February Reading Thread

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Ian Fortytwo said:
After 100 pages I gave up.
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Useless fact. #61734
Apparently Charlotte was the shortest of the Brontë sisters, at 4 feet 7 inches.

Further unsolicited information...
Useless fact #61735
Charlotte dedicated Jane Eyre to William Makepeace Thackeray because she was a big fan. However, unknown to Charlotte, Thackeray, by coincidence, had a 'mad' wife who he kept hidden away. This coincidence caused some gossip as people thought Rochester was modelled on him.
 
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A Child of Great Promise by E.L. Knox. Another enjoyable Alt-Earth tale, this adventure involves a mixed-species party on a quest to find the main character's origins. I was surprised by the twist in the end, I hadn't worked out the answer to her riddle.
 
Halfway through a history book: The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648-1815 by Tim Blanning.
Informative but bland, with a vague narrative structure. Covers the interactions between the various social and political aspects of various European states during that time.
 
Elentarri said:
Halfway through a history book: The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe 1648-1815 by Tim Blanning.
Informative but bland, with a vague narrative structure. Covers the interactions between the various social and political aspects of various European states during that time.
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I struggled with a similar style book...1848: Year Of Revolution by Mike Rapport
It's got all the facts but it just didn't grab me. I suspect it must be fairly straightforward to write a book on a period in history but much more difficult to write it in such a way that it evolves from a list of facts to something that brings that period to life for the reader.
 
Undead Samurai by Baptiste Pinson Wu - the title gives you all the info you need!
 
H. Rider Haggard "The Days of My Life" - his autobiography
Over 400 pages long. I skimmed some of the last 100 pages, as they tended to be about his current political interests. Otherwise I found it a really interesting read. I hadn't realized how much of an action man he'd been. Before becoming a writer he'd been deeply involved, a player even, in the Zulu and Boer wars. After his initial success as a writer, he made a point of travelling, often to remote places in significant hardship, to research the landscapes of his novels. In later life he took an active role in trying to better the conditions of the working man, particularly those working on the land. In this autobiography he also muses at some length on his own writing process. He was also poor academically at school, though, it seems, he was good with his fists...

A couple of points of interest for me:

His three most well known novels - King Solomon's Mines, She, Allan Quatermain were written in a space of about eighteen months, while also working as a barrister, organising work on a large farm, and coping with the responsibilities of a young family. It seems to me that some people, Roger Zelazny for instance, produce their best work while under significant pressure.

I was very interested that in the late nineteenth century there was strong opposition to smallpox vaccination, comparable in its virulence to current opposition to Covid inoculation . Please note: this is not intended to stimulate debate on the rights and wrongs of vaccination just that I find the parallel interesting.
In 1898 Haggard published a book "Dr Therne" in which a smallpox epidemic sweeps the UK. The general theme was that smallpox vaccination was essential. (Haggard had seen on his travels at first hand the horrors of smallpox).
The Lancet wrote: we must commend Mr Haggard's courage in thus entering the lists against the Anti-Vaccination party. As a novelist and a politician alike it is evidently to his advantage to take no step that would be likely to alienate him from any large body of possible supporters. Yet he has risked losing many readers and creating a fanatical opposition to whatever he may do in a public or private capacity for the sake of telling the truth.
 
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Currently re-reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' as I work my way back through my favourite PKD novels. Think I'll be doing Ubik or The Man in the High Castle next.
 
Almost finished with: Secret Life of the City: How Nature Thrives in the Urban Wild by Hanna Hagen Bjørgaas, translated by Matt Bagguley. Interesting, but a bit superficial. I like that there are examples from Norway, instead of the usual UK/USA stuff. GR LINK
 
Strangely I'm reading a history of World War II when in reality I want to write a novel in the style of H. G. Wells. I should really be reading a book on engineering.
 
I just finished book one of Laurence E. Dahners new series The Worlds of Ryn Wilkie, A Parallel Worlds Story, The Warp and the Weft. This is significant because I interrupted another story to do read it. And that one is the beginning of a new series by (former?) Chronner Nathan Hystad, Echoes from the Moon. which isn't a bad read at all. But I'm afraid that it suffers from the comparison. I've several times in the last couple of days found myself anxious to go read more of The Warp and the Weft only to sigh and realize I'd already finished it and that's there's not a book 2 in the series yet. --- This is very unusual for me.

Dahners writes what I would call positive science fiction stories. He sees the world as needing a bit of saving, but not without hope. And that hope is seen by the individual actions of a lot of "good" people. As in all of Dahners' books he gives the main character(s) a smallish super power. But in this case the power is quite a bit more than being able to teleport small objects or react 3 times faster than a normal human as in some of his other works. In this case Ryn discovers she has the ability to move between two parallel worlds where the topography will allow, her own mid-twenty-first century America and one where some event (it isn't quite clear what yet.) has delayed the development of the world and they are presently somewhere in the late 1800's tech wise and with what I would say is a late 1700's view of the role of women. Plus she finds that she can sense things going on around her and inside someone's body within some limits. I would call this a more realistic version of X-ray vision. This gives her some unique advantages, but she isn't Miss Marvel or something of the ilk.

In this first book has Ryn discovers her power and the situation in the parallel world. She is in her medical residency and is considered something approaching an unusually fine surgeon in the making. When she suddenly finds herself on Cearth (her name for the parallel world). She is appalled by the medicine and the fate of the women there. As she discovers the range of her abilities she finds herself determined to do at least a little to help some of the people there.

As with all of Dahners books this is a shorter novel (app, 300 pages) and reads fast. I love that the characters are recognizable and that they want to help one another. His style hits me in the sweet spot. I've read nearly all that he's written. He's most famous for the Ell Donsaii series, but this one may challenge it. It's been out less than a month and it already has over 800 ratings, when I picked up, maybe 4 days ago, it had about 500 ratings,

I have a hard time believing anyone wouldn't appreciate this pleasant story.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed
 
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