What are you reading?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Some people have falsely equated Christopher Tolkien with Brian Herbert, the son of Dune creator Frank Herbert. In truth, the former (as we all know) simply brought his father's existing unpublished works to light, with extensive and brilliant commentary, and the latter (with a co-collaborator) created numerous mockeries of his father's work.

But now we have new entry in the pantheon of son's continuing their father's legacy. But in this case, the son truly and surprisingly manages to create something new that that is worthy of his father's work.

Nick Harkaway is the pen name of Nicholas Cornwell, the son of David Cornwell, whose pen name was John LeCarre. For those who are not familiar with LeCarre's books, they were very much unique in the spy thriller genre, with an unmatched level of complexity and psychological development. Before he passed away, he made it known that he wanted his legacy to be continued, and Nicholas, a novelist himself who several well-considered books of speculative science fiction was in charge of finding someone to take the task on. However, other family members suggested that he do it himself, and despite initial misgiving, he took the task on. The results are nothing short of extraordinary. I truly would not have thought it possible. The new book, Karla's Choice, is sent in the time period between arguably LeCarre's most successful books The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Harkaway shows an understanding of the characters created by his father and ability to create the same kind of quirky, convoluted yet compelling plot that marked his father's books. If you are fan of LeCarre's I can't recommend it enough. I already look forward to the next one!

[narya]

I've heard good and bad about Karla's Choice, but haven't read it myself. I think I will have to read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy first. All three are on my increasingly improbable "to read soon" list.

I have read Harkaway's Titanium Noir and Angelmaker, and both are pegged out on "complexity and psychological development", but as speculative fiction, rather than spy thriller (though if you think about it, there's a bit of the speculative in many spy thrillers). There are certain books that I devour quickly, because I can't put them down, then immediately read them through a second time, at a more leisurely pace, to appreciate how all the parts are introduced and fit together. I did that with both of these novels, so I look forward to reading Karla's Choice.



Currently I'm reading The Last Dangerous Minds, a collection of short stories that starts out with a short memoir by J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) telling how his life was guided from an early age by the writings of Harlan Ellison (prolific short story and screen writer), and their friendship in later days.

I won't list all the books I read since my last book report, but I will highlight a few. And I'm too lazy to post over in the non-fiction thread - I'm adding both fiction and non-fiction here. I recommend all of these to you, with some caveats noted. The other few dozens that I read, well, consider me to be a screening service - I read them so you don't have to!

Recent non-fiction:
* So You Want to Talk about Race, by Ijeoma Olua. This was a recommended read at the end of White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. It is written in the same vein, but more practically, explaining how people of privilege can support people of color.
* War, by Bob Woddward. If I'd known half of what was said behind closed doors in the White House during the early days of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. Scary stuff.
* This Year You Write Your Novel, by Walter Mosley. Only 2 hours long, and a good look inside this author's head, and his writing process. Though he's a horror writer, so don't look too far inside his head.
* The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells. Think of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth with kid gloves taken off. I have been studying climate change professionally for many years, so I no longer have that deer-in-the-headlights look when I read this, but you might.
* Sing Like Fish, by Amorina Kingdon, on how animals communicate underwater. Not just whales, but fish, crustaceans, and people. I read this one, because she will be a guest host at the next Los Angeles Sci Fi virtual book club meeting next Tuesday. Read it if you are into acoustics or marine biology.
* The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides, about the last voyage of Captain Cook. The author makes considerable use of first person accounts, not just by Cook and his crew, but by the people he encountered in Tahiti and the northwest coast of North America.
* Building a Life Worth Living, by Marsha M Linehan, who developed Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), especially for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. TL;DR, you can simultaneously love and accept yourself the way you are, and you can reject the way you are acting now and chose to change yourself for the better. It's not an either/or situation.
* Birding Under the Influence, by Dorian Anderson, about a recovering alcoholic and bird enthusiast who decided to make a "big year" (spot as many different species of birds as you can in one year) by bicycling across America.
* The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris. *Whimper* I miss her already.
* Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance *Yikes!* This guy is scary.
* The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. It's not fair that Amy Tan is not only a great author (Joy Luck Club), but she's also a talented artist and narrator. I got both the text and audio versions of this book from the library, so I could enjoy her artwork and her voice as she discusses her obsession with attracting birds in her back yard. Now I've got 4 feeders up in my back porch and am going through seed and mealworms at an alarming rate. Thanks Amy!

Recent murder mysteries (Yes, I joined a murder mystery book club, well, 2 mystery book clubs, actually, plus 7 other book clubs. My new year's resolution is to trim that down to only 4 book clubs per month.)
* Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto. It's about a delightfully nosey old woman (she's described as old, but she's younger than me) who runs a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. She finds a dead body in her shop one morning, and becomes an amateur sleuth, and matchmaker. And gave me some tips on oolong tea that I didn't know about.
* Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon. This one is actually a grandmother-mother-daughter caper, set in Elkhorn Slough, near Monterey, California. The "murder night" refers to the mother and daughter watching murder mysteries together one night per week on TV, until one of them finds a body and they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation. Part of the side-story is the grandmother coming to live with them while she is going thru chemo. I heard an interview by the author, who said that she wrote this book while her mom was going thru chemo, and she would read each new day's writing to her mom, and discuss it with her. So the book in some ways imitates her real life at the time, except without dead bodies.
* The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides. This is more of a psychological thriller than a classic murder mystery, though there are definitely mysterious, murderous things going on, and a college teacher leading impressionable young ladies in a cult-like setting.
* Everytime I go on Vacation, Someone Dies, by Catherine Mack. A fluffy travel tale, and examination of sisterly rivalry, and a few dead bodies.

Recent other fiction:
* The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty, about a swashbuckling female pirate, with adventures similar to Sinbad the Sailor. I was reading this at the same time as the Cook book, and they paired well.
* James, by Percival Everett, a retelling of the Huckleberry Finn story, from the viewpoint of the escaping slave, Jim, who turns out to be secretly quite erudite.
* The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, and the sequel Forever Peace. There's a third book in the series, Forever Free, that you can skip, but the first two are excellent. Military sci-fi, that questions the whole purpose of military warfare. Time compression due to traveling at a percentage of the speed of light means each time they pop back into normal space, they've skipped a few generations. It was written about 50 years ago, so some predictions about the near future (our recent past) are spot on, some are wildly wrong. The second looks into the concept of forcing peace without war.
* Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, written from the viewpoint of an intelligent, augmented dog who was engineered to be a soldier, and really wants to be a Good Dog, but Master is telling him to do Bad Things to civilians, so what should he do? Tchaikovsky does an excellent job in this book and others of imagining intelligent versions of other species.
* Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies, by Richard K Morgan. Steaming hot cyberpunk. Loved the whole trilogy, though it's definitely not for the more genteel among us.
* Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress, examines what happens if a small group of people become, through genetic modification, more intelligent, more productive, more long-lived, more wealthy, and more hated. The title refers to their discussions of how to make a perfect society. They posit a society in which everyone has a purpose. But what do you do with the person who can't work - do you give him a hand out? What if three beggars ask you for handouts? Where do you stop? Do you help everyone? Even, hypothetically, all the beggars in Spain?
* The First Starfighter, by Grace Goodwin. A military sci-fi bodice ripper. A first for me! Quite amusing.

[RoseMorninStar]

Wow. I can't get over how much you read narya. That's quite a list.

[narya]

I've reported on the 40 books I enjoyed the most so far this year, but there were many more. In 2024, so far, I've actually finished 132 books at least once, and sampled but discarded about 40 more. I can stop any time. Really.

[Jude]

My all-time favourite author would be 107 years old today if she were still alive. Guess who?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Muriel Spark?

[Lalaith]

I unexpectedly got onto a Native American tangent. First, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer (love her!) came up as a free audiobook on Spotify.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208 ... rviceberry

Then someone in my fledgling book club suggested The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/526 ... eed-keeper

I'm nearly done with that one and liking it quite a bit.

Those two books, combined with the documentary Sugar Cane and the state of the world, is definitely breaking my heart, though.

(Off With Her Head: Three Thousand Years of Demonizing Women in Power by Eleanor Herman https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/598 ... h-her-head was good, too, and also infuriating at the injustice of it all.)

Sent from my SM-S928U using Tapatalk

[Jude]

Muriel Spark?

Yup!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had never even heard of her. What would you recommend reading as a good introduction to her work?

[Jude]

"The Comforters" is a good introduction to her work. One of my favourites.

(You may not remember, but you have actually heard of her. click here for a post you made over ten years ago!)

[Maria]

I just got finished with a 91 hour audiobook collection called "Black Ocean: Mirth and Mayhem
https://www.jsmorin.com/js-morins-books ... th-mayhem/

It was .... unusual. Besides being monumentally LONG, the other oddity was the dearth of good guys. I'm used to tales where there are heroes and villains, cut and dried. With the occasional anti hero thrown in. This tale? Not so easy to classify. People who do both good and bad things both minor and major. I can't help feeling I wouldn't want to meet any of the characters in person, though. Not ever. Anyway....

Top notch world building. Good science fiction. I won't be forgetting this series soon.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

"The Comforters" is a good introduction to her work. One of my favourites.

(You may not remember, but you have actually heard of her. click here for a post you made over ten years ago!)

Google is still my friend! I searched on February 1, 1918, to see who had been born that day, and she was the only literary figure that come up.

I will definitely check out The Comforters, which I see was her first novel.

[RoseMorninStar]

"The Comforters" is a good introduction to her work. One of my favourites.

What is it you like about this work/her work in general? I read a short synopsis and it seems rather dark.

I've always enjoyed the movie, 'Practical Magic' and I've been reading the novel. I don't recall putting it on my kindle list but I must have.

[Jude]

"The Comforters" is a good introduction to her work. One of my favourites.

What is it you like about this work/her work in general? I read a short synopsis and it seems rather dark.

Well, it's highly original - the concept of a main character that knows she's in a novel is one I haven't seen elsewhere.

I'm not sure I would call it dark, even if not everything that happens in the book is sweetness and light. Does the synopsis you read contain spoilers? I wonder if they see it differently than I do.

Edit: I just remembered, I gave vison "A Far Cry from Kensington", another great book to get started on. This is what she wrote back:

I sat up quite late reading it last night. It's wonderful. I wish I could explain to myself the spell she weaves, because it seems like nothing, just a chatty old lady, etc., and yet I can't put it down.

[narya]

My all-time favourite author would be 107 years old today if she were still alive. Guess who?

I distinctly remember seeing the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in my freshman high school humanities class. At the time, it was pretty clear that my teacher, Mrs. Clifton, related strongly to Miss Brodie. It was a great class, though I don't remember much else about it. I think I'll read the book now, to see if my views have changed in 55 years. I put that book, as well as Memento Mori on my to-be-read list in Libby, which has grown, horrifically, to over 1,200 titles. I couldn't find an audio copy of The Comforters in any of my 16 library accounts.

I put Service Berries on the list, too, since it's only 2 hours long and I've read Kimmerer before. And Off With Her Head looks good, too. Black Oceans looks interesting, but it's not yet in Libby.

To finish up on my December books of note:

*The Ghost Forest by Greg King. The heart breaking true story of how 96%, yes 96% of the old-growth redwood forest in California was mowed down by greedy industrialists.

* The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, a cute murder mystery from the viewpoint of an extremely precocious 11 year old chemistry buff, living in rural England in the 50s.

* 10 Birds That Changed the World by Stephen Moss, which is more accurately Ten Ways Humans Seriously Screwed up the Avian World, but still, it was interesting historical reading. Especially the carrier pigeon spies (pigeons who were deliberately chosen for their poor homing instincts, who would "accidentally" go roost with German pigeons temporarily, and perhaps be laded with a German communique, then return home to England).

And the 5 highlights of my January 2025 reading:

* A Memory Called Empire, and A Desolation Called Peace, both by Arkady Martine. I started the first one, but really couldn't get into it after the first few chapters, so I set it aside. Then I picked it up again to read, because it was going to be in one of my book club meetings, and realized why the first few chapters were so hard. It was the classic imperial palace intrigue trope, and just like me, the main protagonist was totally confused by what was going on when she first arrived as a "barbarian" ambassador, but finally hit her stride after a few chapters. Then it got quite good. The second book was good as well. This is space opera, since it takes place on another planet, part of a very long standing human diaspora, thanks to space ships and jump gates, but it's mostly the kind of political intrigue you'd see in classic fantasy novels. No magic. All the aliens (except one) are humans who differ only in customs and language. I'd recommend it to you all.

*Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, a novel about a small First Nations community in the wilderness north of Lake Ontario that goes dark one winter when the power, internet, mail, and all contact with the world to the south of them are suddenly cut off. They slowly realize that it is the apocalypse. The audio book is narrated by a Cree man, which adds to the flavor. The novel goes into great detail about the traditional culture, thinly overlain with a veneer of modern ways, and how that veneer is eventually peeled off. There is a lot of similarity between the book and the Alaska Native cultures in Alaska. Lalaith, you might like it. I'm going to a Zoom talk by the author on February 11th, thru the Los Angeles County Library. He'll be talking about his next book, set in the same community, 10 years later. You don't have to read either book before going to the talk. Here's the page on all upcoming talks: https://lacountylibrary.org/vp/ Everyone is welcome at these virtual talks, but you have to register first. All of their talks are posted on their YouTube channel afterwards, in case you can't "attend live".

* Attached, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller is a non-fiction book that was a bit hard to read, because it rang so true, about various attachment styles people have in their relationships. It explains a lot of what I already suspected.

* Unbecoming by Anuradha Bhagwati is an autobiography of a petite, South Asian, bisexual woman in the US Marines in 2004. It's not a pretty story. The misogyny she explicitly related was devastating. But she survived it, and went on to help other women survive, and when necessary, sue, to get better conditions.

And now on to the 16 books in my queue for February (about 156 hours). Despite my new year's resolutions, I'm scheduled for 6 book clubs in February.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I unexpectedly got onto a Native American tangent. First, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer (love her!) came up as a free audiobook on Spotify.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208 ... rviceberry

I would go as far as to say that Robin Wall Kimmerer is a revolutionary (in the best possible way).

[Maria]

Well, it's highly original - the concept of a main character that knows she's in a novel is one I haven't seen elsewhere.

A few of Piers Anthony's "Xanth" novels are like that. They know that they are "Main Characters" and are thus immune from real harm. If I recall correctly, one of the novels is the story of one person's quest to become a main character, although it's been so long ago that I can't be sure of that. There are so many Xanth novels and most of them kind of run together in my head or are completely forgotten. I tried to reread one a decade or so back, though, and my adult mind doesn't appreciate the constant punning so I'm not revisiting that series.

In "RedShirts" by John Scalzi some of the characters become aware that they are characters in a TV series remarkably like Star Trek and their lives are being manipulated by the screenwriter. That one is interesting and funny and I will be re-reading it again some day.

And there's a movie called "Free Guy" where "When Guy, a bank teller, learns that he is a non-player character in a bloodthirsty, open-world video game, he goes on to become the hero of the story and takes the responsibility of saving the world."
So that's the same sort of thing from the video game side of things. That was an OK movie. I might even watch it again someday.

Oh! And Robert Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" is a novel where the characters gain access to lots of different dimensions, many of which are peopled by characters from fictional sources. Eventually the protagonists realize they are characters in some of the other universes and that every time someone writes a story it splits off a new dimension/universe. That's one of the earliest multiverse books that I know of, although Heinlein doesn't use that term.

There are doubtless more. That's just what comes to mind initially.

[Jude]

That's interesting, Maria. I think I'll check one or two of those ones out. Do you have a favourite?

Right now I'm reading "The Mercy of Gods" by James S. A. Corey, the same authors who wrote The Expanse series. It's dark. Really, really dark. At this point I'm regretting starting it, and I'm only reading on to see what happens.

[Maria]

RedShirts is probably best as a stand alone. The Heinlein book... well, the protagonists keep meeting characters from other Heinlein books, so if you haven't read those, it probably won't mean as much as it does to a fan of that author.

There are over 40 Xanth books ( or so the internet tells me) and I have no idea which ones were the ones the author got sidetracked by the issue of being a main character or not. If you start the series, you'll eventually run into them. We dropped out of that series in the late 20s, I think. The puns were getting rather forced by then. They were charming for quite a while, though. "A Spell for Chameleon" is the first of the series and quite good.

[narya]

Jude, The Mercy of Gods is quite dark, and a little tedious. I had to read it twice to sort out all the characters. Still not a fan. I liked the novella, Live Suit, a bit better. It is the work that the James SA Corey duo produced next, in the same (non Expanse) universe. Different main characters, same aliens. But also kinda dark.