Megatheriums for Breakfast

My occasional summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Gosh, I get through a lot of books in six weeks! Partly this is because I listen to a lot of audiobooks as I walk and drive, and partly because… well, I just like reading. So some of these comments will be rather brief.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

E-books on my iPhone

Really superior thrillers with some excellent characterization. It took me a little while to get into the first book because of the slightly off-putting Swedish references and context. But I was hooked by the time Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative finance reporter, is convicted of libel but then offered an intriguing puzzle by Henrik Vanger, an ageing industrialist: what happened to his grand-niece Harriet 40 years ago? The circumstances of her disappearance make it something like a classic “locked-room” mystery.

And we are also introduced to a young woman, Lisbeth Salander – the “Girl” of the titles – an original and memorable character, who drives the plot in some very interesting directions.

Both books were gripping, un-put-downable reading (wearing out my eyes on the small screen of the iPhone – I’m looking forward to buying an iPad).

I haven’t yet read the third in the series The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, though I am looking forward to it.*

Alas, there will be no more Lisbeth Salander books, as the author died of a heart attack not long after finishing the third book in the trilogy.

* I had to buy this in Kindle format, as the epub versions aren’t yet available. I must say that the Kindle app on the iPhone is rather poorly done. Given that Amazon bought up Stanza, I would hope that some of that technology gets put into the Kindle app.

Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh

Audiobook

This Lord Peter Whimsey book was left unfinished at Sayers’ death, but it has been splendidly completed by Jill Paton Walsh, who seems to have channelled Sayers in her understanding of the characters of Whimsey and Harriet Vane (now Lady Peter). Very enjoyable mystery, and a wonderful picture of England as it moves inevitably towards war with Germany. I imagine, however, that some of the criticism of royalty developed in the book (the new King Edward VIII and his dallyings with Mrs Simpson, his loose behavior towards security and his dealings with the Nazis) would never have appeared in a book written by Sayers at the time.

The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell

Audiobook

Rendell has an amazing ability to portray the psychological dramas of ordinary people, in novels written either under her own name or under the pen-name of Barbara Vine. And she is brilliant at inventing (or observing) remarkable characters in a seemingly ordinary urban environment.

In this book we have a fascinating and slowly developing story of two sisters influenced by the death by drowning of their step-father some fifteen years ago when they were both in their early teens. The slow revealing of this back story, the different way each of these sisters remembers this event, and the playing out of the consequences make for gripping reading.

Orpheus Rising by Colin Bateman

Audiobook

I borrowed this from the local library on a whim (the selection of audiobooks is limited, so I often pick up something on impulse). It was a bit strange, but quite enjoyable.

It tells the tale of a young Irish man who has moved to Florida, USA and writes a novel called “Space Coast” which after receiving many rejections is at last published and becomes an unexpected best-seller, making him exceedingly rich. So far so good: but his beloved wife is killed in a senseless bank robbery not long after the book is accepted for publication.

Ten years after the tragedy, after a decade wandering the world, rich but miserable, he comes back to the town where he and his wife had lived. After quite a long lead-up, about half-way through the book, strange things start happening… and at this point the book becomes intriguing, if not particularly deep.

I’ll look out for some other books by this author.

The Ladies of Grace-Adieu by Susanna Clarke

Audiobook

I am a huge fan of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is an astonishingly good book (I’ve read it three times). Set in the 19th Century in a slightly different version of Britain, in which the study of ancient magic and faerie begins to yield positive and practical results.

This book is a compilation of stories which Clarke apparently couldn’t fit into the numerous side stories and footnotes in the original book. They vary greatly in character and seriousness, but most have an underlying humour. I particularly liked “Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower” in which a country pastor discovers he has fairy relations. This is not necessarily a good thing…

Settling Accounts Quadrilogy by Harry Turtledove

E-books on my iPhone

Whew! I’ve finally finished the “Southern Victory” alternate history series by Turtledove – eleven long books detailing the consequences of the Confederate States winning “The War of Secession” in 1862. Great stuff, really, but I think I’m glad I have finished it. I feel like I have been reading this forever.

At least, I think I have finished, unless Turtledove unleashes yet another trilogy taking the history beyond the end of the Second Great War.

Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly

Paperback, my collection

The latest of Connelly’s Harry Bosch books. Bosch’s daughter, living in Hong Kong with her mother, is apparently kidnapped in retaliation for Bosch’s investigation of Chinese Triads in Los Angeles. Bosch charges off to do the Rambo thing, but not everything is as it seems…

Currently Reading

I’m currently reading:

• A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L Sayers (Audiobook)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Hardback*, my collection)

* Just a note on book prices in Australia – it was cheaper to buy this beautiful hardcover version from Amazon and have it shipped to Australia (admittedly with some other books to share the cost) than it would have been to buy a thick paperback version here, whose spine would have cracked in no time.

My occasional highly-erratic summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Because of the long gap (three months) since my last summary, this is going to be a set of very brief comments on what I can remember!

It’s also startling to realize just how many books I read in a three-month period!

Black Echo

Angels’ Flight

The Poet

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly

Library Hardback, Ebooks and Trade Paperback

Yeah, OK, so I’m addicted to popular thrillers. But I like Connelly’s outwardly hard-bitten but often personally vulnerable hero, Harry Bosch. Black Echo is the first book in this series, and I’ve only just read it. Stupidly, the territorial copyright system prevented me from actually paying the author for an electronic version, so I resorted to borrowing a free hardback copy from the local library. Anyway, it was interesting at last to read of Bosch’s first encounter with Eleanor Wish, a relationship which continues on and off throughout the whole series. Angel’s Flight is another in this series. Both books have interesting and not wholly predictable plots, and I enjoyed them both.

The Poet doesn’t feature Bosch, but instead journalist Jack McEvoy, devastated by the apparent suicide of his twin brother, a police officer. Of course in the way of such novels, it turns out that it was no suicide but a murder instead – indeed, part of a series of such murders. As the case becomes handled by the FBI, McEvoy becomes involved with an agent, Rachel Walling, but then starts to have doubts about her… I enjoyed this a lot, and would consider it one of Connelly’s best. Not so The Scarecrow, a sequel featuring McEvoy and Walling, which I thought was a very lightweight pot-boiler, and a real disappointment.

Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

Hardcover, my own collection

This is the third in a series of – what? re-imaginings, re-visitings, re-workings – of Niven’s Known Space science fiction books written in the 1960′s and 70′s. As such, they are really quite intriguing, as the events and characters in those old stories are woven into a wholly different framework seen from an alternative angle. Niven always has plenty of imagination, and wrote stories which really appeal to those who like speculation on the grand scale. But his dialogue and characterization have never been his strong suits. It’s when he teams up with others who are much stronger in these areas that he has done his best work – with Jerry Pournelle, for example, or here with Edward M. Lerner.

The previous two books in this series are Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds.

Infernal Devices

A Darkling Plain by Phillip Reeve

Paperbacks, my own collection

These are the last two books of the Mortal Engines tetralogy. I talked about the previous book Predator’s Gold here. Really superior (if occasionally a bit violent) science fiction for early teenagers, with strong characters and really interesting (if slightly unbelievable) premise of a future world in which cities have become mobile on great traction engines. I, of course, am no longer a teenager. But it doesn’t stop me really enjoying books written for that audience.

Illegal Action by Stella Rimington

E-book on my iPhone

This is the third in a series of thrillers written by the ex-head of Britain’s MI5. She certainly has the background knowledge and isn’t a bad (if not great) writer either.

American Empire: Blood and Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove

Audiobooks

Turtledove is, as they say, the master of alternative history. But gosh this is a long-winded series! So far I have listened to over 160 hours of Turtledove’s vision of a world in which the Confederate States won the American Civil War in 1862. After that event – now called “The War of Secession” – we had the “Second Mexican War” in the 1880s, and “The Great War” in 1914-1917, at the end of which the Confederate States (and their allies Britain and France) were defeated by the USA and Germany.

The “American Empire” group of Turtledove’s novels covers the aftermath of that defeat and leads us up to the 1940s. It’s fascinating how the author spins an entirely believable tale of how a disgruntled sergeant in the defeated Southern army, embittered by his experiences and filled with a conviction that the South was “stabbed in the back” by “traitors” in the government and by an uprising amongst the still-mistreated blacks, goes on to join and then lead, a new political party. Turtledove so cleverly shapes his story that the realization of the parallels with events in Germany in “our” timeline is slow in coming. By casting that story in utterly convincing terms in an American setting, he makes us see those “real” events in a much deeper way.

And so on to the next four novels and the opening of the equivalent of World War II. Lots more reading to do!

Once Upon a Time in the North by Phillip Pullman

Small hardback, my own collection

Very brief but enjoyable prequel to Pullman’s “Golden Compass” series, telling the story of how Lee Scoresby first meets up with the armored polar bear Iorek Byrnison. This is a small-format gift book.

Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan

E-book on my iPhone

Well, this was free (from Baen Books), and worth about what I paid for it. I read the original SF novel in paperback years ago, and I seemed to remember enjoying it, so I read it again for curiosity. I was surprised, though, at how poorly written it was. The plot is all driven by a series of revelations rather than by the actions of the characters (let alone by the interactions of the characters).

The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell

Trade paperback, on loan

The latest Wexford novel from Rendell. Cleverly done, and well-written, if not particularly deep. Rendell writes so many, and so many very excellent, books that I’m sure she sees these police-procedural Wexford books as a relaxation from her more challenging works.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. (Ebook)
• The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell (Audiobook)

My fortnightly summary of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

Predator’s Gold by Phillip Reeve

Paperback from my own collection

Amazon link
This is the second volume in a quartet of sf novels aimed at young adults, a series sometimes dubbed “The Hungry City Chronicles”. In any case, the sequel to Mortal Engines. The basic premise is that hundreds, maybe thousands of years from now the Earth has been all but destroyed in “The Sixty Minute War” and the remaining cities have found that to survive they have to become mobile. Mounted on vast traction engines, cities like London prowl the devastated world, hunting down and consuming smaller cities. It’s a wonderful conceit, and Reeve really brings it to life with both humor and pathos, and some very interesting characters.

In this second novel, the main (surviving!) characters from the first, Tom and Hester, find themselves aboard the city of Anchorage, facing many perils. Their relationship is severely threatened, and the danger ratchets up as the book goes on. Hester is a really interesting character, horribly disfigured and tormented, but fiercely determined to get what she wants. A really strong female character, going right against the grain of most female stereotypes you find in novels aimed at this age group.

Really very superior teen fiction, in my view. I’m looking forward to reading the other novels in the cycle.

One minor note – the Scholastic editions are attractive, but the cut-outs in their front covers are unlikely to survive much handling before they rip.

The Great War:American Front / Walk in Hell / Breakthroughs by Harry Turtledove

Audiobook

Amazon link
I finally completed listening to Turtledove’s “Great War” trilogy, a total of some 72 hours in audiobook format, goodness knows how many pages in hardcopy.

Brilliantly done alternative history, starting with a seemingly trivial change in events early in the American Civil War, leading to the failure of the United States to prevent the southern states from seceding from the Union. Turtledove deals with the Civil War itself (or the “War of Secession” as it is described in later books) only very briefly at the start of How Few Remain, a 24-hour long prequel to the current series, mainly devoted to the “Second Mexican War” in which the Confederate States again defeat their northern neighbour in the 1880s over the issue of the CSA acquiring two new states from the Empire of Mexico.

This work basically covers the period of World War I (“The Great War”), as the United States finds itself allied with the Germans and Austrians against the Confederate States allied with Britain, France and their colonies. The USA is thus fighting the CSA to the south, and Canada to the north. A war which bogs down as it did in Europe in trench warfare, with mustard gas, tanks and aerial dog-fights.

As someone who is not an American (I was born in England, emigrated to Australia in my teens) my knowledge of the actual American events (and particularly geography) is a bit restricted, and this perhaps limits my understanding of what is going on, but I didn’t find this a major problem.

Turtledove’s historical alterations are done very subtly, all of them very logically deriving from his original premise. His writing technique is based on episodically featuring the lives of a variety of different individuals, perhaps a dozen or so, to whom we keep returning as the general flow the story proceeds. In this way he makes the events of the time very personal and moving.

Among his cast of characters, he follows a couple of African-Americans in this trilogy (in How Few Remain, he followed Frederick Douglass) and it is clear that he is very sympathetic to their plight of their race. In this alternate world, of course, slavery takes its time to be abolished, and blacks are still treated appallingly in the South and not much better in the North as the novel opens. The use of the ‘n-word’ is extremely frequent, but is perfectly in context and it would have been absurd to avoid it. I do also wonder whether in this new history there is a single word ‘damnyankees’ because ‘yankee’ is never used without the adjective.

There’s some very tragic material in here, but also a good deal of humor – the bumblings of the 75-year old Lieutenant General George Custer (who never got to Little Big Horn and so survived) and his head-to-head confrontations with President Theodore Roosevelt (still in office in 1914, Woodrow Wilson being President of the CSA) are just a delight.

Absolutely fascinating stuff, though, and really well-done characterisation and story-telling. I expect eventually to move on to his American Empire trilogy in the same timeline which deals with the period of the Second World War.

Die Trying by Lee Child

Ebook on my iPod

Amazon link
I’m a sucker for thrillers (as you can probably tell) and I thought I would try this author, who has a whole series based around his ex-Marine character Jack Reacher.

I couldn’t get hold of the first novel in the series (“geographically restricted“, grrr!!), but was able to buy this one.

Reacher finds himself caught up, literally, in the kidnapping of a female FBI agent. For a long while, the reason for the kidnapping remains obscure, but all is of course eventually revealed. There’s a lot of violence – if I ever read again about someone’s head ‘exploding into a pink mist’ when shot I shall be sick – and some interesting plotting.

I may try Lee Child again – if this is only the author’s second book, it wasn’t bad. But there’s some awfully weak or silly plot points – why Reacher isn’t killed and disposed of by the villains at least five or six times in the novel is pretty well inexplicable. The kind of plot which only works because most people involved act like total idiots and against their own obvious interests.

Double Star by Robert Heinlein

Ebook on my iPod

Classic 1950s science fiction from a master of the craft. Quite a lot of fun to re-read this kind of book, but there’s not a lot to say about it.

An actor is recruited to play the double of a leading politician (on Mars) because the politician has been kidnapped. Then the plot thickens, but not much. It’s also the kind of sf which really doesn’t take much advantage of the genre – nothing about the plot requires the science fiction, planet-travelling background, but could almost just as easily have been set in the modern day.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• The Appeal by John Grisham (Audiobook)
• South by Sir Ernest Shackleton (E-Book)
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Hardcover, my own library)

I’ll try and keep this up on a fortnightly basis.

What (and how) I am reading varies a lot these days. I am generally reading several books at once (terrible habit, I suppose, but I don’t seem to have any trouble keeping plots separate in my head).

So, I’m currently reading:

No Name by Wilkie Collins (1862).

Hardcover.

This is my current bed-time reading.

In my opinion, this is Collins’ masterpiece, not The Moonstone or The Woman in White. No less an authority than Collins’ mentor, Charles Dickens, agreed with me.

Unlike Dickens, Wilkie Collins really knew how to write about women characters. In this novel, the marvelous character of Magdalen Vanstone is absolutely memorable, as the young woman struggles to regain her lost fortune, aided by the unscrupulous fraudster Captain Wragge.

Full of passionate writing, effortlessly mixing tragedy with humour, this book tells a really gripping tale.

 

At Risk by Stella Rimington.

E-book, read on my iPod Touch.

I read this in a variety of locations such as medical waiting rooms, on the tram, etc. Nice to have a whole novel you can fit in a pocket.

This thriller is distinguished as the first fiction work by Rimington who was actually head of Britain’s MI5 (and its first female head). She therefore really knows what she is talking about. This debut novel has a few weak points, only to be expected, but it was still a very good read, as we follow the semi-autobiographical protagonist as she tries to track down a pair of terrorists from a tiny amount of evidence.

As an aside: reading this book on my iPod was a perfectly pleasant experience, despite the small form factor of the iPod Touch screen. I’ll write more fully about e-books sometime in the near future on this blog.
 

The Great War: American Front by Harry Turtledove.

Audiobook, on my iPod Touch.

I am listening to this while I walk or drive.

Harry Turtledove is considered to be the king of alternative history writing, and for good reason. This book is set in a timeline in which the South won the American Civil War. So far, so ho-hum; but Turtledove doesn’t concentrate on the actual Civil War itself for more than a page or two of prologue. What sets his works apart is that he looks at where this other trouser leg of time (as Terry Pratchett would say) leads to.

His first novel in this timeline was How Few Remain, set 20 years after the “War of Secession”, when the North and the South again come to blows.

In The Great War it is now 1914, and the USA finds itself allied with Germany, and the Confederate States with Britain and France. The USA thus finds itself at war with Canada to its north and the CSA to its south. Trench warfare, with poison gas and tanks.

This isn’t just a war novel for boys, though. Turtledove makes the idea come alive by concentrating on the individual stories of a wide variety of people, ranging from individual soldiers on both sides, to a woman running a coffee shop in occupied Washington, to a French Canadian farmer, to a trawler fisherman captured by the CSA navy, and many more.

There are also some famous names still around. General George Custer is still alive at the age of 75 and in charge of an army of the United States (and being thoroughly incompetent at it). Theodore Roosevelt is President of the USA, Woodrow Wilson of the CSA.

Extremely entertaining. But very long. This novel, the first of a trilogy about the Great War, is 24 hours in duration as an audiobook, as are the sequels. And after that, Turtledove has a series based on the Second World War. Lots of listening to come!

 

Miscellaneous

I’m also trying to keep up with reading various blogs, the Crikey newsletter and New Scientist.  I’m about four months behind on the latter.  All of these, including NS, in electronic form, read on my computer screen.  New Scientist is about the only thing for which I wish I owned an Amazon Kindle.  Alas, the Kindle is not for sale in Australia, nor (even more alas, in my view) is the Kindle iPhone app.