pedanther

#24: A book whose author comes after the previous book's author alphabetically

How to Win an Information War by Peter Pomerantsev. A look at the use of propaganda by and against the Nazis in the 1930s and '40s, with a focus on the career of British propagandist Sefton Delmer, and on what lessons can be learned about the use of propaganda in the present day.

The ebook does something I haven't seen before in an ebook: instead of having all the footnotes grouped at the end, the footnotes for each chapter are grouped at the end of the chapter. An advantage of doing it this way is that the progress indicator is closer to being a reliable guide to how far through the book you actually are: I've read non-fiction ebooks with lots of notes where the main text ended and the endnotes began before the progress indicator reached 75% complete, and even one where the end of the main text ambushed me at 50%.


June: One word title

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

I wrote a while back about having trouble getting into Project Hail Mary because the protagonist spends the first part of the novel alone and amnesic, with no other characters to interact with in either the present or the past; Piranesi posed a similar challenge, and similarly I only really warmed up to it once there were multiple characters in play. It also didn't help that I found the central mystery a lot more obvious than the blurb makes out; the general outlines, if not the details, are clear to the reader very early on (although the protagonist, lacking vital information, takes a lot longer to put the pieces together).

And I had issues with the narrative structure: it's told as extracts from the protagonist's journal, and there are good reasons why that's probably the best way it could have been done, but it did mean that there are a few places where the protagonist is having huge emotional revelations and either continuing to write through them or coming back later to carefully write down all the details.


#25: A book whose cover clashes with the previous book's cover

I don't really know what this would mean, so I've been just randomly picking up whatever book catches my eye.

I read the opening section of Accelerando by Charles Stross, which vividly reminded me why I stopped reading Charles Stross.

Now I'm a couple of stories into Bookburners, a shared-world urban fantasy anthology. I'm coming to it with a certain amount of suspicion: I've tried two of this publisher's other anthologies, gave up on one partway through, and though I made it to the end of the other I didn't feel rewarded for my persistence. This one is about a secret Vatican taskforce with the job of tracking down and securing rogue magic books before they do too much damage, which I've seen done before, near enough, and wasn't especially keen to see again. I'm also in the mood to be mildly annoyed by the empty provocation of the book's title: the team get called "Bookburners" as a derogatory nickname by someone in the criminal magic book underground, but they don't destroy the books they confiscate (and in fact it's a plot point that the really dangerous magic books can't be destroyed).

But it'll do until something I actually want to read comes along.

. The weekend gaming session was short-handed again -- one day, Ticket to Ride: Legacy, one day! -- so we played Uno: Show 'Em No Mercy, No Thanks, and Chomp. ( Read more... )


. At the regular weekly gaming session, we played the racing game Formula D. ( Read more... )


. We've had our first scripts-down run-through of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It went well, apart from the bits that didn't.


. I spent some time re-arranging one of my bookshelves, and just as I was finishing up I remembered why I'd had it the way it was before. I'll probably leave it as it is for a while, and maybe put it back the other way next time I feel like making myself feel better by re-arranging something.


. There is a new episode out of Inestimable, the podcast gameshow in which contestants are challenged to get the closest answer to questions like "How many Mona Lisas would it take to cover the exterior surface of the glass pyramid outside the Louvre?" and "What position did 'All Star' by Smashmouth appear in the end-of-year Billboard Top 100?". I was in the studio audience for this one as well, and let me tell you, if you think the finished episode is chaotic...

#21: A book that was added to your TBR after the previous book

Model Actress Whatever by Kim Newman. An actress on the lower rungs of the celebrity ladder develops superpowers and discovers that in her new career, PR and image management are no less of a problem than before.

A lot of Newman's works are set in more-or-less the familiar world inhabited by the reader, albeit frequently with a flavour of secret doings; this one is set in an alternate timeline where superheroes and supervillains have been all over the place since the 1970s, which has obvious advantages for telling a superhero story but I suspect is also at least partly a way of stepping clear of the familiar roster of heroes and diabolical masterminds he's developed in his other works and pitting a new hero against a new threat that isn't already a known quantity. (Several familiar names do show up, in small roles and in contexts that make it clear that this story isn't going to be about them. This occasionally has the interesting effect of the long-time Newman reader being able to see extra depths in the story by inferring things about what's going on that aren't explicitly explained because the protagonist has no reason to know.)


Miscellaneous

It turned out that I found Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World much more approachable once it was relieved of the pressure of being the next book challenge book, and I have finished it after all.

#20: A book whose title has more letters than the title of the previous book
May: Make/Making

Third attempt: How Comics Were Made by Glenn Fleishman. An illustrated history of the various complicated methods by which newspaper comics have been transferred from the artist's drawing board to the newpaper page. I'm reading my backer copy of the Kickstarter-funded first edition; a second edition has subsequently been released by a major publisher with the title changed to How Comics Are Made, presumably because the publisher in question also owns one of the largest surviving comic syndicates and doesn't want people getting the idea that newspaper comics are a thing of the past.

(The Genghis Khan book just hasn't been holding my attention, and will probably end up going back to the library with not much more of it read.)


Miscellaneous

Reading all the Penric stories one after another may not have been a wise decision; they were written to be able to stand alone and be read as and when a person came across them, which means among other things that each one has to set up the premise and characters for what might be a first-time reader, and that gets a bit repetitive when read all together. There are also some other recurring narrative effects that are fine within the context of individual stories but can get to be a bit much in the aggregate, and a few things one notices when reading them in chronological order when that wasn't always the way they were written.

Despite all that, the stories themselves are very good.


I also finished reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, which I've been reading on and off since March. The amount of time I've taken to finish it isn't a knock against the quality of the book; it's just that it's the kind of book where you read an essay and let it digest for a while before starting the next one, and also a good book to read a bit of on days when I wasn't feeling like tackling a whole book. And every now and then it had to go back to the library and I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to come around again on the hold queue.

#20: A book whose title has more letters than the title of the previous book
May: Make/Making

Second attempt: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford. An account of the life and legacy of Genghis Khan. I'm only a chapter or so in, because I kept getting distracted by other books coming out this week.


Miscellaneous

Re-read all of Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries series, and then read the new one that came out this week.

Started re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona series in preparation for reading the new collection that came out this week.

(By the time that's done, the new Kim Newman will also be out, although it appears to be sufficiently standalone that no specific re-reading will be called for.)

#17: A book with a lower average rating than the previous book

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. In a world where being a practitioner of the magical Craft is sometimes remarkably like being a corporate lawyer (it's the loopholes that get you), the high-powered firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao is hired to sort out a problem for the Church of Kos the Everburning: God is dead. (Well, mostly dead.) And it looks increasingly like it might have been murder.

( Read more... )


#18: A book with a similar cover to the previous book

The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders by Marshall Browne. Inspector Anders, on the verge of retirement, is assigned a rubber-stamp investigation of a murder that everybody knows and nobody will say was a mafia hit, and finds himself faced with a choice between keeping his head down and playing out his assigned role or making a possibly doomed stand.

( Read more... )


#19: A book that was added to your TBR before the previous book

Now, I don't have an exact record of when I got The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders -- but it can't have been any earlier than 1999, when it was first published, and I know I have books that have been waiting longer than that...

St Vincent de Paul by M.V. Woodgate. An account for children of the life of Vincent de Paul, 17th-century saint and philanthropist.

( Read more... )


#20: A book whose title has more letters than the title of the previous book

First attempt: The Dog Sitter Detective by Antony Johnston. Struggling actress Gwinny Tuffnell's best friend is falsely accused of murder and needs someone to look after her dogs and also to find the real culprit.

( Read more... )

Fiction books
Peter S Beagle. The Last Unicorn (e)
Marshall Browne. The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders
William Gibson. Neuromancer
Max Gladstone. Three Parts Dead (e)
James McGee. Wolf's Lair
Caroline Stevermer. A College of Magics (re-read)

In progress
Antony Johnston. The Dog Sitter Detective

Abandoned
James P Blaylock. The Last Coin (e)
Olaf Stapledon. Last and First Men

Non-fiction books
Erik Larson. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
MV Woodgate. St Vincent de Paul

In progress
John Green. The Anthropocene Reviewed (e)

( short, screen, and stage )
( books bought and borrowed )

Top of the to-read pile
Jack Weatherford. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (e)

#16: A book where the author's name on the cover is the same colour as on the previous book's cover

April: Ordinal Numbers

The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle.

When I started reading, I was sure I'd read this before; by the time I was finished, I was equally sure I hadn't. I've seen the movie, and I've read about it, and I guess I just forgot I hadn't actually read the whole thing. I'm glad I did, however belatedly.

. One of the great things about AO3's subscription feature is that you can be promptly notified when an author adds a new chapter to a fic you really liked that last got a new chapter nearly twelve years ago. ( Read more... )


. Quite some time ago, I took my car in for a check-up and was notified, among other things, that at least one of the tyres needed to be replaced. I said I would get right on that, and then proceeded not to, because I'd never dealt with a tyre shop before and I'm very bad at inserting myself into unfamiliar situations even when the situation should just involve saying "Hello, I would like to pay you to do the thing that you advertise that you do." ( You can probably guess where this is going... )


. We had a weekend gaming session in which we played a couple of games of Raptor and then a couple of games of Ticket to Ride: Legacy. We've unlocked the entire map now, and should be finished with the whole campaign in one more session.


. At the usual weekly gaming session, we played Feed the Kraken. ( Read more... )


. I went to the doctor for a check-up, ( Read more... )


. Another set of out-of-town relatives visited, which was nice.


. It occurs to me, as I adjust the height of the monitor, that I don't think I got around to mentioning it when I bought one of those spring-loaded monitor arms that allow you to move the screen to any height and angle and it will stay there. I originally decided to get it to simplify repositioning the monitor when I had friends over and we wanted to watch a show from the sofa (I don't have a TV, and watch all my shows via DVD or online streaming), but it's also so good for the basic task of setting the screen to a comfortable height that it's become one of those bits of technology that, now I have it, I wonder how I ever managed without.