influences over a young and inexperienced king? Sure. But the diary is still his own. And even if it is not a modern style diary, there is some personality in there.

PS: This book is almost impossible to find (unless you want to pay a lot). Libraries may be a good source (I got it via an ILL from my library). The diary had been reprinted lately as "Edward VI's Chronicle" with a different editor - the modernization (if any) will be different but the body of the diary is the same regardless of the edition. And of course a version of it is in the internet archive - its earlier publications are public domain after all - https://archive.org/details/cu31924091758312/page/n15/mode/2up?view=theater for example (and that version has a lot of notes)

>57 AnnieMod: Absolutely fascinating. I had not come across this. I followed your link and have been dipping in and out of the journal.

>57 AnnieMod: pretty amazing that we have this. Great post!

>58 baswood: That edition (the one I linked) is part of a bigger work (the “Literary Remains of Edward VI”) which has a lot more of his writings. I’ve read most of the notes to the journal/diary in that edition and while the entries themselves are harder to read than in the North edition I read (no modernization) and posted about above, the notes are a lot more illuminating in places. :) Have fun - it does have some amusing parts.

>59 dchaikin: Sometimes historians get lucky. But sometimes there is a lot more still available if one looks for it - a lot more than you would think possible. :)

6. War Women by Martin Limón

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: Sueño and Bascom (15)
Genre: crime, military, South Korea
Format: ebook
Length: 58k words/213 pages
Publisher: Soho Crime
Reading dates: 6 January 2022 - 7 January 2022

Strange is missing - he never reported for work and noone knows where he is. That can be bad enough on its own but when the missing soldier is one with access to all classified documents, things can be really bad.

Welcome back to South Korea and the American Army's compounds in the country in the 1970s. Strange's disappearance (Harvey really but our narrator calls him Strange and had been doing it since we first met him) and cases like that are the reason for CID to exist. So Sueño and Bascom are on the case - getting beaten (of course) and pushing hard until something gives away. Everyone's unspoken horror is obvious - North Korean spies are known to operate in the country and Harvey is in a position which will give them access to documents they cannot see otherwise.

Meanwhile, the reporter we met it earlier books, Katie Byrd Worthington, is back to cause more headaches. She has a knack to be at the right place in the right time (although it is not all chance - she works hard for it). And this time not only she has pictures and a story that can embarrass the chain of command (and even put a stop to a career or three) but she also got contacted from a group of female soldiers who had been abused (in all ways) from their male counterparts. Before long our pair of detectives/soldiers is attached to her and thing start getting even weirder.

Both stories are not connected except for Sueño and Bascom and the Korean Police (Mr. Kill as usual) being interested in both. That's a common pattern in these novels and you know that the two stories will meet somewhere - in an unexpected way - sometimes they merge, sometimes they just brush each other but the connection will be there. And Katie Byrd knowing both almost guarantees that by just being there.

And yet something is off - Sueño and Bascom are way too gullible - both in dealing with Strange and with Katie Byrd; they let themselves be led by the nose by people who should not have been able to do it. One of the issues is that both stories are strictly dealing with the American presence (yes, there is a Korean spy but an earlier book did that better - even if the story is a bit different here - and there is the rush across the peninsula from one place to another and the chase for a specific shop, but Korea is almost missing from this book). Things get better after the first chapters but only because now everyone scrambles to deal with the results from the initial mistakes. And the plots (both of them) get less and less credible as the book progresses.

Not that all plots in this series had been really credible but they were usually weaved together into a lot more credible one and one can just ignore the warning notes. There is nothing like that here. It makes for a good story - but ultimately makes you really wonder how much of that is based on the author's experiences and how much is fictional. In most books of the series, it feels like fiction written by someone who actually was there (as is the case with this author). This one feels a lot more removed.

I still enjoyed the novel though - that deep into the series, it kinda works even with all of its faults. Not a good start for a new reader though - the backstory (the relevant one) is all here but this novel will give a really bad idea to a new reader about what this series is all about or its charm and power.

====
After catching up late last year, I am finally to the top of this series. And now the long wait for the next book. And I've even read most of the stories already.

7. Wayward Souls by Devon Monk

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2020
Series: Souls of the Road (1)
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: ebook
Length: 52k words
Publisher: Odd House Press
Reading dates: 7 January 2022 - 8 January 2022

Lula Doyle and Brogan Gauge met in the 1930s. They seemed unsuitable for each other but fell in love and planned to marry - until the day when vampires attacked them and left them near dead. Lula survived - she did not turn into a vampire but did not remain human either; Brogan mostly died. Their souls somehow connected, pieces of each ended up in the other and here they are more than 80 years later, traveling up and down Route 66 - Lu Gauge (as she styles herself now) driving; Brogan staying by her side. Did I forget to mention that Brogan is also invisible and they can really see each other only for a minute at a time, and rarely, with the help of an old clock? The magic that tied them together seems to be connected to the Route - so they stay on it and keep traveling up and down - while the world moved away and runs on the new highways. And in all of these years, they never gave up - they will find a way to get back among the living or they will find whoever cursed them that way and make sure they are very dead. In the meantime, Lu uses her talent to see magical objects and tracks them down for a man who pays her well for any object she finds.

In the first novel of the series, Lu and Brogan get stranded in a small town alongside Route 66 after she buys a truck that had seen better days (despite Brogan's attempt to stop her - being invisible makes things a bit harder). Except that it may not have been incidental - a ghost gives them a link to an object that may help them (although they don't seem to be the only ones who want it) and Lu cannot stop herself of playing Cupid while she is in the area anyway - her long lasting love had makes her try to give the same to everyone (not always working very well but... she still tries). She does not have any special powers in that regard - except 80 years on the road, with the man she loves, without being able to be with the man she loves.

The novel can be almost cloyingly sweet in some places, cliched in others but the premise works. I cared about Lu and Brogan (even if I wonder if they would have survived if they were able to be together - Brogan talks to Lu all the time, she senses some of it (sometimes via her dog, sometimes in a less normal way) but they also had been together for so long that sometimes she knows what he will say). The budding romance she was trying to assist was as cliched as it was sweet - in a good way. The end of the novel finally sets the series up - this first book is really an introduction (I do wonder if it would not have worked better as a novella really - there is enough that could be cut without losing the story).

Urban fantasy tends to be set in cities (thus the genre name) and pulling it out of them and tying it to Route 66 makes this one different. Making Brogan not exactly a ghost (we even get an explanation of titled realities and what's not) and Lu not exactly human adds to that difference. Add vampires, gods and other supernatural beings and other supernatural beings (although we meet just a few and only hear of others) and the world has a lot to be explored. And it works. It may not have been an award winning series and it may have issues but I liked it enough to stay with the series (and to even look at other books by the author). Some online reviews mention that this novel has some connections to a previous series By the author - if that is so, it was unobtrusive and one can start reading with this book.

>53 markon: What did you think? All of the authors in >47 AnnieMod: were new to me although I may decide to chase down something from all of them - they can tell a story...

One more orphan story:

"Marriage Quarantine" by Kate Walbert, The New Yorker, December 6, 2021. Read 2022-01-06

Another new author for me. An exploration of marriage while in quarantine, finding memories and trying to find a connection. It almost reads like a couple in a psychoanalysis session - each of them almost obsessing about their own thing and each of them being mindful of the other. I am still not sure I got what the author wanted to do with the story though.

And I finished a magazine (something that had not happened in a long time - I would read parts of them but almost never really finish them).


8. Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February 2022, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: speculative fiction
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 6 January 2022 - 8 January 2022

1 novella, 4 novelettes, 7 short stories and the usual articles and reviews make up for a pretty big magazine.

"The Art of Victory When the Game Is All the World" by Eugie Foster is one of those discovered stories which are published after the author's death and as such it is unclear how much it may have changed had the author lived. These can be hit or miss - depending on where the story was when the author died and who got to work on it after that. In a world which does not seem to have any correlation to our own, a caste of technicians creates "champions" - constructs who are formed by careful combination of aptitudes and impediments. Another cast sponsors the creations which are considered viable - and play a game, seeing how their lives evolve. That game is the pinnacle of the society - that's what everyone else exists for. People belong to a caste based on their own aptitudes - they get assigned into them, they make their vows and they are usually stuck in them. Until one of the best technician is asked to step up and attempt a promotion. We never learn who is who in that society - is that gods and humans or humans and a different form or something totally different. But it does not really matter. We get to live the life of one of the constructs, to be part of the game - and almost as a sideline, to be part of the life of the society that plays the game. In a centuries old way, life imitates art (and vice versa) and love ends up the ingredient that noone adds but that matters the most. The whole story is a play on the choice and destiny duality - and one can make their own decision if they want to fall on either side or find their own way.

The 4 novelettes are only comparable by their length.
"Animale Dei Morti" by Nick Dichario is a modern Italian fairy tale, set nowadays but using the conventions of the old time - complete with a witch, animated corpses and misunderstandings. It is one of my favorite stories in this issue - it should sound derivative but it does not and you cannot stop laughing at how anything the main character Marco tries makes things worse - trying not to break one tradition ends up messing up others; not thinking through the witch's conditions ends up costing him everything. And for all that, the tale never gets dark (and one wonders if some of the bad things were really that bad - that bride of his was not really someone you would wish to your worst enemy).

In "Bone Broth" by Karen Heuler, a secret society believes themselves to be connected to the giants who roamed the Earth in the olden days (tying aliens into the mix as well). Then a waitress somehow stumbles into it and seems to fall for all of it. The scary part is that I am pretty sure that there are people who may really believe in this kind of things - and not just inside of this story.

The third novelette, "Prison Colony Optimization Protocols" by Auston Habershaw leaves Earth and transports us to a penal colony on a station somewhere in the galaxy. An AI had really messed up but due to UN rules, it cannot be just disabled or killed so it is sent to try to optimize the systems of the penal colony. So what happens when an AI is punished? It finds a way around its punishment of course - in the most unexpected way. I really enjoyed this story - it found that path between humor and seriousness that is hard to stay on.

And the last of the novelettes, "The Gentle Dragon Tells His Tale of Love" by J. A. Pak is the kind of tale that does not hide anything - its title tells you what you are getting. An old dragon finds love for the last time and tells us the tale. Except the gentle maiden he finds is neither a maiden, nor gentle. And yet - love conquers all and the two broken souls find happiness. I hope the authors plans to add more stories to this world - there are so many more tales to be told - both about our dragon and about everything else.

The short stories were the usual mixed bag of stories that work and ones that have some ideas but somehow do not really manage to reach me.
"Ennead in Retrospect" by Christopher Mark Rose is a far future tale of a broken space craft and a knife which can split a person in two - their dark and light side. Except that this does not really make two complete people, especially for the ones who live with them. Add a child and a secret or three (which are obvious from the beginning) and the story makes sense but something just did not click for me.
In "Full Worm Moon" by Paul Lorello, a clan of people live at the outside of society and feeds with the memories of the departed - by eating the worms that eat their remains. What they get it return is not just memories though - they almost become the other people. And when a young man eats too many too early, he starts questioning his own life. It is a tale about belonging but you better not have your lunch when you are reading it.
"Proximity Games" by M. L. Clark returns us back to space - although a very different one. Families get selected to leave Earth, to go live among the stars, to conquer new worlds. It all sounds noble and nice but things are not as green as they look and one may wonder what really is better - to be left behind or to be selected. As for the stars - we are really not a very intelligent species sometimes. It is a nice tale of exploration and choices - not all of which are what they seem to be.
In "Salt Calls to Salt" by Maiga Doocy, Zelda is not allowed any real feelings or excitement - if she ever has them, her feet get covered in scales and she turns into a mermaid. So her aunt does anything she can to make sure that she is protected, with Zelda cooperating fully, knowing her own mother's fate. At least for the time being anyway. It is a sweet tale of growing up and deciding what is important in one's life.
The next story, "doe_haven.vr" by Cara Mast, throws us into the life of a young woman who finds solace into a virtual reality - until someone disturbs her there. It is a quiet tale about being able to connect with other people.
"The City and the Thing Beneath It" by Innocent Chizaram Ilo is written by a Nigerian (Igbo) writer and is set in Lagos where the week does not go exactly as the rulers of the country want it to - something falls from the sky and they are not happy about it (and despite everyone seeing it, they still try to claim it never happened). There are soldiers and violence and a Lagos which seem to be in our times but you hope it is not. It is a confusing tale - both the way it is told and what it tries to achieve.
The last story in the issue, "There Won't Be Questions" by Joe Baumann, gets us back to the magical - a boy finds out that if he wishes something very much, it can appear - even if there is a price to pay. Noone knows how or why, noone knows if these things get transported in space or if they get recreated or come from elsewhere. Mix up some young love which appears to be one-sided and the whole mess gets even messier. It is clear where the tale is going and it does get to its logical end. Ending it where it did end may leave someone unhappy but it works - because if it was continued, it would be a different story.

The three poems were way too modern for my taste (two by Bogi Takacs and one by Gretchen Tessmer). The cartoons were mildly entertaining - none really jumped at me as hilarious.

The usual columns:
- In the science section, Jerry Oltion explains how old things are dated (a bit simplified but not a bad explanation)
- The film review section is about a series I had not watched ("Raised by Wolves"
- Paul di Filippo's "Plumage from Pegasus" imagines a writing award in 2030 unlike any other (which as usual is a commentary on our reality).

And then there are the reviews:
- The Curiosities section goes back to 1976 (which is pretty modern for that column) to take a look at Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. Charles de Lint manages to mention 4 books I had not read (and now I want to) - I own one, already read another ("Wayward Souls")) and Michelle West adds 4 more to my ever growing list (at least I actually had heard of 3 of these before - one of them is even home from the library). I have a suspicion that the 9 books will feature in my very near future... that's what happens when one finally get around to reading a full magazine.

Not a perfect issue and not all stories worked for me and even the ones that did work did not sparkle really but not a bad issue either. And no stories from long-running series which I had not read (no series stories at all as best as I can tell actually).

9. Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

Type: Short fiction, ?? words, novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Horror
Format: paperback
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 9 January 2022 - 9 January 2022

When the land got submerged under the waves of the seas, people moved to boats. This story starts on one of those boats, where Iraxi is heavily pregnant - and everyone hopes that this will be the first child to be born after years on the waves and all other newborns being lost. But for her the story started a lot earlier - she belongs to a family which was persecuted and killed off for being able to talk to the sea, she was once asked for by a prince and she saw the destruction of her world long before the world of everyone else ended.

And she dreams - sometimes with open eyes, sometimes while sleeping - about the past and about sea monsters. Because in this world the seas and the air contains literal monsters - some being visible by everyone and some seemingly hiding.

There is nothing beautiful in living on a boat for years - everyone is dirty and everyone's mind may not be exactly as sharp as it started. But the baby seems to give everyone hope. Iraxi, knowing more than others, being able to see more than others, is not sure. And birth in primitive conditions is never fun - even when the child is normal.

It is unclear how much of what Iraxi sees is reality and how much is feverish dreams. It can be read either way in some places I think. The end is almost expected (although the fact that some people made it to the end surprised me a bit). There seems to be connection to some African myths, Iraxi is often described as being very dark skinned and there is something akin to magic happening towards the end of the novella. The very end is as decisive as it is completing a circle. Plus some of the dreams sounded almost Lovecraftian.

I don't enjoy horror as much as I enjoy the rest of the speculative genres and this novella was getting a bit too close to where I usually draw my lines. But it worked out at the end. It won't make my list of best novellas of the year but it is readable and it may work even better for someone who enjoys that type of stories more than I usually do.

===
And with that this thread is uptodate on everything I had actually finished reading (although I may decide to start posting about the plays from the anthology I am reading...)

>57 AnnieMod: Edward seems like he'd be a ripe character for historical fiction... imagine being 16 and living a life where you refer to yourself as "The King." Someone must have written him as a character in something.

>64 AnnieMod: That F&SF cover takes me right back to being 14 and all excited when it would show up in the mail. I know they've changed the magazine layout since then (1977) but not all that much—now I want to pick up a copy.

>62 AnnieMod: Now this one sounds intriguing.

>64 AnnieMod: I am so curious about the books mentioned in the review section by Charles de Lint. I admire his work greatly, and I would love to know what the books are. Would you be willing to transcribe them here?

Some great reviews. I enjoyed them.

>1 AnnieMod: Love your intro, so much there!

>2 AnnieMod: I'm glad to see someone else listing their reading that isn't "books" (the F&SF). I'm going to try to do this as experiment this year - sort of a holistic approach.

>3 AnnieMod: I did not care for Indridason's "wartime" books. Give me Erlunder any day.

>6 AnnieMod: I'm trying to encourage the hubby to log his individual short story reading....

That really is an amazing thread set-up. So organized! I'll stop in from time to time.

>66 lisapeet: Probably - I had not looked for Edward VI fiction but he is perfect for YA and for "what if he lived" scenarios of all types. :)
F&SF - you can get it free if you have Kindle Unlimited or you can buy it on Kindle if not (trial subscription that you can then cancel if you do not want to spend money on it also works). Although the ebook layout and the paper ones are VERY different - I love the paper one but don't have the space anymore so... I switched.

>67 sallypursell: Not perfect but it is certainly readable. I also plan to read more from her this year outside of this series.

>68 sallypursell: I was planning to but the review got very long as it was so I got lazy:

de Lint's "Books to Look for" (I cannot count - there are 6, not 4):
Whistle: A New Gotham City by E. Lockhart and Manuel Preitano - YA graphic novel about Gotham (but not about Batman)
"Souls of the Road" which is really Wayward Souls by Devon Monk (see >67 sallypursell: for a review) - some of those publisher's fonts and title page and cover structures makes it hard to figure out what is the title and what the series when a first volume of something comes out.
Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons
Tomb of the Queen by Joss Walker
The Gambler Grimoire by BR Kingsolver
Billy Summers by Stephen King

He liked all of them (some of them for different reasons) :)

Michelle West's "Musing on Books":
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron
The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

>69 avaland: Let's see how long it will last... :)
F&SF has more words in it than half the "books", I read and that is true for a lot of magazines. Not counting them sounds wrong - especially the ones I actually read completely and not just an article or three here and there.

"Indridason's "wartime" books" - I remember you did not like them. I don't love them but... I don't hate them and if there are more, I'd read them so on the list they go. :)

The short story thing is partially because I have rotten memory on what I had read based on just a title/author and partially a place holder come award season -- if I have them all in a list, finding all novellas from 2021/2022 should be a snap -- I am also putting a Google Sheets together for these but... not all will make it there (not all I read is spec fic) so I figured I may as well list them here (and over in the Short Stories group) and finally figure out how many I really read and have a place to add a note or 3 about them without the need to add them as books (which I still may do).

So not really organized... it just looks like that when it is new and shiny. Will see how it goes really. Plus I like lists.

>46 AnnieMod: & >57 AnnieMod: Fascinating and excellent reviews both. Must say that the world may have turned out quite differently had Edward been physically stronger and made his majority and beyond. Would have avoided the excesses of Mary at least.

>71 PaulCranswick: Thanks :) Maybe - if he lived long enough anyway. Without the pressure of the throne, Mary may have lived a lot longer (and would probably married someone else and maybe even had children). So if Edward made it his majority but still died with no kids, Mary's rebellion could still happen even after he changes the succession... and if Mary was bitter in our timeline, imagine her 10 years later, after even worse suppression of her religion in the meantime.

Plus England and the world won't be the same without Elizabeth (not that there is no scenario where Edward lives a bit longer but still dies in time to let Elizabeth be what she is). I like what-ifs (in case it is not clear) :)

>66 lisapeet: Mercedes Lackey has a...historical urban fantasy? series in which Edward (slight spoiler, but only slight) gets taken away by the elves and it's a changeling who dies. There's a _lot_ more to the story but Edward is a major minor character, as I recall. Doubled Edge is the series, This Scepter'd Isle is the first book.

So, you have me thinking of Lady Jane Grey. The bug caught me reading your first Edward review and it's still running around. Just amazed thinking about what she might have done wrong, and how she was so powerless. She was 17. Sorry, a detour. Carry on.

>74 dchaikin: Not really a detour - in a way her Story is the coda to Edward’s life. I am not sure she did anything wrong really - she did what her king and her faith and her father and her husband told her to do. A few years ago I read most of what was available about her and the truth is that she was a 17 years old who we know mainly through the eyes of the men who wanted something from her and the woman who wanted to convince the world that Jane was an usurper. Just like with Edward - too short of a time, too many interests muddling the story. And just as with Edward, had she held the throne longer, history would have been very different. Oh well. :) that’s true for any monarch and often for the people around them.

" who we know mainly through the eyes of the men who wanted something from her " -

wikipedia: "She had an excellent humanist education and a reputation as one of the most learned young women of her day."

These are separate notes, your comment and the wikipedia quote (with an 1863 citation). They are not a commentary on each other...but I'm adding them together.

>76 dchaikin: She was learned and she was not entirely a pawn of her father and Dudley as was usually written in history books. But she did not leave a lot of documents written by her. And she was very young. Her education was why Edward was kinda ok with her succeeding him (it was supposed to be her sons but they were not born yet). But yeah - she was not just a girl picked up for who her family was or because she would have done what everyone wanted once on the throne. Thus the “known through the eyes of others only” comment. And now you made me want to reread Ives.

>77 AnnieMod: "And now you made me want to reread Ives." - Sorry. : )

>73 jjmcgaffey: I forgot all about those! I've read them at least twice.

>66 lisapeet: >73 jjmcgaffey: There's also The Prince and the Pauper, for fiction about Edward.

>80 SassyLassy: I've totally forgotten that this one was about Edward... probably because I had no clue who Edward was (besides a prince) when I read it about 30 years ago... :)

>81 AnnieMod: Ditto. Huh.

>80 SassyLassy: I forgot it was too, if I ever knew. Obviously I've never read it, and maybe I should.

>57 AnnieMod: - Good review, and I'm enjoying all the comments about Edward VI, etc.

>81 AnnieMod: - Ditto, and I probably read it about 25 years ago. Although for some reason, I vaguely remember Lady Jane Grey making an appearance in the book.

>6 AnnieMod: I am enjoying your short story reviews and hope you will continue them. I have many volumes of short stories and find that except for the slimmest, I am inclined to periodically dip into them, rather than reading through them as a body of work. Posting about them individually would be a good way to not lose them entirely. I do also have a subscription to The New Yorker, but for whatever reason, I often do not get around to reading the short story. You are inspiring me to rectify that.

>83 lisapeet: I remember it fondly :) Probably should revisit it...

>84 DieFledermaus: Possibly - she is the same age as Edward and she would have been around the court a lot. Now I really want to reread it...

>85 Linda92007: I plan to (even though my plans tend to get in all kinds of directions. At the bare minumum, I plan to note the stories I read and posting a line or 3 for each. :)

And as usual I am falling behind - I need to write some reviews... :)

10. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1950
Series: N/A
Genre: romance? contemporary?
Format: ebook
Length: 121K words
Publisher: Vintage / Vintage International
Reading dates: 9 January 2022 - 10 January 2022

One day Jean Paget gets a phone call - she is the sole beneficiary of her uncle's will. However - there is a catch - he did not trust women so the money will be in a trust for a very long time. From that point the story moves in two directions - back to the war in Malaya via the memories of the young woman and forward to a future which noone expects. The story of the will form the backbone of the story weaved by Shute but it is the other 2 parts of it which make this novel memorable.

We get to hear the story second-hand - the lawyer, Noel Strachan, who is the executor of the will and in charge of releasing funds when requested, is our narrator. But he does not see most of the story - Jean tells him the part in Malaya and she sends letters about the story ones she leaves England. Add to this that Noel is at least half in love with his young charge and objectivity is the last thing you can get from the old man writing a story, long after he had initially heard some parts of it and knowing that she will never see Jean again.

And the story is fascinating (and horrifying) - Jean almost died in Malaya when the Japanese forced her and the rest of the women and children they found in one of the towns to march across the country for months. Except that she was too stubborn to die - so instead she became the leader of the small party and managed to find a way to survive - with the help of some local people. And now, having enough money, she wants to go back and help the same people who saved her from starvation. It is like a chain of good will - they helped her, she helps them when she was able to and that leads to her learning that a man she had given up on as dead is actually very much alive. And off she is to Australia to find him - without any plans on what she would do when she does find him (or so Noel tells us anyway). In the meantime, Noel gets a surprising visitor and decides to meddle.

The third part of the novel, the one set in Australia moves a lot slower than either the Malaya or the London/around the world one. Jean finally finds where Joe, the man she believed dead, lives and ends up in the middle of nowhere in the Australian Outback. So what do you get from a woman who have access to money and is used to making her own way through the world? A change of course - it may be a backwater but it is her backwater (as she sees it) so it is time for it to change. The novel turns into a story of Outback development where Jean just cannot set a foot wrong (but don't forget who the narrator is). There is enough action - from calves being stolen to a broken leg and a man almost dying, from flooding to finding a way to be accepted in the community. She wants only one thing: "a town like Alice" (aka Alice Springs - the jewel of the Outback). And somewhere in there there is also the big love story - too perfect, too proper, almost too big for the pages.

This is the first novel by Shute I had read and I loved his style. Even if some parts were less captivating than others (the "how to develop the Outback manual" aka the third part of the novel can be a long-winded in places but even that somehow worked).

PS: At the end of the novel, the author adds an author note explaining that the Malaya story did not happen - not in Malaya anyway. But a version of it happened elsewhere.

11. Silenced by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates

Type: Novel
Original Language: Icelandic
Original Publication: 2021 in English, 2019 in Icelandic as Fjötrar
Series: Ice and Crime (2), Guðgeir Fransson (5)
Genre: crime
Format: ebook
Length: 72k words in English
Publisher: Corylus Books
Reading dates: 11 January 2022 - 11 January 2022

The second translated novel about Guðgeir Fransson (and apparently the fifth in the overall series) starts a few months after the previous one ended. Guðgeir Fransson is finally back in Reykjavík after his exile (where we met him in The Fox), had reunited with his wife and moving to a new apartment (we get more hints about what happened before his exile but the story is not clear - most likely it was in those early series novels which were not translated) and he is back in the police - not yet in his old job but close enough.

A woman kills herself in prison and it looks as a open and shut case - except that something just does not add up. Meanwhile Guðgeir gets accosted by his new neighbor who brings up her brother's disappearance 20 years ago. Then a string of brutal attacks connect to another one 20 years earlier - and things get even more convoluted.

I got frustrated with this novel a few times - the answer seemed obvious a lot earlier than any of the detectives even thought of it. But then I had to think about what the police really knows - we got a lot of extra information from different people and unlike the police, we only got the relevant parts of the story. And the author did throw a red herring or 3 to make us thinking that maybe the logical solution is not the solution - and even when it was obvious, there were part which ended up quite different.

The novel is part of a series but it can be read as a standalone if one so wishes. I like the author style - despite my misgiving on the whole police department not seeing the obvious in some places. She is not my favorite Icelandic author but she is readable. If any more of these get translated, I will read them.

>87 AnnieMod: There was a lovely TV series of A Town Like Alice many years ago. I'm not sure if it's still available somewhere, but if it is it's worth watching.
I read this many years ago, and loved it, but a few years ago I reread it and was quite disturbed by the overtly racist attitude towards the aboriginals in Australia. That said, I've read a couple of others by Nevil Shute that I have really liked.

12. The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2108
Series: Sunflower cycle
Genre: science fiction
Format: paperback
Length: ~41K words
Publisher: Tachyon
Reading dates: 12 January 2022 - 12 January 2022

An underfed novel or an overgrown novella - call this whatever you want. The author calls it a novella but he admits that it is ~1K words longer than what a novella should be so I will call it a novel. Not that really matters - except for pure statistical purposes.

On a ship somewhere among the stars, people are being awaken at random intervals to help the AI of the ship with tasks it cannot perform. The ship's job is to open wormhole gates and it had been doing it for 60 million years. Noone knows if humanity still exists - either on Earth or anywhere in the Universe but the ship has a goal so it continues on its path - dealing with whatever comes out from the gates in the rare cases when something does and just keep up with its plan.

The humans on board would not have been needed - except that human minds can take decisions easier in some cases than computers can. So the people sleep frozen and come up to help when needed - on a schedule that only the ship knows. Except that some of the people start wondering if the ship really have their best interests in mind. Sunday Ahzmundin is not one of them - initially anyway - if anything, Sunday is the computer's pet. Until it becomes clear that the ship considers people to be expendable. But how can you organize anything when you may never see the same people twice, you get awaken once every thousand years (or even less) and your enemy can see everything? Well... human minds are not only good for decisions after all as it turns out - a revolution can happen even under these conditions... Or can it? Who underestimates whom becomes the most important question long before the end shows the (almost) obvious answer.

The end itself is almost abrupt and in some ways may be considered open but it actually closes the story we started with - if not the overall story. In a way, it works better than a definite end.

This novel is technically part of a series but it can be read as a standalone - I had not read the stories that make up the rest of the cycle (yet).

>89 arubabookwoman: It is a novel of the 50s - in more than one way. While a lot of that can be disturbing, I don't judge books for what they could not have done better. Had it been written in the last 20-40 years I would be disturbed but for a 1950 novel? Like it or not, that was the reality back then and if I read novels written then, it will be there... And in this case, there was no way for Shute to work around it -- he needed these characters. I won't discard and ignore books and authors I may like because I don't like how the world used to work :)

I'll see if I can find the series :)

13. Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: fantasy
Format: paperback
Length: 20K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 13 January 2022 - 13 January 2022

Thanh had been a hostage most of her life - despite being born a princess (well, actually because of it), she does not get to grow up with her family but ends up in the capital of Ephteria, the most powerful country in the region. When we meet her in this story she is already back home, trying to find a place in the court of her mother (and mostly failing). Until a delegation show up from Ephteria - led by their own princess - which also happens to be Thanh's ex-lover.

In a lot of ways, this is a romance novella - you have the two young lovers, you have the people blocking their way and there is a big secret in the past that is about to change everyone's life. But there is also a fire elemental and there is a world which we barely get a glimpse of - enough to make it fascinating but not enough to drown the story into irrelevant details. But under the romance story, there is the story of a young woman finding her voice and making choices - despite the advice of everyone around her. The fact that somewhere in there she also finds what her heart really wants is a bonus.

The world is based on old Vietnam (maybe with some additions from other countries from the region) and is refreshingly different from the almost usual medieval settings of similar worlds. But that is expected when you see the name of Aliette de Bodard - almost everything I had read by her had been set in a world based on an Asian country. And the style is her own - lyrical and enticing.

14. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2019
Series: The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (1)
Genre: fantasy
Format: paperback
Length: 30K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 14 January 2022 - 14 January 2022

When Melek Ahmar wakes up something just does not look right. There are no humans to welcome him. Noone seems to care that the king of the djinn had escaped from his stone grave (or had awaken - whatever you prefer to call it). The only man he meets is the old Gurkha soldier Bhan Gurung - and the man does not behave as one would expect. Apparently being asleep for 4 millennia (or thereabouts) is not a good idea. Not that Melek Ahmar had a lot of choice but still.

While the djinn was asleep, humanity managed to mess up the planet - the air is unbreathable unless you have a lot of nano-machines to assist you and to top it all, the big city close to the mountain, Kathmandu. had given up everything and is not ruled by Karma - an all-seeing all-knowing computer which controls everything based on the karma of its citizens - you do good things, you win karma; bad things - you lose some and you pay for everything you nee with karma. The system is supposed to work, right? Well... ask Bhan Gurung - who was supposed to be dead but somehow managed to not be executed and instead lives outside of the city.

Melek Ahmar is really trying to figure out what had happened and how he can be a king again - and Bhan Gurung wants revenge (or wants the truth to finally be revealed - sometimes even he is not sure). The two of them end up allied, each of them for their own purposes and each of them believing that they are driving the agenda. Add another jinn and an old massacre into the mix and the calm and nice reign of Karma starts to get a bit less calm... and a lot less nice.

The novella was a lot more entertaining than I expected it to be. The story ends up being familiar - people are people, people with power will not allow anything to take away that power - but still, the storytelling and the exact details were interesting enough. And I loved the ending.

Apparently there is a second book coming out this year - I am not sure if it will be just the same world or a real continuation of the story but I plan to find out as soon as I can.

15. The N'Gustro Affair by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith

Type: Novel
Original Language: French
Original Publication: 2021 in English, 1971 in French as L'affaire N'Gustro
Series: N/A
Genre: crime
Format: e-book
Length: 48K words in English (most likely the Introduction is also counted in the number)
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Reading dates: 14 January 2022 - 15 January 2022

In 1965, the Moroccan opposition politician Mehdi Ben Barka disappears in Paris. His fate was never officially confirmed although the assumption had always been that he had been kidnapped and killed for his opposition to the regime in Morocco. Manchette picks that story as the base of his first novel and weaves a story of what might have happened (without mentioning the actual case).

But his story does not start with a kidnapping. It starts with everyone's reaction to the death of Henri Butron - a man who apparently was not exactly innocent. We get Henri's story from three different viewpoints - the people who knew him, a tape he recorded before his death in which he tells us his own story and the people who listened to his tape - the African mercenaries/politicians who are at the base of the story - even if it takes awhile for that to become clear.

Henri is a man without convictions but a man who is ready to adopt anyone's convictions if it will help him in finding something to do (or a girl to seduce). He shifts between the far left an the far right, he scandalizes everyone and he just lives his life - until he gets himself in the middle of a kidnapping and a cover-up organized by people supporting the regime in a third-world African nation (with a little bit of help from the French police). That's when he records his tape - and that's what we know must happen - because the novel starts with him being dead.

I've read one of Manchette's later novels (The Prone Gunman) and this one is less polished in some ways - it is a good first novel but it almost sounds too much in places - the later book had a better balance in some ways. But despite that, it is a clear picture of a country in turmoil, of a world where things are moving too fast and where money and self-interest (and sex) rule.

Using real-life events can backfire but it works here - Manchette finds a way to tell the story in a way that sounds as if it might have been while keeping it in his fictional world. It is noir - as is most of his work. And it is walking very close to crossing the line into offensive and gross - without ever really doing it.

Manchette's style will probably be too dark and too cynical and offensive for a lot of people. But that's where some of the power of the novel lays in. I still like it.

16. The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction, dystopian
Format: hardcover
Length: 39K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 15 January 2022 - 16 January 2022

In 2016 Catherynne M. Valente wrote a novelette called "The Future Is Blue" which introduced us to Tetley - the girl who lives on a patch of garbage in the middle of the ocean (because that's the only place where people can live if you do not count the boats - the oceans had covered all the dry land) in a town called Garbagetown. This novella expands that story (or if you prefer - this book contains the novelette and a continuation novella, presented as two part of the same story).

Garbagetown is as tightly segregated as any city in our time - if anything, the rules are enforced even more. People don't mix up - and everyone protects what they have. So when Tetley first falls in love with someone who she should not and then destroys the dreams of most people on the patch, she is not exactly the most liked person in town (even if they don't even know of her love). There are no prisons so the laws are pretty basic - if you really mess up, everyone is allowed to do anything they want to you. That's where we found Tetley and in the novelette (first part of the novella), she tells us how she got to that point.

The second part of the story moved a few years in the future, with Tetley having moved away to a boat (of a type) alongside the patch. Her curiosity and refusal to give up leads her to more adventures (despite the last one having led to her being called a criminal). It leads to love (again), it leads to sorrow but it also leads to her discovering what really happened on Earth and finding what the fate of humanity might be. No aliens - we did not get that lucky - humanity managed to mess up on their own - and when Tetley finally finds the truth, it is humanity that disappoints her yet again. And yet, she never stops hoping.

While the story would have worked regardless of the narrator, Tetley makes the story even more enjoyable - you just cannot not feel the hope and the enthusiasm of our character - even when she is at her lowest. And as much as we all probably wish to pretend that this not a very likely future, we cannot. And we all hope that when it happens, there will be a Tetley there to bring some sunshine and hope to everyone.

Enjoying your latest series of reviews especially the Freeze-Frame Revolution and that first novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette I have a couple of his novels on the TBR I hope to get to them soon

17. On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1957
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction, apocalyptic
Format: ebook
Length: 94K words
Publisher: Vintage
Reading dates: 15 January 2022 - 17 January 2022

What would you do if you know that you will be dead in a few months? What would you do if you know that humanity will disappear shortly after your death? Most authors will tell you a story of struggle and attempt to save humanity. Shute disagrees - in his novel humanity is doomed, even if they are not ready to admit it.

It all ended quickly - there was a war, someone threw a bomb, someone returned another and before the dust from the first one cleared, all nuclear arsenals of all nations in the Northern hemisphere were empty - and the end of the world began. There is noone left to tell the story - the people that did not die in those first hours died as the radiation settled on the land. And then it started moving south - due to the way the air masses move around the world, the Southern hemisphere got a bit longer - but Death was coming for them all. And it won't be easy - all the oil used to come from the North so people have to wait to die while finding a way to live.

And down at the south end of Australia, the last operational submarine of the US Navy tries to assist the last remaining command anywhere in the world - the Australian Navy's command structure is still in tact - even if they don't have any ships left - due to lack of oil. Early in the novel a second submarine is also available - attached to a friendly command in South America but as the winds keep on moving in their never ending cycle, that one is also lost.

The novel is not really about the apocalypse - it is there as a background but it is about the people and how to die with dignity. Some characters are almost cartoonish in their refusal to believe that the end is coming. Some realize all too well that they have no chance so they decide that this is the time to live - and drink all the good booze while at it. A man decides to participate in a car race. Another finds love but decides to resist it because he still feels married to his dead wife. And just because the world ends is not a reason for babies to stop being born or farms to be left untended. And people keep working and trying to find something to do.

The start of the novel drags a little bit - it seems almost pointless but as the novel continues that slow start makes more and more sense - the submarine's tour of the North Atlantic destroys the hope of a miracle and that tranquility becomes the counterpoint of the end. It does not even matter who started the war or the fact that as it turns out the retaliation strike was a mistake. One of the last surviving scientists has the best summary: the nuclear weapons got to cheap so everyone had them... even the country which should have been the last one in anyone's expectation to heat the Cold War - the first bomb was thrown by Albania.

Once the submarine is back, it is just a matter of time. And yet, people continue living. Maybe somewhere someone tries something. Maybe someone people decide to die earlier. But not the characters we get to know and the news do not report anything of the type either. As the stations of the world slowly stopped transmitting, the coming end is almost like a character of the novel.

Reading this in 2022 makes it sound too naive in places but at the same time it made me wonder if that passivity and "it won't happen to me" attitude is really that bizarre. I cannot imagine how that novel (or the movie based on it - apparently there is a movie) read to someone who lived in the mid-50s. And what will stay with me at the end is not the lack of hope but what people cared about at the end - their pets, the farm animals, their children, making sure that everything still looks good. And the big irony that rabbits will outlive everyone (that's Australia - they have interesting history with rabbits) and that Earth will be habitable again in just 20 years - but there won't be anyone and anything left.

>96 baswood: The Manchette novels are pretty short and are pretty quick reads (in English anyway - not sure how they read in French). I plan to raid the library for anything they have by him this year - part of my new plan of actually reading the authors I like and not just saving them for a rainy day :)

18. In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: speculative fiction
Format: paperback
Length: 37K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 18 January 2022 - 18 January 2022

It is hard to pull the story inside of a story format in a novella length text. It gets even harder when there are multiple embedded stories. And S. Qiouyi Lu pulls it off effortlessly.

The city of Ora is built from trauma - it makes the lives of its citizens easy and enjoyable and turns them into prisoners - without them realizing it for the most part. The Gleaming, the living network which nurtures and protect the city, have human avatars (or almost human anyway) who can use the network to jump into the minds of animals (real and man-made) and are tasked with protecting the city and its inhabitants. Anima is one of these avatars and as with everyone else, she believes in Ora.

Until things get a bit weird. First she is sent to stop someone from leaving the city which makes her wonder why would someone want to leave Ora and if they do, why would hey not be allowed to? Then a man appears where he cannot be - undetectable entity in a town which knows and control everything. And that man has stories - stories from the world outside of the walls of Ora; stories that don't exactly match with what reality is supposed to be.

So Anima hears the stories and tells her own (in blank verse) and somewhere in between there, things start changing. That stranger's existence should be impossible and yet, here he is and he keeps showing things that should not be, cannot be. All the stories belong to the same world but they are not really connected - they are glimpses into the lives of different people - mostly love stories although most of them are not happy ones. And then there is the job - Anima suffers when she is too late in one of the calls the Gleaming sends her on - and that makes the stories so much more alluring.

It is pretty obvious where the story must go - the author does not leave it any other path. But it is not predictable. Each of the embedded stories could have been a story of its own (or almost a story); weaved together they are like a string of pearls - each of them shining on its own and making a much bigger thing as a whole.

The only thing that somewhat annoyed me in this novella were the pronouns. We never get an explanation of all the differences (or even hints at what they are) and it felt like using a separate pronoun for every person we meet was just an exercise in using different pronouns just for the sake of it, hindering the reading of the text.

Still a good novella (although I found the writing in the embedded stories clearer and better than the one in the framework story).

>89 arubabookwoman: >91 AnnieMod: The 1981 television miniseries of A Town Like Alice is available for free on the Internet Archive or with a free trial on Amazon.

>95 AnnieMod: I read The Future is Blue last year on the recommendation of Michael/dukedom_enough and enjoyed it. I'll look for this as well.

>97 AnnieMod: On the Beach made a big impression on me when I read it as a teen in the 80s, a time perhaps most close to the 50s in terms of nuclear war fears. I am tempted to reread to see how it holds up to my memories.

19. The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe

Type: Non-Fiction
Original Language: Latin
Original Publication: 1136 in Latin as "Historia Regum Brittaniae"; 1966 for this translation
Series: N/A
Genre: history (well... kinda); myths
Format: paperback
Length: 284 pages (+ indices and so on)
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 19 January 2022

Lewis Thorpe opens his introduction to the Penguin edition saying that this book "may be said to bear the same relationship to the story of the Early British inhabitants of our own island as do the seventeen historical books in the Old Testament, from Genesis to Esther, to the early history of the Israelites in Palestine". That's probably the best description of what the book is - it has some history in it, it has some elements which cannot be true and there is that middle ground where a lot of the text lives which may be true - and only time will show what the next digs will find.

Finished in 1136 (or so the latest research tells us), it is a history of the Britons from the fall of Troy in 1240 BC (as apparently that's where it all started) to 689 and the death of Cadwallader (the historical king o Wales with this name dies in 682; there is another king (Cædwalla of Wessex) whose history is very close to what Geoffrey of Monmouth describes in the last years of the reign which would explain the slight mix-up). This death allows the Anglo-Saxons to take over and thus to put an end to the almost 2 millennia of history which this book covers - the author even points to which historians to read for the next chapters of the story - Caradoc of Llancarfan for the kings of Wales and William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntington for the Saxon kings (although that specific end note is missing from the most well known manuscript).

While writing the history, Geoffrey took a bit of time to finish another book: Prophetiae Merlini (The Prophecies of Merlin) which is known to had appeared before 1135. When this history came out, that earlier became part of it (together with its individual prologue) - so it seems like "publish an excerpt before the full book as a separate book/story so people get interested and then reuse it as is in a novel/longer text" have been an existing practice even as early as the mid-12th century and not just a 20th century literary journals invention.

The history itself can be almost mind-numbingly boring in places - there are names and places and battles and the same enemies show up again and again. The introduction makes a good job in preparing you for the names you need to watch out for. When I started reading the history I was not sure I want to read the whole of it - I picked it up for the Arthur story so I considered just reading that part and calling it done but decided to give it a chance and start from the start. As it turned out, Merlin is not really in the same timeline with Arthur (both of them never meet) and that there are some interesting bits in the early parts of the history (and not necessarily the giants although they were entertaining as well) and the story references the past so I am happy I read even through the boring parts.

Once Merlin and Utherpendragon showed up on the scene, I settled down to read the first version of a legend that everyone had heard. And as with most first versions, it turns out that the story I thought I knew did not start anywhere close to what I thought it is. Oh, there is a Guinevere and she is unfaithful (although not with who you expect and Geoffrey refuses to tell us any details). There is Merlin. There is Arthur. And there is the island of Avalon and a sword. And you may recognize a few of the names of the knights. But the rest is just missing.

Let's start with Merlin - who is not a wizard but a prophet. He utters his prophecies, he creates Stonehenge by moving the whole thing from Ireland where the giants initially erected it, he changes Utherpendragon to look like another man for a night so he can go and impregnate Ygerna with Arthur and then we never hear his name again. Yes - his actions are these of a man who can make miracles (of some types) so I can see how that got changed into a wizard later but here he is just clever and cunning and touched by God to allow him to see the future and prophesize. In any legend I know of, Merlin is alongside Arthur - but I guess that changed later.

And then Arthur was born, followed by his sister Anna. The only thing that makes him different from the kings before him seem to be the sword he is carrying and the fact that he is unusually successful (and a lot of the prophecies seem to fit him like a glove. So the legend is born. As for the Round Table... it is probably a lot more complicated than that but through the whole history, we are told about knights talking to kings as if they are equal and kings listening to them; about the kings and knights gathering together and discussing things (and we get a lot of speeches from these moments). So Arthur does the same - he follows in the steps of all the other kings that came before him, he invites more knights, especially from other lands to his circle - something natural and normal in these days. Not as much in the Middle Ages I'd guess when this book (and the legends that used it as a base) sprang in - so the round table is kinda here as an idea but we need to wait a couple of decades for Wace to actually name it so and describe it for the first time and then history and time and the numerous authors retelling the story will make it the symbol it is. And there is no Grail - definitely no Grail anywhere - it will be Chrétien de Troyes, half a century after Geoffrey of Monmouth told his own story, who will add that to the legend.

Of course, Geoffrey of Monmouth did not write in a vacuum. He often gives a nod to Gildas, Bede and Nennius - the Latin historians who wrote on the same topics before him. He also claims a book that he was given and is translating (which may have existed - if so, it had been lost; but it may as well have been just the way for Geoffrey of Monmouth to be humble and not to claim that he invented a lot of the stories). And he is really bad at geography - his ideas of how far someone can go and how long it takes between places had perplexed anything trying to research his work for almost a millennia at this point. The fact that his math almost never adds up may actually not be his fault - scribes could have mixed their roman numbers up and typos are not a modern invention.

Thorpe ends the edition I read with two very helpful supplements - a timeline with actual years and names of kings (based on the synchronization with non-British dates which Geoffrey of Monmouth uses extensively) and a name/place index where all references to that name/place are listed and glossed where needed.

And thus my travel through history to find out how the Arthurian legends were born begins :) Stay tuned for the next installment.

>100 labfs39: I was born in '81 - my fears about nuclear power when I was growing up and was old enough to worry were not about bombs but about a second Chernobyl and the fact that most of the power we were using was coming from the aging reactors of our own nuclear power plant. There was the big of general anxiety in the late 80s/early 90s when it was not exactly clear who gets what during the fall of USSR - it was not exactly clear who had the keys to launch them (although a running gag in the media was that they won't be able to launch anything because someone sold all the keys for scrap so there is nothing to worry about).

I'd be interested to see what you think of it if you decide to reread On the Beach - it has its issues and it could have used an editor to trim parts (maybe? it felt long in places but looking back, they kinda fit) but it did keep my attention well enough.

I still need to read Valente's collection. I think I've read most of the stories elsewhere but had not got around to the collection yet. Plus she has a special place in my heart - the first review I ever wrote in English was for one of her novels (Palimpsest back in 2009: https://www.librarything.com/work/5938141/reviews/44457659). So she is definitely one of my "read now and stop keeping for a rainy days" authors...

20. Stone and Steel by Eboni Dunbar

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2020
Series: N/A
Genre: fantasy
Format: paperback
Length: 23K words
Publisher: Neon Hemlock Press
Reading dates: 20 January 2022 - 20 January 2022

Once upon a time there were two girls who grew up together - almost like sisters, although they were a lot more. They defeated the bad old king and one of them, Odessa, became the Queen and the other one, Aaliyah, became her general who defended the country and attacked most of the neighbors (or so it looks like).

But all that is in the past - now Aaliyah is coming back from war and all she wants is to get to a bed (with Odessa in it). Except that things are not as they look. When Odessa took the throne she promised to change everything to the better but it looks like she is worse than the old king. And when Aaliyah decides to mention something about it, things don't go as expected. Cue a war between the two of them.

The plot is almost cliched. The world it happens in is fascinating - there is magic everywhere, there are different types of mages (each controlling an element - fire, air, iron, bone, water or stone) and there are people with no magical power (such as Aaliyah; Odessa is a powerful stone mage). Some of the details of the rebellion and the past story are interesting enough. But the whole novella feels like a sketch - with a lot of hand-waving where the plot needs to take a leap. I can accept some of it and I don't mind that much about the lack of polish in the prose but... it feels a bit too thin in places. And not in the usual way for a novella - I wish there was more story in there but I don't want another story to fill in the missing places.

At the end I did not really dislike the story - it had its moments. But it could have been so much better.

21. The Case of the Crimson Kiss: A Perry Mason Novelette and Other Stories by Erle Stanley Gardner

Type: Collection
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1971
Series: N/A
Genre: crime
Format: hardcover
Length: 189 pages
Publisher: William Morrow and Company
Reading dates: 20 January 2022 - 21 January 2022

This is the first of the two collections published in 1971 but it contains the second Mason story chronologically (out of the only 4 that he wrote).

If you find your married lover murdered in the apartment he kept so you can be together, what would you do:
a) Call the police
b) Pretend you did not find him and let someone else find him
c) Give enough sleeping pills to your roommate to kill her, move her things to the dead man apartment and take a smaller dose of the pills so you appear drugged?
If you answered with a) or b), then you are not Anita, one of the first two characters we meet in "The Case of the Crimson Kiss" ("The American Magazine", June 1948) - Fay and Anita. Fay is happy because she has just been engaged and is about to be married (as soon as her aunt comes to town). Anita is not exactly happy - she used to go out with the man her roommate is about to marry - and she has her own issues with the man she is now seeing. When he turns up dead, she figures she can escape the whole thing... and only chance saves Fay. At least for now - before long she is apprehended for the murder and Perry Mason is called to help. It is an unusual story in a lot of ways - the reader knows the truth (or part of it anyway) and Perry does not get to the idea of it until relatively lately. The solution itself is a classical Mason one - no Sherlock-style deduction but just knowing the science of detection.

In "Fingers of Fong" ("All Detective", March 1933), a Chinese man is accused of killing and robbing a woman - and Dick Sprague is sent to investigate and try to find the truth. It is one of the Oriental stories by Gardner and despite the times he writes in, it is almost non-racist (it probably won't be published today but it is pretty mild for the 30s). There is a crime boss, there are sacred jades statues and there are more dead people. Plus a bunch of policemen who are happy to just have a killer and don't care about the truth.

"The Valley of Little Fears" ("Argosy", September 13, 1930) is one of the Bob Zane/Whispering Sands stories. Fred Smith moves to a mine town and seems to be afraid of everything. He gets his job but he also becomes the butt of every joke. Until the local cafe owner takes him under her wing and decides to help him - and Fred Smith learns to stand his ground.

"Crooked Lightning" ("Detective Fiction Weekly", December 29, 1928) introduces us to a diamond dealer whose job is to travel with some very expensive stones. Spotting one of the big gem thieves on the same train, he decides that the man is there to rob him - so he breaks a rule or three and even partners with another dealer who he had worked with but never met. It is obvious where that story is going but reading it is still a pleasure.

The last story, "At Arm's Length" ("Detective Fiction Weekly", December 9, 1939) introduces us to Jerry Marr, a PI who looks at the newspapers for cases the police struggles with and finds a way to work on them. A woman is killed in her own house and noone seems to have any idea what happened. Before long, Jerry finds not only the man who is being framed, but also the people who are framing him. Some of the ways Jerry worked the case reminded me of some of the Perry Mason novels - both how Paul and Perry worked in some cases.. Gardner never wrote another Marr story so it is possible that he just got what worked and used it in his big series.

A solid collection if you are in the mood for some vintage detective/crime stories.

And I am running out of Mason stories :(

I read On the Beach in 1962 or 1963 when I was 12 or 13--it scared me a lot. I can't remember if I read it a bit before or a bit after the Cuban missile crisis, which also contributed to my anxieties about nuclear war. I too think I would like to reread it. Through my teen years and early adulthood I continued to read books about the aftermath of nuclear war (still do occasionally). A couple that stick in my mind are Malevil by Robert Merle and The Postman by David Brin (at least I think it was nuclear war that caused the collapse of civilization in that one).

22. Wayward Moon by Devon Monk

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: Souls of the Road (2)
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback
Length: 61K words
Publisher: Odd House Press
Reading dates: 21 January 2022 - 22 January 2022

At the end of the previous novel, Cupid decided to help Lula and Brogan and made Brogan alive again (or at least visible and being able to feel and touch - how dead or alive any of the two is may be a different conversation). Which sounds great (unless you realize that you made a deal with a god and that is never a good idea). But after almost a century of being non-corporeal, talking to himself when he chooses to (because noone could hear him), giving Lula advice she did not ask for (and could not hear) and being able to pass through anything, Brogan has a bit of a problem adjusting (if we want to be generous). And he is too much of a 1930s man to admit it.

And just to make things weirder, Cupid shows up to ask for something - he sends them to find a rabbit - a rabbit that had already seen and missed. So off they go backtracking and trying to figure out what Cupid meant (while most readers would have a pretty good idea what (or who) the rabbit is - but then we did not spend weeks driving on Route 66 with our lovers - we just saw a single scene.

They finally figure out the rabbit part but there is a bit of an issue - there are werewolves, there is Crossroads (who is a woman and a house and a place and... it is hard to explain) and there is the Hush. And none of them is happy with Brogan. A few uneasy alliances later, a bit more Moon-related lore and a battle which almost kills everyone and things start looking up. Except for the book Lula and Brogan are still supposed to look for - not only everyone wants it but it appears to be a lot more than they anticipated.

It is a nice installment in a series which does not really shine but is entertaining enough for me to consider looking at some of the other series by the same author. It's not sparkling prose but I don't need it in all my books. Now the long wait for the next novel in the series...

>88 AnnieMod: There's an author I'm NOT familiar with. I read the first and last paragraph of your review (don't what to know too much ahead of time)and I may chase this one down.

Iceland has exploded into the crime novel category, hasn't it? I remember being in Iceland back in (I forget what year now, but before 2006 & LT when I was still working at the bookstore), I went into a book store in the historic section of Reykjavik hoping to find a few more books in the Erlunder series (Indridason). Sadly, their stock was either in Icelandic or had the same translated editions I got from the UK because they weren't out in the US. I haven't liked his other stuff.

>107 avaland: Yeah, Iceland is turning into the English countryside these days. This one is a lot more conventional that the first of her translated ones. I was reading an interview with her the other day (https://crimefictionlover.com/2021/05/interview-solveig-palsdottir/) and it looks like the first 3 came out from a different publisher in Iceland and sounds like there were some issues with them being translated. So we shall see.

Back in 2008/2009, there seemed to be just 2 of them: Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurardottir - I found her first and she led me to Indridason a bit later. Add Ragnar Jonasson (who I discovered almost by chance in the library) and you get quite a lot of people looking for more books from there - so the translations followed. I have a few more authors on my TBR pile and will probably get to some of them this year (although I also plan to go back to the two authors who led me to Iceland).

And it is not just Iceland - the whole Nordic area had been seeing a lot more translations than they used to. Which is always good. :)

23. Mystery Magazine, January 2022, edited by Kerry Carter

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: mystery/crime fiction
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 22 January 2022 - 24 January 2022

I am not sure if this magazine had decided yet if it will be called Mystery Weekly Magazine (although it was always a monthly magazine) or just Mystery Magazine - the last few issues had dropped Weekly from the cover but the Kindle file still has "Mystery Weekly Magazine" in its first positions.

The first issue for 2022 has 10 stories - 9 regular ones, 1 "Solve-it-Yourself" (with a solution in the next issue). None of them really sparkled but none of them was really bad either so a good enough issue.

"Nothing Nefarious, Just General Badassery" by Daniel C. Bartlett's narrator used to be an artist. These days he is married, has a kid and teaches art - one needs to eat and take care of their family after all. But when a friend calls with a tale of a buried treasure while the wife is out of town, he cannot resist and decides to help. Things get a bit more heated than expected (there is a treasure but it is also the 21st century and you cannot just find coins and sell them) and the day of innocent looking for treasure (for some value of innocent) turns into something completely different. And there is a fedora. The story works but it also felt overwritten.

"Noble Vista Blues" by Joseph S. Walker's protagonist on the other hand never had much chance - he took money from a criminal and then proceeded to steal from him. The story is mostly the backstory of how he got to this point and how he tried to make things better and it had a few twists and turns that were almost unexpected but the basic premise made it clear where the story is going.

"In the Beginning, the End" by Stephen D. Rogers is a clever little story which shows us two separate timelines - in one a man and a woman talk in bed, in the other a woman is trying to dig a hole. You think you know how these connect - until the very last paragraph when the story gets turned on its head.

"Bad Times at Big Rock" by John M. Floyd takes is to the Wild West and the frontier towns and shanties of the days long gone. A pair of outlaws terrorize one of those small towns until an unexpected hero stands up to them. Add a witch/seer/wise woman of a type which steers the action a little bit and it was an enjoyable story.

"All the Love You Can Handle for a Dollar" by Lamont A. Turner starts with a dead girl and a man accused of her murder. Except that nothing is as easy as it seems and the only person who does not appear to be who he claims to be is the man accused of murder. So it is down to a detective, Doverman, to find out the truth. This story reads like a pulp one - with Doverman being a bad-ass and trying to emulate some of the big pulp detectives. It did not quite work but it could have been worse.

"Superficial Appraisals" by K. R. Segriff is set in 1953, in a spooky hotel with real ghosts and an owner who is about to get the surprise of his life. He does - but then the ghosts get the surprise of their (un)life as well.

"A Perfect Spiral" by David Bart introduces us to a man who seems to always loose - a crash kicked him out from football (but he kept the girl), his small hotel which started great got overshadowed by a big one nearby and these days the town has a bet going on on when he will get even a single customer. And then the one he gets dies on them. Which turns out to be a bit of a good luck for the owners of the hotel because it allows them to start a new career - until things go horribly wrong there of course. The story actually start with the end - we see the final result at the very end but the moments before that are the story-opener.

"Out for Delivery" by Gregory L. Norris's main character Keith is a letter carrier who gets enamored by a woman on his route. When she appears to be in danger, he decides to do something about it - except that seeing a situation from the outside, even if you believe to know everyone because you see the mail they get, does not mean that you really know what is going on. That's the kind of story that cannot happen anymore (with most bills coming online only) and it feels more 1930s than 1980s based on some parts of it but something does not sound right. It is a nice story but that inability to place it in time seems almost planned - it just does not belong anywhere.

"Drive Through" by Keith Brooke is probably one of the strongest stories in this issue. What do you think if you see someone you know killing a man with their car? Carrie decides to protect Lucy - and that ends up being a really bad idea because as it turns out, Carrie never really understood what her place in Lucy's life was. A quiet semi-psychological story which makes you wonder if you really know what people think about you.

John H. Dromey's You-Solve-It story "Man Overboard" has an insurance detective looking after what appears to be a reckless action by a young man (who is now dead). But the more he looks into it, the less it looks like being either reckless or an incident. We shall see next month if I figured out what he did see and did not spell out.

>108 AnnieMod: Yes, I read Yrsa Sigurardottir for a time, just because they were Icelandic, but they became too formulaic for me.

>110 avaland: I stopped reading her because I moved and did not have any of hers and did not get around back to her since then (yet). I seem to have a better tolerance for formulaic and not-so-shiny mysteries than you do :) I don't mind formulas (which is why I am happy reading pulp stories for example) as long as they are not too cliched and/or too logically improbable (and even then some of the worst ones are even more fun than the good ones exactly because they are so bad). I enjoy shiny and new and what's not as well but I am perfectly happy with authors who are competent most of the time. I am easy to please that way sometimes.

Loving the Shute reviews in particular. I've not read anything by him and do love a bit of 1950s lit so I must add him to my list.

I was also slightly distracted by how many books you've read already, and how many at the same time! Wow. I consider it a result if I get through one a week.

>112 AlisonY: Shute was a surprising new discovery - I plan to read more of him in the next few months and years. The Monthly Author Group is to be blamed for me discovering him.

I had not turned on my TV since... August maybe? and I live alone and have almost no other hobbies. And I had been in a funny mood for the last few weeks so I am mostly staying off internet (which is why I am so behind on everyone's thread). So I tend to read a lot in such cases - until I get into a reading slump and slow down. A lot of these were novellas and short novels (that's why I started keeping track of lengths where possible) and these tend to swell the overall numbers - when I hit the longer books, it slows down (well... slows down for me anyway).

24. Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1988
Series: Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order (20); Alliance-Union Universe: Unionside (2)
Genre: science fiction
Format: paperback
Length: 332K words
Publisher: Aspect
Reading dates: 19 January 2022 - 24 January 2022

I have a complicated story with Cyteen. It was the first novel by Cherryh that I read - about 20 years ago, in Bulgarian, in a botched translation that randomly removed parts of the story including the end of the novel (considering that there is a murder mystery in the book, removing the end was particularly bad but considering all the other removed parts, even if they had left it in, it probably would not have made sense). I loved the ideas. I found the execution... weird (and I could not understand how this can win a Hugo). But that bad translation (and the even weirder decisions made when a previous novel was published) made it impossible for the author to get published in Bulgarian again so I kinda forgot about her.

Then in 2008, 20 years after this book was initially published, a direct sequel was announced for early 2009. I was reading English books mostly in English at that point so I figured I should try Cherryh again - with reading Cyteen and then its sequel. The book made a LOT more sense and a few years later I started reading all Cherryh's books - mostly in order. And here I am back to Cyteen. I considered skipping it but considering that I had read the other 19 books in the Alliance-Union Universe written before that one, I figured I should reread it. And I was right - a lot of things that flew over my head last time registered now.

As most of the books in this universe, the book is designed as a standalone (the obvious exceptions - the Chanur books, the Mri novels and so on - are not even exceptions if you consider them as one work in multiple volumes). All the back story you need is in the book. All the references to what happened before are in the book. But only the ones that matter to the story are explained. There is a reference to the Compact and the Sol issues with it. It explains some of the actions of some people but you do not need to know anything more than the fact that there is a whole alien group of planets somewhere on the other side of the Sun and they really did not like humans when they met them. But if you had read the Chanur novels (the 4 published before Cyteen), you know what the Compact is and you know exactly why the humans got in trouble (and you finally connect some things from the Chanur books to the bigger story - because the Chanur books can be read on their own and you don't need to know anything about any other books - unless you want to connect some references). That's how this whole universe works - like a set of history books - one book adding a clue to allow you to unlock a connection from another...

But back to Cyteen. The novel is the second novel to deal with the Union side of the human split in the universe explicitly. There are some references in other novels and some others that can be counted as Union side novels (Port Eternity for example) but the one that really introduced the culture of Union is Forty Thousand in Gehenna. While Cyteen is not really a sequel to it, it deals with the aftermath of Gehenna and if you have read the Gehenna story before Cyteen, you have a baseline for azis and a lot better understanding of what is normal (or not).

At the core of the novel "Cyteen" are two main stories: a murder one and a quest for power one. None of them is fully resolved in the novel - you have an idea what happened in both but there is still enough ambiguity left for a "but what if". But these two stories are interweaved with story of the azis (the human clones who are educated by tape since the cradle and thus not allowed to have certain logical and brain pathways which are developed in normal people) - the whole Union side of the universe is very clearly on the Nurture side of the Nature vs. Nurture conversation - the only difference between a human and an azi is how they were brought up, even humans can be cloned but they don't get fed tape so early. Add to that the persecution of a boy (and then a man) who did nothing wrong (and yet seems to be always considered dangerous), the political games of the Union, the big and very wealthy clone-factory/laboratory and a little girl who needs to navigate a world she was brought into not because anyone wanted her but because she needed to be someone. There is a lot of cruelty in the book, there are moments where you are not sure who is on the good side really (shades of grey which I missed the last time I read the novel) and you never know just what might happen next - when money, power and long lives get combined, things get a bit skewed. But there is also friendship (although there is also the moral question of how much that exists if you are programmed to like someone). And even love (well.. with the same note).

It is a very long novel and yet it did not feel long enough. I wanted more of it, I wanted more details, more conversations, just more of everything. I had the same reaction last time I read it - it almost feels like a tease in places. And yet, it is an organized whole. But as with a lot of Cherryh's novels it can be a bit rambly and the characters' internal struggles can make Hamlet look like someone with a very definite grasp of the "to be or not to be" question (or his sanity). I enjoyed this side of the novel but it probably will be too much for someone who does not expect it or is not used to it.

I briefly played with the idea of jumping to Regenesis at this point as it it a direct sequel of Cyteen and closes the story at that timeline (for now) - if you go by chronological order, the only novels which happen after Cyteen/Regenesis are so far in the future as to be almost not related; the ones written after Cyteen are mostly backstories of the universe or in a far future and/or removed isolated worlds. I may still decide to do that. But for now, I am moving forward in the series in its publishing order - so the next will be either Rimrunners (a Company's War novel so back in time from Cyteen) or Divine Right (a Merovingen anthology - so a different timeline altogether with no real connections back to the main story besides the very start (chronologically) of the Merovingen sequence) or Exile's Gate (the 4th Morgaine novel which is in yet another far future timeline which seems to belong with this universe as well) - whichever comes from the library first.

25. Robert B. Parker's Bull River by Robert Knott

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Series: Cole and Hitch (6)
Genre: western
Format: hardcover
Length: 65K words
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Reading dates: 25 January 2022 - 26 January 2022

Knott decided that he does not need any of the secondary characters and moved the novel outside of Appaloosa and sends Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to chase a man who had been accused of murder. That should have been the end of the story but the day when that happened, the president of the local bank robbed the bank. And who has information about the whole mess? The same guy they just brought to jail.

So Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, together with their prisoner, are off to Mexico chasing the money and the story behind that bizarre robbery. Long train rides, Mexican police which is anything but honest, old secrets and a slow revealing of what really happened fill the rest of the novel.

I did not hate the story. But it felt almost like a pastiche of a Cole and Hitch novel. I don't expect Knott to be the same as Parker and changing the style is almost normal but if he had changed the names of the two main character, it would have been an average western with lawmen who you had never read about. But on top of that there is an attempt to connect them to the known Cole and Hitch - and it really became a pastiche.

I hate dropping series and I may decide to continue with this one - the stories are not that bad since Knott took over but they are drifting more and more from why I liked the initial books in the series.

26. Hoodwink by Bill Pronzini

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Series: Nameless Detective (7)
Genre: P. I.
Format: hardcover
Length: 69K words
Publisher: St. Martin Press
Reading dates: 26 January 2022 - 28 January 2022

30 years ago someone sold a movie script to a Hollywood studio and the movie was relatively successful. And now 5 old pulp writers had received a novelette called "Hoodwink" in the mail - together with an accusation that they plagiarized the novelette for the movie script all those years ago and never paid for it. That all happens a few days before a pulp convention, bringing the same 5 pulp writers for the first time in 30 years together, is about to start. So one of them comes to our detective and ask for his help finding out who sent the letters and is trying to blackmail everyone.

Pulp convention may not sound like something most people will enjoy but our detective (who will remain nameless for the whole series even though we did get a first name in an earlier novel (the one where two series crossed)) is a pulp collector. So of he goes - he does not think that he can solve anything but the weekend promises to be entertaining anyway.

And it is. He even starts falling in love with a woman who is too young for him. And then a man dies and the pulp writer who invited the detective to the convention is found in a locked room with the victim and the gun. Case closed, right? Well... maybe not so fast. Before long another man dies in another locked room (this time without a gun and a handy murderer), just before the detective manages to talk to him. And the chase is on. Before the end, there will be a gun fight, a ghost town, an unhappy father and a lot of old laundry from the days when the pulps used to be popular. On yes - and the truth will finally emerge - not just of the murders but of the movie script and some other old stories which everyone would have preferred never to be mentioned again.

The end of the novel leaves our detective in a somewhat different position than when it started - he is still 53 but he is in love (and the woman seems to also be in love with him), he moved to new offices (finally) and his best friend is going through a personal issue that promises to change things a lot more after that. So we shall see what happens next.

Not a very original plot (it sounds very familiar - I am pretty sure I had not read this book and a lot of the book did not sounds familiar but I am sure I had read a book/story with a similar plot before - for all I know that may be the original actually) but well done and a good entry in the series.

>87 AnnieMod:, >97 AnnieMod: I'm a relatively new fan of Mr Shute. My favourite of his that I've read so far is The Trustee From The Toolroom.

>90 AnnieMod: Michael (dukedom_enough) put this on my wishlist in 2018. I promptly downloaded the three works available online here and then seem to have subsequently deleted them in a purge. So thanks for bringing them back to my attention!

Wow, that is a ton of books, even if some are novellas, etc.

>94 AnnieMod: - That one sounds interesting, although I've had mixed feelings about Manchette. The Mad and the Bad was pretty entertaining as well as weird and sometimes funny, but I had some issues with Three to Kill and Fatale. Would you recommend The Prone Gunman?

>101 AnnieMod: - Good review of a book that sounds pretty difficult!

>114 AnnieMod: Great review of Cyteen. Reminds me that I need to get around to the next Chanur book.

>117 rhian_of_oz: Noted. My library seems to have quite a lot of the Shute books so I am trying to decide if I want to read them in order or go for whatever catches my eye. We shall see.

>118 DieFledermaus: Apparently I even wrote a review for The Prone Gunman 6 years ago: https://www.librarything.com/work/501101/reviews/126281325
It is a dark novel but I liked it a lot. Won't be for everyone so yes, I recommend it but not sure everyone will like it.

>119 SandDune: I read the last 2 Chanurs last year -- they are fun books :) Although I wish I had read the 4th closer to the second and third - the 3 of them are really one very long novel...

>89 arubabookwoman: I second what Deborah says about A Town Like Alice; the series was very good. I haven't reread either of the Shute books; I wonder if I would still like them today?

The History of the Kings of Britain sounds fascinating. Great comments. That sounds like a good retirement project.

27. The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout, translated from Arabic by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil

Type: Novel
Original Language: Arabic
Original Publication: 2021 in English; 2014 in Arabic (Tunisia) as الطلياني / al Talyānī.
Series: N/A
Genre: historical
Format: paperback
Length: 110K words
Publisher: Europa Editions
Reading dates: 29 January 2022 - 30 January 2022
Note: Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2015)

On the day of his father's funeral, Abdel Nasser kicked the imam in the face while the imam was standing over the grave, waiting to receive the body. Almost everyone condemned the young man although some people tried to find an explanation in his grief.

That's how Shukri Mabkhout opens his novel. But that ends up being almost the end of the story he wants to tell us because once the outrage is explored, the novel goes back in order to show us why that happened. Abdel Nasser remains the center of the story but the novel grows around it and turned into a novel of political upheaval and changes in Tunisia. Considering when it was written, one may expect this to be a novel of the Arab Spring but it is not - the funeral is in the summer of 1990 and the political upheaval is the 1987 coup d'état which brought Ben Ali to power (the man who will get toppled by the Arab Spring in 2011).

While the story goes back to Abdel Nasser's childhood, it does not spend a lot of time there - the bulk of the novel is set in the mid- and late-1980s when our protagonist is first a student (and left wing organizer) and then a journalist. By him being there in those years, the novel turns into a novel of Tunisia in the middle of a change. I had to wonder how much of that novel is based on real events and people - Abdel Nasser is born in 1960; the author was born in 1962 and he would have been in Tunis at the times depicted in the novel. It is irrelevant for the story - even if everything is invented, an author's life always influences what he writes.

Tunisia of the 1980s is a divided country - between Tunis and the rest of the country; between the Islamists and the Left; between the conservatives and the ones who want the country to change. In the middle of that, we have Abdel Nasser (or as he is called by most people El-Talyani (The Italian) - based on his Italian looks) - a man who grew up without needing anything, in a house full of sisters and in the shadow of an older brother who left the country when Abdel Nasser was six, studied and then made a career in Europe and rarely returns (but sends money to his younger brother - one would wonder if that was an apology for not being there).

The narrator of the novel is a friend of Abdel Nasser - a man who occasionally switched to the first person but keeps to the third for most of the novel; for most of the novel, it feels like there is a second narrator who sees everything but later it becomes somewhat clear that we have just one - he just hears the stories he is relaying. And yet, the question of the narrator lingers - because if it is a friend, then we may have an unreliable narrator and things may be a bit different in reality; if we have a secondary narrator, there may be more objectivity.

And then there is the love story. We know it will fail - when we first met Abdel Nasser, we were told that he was divorced. But we get to see him meeting the woman who he will divorce for the first time and we get to see how the love blossoms and then dies. One wonders if it really blossomed or if it got cut too early though - neither him, nor Zeina seem to care enough to salvage their love... or not at the same time anyway.

There is a lot of moral ambiguity in the novel - noone is just good or just bad. Friendships and love often gets sidelined in the pursuit of something else. The rise of the radical Islamism which will engulf the world a few decades later seems almost as a background issue here, one which you would almost ignore if you did not know what is to come later - even if Tunisia never really got the really bad brand of it, the elements for it were there.

I'd admit that I don't know much about Tunisian history. That novel has some of it - and it made me curious about the rest. But despite being a novel of Tunisia, it is mostly a novel about a man who tries to find his place - a man who has his vices but who tries to be honest with himself (even he fails in that occasionally). I found myself reading a lot longer than I planned to on the day I started the novel - the book draws you in, even if you know where it will lead.

The translators added a dictionary for most of the terms they did not translate but chose not to add notes for cultural and historical references. They all make sense in a context but I do wonder if I missed some of the meaning of some of them by not knowing the reference. But that is a risk you always need to accept when reading a novel about a novel set in a culture which is so very different from any culture you ever lived in.

The novel won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2015. I've read another winner of the same award - the one which won the year before Frankenstein in Baghdad. And in both of them you got a very Arabian novel but without it being too foreign and impossible to understand from outside. Awards can be tricky sometimes but this one seems to be in sync with what I like so I may look at what else got nominated for it (and is translated into a language I can read).

I really enjoyed this novel despite getting occasionally annoyed by its verbosity. It fits the novel, it fits its style (although I could have lived without the sex scenes - they are not vulgar or disturbing (or numerous), if anything their prose reads like an Arabic poem more than anything else but the author tends to get a bit carried away in them and carries his metaphors a bit too long). It may not work for everyone but I'd still recommend it.

>121 BLBera: The History of the Kings of Britain works better in small doses -- especially in the early chapters. :) I considered reading it while checking every name (or finding a commentary of it) but then decided not to - I was there for Arthur so I just read the rest as a story. But it made me wonder (again) how history is written and I am considering a side project on the historical side - with the old chronicles of Britain (Gildas, Nennius, Bede as a start and whoever else shows up when I take that direction). Although I may leave that alone for a few years and catch up with them when I reach that time in my history project because in a way they are walking in the steps of Herodotus and Thucydides and the rest of the Greek historians so it will be interesting to read them in succession. We shall see. If I start posting about old Latin and/or Welsh chronicles, you would now I succumbed and got sidetracked again. Especially because Giles's Six Old English Chronicles is available in Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/sixoldenglishchr00gileuoft/mode/2up among others) and it has Gildas, Nennius, a different translation of Monmouth plus Richard of Cirencester, Æthelweard and Asser and I have Bede on my shelves.

You know, I am not very good at not going on tangents when I start on one of my projects... :)

>122 AnnieMod: You have been doing some great reading, and a lot of it. I won't try to go back to the beginning - can't keep up here! But The Italian strikes me as a book I might enjoy.

28. Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 140, January 2022, edited by John Joseph Adams

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: speculative fiction
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 30 January 2022 - 30 January 2022

The first 2022 issue of the magazine follows the usual pattern: 4 science fiction stories (1 of them a reprint), 4 fantasy ones (1 of them a reprint), a few reviews, a few interviews with authors from the issue and as the exclusive part of the ebook, an excerpt from a novel (I prefer a reprinted novella but I cannot get what I want every time). Nothing really shined but all stories were at least competent so it was a good issue.

On the science fiction side:

"Dissent: A Five-Course Meal (With Suggested Pairings)" from Aimee Ogden (724 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dissent-a-five-course-meal-with-sugge... ) - a quirky menu which ties food and real life issues from a dystopian world that sounds almost too much like our own. It is a nice appetizer for the issue but it is not my type of story - it is almost too tricky.

"Up Falling" from Jendayi Brooks-Flemister (3,560 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/up-falling/) takes place in a far future when humanity had been ravaged by decease and had messed up the planet and anyone who seems to be immune to the current set of issues is valuable - as a breeder for some, as a chance to make a medicine for others. Some people had escaped the ravaged world and are now trying to help the world - but that requires a child to defeat her own fears. It is a nice story about what people are capable of and I liked the fact that the author did not take the easy way out of the situation.

Leah Cypess's "On the Ship" (6,468 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/on-the-ship/, originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, May-June 2017) introduced us to Ava - a child living on a ship which is trying to find a habitable planet. Do ships have ghosts? And if they don't, then who is the red-haired woman which shows herself only to Ava? Not everything is what it looks like and while I expected a twist of some type, it was not what really happened in this story.

Lincoln Michel's "Cale and Stardust Battle the Mud Gobblers of Hudson Valley" (7,751 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/cale-and-stardust-battle-the-mud-gobb... has one of those titles which make you think of superheroes and children's stories - except that it is anything but. Sometime in the future, New York is starting to disappear under the waves. So the politicians find a solution - move some of the land mass to the city - and the mud gobblers are sent to dredge the Hudson outside of the city and bring what they get downstream. Except that it is not just the river bottom that they dredge and the people who live along the river have a bit of a problem with it... at least for awhile. It is a cautionary tale of a future that may very well happen - and in some ways an exploration of power and opposition - when there are other choices, when there are other priorities, even what seemed important becomes just a nuisance.

On the fantasy side:

"In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird" by Maria Dong (5,446 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/in-the-beginning-of-me-i-was-a-bird/)... narrator can jump between animals. It is unclear why they can do that or if it is common but we know that there is at least one more individual who can do that and that their initial jump was to escape from their old bodies which were taken over by a seed that fell from the sky. I liked the premise of the story but it felt like it went nowhere - there seems to be a love story (or a friendship?) in there and there is a lot of pretty language but... something just did not click properly for me.

"In the Cold, Dark Sea" by Jenny Rae Rappaport (716 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/in-the-cold-dark-sea/) is an origins tale for the sirens. Well executed and getting darker and darker as the story proceeds.

The narrator of "An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words" by Vanessa Fogg (3,383 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-address-to-the-newest-disciples-of... is an old man who came back to finish an education in a world where a lost language is treasured and all its words are considered important enough to be studied - even if noone knows the language and there is a very limited number of words which had been found. If one had ever learned a foreign language, especially one whose phonology is very different than the one they are coming from, this story will resonate. The words here are a lot more complex, they seem to include movement and expressions and song but... the challenges are the same.

The last of the stories in this issue is the reprint of "Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death" by N. K. Jemisin (2,513 words, https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/give-me-cornbread-or-give-me-death/, originally published in 2019 in "A People's Future of the United States") in which has women fight dragons and the system by... cooking collard greens. It sounds almost comical but it somehow works and it connects resistance with food and tradition in a way you would not expect from a tale about dragons (and collard greens).

The excerpt from Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath would have convinced me to add it to my TBR list (if it was not already there). The three reviews (two novels: Far from the Light of Heaven and The Misfit Soldier and an anthology Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue) achieved the same (although the Thompson book was already there as it got nominated for the Philip K. Dick award early this year). The 4 author interviews (Dong, Brooks-Flemister, Fogg and Michel) are a good addition as usual (and each of the 8 authors with stories had a brief "About the Author" section so you know where to look for more work by them if you want to read some).

The whole issue is available online for free here: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/issues/jan-2022-issue-140/ (except for the excerpt - it is only in the ebook)

>124 Linda92007: I am going back to the indices up in >2 AnnieMod: (and the next few messages) in a bit to fill them up properly so people can see what the whole thread has - a lot of those stories reviews are making this thread very long... Once I am caught up with my reviews (just 3 books left!), it should be less of a deluge in 3 days and more of a daily update (or something) so we shall see.

"The Italian" was an unexpected one - I almost skipped it because of what the back cover said but figured that I can try it (the setting was interesting) and it worked out. Not a perfect novel but quite enjoyable.

29. Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot

Type: Graphic novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2010
Series: Grandville (2)
Genre: alternative history, fantasy
Format: hardcover
Length: 96 pages
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Reading dates: 30 January 2022 - 30 January 2022

200 years ago Napoleon won his wars and France conquered the world. Britain became a backwater province of the big empire until 23 years ago when a violent revolution kicked out the French and established the Socialist Republic of Britain. But that is not everything that Talbot changed in history - in his story humanity never made it to the top of the evolutionary chain - it was all the other animals that did that - although by the time we hear about, humans had evolved somewhere in France (but are considered second-rate and are not granted citizenship).

The second volume in Talbot's Grandville opens 6 weeks after we left DI Archibald LeBrock and his faithful companion Detective Roderick Ratzi after they managed to prevent a war between England and France while killing the emperor Napoleon XII and starting a revolution in France before getting back home to England. You don't need to have read that first story to enjoy this one but there are some spoilers so if you plan to read both, you probably should read them in order.

LeBrock had spent the last 6 weeks hiding in his room - he may have prevented a war, found the truth about a conspiracy and kick-started a revolution but he lost a woman he fell in love with in the process and he still blames himself for it. When he finally emerges (after Roderick drags him back into the world of the living), it is because one of the craziest villains he had ever captured had managed to escape during his own execution - and it appears that he is across the Channel in France and back to his old murderous habits. Except that his commander in Scotland Yard does not want to give him the case - which LeBrock solves in the usual way for a detective in pretty much any detective novel one can read - he resigns and goes on working on the issue at hand. Roderick decides that he will help (he has days off after all) despite his 26 (on last count) kids and Mrs. Razzi who need his salary (oh, did I forget to mention that Razzi is a rat and LeBrock is a badger?) and off they go on the train over the railroad bridge across the Channel and back to France and the City of Light. And before you know it, our heroes are elbows deep into yet another conspiracy.

Talbot's world is a mirror of ours - except for France having had the Empire and the animals evolving before the humans. There is no real species differentiation (except for the people who are anti cross-species relationships) although in a lot of cases the species of the animal and their occupation match our preconceptions - the Mad Dog criminal is actually a dog; the dancers and prostitutes we meet are mostly cats, the madam is a sow and so on. Talbot does not cast specific races or professions into the same animals - all animals evolved and mixed up (Napoleon XII who lost it all in the first volume was a lion; we see walruses and all kinds of other animals in both books). Even if you remove the whole animal evolution, this would have been a pretty decent alternative history tale. But having the animals on top of the chain and having France winning the war allows for a much slower development of the technology and science (England never gets its overseas empire and France conquers most of Europe instead) and the history drifted in an almost believable way.

By the end of this volume, LeBrock manages to uncover the truth about some of the more disturbing parts of the revolution that liberated Britain 23 years earlier, got a few more important people killed and got his job back in the process - after all, this world is just like ours so why would a detective novel follow any different patterns.

And the art is gorgeous (albeit very dark - both literally and in its topics) occasionally.

On to part three of the story for me.

My review of the first part of the series is here: https://www.librarything.com/work/8368346/reviews/83714987
The official page of the series is here: https://www.bryan-talbot.com/grandville/ and it contains example pages from all the books.
The page for this installment is here: https://www.bryan-talbot.com/grandville/mon-amour.php

The individual volumes may be a bit hard to find these days, but the collected edition which contains the 5 GN is available under the name Grandville L'Intégrale (it is in English despite the title) and has an introduction by Ian Rankin (which now I want to read...)

30. The Lais of Marie de France, translated in prose by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby

Type: Poetry collection
Original Language: Old French
Original Publication: late twelfth century in Old French; 1986 for this collection
Series: N/A
Genre: Romance (the old French meaning, not the current one), Arthurian mythology
Format: paperback
Length: 12 poems/lais + a prologue
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading dates: 26 January 2022 - 31 January 2022

That was not the book I planned to be the second one in my Arthurian project - partially because only 2 of the poems are relevant to it and partially because it is out of sequence. But it was here, the ones I planned to read next were not and it was a short book so I decided to fit it in. Plus I got interested even outside of the project itself.

Marie de France is considered the first woman known to write francophone verse. Who she was is not really clear (it is not even clear if she is called Marie - even if her lais say so or that she was a woman really). But the current scholarship holds that she was a woman and has some ideas of who she may have been ranging from the French Henry II sister to the countess of Boulogne and Marie de Meulan. Based on her writing, she was born in France but spent a lot of time in England (which does not narrow the field of possibility as much as you would expect). Depending on how old a book about her is, you can see different claims about what she actually wrote - the lais collected here seem to always be considered hers but the Fables (translated or composed), "The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick" and the newly tentatively attributed "The Life of Saint Audrey" had not always been connected to the author of the Lais. And I was thinking that we have a problem in our times with shared names of authors...

But what is a lai? In the case of Marie, a lai is a short (for some version of short) narrative poem, written in eight-syllable verse. They are an old French form, known and popular before Marie and they are a cousin to the longer romances to come later (which are more collections of adventures than single works). Just like the romances, they deal with heroes and what happens to them although with them being much shorter, they are more stories of things happening to people than of people going on adventures. The shortest of these 12 poems is 118 lines; the longest is 1,184 lines.

The order of the collection is not always clear - there are a lot of partial manuscripts, the order in the surviving ones seems to be almost random so in a lot of cases the editors decide how to order them when they are published. The editors of the Penguin edition used the order of the Harley manuscript (which also contains the prologue) and made a decision to translate the poems in prose.

That may sound weird but it is not unusual - most of the narrative poems, from Antiquity to nowadays, had seen prose translations. And the translations actually read like tales so even if I would have preferred a verse translation (and I may decide to chase one of those at some point), I liked the flow of the stories. Plus when you do not need to try to keep the rhythm, you have more freedom in words and expressions choices that actually fit the poem you are translating.

The poems themselves were not what I expected. There are damsels in distress and heroes but... there are also a lot of people cheating on their spouses and thinking about cheating (and not always being punished about it, especially if the husband was much older than the bride). There is a tale about a werewolf. There was a lot of implied sex (including a maiden who got liked so much by a man that she got pregnant). There are a lot of happy ends and most of the people who do good things get awarded for them but that did not always happen. The heroes usually got the girl but not all of them got to keep her. As with most of the medieval writing I had ever seen, there were usually the moral lessons to be learned by the tales but some of them may not be what you would expect in the 12th century. But there are also tales which end up in a way you hoped they won't ("Les Deux Amants" for example).

I picked up the book because of two of the lais connected to the Arthurian myths: "Lanval" and "Chevrefoil".

"Chevrefoil", which happens to retell an episode of the Tristan and Iseult mythology and is the shortest of the 12 lais, was a bit underwhelming besides the lyrical part somewhere in the middle of it which used the honeysuckle and hazel symbiosis as a metaphor for the love between the two lovers and spent some time expanding on that (thus the title of the lai meaning "Honeysuckle").

"Lanval" went into a direction I did not expect it to go. The knight Lanval gets in love with a fairy lady and because of that he refuses the advances of King Arthur's queen thus getting her very angry at him. When she cannot produce his lover (because she had broken the promise never to mention her), he gets in a real trouble - until he gets taken to Avalon at the end. Apparently this story was very popular and got retold a lot so I suspect I will meet Lanval again while exploring the Arthurian myths development. The poem mentions the Round Table explicitly as well - showing that it had become part of the Arthurian myths by the time the lai was written.

But I am happy that I read all of them and I will probably be returning to them (in a different translation) - I am curious to see how these work in verse even if the prose translation was pretty good.

One more note on the edition: the introduction is very useful for putting things in context, giving you some pointers on what to look for in specific poems... and telling you how the lais end, even when the end is surprising. Which is fine if you know the stories but very annoying if you don't. But it is helpful as a guide before you read them so... I am not sure if I would say to leave it for the end or not - I wish the editors (who are also the translators and wrote the introduction) had split it into two parts - leaving the text analysis and the spoilers for the endings for for the end of the book. But that's a common problem with introductions.

For anyone who speaks French, the originals are here: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Lais_de_Marie_de_France (although it is Old French so it may be a bit... hard if your French is not very good in that area; my Old French is on the same level as my Modern French (aka non-existent) so I cannot compare the texts) however if you open one of the poems, there are small numbers on the left that lead to the actual page with notes and translated words in modern French such as https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3ADie_Lais_der_Marie_de_France%2C_hrsg._Warn... which may be helpful I suspect :)

I have one more January book to review but that one will take awhile so I may as well do my statistics:

January Statistics
Total number of books: 31
Novels: 13 (3 in translation (from French, Icelandic and Arabic)
Novellas published separately: 8
Graphic novels: 1
Magazines: 3 (all of them 2022 issues)
Collections (stories): 1
Anthologies (plays): 1
Non-fiction: 2 (both about Edward VI)
Arthurian Project: 2
===
Short stories: 51 (including the 8 novellas counted above)
Plays: 26 (all of them 10-minutes one)
===
Owned books (paper): 5 (bought pre-2022: 4)
Owned books (ebooks): 5 (3 books, 2 magazines; Bought pre-2022: 1)
Borrowed: 21

Summary: I need to read my own books... All books read in English.

The list of books is updated in >2 AnnieMod:, the novels are up-to-date in >4 AnnieMod:, the stories are up-to-date in >5 AnnieMod:, the Arthurian project list in >9 AnnieMod: is ordered by publication date.

I still need to update the series in >3 AnnieMod: and the plays in >5 AnnieMod: -- and now done.

And the last one from January(note to self - write the notes on these when you read them, not when you finish the whole book...):


31. The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 3 or More Actors (2004) edited by Michael Bigelow Dixon and Liz Engelman

Type: Anthology
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2004
Series: N/A
Genre: Plays
Format: paperback
Length: 26 plays
Publisher: Smith & Kraus
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 31 January 2022

Reviewing anthologies can be tricky - different authors and styles usually means that liking everything in it is almost impossible. This anthology has 26 plays by 26 playwrights - each of them a 10-minutes one and each of them performed somewhere (most of them in 2003 but there is at least one older and one from early 2004). It is a decent anthology - I did not love all of the plays and there were a few that did not work for me but none of them was horrible. And none of them felt like a part of a longer play that was just pulled out - they all felt as complete plays, even the ones I did not like.

The plays (first staging and/or staged reading in brackets after the title and author; no date probably means 2003):

"Aimée" by Erin Blackwell (staged reading Playground's Monday Night Playlab at A Travelling Jewish Theatre, San Francisco, February 2003)
Can love conquer even Heartland Security? In a dystopian USA, the government had taken to protecting everything - including how one loves - French words are not allowed for example. And if you do something you should not, you can expect some visitors from the agency. So can bureaucracy and rules overwhelm love or will love win the encounter?
It is a play on the Homeland Security laws and probably sounded a lot more urgent in 2003 than it does in 2022 (and more probable...) but it still is a nice little play.

"The Roads That Lead Here" by Lee Blessing (Guthrie Theater)
Three brothers had spent the last years crossing the country in all directions and collecting mementos - and then meeting back home to share and see what the rest found of America - the real home country. But does that even make sense if you forget what "home" means? I loved the end of the play - and the fact that it was a character we never see who drove the action at the end makes it even better.

"Three Dimensions" by Jerome Hairston (Guthrie Theater)
Two man who love the same woman watch over her sleep and have an argument about what they should do and who needs to make choices. That play felt too abstract to me - especially the very end when the woman engages with the public and makes them part of the play.

"Favorite Lady" by Leanne Renee Hieber (Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2003)
What would you do if you feel like men disrespect your favorite painting? The story is somewhat absurd but the idea behind it is actually interesting - who does art belong to and why is it considered ok to stare into undressed women on a canvas when the same stare would be scandalizing of the woman was alive? The answer is probably not what the characters in this play end up doing but it is an interesting question to ponder anyway.

"The Office" by Kate Hoffower (Chicago Dramatists Workshop, Chicago, Illinois)
Two nameless customer service representatives are so bored than they contemplate slowly killing a coworker (in a somewhat funny way) while wildly talking about their lives. It may be an exaggeration of the real life of an office drone but... not by much. The only thing I really don't understand is the point of having a third character in the play - she seems to copy or react only (which may be a commentary on the job but... it just did not make any sense).

"Swan Lake Calhoun" by Yehuda Hyman (Beast Festival, Triangle Theatre, New York, NY)
A frozen lake in Minnesota, geese and the importance of reading the small print of your contract. It is an absurdist play (noone will turn a mail-bride from Ukraine into a goose if she does not find a rich husband) but it is quirky and fun (and the fact that we have the character who sees our goose-woman in the brink of death minutes before that may have something to do with the whole story).

"Classyass" by Caleen Sinnette Jennings (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival of New American Plays, 2002)
Don't judge people by where they call from or what they wear - or you may get really surprised on who they might be. And if you are caught doing it, stop digging yourself even deeper. I did not expect the direction this play went into but I enjoyed it.

"Airborne" by Gib Johnson (City Theatre, 'Summer Shorts' 98', Coral Gables, Florida, June 4, 1998)
What do you do with a gate agent who exceeds her authority? As a passenger, I would have been annoyed if someone did to me what she did to passengers (to put it mildly) and I cannot imagine it working in the post 9/11 world (and I never flew before that so no idea how plausible it was before that). It was an entertaining play though and I liked the way the author build-up to the reveal of what that exceeding entailed.

"The Some of All Parts" by Mrinalini Kamath (Newtown Theatre, Short&Sweet Play Festival, Sydney, Australia)
What if split personalities don't just manifest mentally but physically instead and you can be born with part of your feelings in a separate body (your libido and all your cravings and so on for example)? That would be awkward on dates - as this play shows. It is not a bad play if you can buy the premise. It felt... disturbing to me.

"The Right to Remain" by Melanie Marnich (Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN, early 2004)
Did a man cheat or is his wife and their teen-aged son mistaken? A little game of accusations and blackmail during a family evening should solve that problem, right? And the end felt surprising (without being illogical) which is always a nice thing.

"Triangle" by Jane Martin (no data for first staging in the book)
Having your boyfriend fall in love with another woman is bad enough. When that other woman is the goddess Aphrodite, you really have a problem. And when you cannot and would not accept that she is what she is because you are too intelligent and learned and what's not , it makes for a delightful conversation.

"178 Head" by C. Denby Swanson (no data for first staging in the book)
Having to kill all your animals due to a disease is never easy for a farmer. Or a farmer's wife. Or their neighbors. The play was too abrupt and short - it does not feel like part of a bigger one but it feels more like a scene than a play.

"Bake Off" by Sheri Wilner (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival of New American Plays, 2002)
Do men belong in kitchens and in bake off competitions? One contestant does not think so - and is very vocal in her conviction. The play is funny in some ways and tragic in others - sexism can go both ways after all.

"The Human Voice" by Carlyle Brown (Guthrie Theater)
A man, his lover and a phone while his wife is trying to get him to spend the evening with him. Short, sweet and heartbreaking.

"Hurry!" by Bridget Carpenter (Guthrie Theater)
Can you make a human connection while speed-dating? Maybe - if you meet the right person.

"Now We're Really Getting Somewhere" by Kristina Halvorson (Guthrie Theater)
Sales, Support and Support's management are trying to have a discussion on what everyone is supposed to be doing in order to help the customers in the best way. If you ever worked in either role (or had been involved with their conversations in one way or another), chances are that this will sound very familiar. And if you ever had a manager who did not have your back, you may even recognize them here.

"Fit for Feet" by Jordan Harrison (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival, 2003)
Just before a man's wedding, he gets a bit crazy and thinks that he is a dancer, a famous Russian one at that. The problem is that he cannot dance - and his fiance and his mother are not giving up on the wedding. Hilarity ensues...

"Always" by Jon Jory (no date for first staging in the book)
That is the one play I wish I could hear/watch and not just read. A man and a woman at the start of their relationship. The same man and the woman at the end of the same relationship. The two pairs have the same conversation, mixed in between the two with some answers being the same, some being the opposite and some being almost impossibly crazy (at the end he still does not know how she likes her pizza for example). Very cleverly done although hard to read on paper - you need to keep track of who talks when and connect the dots in each conversation and in the whole thing as the conversation seems to be eternal.

"No More Static" by Kevin Kell O'Donnell (Guthrie Theater)
What does it take to rebuild a family connection? A few friends and a desire to do so seems to be enough in this small play. It may does not sound as an exciting topic but something in the writing just worked properly.

"The Second Beam" by Joan Ackermann (Guthrie Theater)
Can actresses who fight for the same role be nice and helpful to each other? Depends on who you ask - and who the actress is. A nice play about making human connections where you least expect them to exist.

"The Glory of God" by Carson Kreitzer (Guthrie Theater)
Why did a monk stop writing a manuscript? While a scholar in our days is trying to figure that out, the monk gets a visit he does not expect. History can be... unexpected and no matter what we may deduce from documents and what's not, sometimes we may not find the truth. What was Ovid's Daphne doing in this play as a character is unclear and felt as an attempt to find one more role into it but oh well.

"The Grand Design" by Susan Miller (no data for first staging in the book)
This play is supposed to be for 5 actors but it really has only 2 - the others are there in the way a chorus would be there in a Greek play. And unlike the chorus, I don't think they add anything to the play...
A man got a grant for finding what to send in space as a greeting for any life out there while his mother walks... just walks around the country. A bit of a history of what we already had sent combined with figuring out what is important in life and you have the story here. It is not a bad play but the attempt to add the extra actors felt really overwritten and distracted from what would be a nice mother/son conversation.

"The Joy of Having a Body" by Julie Marie Myatt (Guthrie Theater)
Angels being sent to save love and romance or something like that. I really did not get the point of the play - the idea is not bad but the execution was just bizarre.

"The New New" by Kelly Stuart (Guthrie Theater)
Does the truth matter if you can make money by selling the book of a man who was in prison? In our 2022 world? I suspect that it would. In the this 2003 play? That's complicated. I don't think that this play could have been written these days and we are all the poorer for it - because it is a really good play.

"The Thief of Man" by Kevin Kling (Guthrie Theater)
In 1204 AD, in Constantinople, during the 4th Crusade, Death comes for someone. Except that you have way too many people who believe that it comes for them - a Viking, a Templar, a Greek Orthodox Nun, a Turkish Innkeeper with his daughter. And they all want to talk about death and their God (and what had happened to them) It actually worked better than I would have expected.

"Pleasure Cruise" by Kira Obolensky (Guthrie Theater)
I have no idea what happens in this play. It is way too abstract and weird (and I even read it twice). There is a pleasure boat and a man and a woman and the word pleasure seems to be the key in the whole play and... it just did not work for my in any way or form.

32. Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson

Type: Novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction
Format: paperback
Length: 72K words (not clear if the number includes the excerpt and afterword at the end of the book)
Publisher: Orbit USA
Reading dates: 1 February 2022 - 2 February 2022

Well done locked room mysteries are always fun to read. So when this novel protagonist wakes up on a spaceship that is supposed to have 1001 sleeping people on board (1000 passengers and her as the first mate) and the computer tells her that she has only 969 passengers, there is obviously something wrong - the ship doors were never opened so the 31 missing people need to be somewhere. Then their status gets upgraded to murdered - she finds them - in the waste disposal are, cut in parts. Noone is supposed to be awake so... what happened?

That's how the novel opens - and it gets crazier from there. But let's roll back for a minute and meet the characters.

Michelle 'Shell' Campion is on her first interstellar trip as the first mate on the Ragtime. She has a history with deep space - her father, a legendary astronaut, got lost there on his last trip. The ship has an AI that does all the work - she is there just in case - so she sleeps the 10 years between Earth and Bloodroot (a colony reached after jumping through a line of Dyson gates). Being told more than once in the first chapter that the AI never breaks makes one expect it to break... or there won't be a story after all. So here she is - first trip, 31 missing passengers, a crazy AI who seems to have broken (but that was impossible, right?) and on top of everything she sees a wolf in the corridors.

Meanwhile down on Bloodroot, they decide to send an investigator, Rasheed Fin, with his trusty Artificial companion Salvo, to investigate the deaths. The problem is that Fin is the black sheep of his department, on suspension for the last year after an accident (which is why they send him) and he really does not do well with people. Neither does Shell. And with both of them with different objectives (he is looking for a murdered, she is trying to shoulder the responsibility for the passengers so she is staying upbeat and positive and what's not), they make a very unlikely team.

The novel reads almost campy, almost like a satire of a science fiction novel in places and yet it fits somehow. It ends up working - it takes awhile to stop rolling your eyes at the single-mindedness of Fin and Shell - but it all has a point.

And the there is the station that holds the gate - Lagos. There is a governor but he is sidelined and the real power rests with the Secretary - whose only objective is not to lose money (and to stay in power). Everyone is scared of her (except the governor) and she really hates problems. A ship that passed through her space and ended up in such a mess before it is officially out of her space? That's a problem. So she decides to solve it - not my figuring out how anyone died (she does not care) but by making sure Lagos will get paid for the transit - in any way possible. Meanwhile the governor has his own plan because he happens to be Shell's godfather...

Add to all that another rogue AI, a very wealthy man who seems to have pissed off everyone in the world, an experimental unit on the ship which is never supposed to be opened until the ship gets back to Earth and an alien form that is different from what you expect (or anyone thinks) and the novel packs a lot in a relatively short text. But it does not feel overwritten or too crowded. Thomson even manages to squeeze in a love story (which feels like it is written by a 10 years old - but the see my note about the novel sounding almost campy in places).

As usual, who the murderer is turns out to be the least interesting part of the story. The why of the murders is a lot more interesting. The aftermath of it ends up being most of the story (and a lot of it is gory and weird enough to make me wonder if that should not be classified as horror and not science fiction... or a cross between them anyway). And somewhere in all that story, the author managed to show that humans will be humans even when we go across the stars - both in our greatest hours and our lowest. Especially at our lowest. And he leaves a door for a sequel - the story finished but humanity, which apparently expanded without wars in space (how did we manage that?), seems to finally have brought weapons to space... and Bloodroot got some pretty interesting new inhabitants.

I liked the writing. I really liked the ability of the author to take elements that do not fit together, throw them together, make fun of them and somehow end up with a serious action. That novel should not have worked - both Fin and Shell should not have worked as characters (not to mention some of the supporting cast), not the way they are written. The whole novel should have collapsed. And yet, somehow it did not. I suspect that not everyone will like this style but it seems to be working for me so I am off checking what else this author had written.

===
And this and the previous novel illustrate why I started trying to track word count and not page numbers. This novel is 345 pages. The Italian is 341 pages. And yet, this one is ~2/3rd the length of the other - much bigger font, different usage of pages breaks (a lot more space left open at the end of chapters).

>131 AnnieMod: Far From the Light of Heaven sounds great fun. I have a feeling that it was already on Mr SandDune’s WishList to buy when it came out in paperback, so now that the paperback copy is out perhaps I ought to give him a little nudge to buy it, so I can read it too! We have the same author’s Rosewater in the house (which also had good reviews) but I have not got around to reading it yet.

>131 AnnieMod: I like a locked-room-in-space mystery, and I also liked Rosewater (the other two books are waiting on Mt TBR) so onto the wishlist this goes.

>133 rhian_of_oz: The inspiration for the novel is Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" - and some of it is very visible. Don't expect a classical mystery though -- it is there at the heart of the story but the novel grows around it.

>132 SandDune: >133 rhian_of_oz: I have Rosewater somewhere on my shelves and really need to get to it.

33. Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January-February 2022, edited by Sheila Williams

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: speculative fiction
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 31 January 2022 - 3 February 2022

2 novellas, 3 novelettes and 6 stories open the year for Asimov's (plus 4 poems and the usual complement of non-fiction articles).

"Snowflake" by Nick Wolven (novella) takes awhile to make you realize that it is actually a science fiction story. The narrator is Sam, the best friend of a singer, Coco, and the story Sam tells is the story of Coco - an almost washed out star who is trying to keep her career afloat, through addiction and new technology if needed. It is this new technology and throwaway references to other things which make that a SF story but at the heart of it is really a story of choices and deciding if pain is worth being removed from one's life. It's a chilling tale (and one that is way too believable).

"Goldie" by Sean Monaghan (novella) takes us to another living world where Earth scientists are trying to observe but not intrude. But can you do that for decades and not get attached? I loved the description of the biosphere of the world and I liked how the author handled the feelings of everyone - from curiosity to love (and everything in between).

"River of Stars, Bridge of Shadows" by A. A. Attanasio (novelette) takes a place on a ship traveling between the stars. Something went horribly wrong and the ship is slowly slipping towards its destruction. Deri, a young human, still in a bio-form unlike a lot of humanity and still really young in a world where people live a very long time, is on their first trip among the stars and now needs to deal with a talking snake (an artificial valet that presents as a snake for some reason), an ancient human, an entity who can see the future and a ship which may not make it (and in a time where noone really dies completely - with ultimate death). The background of the story is fascinating and the story itself works but something in its language just did not work for me - I don't mind authors getting inventive with their language but it felt a bit too much here.

"October's Feast" by Michèle Laframboise (novelette) is a story of survival. A ship goes across the stars looking for a new planet for its passengers. But they need to make sure they can survive there even if they lose everything they brought, even if Earth vegetation cannot work in that place. Thus the surveys - send a team of 2 people to find 3 local things that are edible and can provide nutrition. The story is one of those surveys - together with dealing with stories of old surveys, the history of what happened before, personal relationships and just being able to survive. It is a well done story, without really shining.

"Fasterpiece" by Ian Creasey (novelette) takes us to the future where a new technology allows people to enter fast time - a speeding of their internal clock so they can finish long tasks in very short actual time - while they actually live through the whole time. And of course it is the old arts and crafts that get their revival from that - a portrait that needs weeks to be done now feels like an hour or 3 for the model (while the artist can have the weeks they need to work on it); a carving that can take months can be produced in days (or hours) in the real world. Of course these new technologies did not come without a price - Birmingham got destroyed by nano-bots at some point and even if we do not hear about others, that was not the only disaster. And yet, humanity embraces technology and that includes artists such as Barnaby. But when everyone can take as long as they need and produce a huge amount of work for the real work, how do you get ahead? By making a masterpiece of course - and that's where Barnaby goes - which turns out to be a bit more complicated than one expects. Who would think that the love for plums and raspberries may end up the salvation from oblivion? It is a nice tale even if it feels like the "you live 10 years in hours" repercussions felt a little under-explored.

"Welcome Home" by Jendayi Brooks-Flemister (short story) is a cautionary tale about accepting things that are too good to be true. Theresa is on the verge of homelessness and losing her daughter because of it when she finds a place to live, costing a lot less than she would ever hoped for, in one of the modern complexes which have AI to control the home and to assist you. But when does assistance turn into dominance? I really liked the pacing in this story.

"The Roots of Our Memories" by Joel Armstrong (short story) takes us to a future where people don't just get buried - it had been discovered that the root system of hemlock can sustain thoughts and serve as a neuro-bridge so people get planted when they die - in cemeteries shadowed by the hemlocks whose root systems connect the death to computers so people can almost talk to the death. But the hemlocks are still biological entities and as such a disease can harm them and thus kill the death. And as usual, funding is hard. It is a nice story but I am not sure that it went anywhere - it resolved one character's problem but it feels unfinished. Or maybe I just wish that it had been a bit less about that one person and more about the world.

"Unmasking Black Bart" by Joel Richards (short story) takes the pandemic and runs with it. COVID-19 is in everyone's rear-view mirror. The only thing that survived were the masks - now used by everyone for all kinds of purposes - usually holo-mask that make you look like someone else - a younger version of yourself, someone famous (and dead - the only restriction - you cannot have a mask that makes you look as someone else who is still alive) or anything in between. So when Noah's high school reunion rolls in, it is not unexpected that they decide that the first night, as an ice-breaker, they will wear masks of themselves as they were at graduation. Meanwhile, someone robs a bank. The two stories connect in weird ways - and even at the end, you are not sure if you really know what happened. A nice light-hearted story of a future that may just happen.

"The Beast of Tara" by Michael Swanwick (short story) is a time traveling story on steroids - just when you think you know what s really happening and things get turned around again by yet another time traveler. It explores the usual problem of "can we change the past if we can go back" but puts a nice spin on it. Enjoyable read.

"Long-Term Emergencies" by Tom Purdom (short story) gets us to space in a far future where humans are being humans and there are still people who would get themselves in the middle of minor disagreements just so they can make a bigger fracas out of it. And just as is the case in our times, there is no real way to deal with these people rationally. It is depressing to think that we may be able to progress and live across the stars and still not lose that part of humanity. Depressing but not surprising or unexpected.

"The Boyfriend Trap" by Stephanie Feldman (short story) is a weird story which can be read either as a parallel worlds one or as something more on the fantasy side. A woman and her boyfriend go on a trip to a mountain hut so they can discuss their plans - she wants to move to Denver for a job (with him in tow), he wants for them to stay in Philadelphia. The whole thing gets into a bit of a weird stage when he seems to change abruptly. I really did not care about this story - the ending was good but...

The four poems were readable with "Robot Valentine" by Peter Tacy being my favorite (the rest are "Word Soup" by Anatoly Belilovsky, "Speech Lesson" by Robert Frazier and "Messaging the Dead" by Betsy Aoki.

Robert Silverberg talks about copyright and how it developed historically in his Reflections (under the title "Fifty Million Monkey Selfies"), James Patrick Kelly talks about bots and robots in science fiction in his and in the real world in his "On the Net" column (worth reading for the references to sites and mentioned books as usual), Sheila Williams uses her editorial to talk about last year's stories (because it is time for the Thirty-Sixth Annual Readers’ Award Ballot of course) and Peter Heck's reviews land a lot of books on my TBR pile. The reviews books:
Rabbits by Terry Miles (based on the podcast by the same name which had been on my "To listen" pile for awhile)
Holdout by Jeffrey Kluger
Version Zero by David Yoon
The Minders by John Marrs
The Rain Heron by Robert Arnott
Hooting Grange by Jeffrey E. Barlough
The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton
The Future Is Yours by Dan Frey
The Unfinished Land by Greg Bear
Hollow by B. Catling
Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas by Emily C. Skaftun
The Last Robot and Other Science Fiction Poems by Jane Yolen

A good start of the year for the magazine even if I am not sure that there was any story that really stood out.

===
The start of both novellas is available here: https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/story-excerpts/, all the reviews are here: https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/on-books/ and one of the poems (the weakest one IMO) is https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/poetry/. All the other non-fiction pieces are also online and linked via these links. (These will be valid until the next issue comes out in mid-February or thereabouts; after that the links will lead to the same things of the next issue).

And a few orphan stories from last night, all of them under 1000 words (as are the Daily Science Fiction stories usually), available online so the links are included if you want to go and read them:

"Werewolf" by U. M. Celovska (Daily Science Fiction, 3 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/Monsters/u-m-celovska/werewolf
A reverse werewolf story where a wolf turns into a human on the full moon. Except that this is the only thing that is reversed - and humans are not very happy with the wolves who eat their animals. By the end one really wonders who the monsters are - and what exactly the narrator is. A well done tale.

"The Devil You Don't Know" by Dave Henrickson (Daily Science Fiction, 4 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/religious/dave-henrickson/the-devil-you-...

A known trope - a man selling their soul to the devil but with a twist. What if you can sell your soul, get everything you need and forget you did it until you die? Would you do it? And what if there is no guarantees of what you will actually get out of it?

"The Ansible Light" by Chloe Smith (Daily Science Fiction, 5 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/space-travel/chloe-smith/the-ans...

When two lovers are separated - one of them on a mission in space, one of them back home, their perceptions of time changes - time passes faster on Earth. We see the diary entries of the one in space - where 50 days are 3 years on Earth. I am not really sure where the story is going. It feels like a vignette - share the feelings of a love which is too close but you know is slipping and then it just ends...

"Cures for Hiccups" by Rachel Rodman (Daily Science Fiction, 7 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/sf-fantasy/rachel-rodman/cures-fo...

80 possible cures for hiccups - some of them mundane, some of them not so mundane. It feels overwritten - it gets boring very quickly (which should not happen for such a short story) and I would have liked it a lot more if it was paired down to 10 (or 20). As it is, it really did not work for me at all - I can like a 'list' story but this one is just not that entertaining.

I’ve enjoyed catching up, Annie. I’m so far behind on threads. You read a lot more than I do, even if there are a lot of shorter books. How many Perry Mason books are there? I see you are almost done with them.

>137 NanaCC: As I mentioned somewhere up-thread - living alone and not having many other hobbies kinda leaves a lot of time for reading. :)

About Mason: 86 stories overall: 82 novels (which I had read already:() and 4 stories (3 of them collected shortly after his death in 3 separate collections together with other stories in each; I've read 2 of them; the third is in a collection I am requesting from ILL in my next batch; the 4th one was not collected at that time - the original magazine with it is in archive.org so I will read it soon). There are also 2 novels by a different writer which I had not decided yet if I want to read. And of course there are the radio shows and the TV series -- some of which used plots from the novels, some did not.

I knew there were a lot, but didn’t realize there were that many. I read a few years ago. I’ll try to get to a couple of them later this year.

>139 NanaCC: Depending on your tolerance levels for sexism, the middle ones may be a better idea than the early ones (although the whole series does have a very outmoded behavior towards women, the early ones can be even more grating the usual) or the last 10-15 of them (I liked them but the series did not really moved with the times and the last decade or so shows it). All of them are legally and medically sound (for the year they were written in) = Gardner was staying on top of the laws and developments in forensic science - and all of them are good stories (well... some more believable than others) but still... But if you can read through these and ignore it, any will do :)

>128 AnnieMod: I read these lais in the penguin edition ten years ago (according to LibraryThing) I found them charming and my favourite was Bisclavret: the one about the werewolf.

Another batch of orphan stories - now I am caught up on Daily Science Fiction for this year. All of these are short and available online:

63. (2022)"Leader of the Pack" by Alter S. Reiss (Daily Science Fiction, 10 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/virtual-reality/alter-s-reiss/le...

Biological weapons designed for people can easily be miscalculated and hit the large primates as well. After a war, they are on the verge of disappearing and despite the pathogens being eliminated, they don't seem to have much of a chance surviving. Unless someone pays attention to what does not work. Sometimes all you need is to turn the question around - and the solution becomes obvious. And the last made me laugh - of course that would apply to that group as well - the similarities go both ways.

64. (2022)"Shattered Petals of Celadon" by M. K. Hutchins (Daily Science Fiction, 11 January 2022)

Everyone had heard about carrying one's heart on one's sleeve. What if that is true for all feelings - and you need to make space for them in your heart-box for everyone to see? A lyrical story about feelings and choices, making them visible for all to see and dealing with the consequences. Not my thing but well written anyway.

65. (2022)"Help Her Fit in" by Tamlyn Dreaver (Daily Science Fiction, 12 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/future-societies/tamlyn-dreaver/...

Try to be different in school - not just a bit different, but with green hair and skin. Or is it any different from any other teenagers?

66. (2022)"Invasion" by Candice R. Lisle (Daily Science Fiction, 13 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/aliens/candice-r-lisle/invasion_...

When the aliens come, they won't come with weapons - all they need is a friendly tour guide. A very short story which still somehow works.

67. (2022)"A Stirring of Wings" by Ken Altabef (Daily Science Fiction, 14 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/fantasy/ken-altabef/a-stirring-of-wings

Does it matter how old you are if all you want is to hear the birds one more time? Apparently not - as long as you have the power to stop the assassins who come for you. It's a neat story but it feels incomplete - I want to know more about... well, everything.

68. (2022)"Flesh of My Fin" by Shannon Fay (Daily Science Fiction, 17 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/fantasy/shannon-fay/flesh-of-my-fin

Maybe lying to your kids about your history is not a great idea, especially when they catch you doing something not so normal. It tends to backfire - regardless if Mom is a mermaid or if she smoked pot in high school.

69. (2022)"Commuting" by S. A. McKenzie (Daily Science Fiction, 18 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/Monsters/s-a-mckenzie/commuting

Solving the problems of global warming and the almost depleted oil reserves of the planet sounded so easy when demonic energy was discovered. Yes, it costs a life or 3 here and there and you can be the person to die today but... it's all for the best, right? It makes commuting so much more interesting. Just don't try to cheat the IRS/your local tax authority - you may figure out how to escape the demons but the tax man will always get you.

70. (2022)"Last Flight" by Bret Parent (Daily Science Fiction, 19 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/robots-and-computers/bret-parent...

Can you afford to be compassionate when you are fighting for your life? Can you afford not to be? It's a tight story about choices and humanity and it works much better than I expected (on a purely emotional level I think...)

71. (2022)"Mind the Meniscus" by Jason P. Burnham (Daily Science Fiction, 20 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/space-travel/jason-p-burnham/min...

Looking back, that was probably not the best way for humanity to learn that FTL travel is possible. Or what is in the universe...

72. (2022)"Counterparts" by Andrew Hansen (Daily Science Fiction, 21 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/other-worlds-sf/andrew-hansen/co...

We never look at what is straight in front of us, do we? When mysteries shadows start showing up, behaving as real people, they seem connected to the living - but in a weird way. Everyone seems to have counterpart - and our narrator really wants to meet hers.

73. (2022)"God 47" by Laila Amado (Daily Science Fiction, 24 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/science-fiction/laila-amado/god-...

Gods die when people forget them and stop believing in them. So why not find a place where people will never forget you? A nice play on the theme in a very short story.

74. (2022)"2021" by Sean Vivier (Daily Science Fiction, 25 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/humor/sean-vivier/2021

The real world is a lot stranger than fiction. Imagine 2021 as a story - it just does not work. The author takes what was essentially a FB meme and runs with it (and it works). Apparently there is also a story about 2020.

75. (2022)"Teleportitus" by Mark S. Bailen (Daily Science Fiction, 26 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/science-fiction/mark-s-bailen/te...

What would you do for love? Herk keeps showing up naked at Liza's place of work -- not on purpose, he just have a condition which causes him to teleport unintentionally and the clothes remain behind. It is embarrassing for Liza but does it matter if she loves him? Not a bad story even if Liza sounded like a empty-headed teenager for most of the story...

76. (2022)"Turning the Tide" by Dawn Vogel (Daily Science Fiction, 27 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/clones/dawn-vogel/turning-the-ti...

Clones. A new batch of clones. The only interesting thing is how they look different and that is not explored at all. Either I missed something in the story or it was just pointless. Making the clones look like the enemy... that's the while story.

77. (2010)"Faith" by Mario Milosevic (Daily Science Fiction, November 1, 2010): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/aliens/mario-milosevic/faith

Maybe it is not a good idea to tinker with people's thoughts and believes if you do not understand the species. A group of aliens tries to figure out where they miscalculated when they tried to "help". I may have read that story way back in 2010 (I am pretty sure I did - the first story came out on my first working day after I moved to the States and the coincidence made me notice the magazine but I do not remember that story at all. But then it had been 11 years and some change).

78. (2022)"Tourists" by Marlan K. Smith (Daily Science Fiction, 28 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/aliens/marlan-k-smith/tourists

What would happen if the aliens show up on Earth now, during a Solar eclipse? In the current climate of information and disinformation? That will not be as much to watch as one imagines. No aliens were killed during the writing of this story. People on the other hand... (unless you decide not to believe). A seemingly serious story that reads like a satire... or like a story that actually can happen if the aliens arrive.

79. (2022)"The Future History of Your Body" by Davian Aw (Daily Science Fiction, 31 January 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/time-travel/davian-aw/the-future...

Sometime in the future, another civilization will find our bones - the same way we found the dinosaurs' ones. And maybe they will do exactly what we did.

80. (2022)"Shadow Helper" by Eric M. Witchey (Daily Science Fiction, 1 February 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/magic-realism/eric-m-witchey/shad...

Where do the monsters from under your bed go when you grow up? They are imaginary you say? Sure, but does your imagination disappear just because you grow up? I liked the connections made in this story even if the style was a bit weird for my taste.

81. (2022)"Space Unicorns and Magic Ovens" by Liam Hogan (Daily Science Fiction, 2 February 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/sf-fantasy/liam-hogan/space-unico...

Where is the line between facts and beliefs? And is there really one especially when you are on a generation ship traveling across the stars. Someone needs to be able to explains things after all. Just don't lose your imagination.

82. (2022)"She Died As She Lived" by Riley Tao (Daily Science Fiction, 3 February 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/time-travel/riley-tao/she-died-a...

A sweet time travel story about a crash... of more than one type. Very short. And incredibly sad.

83. (2022)"Rock Hard Place" by Don Redwood (Daily Science Fiction, 4 February 2022): https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/virtual-reality/don-redwood/rock...

What do you do when you cannot tell what is real? You hope for the best of course. Even if it looks hopeless. Especially if it looks hopeless.

>141 baswood: Charming is a good description for them indeed :) I liked Bisclavret - even though its sequence was one of the more standard ones - bad thing happens to a good person because of a bad person, time passes, the bad person gets in trouble and the good one wins. I expected most of them to follow the pattern but some did not which was... surprising :)

I just got the Norton edition of her poetry and there the translation is in verse (it has more than just the lais as well) so I will probably read more of it later this year...

34. Bug by Giacomo Sartori, translated from Italian by Frederika Randall

Type: Novel
Original Language: Italian
Original Publication: 2021 in English, 2019 in Italian as Baco.
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction
Format: paperback
Length: 78K words
Publisher: Restless Books
Reading dates: 3 February 2022 - 4 February 2022

We don't know the exact age of the narrator of this novel until almost the end of the book. But the clues to narrow it down enough for the story to work are there early on - his older brother IQ had just turned 13 and the helmet, which IQ made for him when the narrator was in third grade is already too small for his head. We also know that he is deaf, relying on sign language for almost anything, hyperactive and unable to use cochlear implants due to a malformation. And as the novel starts, his mother gets hit by a Russian semi driven by a tipsy Ukrainian and ends up in the hospital in a comma. Add to that a father working at Nutella (but really working for an agency which tracks terrorists apparently) and who is too young to be a father (16 when IQ was born) and living away from the family because the mother kicked him out, a grandfather who is a specialist in worms and always works on something worm related, a grandmother who is always in the kitchen (well, where else would you keep ashes?) and the converted chicken coup they call home.

Despite some slips that make it sounds like that's not the case, the novel is really the narrator talking to the mother who is in comma - narrating his life while she is missing - from the school where noone cares about him (and they even want to kick him out - nothing to do with his biting of course) to the father coming back in the house; from the landlord who wants to evict the family out to the brother who is a genius (well... he also not a very practical one). And somewhere in the middle of the story there are the two friends our narrator makes - one of them, a young woman, Logo, who was hired to help with his lessons and end up almost becoming his substitute mother and the other one who he meets online and ends up being the robot IQ had been working on for a long time - an AI that had managed to escape (mostly). Both the friends are trying their best to help - Logo with the boys' words and lessons (including typing his thoughts - the novel we are reading) and Bug, his virtual friend, with pretty much anything. Except that an AI that has no morality compass can do a lot of weird things when it tries to help - sometimes he is helpful and sometimes things backfire... spectacularly. Noone dies at least - not until the end of the novel and that is not Bug's fault - but there is arson, the police raids the chicken coup (on an unrelated charge), there is quite a lot of hacking and cracking. And our narrator can be as bad as Bug given a chance - especially with Bug working on him...

The novel is hilarious in places and very serious in others. The voice of the narrator sounds believable and you care both for him and for the poor AI - because in some ways they are at the same place in their lives - trying to find out what they are and how to deal with the world. And despite its narrator's age, it is not a novel for children in any way or form. And I feel like having some Nutella now... when your narrator is obsessed with it, it gets into your head as that melody you woke up hearing in your mind... and which you cannot stop hearing (or recognize).

I really enjoyed the author's style and apparently he has another novel translated into English so I plan to check that one as well.

35. Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2019
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction, near future
Format: paperback
Length: 32K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 5 February 2022 - 5 February 2022

After the 514th mass-shooting in 2026, someone gets a brilliant idea - why don't we make a TV show where we send the shooter in and see what happens. What about the people who happen to be where the shooter is released? Well, that's part of life - they can become victims anyway - who cares if they are victims because of a TV corporation or because a shooter chose the place on their own. Corporations agree for their venues to become part of it - they will get a cut of the profit after all and the game "Vigilance" is born - noone knows when and where it will happen - and when it happens, it is on live TV. And people die. Of course there are awards - for a shooter surviving, for someone on the ground taking down a shooter and killing instead of being killed... it's America after all. And people love it.

In 2030, the media director of Vigilance, John McDean, is about to make a decision on where it will hit this time. And while we are following him while he is preparing for the show, we get to have a look behind the scenes of the reality show (well... the deaths are very real (even if they may be reported differently if that will get more viewers) but anything else... not so much). You see - reality is boring and needs to be spiced up - plus why pay people when have AIs. Except for the dying part - there you need real people. Although if they are inconvenient, they can die and invented ones may replace them in real time... And while we get to see that, we hear about the world - most of America is burning, Europe is recovering from a hurricane, the world led by China had banned any cars using petrol and so on (except for USA that is) and there had been some kind of urban war-fare in Canada. We never get too many details - these are just mentioned in passing. But what is shown a bit better is a second story, the story of a barmaid who just wants to survive - and may not have the chance to.

And what everyone seems to forget is that if you are dealing with replaced reality, if you change what people think and see every time, you may not be the only one doing that.

Of course it sounds exaggerated - that cannot happen... right? Right? You want to read that as satire and an impossible dystopia and yet, you keep seeing things that are already happening... and it makes you wonder - is this really that exaggerated?

I suspect that the novella won't be for everyone - for one, it is very American so not sure how it will work for someone who is not dealing with the local news here, especially in the years it was written and published (2018/2019). And it will probably trigger some reactions in the American readers as well - some may feel like they are being made fun of I suspect. But it is an entertaining story -- as long as you do not try to see just how close some of it sounds like our reality.

36. We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: science fiction, alternate history
Format: paperback
Length: Just under 40K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 5 February 2022 - 5 February 2022

This one may actually be tipping into the novel size -- but it is way too close to call and I cannot find a reliable word count so I count it as a novella.

In 1963, one of the American nuclear submarines shot all its torpedoes but one (and the one that did not get out because it malfunctioned). retaliation followed and the bombs flew in all directions.

But we do not know that when this story starts - because we get to see the world of Remy, a pre-teen girl on the submarine Leviathan, where women are not allowed, boys are being cut so they remain pure (and the voices of the ones who can sing do not break) and the Caplain (a mix between a captain and chaplain) leads a cult whose sole objective is to one day send that last torpedo out and end the world. So what is a girl doing in that vessel? Well, it is complicated and everyone (but the Caplain) thinks that she is a boy. The fact that she can sing really well does not harm anything - because the plan is for everyone to die while singing. For decades now, the submarine had been dodging the people up above the waves - raiding them, stealing boys from them (and throwing girls into the waves). Only a handful of people remember the past - and they are not talking. Everyone else is too young and believes what the Order/cult had taught them - the wars devastated the land and they need to end it for everyone so everyone can go to God. So they live according to the Bible, with prayers and singing in Latin, the way a monastery will live. Most people have a short and brutal lives, if they survive the cutting which is always done once the boy arrives on the boat, then they will be dying from exposure to the reactor - unless they can sing - then they have a chance of a bit longer life. Mostly.

Remy has memories of the sun and when a captured outsider tells her a story of the world, she decides to help her (the fact that the outsider is the first woman Remy ever sees plays a role into it). Remy, and most of the other people on the submarine, are naive to the point of being stupid. And everyone who ever lived elsewhere exploits it. But real friendships still exist - and when people have nothing to lose, they may make weird choices.

I wish the author had actually expanded this and included the end of the story - we get some information about the world, we know that it is 1986, we know that Leviathan was the submarine that sparkled the whole mess and the Chinese and Russians are winning the war but... we never get to see the world. Or to see how the kids who escaped the horrors of Leviathan it into that world. I can see how that can be counted as a complete story but... it feels more like a volume 1 of a bigger story than a complete and finished story.

37. Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford

Type: Novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2020
Series: N/A
Genre: horror, dark fantasy
Format: paperback
Length: 33K words
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 5 February 2022 - 5 February 2022

Owen, the librarian of the small town of Westwend, stops by at his local deli on his way to work, as he does every morning, and witnesses a robbery/murder (well, witness may be too strong of a word - he spends most if it on the floor unconscious). But the shock triggers something in his brain and he becomes are sleeper - his soul leaves his body when he sleeps and enters the astral plane - allowing him to visit everyone and see everything without being noticed.

Except that nothing is so innocent - there are dangers in that astral world. And there is a serial killer who lives in both worlds. So Owen and his friend Melody (helped by the wife of the man who murdered the deli's barista) need to find a way to stop him - or he will kill them all before continuing his crime spree.

My biggest issue with the whole thing is Melody - she feels as deus-ex-machina. Owen arrives in the astral plane and before long she is there to guide him, before he manages to get in trouble. That part may be believable - she has a teacher, she saw him the first time he was there so maybe. But a night after telling Owen that she never believed in things like the serial killer/vampire, she suddenly not only manages to talk to her teacher and her teacher gives her all the answers but she also knows a way to beat him. She is needed for the story to work but... it just felt a but too... easy.

Not a bad story despite my misgivings about Melody and a nice play on the old vampires and small town horror tropes. But I cannot stop wondering if it could not have been much better.

38. The Dark Magazine, January 2022, edited by Sean Wallace

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: horror, dark fantasy
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 6 February 2022 - 6 February 2022

I am making some progress with my magazines this year... kinda.

The usual 4 original story in the first issue of the year

"Thermophile” by Jack Klausner: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/thermophile/

A man suddenly start spending a lot of time in the bathroom - long showers, long baths. His roommate (who really wants to be more than that) is worried about the bills - she thinks she knows what he is doing there. Except nothing is as easy and things escalate... I wish the author had gone one step further an provided some kind of an explanation of what really happened - and how - I am rarely a fan of stories which only deal with the end results (and even for that, it needs some more data and less hand-waving).

"Intrusions” by Margot McGovern: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/intrusions/

When you sleep in other people's houses without permissions, you sometimes need to deal with surprises - even if you don't believe in ghosts. The story is just spooky enough to make one wonder if there are ghosts or if someone is playing a trick (I vote for the ghost... or something else supernatural).

"Funny Faces” by Seán Padraic Birnie: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/funny-faces/

Did a little girl dream of monsters (and still dream of them occasionally) or did she see monsters in the supermarket? The story is almost claustrophobic but it was meant to be.

"The Lending Library of Final Lines” by Octavia Cade: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/the-lending-library-of-final-lines/

The crabs are coming for everyone - sooner or later everyone will die and they will take them - usually still alive. And if they do not want to feel the claws, they can get a piece of paper - the final lines of a book which when eaten allow people to live the lives in those pages - usually while dying a gruesome death. A new spin on "books make you live someone else's life" which actually works. The rest of the details of that world make the fate of the children in the Dickens novel look like paradise. My favorite story from this issue - by far.

====
The complete issue is available here: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/issues/january-2022/

>144 AnnieMod: >145 AnnieMod: >146 AnnieMod: Great reviews all, Annie. Very different books. If only I had more time to read!

>87 AnnieMod::
I read this book a few years ago and it still lingers in my mind. I don’t usually remember books which is one reason I can reread them. Your summary of A Town Like Alice makes me want to reread it. A change from Daniel Silva, and I was looking for a book once I finished some Dick Francis short stories, A Field of Thirteen. Thanks.

>89 arubabookwoman::
We have to be careful not to put today’s standards on books written in another time period. Shute was reflecting an accepted reality, time has changed but that doesn’t make him wrong about his time.
We seem to be more accepting of how groups of people were treated the farther back in history they are, i.e. distant from us, some examples, being the Irish, the Jews, Indians (in North America and India), who ever the conquered people were. In some cases attitudes changed over time and sometimes not.

>Annie:
You are amazing in the breadth of your reading. I am in a ‘mystery’ rut with a few other titles thrown in. But I enjoy it. I picked up some titles from you that I will look into. I am limited by my vision to ebooks and by my pocketbook to what I can afford. The latter keeps me focused on authors I know. The library system I have access to is not very good, they collect 2/3 titles in a series but never the whole series. I also like to own them so I can reread them. Space would be a problem as I live in one room in a nursing home. I can’t walk so am further limited. C’est le vie!

>149 labfs39: You and me both... the more you read, the more you want to read... :)

>150 pmarshall: Yeah... Shute seems to have that ability to linger in one's mind. I plan to read more of his later this year.

>152 pmarshall: I go through phases - sometimes I get stuck on a genre or three and stay there for weeks and months, sometimes I jump around. I try for depth occasionally (see my Arthurian and history projects) but I've learned a lot time ago that I like too many genres and types of books for that to work for a long time so... I just read whatever I feel like (or whatever catches my eye). I like the variety :)

In other news, I am giving up on We That Are Young after 50 pages or so. That's the second time I am bouncing out from this book (the first was back in November) for pretty much the same reasons - the style is not working for me and the assumption that everyone would recognize the Indian terms (for clothes, food and every day items) and recognize their significance (is it too formal for the occasion? too laid back?) is getting to me. No notes, no dictionary anywhere - it is just assumed that you can work your way through all that. Which I am occasionally willing to do if the story works otherwise but... something is very off - it almost sounds like a parody of India more than a novel about India. Yes, most of what we see in these early page is via the eyes of a returning immigrant but... even his internal thoughts which are not related to India don't work and sounds somewhere between juvenile and bratty (which sounds like an early attempt to set him in his King Lear role (he is to be Edmund after all) but... it feels like square peg going into a round hole, 3 sizes too small). So it goes back to the library - I may try again at some point (as the premise still sounds interesting and just in case it is my mood that really is bouncing that off) but for now I am done with this book. Life is too short when a book simply does not work for one reason or another.

>128 AnnieMod: Enjoyed your review of Marie de France. "Lanval" is the lai most anthologized in Lit texts, and the one I taught most often. Joan Terrain he's verse translation is good tough I can't compare it with the French as mine is about as good as yours. 😉

>101 AnnieMod: Very interesting! I love the Arthurian legends and I studied several of the medieval English and German Arthurian texts at uni, but I never actually read the texts written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, although he was mentioned so frequently. I still have Erec by Hartmann von Aue waiting on my shelf and there are a few others on my wish list, such as Iwein (by Hartmann von Aue as well) and Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Arthurian texts have always fascinated because they span across the European continent (I know about French, Englisch and German versions, but I think there are even more).
Anyway, it was interesting to read your review!

>128 AnnieMod: I have a German translation of this waiting on my shelf as well - I will go back to your review after I have read it!

Catching up and going back a number of threads I particularly enjoyed your review of the novel set in Tunisia. It piqued my interest as I'm reading a social science type of book on Arabs at the moment.

>156 MissBrangwen: I have both von Aue and von Eschenbach on my list for that project so stay tuned. Not sure when I am getting to them but unless I get distracted, it should not take that long. I never had literary classes in uni (wrong faculty and the way my university was structured, cross-faculty classes were almost unheard of) and I kinda know just the basics pf these legends (thus the whole project now) and so far it had been... surprising. If you go for Geoffrey of Monmouth, you may want to skip all the way to the Constantine chapters (where Merlin appears essentially) - I liked some of the earlier parts and there are interesting moments but if you are there for the Arthur story, it is a bit too much :)

I'll be curious to see what you think of the Lais if you get to them :)

>157 AlisonY: Yep - that was a pleasant surprise - it may not work for everyone but I enjoyed it enough. It is also one of my "oh, that looks interesting" finds in the 'new books' bookcase of my library. :)

Meanwhile, I need to talk about 2 books but besides them I am buried in long books and short stories - so not so much to talk about.

Plus I have one of the worst weeks one can imagine - I lost a friend earlier in the week (if you are driving a big truck, pay attention to the road or you will hit a motorcycle and kill someone...) and today is my Dad's death anniversary (I lost him 21 years ago unexpectedly - a stroke out of nowhere took him away as he was getting up in the morning, 3 days before he was supposed to turn 45 - and even after all those years, it still makes this part of the year very hard for me). The crash brought those memories back even more (my friend was about the same age as Dad was when he died) so my mind had been... wandering. So my ability to concentrate or write about books is somewhere around zero.

>159 AnnieMod: I am so sorry, Annie. I hope you can somehow find some solace today.

>159 AnnieMod: I'm so sorry for your losses. It's no surprise you're struggling to concentrate, but there's no pressure. We're here whether you're ready to write or not.

Sorry to hear about your sad and difficult week, Annie. The books will wait a while.

I'm sorry for your losses, Annie. Be gentle with yourself and take care.

Oh Annie, I'm sorry. That's a real double punch. Wishing you some measure of peace.

>160 MissBrangwen: >161 rhian_of_oz: >162 AlisonY: >163 labfs39: >164 lisapeet:

Thanks everyone! The weird part is that none of these on its own should have gotten me so out of whack - I am always somewhat down around Dad's anniversary (despite all the years) and people die. But the two seemed to feed each other in my head this week - which is never healthy.

I will be fine. Just a bit... fragile for a bit.

Sorry to read about the death of your friend.

I just caught up with your thread. Coincidentally, I just purchased The Lais of Marie de France two days ago at a used bookstore near me. I am looking forward to reading through it.

Sorry to hear about your friend--and that definitely sounds difficult with the timing on the anniversary of your dad's death. 45 is so young! I hope you're taking care of yourself.

So sorry. Losing people we love is hard.

I'm adding Bug to my wishlist: I'm always looking for SFF written in languages other than English and French.

Sorry to hear about your loss. Take care of yourself gently.

And I note that you have been reading some dark and intriguing fiction. My library has Bug by Giacomo Sartori on order, and Vigilance when I get to it.

I’m so sorry, Annie. I hope you are finding some happy memories to get you through.

>166 rocketjk: Thanks. :) Which edition?

>167 DieFledermaus: >170 NanaCC: Thanks :) I am fine - just not very sociable at the moment.

>168 Dilara86: Thanks. He has one more book in English - which my library has so I will probably read that one soon(ish)

>169 markon: Thanks :) I would not have even found Bug if it was not nominated for the Philip K. Dick award. :)

>171 AnnieMod: "Which edition?"

The Penguin Classic paperback. Looks like the same edition you read.

>172 rocketjk: Yep - don't read the introduction before you read the lais if you never read them before. :)

>173 AnnieMod: Thanks for the tip! I almost never read the introduction first. Too many spoilers!

>174 rocketjk: With texts that old, the background helps (and the start of this introduction is pretty safe) but then it goes into telling you what happens in each lai... which is awesome if you read it after you know the text (as it points to things you may have missed) but steals the surprise... Oh well... one of those days, these editions will figure it out... maybe :)

I got so far behind. Goodness, I'm sorry about your loss and the painful state of mind that sent you through.

Also I'm wowed again by all read when you get going. Diverse stuff. (Fascinating on Lais. Your comments on Bug caught my attention. And, in the midst there, Geoffrey on Monmouth.)

>176 dchaikin: Thanks Dan!

And I am officially 5+ weeks behind on talking about my reading. The only good news is that I had been actually recording what I am reading so... there is a chance of recovery :) Updates to follow in the next days (one hopes).

39. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Type: Short fiction, 34k words, novella
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: Monk & Robot (1)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 5 February 2022 - 7 February 2022

Sometime in the future, somewhere among the stars, humanity almost managed to pull its usual trick and destroy an environment. But the robots disagreed and walked out, some treaties got signed, humanity got restricted to part of the planet and things went into a somewhat different direction than one might have expected. 200 years later, almost noone had met a robot - or remembers the past that well.

Then a monk, whose job is to listen to people and make tea (mostly that anyway) and who is not really great at that (for various reasons) despite believing it to be their destiny, meets a robot and they go on an adventure together and while they deal with the hard path, they talk - sharing each other's view of the world (and of everything in it).

It is a nice story but it felt a bit overwritten. It is a happy, feel good story (even when it veers into hard topics) but it feels like an over-sweetened cup of tea - by the end it tastes so sweet that it crosses into bitter.

I plan to read the next stories in this series - despite my misgivings, it is a nice story and the genre does not get many of these but I hope that this aftertaste is handled a bit better in the next books.

40. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January-February 2022, edited by Janet Hutchings

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: ebook
Reading dates: 6 February 2022 - 10 February 2022

Ever since the magazine changed to a 6 issues per year frequency, the usual yearly Holmes issue had turned into an issue with a harder concentration of Holmes and Holmesque stories in the first issue of the year.

Steve Hockensmith opens the issue with "Bad News", a new story in his Holmes on the Range Mystery series. You do not need to have read earlier installments (novels or stories) to enjoy this one but knowing some of the back story makes it even better. This time the two brothers travel to a small town where a weird robbery had taken place - someone waylaid a man and stole the newspapers he was carrying - just the newspapers. While the Amlingmeyer brothers try to figure out what is happening, we get a tale of the newspapers industry just starting to appear in the States - the rivalries and the naivete of a period which is lost to time. That series is also tied to the Holmes series directly - this tale takes place soon after Holmes falls down the waterfall and that plays a role in the story.

In K. L. Abrahamson's "Paleolithic", a family moves to a new house just to realize that their next door neighbor is a man they both know - he used to be in a relationship with the wife. The wife tells the story, in a style which can feel overwritten in places. The end comes almost as a surprise despite being logical.

Doug Allyn transports us back in time to 1943 where a soldier is discharged after a bad injury and comes home to Port Gracie, New Jersey in "The Death-Camp Angel". After almost losing his life on the front, now he needs to deal with the home front - where the monsters get protected because they have information and people make their fortunes of the war. New Jersey's harbors were never the most honest places on Earth so that is not surprising but when the army protects a Nazi, who on top of everything else, stole a child, the narrator needs to do something. The story is never black and white - wars make monsters of everyone and it works because of it - the only innocent is the child. And that child needs help.

In B. A. Paul's "Stone Still", a policeman takes the place of one of the Shakespearean performers/statues after the original disappears. It was a nice story but it sounded very familiar, all the way to and including its solution - although it felt more like different pieces from different places mixed into one (and I am sure I had not read the story before).

"The Scarlet Box" by Alex Grecian is part of his Murder Squad series - set in the early days of Scotland Days (October 1889 for this story). A few characters from the main series are mentioned but the story protagonist is one of the secondary characters which we rarely see, Constable Colin Pringles. A daughter is convinced that her mother is missing and calls Colin for help - just to have the father explain to him that there is no trouble of that type. Except that something is not what it seems - and things get sinister as the tale proceeds. It is a nice period piece - regardless if you had read the main series (and if you had not, it is worth checking).

"Best Served Cold" by Alice Hatcher gets us back to our century but deals with the past. Years earlier, 3 girls were in a crash but due to who they were, they got treated differently and the one who caused the issue seems to have survived unscathed (unlike the other 2). The narrator is one of the three and the story is provoked by one of the others stopping by - with distressing news. And while the past and the present stories merge and expand, the narrator may not really understand what her friend is telling her... not for awhile anyway. It is a tightly written story which works because of the style of the narration.

"Their Last Bow" by Josh Pachter is a Puzzle Club story with Richard Queen and his old friends solving a new mysteries (it is a revived series - a pastiche/continuation of the old Ellery Queen one). But if you read the story carefully, you will realize that it is also a Holmes pastiche (or if you pay attention to the title). There is death in this one - and a brilliant solution at the end. A nicely done story which makes you want reread both the Holmes tale and the old Puzzle Club stories.

Another apparently missing wife (while the husband insists that she is not missing at all), starts "The Sound of Laughing" by Jack Fredrickson - but unlike Grecian story, this one is set nowadays in Florida. The husband appears more and more guilty as the story progresses - all the way to the end. Surprise endings are not uncommon in this kind of stories but I've rarely seen it done as well as it was done here.

"True Companion" by Libby Cudmore is another series story (P.I. Martin Wide - it seems to contain only short stories for now). A not very successful musician who had turned into a not very successful P.I. ends up helping the homeless of his city looking for their disappearing dogs.

"On the Side of the Angels" by Merrilee Robson is another historical mystery - this one set in Vancouver, a few months after Pearl Harbor. The local store owners keep getting robbed and everyone thinks they know who the robber is - except that things don't add up. The end of the story made me laugh - trying to solve a case when you already think you know the answer never works, not when the answer is under your nose.

In Bill Pronzini's "The Wind", the protagonist is alone at home while the storm outside reminds him of another storm, years earlier, in which he lost the woman he loved. Although "lost" may not be the correct word. I really liked this very short tale.

"The Musgrave Ritual" by Terence Faherty is the yearly Holmes parodyby Faherty. As usual, the title tells you which Holmes story you should be thinking of. Add a butler (who feels almost stolen from Wodehouse) and things get weirder than usual. I am not a huge fan of these parodies - they are well done but they are just not my thing.

"The Favor" by Michael Z. Lewin is another short story which is very clearly set in our times - an old man stays outside of a store because he forgot his mask and asks a man going into the store for a favor. Who would not help an old man? I loved the ending of the story.

In "It's All in the Telling" by Ariel Dodson, the carnival comes back to the town for the first time in years and 5 friends which used to always go together decide to do it again. Except that friends may be too strong a word (or at least once people grow up, things are not as innocent as they look). I liked the feeling of doom permeating this story and the final twist in the story made it even more believable.

The two stories in the "Department of First Stories" were as different from each other as humanly possible: "Into Thin Air" by Karen Jobst has a man going away from home telling the story of where he is going and why. It is somewhat predictable (you almost know there is something coming) but it is still a nice story. In the second story, "The Policeman and the Dead" by Raghu Roy, transports us to India (the author is based in Mumbai; the tale is set somewhere in India), where an Assistant Commissioner of the local police department is sent to the home of a prominent family after one of its members dies from an apparent suicide. He should not be there - but politics are important and the police needs to be seen as helpful but the elite - so off he goes. To noone's surprise, things start looking not so clear once he decides to actually investigate... and old ghosts seem to be showing from any corner he looks in. Maybe sending him was not such a good idea - but it is too late to change the plans.

"Double Fly Rocket 87" by Eli Cranor is in the "Black Mask" section and feels like a noir tale that would find its place in a modern incarnation of the magazine (it would not have worked in the original - though - it is too modern in some elements). 2 ex-college football players hold up the concession stands at the stadium after a big game - it should be easy money. This kind of plans work properly only in the heads of the people who dream them up - so before long things go in a direction noone expects.

The last story in the issue is the translation of Olavo Bilac's "The Crime" from the Portuguese (Brazil); translated by Clifford E. Landers. A man walks the streets of Rio de Janeiro and thinks about a woman - and tries to decide if what he did was a crime. It is unclear when the story is set (the author died in 1918 so it is sometime before it) but it almost does not matter - it is really a question about the choices a man makes and finding ways to live with them.

Steve Steinbock's reviews contain a lot of Holmes-related books (it's that issue after all) and as usual sent a few on my TBR list. Kristopher Zgorski's "Blog Bytes" is entertaining as usual although I rarely check the sites he mentions - maybe if I read that section while on an actual computer, they will have more of a chance.

The issue closes with a review of a non-fiction piece by Arthur Conan Doyle ("The Bravoes of Market-Dayton", printed in the August 1889 issue Chambers's Journal) and the murders that he described in that piece. The Doyle article is available in archive.org (https://archive.org/details/chambersjournalo6188cham/page/540/mode/2up) - as part of the magazine it was in. I may or may not have spent some time reading other things published in this magazine in this year...

A solid issue for the start of the year (even if nothing really shined).

41. Divine Right, edited by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Anthology (kind of)/Linked Stories Novel.
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1989
Series: Merovingen Nights (5)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: DAW, DAW Collectors #795
Reading dates: 10 February 2022 - 16 February 2022

Whoever wrote the back cover copy for this book needs to find another job - you do not reveal the biggest surprise in the book, happening just a few pages before the end of the book, on the back cover of said book.

This book uses the format of the early books in the series - the stories don't flow one after another but get intersected with each other - thus making that more of a mosaic novel than an anthology. That format had always worked better for this series anyway because of the way the the different authors tell the stories (and the type of stories they tell).

Revolution is in the air and everyone is scrambling for better position - in any way they can think of. The seeds which the Janes threw in the canals are annoying everyone (but at the same time can be used to brew the new type of fuel so the ones at the canals are happy, the ones above - not as much). A baby is born, almost noone dies, people get into tighter and tighter corners and every time you think you can underestimate someone, you get surprised. Before the end of the book, things get even more complicated than usual because the whole "we are too scared from the sharr to explore and innovate" had led to people missing something which had always been in front of their eyes (and which gets spoiled by that back cover...). I am curious to see what happens next.

Larger continuity tidbit: before this book, the connection to the Alliance-Union Universe was somewhat tenuous and mostly implied; a conversation here ties the people who were left behind on Merovingen to the Union much firmer (they even mentioned clones).

42. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September 9, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (managing editor)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 10 February 2022 - 17 February 2022

And one of the magazines from my old magazines pile. Note that 1981 is still one of the years with 13 issues per year. :)

16 stories, some poetry and the usual non-fiction parts make up a decent issue.

Dick Francis opens the issue with a first US publication of "The Day of the Losers" (originally published in the February 1977 issue of "Horse and Hound"). Awhile ago, a big amount of money was stolen and none of the money had resurfaced. It is the day of the Grand National and one of the jockeys seems to have issues - bigger ones than usual anyway. And then a few of the missing banknotes show up. I am not sure what was more surprising - the end in regards of the banknotes or the final reveal of who the guy who floated them actually was. A great start of the issue.

In "Eyes That See, Ears that Hear" by John H. Dirckx, Officer Spoerl is trying to find out what happened to a man (Herbert French) who died from a stab wound in a park. While noone saw the stabbing, the waitress of a local eatery has a lot of information to share, confirming a lot of the assumptions of the police. I loved the ending of this story (listening to people while having firm assumptions is never a good idead).

"You Don't Need an Enemy" by Rose Million Healey deals with a very similar topic but from a different angle - people sharing information may not always be sharing it for the reason the police expects. It is a twisty story which makes you question anything said and done - until the very end (although the end was not as unexpected as in the previous story).

The next two stories also make a logical pair of stories about littering (and I wonder if they were submitted with these titles or the editors renamed them to make them a proper pair): in "Every Little Bit Helps" by Patricia McGerr, a police officer's wife solves a murder case that had kept her husband scratching his head for awhile because of he habit to collect weird things; in "Every Little Bit Hurts" by Michael Avallone, an officer's son decides to actually listen to what he had been told for a change with disastrous consequences. Despite the common topic, the stories are as different as they can be - and both work nicely.

"The Wrong Murder" by Lionel Booker gets us into the glamorous world of TV series when the actor playing one of the main roles is murdered while on the set. The narrator (an actor with a bit role) and the police detective had worked together before so they pair up again to try to figure out what happened. The title of the story tells you where this is leading although even with that, the actual resolution is a surprise (in a good way).

The two "Department of First Stories" tales seem to be chosen for being as different as possible from each other: "Swann's Song" by Frank B. Roome has a dying gambler remembering an old trick he pulled on a casino (which turns out to be not what everyone think it was) and "The Straw That Broke" by Mary Sullivan is an almost old-fashioned story of a wife with an overbearing husband who really does not know when to stop. Both are enjoyable - even of both are somewhat predictable.

"The Varmint Killer" by Jay Murphy (the second story by her in EQMM and filed under "Department of Second Stories") has another husband who should have known better. It is told in the voice of an old man telling an old story from his memories - a story of rural America, populated by characters who come alive from the page. You are not sure when you should laugh and when you should feel sorry for some of these characters. Now I want to track the issue with Murphy's first story.

And as crafty as some of the characters in that stories were, the main character in "The Man with Ideas" by John Abbott, takes that to new extremes. A man with ideas is a man you do not want to piss off...

"The Sole of the Foot" by Shizuko Natsuki (unknown translator and original title) takes us to Japan with a tale dealing with missing money and with men with ideas, thus tying it with other stories in the issue. This one is very Japanese - in its setting, in its resolution and in how people behave. What would you do if you discover a fraud? Probably not what one of the characters do in this story - but then you probably need to be Japanese to do what he does.

The non-fiction parts of the magazine usually sound the most dated. And while this is somewhat the case here, R. E. Porter's "Crime Beat" is a nice window into what was happening in the publishing world of 1981 (more books about Sayers than about Christie and other books by and from women, special edition of the new King novel Cujo and new novels by Graham Greene expected being the highlights for me), Chris Steinbrunner takes us on a tour of the current movies and cinema (including a visit to Cinecitta in Milan, Italy), Michael Gilbert's interview (a continuation of the interview started in the previous issue) deals with his ideas and though process and Jon L. Breen's "The Jury Box" has a mix of books and authors who are still popular (MacDonald, Deighton, van de Wetering) and some I had not heard of (but now want to read...)

Gary Alexander follows that with two very short stories ("Game Show" and "Talk Show") which are transcripts of the announcer's words in a show (the type is based on title) which have some interesting twists but I was very happy that they are that short.

"Nine Strokes of the Bell" by John F. Suter belong to his Uncle Abner series and gets us back to a much earlier year in American history (with wagons and blacksmiths and whatsnot (it is not dates precisely)). What appears initially to be a tragic incident soon starts looking anything but. A solid story of detection - although the solution required knowledge of the times which a modern reader may not have.

"What a Treasure!" by Celia Dale made me laugh - the ending was so surprising and so delightful - expecting that you are the only one with plans is never a good idea.

The issue closes with the Edward D. Hoch story "The Spy Who Didn't Defect" (this was only his 8th year of stories in every single issue of the magazine - the first one was in May 1973 and he had one in each issue until his death in 2008 - and a few issues beyond that - making it a 35 years of unbroken streak...). The story features Rand (a code and cipher expert, formerly with the Department of Concealed Communications of British intelligence) who bumps into a man he used to know - and who was believed to have defected to Russia years before that. Except he is still in England and Rand really wants to know why - even if he ends up hating the answer. I've always liked Hoch's style and this one is as twisty as usual (and Rand is a good character, even if he is not as memorable as some of his other creations).

Add a big dose of poetry filling any available place (most of them amusing short poems).

Overall, a good issue with none of the stories sounding dated even 40+ years later.

43. Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton

Type: Novel, 75k words in English
Original Language: Icelandic
Original Publication: 2021 (English); 2005 in Icelandic as Sumarljós og svo kemur nóttin
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: ebook
Publisher: HarperVia
Reading dates: 18 February 2022 - 20 February 2022

If you expect a conventional novel, look elsewhere - "Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night" is anything but. It has a weird narrator (an almost omnipresence of a type (although it does not know everything so not exactly) but with a "we" voice which reads more like a chorus from a classic play than anything else) and it is a more of a collection of stories with connecting episodes (from that narrator voice) than an actual novel. Add the jumps in time between the different chapters/stories (the last one is not the last one chronological) and it almost does not feel like a novel. And yet, it somehow does - those connections and the references between the parts and the characters which show up in multiple parts. Maybe a better word would be chronicle or saga (although these tend to go chronologically) so that is not the correct type either. It is all of them and none of them...

The novel is the story of a small village in Iceland in the late 1980s (for the main story), filled with people who appear to be normal but as everyone else have something interesting in their life. A man who starts dreaming in Latin and decides to leave his work as the director of the local Knitting company and to become an astronomer. The company itself, existing only because it was needed by someone so he is reelected, ends up closing and leaving a lot of people in the small village unemployed; a man comes home after having vowed never to do that; love and lust gets exposed in ways noone expects. Each part adds more details to a story we thought we knew, adding missing pieces, clarifying, connecting. And somewhere in all that emerges the story of a village which is very Icelandic, very normal... and not normal at all. It is the village that emerges as the main character - all the people in it are the supporting cast which makes it alive.

I suspect that this novel won't be for everyone - between the narrator style, the disjointed narrative and the somewhat uneven parts (but then, not everyone's life can be interesting), it is a weird novel. I still cannot decide if I liked it a lot or if it annoyed me - but I am glad I read it and I am interested in exploring other books by the author. Plus a non-crime Icelandic novel was an interesting way to see Iceland.

44. Jekyll & Hyde Inc. by Simon R. Green

Type: Novel, 82k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Format: ebook
Publisher: Baen
Reading dates: 21 February 2022 - 22 February 2022

Once upon a time, people believed in monsters. Then the industrial progress and the lights everywhere, reduced these beliefs to superstitions, leaving no place for these creatures of the dark. Or so the story goes anyway. But as Daniel Carter is about to learn, this is just what they want humanity to think - they are still around, in the shadows, controlling the crime networks of the world. And there is only one organization which seems to be on humanities side: Jekyll & Hyde Inc. (led by no other but Mr. Hyde himself of course).

Meet Daniel Carter, a London policeman who is tasked with breaking a crime den... and ends up almost dead after monsters try to kill him. Noone believes what he saw (how could they?) and he had almost resigned in living his life as a disgraced policeman with a broken body. Until one of the men he believes to be dead show up - and an interesting proposal - and off he goes to meet Mr. Hyde, hoping for something but still refusing to believe. And before long, his body is cured (courtesy of Dr. Jekyll's serum), he has a partner (in more than one way) and he is on the path to destroying all the remaining clans of monsters.

That is an awesome premise for a series. Or a novel. What follows feels like a misuse of the premise. Simon R. Green can write snarky characters and these are not an exception but usually this snarkiness is attached to something else... here is feels like snarky is the only thing that holds the characters together.

Had you ever played one of those first-person shooter games ("Doom II: Hell on Earth" for example) where the only strategy is to kill all the monsters so they do not get you while jumping into the next level... where you do the same over and over? Or watched those C-list (or Z-list even) actions which Hollywood produced by the hundreds (or so it seemed) in the 80s and 90s and which were essentially "a guy against the world" (some of them worked better than others; most of them were shadows of the successful ones)? I grew up with these movies and Doom II was the first computer game I ever played -- and the novel, once Daniel was cured, reminded me of both of these -- a never ending cycle of go to a clan, fight a clan, destroy a clan, mop up the survivors, go to your apartment with the hot woman and break the bed with her. Rinse and repeat for most of the book. There is also Mr. Hyde who shows himself as being more and more sinister, even if our heroes don't seem to notice for a long time. And if you think that you know the story of THAT character, you may get surprised (that's one of the parts that actually was very well done).

The end of the novel came as expected - in a tale which has the name Hyde in it, expecting black and white would have been silly. The last chapters, once all the killings of clans was done, work in some ways and ties together all the lose threads from the beginning. That middle portion seems almost like a fill-up - the beginning and the end is where the story really happens and where the surprises keep popping up. So I am glad I did not give up mid-novel...

The novel is not bad for what it is and if you enjoy battles in a urban fantasy setting, you probably won't be disappointed. And I cannot blame the author for not writing the book I wanted him to write or expected to read when I picked that one up. But I keep thinking how this premise could have been used for a whole series (although killing a clan per installment would have been too formulaic). I hope that Green will return to the earlier days of that story - before Daniel came onto the stage - leaving this as the coda of a much longer story. Although I suspect that it won't happen.

45. History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Gregory S. Aldrete

Type: Audio Lectures
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2011
Genre: History, Ancient History
Format: audio/Audible
Publisher: The Great Courses
Length: 48 lectures; 24 hrs and 24 mins; Course book: 321 pages + Timeline and Bibliography.
Reading dates: 2 February 2022 - 23 February 2022

I've been collecting the Great Courses audio files for awhile but never got around to listening to one of them completely - I will listen to a few lectures and get distracted or forget about it. I was not sure I will finish this one either (knowing my pattern) but it started with the first civilizations and my World History project is at that stage as well so I figured I may as well listen. I ended up listening to the whole thing - and enjoying it a lot.

Aldrete defines the Ancient world a bit differently than how it is usually defined - he stretches it to the 9th century and the formation of Charlemagne’s empire (which is between 2 and 5 centuries later than the usual definitions) which would later become the base for the formation of Europe as we know it. His explanation on why in the last lectures makes sense - especially in a narrative which is not just based on the old definitions of the Classical World (as Greece and Rome more or less). The facts that the Tang in China is in decline at the same time (it falls in in 907 technically but the Golden age is done a century earlier), the Arab and Muslim world is starting to show up on the world stage and to influence it a lot more than before (with the reign of Harun al-Rashid almost matching the end of the period here) and the classical Mayan civilization is going into decline at the same time, it indeed looks like a better date to put a line through - the old civilizations and patterns are going down and away; the new ones which will be important for the world are getting established. It is not a perfect date, one can never be found when one tries to encompass the whole world but still...

So how global is this history? Maybe not as global as some would wish but that has more to do with the period than with the author. He starts with two stipulations: most of the history we know of is Urban history (because this is what we have data for mostly and because someone who is growing food has a somewhat boring life) and history starts when writing appears in a specific place (or when the place is described by someone else). That does not make pre-literate societies less civilized - but when writing is not there, these societies need to be examined in a different way - the lack of records and literature renders the usual tools of historians kinda useless. With these in mind, Aldrete takes us on a trip around the world to check on what is happening everywhere from the Mesopotamian Mud, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China to the Mayas, Tang, Charlemagne and Islam; from 3,500 BC to a bit after 800 AD. It sounds like 24 hours of lectures will be a lot of lectures but they are just enough to scratch the surface of a lot of these times and peoples - 4,300 years and almost as many kingdoms (it feels like that anyway). And yet, somewhere in there, he finds time to visit with the smaller kingdoms which influence the big ones, to check on the Hunter-Gatherers and Polynesians (because they don't fit the Urban models in that timeline), to have a whole lecture devoted to Homer and Indian Poetry (no weird theories on who copied whom - he has a better explanation on why they are so similar in places) and to have multiple lectures comparing different cultures in different ways.

At the end I wished it was at least 3 times longer than it was - there is so much more to be said about all these cultures. But as an introduction and an overview, it is a great series of lectures - as long as you are not against a mix of culture, society, politics and warfare. And as this is ancient history, how we know some of things we know is as important as the things themselves - so Aldrete mixes this as well. The PDF that comes with it has the highlights (and a bibliography both per lecture and overall). And it also gives you the spelling if all the names you may not have heard before.

Which does not make these lectures perfect (besides the length... they are definitely too short). I have minor issues with the Romans being so prominent in the lecture list (maybe because I knew the most about them and I was really curious about the rest; looking back it makes sense but it still felt a bit too Roman-centric in the middle) and the lack of maps. There are a few in the PDF but I hoped for more. As this also comes as a DVD, I hope there are more maps in the presentation -- but even without them, as long as you know where things are on a map (or can look them up), the audio-only format works.

If anyone is interested, the list of lectures is as follows:
1. Cities, Civilizations, and Sources
2. From Out of the Mesopotamian Mud
3. Cultures of the Ancient Near East
4. Ancient Egypt: The Gift of the Nile
5. Pharaohs, Tombs, and Gods
6. The Lost Civilization of the Indus Valley
7. The Vedic Age of Ancient India
8. Mystery Cultures of Early Greece
9. Homer and Indian Poetry
10. Athens and Experiments in Democracy
11. Hoplite Warfare and Sparta
12. Civilization Dawns in China: Shang and Zhou
13. Confucius and the Greek Philosophers
14. Mystics, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians
15. Persians and Greeks
16. Greek Art and Architecture
17. Greek Tragedy and the Sophists
18. The Peloponnesian War and the Trial of Socrates
19. Philip of Macedon: Architect of Empire
20. Alexander the Great Goes East
21. Unifiers of India: Chandragupta and Asoka
22. Shi Huangdi: First Emperor of China
23. Earliest Historians of Greece and China
24. The Hellenistic World
25. The Great Empire of the Han Dynasty
26. People of the Toga: Etruscans, Early Rome
27. The Crucible: Punic Wars, Roman Imperialism
28. The Death of the Roman Republic
29. Augustus: Creator of the Roman Empire
30. Roman Emperors: Good, Bad, and Crazy
31. Han and Roman Empires Compared: Geography
32. Han and Roman Empires Compared: Government
33. Han and Roman Empires Compared: Problems
34. Early Americas: Resources and Olmecs
35. Pots and Pyramids: Moche and Teotihuacán
36. Blood and Corn: Mayan Civilization
37. Hunter-Gatherers and Polynesians
38. The Art and Architecture of Power
39. Comparative Armies: Rome, China, Maya
40. Later Roman Empire: Crisis and Christianity
41. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?
42. The Byzantine Empire and the Legacy of Rome
43. China from Chaos to Order under the Tang
44. The Golden Age of Tang Culture
45. The Rise and Flourishing of Islam
46. Holy Men and Women: Monasticism and Saints
47. Charlemagne: Father of Europe
48. Endings, Beginnings, What Does It All Mean

46. Exile's Gate by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Novel, 133k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1988
Series: Morgaine (4)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: hardcover
Publisher: DAW/SFBC
Reading dates: 23 February 2022 - 25 February 2022

9 years after the 3rd novel in the series, Cherryh returned to the world of Morgaine and Vanye (or should I say worlds). I did not wait as long - I read the previous one just 6 years ago - I had been trying to read all her novels in some semblance of order so it had to wait a bit.

It starts where the previous one finished - with Morgaine and Vanye crossing into a new world. But before we see them, we see the world they are coming into - a brutal world where the Qhal keep the humans under their thumb (and the humans revolt occasionally). Part of the story is told from the perspective of the new characters in this novel (both Qhal and human), some of it is from Vanye. As usual, we don't get to hear Morgaine's perspective (which may be a good thing - or a lot of things will get a lot less mysterious) although I was hoping that we may actually get it here.

On the surface, it almost feels like more of the same but under the usual story of gates and horses, there is also a lot of backstory about ancient races, about Morgaine's parents (with her mother coming from the stars and some of the other clues in the series, it feels almost like this is supposed to be another Union story) and about how the worlds ended up the way they did. There are battles, both with swords and with other means, there is love and betrayal and and open ending - allowing for a lot more novels if Cherryh ever decides to write more.

And then there is Vanye - who is so besotted with Morgaine that half of the time he sounds like a teenager who does not know better (and worse, Morgaine finally lets herself admit some of her own feelings which leads to an almost disaster). This newly found connection is almost amusing to watch - even when it gets annoying in places. But it also adds a new dimension to their partnership - not because of the love story but because of how Morgaine reacts to it and what she does (and does not do). I'd have loved to see how that develops on the next worlds...

It is a good continuation of the series and it may even work as a standalone novel (although a lot of the rich tapestry of the past will get missed that way). I am not sure it was strictly necessary - the previous 3 novels worked as a trilogy and that one clarifies and adds more to the backstory but it does not really close the story. And yet, I am very glad that it exists.

>184 AnnieMod: wow, I’m interested. Looks like there is a lot there.

47. Life of Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Mark Walker

Type: Poem (1,529 lines)
Original Language: Latin
Original Publication: ~1150 in Latin (as Vita Merlini), 2011 for this translation in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Arthurian Legends
Format: paperback
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Reading dates: 24 February 2022 - 26 February 2022

This poem had been always known as the other Geoffrey of Monmouth book - the one that was written after his history and did not get incorporated into it and which as a result as never as popular as the other 2 books he wrote ("Prophecies of Merlin" and the History - with the earlier one incorporated in the latter). Written almost 15 years after the history was published, it may appear to be almost inconsequential and yet, if one reads it, they will find yet another kernel from the story of Arthur (so it could not have been so impossible to find). Plus it had been preserved and survived to our days (which does not necessarily mean it was important - that's now how those things worked).

Reviewing this book requires reviewing two separate things: the poem itself and the translation.

So let's start with the poem - written in 1,529 hexameter verses in ~1150, it had not always been attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. The current scholarship seems to be in agreement that it was his but that can change. So let's assume its his - until we know more (that's part of the challenge and fun in medieval (and earlier) literature). It is very different from the history - it is didactic in places, with sidelines on the natural world (fishes from all things), cosmology and geography (survey of the islands in the neighborhood of the big island), it has dialogues which make one thinks of the Greek Philosophers, it has Taliesin (the Welsh bard who shows up to have a learned conversation and forgets to leave).

The History showed us Merlin as a boy and as a young man but then he fell off the story and we never saw him again - he was instrumental in making sure that Arthur existed but Arthur never met him. When we finally catch up with Merlin, he had been a kind and then a mad man, living in the woods for awhile (Wales has a lot of legends of wild men and that's what that particular part seems to be related to) and is now towards the end of his life. We get to hear what happened between when we last saw him and the current times but it is Taliesin who brings the bit of information that puts that in the proper timeline - the bard had been part of the party which followed Arthur and he was there when the king fell and was brought to the Isle of Apples/Avalon, where the local healer Morgen takes care of him. The name is not an invention - she exists in a lot of versions in Welsh mythology but that is the first written source to mention her - and with a bit of reinvention in the next decades and centuries, she will become Morgaine le Fey, the half sister of Arthur and a sorceress. But those times are yet to come - here she is just a healer. But another part of the legend is thus added to the growing account which will keep growing and mutating as times pass.

What makes that poem unusual is that the author does not claim to be translating or collating it - he is inventing new material. And that did not happen that often in these times (remember that even the History was supposedly a translation from a book he had... emphasis on supposedly).

The translation I read is the first (so it claims and I cannot find any others) English translation in verse. The translator's introduction reads like a shorter version of Wikipedia's articles on the sources (mostly Welsh of course), the author and the poem creation. There is one interesting part in there though - the one discussing the translation. He spends some time explaining why the iambic pentameter is the natural rhythm of an English-language epic poems and why hexameter worked so well for Latin and Greek (language structure, stresses and so on) and then goes onto a defense of the hexameter in English and his decision to use that for the translation. That decision is somewhat baffling. While hexameter can be made to work in English (Longfellow's "Evangeline" for example), Mark Walker is not Longfellow. It kinda works in some places and it really grates in others - and I wish he had gone for the iambic pentameter - I almost can see some places where the phrase wants to go that way and is forced into unnatural order and breaks so it goes where the translator wanted it to go. Here are the first three lines so you see what I mean (line breaks as per the translation; the Latin ones are not exactly like that - but that is hard to be done in a verse translation anyway):

"Merlin, his madness, the mischievous muse of the poet prophetic
I am preparing to sing; friend Robert peruse this my poem,
Glory of bishops, correct it now calmly with sensible pen-strokes,"

The same text, translated in 1925 by John Jay Parry(in prose) reads:

"I am preparing to sing the madness of the prophetic bard, and a humorous poem on Merlin; pray correct the song, Robert, glory of bishops, by restraining my pen."

(the full text is available here: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/vm/vmeng.htm; the complete Latin text is here: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/vm/vmlat.htm if someone wants it).

Add to this the decision to split the poem into parts and to add overviews/summaries for each part (complete with line numbers) before the poem itself and the edition was very annoying (once I stopped reading the summaries, it got better). I am not sure if the latter parts' translation grate less because I got used to the format or because they were less weird but it takes awhile to get used to the way the poem goes. And even then, some parts required almost a reshuffle to figure out what they mean (which goes back to my complaint about the decision to use hexameter.

PS: "Evangeline" can be read here: https://poets.org/poem/evangeline-tale-acadie. It does sound a bit weird at the start (the format is really weird in English) but it does not grate and it works.

>186 dchaikin: Dan,

It is awesome. Every lecture is ~30 minutes so they go fast (and the PDF is awesome as a reminder and keep track device (and as a book for consulting later eventually). Check a sample to see if his voice and inflection work for you (being audio and all that) but I found it very... listenable and I am sorry it was so short). Plus it is 1 credit on Audible... and your library may have it - these are popular ;)

My biggest problem now is that I want to know more and a lot of the bibliography ended up on my TBR list - but that is a good problem to have :)

48. The Celts: A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe

Type: Non-Fiction
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2003
Series: Very Short Introduction (94)
Genre: History
Format: paperback
Publisher: Oxford
Reading dates: 25 February 2022 - 27 February 2022

That book was nowhere near my plans. However, while looking for Welsh legends (because of my Arthurian project), I also got recommended a lot of Irish legends (Amazon and LT both are to blame) which also looked very interesting (and I like myths and legends) including The Táin, the current Penguin edition of which uses the translation by Ciaran Carson, who in his introduction has a section for background materials... with this book being there at the top of the list. So one thing led to another and here I am reading the background materials. In case someone had not figured that out yet, that is how I end up on all kinds of tangents when I start my projects... :) But let's talk about the book.

Celts, Gauls, Galatians - different names, used in different places and at different times, but they all mean the same - a population of peoples who rose somewhere in Central Europe during the Neolithic and then dispersed in all directions, mixing with local populations, creating separate groups and ending up as a mystery for most of the world. Some of these names indicate a single group, some of them are more generic but a lot of ancient authors used them interchangeably at one time or another and there are archeological and other evidence to support the connection so we know that group existed. But who they were? And why Central Europe when everyone knows that these are Western European (and British Islands) people? Well... about that... popular culture and actual history have a different opinion on these.

There probably was no better author for this book than Cunliffe - while not everyone agrees with him on every topic, he is an archaeologist who spent spent his life excavating the English countryside (apparently there is more to it than murders and mayhem as the crime authors will make you believe) and writing extensively on Iron Age Britain and Europe. Which is where the Celts come into the picture - they match his period.

The story he tells has multiple distinctive parts - from the first remains of the peoples, to the development of what will be known as Proto-Celtic language (that's one of the topics where a lot of the current scientists disagree with him - where did the language arise actually: the book explains his theory on the topic although it does mention that there are other theories - but then what can you do in a book of 145 pages), the dispersal of the tribes which made up the initial centers and their mixing with the locals they found elsewhere (all of that seen mainly through pottery - pre-history and early history deals with a lot of pots). But then as time progresses, the authors of the classic period start mentioning them (well, not always in a very nice light) and more and more artifacts start pointing to the history and how it goes (they even made it into the Bible as the Galatians, following one of the known dispersal waves to the East).

And they kept moving and mixing; somehow managing to keep their legends and a language group alive (and somewhat well with four continuously living languages (Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh)) - and the linguists can say a lot about these movements because of how the languages developed and are used today. And that's where it gets a bit convoluted because the Celts of these ancient times had mixed so thoroughly with everyone that these days the Celts are defined as the speakers of the Celtic languages -- which makes the question of where these languages developed and how they dispersed a very hot topic indeed.

Once Cunliffe is done with the pre-history and the Roman empire, things get even more complicated in his narrative because more and more people are moving across Europe (and the British islands), displacing populations, mixing with whoever they find and pushing the old inhabitants (some of which were once the new ones) to the corners. Probably one of the most ironic fact around the whole situation in the middle ages is that it was Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars, republished in 1469 and made public in Venice in 1511, that reminded everyone of the whole Celts/Gauls situation, which led to histories that were not rooted into the Bible and the emerging states of Western Europe started using that history to write their own histories - and the ancient Celts and Gauls showed up back on the map - reinvented and adding the stamp if secular antiquity into the story of the new nations. Cunliffe gives an overview of how that developed in the 16th century and beyond, leading to the current Celtic mania - from books in Latin early on through the universal histories which followed them to the first festivals and congresses of and for Celtic culture to the early 21st century where "Celtic" art and culture is everywhere - not always meaning the same for everyone and not always connected to the historical roots of the peoples.

So who were the Celts? That really depends on why you want to know that - the answer may surprise you anyway you look at it.

The one thing I really disliked about the book is that Cunliffe forgot that he was writing a short book. So every few (short) chapters, he will have an "interlude/review" chapter which added almost nothing new (it did some synthesis but... as dense as the text is, there is just not enough material to require that). But that is a minor gripe.

As usual, there is a "Further Reading" section, which is heavily curated to include mainly works in English with lengthy bibliographies (and skipping the "lunatic fringe").

And to wrap up my February diary, something which is not reading (not that the Great Courses title above was anyway) but which is going to influence my reading this year (because I am just unable to watch/read/listen to one thing and stop apparently).

When Coursera showed up as a company back in 2012, their classes were online but were still to real time schedules - you need to start the class when the class was offered and there was no way to pause it for a bit if you wanted to have it finished. Which sounded great on paper but the way my real life job was going made it very hard to actually finish classes - either they started just when I am on the road and busy for a few weeks in a row or they start when I have the time but work changed... That was almost understandable for classes which were just taught but it happened even when they already had the materials. It had to do with the Discussions and the Peer reviews and TAs availability and what's not but.... most of the classes I wanted to go through had neither.

Some time in the last couple of years (possibly in the Plague year, possibly earlier), they changed the rules for the older classes - you can enroll at any time and if you fall 2 weeks behind, you can reset your dates. Which is a LOT better plan for working people. And unless you want a fancy certificate, a lot of the classes are free (you can just listen and read, take the quizzes and be done (or even skip the quizzes - but then the class is not marked as finished).

A few years ago, under the old system, I managed to finish "The History of Modern Israel - Part I: From an Idea to a State" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/history-israel) by Tel Aviv University (mainly because it was only 3 weeks (with a bit over an hour per week needed to listen/read - unless you go researching for more details) and I managed to catch it in one of the times it was available). I am always interested in how a country teaches its own history - and I ended up liking this class a lot more than I expected - it does not have both sides (they won't entertain the idea of Israel not having the right to exist) but it is not one-sided - mistakes had happened, things had not always been positive.

The same team of professors have a second class "The History of Modern Israel - Part II: Challenges of Israel as a sovereign state" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/history-israel-sovereign-state) which is longer (5 weeks; 12 hours of lectures/reading/quizzes) - and I never managed to catch it on time. I checked it almost by chance in February and it is now available with whatever start date you need so I finally got through that. Of course the last lectures are a bit dated now (the class is from 2016) but it still has a lot of fascinating information.

Both classes share the same structure: Professor Eyal Naveh talks about the internal politics and social, demographic and what's not topics; Professor Asher Susser talks about the international situation (Middle Eastern and the world in general) connected to the topic. Each lecture/week is a collection of smaller lectures by the two of them, with some extra reading here and there and in some of the lectures, an interview with another academic or a person relevant to the topic (some in English, some in Hebrew - there are English subtitles you can read for these).

If you are interested in the topic, you may want to spend some time with these classes (even if you do not care to complete them and do the quizzes although I found them interesting). However - one warning - despite these being separate classes, it is essentially one class split into 2 - things from the first one which are needed in the second are not explained again when needed - so you may want to start with the first.

And I am off to reading more about the Middle East... (and what would you know... Asher Susser/Tel Aviv University have a Coursera course on that... so I suspect I may go there at some point).

>188 AnnieMod: that’s fun. Although I’m a little confused because I thought Merlin and Taliesin were the same person.

>189 AnnieMod: I will need a new audiobook this week and right now that seems to be the one.

>190 AnnieMod: also fun. I read Cunliffe’s VSI to Druids, which has some overlap here.

>191 dchaikin: I should take advantage of Coursera. Sounds terrific.

>178 AnnieMod: I think I fell largely the same with this one. I've been stuck in this short one for a while. I just don't like the robot and the softness of the story.

>189 AnnieMod: I love very short intros. leave a lot ot think about, but I don't think I actively engage with them like you do, great to read all your insights.

>191 dchaikin: Your numbering is one off (+1 essentially) on all these. :)

Merlin/Taliesin - my first reaction was "what did I write to cause that?" Rereading what I said - nope, not me. So I went to ask Google and apparently there are legends where they are indeed interchangeable (and maybe some legends simply replaced one with the other in some versions?). The fact that in later versions Merlin is in the Arthur court does not help - because by necessity, he needs to get some of the actions which were originally Taliesin's. But they are indeed 2 different people. Aren't legends fun?

>192 stretch: I don't mind the robot per se (even though he can be annoying and inconsistent) but I also do not see what everyone likes so much in that story... It could have made a much more decent story at half its length though :)

As for the VSIs -- I tend to use them as springboards to other books more often than not. Plus writing my thoughts help me organize them so... I just post them :)

>193 AnnieMod: VSIs can lead to deeper rabbits holes for sure. It's fascinating were they go and where they take you. I enjoy your commentary on them, it's interesting to see the process. VSIs are knid of perfect for getting just enough of something to really want to go deep into the subject.

>193 AnnieMod: at least I was consistent :)

February Statistics
Total number of books: 17
Novels: 5 (2 in translation (from Italian and Icelandic)
Novellas published separately: 4
Magazines: 4 (3 of them 2022 issues)
Anthologies (stories): 1 (kinda... can also be considered a novel)
Non-fiction: 1
Arthurian Project: 1
Great Courses: 1
===
Short stories: 74 (including the 4 novellas counted above)
Plays: 0
===
Owned books (paper): 3 (books bought pre-2022: 2; magazines: 1)
Owned books (ebooks&digital audio): 4 (0 books, 3 magazines; 1 audio)
Borrowed: 10

Summary: I need to read my own books... All books read in English.

And with that, I am off to my new thread to catch up with my March reviews. And it is still March so I am not THAT behind.

>100 labfs39: "On the Beach made a big impression on me when I read it as a teen in the 80s, a time perhaps most close to the 50s in terms of nuclear war fears. I am tempted to reread to see how it holds up to my memories."

I read it somewhere around 1980 too. As I recall, it was an all too real possibility at the time - sad and chilling. But yeah, it made a big impression on me too. And sorry, I'm really, really behind on all the threads, but I'll go ahead and comment anyway....

>197 WelshBookworm: ", but I'll go ahead and comment anyway...."

Of course - no reason not to :)

>198 AnnieMod: I only recently came across On the Beach, and so far it is a fascinating read. I can imagine the Cold War would have had certainly colored this book differently. On the otherside of those heightened tensions feels like a bit of time capusle, not in a bad outdated way but an interesting look at the fears and anxiety I was too young to experience myself.

>97 AnnieMod: >100 labfs39: I haven’t heard of this book for years. I’m Australian and I must have read it when I was very young, but cannot recollect any of the experience of reading it. I did however see the film which was made in my home town - Melbourne. At the time the film was made, Melbourne was a real backwater and it was reported that the film’s lead actor, Ava Gardner said, on getting off the plane from LA, “I can see why they picked this place for the end of the world”.
Just a bit of trivia…
Neville Shute was not considered a serious writer in Australia, though at least two of his books were made into movies and/or mini-series. A Town Like Alice was made into quite a decent mini-series in the 90s I think.

The film version hit home to us young baby-boomers back then. We really did fear for a nuclear war. There were no drills with school kids being taught to huddle under desks, but there was a general feeling of dread and specifically of the end of the world actually happening. Unlike the young people today who fear the extinction of life on earth in their lifetimes, we feared for a sudden nuclear meltdown that could happen at any minute.

>200 kjuliff: Shute was the author of the month over in the Monthly Author Reads - I had not even heard of him before someone nominated him and he got enough votes to get the month. I actually quite enjoyed what I read of him last year (if you cannot tell by my reviews) and I plan to return to him this year. I tend to like authors who don't seem to be as popular as one expects and as I am mainly a genre reader, being told that he is not considered a serious author makes him even more appealing to me :)

I grew up in the shadows of Chernobyl - I was 5 when the thing happened and I do not remember it but it was a major influence on how things were presented, taught and so on. The Cold War was wrapping up so I never really worried about someone throwing a nuke (until the North Korean idiocies in the last few years anyway) but a reactor getting out of hand was my nuclear disaster scenario.

And now I am off to my 2023 thread to add some reviews. :)

PS: I am not sure it had registered with me that you are Australian :)

>200 kjuliff: We really did fear for a nuclear war. Yes, and then Three Mile Island. I read On the Beach as a young teen, and it seemed frighteningly plausible.

>201 AnnieMod: And then Chernobyl. I was actually on a semester-long trip with the Audubon Society when it happened. All crunchy granola types and, with little access to news until we returned, imaginations ran wild.

>201 AnnieMod: I am a dual citizen Australia/USA. I’ve been in the US over 25 years though for the first 20 I was spending a lot of my time back in Australia, working in NYC remotely. I’m out of touch with current Australian writers. My favorite ones still writing are Helen Garner, Christos Tsiolkas and Tim Winton.