Books read, late May

[mrissa]

Diane Ackerman, The Planets. Reread. The last time I read this I was very early in a physics major/English minor in college and was much impressed with it. This time, alas, much less so. It's a poetry collection where the poems are trying to be in some way shaped like the planet they're associated with. Uranus, for example, is printed sideways on the page. This strikes me as far less clever than it did when I was an eager physics teenager. Ah well.

Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings, The Asset Economy: Property Ownership and the New Logic of Inequality. Like many economics books, this is a mixture of "oh, of course!" and "I don't think you've come even close to demonstrating that in the confines of these pages." The former: looking at households managing asset sheets, yes, definitely. The latter: I don't think they've at all demonstrated that assets have supplanted things like jobs for class determinants--especially since figuring out other people's assets can be quite tricky--and also some of how they define what an asset is seems to be pretty circular about their own arguments and can be shaky/self-contradictory. (Is education an asset? Asserting that it is allows some of their arguments to proceed, but it certainly doesn't meet some of the obvious definitions.) Short, interesting in the sense of "sparked several conversations around the house."

John Appel, Assassin's Orbit. Discussed elsewhere.

Chaz Brenchley, Derelict of Duty and The Station of the Twelfth. Kindle. These are two very short pieces that felt extremely strong to me. In some ways I liked the first better, but the latter is a great introduction to what Chaz has been doing with his Mars stuff on Patreon and why you might be interested.

Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen. Vivid and fast-paced, probably my least-favorite of Chokshi's so far which still puts it a cut above many other things out there. Death and magic and treachery.

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda. Kindle. I love her so much. I'm reading her books with as little knowledge of what they're about as possible, going in, and this is actually going great, I'm getting to have them as books, not as classics we know all about. So there were things in this that I don't want to spoil for you in case you want it the same way. There's a lot about figuring out one's work in life, and who's on the edges of society, and all sorts of other interesting things. It's massive, and it's worth every page.

Jonas Lie, Weird Tales from the Northern Sea. Kindle. This is 19th century short stories from a northern Norwegian, and it is just as depressing as you'd expect from that. "An ocean spirit ate my whole family and I was a shadow of myself after that. Also my boat was no good." Welp. Am I sorry I read it, no, sometimes I'm like that.

Premee Mohamed, The Broken Darkness. The sequel to Premee's first cosmic horror novel, and it's just as strong on complicated friendship and accidentally destroying the world in unfathomable ways, so if that's your non-Euclidian jam, here's more.

Coral Alejandra Moore, Eliana González Ugarte, et al, Constelacion Magazine Issue 1. Kindle. A strong first issue of this bilingual speculative magazine with standout stories from Malka Older and Dante Luiz.

Dorothy Sayers, Have His Carcase, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, and Unnatural Death. Rereads. I was keeping an eye out for several things on this reread. One of them is which ones make good stand-alone reads if someone is to only read one, and I am still a partisan for The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on this point. If you haven't read any of the Lord Peter Wimsey books and think you're only up for one, let it be this one. It's thoughtful about the aftermath of the Great War, and it introduces you to the characters without leaning too heavily on previous volumes. It remains one of my favorite novels in that way and also works as a mystery novel specifically. I almost skipped The Five Red Herrings--I did on my last reread--and I'm glad I didn't; my tolerance for phoneticized dialect has gone up, and I could see the influence of her writing for the stage here even though I didn't find it wholly successful. A friend has suggested that Strong Poison is a good stand-alone, and I could not disagree more: I think its structure is a very weak start (it starts with a judge summing up a court case at length!) and it relies on knowing the characters to care what they're doing--and I'm not sure Peter's behavior is at all sympathetic if you don't already like Peter (or frankly entirely sympathetic even if you do). Still, the series has hit its full swing here, and it's just what I want to be reading. This has been a good life choice.

Lynne Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, et al, Uncanny Magazine Issue 40. Kindle. My favorite things in this were stories by Fran Wilde and Rachel Swirsky, but I'm glad to have the whole thing. Yes, I did a lot of magazine catch-up this month.

E. Catherine Tobler, Sonya Taaffe, David Gilmore, et al, The Deadlands Issue 1. Kindle. Another strong first issue, although my favorite part was the opening to the ongoing column from Amanda Downum.

Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy. For an 850-page book, it was paced like a rocket. Explained some useful things about Romania and Switzerland that often get skipped over by authors wanting to focus on Germany and Spain. Really you could do a lot worse for books on the Thirty Years War.

Comments

[oursin]

Oh, Daniel Deronda! There was a TV version about 1971 with Robert Hardy as Grandcourt who was brilliantly awful.

[mrissa]

Dear Lord, she said faintly.

[sovay]

Jonas Lie, Weird Tales from the Northern Sea.

I remember reading this book in elementary school! All of the stuff about the draugr and the drowned was wonderful to me. It ran together in the same space of my head as Gordon Bok. It may influence a story of mine that I wrote in 2019; the story is based on a nightmare I had as a child which certainly feels like it.

[mrissa]

I'm so glad we found each other, because "oh yes, draugr, I read about those as a child" is not something a great many people relate to, I find. Strange, but there it is.

[sovay]

because "oh yes, draugr, I read about those as a child" is not something a great many people relate to, I find. Strange, but there it is.

People are weird. I am glad to know you, too.

(Have you ever written about draugr, I asked hopefully.)

[mrissa]

Well, the night is yet young.

[thanate]

Oh dear... I am torn between never wanting to read more Doomful Far Northern Literature, and making grabby hands at draugr stories.

(I guess clearly this puts me on team "Marissa should write one"?)

Murder Must Advertise

[magenta]

This is my current reread, started when I couldn't sleep at 2 am. I find it a useful standalone so I wouldn't get sucked into reading more. All the information about advertising is fascinating, and shows she absorbed everything when she worked in that field. Also, it has a character named Pamela Dean.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[mrissa]

Not only named Pamela Dean but called Pamela Dean. Most characters named Pamela Dean would mostly be called Pamela or Pam or Pammie or Dean or Miss Dean or Peaches or Spike or something, but no, this one is called Pamela Dean, almost every time, like clockwork, as regularly as the people who met our Pamela at a convention once and want you to know that they are now her bosom friend, their dearest chum PAMELA DEAN you know, US LIONS, that means them and PAMELA DEAN. It fits perfectly well in the text but the fact that it's Pamela Dean makes it very odd for anyone who knows our Pamela.

Possibly it's more like that if you've ever been on an elevator at Minicon with someone who is trying to pick you up on the strength of their close friendship with PAMELA DEAN THEY KNOW HER YOU KNOW. But I have. So.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[sovay]

Not only named Pamela Dean but called Pamela Dean.

I re-read Murder Must Advertise about two weeks ago having not, in fact, read it since personally getting to know a (same) Pamela Dean, and it continued to zap me slightly every time.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[ethelmay]

EDITED: I thought there was another Pamela Dean in To Sir, With Love, but it turns out she's Pamela Dare.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[thanate]

Good gracious.

My first rec for a standalone is definitely Murder Must Advertise, if only because my mother read it aloud to us when I was in about 5th grade, and I didn't try the rest of the series until some years later. (Thus my brother must have been in 2nd, and I remember the timing mainly because part of the reading aloud also coincided with the time my parents told stories at a festival at the National Building Museum.... but anyway.)

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[mrissa]

That's an interesting choice, given that a lot of it is about drug-running and advertising. It's the sort of thing I think of as kids understanding but not understanding--and I think you'll get less out of Death Bredon if you don't know what he's like when he's being Peter Wimsey, but less is not nothing...but on the other hand, is it what I'd want someone to have of the series. I don't know. An adult would get more out of the commentary on the work world and advertising, I think, so that part would be good. But there's a near-complete lack of Bunter, and Bunter is, objectively speaking, the best thing going here.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[ethelmay]

I read The Nine Tailors first, and that worked for me. After that I started at the beginning. I think Murder Must Advertise is half good and half terrible (the whole Dian de Momerie subplot is mostly terrible).

I actually love the beginning of Strong Poison.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[thanate]

Lack of Bunter is a strong counter-argument, as is the fact that it's not exactly *representative* so much as just stands alone well by virtue of being mostly discontinuous from the series as a whole.

I guess my parents figured that after reading me the Lord of the Rings at age six, real world drug plots were probably fine? I'm not actually sure; I think a lot of it was sharing the fun language stuff from the advertising bits, and the rest of the plot came along for the ride.

Re: Murder Must Advertise

[mrissa]

How interesting. I consider the "adult" content of LotR and the "adult" content of MMA nearly polar opposites in type of adult.

[oracne]

Yay Sayers!

[sartorias]

I wonder if Wilson will replace Wedgewood as the book on the Thirty Years War. In any case, I want to read this one.

I think Daniel Deronda is a hot mess in a lot of ways, and terrific in other ways. She was doing so many interesting things. Why, oh, why can't these people live 150 years so they can hone their craft and write lots and lots of great stuff? (Looking at you, Jane Austen, John Keats, PB Shelley, the Brontes, Mrs. Gaskell . . .)

[mrissa]

I mean those other people are all very well, but they're not my girl Maryann.

[ethelmay]

I have always longed to see what an elderly Jane Austen would have said about Charlotte Yonge's early works (they lived in roughly the same neighborhood and had acquaintances in common - Austen was 48 years the elder and died six years before Yonge was born). I think she would have been rather annihilating but an excellent influence for the better.