What I read in 2017, July-December
Dec. 28th, 2017 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayne07/03 Death's End, Cixin Liu (hf)
07/21 Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire
07/21 The Delirium Brief, Stross (p)
07/27 A Local Habitation, McGuire
07/31 An Artificial Night, McGuire
08/15 The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu
08/24 Friday the Rabbi Was Late, Harry Kemelman
08/28 Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry
09/06 Late Eclipses, Seanan McGuire
09/10 One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
09/21 Jack LeVine: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944, Andrew Bergman
09/28 The Last Firewall, William Hertling
10/05 The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
10/16 Hopscotch, Brian Garfield
11/11 Hollywood & LeVine, Bergman
11/27 Tender is LeVine, Bergman
12/02 Hard Times in Dragon City, Matt Forbeck
12/15 Buying Time, Joe Haldeman
I was really hoping to get my reading and movie lists done quarterly this year, but that didn’t happen. So here’s the last six months, since there’s no way I’m going to finish another book before the end of the year! My January-March book reviews are here, my April-June are here.
It looks like 42 is the number achieved this year, which is one very good number to achieve. Of the last six months, only one physical book read in the recreational reading category: Charles Stross’ new Laundry Files release: The Delirium Brief. And I finished Cixin Liu’s third book of the Three Body Problem series, which is not the name of the series but is a Hugo Nominee for best novel (didn’t win).
Looking over my list, it would appear that I only read two physical books, the other being Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde. I don’t expect the forthcoming year to be significantly better for physical books. I finished one Project Gutenberg title, an interesting memoir of one of President Lincoln’s body guards called Through Five Administrations.
2017 also saw me vote for the Hugos for the first time, which exposed me to a lot of authors that I never would have heard of otherwise and plan on following. I didn’t vote every category, but of the ones that I did, all of my number one picks won except for best novel. I’ll definitely be doing this in the future, but I won’t be buying my WorldCon membership early enough to nominate works: I don’t read enough new science fiction to have what I would consider an informed opinion.
So on to my comments on the books, under the cut.
Death’s End was the final volume of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy which began with Three Body Problem, which won the 2015 Best Novel Hugo. The first book was set on contemporary Earth, the second started shortly later and advances time through cryosuspension, the third book leaps in to the future and hits the ground running. As I had not read the second book before reading the third, I had to accept some of the concepts unsupported, and that worked fine, but I would strongly suggest reading the books in order (I did later read the second book). The aliens arrive, and though grossly outmatched, the humans figure out how to get the alien home system destroyed. Unfortunately that has consequences for Earth, and reveals them to the wider and very uncaring populated galaxy.
Rosemary and Rue is Seanan McGuire’s first (of MANY) October Daye novel. Toby is a half-elf detective in roughly contemporary San Francisco whose initial problem is her having been turned in to a koi while investigating the kidnapping of the wife and child of her liege. I received a Kindle file containing something like 8-10 of the October Daye novels and have read several, and they are excellent. I’ve been spacing them out to give her time to write more. Toby has a tough life. Nasty shenanigans going on amongst the fae while trying to keep their presence hidden from humans. Toby has numerous problems of her own: her mother is a high elf and rather thoroughly insane is just one of them. Her relationship with the King of Cats just further complicates things. My wife has been reading Seenan for a long time, I’m not much of a fantasy or urban fantasy reader until the last few years, but this one has me thoroughly hooked. In this book, Toby is trying to get her life back together after having spent several years as a fish. Then one of the few fae nobles who nobles who treated Toby with respect is murdered in a very nasty way, and with her dying breath casts a curse on Toby to force her to find the killer. If Toby doesn’t find the killer or stops looking, the curse will kill her.
The Delirium Brief, the eighth novel in Charles Stross’ Laundry series about a British secret government agency who is tasked with stopping the coming of Cthulhu. It kind of defies description. The previous novel, The Nightmare Stacks, featured an extra-dimensional invasion of Leeds by elf sorcerers, who are ultimately defeated by a defector elfin princess and a vampire Laundry agent. The Delirium Brief starts a month or so after the invasion after The Laundry is exposed to the public and explores what happens when you try to privatize such an agency. Hint: it isn’t good. When Stross was well-through writing this, Brexit happened and he had to redo a substantial amount of the book.
A Local Habitation, the second October Daye novel, features Toby being sent by her liege to find out why he can’t get ahold of his niece who is running a tech startup. And since Toby is a knight, the only halfling to earn such a status, he tags her to train a squire. Once she arrives at the startup, that’s when the murders begin.
An Artificial Night, the third October Daye novel, is truly nightmarish. Someone is kidnapping both fae and mortal children, and her liege tasks her with stopping the kidnappings and getting the children back. It becomes very personal when not only do her best friends lose their daughter, but her squire’s mortal girlfriend disappears.
The Dark Forest, book 2 of The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. It starts shortly after the first book: Earth knows the aliens are coming with the goal of colonizing the Earth, and they start working on defenses. But how do you defend with current technology against aliens with spaceships that can travel interstellar distances?
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late Is the first of the very well-known Rabbi mysteries by Harry Kemelman. I’m not much of a mystery reader, but on occasion something will catch my eye. I like wry humor, and this one caught my eye. Rabbi David Small is a young Rabbi in a small town who would prefer to be left to his studies, but when a young nanny is discovered dead from strangulation just a hundred yards from the temple and some of the evidence points to the Rabbi, he has to apply some Talmudic logic to helping the police solve the crime. Published in 1964, it’s a nice window in to an older era and full of lots of interesting information on Hebrew traditions in the home and in the temple. It won Kemelman an Edgar for Best First Novel.
Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, the second Rabbi Small novel. The day before Yom Kipur, a man is found dead in his garage. The police rule it suicide, but was it murder? The difference is critical as to whether the man can be buried in the Jewish cemetary.
Late Eclipses, the fourth October Daye novel, opens with a very close friend of Toby’s, Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, becoming sick with a seemingly impossible illness. Lily’s Tea Gardens is where Toby spent her years as a fish, but a forget spell had been cast on her and on the tea gardens, so Lily didn’t know Toby was there and no one outside of the gardens knew they were there! Lily’s Gardens are a recognized independent kingdom and allowed to remain neutral in fae politics, and are a safe land for halflings like Toby to find refuge. Can Toby help Lily and find the man responsible for poisoning her? And why would someone do such a thing to a neutral?
One Salt Sea the next October Day book again features kidnapped children, but this time they are the children of the Queen of the Duchy of Saltsea. Toby must find and rescue the children and stop the plot, etc. Don’t take the ‘etc.’ the wrong way: it’s an excellent book and the series continues to be great.
Jack LeVine: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944. Andrew Bergman, in 1985, was dubbed by New York Magazine as The Unknown King of Comedy. He wrote the screenplay that eventually became Blazing Saddles, he wrote and directed The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas, Fletch, Oh God, You Devil, etc. And he wrote three Jewish detective books, the Jack LeVine series. The Big Kiss-Off is set just before the end of World War 2, Jack is a New York detective who is approached by a chorus girl who is being blackmailed for some stag films that she made when she was younger. Her father is connected to the Republican ticket running against Roosevelt, and if the films became public, it could have far-reaching problems. Murders ensue, Jack gets knocked out as seems to happen in all the books, diverse alarums. While his being Jewish is fairly inconsequential to the books, it’s still a nice slice of life in to that time in New York. Interesting read.
The Last Firewall is book 3 of The Singularity Series by William Hertling. I haven’t read the first two, I bought this one from a newsletter and it stands well on its own. A near future Earth where everyone has implants jacking them in to the net. AIs are strictly regulated after a problem almost resulted in an apocalypse, still an AI known as Adam has managed to grow beyond what is allowed and is trying to take over the world and is close to it. One young woman, Catherine, has a bit of brain damage and a damaged implant from a childhood disease after she was implanted and has a truly unusual amount of control over the net: she may be the world’s last hope against Adam, she may be The Last Firewall. Pretty good story, I’ll have to look up the first two books some time to get a more full picture of the world.
The Martian Chronicles, classic Ray Bradbury. Having read this recently, I don’t know that I read this when I was younger! A collection of short stories built around humans getting to and exploring Mars, and what happens when the Martians decide they don’t like Earthers on their planet. Very interesting read. Quite dated in terms of its science since it predates the space program, but that lends it a certain kitchiness and also a unique perspective in to Bradbury’s upbringing.
Hopscotch by Brian Garfield is a wonderful read and is the basis for the movie starring Walter Matthau. The book won him the 1976 Edgar award for best novel. He also wrote the book Death Wish that became the Charles Bronson movie. His early writing was mainly westerns. Anyway, this book is about a CIA agent, in fact, one of their best field agents, who, due to an injury during a mission, is forced in to retirement. He doesn’t like the way that he was given the bum rush, so he decides to have some fun at their expense and decides to publish his memoirs and sends it one chapter at a time to publishers around the world, always withholding one key page that authenticates all of the facts in the chapters that proves government-sanctioned assassinations, regime topplings, etc. Thus starts his game of cat and mouse as the CIA tries to kill him and he tries to stay alive. The movie was brilliant, couldn’t ask for a better actor in the role than Matthau, and the book is every bit as good. You can see/hear Matthau in the book: it would have been interesting to not have seen the movie before reading the book, but I can’t selectively forget things or erase my memory.
Hollywood & LeVine, the second Jack LeVine book starts with a friend of Jack’s persuading him to come to California. He’s a screenwriter, and he’s afraid but won’t go in to too many details. Shortly after Jack arrives, the friend commits suicide on the studio lot – or was it murder? The Red Scare and a youngish Senator Richard Nixon come in to play in this one.
Tender is LeVine sees Jack back in New York, this time approached by a Jewish violinist in the NBC orchestra who is convinced that the conductor, Arturo Toscanini, has been switched while they were on tour and the man leading the orchestra is not the real Toscanini. A trip to Cuba results in Jack being kidnapped and taken to Las Vegas. Again, diverse alarums. A good read. I wish there were more Jack LeVine stories, but these three are good reads.
Hard Times in Dragon City by Matt Forbeck is book 1 of the Shotguns and Sorcery series. Set in a fantasy city besieged by undead, which is mostly more of an annoyance than a danger, retired adventurer and now gentleman at leisure Max Gibson is pressed in to service to find out who murdered the family of his dwarf adventuring buddy. Oh – the ruler of the city is a dragon. And he’s taken an interest in getting this situation resolved. It’s not great writing, but it is a fun read. This came to me in a bundle, I believe from Story Weaver. Matt Forbeck is also a game designer and the Shotguns and Sorcery series is a novelization of a forthcoming role-playing game.
Buying Time by Joe Haldeman is a book that I’ve had for some time and never read! I’m a huge fan of Joe, I think he’s an excellent author who doesn’t receive the recognition that I think he deserves. Anyway, in this book, if you have a lot of money, you can go in for a rejuve every decade with one stipulation: you must have $1,000,000 (it was written in 1989 when $1M was a lot of money), and all of your assets go to the Stileman Foundation that provides the service. You start out a pauper, and have to re-earn your fortune to be able to afford your next rejuve. The protagonist, Dallas Barr, is perhaps the oldest still living “immortal” and he is invited to join an inner circle that aims to sidestep the Foundation, become true immortals, and go on to rule the world. Dallas has problems with the concept, things go bad, people start getting murdered around him while attempts are made on his life, and he flees off-planet to try and mount a counter-offensive. Interesting book with Newtonian physics: accelerate towards your destination, then flip around and decelerate. No FTL here.
07/21 Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire
07/21 The Delirium Brief, Stross (p)
07/27 A Local Habitation, McGuire
07/31 An Artificial Night, McGuire
08/15 The Dark Forest, Cixin Liu
08/24 Friday the Rabbi Was Late, Harry Kemelman
08/28 Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry
09/06 Late Eclipses, Seanan McGuire
09/10 One Salt Sea, Seanan McGuire
09/21 Jack LeVine: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944, Andrew Bergman
09/28 The Last Firewall, William Hertling
10/05 The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
10/16 Hopscotch, Brian Garfield
11/11 Hollywood & LeVine, Bergman
11/27 Tender is LeVine, Bergman
12/02 Hard Times in Dragon City, Matt Forbeck
12/15 Buying Time, Joe Haldeman
I was really hoping to get my reading and movie lists done quarterly this year, but that didn’t happen. So here’s the last six months, since there’s no way I’m going to finish another book before the end of the year! My January-March book reviews are here, my April-June are here.
It looks like 42 is the number achieved this year, which is one very good number to achieve. Of the last six months, only one physical book read in the recreational reading category: Charles Stross’ new Laundry Files release: The Delirium Brief. And I finished Cixin Liu’s third book of the Three Body Problem series, which is not the name of the series but is a Hugo Nominee for best novel (didn’t win).
Looking over my list, it would appear that I only read two physical books, the other being Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde. I don’t expect the forthcoming year to be significantly better for physical books. I finished one Project Gutenberg title, an interesting memoir of one of President Lincoln’s body guards called Through Five Administrations.
2017 also saw me vote for the Hugos for the first time, which exposed me to a lot of authors that I never would have heard of otherwise and plan on following. I didn’t vote every category, but of the ones that I did, all of my number one picks won except for best novel. I’ll definitely be doing this in the future, but I won’t be buying my WorldCon membership early enough to nominate works: I don’t read enough new science fiction to have what I would consider an informed opinion.
So on to my comments on the books, under the cut.
Death’s End was the final volume of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy which began with Three Body Problem, which won the 2015 Best Novel Hugo. The first book was set on contemporary Earth, the second started shortly later and advances time through cryosuspension, the third book leaps in to the future and hits the ground running. As I had not read the second book before reading the third, I had to accept some of the concepts unsupported, and that worked fine, but I would strongly suggest reading the books in order (I did later read the second book). The aliens arrive, and though grossly outmatched, the humans figure out how to get the alien home system destroyed. Unfortunately that has consequences for Earth, and reveals them to the wider and very uncaring populated galaxy.
Rosemary and Rue is Seanan McGuire’s first (of MANY) October Daye novel. Toby is a half-elf detective in roughly contemporary San Francisco whose initial problem is her having been turned in to a koi while investigating the kidnapping of the wife and child of her liege. I received a Kindle file containing something like 8-10 of the October Daye novels and have read several, and they are excellent. I’ve been spacing them out to give her time to write more. Toby has a tough life. Nasty shenanigans going on amongst the fae while trying to keep their presence hidden from humans. Toby has numerous problems of her own: her mother is a high elf and rather thoroughly insane is just one of them. Her relationship with the King of Cats just further complicates things. My wife has been reading Seenan for a long time, I’m not much of a fantasy or urban fantasy reader until the last few years, but this one has me thoroughly hooked. In this book, Toby is trying to get her life back together after having spent several years as a fish. Then one of the few fae nobles who nobles who treated Toby with respect is murdered in a very nasty way, and with her dying breath casts a curse on Toby to force her to find the killer. If Toby doesn’t find the killer or stops looking, the curse will kill her.
The Delirium Brief, the eighth novel in Charles Stross’ Laundry series about a British secret government agency who is tasked with stopping the coming of Cthulhu. It kind of defies description. The previous novel, The Nightmare Stacks, featured an extra-dimensional invasion of Leeds by elf sorcerers, who are ultimately defeated by a defector elfin princess and a vampire Laundry agent. The Delirium Brief starts a month or so after the invasion after The Laundry is exposed to the public and explores what happens when you try to privatize such an agency. Hint: it isn’t good. When Stross was well-through writing this, Brexit happened and he had to redo a substantial amount of the book.
A Local Habitation, the second October Daye novel, features Toby being sent by her liege to find out why he can’t get ahold of his niece who is running a tech startup. And since Toby is a knight, the only halfling to earn such a status, he tags her to train a squire. Once she arrives at the startup, that’s when the murders begin.
An Artificial Night, the third October Daye novel, is truly nightmarish. Someone is kidnapping both fae and mortal children, and her liege tasks her with stopping the kidnappings and getting the children back. It becomes very personal when not only do her best friends lose their daughter, but her squire’s mortal girlfriend disappears.
The Dark Forest, book 2 of The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. It starts shortly after the first book: Earth knows the aliens are coming with the goal of colonizing the Earth, and they start working on defenses. But how do you defend with current technology against aliens with spaceships that can travel interstellar distances?
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late Is the first of the very well-known Rabbi mysteries by Harry Kemelman. I’m not much of a mystery reader, but on occasion something will catch my eye. I like wry humor, and this one caught my eye. Rabbi David Small is a young Rabbi in a small town who would prefer to be left to his studies, but when a young nanny is discovered dead from strangulation just a hundred yards from the temple and some of the evidence points to the Rabbi, he has to apply some Talmudic logic to helping the police solve the crime. Published in 1964, it’s a nice window in to an older era and full of lots of interesting information on Hebrew traditions in the home and in the temple. It won Kemelman an Edgar for Best First Novel.
Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, the second Rabbi Small novel. The day before Yom Kipur, a man is found dead in his garage. The police rule it suicide, but was it murder? The difference is critical as to whether the man can be buried in the Jewish cemetary.
Late Eclipses, the fourth October Daye novel, opens with a very close friend of Toby’s, Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, becoming sick with a seemingly impossible illness. Lily’s Tea Gardens is where Toby spent her years as a fish, but a forget spell had been cast on her and on the tea gardens, so Lily didn’t know Toby was there and no one outside of the gardens knew they were there! Lily’s Gardens are a recognized independent kingdom and allowed to remain neutral in fae politics, and are a safe land for halflings like Toby to find refuge. Can Toby help Lily and find the man responsible for poisoning her? And why would someone do such a thing to a neutral?
One Salt Sea the next October Day book again features kidnapped children, but this time they are the children of the Queen of the Duchy of Saltsea. Toby must find and rescue the children and stop the plot, etc. Don’t take the ‘etc.’ the wrong way: it’s an excellent book and the series continues to be great.
Jack LeVine: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944. Andrew Bergman, in 1985, was dubbed by New York Magazine as The Unknown King of Comedy. He wrote the screenplay that eventually became Blazing Saddles, he wrote and directed The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas, Fletch, Oh God, You Devil, etc. And he wrote three Jewish detective books, the Jack LeVine series. The Big Kiss-Off is set just before the end of World War 2, Jack is a New York detective who is approached by a chorus girl who is being blackmailed for some stag films that she made when she was younger. Her father is connected to the Republican ticket running against Roosevelt, and if the films became public, it could have far-reaching problems. Murders ensue, Jack gets knocked out as seems to happen in all the books, diverse alarums. While his being Jewish is fairly inconsequential to the books, it’s still a nice slice of life in to that time in New York. Interesting read.
The Last Firewall is book 3 of The Singularity Series by William Hertling. I haven’t read the first two, I bought this one from a newsletter and it stands well on its own. A near future Earth where everyone has implants jacking them in to the net. AIs are strictly regulated after a problem almost resulted in an apocalypse, still an AI known as Adam has managed to grow beyond what is allowed and is trying to take over the world and is close to it. One young woman, Catherine, has a bit of brain damage and a damaged implant from a childhood disease after she was implanted and has a truly unusual amount of control over the net: she may be the world’s last hope against Adam, she may be The Last Firewall. Pretty good story, I’ll have to look up the first two books some time to get a more full picture of the world.
The Martian Chronicles, classic Ray Bradbury. Having read this recently, I don’t know that I read this when I was younger! A collection of short stories built around humans getting to and exploring Mars, and what happens when the Martians decide they don’t like Earthers on their planet. Very interesting read. Quite dated in terms of its science since it predates the space program, but that lends it a certain kitchiness and also a unique perspective in to Bradbury’s upbringing.
Hopscotch by Brian Garfield is a wonderful read and is the basis for the movie starring Walter Matthau. The book won him the 1976 Edgar award for best novel. He also wrote the book Death Wish that became the Charles Bronson movie. His early writing was mainly westerns. Anyway, this book is about a CIA agent, in fact, one of their best field agents, who, due to an injury during a mission, is forced in to retirement. He doesn’t like the way that he was given the bum rush, so he decides to have some fun at their expense and decides to publish his memoirs and sends it one chapter at a time to publishers around the world, always withholding one key page that authenticates all of the facts in the chapters that proves government-sanctioned assassinations, regime topplings, etc. Thus starts his game of cat and mouse as the CIA tries to kill him and he tries to stay alive. The movie was brilliant, couldn’t ask for a better actor in the role than Matthau, and the book is every bit as good. You can see/hear Matthau in the book: it would have been interesting to not have seen the movie before reading the book, but I can’t selectively forget things or erase my memory.
Hollywood & LeVine, the second Jack LeVine book starts with a friend of Jack’s persuading him to come to California. He’s a screenwriter, and he’s afraid but won’t go in to too many details. Shortly after Jack arrives, the friend commits suicide on the studio lot – or was it murder? The Red Scare and a youngish Senator Richard Nixon come in to play in this one.
Tender is LeVine sees Jack back in New York, this time approached by a Jewish violinist in the NBC orchestra who is convinced that the conductor, Arturo Toscanini, has been switched while they were on tour and the man leading the orchestra is not the real Toscanini. A trip to Cuba results in Jack being kidnapped and taken to Las Vegas. Again, diverse alarums. A good read. I wish there were more Jack LeVine stories, but these three are good reads.
Hard Times in Dragon City by Matt Forbeck is book 1 of the Shotguns and Sorcery series. Set in a fantasy city besieged by undead, which is mostly more of an annoyance than a danger, retired adventurer and now gentleman at leisure Max Gibson is pressed in to service to find out who murdered the family of his dwarf adventuring buddy. Oh – the ruler of the city is a dragon. And he’s taken an interest in getting this situation resolved. It’s not great writing, but it is a fun read. This came to me in a bundle, I believe from Story Weaver. Matt Forbeck is also a game designer and the Shotguns and Sorcery series is a novelization of a forthcoming role-playing game.
Buying Time by Joe Haldeman is a book that I’ve had for some time and never read! I’m a huge fan of Joe, I think he’s an excellent author who doesn’t receive the recognition that I think he deserves. Anyway, in this book, if you have a lot of money, you can go in for a rejuve every decade with one stipulation: you must have $1,000,000 (it was written in 1989 when $1M was a lot of money), and all of your assets go to the Stileman Foundation that provides the service. You start out a pauper, and have to re-earn your fortune to be able to afford your next rejuve. The protagonist, Dallas Barr, is perhaps the oldest still living “immortal” and he is invited to join an inner circle that aims to sidestep the Foundation, become true immortals, and go on to rule the world. Dallas has problems with the concept, things go bad, people start getting murdered around him while attempts are made on his life, and he flees off-planet to try and mount a counter-offensive. Interesting book with Newtonian physics: accelerate towards your destination, then flip around and decelerate. No FTL here.
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Date: 2017-12-30 01:00 pm (UTC)