Bragan Reads Everything Else in 2016, Pt. 3

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Bragan Reads Everything Else in 2016, Pt. 3

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1bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 1, 2016, 6:44 pm

It's a new thread for the new quarter, continuing from here, and moving right ahead with what, so far, is shaping up to be a pretty good year of reading.

As usual, I'm just going to jump right into the books, so here's my first one for July:

75. The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith



Book number five in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. This time, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's first female private detective, investigates a rich woman's potential suitors and deals with a fiance who can't say no to performing a dangerous stunt for charity, but can't say yes to setting a date for the wedding.

Like the rest of the series so far, the most apt word for this one -- and I mean this in the best possible way -- is "gentle." It's a gentle story about gentle people (mostly), featuring gentle ruminations, the gentle suggestion of a plot, and a gentle sense of humor. Actually, that last thing is very much in evidence this time out, and I found myself smiling or even laughing (gently!) quite a few times as I read. Which is enough to make this probably my favorite of the series so far.

Rating: 4/5

2avidmom
Jul. 1, 2016, 7:44 pm

>1 bragan: Love those books. (They've also made me a fan of Red Tea.)

3bragan
Jul. 1, 2016, 8:44 pm

>2 avidmom: I haven't had red tea in ages and ages, and I don't even remember whether I liked it all that much... But this book had me craving some, anyway. :)

4bragan
Jul. 6, 2016, 9:04 pm

76. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee



The author, oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, may like to describe this work as a biography of cancer, but I think it's more accurately and more thoroughly described as a history of cancer research and cancer treatment.

I'm afraid the book did suffer a little bit from over-hype, for me. Some of the things I'd heard about it made it sound like simultaneously a scientific tour de force and an enthralling page-turner as well-paced and exciting as any thriller. Well, it was probably never going to live up to that, but, nevertheless, it is good. Mukherjee writes very clearly, with a good balance between technical precision and accessibility and occasional moments of genuine eloquence. He humanizes what could otherwise be fairly dry material with comments about the lives and personalities of various researchers and other important figures, and with often very poignant glimpses into the lives of his own patients and his encounters with and responses to them. And he provides a lot of information. Just... a lot.

So, OK, it's not a thrilling, fast-paced page-turner. But if you're interested in a deep dive into the subject of cancer that's information-dense but very readable, this is definitely the book you want. (And, let's face it, with the likelihood of being diagnosed with cancer at some point in one's life being about one in four, it's a subject that's pretty much relevant to everybody.)

Rating: 4/5

5RidgewayGirl
Jul. 7, 2016, 10:15 am

I really need to pick up a copy of this and read it.

6bragan
Jul. 7, 2016, 1:52 pm

>5 RidgewayGirl: It took me quite a while to get around to reading it, but I'm glad I finally did.

7bragan
Jul. 8, 2016, 4:59 pm

77. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett



My partial re-read of Pratchett's Discworld series, starting with the Death books, continues with this one, in which the Hogfather, Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus, has disappeared after someone put out a hit on him, and Death has to step in to do his job and keep belief in him alive.

With a premise like that, how can you go wrong? The mere thought of Death in a Santa suit trying very hard to get the hang of a proper "HO HO HO" is just inherently hilarious. But there's lots and lots of other delightful stuff in here too, from Death's granddaughter Susan dispatching monsters from under children's beds with a poker and a no-nonsense attitude, to Death's manservant Albert snarking wonderfully while wearing a Hogswatch pixie outfit, to Death's inevitable and endearing inclination to become a little too invested in his new job, to the marvelous creepiness of the Santa-cidal assassin Mr. Teatime, to the fact that when Pratchett turns to contemplating the true meaning of Christmas, what you get isn't saccharine platitudes, but some deconstruction of saccharine platitudes and a glimpse at something much deeper, much older, and much more fundamental. Even the bits with the wizards, which are usually the weak point in these Death-centered books, were fun, with Archchancellor Ridcully being on particularly fine Ridcully-ish form, and an entertaining appearance from Hex the magical computer. (I like Hex. He's basically made entirely of computer-related puns, and it amuses me greatly how that somehow never gets old.)

It may not be an absolutely perfect novel. As sometimes happens with Pratchett, some of the plot stuff maybe gets resolved a little too quickly. And the god of hangovers character -- excuse me, the oh god of hangovers character -- is a bit too much of a one-note joke for me. Nevertheless, this is probably one of my favorite Discworld books, and it holds up beautifully on a re-read. Even in July.

Rating: 4.5/5

8dchaikin
Jul. 8, 2016, 7:18 pm

This review makes me want to read Pratchett again.

9bragan
Jul. 8, 2016, 7:41 pm

>8 dchaikin: You should give into that impulse. It is worth doing.

10japaul22
Jul. 9, 2016, 8:20 am

>4 bragan: I've not been able to read this after my dad died suddenly of cancer two years ago. Still too painful, but I've heard amazing things about it so I was happy to see that the same author just came out with a history of the gene that I'm very interested in reading.

11bragan
Jul. 9, 2016, 1:10 pm

>10 japaul22: Yeah, I can see it being a very difficult read, when such memories are still too fresh.

I just bought his book about the gene, as a matter of fact, which is what prompted me to finally get to the cancer one. I figured there was no good reason to have two huge books by the guy sitting neglected on my shelves.

12bragan
Jul. 9, 2016, 8:42 pm

78. Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell



A man invents a time machine and uses it to zip around playing tourist through all of time. But every subjective year he returns to the same place, a hotel in the decaying remains of a future Manhattan, to attend a convention in which all of the guests are him. Every year, things play out exactly as he remembers from past years (at least as far as he can remember, given how much he drinks), until, at age 39, he discovers a dead body in an elevator. His own dead body, apparently only a year older than he is now. Which shouldn't be possible, given that there are plenty of versions of him older than that. What's changed? How? Who shot the dead version of him? Can he figure out what's going on and make it not happen? If he fails, will his entire future be erased?

OK, I love a good time travel story, but I tend to get a little annoyed by ones that try to have both closed cause-and-effect loops and time being able to change. They tend not to make much actual logical sense, and this one isn't really an exception, but the whole concept here was so fantastic that I was more than happy to just roll with it this time and let myself get caught up in the story. Except that as I read on, I couldn't help feeling the whole thing was starting to feel a bit... gimmicky. Then it took a turn and read like an entirely different novel for a while, and started to drag a bit. The ending was interesting, for sure, but not entirely satisfying, mostly due to that whole thing about stories of this nature not really making logical sense.

So... I don't know. It was a very neat idea, and I admire the sheer audacity of the author in even trying to pull something like this off. And it was certainly an interesting read. But, in retrospect, I'm not sure the execution was ever going to be able to live up to the promise of the setup.

Rating: 3.5/5, although I think half a star's worth of that probably is just out of respect for the audacity of it all.

13dchaikin
Jul. 9, 2016, 10:45 pm

Great setup. Maybe the author came up with the setup first, then had to force logic for a resolution. ??

14bragan
Jul. 10, 2016, 12:21 am

>13 dchaikin: It almost felt like he was trying to write two different books at once, to be honest, considering what a different turn things take for a large chunk of the middle. Also, even though the author has the protagonist(s) watching time travel movies and mocking them for inaccuracies, he's basically using the exact same kind of time travel "logic" that most movies use, which is to say the kind of logic that isn't.

15RidgewayGirl
Jul. 10, 2016, 4:44 am

>12 bragan: well, I'm intrigued.

16bragan
Jul. 10, 2016, 10:42 am

>15 RidgewayGirl: I know, it's impossible not to be intrigued by that premise! I can't really decide whether I'd recommend the book or not, though.

17bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 11, 2016, 10:07 pm

79. Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider by Amir D. Aczel



This was published in 2010, which was early days in the lifetime of the LHC and well before the detection of the Higgs boson, so it's more than a little dated. That's not my problem with it, though. My problem with it is that what the title promises and what the book delivers are very different things. I was hoping for, well, the story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, with lots of information about their history and operations and such, but there's surprisingly little of that here, and what there is is a bit disorganized and not especially deep. The vast majority of the book is about the physics itself, which is presented in about as much detail as it's possible to have without mathematical equations (or, in other words, enough to overwhelm your brain, but not enough to actually understand the subject). Of course, the physics is kind of the whole point of the LHC, so some discussion of it is pretty much mandatory, but if I'd wanted to just read an intro to particle physics book, I would have bought an intro to particle physics book.

The glimpses it does give us of the LHC are impressive, though. That is one hell of a scientific instrument.

Rating: 3/5

18dchaikin
Jul. 12, 2016, 8:18 am

Too bad. Maybe the author couldn't resist filling and filling in background??

19bragan
Jul. 12, 2016, 12:39 pm

>18 dchaikin: This is the second book I've read by this author, and I was even less impressed by his decisions about what to focus on and what to leave out in the other one. I've heard fairly good things about his book on Fermat's Last Theorem, but I think he and I are pretty much done.

20bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 15, 2016, 1:09 am

80. Wizard's Holiday by Diane Duane



This is book seven in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, which features teenage wizards helping to keep the Earth and the universe in good working order. In this one, our heroes Nita and Kit participate in a sort of wizardly exchange student program, which sends them to a paradisaical alien planet for two weeks while an assorted trio of aliens moves into Nita's house with her dad and her sister.

I remembered really enjoying at least the first few books in this series, but at some point I lost interest or just stalled out for some reason, and it had been many, many years since I read book six. The good news is that it was easy enough to fall right back into the series, and not the least bit confusing, even if I'd forgotten a lot of the specific details of what had happened before. And this installment did make me remember what I liked about it in the first place, including the way the magic is informed by real science and the sense that the characters inhabit a big, wide, wonderful universe. I'm less sure how I feel about the pseudo-Christian metaphysics behind it all, but it is at least interesting, and it's wrapped up in an appealingly life-affirming philosophy.

Unfortunately, most of this particular volume just wasn't particularly interesting, as it takes almost 3/4 of the book before any semblance of a plot develops. That's nearly 300 pages of lying around on beaches and introducing aliens to the joys of the American shopping mall, and it's pleasant enough, even rather charming, but not terribly engaging, to the extent that every time I put the book down, I had to mentally poke myself to make myself pick it up again. And once the plot does get going, some parts of it work better than others. I was never able to get too worked up about the Earth-bound side of the story, as there was very little suspense about how it was going to come out. The stuff on the alien planet was quite a bit more interesting, if only because it gave me a lot of classic Star Trek vibes, but both parts felt like they wrapped up entirely too abruptly.

Mind you, it's very possible that if I hadn't left the better part of a decade between the previous volume and this one, the lack of action in most of it might have felt more like a welcome breather -- a holiday, even -- between more intense stories. It's also very possible that if I were 12 or so, and thus much more firmly in the intended audience, rather than the jaded, seen-it-all adult that I am, pure sense of wonder might have carried me happily through the slower parts.

I'm not remotely sure, now, whether I'm going to end my attempt to return to this series here or carry on with the rest of it at some point.

Rating: 3/5

21bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 21, 2016, 12:48 am

81. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison



Ralph Ellison's classic 1952 novel about a black man who is sent away from his Southern college to New York City, where he experiences disillusionment, activism, violence, changes of identity, and absurdity.

My reactions to this are book are complicated. I found the first couple of chapters extremely compelling, but as I read on, I often had trouble making up my mind about Ellison's writing style, sometimes feeling impressed, sometimes impatient. (It probably didn't help, I admit, that I insisted on picking it up at a time when my reading brain apparently would much rather have had some fluffy escapism.) I'm not entirely sure how much I can say I enjoyed reading it, to the extent that it's even reasonable to use a word like "enjoy" for something like this, anyway. But it is a book I feel very, very glad to have read, and I absolutely would not dispute its status as an important work of literature. As a social commentary, it's complex, devastating, and still painfully, horrifically, depressingly relevant all these decades later.

Rating: When it comes to things like this, I think this simple ratings system fails utterly. For my own subjective experience of it, I'm giving it 4/5, but I'm aware that that falls short of recognizing Ellison's accomplishment.

22dchaikin
Jul. 21, 2016, 12:46 am

>21 bragan: Interesting, Betty. I have wanted to read this for a long time.

23bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 21, 2016, 12:49 am

>22 dchaikin: It's not an easy book to read, in several ways, but despite my own mixed feelings, I think it's very much worth it.

24bragan
Jul. 24, 2016, 11:58 am

82. Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) by Christian Rudder



Christian Rudder was one of the founders of the dating site OKCupid, and, as such, he has access to truly stunning quantities of data about people who use the site: what they put in their profiles, how they answer the site's getting-to-know-you questions, which other people they choose to contact, even how long they spend typing messages to other uses. With this data, as well as some gathered from other sites, he finds a variety of interesting patterns -- ranging from the obvious to the weird to the vaguely depressing -- in how people conduct themselves online, especially in an online dating environment, including differences and similarities between people of different genders, races, and orientations.

I found a lot of these patterns fascinating, and the sections in which he lays them out, complete with tables and charts and comments on possible confounding factors in the data, to be far and away the most interesting parts of the book. There are also chapters that are more opinion-based, in which Rudder talks about social trends and issues of online privacy and such, which aren't bad, but which tend to make somewhat more familiar points.

The whole thing is written in a casual, personal, often slightly flippant tone that I sometimes found very approachable and amusing, but other times thought was slightly overdone. But, all-in-all, it's a good, accessible read, one that's left me feeling both intrigued and slightly unsettled by just how much the patterns of our behavior online can reveal about us all.

Rating: 4/5

25Narilka
Jul. 24, 2016, 9:58 pm

>24 bragan: That sounds fascinating. It's going on my wishlist.

26dchaikin
Jul. 24, 2016, 10:38 pm

I would wonder about the OKCupid book, about the conflict of interests between accuracy and possibly trying to protect the site and make it come out looking good. But, sounds interesting.

27bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 25, 2016, 9:50 am

>25 Narilka: I've read a couple of different takes now, on the subject of Big Data, and I think this might be the first one I'd recommend for the, if you don't mind the hyper-casual writing style.

>26 dchaikin: It is something to think about, although he at least manages to give the impression that he's being honest. It definitely doesn't feel like a rah-rah advertisement for the site.

28bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 30, 2016, 11:10 pm

83. The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy edited by Mike Ashley



The editor describes his definition of "extreme fantasy" this way: "In all of the stories, the authors have taken a fantastic idea -- and I mean fantastic in both its senses -- and then seen how far they can push it."

Like most anthologies, this one is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the stories do, indeed, have fantastic (in both senses) ideas, but fall down in the execution. A couple of them puzzle me with their inclusion, as their only claim to extremity is some actually pretty mild horror elements. One or two are just kind of unpleasant. But there are also some brilliant little gems of wonderful weirdness, and the book as a whole left me, in the end, feeling as if I'd just taken a nice, long walk through a fascinatingly surreal landscape.

Rating: It's always difficult to know how to rate an anthology like this, but since the good stuff was so good, and since the collection as a whole felt so worthwhile to me, I feel pretty good about giving it a 4/5.

29valkyrdeath
Jul. 29, 2016, 3:40 pm

>28 bragan: I grabbed that anthology as soon as I saw it a few years ago and it's been sat on my shelf ever since still unread, along with the companion science fiction volume. Seems like there's enough good stuff in it to be worth reading. I'm not quite sure why I haven't read them before now.

30bragan
Jul. 29, 2016, 5:12 pm

I would definitely say there's enough good stuff in it to be worth reading, at least if you like stories that are on the weirder side.

I am wondering now whether the SF version is something I should check out.

31bragan
Jul. 30, 2016, 10:57 pm

84. Silhouette by Justin Richards



A Doctor Who novel featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, along with Vastra, Jenny, and Strax. Or... well, OK, it sort of features the Twelfth Doctor. This was published in September of 2014, mere weeks after he made his first proper TV appearance, which means this book must have been written with almost nothing to base its characterization of this incarnation on. And boy, does it show. Aside from some superficial descriptions, this version isn't recognizable as Capaldi's Doctor at all, but is just some sort of generically Doctorish figure with strong hints of Matt Smith. It's incredibly distracting, and entirely unnecessary, as there is absolutely no reason this story could not have been written for the Eleventh Doctor instead. It's impossible to see the attempt to write the new version so quickly as anything other than a marketing decision made at the expense of the story, which just makes it all the more irritating.

Not that the story itself is that exciting, anyway. It starts out mildly intriguing, in a somewhat old school-feeling sort of way, but just got less and less interesting as it went on. And even in Doctor Who there's a limit to how much "Now I will tell you all my evil plans at length for no reason, then order you to be killed and conveniently walk away!" you can pull off, and this book decidedly exceeds it.

I will give Justin Richards one thing, though: he does a great Strax. The guy's dialog is spot-on in all its glorious, bloodthirsty hilariousness, and actually made me laugh out loud once or twice, providing some nice bright spots in an otherwise pretty meh book.

Rating: 2.5/5

32bragan
Bearbeitet: Jul. 31, 2016, 11:17 pm

85. The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame by Daniel H. Wilson & Anna C. Long



A collection of short biographies of so-called mad scientists, real and fictional, with analyses of their possible psychopathologies. The fictional entries are taken from literature, TV, movies, and comics, and are mostly characters you probably know, from Victor Frankenstein to Lex Luthor to Dr. No. The real ones feature a few widely familiar names, such as Nikola Tesla (who belongs on this list if anyone does) and Marie Curie (who really doesn't, but who is alleged to have suffered bouts of depression, possibly exacerbated by radiation poisoning), along with quite a few less familiar ones, such as Sidney Gottlieb, who was known for dosing unwitting subjects with LSD.

There's a lot of humor here, especially in the little profiles at the beginning of each section listing things such as likes, dislikes, and hobbies, and in the lists at the end that provide tips for increasing both your madness and science quotients. And there's something particularly amusing in treating a ridiculous fictional character like Dr. Evil to a mock-serious psychological analysis. But, I must admit, I do find the armchair diagnoses of real people mildly uncomfortable, and I fear that the real biographies here may be distorted by the mad scientist narrative. I suspect I actually would have enjoyed it more if it had just stuck to the fictional folks.

Rating: 3.5/5

33dchaikin
Aug. 1, 2016, 8:53 am

"tips for increasing both your madness and science quotients" - Always useful.

Too bad they didn't handle the nonfiction aspect better. But, I would like to read about Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

34bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 1, 2016, 9:13 am

>33 dchaikin: Apparently I need those tips, as the handy self-evaluation quiz that's also included in the back says I'm not mad enough to be a mad scientist, and suggested maybe I should be a henchman or something, instead.

And there is no Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz entry, but there is a Professor Hubert Farnsworth one.

35dchaikin
Aug. 1, 2016, 9:20 am

What? No Doofenshmirtz!

My condolences to your sanity.

36bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 2, 2016, 1:45 am

86. Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz & Kat Helgeson



Gena (short for Genevieve) and Finn (short for Stephanie) are two young women who meet online and bond over their shared love for a TV series, a cop drama called Up Below. Soon, they begin to develop a deep friendship that may be blossoming into something more, something that complicates both their lives.

I have to say, things like this weird me out a little bit. As a fangirl from way, way back when we had only one Star Trek crew and liked it that way, I'm just not used to the way fan cultures like the one these characters participate in are increasingly becoming part of the mainstream and getting spotlights like this shown on them. When the heck did that happen? But even as it confuses me, it also fascinates me, so there was no way I wasn't going to read this book.

My feelings about the novel itself are kind of mixed. It's very clear from the outset that the authors have experience in online fannish subculture, because they capture aspects of it pretty well, but they do it in a way that felt much shallower to me than Rainbow Rowell's treatment in Fangirl (which, by the way, I happily recommend). I also can't help thinking that the snippets of fan fiction and fan art the two characters impress each other with aren't actually all that good, although I admit to being a little bit snobbish about such things.

The structure of the book is interesting, as it's a sort of 21st century epistolary novel, told through blog posts, e-mails, text messages, post-it notes, etc. Mostly this works very well, feels very natural, and moves the story along nicely, but I think the conceit falls down towards the end and starts to feel like the artifice it is.

As for the plot, it wasn't exactly the quiet, sweet story of bonds of love and friendship developing between fans that I was expecting or hoping for, instead taking a couple of implausible and melodramatic turns to reach an ending I didn't find entirely satisfying.

Bottom line: it's a quick, decent read, and one that understands its subject matter reasonably well, but not quite the book I wanted it to be.

Rating: 3.5/5

37bragan
Aug. 5, 2016, 10:53 pm

87. Silas Marner by George Eliot



Classic 1861 novel about a socially outcast weaver who adopts a child, and the country squire's son who keeps her true parentage secret. Like many novels of this time period, it's pretty wordy for the amount of actual story, but it's a pleasant read, with a warm message about what really makes a family. And George Eliot's writing displays a very keen eye for the details of human nature.

Rating: 4/5

38dchaikin
Aug. 6, 2016, 9:29 am

Another important classic. This is one of those books I really need to read...and I think it's not that long (?)

39bragan
Aug. 6, 2016, 11:05 am

>38 dchaikin: No, it's only about 250 pages, and 19th century wordiness notwithstanding, it was actually a pretty quick read.

40bragan
Aug. 7, 2016, 11:11 am

88. The World in Flames by Jerald Walker



A memoir about growing up in the 1970s as a member of a large international religious cult whose leader imposed strict rules on his followers, siphoned off large amounts of their money to "spread the word of God" (read: to buy himself private jets and finance his lush lifestyle), and prophesied an imminent end of the world in which only his church's faithful would be spared. Oh, and the whole organization was also pretty racist, which you would think would be a problem for the author's family, but as well as being black, his parents were also blind, and were desperate to believe the cult's promises that their sight would soon be restored.

It's a hell of a childhood story, and the writing is good enough, but despite a genuinely touching moment or two, I somehow never quite felt as engaged with this as I'd hoped to. It may be because the style is very novelistic, lacking the feeling of raw honesty you can sometimes get with memoirs, but, because it's real life, also lacking the structure and coherence of a good novel. Or maybe it's just that I've read one too many stories about growing up in cults now. Probably that second one, really; things that once might have shocked me now just make me nod my head sadly. Mind you, if you haven't read any of those (or, I suppose, had the experience firsthand), I think it's very much worth doing. It will expand your perspective on how crazy this world really is.

Rating: 3.5/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)

41bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 9, 2016, 2:27 pm

89. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett



The first leg of my Pratchett re-read concludes with the final book in the Death subseries, Thief of Time. (Although, to be honest, as with the previous volumes, I kind of wish it had featured more of Death himself. He really is my favorite character in the entire series. Not that his granddaughter Susan, who gets more attention here, isn't also terrific, because she is.)

This one didn't give me the feeling of sheer, crazy delight that Hogfather and Soul Music did (although it does have some pretty great jokes), but it feels like a slightly more substantial story than those, and it does a lot of fun and interesting things with the concept of time. There are also some really great examples of something that Pratchett does very well: infusing his comic fantasy with some genuinely thoughtful, philosophical, and scientifically literate ideas. In addition to playing around with time, he also touches on chaos theory, and explores at some length the question of what it means to be human, specifically what it means to be both a consciousnesses and a body.

Rating: 4.5/5. Although, admittedly, I sometimes feel like I'm over-rating these books slightly, just because of my love of the series as a whole. Not enough to make me change that number, though!

42bragan
Aug. 9, 2016, 2:26 pm

89. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett



The first leg of my Discworld re-read concludes with the final book in the Death subseries, Thief of Time. (Although, to be honest, as with the previous volumes, I kind of wish it had featured more of Death himself. He really is my favorite character in the entire series. Not that his granddaughter Susan, who gets more attention here, isn't also terrific, because she is.)

This one didn't give me the feeling of sheer, crazy delight that Hogfather and Soul Music did (although it does have some pretty great jokes), but it feels like a slightly more substantial story than those, and it does a lot of fun and interesting things with the concept of time. There are also some really great examples of something that Pratchett does very well: infusing his comic fantasy with some genuinely thoughtful, philosophical, and scientifically literate ideas. In addition to playing around with time, he also touches on chaos theory, and explores at some length the question of what it means to be human, specifically what it means to be both a consciousnesses and a body.

Rating: 4.5/5. Although, admittedly, I sometimes feel like I'm over-rating these books slightly, just because of my love of the series as a whole. Not enough to make me change that number, though!

43bragan
Aug. 11, 2016, 11:18 pm

90. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz



There have been a lot of Sherlock Holmes stories produced since Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing them himself, and the ones I've read have ranged all over the place, from the excellent to the ridiculous. This one has the unusual distinction of being authorized by Doyle's estate, but that didn't strike me, in itself, as any guarantee of quality. I'm pleased to say, though, that it is, in fact, really good. Although it's surely not a story that Doyle himself would have written, it captures the feel of a Holmes story, both the style and the plot, extremely well, giving more of the sense of reading an authentic new Holmes story than probably any other attempt I've seen. But there is a hint of freshness to it, too, including a touch of social commentary not really seen in the original. That could have seemed heavy-handed or out of place, but I think it ultimately works pretty well. The exact same thing could be said of the inevitable little touches of Holmes-fan indulgence, including at least one brief character appearance that was not really necessary, but enjoyable anyway. And the mystery itself -- actually two intertwined mysteries -- is very engaging, with lots of crazy twists and revelations and Holmes, as usual, being two steps ahead of both Watson and the reader the entire time. I'm actually a little surprised by just how thoroughly I enjoyed it all.

Rating: 4.5/5

44bragan
Aug. 11, 2016, 11:21 pm

Wait, why is my Thief of Time review showing up twice? I didn't read it twice! And the second post is time-stamped before the first one? That is weird. It's... also eerily similar to some crazy timey-wimey plot stuff that happens in the book, now that I think about it. Huh.

45baswood
Aug. 14, 2016, 8:33 am

There has to be a rational explanation

46bragan
Aug. 14, 2016, 2:07 pm

>45 baswood: Well, of course everything has to have a rational explanation. In this case, I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that LT seemed to be having some problems when I was trying to post. Although the fact that it didn't show up twice then is a little odd.

Either that, or someone was doing very strange things with the flow of time. One or the other. :)

47bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 14, 2016, 3:41 pm

91. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future by Johan Norberg



If you watch the news, or, really, do anything other than lock yourself in a closet with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears, it's depressingly easy to think that the world is world is a terrible, terrible place. Which maybe it is, but it is at least a lot less terrible than it used to be, and it's riding a steady upward trend. Or, at least, that's Johan Norberg's thesis, and he's got statistics to back it up. So many statistics. A frankly eye-watering number of statistics. And what those statistics show is that, globally, living conditions are improving at an impressive rate. There is less famine, violence, poverty, disease, and social inequality now than there has ever been, and more freedom, education, and sanitation.

There are two things I particularly appreciate about this book. One is that it takes a truly global perspective. The author is Swedish, so there are a lot of statistics about Sweden and how things have changed there, and, of course a lot of information about big, influential countries like the US and China. But no corner of the world is neglected (with, I guess, the usual exception of Antarctica), and he pays particular attention to the developing world and the ways in which it is, in fact, developing.

The second thing is that there is no Polyanna-ish dismissal of the world's very real problems. Norberg never so much as hints that the idea that things are better than we think means that everything is fine, or that we don't have to worry about continuing to make improvements or deal with real threats. He is also careful not to lose sight of the fact that just because more people are doing better these days, that doesn't mean that there aren't many, many people still living in terrible conditions. The fact that 90% of people today have access to uncontaminated water sources is an awesome accomplishment compared to what that figure was 35 years ago, but it still means that 700 million people don't have clean water to drink, and realities like that are never glossed over.

On the negative side, I did sometimes find Norberg a little too "Rah-rah, capitalism!" for my personal comfort levels, but, on reflection, I think that's because, as an American, I've been conditioned by our dysfunctional politics to expect enthusiastic assertions about free markets improving things, which are reasonable enough by themselves, to be followed up by cringe-inducing rants about Evil Gummint Regulations and the moral failings of the poor. But those are not in evidence here. A slightly fairer criticism is that the writing, while not bad, is not always engaging enough to make the endless parade of statistics go down as well as one might hope. And if, like me, you think it's kind of a no-brainer that, whatever the problems of the modern-day world, it's still a much better time to be born into than the days before antibiotics, democracy, and the realization that dumping sewage into your drinking water is a bad idea, then Norberg's detailed defending of that position can almost get a little tedious. But for those who can't help feeling like maybe the world is teetering on the abyss, or who have the strong impression that everything is getting worse, this book should provide a useful new perspective and some reasons to be more optimistic.

Rating: 3.5/5

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers book.)

48dchaikin
Aug. 14, 2016, 4:58 pm

>46 bragan: i'm thinking it's remarkably appropriate and LT knew exactly what it was doing.

49bragan
Aug. 14, 2016, 8:40 pm

>48 dchaikin: It's sort of hilariously appropriate, really.

50RidgewayGirl
Aug. 15, 2016, 8:22 am

>47 bragan: Excellent review, Betty. It is important to remember that the world is not on the verge of collapse.

51bragan
Aug. 15, 2016, 4:08 pm

>50 RidgewayGirl: Well, of course, there are probably still ways it might collapse. But it's not inevitably trending that way! Which is good to know.

52bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 17, 2016, 7:08 am

92. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett



The ancient city of Bulikov was once the home of very real, very powerful gods. Now its gods are dead, the miracles that sustained it are shattered, and the people it once enslaved have become its oppressors. And the one man permitted to study its forbidden history has just been murdered, setting in motion a chain of events no one can predict.

I enjoyed the heck out of this one. It's got some really fascinating and original world-building, well-drawn characters, a subtle sense of humor, some fun action, and a good plot with lots of twists and turns. It's not perfect, I suppose. There is some "As you know, Bob"-style dialog that I can't help thinking should have bothered me more than it did, and maybe some slightly heavy-handed touches of religious satire. But I don't care. Overall it was just a great read, enough so that even before I finished it, I'd already ordered the sequel.

Rating: 4.5/5

53Narilka
Aug. 17, 2016, 9:19 am

>52 bragan: That sounds like one I'd enjoy. It's going on my wishlist.

54bragan
Aug. 17, 2016, 8:39 pm

>53 Narilka: I definitely recommend it if it sounds up your alley!

55bragan
Aug. 20, 2016, 5:51 am

93. Lightless by C. A. Higgins



The Ananke, a top-secret experimental spaceship, is boarded by a couple of pirates/con men/thieves. One of the criminals escapes, but not before doing something to the ship's computer. The other is captured and questioned at length by a ruthless interrogator who is convinced he has ties to a high-profile terrorist, but she's so focused on getting the truth out of him that she's clearly not paying as much attention as she should to the increasing computer malfunctions, or to the ship's mechanic's protests that something is seriously wrong.

It sounds like a good, interesting setup, and the plot is clearly trying to be clever and twisty. But it just failed to work for me on far too many levels. The pace was slow, with almost nothing happening for much of the book, until a bunch of plot revelations -- many of them far too easy to guess in advance -- get dumped on us all at once at the end. The writing, while not bad, exactly, felt slightly odd or awkward to me, in a hard-to-pin-down way that had me double-checking to see if it had been translated from another language. (It hadn't.) Too much important world-building stuff is left entirely too vague and underdeveloped, while a lot of other story elements, from the minor to the plot-critical, felt implausible or just plain wrong. It ends on an not-very-satisfying note, too, presumably to induce us to buy the sequel (which I am not going to do). Most damning of all, I never felt, from the first page on, that I had any reason at all to care about these people, their ship, or their solar system.

Rating: 2/5, although it does occur to me to wonder if I'd be less harsh on it if my expectations were lower going in. I'd heard some good buzz about this one that steered me very, very wrong.

56dchaikin
Aug. 20, 2016, 10:59 am

Bummer this didn't work for you.

57bragan
Aug. 20, 2016, 9:01 pm

>56 dchaikin: Yeah, and I was looking forward to it, too.

Mind you, it probably didn't help that I read it after the excellent City of Stairs and couldn't help comparing the two. (They're very different books, of course, but do have some elements in common, and one of them definitely handles them better than the other.)

58dchaikin
Aug. 20, 2016, 11:27 pm

That makes it so much worse. !!

59FlorenceArt
Aug. 21, 2016, 2:53 pm

Trying to decide whether to wishlist City of Stairs. It sounds intriguing but I have gotten entirely fed up with gods (even if they are slightly more interesting when in the plural).

60bragan
Aug. 21, 2016, 3:50 pm

>59 FlorenceArt: I think what City of Stairs does with its gods is unusual and interesting (and, perhaps, likely to work well for people who are feeling fed up with gods in general), but your mileage, of course, may vary.

61bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 21, 2016, 7:52 pm

94. Naked by David Sedaris



This is, I believe, Sedaris' first collection of autobiographical essays. (There may have been some in the earlier Barrel Fever, but I remember there being more fiction than non-fiction in that one.) It features stories -- admittedly, probably fairly embellished ones -- from his childhood, college years, and young adulthood. Also that one time he spent a week in a nudist trailer park.

I've read some of his later collections, and my vague impression is that maybe this one is a little darker, a little less funny than most of them. It certainly deals with some fairly serious stuff, such as his mother's cancer diagnosis. But his dark, sardonic, self-deprecatingly self-aware sense of humor is still very much in evidence, and, as usual, it's hard not to feel drawn in to wacky pathos of his life.

Rating: 4/5.

62bragan
Aug. 23, 2016, 5:27 pm

95. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two by Jack Thorne, based on a story by J K. Rowling, John Tiffany & Jack Thorne



This is the complete published script of the two-part Harry Potter play that recently premiered in London. And... it's not bad. The story is a mixture of some fun plot elements, some implausible ridiculousness, and some character stuff that has its heart in the right place, but sometimes gets a little melodramatic or emotionally clunky. So, pretty much exactly like the original series, really. Most pleasingly, it turns out that Scorpius Malfoy is a really good, even downright endearing character, and hey, who've have figured that?

But I'm thinking there was no way this was ever going to fully live up to the legacy of the series, pop cultural juggernaut that it is, and I say that as someone who isn't even really a huge Harry Potter fan. My initial response, as I began reading, was, "This is okay, but, honestly, a story about the next generation, two decades later, just feels so tacked on and unnecessary, like an irrelevant coda to a story that was definitively finished." As the play went on and began to revisit a lot of elements from the original books, I found myself instead thinking, "But the next generation surely deserves to have their own story, rather than to be caught up in this sort of navel-gazing into things we've already seen." Basically, the poor play just couldn't win! Fortunately as I moved on into part 2, I found myself relaxing a bit and doing a better job of just enjoying the story for what it was, and I had a pleasant enough time. But coming into it with all that impossible-to-avoid baggage in my head probably meant I was never going to find it 100% satisfying. Even though that's totally unfair to the play, which is making no attempt to pretend it's Book Eight in the Harry Potter Saga (even if the publisher of the script certainly didn't go out of their way to keep people from thinking that). Basically, it's a decent piece of authorized fanfiction in play form, and there's nothing wrong with that. Or, at least, nothing that's not caused by my own irrational inability not to expect that a new, official Harry Potter story ought to be not just a new Harry Potter story, but some sort of overwhelming Pop Cultural Event.

And, of course, that difficulty in being entirely satisfied is exacerbated by the fact that this isn't even the medium the story is intended to be consumed in. I have little doubt that I'd have found it much more engaging on the stage. Not least because I found it impossible to even imagine what kind of visual techniques might have been used to pull off any of the magic described in the script, and I'm willing to bet it was fairly impressive to see.

All that having been said, though, I am glad I read it. It's a very fast, reasonably entertaining read that invites the reader to think a bit more about some of the characters and events of the Potterverse, even if -- as I'm sure will be the case for some fans -- it's only to disagree with what this story does with them. I'm also glad, by the way, that I managed to avoid spoilers for this before I read it, as there are at least a couple of plot elements that I'm sure I would have found much less fun if I'd known about them beforehand.

Rating: 3.5/5

63bragan
Aug. 26, 2016, 8:24 pm

96. Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach



A socially awkward young women is approached by the charismatic founder of an internet discussion forum she frequents with an unusual proposition: that she take on the job of impersonating online another woman who wants to commit suicide, but doesn't want her friends and family to know she's dead.

Basically, this is the story of a bunch of dysfunctional people, all of whom are doing things that are so clearly not a good idea that you just want to reach through the pages and shake them. Especially the protagonist, Leila, who is a painful -- but, I think, believable -- combination of intelligent, clueless, sympathetic, and creepy. Watching the story play out is very much like watching a slow-motion train wreck, with the same can't-look-away fascination. One could argue that the ending doesn't provide nearly enough closure, but I think it worked for me just fine.

Rating: 4/5

64RidgewayGirl
Aug. 26, 2016, 8:26 pm

>63 bragan: I like the sound of that.

65bragan
Aug. 26, 2016, 8:32 pm

>64 RidgewayGirl: I honestly wasn't sure if it was the sort of thing I was going to like or not, but I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

66bragan
Bearbeitet: Aug. 29, 2016, 4:52 pm

97. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick



In the 1990s, Barbara Demick conducted extensive interviews with North Korean defectors about their lives, and in Nothing to Envy she interweaves their personal tales with some broader historical context to present a portrait of everyday life in North Korea under the reigns of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. It is, of necessity, an incomplete portrait, as even journalists who have been there (as Demick has been) get only a carefully managed, deliberately distorted view of the place, and fact-checking anyone's stories is largely impossible. But it's enough to give a sense of what life is like there. And that life is just... hard to fathom, at least from where I sit, here in the United States.

It's one thing, I think, to know intellectually that North Korea is basically an Orwellian nightmare brought to life, but another to see how that actually plays out in the lives of ordinary people. More than that, I was struck by the extent to which North Korea in the 90s comes across as not merely Orwellian, but as almost post-apocalyptic. It's a place where the lights have quite literally gone out, a place that once had infrastructure that's now broken down, once had industry whose remains have been cannibalized for scrap, once was able to feed its populace but now leaves its people to desperately scour the countryside for whatever meager pickings they can find.

It's often horrific to read about, and yet, in its own disturbing way, absolutely compelling. As are the very human stories of the people affected. This is definitely a book that deserves all the buzz it's gotten. (Even if I am very, very late in adding to that buzz.)

Rating: 4.5/5

67dchaikin
Aug. 29, 2016, 4:41 pm

>66 bragan: - yes, to all that. Glad you liked it.

68bragan
Aug. 29, 2016, 4:51 pm

>67 dchaikin: Thank you for prompting me to finally pick it up off the shelf!

69bragan
Sept. 3, 2016, 10:47 pm

98. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami



This is my first experience with Murakami, after meaning to get around to sampling his work for ages, and... Well, I don't quite know what to make of it. I don't even know how to describe it. It's about a teenage runaway and an old man who can talk to cats and a library and a weird incident in the Japanese countryside during WWII and... And, no, that doesn't do it at all. None of that remotely conveys just how odd this book is. But to say that it's surreal, even though it is, doesn't seem to cover it, either. It's just... odd. Bizarre things happen that are never fully explained, even though explanations are hinted at. (Well, sometimes. A little. Maybe.) There's some weird, potentially very disturbing stuff with sex and animal cruelty. A lot of it is very metaphorical, often even pointing out the fact that it's metaphorical. Everything in it is very clearly connected, but it's not always clear exactly why or how. And there are lots of digressions to talk about literature or music or philosophy, any one of which may be relevant or may just be the author indulging his interests, it's hard to tell.

All of which makes it sound like a muddled mess, but the truth is, it's very readable. Surprisingly readable. But also a little frustrating, as it's not a short book, and after a while you start to get the distinct feeling that it's not actually going to tie everything together at the end in way that makes coherent sense. Which it doesn't. But that's less unsatisfying than I expected, because it does make a sort of dreamlike sense. Maybe. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that, however mixed my feelings about it, it was certainly interesting. And that I will definitely give Murakami another shot in the future, if only so I can continue trying to figure out what I think about him.

Rating: 3.5/5

70Simone2
Sept. 4, 2016, 2:43 am

>66 bragan: I managed to completely miss this buzz. I am glad you bring this book to my attention, an intesting subject and your review is great. On the wishlist it goes!

71bragan
Sept. 4, 2016, 3:02 am

>70 Simone2: It was mostly buzzy a few years ago, when it came out. Anyway, it's a terrific book, so I'm glad to have put it on your radar!

72ursula
Sept. 4, 2016, 9:19 am

>69 bragan: Yeah, you definitely have to resign yourself to having loose ends when reading Murakami. The sense of dream logic is very strong in most of his books, although there are a few exceptions.

73baswood
Sept. 4, 2016, 12:18 pm

>69 bragan: Interested to see your take on Murakami. I read Norwegian Wood, Murakami a few years ago and enjoyed it, but have not been tempted to read anymore.

74bragan
Sept. 4, 2016, 10:48 pm

>72 ursula: I'm not sure if "loose ends" even quite covers it. It was very much a "What the heck did I just read, and what did it all mean in the end, anyway?" kind of experience, but not necessarily in a bad way. I think. Maybe. :)

>73 baswood: I have The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and 1Q84 still on my wishlist, having seen interesting comments on or recommendations for them. I'll probably get to them at some point, but I'm not in a great hurry. I think there's probably a limit to how much Murakami my brain can handle in a given period of time.

75bragan
Sept. 5, 2016, 12:54 am

99. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich



Book eleven (more or less) in the Stephanie Plum series. In this one, Stephanie gets fed up and decides to quit her bounty hunter job -- which she really ought to have done about ten books ago, if you ask me -- and also seems to have become a target for a bad guy from the past out looking for revenge.

What is there to say about this one, really? It's a Stephanie Plum novel. You read one, you've read 'em all, and even having Stephanie temporarily quit her job just adds a running joke about new jobs that end in disaster to the running joke about cars being destroyed. As usual, I found the wacky hijinks mildly amusing, the love triangle that never goes anywhere mildly annoying, and the constant jokes about women overeating and worrying about their weight increasingly irritating. The plot is paper-thin, and mostly only gets interesting for about ten pages at the end, but it's hard to care much since the plot is mostly an excuse for aforementioned wacky hijinks, anyway. There was a line of dialog or two that gave me a little bit of a chuckle, although this one lacked the occasional laugh-out-loud moments the best of them have. And it was about the speed my brain could handle while trying to pass a boring night shift on far too little sleep.

Rating: 2.5/5

76.Monkey.
Sept. 5, 2016, 3:31 am

>69 bragan: I agree that it was very readable, but also much more than a little frustrating! Lol. It was interesting and there was a good bit of it that I did like, but the "end" just really irritated me and I'm not much interested in reading more of him, personally. I will, because I always give more than one chance and there's more of him on the 1001 list, but I'm not looking forward to it!

77bragan
Sept. 5, 2016, 3:40 am

>76 .Monkey.: I think the ending might have annoyed me a lot more if I hadn't reached a point in the course of the book where I started to get the distinct feeling that it was probably never actually going to spell out explanations for everything and thus had some time to adjust my expectations.

78bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 6, 2016, 8:42 am

100. Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson



Jenny Lawson, aka the Bloggess, shares stories of her life, from her bizarre childhood growing up as the daughter of a taxidermist obsessed with animals both living and dead, to surreal conversations with her long-suffering husband, to accounts of various I Love Lucy-esque escapades. (Well, if Lucy swore a lot and worried about the zombie apocalypse more often.)

If you've ever read her blog -- and if you haven't, you really should -- you know just how utterly hilarious she can be, and that is fully in evidence here. I was already smiling by the time I finished looking over the table of contents, and by the end of the two-page introduction, I was laughing out loud. And even though she also talks about some very un-funny parts of her life -- miscarriages, crippling anxiety, chronic pain, the death of her beloved dog -- she somehow finds a way to make you laugh around and through it all.

Rating: 4.5/5

79OscarWilde87
Sept. 6, 2016, 12:04 pm

>62 bragan: I was afraid the play might just try to live off of the original series. Thanks for reading and reviewing it for me.

80bragan
Sept. 6, 2016, 12:46 pm

>79 OscarWilde87: In a sense, I suppose it does. Which didn't make it not worth reading, but...

81bragan
Sept. 9, 2016, 10:04 am

101. In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith



Book number six in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Despite looking at the beginning like it's setting up an odd little mystery, this one basically abandons even the thinnest traces of a detective story plot. And that is absolutely fine, because, as always, the appeal of this series is in the setting and the characters, and there's some really good character stuff here.

Rating: 4/5

82bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 12, 2016, 11:10 pm

102. Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson



A kid from the Deep South goes off to attend Berkeley, where he happens to mention to some of his friends the annual Civil War re-enactment that takes place in his home town. The friends are appalled, and one of them comes up with the idea of showing up at the event and staging a "performative intervention": a re-enactment of the lynching of an escaped slave, intended as a form of protest. This... does not go well.

This is yet another book I find myself with hard-to-pin-down mixed feelings about. At various points during the novel, I found myself thinking that the social commentary was a little too obvious, or a little too hard to interpret clearly, or nicely nuanced in a way that provides a lot to chew on but very few pat answers. (I suppose it's entirely possible that it is, in fact, all three.) I also thought the was writing sometimes clever and evocative, but sometimes too clever, too obscure, too overdone. In the end, I don't know if I enjoyed reading it (in whatever sense "enjoyed" is even the appropriate word for a story like this), or that I was entirely satisfied with it. But I do feel glad to have read it, I think.

Rating: 3.5/5

83bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 16, 2016, 11:02 pm

103. The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction by Nate Silver



Nate Silver, best known for his remarkably accurate predictions of the results of the 2012 US elections, takes in-depth look at how people attempt to make predictions about everything from stock prices to earthquakes to an opponent's next chess move. He explains in very clear, very carefully thought-out ways how people in various fields attempt to assign probabilities to future events, the importance of not underestimating your level of uncertainty, the dangers of overconfidence, and all kinds of other interesting and important aspects of the subject.

If I have one complaint about this book, it's that there is almost too much of a good thing. What he's saying is great, well-expressed, and very much worth saying, and his examples are good, but there are so many of them, and he discusses them so thoroughly, that by the end my brain was getting a little tired. Then again, maybe that's my fault as much as Silver's, as one thing I did notice is that my level of brain fatigue depended a lot in my own interest levels in whatever area he was currently considering. Attempts to predict natural disasters or terrorist attacks, or to sort the noise of weather from the signal of climate? Fairly exciting stuff to me, and I zipped through it. But economics makes my eyes glaze over and baseball makes me yawn, and there was an awful lot of both.

Still. I definitely recommend it to anyone who is willing to take a bit of a dive into this subject, whether or not you happen t be a baseball fan. Although you'll probably enjoy parts of it much more than I did if you are.

Rating: 4/5

84OscarWilde87
Sept. 17, 2016, 3:53 pm

>83 bragan: Great review. This definitely sounds like something I would read.

85bragan
Sept. 17, 2016, 7:10 pm

>84 OscarWilde87: It has more math! :) Although Silver mostly avoids using equations.

86bragan
Sept. 18, 2016, 3:23 pm

104. A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak



This short SF novel from 1977 is set long after the collapse of technological civilization, and follows a man who has spent time in what may be the only remaining university, studying preserved human knowledge. There, he hears a legend about somewhere called The Place of Going to the Stars, and sets off to seek it out, picking up a variety of strange traveling companions on the way.

The writing and story are pleasant enough, in a low-key sort of way typical of Simak, and there are some nice touches of good old SF sense of wonder stuff at the end. I did have some suspension-of-disbelief problems with it, though, especially at the beginning. It's not the way it buys into the reality of psychic powers; that was so common in 70s SF, and it so often made for entertaining story elements, that even a hardcore skeptic like me can just shrug and accept it. It's also not that the protagonist just happens to randomly encounter exactly the people and information he needs to complete his quest, as there's a certain kind of fairy-tale logic to that that actually mostly works.

No, it's the world-building I have some issues with. The way the collapse of civilization happened isn't quite convincing to me, at least not the way Simak presents it, and the details of what survives from the former civilization and what doesn't are odd, too, in ways that are entirely too plot-convenient. Come on, is a 1500-year-old paper map still going to be readable after being carried around in someone's backpack? And the main character feels far too much like someone with a 20th-century perspective rather than a plausible product of his own time and culture, even accounting for the fact that he's read a lot of old books.

Still, the further I read on, the less most of that bothered me. And I'd say that if you're in the mood for a bit of vintage SF -- and, unlike a lot of the more experimental stuff of the 70s, this undoubtedly had a bit of a vintage feel even then -- you could do a lot worse. If what you're looking for, though, is a first introduction to Simak, I would recommend Way Station instead.

Rating: 3.5/5

87LolaWalser
Sept. 18, 2016, 3:38 pm

What a coincidence--just minutes ago I read a review of "The Ophiuchi Hotline" which contrasted it to that Simak! (This: http://www.librarything.com/work/108700/reviews/122569089)

I've only read City by him, which had some appealing ideas but was utterly traditional in its social vision--very disappointing when supposedly looking at thousands of years into the future.

88bragan
Sept. 18, 2016, 4:19 pm

A fun coincidence! Especially as it's not exactly one of his better-known novels.

I read The Ophiuchi Hotline ages ago, by the way, and I think I remember liking it, but not very much about it. Varley definitely does make an interesting contrast with Simak, though. I think the reviewer is totally right about that.

City is one that's frequently praised as his best, but I always liked Way Station much better.

89bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 19, 2016, 11:47 pm

105. The Official Star Trek Trivia Book by Rafe Needleman



This collection of Trekkish trivia questions (with answers and scoring charts provided in the back) was published in 1980, so, unsurprisingly, it's limited entirely to the original series. And, boy, is it some hardcore trivia. Admittedly, I've come to think of myself as something of a lapsed Trekkie, and the days when I had practically the entirety of the original series committed to memory are long, long past. But, still, I'm no slouch. My team tied for second out of twenty-six in a Trek trivia quiz once, and we were competing against some pretty serious fellow nerds. So I know my tribbles from my Tholians. But, while not all the questions were terribly hard (and there are even a few gimmes), there were also a lot of them that I just found myself staring at blankly. In some categories, I barely reached the level of Klingon. I do, however, apparently still remember just about everything there is to know about Spock. You have no idea -- seriously, no idea! -- how much of my life I've spent waiting for someone to try to stump me at Trek trivia by asking me what Spock's Starfleet serial number is, just so I could rattle it off confidently and declare myself Queen of the Nerds. Sadly, there was no one around to see when it finally happened, just me and the book. Still, I cannot help feeling a certain warm glow of satisfaction.

Anyway. Despite the frustrating reminders that I no longer remember half the stuff that I knew when I was twelve, and the fact that I might quibble with the formulation of some of the questions, going through these quizzes made for a fun trip down interstellar memory lane. It's neat what you can dig up at library sales.

Rating: 3.5/5

90.Monkey.
Sept. 20, 2016, 6:01 am

Wow, I love TOS, but I would definitely fail that quiz with flying colors! Lol. It does sound like fun, though! :)

91bragan
Sept. 20, 2016, 7:42 am

>90 .Monkey.: Well, one hardly needs to memorize it to enjoy it. Even if twelve-year-old-me tried very hard to. :)

92bragan
Sept. 20, 2016, 8:04 am

106. A World Without You by Beth Revis



Bo attends a school for teenagers with supernatural talents, although it's cleverly disguised as a school for the troubled and mentally ill. He has the power to manipulate and travel through time, but doesn't have full control of this ability, and when he accidentally strands his girlfriend in the past, he must desperately search for a way to retrieve her. Except... Except perhaps none of this is true at all.

I have to say, I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting to. The premise could so easily have been gimmicky, even cringe-worthy, but instead it really works. The story drew me along nicely, and the characters, while perhaps rather lightly sketched, are presented in exactly the right amount of detail to make them and their problems feel believable and real. It reads very smoothly, too; unlike a lot of YA, the prose lacks that slightly flat, slightly over-simplified feeling that never lets you forget you're reading YA. I wasn't at all sure how the author was going to manage to end things in a way that wouldn't feel wrong in one way or another, but I think she pulled that off, too, with a climax that's both exciting and poignant.

I think I may have to go check out more by this author.

Rating: 4/5

93bragan
Sept. 23, 2016, 3:43 am

107. Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterley



During World War II, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' facility in Langley, Virginia, which did research into airplane design, hired a large corps of "computers": women, most of them with mathematical educations they'd had very limited opportunity to use, whose job it was to solve the complex equations the engineers relied on for their work. Some of these women went on to do engineering work of their own and, once NACA became NASA, made significant contributions towards putting human beings on the moon. Many of these women were black.

Margot Lee Shetterley weaves the individual stories of some of these black women with the broader stories of Langley, the Civil Rights movement, and the realities of life in the Jim Crow south, sometimes moving back and forth between a general historical overview and an almost novelistic description of particular people on particular days, complete with details like the color of the autumn leaves. I think how well this approach works varies; it occurred to me more than once that I might have preferred less detached, linear narrative about these women's lives, and more transparent accounts of what the people Shetterley spoke to had to say in their interviews as they looked back on the past. But even if I found the execution somewhat imperfect, the story itself is a fascinating bit of untold history, at once inspiring (because these women were pretty amazing, despite all their disadvantages), and sobering (because it's an unambiguous reminder of the legacy of racial and sexual inequality we have not yet entirely left behind).

Rating: Despite its flaws, I think I'm going to have to give this one a 4/5. If the subject matter sounds interesting to you, I do recommend it.

(Note: This was a LibraryThing Early Reviewers Book.)

94ursula
Sept. 23, 2016, 8:59 am

>93 bragan: I just watched the trailer for the movie about these women yesterday. We tend to avoid movies or other entertainment that have anything to do with math around here (husband is a mathematician), but I'm kind of interested in this story.

95bragan
Sept. 23, 2016, 9:43 am

>94 ursula: I've heard about the movie, but haven't seen the trailer for it. I'll have to take a look. It'll be interesting to see how they film it.

96bragan
Sept. 23, 2016, 7:40 pm

>94 ursula: And I have seen the trailer now (it's here, for anyone interested), and it looks very good. I'm quite looking forward to seeing it now.

97bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 25, 2016, 8:32 am

108. City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett



This is the sequel to the excellent City of Stairs. It's set several years later, with a different main POV character (albeit one who is familiar from the first book), but it still features everything I liked so much about City of Stairs, and then some: good characters, great fantasy world-building, and a compelling story featuring twists and turns, mystery and action. There's also some real depth to it, featuring themes of war, guilt, and what it means to be a soldier. This has rapidly become one of my new favorite series, and although this volume, like the first one, is nicely self-contained, I already find myself wanting more.

Rating: 4.5/5

98bragan
Bearbeitet: Sept. 26, 2016, 5:25 am

109. Doctor Who: Dead of Winter by James Goss



A Doctor Who novel featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, and Rory. This one's got a rather unusual structure: short first-person chapters from Amy's perspective alternate with letters and journal entries from the guest characters, plus a smattering of one or two other POVs. It uses a few other odd narrative tricks, too. The execution of all this isn't perfect; there was a moment or two where I actually found some aspect of it a little frustrating. But mostly it's interesting and engaging. I've only read a few of the current crop of Who novels, but most of them have been rather boringly conventional in their storytelling, so Goss's willingness to experiment is something of a breath of fresh air.

The plot -- which involves a sort of sanitarium in 18th century France, a well-meaning doctor, and creatures from the sea who seem to offer a miracle cure -- isn't terribly complex, and features some familiar elements, but it plays out in interesting ways, with moments of slight creepiness and an emotionally complex ending.

The characterization is mostly pretty great, with strong voices, both internal and external, and some really nice insights. There is one annoying false note to it, though, in that the Doctor sometimes gets genuinely and gratuitously nasty towards and about Rory, culminating in a disparaging remark about his profession and his sexuality that was both very out of character and Very Not Cool. I can only imagine that this was the author attempting to portray a bit of tension or jealousy in the strange, three-pronged Doctor-Amy-Rory relationship and going slightly too far with it, but it's befuddling, because he does such a good job with that relationship elsewhere, addressing it in ways that are infinitely more nuanced and accurate.

Rating: Despite its flaws -- and I'm really tempted to knock off a half-star for that stupid remark about male nurses -- I'm giving this onea 4/5. It's definitely one of the more interesting and worthwhile Who novels I've read recently.

99kidzdoc
Sept. 28, 2016, 4:14 am

Nice review of Hidden Figures, Betty. I'll be on the lookout for the book, and the movie.

100bragan
Sept. 28, 2016, 10:29 am

>99 kidzdoc: Worth looking out for, I think.

101bragan
Okt. 1, 2016, 9:24 pm

And that's it for the 3rd quarter of the year! Please join me on my shiny new thread for the rest of my 2016 reading.

102brodiew2
Okt. 5, 2016, 4:53 pm

Hello Bragan!

>104 brodiew2: looks interesting. At least the concept sounds interesting even if the application doesn't quite work. In the same vein, I quite enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz and Eternity Road. This sounds lighter perhaps. Does it take itself seriously or is it more tongue in cheek?

103bragan
Okt. 5, 2016, 7:02 pm

>104 brodiew2: While it's a fairly lightweight read, and certainly not dark, I wouldn't say there's a tongue-in-cheek feel to it at all. The good thing about it, if it sounds interesting, is that it's pretty short. I think it's out of print, but used copies are probably not too difficult to find.

104brodiew2
Okt. 6, 2016, 2:58 pm

Thanks, Bragan. Do you know of other titles that explore a similar subject; a devolution of society that makes modernity archaic?

105bragan
Okt. 6, 2016, 5:24 pm

>104 brodiew2: Hmm. There are a lot of those kinds of post-apocalyptic stories, and I've read a fair number of them, and yet I find myself blanking a bit when thinking about recommendations. (Well, I'm reading one right now, Justin Cronin's The Passage, that has elements of that, but it's not the first thing I'd recommend.)

Actually, the first thing I'd recommend would probably be Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. That starts before the plague-ridden end of civilization, then jumps forward in time to many decades after. It's gotten a lot of praise, all of it well-deserved, in my opinion.

Otherwise... Well, f you don't mind zombies and literary writing with a bit of a Southern Gothic flavor sounds appealing, I liked The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell a lot. That's set at least a generation after the collapse. David Brin's The Postman isn't perfect, but as I recall it's not bad (and much better than the movie that was made out of it). I think George Stewart's Earth Abides, like A Canticle for Lebowitz, is considered something of a classic, but it's been so long since I've read it I couldn't say much about it; I suspect it's pretty dated now.

I really do feel like I should have more than that. If you have anything more specific that you're looking for, I might be able to add to the list. But you should ask around, or maybe do a web search; I'm sure you can get some good recommendations for that sort of thing.

106brodiew2
Okt. 7, 2016, 12:05 pm

Good morning, Bragan. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me titles to think about. Post apocalyptic is a fairly broad genre, no doubt. I am familiar with, but have read only a couple of the titles you mentioned. What captured me about Canticle and Eternity Road was that many generations had past since the fall of civilization, that our modern world, was a mystery to our descendants. The ruins of our cities are the playground for much more primitive society. I think that may narrow the field a bit. Thanks again.

107bragan
Okt. 7, 2016, 12:56 pm

>106 brodiew2: I like that as a setting, too, if it's done well. There's something compelling about a perspective that shows you your own civilization as an ancient ruin, and all its history reduced to myth. Annoyingly, good titles for that are not coming to mind, though. I will say that if you have any interest in reading non-fiction that touches on the subject, Deep Time by Gregory Benford is fascinating. It's about attempts to mark nuclear waste sites as dangerous in a way that will work for the next ten thousand years, for whatever civilization (or lack thereof) might come after us.

108OscarWilde87
Okt. 9, 2016, 6:58 am

>93 bragan: Nice review of Hidden Figures. The book sounds interesting.