Books Read, January-March 2019
Jun. 29th, 2019 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayne01/04 Night Watch (DW 29), Pratchett (rr)
01/08 Going Postal (DW 31), Pratchett (rr)
01/10 Monstrous Regiment (DW 30), Pratchett (rr)
01/13 Thud! (DW 34), Pratchett (rr)
01/14 Making Money (DW 36), Pratchett (rr)
01/17 Unseen Academicals (DW 37), Pratchett (rr)
01/21 Snuff (DW 39), Pratchett (rr)
01/25 Raising Steam (DW 40), Pratchett (rr)
01/30 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers (rr)
02/01 A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers (rr)
02/02 Moon Over Soho (RoL 2), Aaronovitch
02/03 Whispers Under Ground (RoL 3), Aaronovitch
02/04 Broken Homes (RoL 4), Aaronovitch
02/09 The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez
02/23 The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh
03/07 Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers
03/11 Women Invent The Future, compiled by Rachel Coldicutt & Samantha Brown
Last year I started re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and in January I finished it up, except for the Tiffany Aching series. I’m saving that for later, especially since the last book for that series is the last book he wrote, and it’s a bit of a heartbreaker. Seventeen books in the first quarter of this year, which is, I think, respectable. Ten re-reads, eight of those Discworld, the other two being re-reading Becky Chambers as I caught a copy of her third book, Record of a Spaceborn Few, on sale.
And as a change of pace, a cookbook! It’s more than a cookbook, it’s a history of Tex-Mex with a bunch of recipes thrown in. And I’m going to talk about it first.
Comments under the cut.
The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh I have a lot of cookbooks in ebook form, and I’ve made at least one recipe out of more than half of them, and I’ve remade that recipe usually more than once. Unless it’s an author I trust, I usually look up the author on Amazon and read reviews, then I download a sample on my iPhone or iPad. And I usually get mad because the publisher cuts off the ebook sample while the author is blathering and before they get to a recipe. Anyway, this book was different: I bought it on the strength of user review complaints. While the book says it’s a cookbook, it is primarily a history of Tex-Mex: how it evolved, its relationship to the history of the Southwest. It talks about the economy, the Great Depression, the visits of Presidents to San Antonio, the coming of the railroad to Texas, the chasing of the Native Indian tribes by cavalry troops (history isn’t always pretty), all sorts of stuff. And there are recipes, and stories with people who are sometimes descendants of those who opened the original restaurants a hundred or more years ago! LOTS of photos! This guy did a lot of research! He explains how a lot of Tex-Mex came from poor people making the most of cheap cuts that they were given and could afford, trying to get the most flavor out of them. Lots of people on Amazon complained that there was so much history and so few recipes that they were disappointed. For me, I went in to this with an open mind and viewed it as a very serendipitous find – it was quite interesting, I learned a lot, and though I have not yet made any recipes from it, I’m quite looking forward to trying some. And I would heartily recommend the book to anyone who would like to indulge in a food historical deep dive, so to speak.
Night Watch (DW 29), Going Postal (DW 31), Monstrous Regiment (DW 30), Thud! (DW 34), Making Money (DW 36), Unseen Academicals (DW 37), Snuff (DW 39), Raising Steam (DW 40). I’m going to talk about the Discworld books as a whole and somewhat briefly. These fall in to a few basic slots: Vimes Has A Bad Day: Night Watch, Thud, and Snuff; Vetinari Torturing Someone Other Than Vimes: Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam; Other Ankh-Morpork: Unseen Academicals, and Not A-M: Monstrous Regiment. And when you get down to it, add slots for Witches and The Watch, and you can categorize pretty much any Discworld book. I find myself getting really sad thinking about these, he wrote so many great books and I want everyone to love them. At the same time I accept that Terry is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s OK. And I’m going to leave off with only talking about Steam, his last Ankh-Morpork book. A-M and Discworld had already evolved into a steampunk age: they had the Clacks, light semaphores for sending messages across the continents at great speed. They had a helmet for the Watch’s troll detective, Detritus, to cool his brain to make him smarter. The Watch was inventing forensics. So science advancing to the point of steam-driven rail transport is not a far stretch. Who better to see to the promotion of trains than Moist Von Lipwig, a criminal fraudster and schemer, who was expertly hanged nigh unto – but not into – death and recruited by Lord Vetinari. Moist had successfully revived the post office, made the A-M mint profitable, it seemed a suitable challenge. But the Dark Dwarfs thought it an abomination, sadly they did not count on Moist possessing a berserker spirit! A tremendously fun read, and I was almost crying when I closed the cover and set it down, knowing that there were no more, aside from the Tiffany Aching books. I expect in another 5-10 years I’ll re-read them all again.
I’m going to cover all three of the Becky Chambers books as one. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. A Closed and Common Orbit. Record of a Spaceborn Few.. Love me some Becky! Her Spaceborn series, whatever it’s called, is great science fiction. She leaps right in to it with 'this is how it works - we’re going to show, not tell'. Learn about her universe as you go. The first three books are loosely connected, and the fourth book – To Be Taught, If Fortunate – is due September 3 - pre-order from the publisher here! (available earlier in the UK) While there is setting and character connection between the first two books, which I’ve talked about previously, there’s only setting linking Record into the universe. In the early days of human spaceflight and space colonization, fleets of generation ships went out and they stayed together for mutual support. This is the story of one such fleet, the Exodus fleet, that was found and rescued by ‘aliens’. They still live on their ships, are still – mostly – self-sufficient. They’ve been tech-boosted by the aliens a few times and work with the locals. Any humans who want to leave are allowed to enter the larger society, we meet such in Closed and Common Orbit, they’re known as Exodans. This is really quite a book. It starts as an inter-linking series of personal stories, turns in to a mystery, mostly shaped by the tragedy of an accident that destroyed one of the Exodus ships several years ago, resulting in its destruction with the loss of almost everyone on board. If you liked her other two books, you’ll like this one and find it quite a shift in tone. I’m really looking forward to her next! She’s up for two Hugos at WorldCon this year: one for this book for Best Novel, one for Best Series!
Once again, I'm going to lump all three of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London Books in one big clump. Moon Over Soho (RoL 2). This is the second book in Ben’s Rivers of London series, an urban fiction series pitting England’s last officially sanctioned wizard, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, with a freshly-minted Metro Police Constable Peter Grantt. In the first book, Rivers of London or Midnight Riot in the USA, Grant was standing watch at the scene of a murder overnight to make sure it was not disturbed when he was approached by a ghost who had information relevant to the crime. He was subsequently made Nightingale’s prodigy and inducted as his apprentice. In the second book, Peter is called in to determine if the extremely bloody murder of a journalist in the downstairs toilet of a jazz club in Soho was supernatural. It was. Turns out that a number of professional and amateur jazz musicians have been getting murdered recently. Time for the magic squad to justify their budget! Whispers Under Ground (RoL 3) sees the murder in England of the son of a United States Senator. A piece of pottery through the heart, said pottery hasn’t been made in ages. An FBI agent has been sent to 'help' with the investigation. An ancient magic race underground? Many things afoot…. In Broken Homes (RoL 4) starts very weird. A car accident. Such happens. But inside is blood from a body already suffering from rigor mortis, which is unusual. The body is found, that of a young woman, whose face has been obliterated by a shotgun and whose fingers have been removed, making identification difficult. To compound things, a magician that they start calling The Faceless Man shows up and makes serious attempts at killing Peter.
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez. In late January, Story Bundle ran a Latino Science Fiction bundle, which I purchased. This book was one in that package: the title really appealed to me. And I quite enjoyed it! It's a collection of short stories by Hernandez that, as described in the introduction by Jeffrey Ford, "Everything it suggests is here–Science, Faith, Assimilation, Particle Physics, Cuba, contemporary Latino culture in the U.S., and a sensibility that recognizes a vast world beyond. Not only do each of these elements appear within the book, but they appear, very often all at once, in each of the book’s dozen stories." That's an excellent description: a very different take on science fiction, one from a quite different culture that melds a different belief system with different aspects of faith and culture. Very good stories. I should read more of these books: the perpetual problem of the reader – too many books, never enough time.
Women Invent The Future, compiled by Rachel Coldicutt & Samantha Brown is a book that I got for free from the iBook Store, no idea if it's available from other ebook sources. It's a small book, only seven stories, but it included a story by Becky Chambers, so I snagged it. All women authors, and a pretty good and fairly quick read. Recommended. And if it's not available for your platform and you have a Mac or you have access to one or a friend with one, you can always download it and use Calibre to convert it from epub to whatever your device uses.
01/08 Going Postal (DW 31), Pratchett (rr)
01/10 Monstrous Regiment (DW 30), Pratchett (rr)
01/13 Thud! (DW 34), Pratchett (rr)
01/14 Making Money (DW 36), Pratchett (rr)
01/17 Unseen Academicals (DW 37), Pratchett (rr)
01/21 Snuff (DW 39), Pratchett (rr)
01/25 Raising Steam (DW 40), Pratchett (rr)
01/30 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers (rr)
02/01 A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers (rr)
02/02 Moon Over Soho (RoL 2), Aaronovitch
02/03 Whispers Under Ground (RoL 3), Aaronovitch
02/04 Broken Homes (RoL 4), Aaronovitch
02/09 The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez
02/23 The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh
03/07 Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers
03/11 Women Invent The Future, compiled by Rachel Coldicutt & Samantha Brown
Last year I started re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and in January I finished it up, except for the Tiffany Aching series. I’m saving that for later, especially since the last book for that series is the last book he wrote, and it’s a bit of a heartbreaker. Seventeen books in the first quarter of this year, which is, I think, respectable. Ten re-reads, eight of those Discworld, the other two being re-reading Becky Chambers as I caught a copy of her third book, Record of a Spaceborn Few, on sale.
And as a change of pace, a cookbook! It’s more than a cookbook, it’s a history of Tex-Mex with a bunch of recipes thrown in. And I’m going to talk about it first.
Comments under the cut.
The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh I have a lot of cookbooks in ebook form, and I’ve made at least one recipe out of more than half of them, and I’ve remade that recipe usually more than once. Unless it’s an author I trust, I usually look up the author on Amazon and read reviews, then I download a sample on my iPhone or iPad. And I usually get mad because the publisher cuts off the ebook sample while the author is blathering and before they get to a recipe. Anyway, this book was different: I bought it on the strength of user review complaints. While the book says it’s a cookbook, it is primarily a history of Tex-Mex: how it evolved, its relationship to the history of the Southwest. It talks about the economy, the Great Depression, the visits of Presidents to San Antonio, the coming of the railroad to Texas, the chasing of the Native Indian tribes by cavalry troops (history isn’t always pretty), all sorts of stuff. And there are recipes, and stories with people who are sometimes descendants of those who opened the original restaurants a hundred or more years ago! LOTS of photos! This guy did a lot of research! He explains how a lot of Tex-Mex came from poor people making the most of cheap cuts that they were given and could afford, trying to get the most flavor out of them. Lots of people on Amazon complained that there was so much history and so few recipes that they were disappointed. For me, I went in to this with an open mind and viewed it as a very serendipitous find – it was quite interesting, I learned a lot, and though I have not yet made any recipes from it, I’m quite looking forward to trying some. And I would heartily recommend the book to anyone who would like to indulge in a food historical deep dive, so to speak.
Night Watch (DW 29), Going Postal (DW 31), Monstrous Regiment (DW 30), Thud! (DW 34), Making Money (DW 36), Unseen Academicals (DW 37), Snuff (DW 39), Raising Steam (DW 40). I’m going to talk about the Discworld books as a whole and somewhat briefly. These fall in to a few basic slots: Vimes Has A Bad Day: Night Watch, Thud, and Snuff; Vetinari Torturing Someone Other Than Vimes: Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam; Other Ankh-Morpork: Unseen Academicals, and Not A-M: Monstrous Regiment. And when you get down to it, add slots for Witches and The Watch, and you can categorize pretty much any Discworld book. I find myself getting really sad thinking about these, he wrote so many great books and I want everyone to love them. At the same time I accept that Terry is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s OK. And I’m going to leave off with only talking about Steam, his last Ankh-Morpork book. A-M and Discworld had already evolved into a steampunk age: they had the Clacks, light semaphores for sending messages across the continents at great speed. They had a helmet for the Watch’s troll detective, Detritus, to cool his brain to make him smarter. The Watch was inventing forensics. So science advancing to the point of steam-driven rail transport is not a far stretch. Who better to see to the promotion of trains than Moist Von Lipwig, a criminal fraudster and schemer, who was expertly hanged nigh unto – but not into – death and recruited by Lord Vetinari. Moist had successfully revived the post office, made the A-M mint profitable, it seemed a suitable challenge. But the Dark Dwarfs thought it an abomination, sadly they did not count on Moist possessing a berserker spirit! A tremendously fun read, and I was almost crying when I closed the cover and set it down, knowing that there were no more, aside from the Tiffany Aching books. I expect in another 5-10 years I’ll re-read them all again.
I’m going to cover all three of the Becky Chambers books as one. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. A Closed and Common Orbit. Record of a Spaceborn Few.. Love me some Becky! Her Spaceborn series, whatever it’s called, is great science fiction. She leaps right in to it with 'this is how it works - we’re going to show, not tell'. Learn about her universe as you go. The first three books are loosely connected, and the fourth book – To Be Taught, If Fortunate – is due September 3 - pre-order from the publisher here! (available earlier in the UK) While there is setting and character connection between the first two books, which I’ve talked about previously, there’s only setting linking Record into the universe. In the early days of human spaceflight and space colonization, fleets of generation ships went out and they stayed together for mutual support. This is the story of one such fleet, the Exodus fleet, that was found and rescued by ‘aliens’. They still live on their ships, are still – mostly – self-sufficient. They’ve been tech-boosted by the aliens a few times and work with the locals. Any humans who want to leave are allowed to enter the larger society, we meet such in Closed and Common Orbit, they’re known as Exodans. This is really quite a book. It starts as an inter-linking series of personal stories, turns in to a mystery, mostly shaped by the tragedy of an accident that destroyed one of the Exodus ships several years ago, resulting in its destruction with the loss of almost everyone on board. If you liked her other two books, you’ll like this one and find it quite a shift in tone. I’m really looking forward to her next! She’s up for two Hugos at WorldCon this year: one for this book for Best Novel, one for Best Series!
Once again, I'm going to lump all three of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London Books in one big clump. Moon Over Soho (RoL 2). This is the second book in Ben’s Rivers of London series, an urban fiction series pitting England’s last officially sanctioned wizard, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, with a freshly-minted Metro Police Constable Peter Grantt. In the first book, Rivers of London or Midnight Riot in the USA, Grant was standing watch at the scene of a murder overnight to make sure it was not disturbed when he was approached by a ghost who had information relevant to the crime. He was subsequently made Nightingale’s prodigy and inducted as his apprentice. In the second book, Peter is called in to determine if the extremely bloody murder of a journalist in the downstairs toilet of a jazz club in Soho was supernatural. It was. Turns out that a number of professional and amateur jazz musicians have been getting murdered recently. Time for the magic squad to justify their budget! Whispers Under Ground (RoL 3) sees the murder in England of the son of a United States Senator. A piece of pottery through the heart, said pottery hasn’t been made in ages. An FBI agent has been sent to 'help' with the investigation. An ancient magic race underground? Many things afoot…. In Broken Homes (RoL 4) starts very weird. A car accident. Such happens. But inside is blood from a body already suffering from rigor mortis, which is unusual. The body is found, that of a young woman, whose face has been obliterated by a shotgun and whose fingers have been removed, making identification difficult. To compound things, a magician that they start calling The Faceless Man shows up and makes serious attempts at killing Peter.
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez. In late January, Story Bundle ran a Latino Science Fiction bundle, which I purchased. This book was one in that package: the title really appealed to me. And I quite enjoyed it! It's a collection of short stories by Hernandez that, as described in the introduction by Jeffrey Ford, "Everything it suggests is here–Science, Faith, Assimilation, Particle Physics, Cuba, contemporary Latino culture in the U.S., and a sensibility that recognizes a vast world beyond. Not only do each of these elements appear within the book, but they appear, very often all at once, in each of the book’s dozen stories." That's an excellent description: a very different take on science fiction, one from a quite different culture that melds a different belief system with different aspects of faith and culture. Very good stories. I should read more of these books: the perpetual problem of the reader – too many books, never enough time.
Women Invent The Future, compiled by Rachel Coldicutt & Samantha Brown is a book that I got for free from the iBook Store, no idea if it's available from other ebook sources. It's a small book, only seven stories, but it included a story by Becky Chambers, so I snagged it. All women authors, and a pretty good and fairly quick read. Recommended. And if it's not available for your platform and you have a Mac or you have access to one or a friend with one, you can always download it and use Calibre to convert it from epub to whatever your device uses.
