Megatheriums for Breakfast

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.

The Jetty Journals by Ian Buchanan

E-book on my iPod.

This is a short novel aimed at teenagers, written by a good friend of mine and now published as an e-book through Smashwords.

Ian sent me an electronic copy of his novel a couple of years ago and urged me to read it; but what with one thing and another I didn’t get around to it. A large part of my reluctance, I think, was just that I hate reading anything of any real length on the computer screen. Reading for pleasure is part of what I call the ‘couch culture’. Reading stuff from the computer screen is part of ‘desk culture’ and too much like hard work.

Anyway, when he let me know that it was available as an e-book in a format suitable for my iPod Touch, I downloaded it and read it with pleasure in a few days.

The book tells the story of a small group of Melbourne teenagers who survive a global pandemic which kills off a very large percentage of the population. Well, it turns out, it didn’t actually kill everyone – some people survive, but unpleasantly changed…

The book is strong on the group’s desperate struggles to survive, and full of local color – set mainly on the Mornington Peninsula which runs along the eastern edge of Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay.

I found it very enjoyable, though I felt the ending was a little incomplete. Ian tells me, though, that he has a sequel in the works, which should satisfy that feeling.

Secret Asset by Stella Rimington

E-book on my iPod.

This is the second novel by the one-time head of Britain’s MI5, and as with her first novel, is full of convincing detail about the management of agents and the investigation of terror threats.

A terrorist plot is detected, but with insufficient information to track down the suspects; an old IRA member lies dying and reveals a secret vulnerability of Britain’s security forces; our heroine Liz Carlyle is delegated to investigate some of her fellow staff, looking for a mole.

I found the ending of this one to be a little unsatisfactory – perhaps not quite credible – as the mole is finally identified, their motivation discovered, and the terrorist plot revealed. But still, good page-turning stuff.

Current Reading

I’m currently part-way through:

• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Hardcover, my own library)
• The Great War – Breakthroughs by Harry Turtledove (Audiobook)
• South by Sir Ernest Shackleton (E-Book)

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.