November 2022 Reading Thread

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I still have The Algebraist to read as well, Vince. In fact, I really need to reread Banks‘s Culture novels as it has been far too long.
 
Finished: Crocodile Beat by Christoffer Petersen - A light and entertaining Greenland missing persons novel, half of which is set in Darwin, Australia this time.

Started (again): The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard - Science fiction novella set a future, speculative time where the space age has Confucian galactic empires of Vietnamese and Chinese inspiration: scholars administrate planets, and sentient spaceships are part of familial lineages.

Also started: Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes.​
 
Just finished Tom Holland’s Rubicon: The Triumph And Tragedy Of The Roman Republic.

I had some knowledge already of this part of history but nothing particularly in-depth. This was probably why I was somewhat surprised to see that the three Punic Wars were covered in a fraction of a chapter. Hannibal was lucky if he got a couple of paragraphs and Scipio Africanus wasn’t even mentioned. As I continued, however, I began to understand that no outside influence could pose as great a threat to the republic than that posed by some of its own citizens - that people tasting power are extremely reluctant to give it up. And with that in mind, despite all its great intentions, I think the republic was probably doomed from the start. If history can teach us anything then perhaps this fragility of any form of democracy and its openness to corruption is one of the most important.

That all said and done, I learned a lot from this well written book and so find my time not wasted in reading it.

Now I’m starting The Punic Wars: A Captivating History. A simple and concise book to fill in the blanks where this period of the Roman republic is concerned.
 
FYI: Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles is a good general book about Carthage. It's better as a general overview than The Fall of Carthage (aka The Punic Wars) by Adrian Goldsworthy, which is mostly a military history, with little mention of culture etc.
Persian Fire by Tom Holland is also very good.
 
I read Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones. I thought The Witness For The Dead was a good detective story in a fantasy setting and I thought the sequel was similarly good. One of the features of the books is that Celehar tends to have to work on multiple cases simultaneously, often of very different types, here varying from tracking down a coveted scone recipe to investigating sinister goings on in a school for orphaned girls. This means that the pacing can sometimes be a bit odd, with the climax of the main case happening about 2/3 of the way through the book with much of the remainder focusing on the repercussions of it. Despite the sometimes dark subject matter and Celehar tendency towards feeling melancholy it is an enjoyable book to read. Celehar himself is very likeable and there is a good cast of supporting characters, both old and new (Celehar's new apprentice is a good addition to the story).

I then read Neil Gaiman's seventh Sandman collection, Brief Lives, which I thought was very good even if some of the earlier parts of the quest felt a bit aimless.

I have now started one of Ian McDonald's earlier novels, Necroville, which doesn't really seem to be among his best-known works.
 
I'm currently reading Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson.

Also reading A Vertical Art On Poetry, by Simon Armitage. Essays on poetry.

Also reading A Private Spy, The Letters of John Le Carre.
 
On to Judge Dredd: Black Atlantic

Judge Dredd Black Atlantic.jpg

I'm cycling home from work too and will start listening to audio books. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks is my first choice.
 
"Relic" by Alan Dean Foster. The tale of the last known survivor of a human interstellar civilisation. Didn't impress me much at first, but I really got into it after a couple of chapters. Very old-school, in a good way. Some nice nuances in the relationships between the hero and his alien hosts, the Myssari. (Who are non-humanoid, which I always like.)

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St John Mandel. Accidentally absorbed this in a day. A literary-flavoured time travel story, vaguely reminiscent of "Cloud Atlas". Lyrical without being pretentious.
 
Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. I’ve been a fan of his short-stories for a while now, so I figured it was time to read what many claim to be his finest work. So far, so good. And I feel that the title--taken from Macbeth--really does justice to the book’s content (or vice-versa). It really seems that wickedness is coming to that Illinois town. The prose has a lot of weirdness to it too, many weird adjectives; but I wouldn’t call it purple prose because it doesn’t draw my attention away from the narrative.

And about the Conan complete collection I started a couple months ago, I’m already at the last story: The Hour of The Dragon. It’s a 160-page novella, and I’m reading it slowly.
 
Finished 2 Shakespeare Plays: Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
 
Fiberglass Cyborg said:
"Relic" by Alan Dean Foster. The tale of the last known survivor of a human interstellar civilisation. Didn't impress me much at first, but I really got into it after a couple of chapters. Very old-school, in a good way. Some nice nuances in the relationships between the hero and his alien hosts, the Myssari. (Who are non-humanoid, which I always like.)
Click to expand...
Yes, a good, old-fashioned (in the best sense) SF book.
 
Paul Bowles "Let It Come Down" (1952)
American arrives in the International Zone of post WWII Tangier to make a new beginning for himself away from his conventional life as a bank clerk in the USA, and quickly finds himself out of his depth in an unfamiliar cultural milieu amidst all manner of intrigue. Some similarities to Graham Greene, but without the warmth. Unnecessarily dramatic ending - the novel was interesting enough without that particular denouement.
 
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