Book Chain, etc, Week 9
Mar. 2nd, 2026 06:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther#8: A book with a cover in the same colour as the previous book
Devil in the Mountain: A Search for the Origin of the Andes by Simon Lamb.
Still at it, but it's slow going. It's interesting, but it requires concentration and it's not the kind of book where, when you're not reading it, you're actively looking forward to picking it up again. (At least for me; someone who was more into geology in general might feel differently.)
StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge: A book you discovered via the 'Similar Users' toggle on the News Feed
Attempt one: Mythos by Stephen Fry. A collection of retellings of stories from Greek mythology.
I have not yet officially given up on it, but I'm less than a quarter of the way through and I have a strong feeling I'm not going to make it to the end. Fry is at a disadvantage with me, because I've been reading various authors' retellings of Greek myths since I was small and I already know most of the stories (and most of the facts he sprinkles in about modern words that derive from them), so it's standing or falling on the execution. I had hopes for the execution -- after all, it's Stephen Fry -- but so far it's not going well. The tone feels inconsistent: it doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind whether it's aiming for a formal register or a colloquial tone, or whether it's recounting the myths as something long ago and far away or getting right up in the action and into the characters' heads, and switches from one to another from sentence to sentence in a way I'm finding rather irritating.
Someone I know is listening to the audio book and enjoying it, and perhaps that would be the way to go; presumably Fry's performance would help.
Anyway, we're still in the early parts of the story, where the world is full of immortal personifications of abstract concepts and humans haven't been invented yet. I'm going to give it until the humans show up, and see if the narrative settles down when there are actual people in it. My hopes are not high, though.
Devil in the Mountain: A Search for the Origin of the Andes by Simon Lamb.
Still at it, but it's slow going. It's interesting, but it requires concentration and it's not the kind of book where, when you're not reading it, you're actively looking forward to picking it up again. (At least for me; someone who was more into geology in general might feel differently.)
StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge: A book you discovered via the 'Similar Users' toggle on the News Feed
Attempt one: Mythos by Stephen Fry. A collection of retellings of stories from Greek mythology.
I have not yet officially given up on it, but I'm less than a quarter of the way through and I have a strong feeling I'm not going to make it to the end. Fry is at a disadvantage with me, because I've been reading various authors' retellings of Greek myths since I was small and I already know most of the stories (and most of the facts he sprinkles in about modern words that derive from them), so it's standing or falling on the execution. I had hopes for the execution -- after all, it's Stephen Fry -- but so far it's not going well. The tone feels inconsistent: it doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind whether it's aiming for a formal register or a colloquial tone, or whether it's recounting the myths as something long ago and far away or getting right up in the action and into the characters' heads, and switches from one to another from sentence to sentence in a way I'm finding rather irritating.
Someone I know is listening to the audio book and enjoying it, and perhaps that would be the way to go; presumably Fry's performance would help.
Anyway, we're still in the early parts of the story, where the world is full of immortal personifications of abstract concepts and humans haven't been invented yet. I'm going to give it until the humans show up, and see if the narrative settles down when there are actual people in it. My hopes are not high, though.
