YouKneeK’s 2017 SF&F Overdose Part 1.5

When I started my first thread on Dec. 11, I had the naïve idea that it would only get a few posts in 2016 and so should serve as my 2017 thread also. I was too impatient to just wait for 2017 before I started! My thread was more active than I expected, though, so I decided I might as well start a brand new thread for my 2017 reads. My first thread is therefore now just the "Bonus 2016 Preview" part. ;)

Thank you to everybody who has made me feel so welcome! I’ve had a lot of fun here already and I’m looking forward to more fun, and possibly some mayhem, in 2017.

Introduction
The long version of my introduction can be found in my first thread.

Here’s a brief summary of what to expect from my reading and reviews:
1. I read mostly science fiction and fantasy, although I sneak other genres in now and then.
2. The books I read tend to be at least a few years old as opposed to being the latest releases.
3. I review every book I read and I’ll post my full reviews in this thread, probably one or two a week.
4. I try not to spoil anything in my reviews, since I hate spoilers myself. I’ll use spoiler tags if I’m bursting to talk about something spoilerish.
5. I have a tendency toward wordiness in much the way that water has a tendency toward wetness…

2017 Reading Index

Clicking on the Date Read will take you to the post containing the review.

   Date Read/
 # Review Link	Title				Author(s)		
 1 2017-01-02	Carpe Jugulum			Terry Pratchett
 2 2017-01-06	Childhood's End			Arthur C. Clarke
 3 2017-01-15	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell	Susanna Clarke
 4 2017-01-21	The Science of Discworld	Terry Pratchett, 
						Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
 5 2017-01-22	Redshirts			John Scalzi
 6 2017-01-28	Watership Down			Richard Adams
 7 2017-01-30	Revelation			Carol Berg
 8 2017-02-03	The Fifth Elephant		Terry Pratchett
 9 2017-02-09	The Three-Body Problem		Cixin Liu
10 2017-02-10	The Dark Forest			Cixin Liu
11 2017-02-25	Death's End			Cixin Liu
12 2017-02-26	The Truth			Terry Pratchett
13 2017-03-04	Thief of Time			Terry Pratchett
14 2017-03-07	Pride & Prejudice		Jane Austen
15 2017-03-09	The Last Hero			Terry Pratchett
16 2017-03-11	The Amazing Maurice and His	Terry Pratchett
		Educated Rodents
17 2017-03-15	The War of the Worlds		H. G. Wells
18 2017-03-19	Night Watch			Terry Pratchett
19 2017-03-24	The Science of Discworld II	Terry Pratchett, 
						Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen

Review: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett



Carpe Jugulum is the sixth and final book in the Witches subseries of Discworld. This has been my favorite Discworld subseries, mainly because Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have been so much fun, so I’ll miss it. This is also the first subseries I’ve completed, unless you count Ancient Civilizations which consists of two loosely-related books grouped under that heading in The Discworld Reading Order Guide.

The title is a pretty good hint about the story: Carpe Jugulum, seize the throat. I’ll let you use your imagination to figure out the premise. :) This one had a good story, but it wasn’t quite as funny as some of the earlier Witches books. It did have humor, but I think it was just missing more Granny Weatherwax. She played an important part in the story, but she didn’t get much page time. On the other hand, Agnes is a fun character and she featured prominently along with Nanny, so I was happy about that. Magrat shows up a little bit too, but she’s far less annoying than she was in the earlier books. This book also contains a bit of a follow up to one of the earlier books, Small Gods, and that was fun to see.

My only other comment needs to go behind spoiler tags. Don’t click if you haven’t read the book! With this being the last Witches book and with all of the false foreshadowing, I spent most of this book worried that Granny Weatherwax would be dead or something by the end. It isn’t too often that I feel any sort of real suspense when reading a Discworld book, but I did this time. I was happy that she was still alive and well by the end.

Next Book
Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, one of the many classic authors (and books) that I’ve never read.

If you want more Granny, read the Tiffany Aching ya sub-series. She enters into that trilogy I believe.

>4 BookstoogeLT: Thanks, that's something to look forward to then! I do have that subseries on my reading list, coming up in a few books.

What >4 BookstoogeLT: said! Well, I've only listened to the 1st so far, but the 2nd is now loaded and ready to go.

I'm curious to know how you like Childhood's End. It was one of my favorites when I read it at 19, but I tried to reread it a couple of years ago and couldn't make it past the first few pages. I'm not a successful rereader in general, though. There are too many firsts still waiting.

>6 clamairy: When I was a kid/teen I used to re-read all the time and I enjoyed it, but that was just because I never had enough new books and I had to read something. Now I almost never re-read for the same reason you said – too many firsts still waiting! Plus it's a lot harder to find the spare time for reading now, so I want to make the most of it.

Status Update: The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (4 out of 211 stories read)

The Non-Specific Plan
This book has been on my want-to-read list for a while, and I downloaded a copy of it a few days ago. I’m only familiar with the most common fairy tales, and only with the more sanitized Disney-ish versions, so I expect this will be an interesting experience.

There are 211 stories, so I figured it might get tedious if I tried to read them all straight through. I remember when I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes straight through; I was going nuts by the end due to the repetitive style and tone of the stories. 211 fairy tales in a row would surely be much, much worse.

My plan is to read a few here and there, in-between other books or whenever I feel the need for a short diversion. I don’t plan to be very structured about it. I don’t normally do formal status updates while I’m reading a book but, since I expect this book to take me a while, I may post some updates now and then. If nothing else, it will help when I finish the book and want to write a review. I’m definitely not going to review every individual story, though!

Thoughts so Far
So far I’ve read the introduction, plus these first four stories:
1. The Frog-King, or Iron Henry
2. Cat and Mouse in Partnership
3. Our Lady’s Child
4. The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

The first one was semi-familiar to me, maybe, but it was pretty different from the only frog-related fairy tale I know. When the frog said he wanted to sleep in the little girl’s bed, I expected the story to end with a smooshed frog. :) It wasn’t at all clear why throwing the frog against the wall would turn him into a prince, and even less clear why he would want to marry a spoiled little girl who had thrown him against the wall in the first place, but I guess fairy tales don’t have to make sense! The other three stories were new to me. The last one was entertaining, but the ending was a bit bizarre.

I think this should be a fairly fun read if I can manage to pace myself and not get burnt out.

>7 YouKneeK: Yes, same here. I read LotR* at least 18 times before I was 20. New books were harder to come by, and for some reason I didn't go to the library very often. I preferred to stock up at the annual library book sale in my town each Summer.

*I was afraid to reread this as an adult, but finally took the plunge in my 40s and was relieved to find it was as wonderful as I remembered it.

>9 clamairy: Me too about the library… I’m glad I wasn’t the only one! I always feel weird saying I didn’t go to the library much when I was young, even though I loved to read. The public library finally got on my radar when I was 20. That was when I moved out into my own place and I was being all budget-conscious, brainstorming ways to get free entertainment. That’s also around the time when I finally got addicted to science fiction and fantasy.

I was almost 38, a little over 3 years ago, before I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t terribly thrilled with it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if my first read had happened earlier, before I’d seen the movies and before I'd read more modern fantasy books that borrowed from elements of Tolkien's work. The parts I enjoyed best were the parts that weren’t in the movies, just because they were new to me. When I was reading it, I’d been traveling every week on business for about 7 months straight and I was taking university classes at the same time, so I might have enjoyed it more if I’d been less exhausted. I fell asleep in the middle of the songs more times than I can count. :)

>3 YouKneeK: I've been holding off reading that because it IS the final Witches book. I know I'm going to have to read it eventually but... maybe not for a little bit longer.

>11 Narilka:, As is mentioned above, Granny and other witches make good appearances in the Tiffany Aching series. It's The Shepherd's Crown which ends all of Discworld, only because it is his last novel. :(

Looking forward to following

>13 stellarexplorer: Thanks!

Have any of my fellow Discworld readers here read the The Science of Discworld books? I’ve been skeptical about whether I’ll enjoy them but, going by publication date, it's about time for me to read the first one. I think I’ll make it my next Discworld book and then decide from there whether I want to read the other three.

>14 YouKneeK: Me at least. The first three are good throughout. In the fourth the science is good enough but the interwoven story is terminally weak.

>14 YouKneeK: I've read the first three and enjoyed them a lot. It's been a while since I read them, but there's a really nice balance between narrative and nonfiction, and the narrative works to illustrate the topics covered. That said, the narratives are only very loosely connected to the main series and you won't miss anything vital, so if you decide you don't like them they're easily skipped.

>15 hfglen: and >16 dovelynnwriter: That’s encouraging, thanks. I’ve been eying them with a little bit of reluctance, but I wanted to at least try one. I'm feeling less reluctant now. :)

Review: Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke



This was my first time reading any of Arthur C. Clarke’s work, and I started the book without knowing what the story was about. When I read a well-known classic, I expect to find familiar plot elements that I’ve seen in more modern works. In this case, I don’t think I’ve encountered a story quite like this, although I’m sure there are some out there somewhere.

The first chapter did seem like a very familiar story. In that short chapter we learn that the U.S. and Russia are having a space race, each only weeks away from launching ships to explore our own galaxy. Before the chapter is over, both countries lose the space race when a fleet of alien ships suddenly shows up and takes position over all the major countries of Earth.

So that sounds like a story that’s been done to death, but it doesn’t go in the direction you would probably expect. Despite being more unique than I expected, my interest fluctuated drastically throughout the book. There were story elements I was very interested in, and there were times when I was fully engaged in trying to guess explanations for certain things, but there were many other times when it was a struggle to push through.

This is a far more plot-driven story than character-driven. In some cases the characters weren’t very likeable, and in other cases we just didn’t get into their heads deeply enough to really understand them. The story took a rather bizarre turn that I didn’t care for as it approached the end. From that point, it was rather bleak and disturbing. The writing came across as a little stilted to me, not just the dialogue but the narrative as well. It wasn’t drastically so, and it’s hard to put my finger on the specific reasons I felt that way. I don’t think it was the age of the book, because I’ve read other books from around this time period without having the same impression.

I’ll likely try some more of Clarke’s work in the future. I already have a copy of Rendevous with Rama, so that’s likely the next one I’ll try once I decide to cycle back to this author.

Next Book
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I’m moving from one Clarke to another, I guess, although it was unintentional. :)

If you would like an "alternate" version, try the tv mini-series that recently came out. It solves the "character" issue and makes the main narrator a pretty likable character. They also round off the depressing edges of the ending, and still keep it true to the spirit of the book. I was actually impressed. But considering where I was coming from with the book, that wouldn't have been hard to do :-)

If you don't mind short stories, I'd recommend his "More than One Universe" collection. Gives a pretty good run of stories from throughout his career so you get a ton of appetizers. I seem to remember that Rendezvous bored me out of my skull...

Definitely looking forward to what you think of Strange/Norrell.

>14 YouKneeK: I'd never heard of the Science of Discworld series. I am intrigued and have added it to my list of possible future purchases!

>19 BookstoogeLT: Thanks! I might try that mini-series eventually. I actually haven’t even turned on my TV in about 4 months now. It’s not from any particular intent; I tend to go through phases with TV.

>20 jillmwo: Here’s hoping we both enjoy it! :)

>18 YouKneeK: Well I'm not surprised at this rating, but I am impressed that you persevered!

>19 BookstoogeLT: I'm pretty sure I DVRed that when it first aired, but still haven't gotten around to viewing it.

>21 YouKneeK: What is this TV you speak of? :D Though mine languishes for long periods of time, I used it to watch a few movies last week when I was sick with a cold.

Childhood's End was the first science fiction book I'd ever read (6th grade). So I put off reading it as an adult for quite awhile. Sure enough, when I read it, I gave it a 6/10 and I have to believe at least one star was for sentimental value. I checked out Netflix for the series (didn't know there was one) but the reviews put me off. I doubt I'll ever watch it. Shame.

They did a bang up job with the Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell series though.

>22 clamairy: It helped that it was an extremely short book, and that it was interspersed with parts where I was very interested in learning what would be revealed.

My TV, maybe counter-intuitively, is more likely to get turned on when my schedule is really hectic. I think it’s because I usually lack the energy to do much else during those times, but I need to do something purely for “fun” to stay sane.

>23 Morphidae: Although I’m not likely to do it in the near future, it would be interesting to re-read some of my childhood favorites and see how my opinions have (or haven’t) changed.

I imagine Childhood's End in particular would lose some of its appeal the second time around regardless of the reader’s age, since the most interesting aspects (at least for me) came from the mystery surrounding the aliens and their purpose.

I've missed out on some of the fun of these classic SF&F books by not reading them earlier in life when I might have appreciated them more. Still, it's nice to fit them in here and there, and I do still enjoy them even if maybe not on the same level I would have when I was younger.

It's not science fiction, but one book that transitioned from childhood to adulthood quite well was Little Women. I adore it just as much now as I did then. Even more so with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Amazing books.

Ender's Game* is always a delight. While I wouldn't call Julian May's Saga of the Exiles hard science fiction, it still qualifies as speculative fiction. It has also aged well. Lastly, Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey holds a special place in my heart and I think it still is a good book. I'm just waiting for it to be long enough for me to reread it again.

*Personally, I borrow not buy Card's works because of his political leanings.

>26 Morphidae: I listened to Ender’s Game as an audiobook a few years back on a whim, and that was one of the few audiobooks I’ve actually really enjoyed. I listened to it during short hikes at a local park on my lunch breaks and would often end up back at my car with almost no memory of the walk itself because I was so absorbed by the book.

>26 Morphidae: Crystal singer is a comfort read for me. I don't know why, but I love it!

>28 Sakerfalcon: A female succeeds against all odds? What's not to love? (And she's kind of a bitchy loner, too, not one of the typical tropes.)

I thought I’d post an update since I’m currently reading two tomes and it may be a while before I have any reviews to write! My reading progress is also slowing back down now that all the holidays are over and I’m on a normal work schedule again. Happily, I have next Monday off for Martin Luther King Day (a U.S. holiday). I didn’t realize until recently that it's a company holiday this year. My employer changes our holiday schedule around regularly for various reasons, particularly in regard to MLK Day and Good Friday. I was very happy to realize I had a three day weekend ahead of me. :)

Anyway, about the books…

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
In Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I’m on page 326 out of 850. The Kindle edition doesn’t count the pages and pages of footnotes in the page count, and I’m reading those too, so I feel robbed. ;) The footnotes are all marked as being on one reeeaaaaallly long page 850. I imagine I'm unrolling an old-fashioned scroll as I read them...

I’m enjoying it so far, although it isn’t one of those books that compels me to keep reading when I have other things to do. It was amusing from the beginning, making me chuckle in spots. It’s very character-driven and rather light on plot, which I don’t mind too much since it’s written well. The story has also gotten more interesting as it’s progressed. For the first 100 pages or so, I hated most of the characters, even though some of them were pretty funny. Now there are some more likeable characters involved, so that has increased my enjoyment. I’m also very interested in the side story involving Stephen Black, who is one of the few characters I like.

The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
As I mentioned earlier, I’m intentionally reading The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales slowly -- a story here and there as the mood strikes. Otherwise, I would surely get sick of reading 211 fairy tales in a row. I’m making slow progress on this because I usually prefer to read my “main book”. I’ve only read the first 12 stories so far, but this is supposedly 12% of the book. I guess the rest of the stories will be, on average, about twice as short.

The stories are silly and of course totally unrealistic, but they are fairy tales after all. They’re fun in small doses. They do often have a darker tone to them than the more sanitized fairy tales we may have grown up with, but I haven’t yet encountered anything particularly shocking. I don’t know if I would feel differently if I had children and if I were considering whether or not to let them read this.

I feel about Strange/Norrell is how I "imagine" a lot of people feel about Dickens. Glad you are enjoying it. From what I remember, if you're enjoying it from the beginning, nothing changes that should marr that enjoyment.

>31 BookstoogeLT: Thanks, I'm glad to hear that! At the risk of horrifying you, I haven't ready any of Dickens' work as an adult. I remember suffering through A Tale of Two Cities in high school, and yet somehow I remember absolutely nothing about the story. I expect I might appreciate it more now.

I'm not horrified. I will say this in defense of older books not just classics: so many books you read today will have a much deeper foundation if you know/recognize the foundation that the author is using.
My example is Lovecraft. After reading an annotated version, I began to see a lot of his influence in many of the darker fantasy/urban fantasy books. I was glad because now I knew those modern authors weren't that brilliant, they were just good at skimming someone else's work ;-)

>33 BookstoogeLT: You make a really good point. I know I often see references to various classics, but often I only know enough to recognize them and not to fully appreciate their intent. Nor to recognize if the reference actually has deeper layers or if the author is just making a shallow reference to appear “literary”.

I’ve always imagined I might catch up on the classics I’ve missed (or just flat-out don’t remember) at some point in my life, after I start feeling like I truly have overdosed on SF&F. But your point is well taken that I would likely gain more by reading them sooner rather than later.

I’ll have to give it some thought. Once a month feels like too much when I look at the huge list of things I’m excited to read, but maybe once a quarter to start...

>18 YouKneeK: Rendezvous with Rama is one of my favourite Clarke stories. I would not bother with the sequels, however. They were a joint venture with another writer and I do not think they added anything to the story.

>34 YouKneeK:

You might find it better to try the classics thematically; so, if you read a SFF book that references or riffs off a classic, try reading that then. For example, if you read Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, try reading some Anthony Trollope, or Angela Thirkell if you find Trollope too heavy going.

However, be warned that a lot of Victorian-era fiction comes across to modern readers as overly moralistic and sententious. I frankly find it mostly unreadable; I can tolerate Jane Austen but not the Brontes. Earlier classics - especially Greek or Roman or the Sagas - try and get in modern translations (most of the free versions on the web are Victorian translations and are often bowdlerised).

>35 pgmcc: Thank you pgmcc, I was wondering about those sequels. I had noticed the average ratings for them are so much lower than the original book.

>36 Maddz: That’s really helpful Maddz, thanks. I especially would not have considered that older translations would likely be bowdlerized because of the era in which they were translated… I very likely would have picked an older translation with the naïve idea that it would somehow be "more classic", but I’d rather read a translation that best conveys the original story.

>29 Morphidae: When you put it like that ... of course!

You should check out the BBC mini-series of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It's quite good. They've made changes of course but the "feel" of it is there.

>39 Morphidae: Thanks Morphidae! I might eventually. Somehow it seems so much more difficult to find time for TV than for books. Probably because I can open a book "for just a few minutes" (ha!) whereas a TV show is at least a 40 minute commitment.

>40 YouKneeK: By the way, >39 Morphidae: had a stellar book discussion about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on one of her reading threads. I don't have the link handy, but maybe if you talk sweetly to her, she will share it with you. :)

Oh dear. I don't even remember where it was. *goes looking*

ETA: Here it is! http://www.librarything.com/topic/129806

Though I found out later she wasn't pleased I didn't ask more "interesting" questions and she probably wouldn't be doing anymore tutored reads. (Don't worry, she doesn't post in LT anymore.)

>42 Morphidae:, lol, well, I very much enjoyed it!

>43 MrsLee: I did, too!

>42 Morphidae:, >41 MrsLee: Awesome, thank you! I’ll check it out after I’ve finished the book.

>45 YouKneeK: You can check it out as you go along. It's marked by chapter.

I enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It is famous for its footnotes.

We were luck enough to have Susanna Clarke as our Guest of Honour at the third Phoenix Convention in 2006. For a reading she read a footnote that she had finished just too late for inclusion in the book. The footnote was sixteen pages long.

I hope you enjoy it.

>46 Morphidae: Ah, thanks, I see how it works now. I’ve started reading the first few chapters' worth of posts. That’s a cool way to do it.

>47 pgmcc: Ha, some of her footnotes do seem to be more like footstories. I’ve read at least one so far that would count more as a short story. They’re fun to read.

>46 Morphidae: I decided to stop reading the thread for now until I finish the whole book, just to be safe. I saw a question asking if Mr. Drawlight gets his comeuppance by the end, and I most surely hope so, but I don’t want to risk finding out, not even a yes or a no, before I actually get to the end. ;) (I know, I know, my idea of what constitutes a spoiler is ridiculously broad!)

>47 pgmcc: Oh, that must have been wonderful, Peter. I hope her health has been good enough to let her work on the next book.

>50 Marissa_Doyle: I was in touch with her partner, Colin Greenland a few years ago, and unfortunately her health was not great. I am glad the book made it to the screen to provider her with some income.

>30 YouKneeK: The Grimm's already sanitised the fairytales they collected, though not to the extent some versions go. If I recall, there were some stories that they removed entirely when they printed a second edition because they were deemed too gruesome. If your volume hasn't rearranged the stories, it'll take somewhere around 30 stories before the more gruesome ones start to show up. It'll depend on what your definition is in relation to fairy tales. Have you reached Fitcher's Bird and The Juniper Tree yet? I've always felt that those are some of the most gruesome in the whole collection. (And yes many of them are quite short. ^_^)

>52 dovelynnwriter: Now that you mention it I do remember seeing some notes about that in the introduction. No, I haven’t read Fitcher's Bird or The Juniper Tree yet. So far I’ve only read the first 15 stories. I checked my table of contents and those two are #’s 46 and 47 respectively. Something to look forward to! Maybe. ;)

I hope to finish up Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell today. I’m up to page 720 out of 850, so I should be able to. After that, I plan to start adding more daily fairy tales to my diet…

>53 YouKneeK: I'd say we're currently in a time where we're reversing some of those sanitisation choices again as well, though I doubt we'll see fairytales return to the oldest forms surviving forms we have of the stories.
Ah, then I suspect your version is sticking to the original order. ^_^ I hope you'll enjoy them! I loved them as a child, but as an adult I find it easy to see why some tales have fallen into such obscurity.

As I recall, one version of Cinderella had the wicked step-mother lopping off parts of the step-sisters feet so that they would fit into the glass slipper. The prince was deceived until he noticed blood dripping out of the shoes as they were driving away.

>55 jjwilson61: Ha, well that's one way to go about it I guess!

Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke



This was a very uniquely told fantasy story. It’s set in England (mostly) in the early 1800’s, and the author tells it in an authentic-sounding manner. It mixes in a bit of the real world with the fantasy world, and uses some archaic words like “shew” (show) and “chuse” (choose) to add flavor. There are also a lot of footnotes that add depth. The tone of the story, combined with the footnotes, often made it feel a little more like I was reading a historical text rather than a fictional story. Well, aside from all the magic and stuff, of course. :) There’s also some humor. It’s a somewhat dry humor that comes in large part from the despicable characters populating the story.

The basic story is that true magic hasn’t been seen in England for a very long time. When the book begins, we’re introduced to a bunch of argumentative men who call themselves “magicians” but in fact have never cast any sort of spell. They just study the history of magic, but they don’t practice it themselves or know of anybody who does. Then we meet Mr Norrell who, much to everybody’s surprise, is a “practical” magician – he can actually do magic. Mr Norrell has decided to make it his goal to bring magic back to England. But Mr Norrell does not have the type of personality you might expect, nor does he go about things in a way that might seem most effective to a rational reader.

It was an interesting story, and the writing was impressively done, but I was never very absorbed by it. It’s far more character-based than plot-based, which isn’t a problem for me, but there weren’t too many truly likeable characters in this book and some of them were downright awful. The book is broken up into three parts. The first part features mostly despicable characters, the second part gives more page time to some of the more likeable characters, and the third part picks up the pace of the plot more significantly. I thought the book steadily got better and better, but I still found it easy to put down. For all the depth and authenticity the author put into the setting and the characters, I wasn’t too thrilled with the magic itself. There seemed to be no real or consistent rules and, at times, it seemed terribly overpowered.

This book is 850 pages, not counting the footnotes that were all counted as page 850 in my Kindle edition. The footnotes made up the last 7%, which would be about 64 pages. So yes, this book was slightly tome-ish! If anybody reads this on a Kindle, be careful because some of the footnotes get cut off in the pop-ups. Many of the footnotes are quite long, some being practically short stories rather than ‘notes’. When reading on the Kindle, you can follow the link to go directly to the footnotes to make sure you’re seeing it all. In my case, I chose to read the book on my tablet instead, even though I don’t normally use it for reading. It was just a little easier, plus the footnote indicators stood out better on a color screen with their blue numbers and I didn’t want to miss any. I’ll be very happy to get back to my Kindle, but my tablet did give a slightly more realistic “weight” to my tome. :)

I have a couple of more specific comments that I’ll need to put within spoiler tags:
I thought the most interesting parts involved secondary characters. I was very interested in Childermass. I wish he’d played a more prominent role in the book, but the air of mystery surrounding him was part of his appeal. I also enjoyed the parts with Stephen Black quite a bit. Segundus was also interesting, what little we saw of him.

Jonathan Strange was somewhat likeable, certainly far more so than Mr Norrell. He was rash and a bit self-absorbed, but I liked his openness and his desire to spread knowledge. He seemed to have good intentions, even though his carelessness was sometimes a problem. Mr Norrell, on the other hand… ugh! Setting aside the fact that most of the problems in the book were the result of his selfish choices, he just had a horrid personality. I hate information hoarders, and he took it to extremes. He tried to suppress other magicians not out of genuine concern that they might cause harm, but because he was afraid somebody might equal or surpass his skills and siphon off some of his credit. He wanted all the glory for himself, and he cared more about his own pride than the greater good. He irrationally worked against his own stated objective of bringing Magic to England by actually suppressing it. Ok, yes, he struck a nerve with me. :) I guess that says something for how well-written he was if he managed to evoke so much dislike from me.

It was a little surprising to me, at least at first, that Norrell became so fond of Strange’s companionship, but I guess it makes sense that he would enjoy his first opportunity to converse with somebody who shared his interest in and aptitude for magic. Given Norrell’s history of dishonesty and selfish behavior, I imagine he will hinder Strange rather than help him solve their little curse of darkness, out of a desire to keep Strange all to himself.

Whew… I guess my review was a bit of a tome itself!

Next Book
The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett. Because it seems like I should follow up my fake history lesson with a fake science lesson, right? :)

Great review and excellent summation of Norrell.

I'm pretty sure I read a paper copy but I can't for the life of me remember if the footnotes were in the back or if they were at the bottom of the page, much like Pratchett and his discworld ones.

I want to say they were in the back and I gave up rather quickly on them as they were tiresome and boring and I was already not liking the book :-)

>58 BookstoogeLT: Thanks. :) It would have been more trouble to find and read the footnotes in the back of a paper copy; I can see why you gave up on them. I liked some more than others, particularly the ones that told or expanded upon a story.

>42 Morphidae: I just went back and read the entire thread. I really enjoyed it and I thought you asked fun questions. Thanks for finding the link for me!

I have some comments about the thread, which I’ll put in spoiler tags to be safe:
Your question here about whether the fairy would take the first 35 years of Lady Pole’s remaining life was the exact same thing I was wondering at that point. I didn’t expect him to twist it quite the way he did by taking half of each day, but it was obvious he was going to trick Norrell in some manner and I couldn’t believe Mr Norrell didn’t ask more questions. Obviously the fairy wanted her while she was still young.

Your comments here about the Tarot cards were particularly interesting to me. I was a little frustrated in that section because I knew a lot of things were going over my head when the characters didn’t explain it explicitly.

I also agreed with many of your comments about the inconsistency and lack of believability concerning the fairies and some of the other magical events.

>60 YouKneeK: I read a LOT of fantasy and magical realism so I have no problem at all with suspension of disbelief. But there need to be rules within that fantasy framework that make sense. Sometimes this book pushed those boundaries enough that I was knocked out of the story. "Wh-what?"

You should still watch the BBC series, I think. It removes some of the weaknesses. Even Norrell became more sympathetic.

>56 YouKneeK: Yep! And that version generally sees the birds pecking out their eyes instead. I think that's the Grimm version as well. It's got nothing on, say, Sun, Moon, and Talia which is one of the oldest surviving versions of Sleeping Beauty, though. (If anyone wants to look it up, it comes with trigger warnings, so... You know. Tread carefully.)

>58 BookstoogeLT: Ages ago when I attempted to read the book, my copy had them at the bottom of the page the same way Pratchett has them. I'd imagine that the reason the ebooks have them as pop-ups and end notes is beause ebooks aren't (yet) designed to handle footnotes particularly elegantly.

I really hated the footnotes, though. I'd like to give the TV series a try some time, but I'm in no hurry. I just hated what I'd read of the book that much. T_T

>61 Morphidae: Agreed. There’s a huge difference between “unrealistic for the real world” and “unrealistic within the context of a fictional story”. The former is no problem whereas the latter is a big problem.

I may watch it eventually, but not right away. First, I have to get back into an “in the mood for TV” phase of my life. Right now the thought of spending 7 hours in front of the TV, however I might break it up, seems horrifying. Second, experience has taught me that I’ll get bored if I try to watch it while the story is too fresh in my mind.

>63 YouKneeK: True, it was almost five years between when I read the book and watched the series.

>55 jjwilson61: I just got to Cinderella (#21 in my edition) and the story was told exactly the way you mentioned. The whole thing was entirely less logical than the Disney version I’m used to, because Cinderella kept running off for no apparent reason. At least with the whole fairy godmother business in the Disney version, she has a deadline to keep so it makes some sort of sense. :)

>58 BookstoogeLT: I was gifted a hardcover of Strange & Norell a few years ago. I have yet to read the book but, having thumbed through it once, I recall the footnotes being located at the bottom of the pages and not in one huge section at the end. Other editions may have done it differently?

As a kid, I loved reading my mum's copy of The Grimms' German Folk Tales, which was full of blood and gore and child abandonment. So the version of Cinderella that I grew up with was the one with bits being hacked off and eyes being pecked out. That was more familiar to me than the Disney version. It's amazing what one can just accept as a child, and carry on. I eventually inherited the book from my mother, but it appears that my daughter has annexed it into her own library.

>66 ScoLgo: Mine were at the bottom, too.

>66 ScoLgo: & >68 Morphidae: I think placing the footnotes at the end is the easiest (possibly only decent) option for ebooks. I guess they could place them at the end of chapters. The thing that screws me up with footnotes when reading on a Kindle Papetwhite is that once you tap on one and it takes you to the land where the footnotes reside then you can't just swipe on the screen once to flip back. You have to tap the screen at the top to activate the panel and then hit the back arrow. I learned this the hard way reading a Bill Bryson book that was chock full of footnotes.

>69 clamairy: Footnotes seem to be implemented really inconsistently on the Kindle, I guess depending on how the publisher set them up. With most of the Discworld books, the shorter footnotes usually show up in little pop-up windows over the page I’m reading, and I can just touch an ‘X’ to close the pop-up and go back to what I’m reading. Sometimes they take me to Footnote Land, and then there may be an underlined # or symbol at the beginning of the note that I can touch to go back to the original position in the book. But other times I have to do what you described to get back which feels a little cumbersome. And sometimes you can touch that # or symbol and it takes you back to the wrong spot. I also have trouble with them being less noticeable; sometimes I miss them and I've started to get twitchy when I see an innocent ", thinking I just saw a * and need to go read a footnote.

The whole footnote thing needs some work and standardization! The Science of Discworld book I’m reading now has actual chapters, and the footnotes are at the end of each chapter. I like it that way because then I can quickly scan over the short list of footnotes and make sure I didn’t miss any before moving on.

@lynnoconnacht
@ScoLgo

I read it back in '12 and said nothing in my review of the footnotes, so I have absolutely NO idea. Either way, long footnotes would have taken me out of the story no matter where they were placed.

>70 YouKneeK: Yes, I think it was the Bryson book where I got returned to the wrong page when I would try to get back hitting the *. Or the layout on the page would be completely different, which was unsettling.

Review: The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, & Jack Cohen


The Science of Discworld is an odd sort of Discworld book. Based on the name, I had thought it was going to delve into more detail about the fictional workings of the Discworld. Like, say, how the giant turtle and the elephants stay alive outside of an atmosphere or how water on the Discworld gets replenished when it keeps falling off the disc… If that last sentence makes it sound like I’ve gone off the deep end, then you clearly haven’t tried reading Discworld.

The science in this book is actually more about the real science of our own world, with a very thin Discworld story interspersed between the science bits. The Discworld part of the story takes place in the Unseen University, where the wizards end up creating a simulation of the birth of a universe remarkably like ours, followed by many million years’ worth of evolution on “roundworld”, a planet that is also remarkably like ours. Each short Discworld-based chapter is then followed up with a science chapter discussing topics related to what’s going on in the Discworld story.

For the first 25% of this book, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through to the end. The science parts were boring me to tears because they mostly covered either terribly basic concepts or entirely theoretical topics that I wasn’t very interested in reading about. As it went on, it got more interesting, although there were still scattered bits of boredom here and there. If this had been a book about computer science, I probably would have enjoyed the theoretical parts equally as well as the practical parts. Actually, even though it wasn’t at all the focus of the story, computer science did get a few mentions here and there, and I particularly enjoyed those parts. When it comes to the natural sciences, however, my interest isn’t strong enough to sustain me through theory. I enjoyed it when the authors discussed what we do know and why we think we know it, whereas the various speculations about things we have no way of knowing for sure were more frustrating to me than interesting.

The Discworld part of the story was very short, but amusing. It served as a nice way to break up the science bits and provide some humor. However, the story had a major logical flaw that annoyed me to no end. It’s supposed to be physically impossible for anybody to get into the Roundworld experiment, but Hex is able to use suits to let people enter Roundworld virtually. Rincewind is the first person made to try this, and the luggage shows up physically in Roundworld, supposedly following Rincewind there. But Rincewind’s actual, physical body is still in Unseen University. There’s no logical reason that the luggage should have ended up inside the experiment. It was only done as cheap story trick to allow the wizards to get materials to and from Roundworld by having them transported via the luggage.

So… will I read the second science book? Yes, I think so, once I get to that point in the publication order. Whether or not I read the last two will probably depend on my reaction to the second one.

Next Book
Redshirts by John Scalzi. This will be my first time reading anything by Scalzi.

I read Scalzi's reboot of Little Fuzzy (Fuzzy Nation) and hated it enough to avoid other books by him. (Yes, I know I have a couple of other books by him but Old Man's War was on a Baen CD Rom, and The Mallet of Loving Correction was part of a book bundle (Humble Bundle IIRC). I've so far avoided reading them.)

I have to say I'm not wildly keen on novel-length parodies; short stories, yes. I own Randall Garret's Take-Off! which worked because you could dip in and out as the whimsy took you.

Well, sounds like a Discworld book I'll be passing on. Not much of a fan of Pratchett's philosophies in his novels, so I suspect his "science" books will be the same.
I am glad I read your review though. Now I can discuss this book and sound like I know what I'm talking about, without ever once having cracked the cover ;-)

>74 Maddz: So far, at the 20% mark, I’m actually really enjoying Redshirts. When I say this is my first Scalzi, it’s not technically true, but close enough. This past fall I tried to listen to The Android’s Dream on audio during a road trip. Within about an hour, I could barely keep my eyes open and had to turn it off. I’m a really bad audio listener, though, so I might have enjoyed it in print.

>75 BookstoogeLT: Ha, glad to help. :) I feel confident in saying you would hate this book due to the philosophies presented.

Yeah, sounds like I'll be skipping the Science books too. Thanks for the review!

>74 Maddz:

I didn't care for Fuzzy Nation either, but really enjoyed Old Man's War.

>77 Narilka: I’m happy I could provide a service for the community. ;)

>15 hfglen: and >16 dovelynnwriter: did seem to enjoy them more than I did, though.

>76 YouKneeK:

The reviews I've read on Redshirts seem to be polarised; at some point I'll end up reading the other Scalzis I've got - when depends on how I shall be commuting (I've been offered contract work in London, but I don't know exactly where - S & SE outer London is not viable as a daily commute from where I live and overnight stays eat into the per diem). Then I'll make a decision.

>78 suitable1:

Oddly, I enjoyed Ardath Mayhar's Golden Dream and William Tuning's Fuzzy Bones much more than I did Fuzzy Nation. I suspect it was because they stayed closer in style to Piper than Scalzi did.

>80 Maddz: I hope the London offer works out!

Review: Redshirts by John Scalzi



Redshirts was a very fast read, light and funny, but with some depth mixed in here and there also. It was an especially nice change of pace after my last couple of books which were slower reads for me. It probably helped that I loved the original Star Trek series, because I was able to appreciate the parody aspect. Reading this book actually made me want to pull out my TOS Blu-ray discs, and it’s the first time in months that I’ve had the slightest urge to even turn on my TV. So far I’m resisting the urge, though! I don’t know if I’d say Star Trek familiarity is a must for appreciating this book, but I do think it would help a lot, especially if you normally like your plots to make sense.

The story is entertaining and the characters are written well, but the plot is pretty crazy. I don’t think the plot was ever intended to make sense; it was just supposed to be fun. In that, it surely succeeded. Despite the plot silliness, the characters themselves really weren’t too difficult to take seriously and even the story didn’t often feel too over-the-top. I liked the characters and cared what happened to them. I’m having trouble explaining my reaction to this book because it somehow felt both silly and not silly at the same time.

Because of my mixed “silly/not-silly” reaction, I went through most of the book undecided about whether the author was going to stick with the crazy plot explanation he appeared to be working toward from the beginning or if he was going to give it a more serious, believable twist. I kept half-expecting Scalzi to come up with an explanation that made actual sense, even while suspecting that wouldn’t happen.

This was my first time reading anything by Scalzi and I think it gave me a good taste of what he’s capable of. It wasn’t just the humor that appealed to me, but the way he made me care about the characters and the way he depicted the friendships between them. I definitely plan to try more of his books at some point in the future. The main reasons I didn’t rate this higher are: 1) I do prefer plots that make sense and 2) it was just so, so short that I was left wanting a little more meat. It was still a very enjoyable read and I’m glad I finally tried it.

Next Book
Watership Down by Richard Adams. The Kindle edition went on sale not too long ago, shortly after the author’s death. As shocking as it may be, I’ve never read it before. It had been on my list to read eventually, so I went ahead and grabbed it.

>81 YouKneeK:

So do I! Contract work, alas, and 3 months in the first instance, and I rather suspect CCC will be wanting me back as the new team has decided they're not going to do report building anymore and Application Support hasn't got the capacity.

Plus I think the idea of using SSRS to do data extracts on the adults case management system won't work for 2 reasons:

1. Why do you want to use SSRS to connect to the database? There's already a working connection with Business Objects so you don't need another. What do you mean you don't have a BO report builder any more? Well, you can try to get her back or hire one.

2. The SSRS coders know the childrens case management system and data sets not the adults so will come horribly unstuck...

Basically, this wasn't thought through...

>82 YouKneeK: Try Old Man's War. It will give you what you missed in Redshirts. It's a serious book with less humor but it does have good plotting and much more meat.

>83 Maddz: Is report development one of the things you do, then? I do a lot of that at work, although I'm trying to get rid of it. I actually like developing reports, but it eats into my programming time and I prefer programming. Fortunately my manager also wants me to do more programming and less reporting. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had a great track record with finding reporting resources.

We’re probably a week or two away from making an offer to somebody for our report developer position, though. This time I begged to be involved in the interview process, because the last person he hired was a disaster. During the recent phone interviews, I bombarded them with tons of questions about SQL and general reporting concepts. The ones who weren’t crying by the end were the ones we scheduled for face-to-face interviews. ;)

Ok, nobody was actually crying, but I was amazed at what some people couldn’t answer. How the heck does somebody apply for a job that lists SQL as a major requirement and not know the difference between an inner join and a left outer join? The relevance of key fields to joins? The SQL syntax for aggregates? What a CASE statement is? I guess they’re just hoping people will take them at their word and not ask even the most basic questions. That’s how the last guy we had got in.

>84 Morphidae: Thanks, that’s definitely on my list and I actually already have the 1st book. From everything I’ve heard, I expect I’ll probably enjoy it. It’s lower on my priority list though since he’s still contracted for more books in the series. I understand they’re supposed to stand alone though, or at least that the 6th book was a conclusion of some sort, so it’s on the higher end of that low priority. ;)

>86 YouKneeK: I certainly felt comfortable reading it as a standalone. I can see it continuing on but not urgently, if you know what I mean. Rather like the Miles Vorkosigan series, if you've read that. You need to read them in order, but each stands alone.

>85 YouKneeK:

Business Objects report development, so I've had little experience of SQL (nor needed it). That's what our universe designer needs - but he also does Oracle reporting. In any case, I primarily work in Desktop Intelligence (full outer joins only) because the council never sprang for a stand-alone data warehouse and Web Intelligence only got grouping functionality (CASE statements) with BI4+, and given how long it took them to move from BO 6.5, they would never get around to doing that upgrade. Besides, it's looking increasingly like the new Business Intelligence team won't do that kind of reporting at all.

I'm looking to do some training as I have an enforced 5 week gap because of modification order rules. (To return us to a vaguely book-related discussion, I've got a copy of Cindi Howson's SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 The Complete Reference 3/E to read through in the meantime.

>88 Maddz: Ah, ok, and I’m the opposite – I’ve had very little experience with any SAP reporting. I did do a small amount of work with BEx, but I wasn’t in an IT role at the time and was just running some fairly simple ad-hoc reports for my department. I had learned SQL in 1999, and I had a pretty good aptitude for reporting in general, so I inevitably ended up with reporting responsibilities no matter what department I worked in. Shortly after my division went live with SAP, I transferred into my first actual IT role and we didn’t work directly with SAP.

In my department, we recently started using a Cognos-based tool for which I designed a model and some packages. The users can write ad-hoc reports with those packages and they have all the table joins and common business logic defined behind the scenes. It takes some of the reporting burden off us and prevents the users from causing havoc, but it means the reporting requests that do come to us tend to be the more complicated ones.

>89 YouKneeK:
The problem with the council is that they're expecting operations to do self service reporting when the only BO experience operations has is running pre-built reports out of Corporate Documents and perhaps applying some filters. Also, by and large operations does not have the skills to actually build reports from scratch, especially multi-variate queries.

I've been accustomed to writing and maintaining some seriously complex reports, and knocking up some fairly basic ad hoc queries is so simple for me.

Cognos? I hang out on BO Board, and it's been mentioned as one of the ways businesses are moving away from SAP.

>89 YouKneeK: & >90 Maddz:

Does anyone still use Crystal Reports? That was my main report writer.

>82 YouKneeK: I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I had similar feelings about it. It was silly and yet I became emotionally involved. For me that's a very satisfying blend, and I believe it's quite difficult to achieve.

Hey, I'm just about to start the audio of Watership Down!

>90 Maddz: I can see how that would be problematic! Even with our fairly simple Cognos setup, it took some hand-holding before most of our super users were comfortable with it, even after formal training sessions and extensive written documentation.

>91 suitable1: I know some people definitely do, although I personally haven’t written reports with it. I’ve converted some of our sites off Crystal Reports, so I’ve used the software just to extract all the relevant logic from existing reports. Actually, I think the next project in my pipeline has reports in Crystal Reports.

>92 clamairy: I agree. It was a very unique combination that I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen done on that level.

Nice timing on Watership Down! Is it a first-time read, or a re-read? I didn’t get time to read much of it at all yesterday, but I really enjoyed what little I had time for. When reading the introduction, I learned the book started off as a made-up story the author was telling his children during a long car ride, making it up as he went along. Listening to it as an audio would be pretty cool considering its origins.

>94 YouKneeK: I've never read it, but I have the vaguest recollection of having the movie playing in the background at some point during the last 20 years. I remember nothing, except that it was pretty to look at. I listened to the first half hour today, and it's read by the author. I agree, it was a fascinating foreword.

I listened to Watership Down when I was about 10, and sick at home with the flu. This was long before "audiobooks" were a mainstream thing. Since my parents were blind, they had a lot of books on tape. By then it would have been cassettes, although I can remember them listening to reel-to-reel tapes, too. My mother had Watership Down for one of her university courses, read by a volunteer reader, and thought it would keep me entertained for a while. I enjoyed it then, but oddly enough, when I had to read it in print for my own university course, I didn't find it as enthralling.

>82 YouKneeK: Definitely read Old Man's War. Its got some unique elements to the 'humans expand in the galaxy' plot and is well done. I'd also recommend Lock In. It doesn't have much in common with either of the other two, but its good. I actually enjoyed Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation better than the original!

I've read Watership Down multiple times and enjoyed it. Its.. different.

>95 clamairy: I’m happy to have found a fellow book lover who hasn’t read this book before. I was worried I might be the last one standing. :)

>96 SylviaC: Do you think you enjoyed it less the second time because you were already familiar with the story?

>97 Karlstar: Lock In was actually one of the books I was considering as my first Scalzi read, until I saw he was contracted to write a sequel and I decided to wait on that one.

Watership Down definitely does seem pretty different so far! :) I recently reached the 13% point and am going to try to get a little more reading in before bed.

>99 YouKneeK: It may have been that the second time I was reading it through the filter of "required reading", for a course that I wasn't particularly enjoying.

Scalzi has a novella which gives the background for Lock In. It is available to read online on the Tor site:
http://www.tor.com/2014/05/13/unlocked-an-oral-history-of-hadens-syndrome-john-s...

edit: The title is Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome.

>91 suitable1:, >93 YouKneeK:

The council did have CR in use, albeit only by one person. She took voluntary redundancy... I think the intention is to go to SSRS and Power BI & Excel for future analytical requirements within the BI team.

Oddly, I too re-read Watership Down within the last year. It's always been one of those books I've been ambivalent about; talking animals I generally find too cutesy, so that and the Plantagenet duo by Allen Andrews are about the only examples of that genre in my library.

>100 SylviaC: Ah, that would make sense. Thanks for the link to the novella! I’ve bookmarked it so I’ll remember to look later.

Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams



This was my first time reading Watership Down, and I didn’t know too much about it before I began reading except that it was a story told from the perspective of rabbits. I’m glad I finally read it, and I enjoyed it, but I was never enthralled by it. It was easy for me to put down.

The book starts off with a rabbit, Fiver, having a premonition that something horrible is going to happen to the warren where he and his brother live. His brother Hazel has learned that Fiver’s instincts about danger are usually correct, so Hazel does his best to help Fiver convince the chief rabbit that all the rabbits need to leave. Without any tangible support for their argument, the chief doesn’t take them seriously and is quite annoyed at being disturbed with such nonsense. A handful of rabbits decide to leave anyway, and the story is about the adventures they have after leaving as they try to make new lives for themselves.

Somehow I’ve gone through life without having much exposure to rabbits. I’ve seen a couple wild rabbits here and there at a distance, and I’ve occasionally seen fuzzy, rabbity lumps not doing much of anything (understandably) in tiny cages in pet stores, but that’s about it. When I was about halfway through the book, it finally occurred to me to look up rabbit videos online. That was nearly as entertaining as kitten videos, and searching for some specific things (fighting, thumping) helped me better picture some of the action in the book.

There really weren’t any major twists or surprises in this story. At least, not in my opinion. I felt like everything that happened was easily predicted by common sense, if not hinted at by the author well in advance. The string of adventures sometimes felt a little tedious to me, but there were also times when I was pretty well entertained by it. It also took me quite a while to warm up to the characters, but I did feel fairly attached to some of them by the end.

There’s an anthology associated with this book, Tales from Watership Down, but I’ve decided not to read it.

Next Book
The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, heading back to Discworld with the 5th book in the Watch subseries.

Ok, that picture is awesome. Where/how did you create it?

I've wondered about reading Watership Down several times, but not being a big animal person, it just never appealed to me very much. After reading your review, I'm even less inclined :-)

>104 BookstoogeLT: Hopefully I haven’t dissuaded you from reading something you would consider the best book of all time. ;)

Do you mean the rectangular header things I’ve been using for my review posts? I’ve just been using PowerPoint to combine various elements, then I take a screen shot of it after all the elements are in place, paste it as a single image, and save it as an image file. It’s just a gray rectangular box, with an image of the cover of the book pasted on top of it, and a text box. This is the absolute limit of my "artistic" skills. :)

I also made small images for each of the possible star ratings I might want to use, so now I just copy/paste whichever star rating I need on top of the rectangle. Probably just about any software that allows you to insert and manipulate graphics would work just as well; I only used PowerPoint because it was the easiest and most familiar thing I had on hand. Since I have the format in place and saved, it just takes a couple minutes to edit the text and slap in the new graphics for each new book.

Yep, that image. I've got an internet filter on, so your previous images never showed up.

Powerpoint. I might have to check that out, because that image gets the cover image, the star image and the info block all into one picture. Very streamlined.

As for dissuading me, that is a risk I am more than willing to take :-D

>106 BookstoogeLT: Aaah, that explains it. For a minute, I thought you thought I’d created the cover image. :) This was the ridiculously easy solution I ended up with after getting exasperated trying to accomplish the same thing with an html table when I was trying out WP.

>107 YouKneeK: Well, off to see if OpenOffice has a comparable program...

>108 BookstoogeLT: At work, I’ve done somewhat-similar things (at least in terms of overlaying images with other images and text blocks) in both Word and Outlook. They’re a little more clunky when it comes to that kind of thing, but they work. So if you have Word, or an equivalent, that might work for you also.

>103 YouKneeK:

Glad you enjoyed it enough to finish it. It's a book that's a candidate to end up in the ebook shelf if it comes up in a deal sometime just to clear space in the library.

I did read Shardik many years ago, and I think The Plague Dogs, but they are very much darker in tone than Watership Down and I didn't like them as much (mind you, I'm not much for horror stories and as I recall both verged on that). Neither are in my library now (if I ever owned them in the first place).

>110 Maddz: I’ve seen a few similar comments from other people who also liked Watership Down better than his other work. I haven’t looked into the other books at all myself, though.

Wow, YouKneek, your first spammer. Yay?!?

Which has made me realize that these threads, while started by an individual, can't be controlled by said individual.

Any Moderators for the group, do you have ModPowers to delete comments? And is there any way for the creator of a thread to have those powers? Or are we dependent on you for that?

>113 BookstoogeLT: LOL, I feel so honored. There is a way to flag spam and, if enough people flag it, the message content gets hidden. To flag spam, click the “More” link below the message, then “Flag”.

I assume after that it eventually gets deleted by LT staff or moderators, but I’ve never paid attention before. I’m now much more curious about the process…. ;)

Looks like this person has been spamming other threads too.

>114 YouKneeK: Yeah, I saw the "flag" option, but that is like calling the police AFTER your house has already been burgled. And to just have it hidden, hmmmm. Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to see how this type of thing is handled here.

>116 BookstoogeLT: If a user gets a certain number of flags within a certain amount of time, their account gets removed as in #112.

Otherwise, it just gets hidden. Flags are not just used for spam but also for personal attacks and name-calling. That is why posts are simply hidden not deleted. It's community run, not by a moderator or moderators.

Audiobook Review: Revelation by Carol Berg



This is the 2nd book in the Rai-Kirah trilogy, which I originally read in print five or six years ago. This past November, I started listening to the series in audio during commutes. I’m a terrible audiobook listener, but this series is one of my very few successes.

In my review of the first book, I wrote at excessive length about my difficulties with audiobooks and why this series is working for me, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much here. However, I do want to comment again on the narrator, Kevil Stillwell. He sets the perfect tone for the main character, the first-person narrator for the story, and he uses recognizably distinct voices for the other main characters. Most of his reading is done in a fairly understated way. When he does get more dramatic, it’s always at an appropriate moment, and it has occasionally given me chills. For me, it’s so much more effective when a narrator saves the drama for special moments.

This story begins a couple years after the previous book ended. It tells a complete story, with the main issues resolved at the end, but the foundation needed to truly appreciate it is set in the first book, Transformation. I wouldn’t recommend reading this book first. There were many new and interesting twists that built on the things we had learned in the first book. In particular, we learn a lot more about the demons and how the Ezzarians ended up being responsible for protecting the world against them.

There was a lengthy section around the middle that started to feel like it was dragging a little. Our main character is cut off from everything familiar and, most importantly, he was cut off from all of the secondary characters I enjoyed so much. The story was still interesting, but my attention started drifting more frequently than it had before. I remember being completely absorbed by the entire series when I read it in print, so my perspective is likely the result of listening to it over a very long period of time in audio, a format with which I have trouble paying attention to begin with. Instead of that section lasting for a day or two of reading, it lasted for weeks’ worth of commutes.

There were several great moments throughout the book, and I particularly loved the ending. I’m not going to have any more opportunities to listen to audiobooks this week, but I look forward to starting the final book next Monday.

>103 YouKneeK: I've read Watership Down a couple of times, its interesting but not great. Maybe its one of those books that's best read by young adult readers? Anyone else have any thoughts on this one? I know it is considered a classic, but perhaps for a limited audience.

>103 YouKneeK: Watership Down is one I haven't read either. Based on the premise I think I would have loved it as a kid so it's too bad I missed it back then.

>119 Karlstar:

I bought it and read it back in the day, I must have been in my 20s. It's stayed in my library ever since even though I find the specific (sub-)genre too cutesy for my tastes. I will say it's less cutesy than the general run of animal stories. Nowadays I suppose it would be targeted at the YA market, but back in the day it wasn't (mind you, there wasn't much in the way of YA back in the early 80s that I recall).

I've since re-read it a few times, most recently last year. I actually use it as a reference when playing Bunnies and Burrows... I wouldn't say it's really a kids book; there's enough darkness to the story that I would say it's more a teen book these days.

I also read Watership Down a while ago, in the late 70s when I was in high school. The story kept my interest but I wasn't blown away by it either.

>119 Karlstar:, >120 Narilka:, >121 Maddz:, >122 jjwilson61: I think I too might have been more enthusiastic about it if I’d first read it at a younger age.

>103 YouKneeK:, >119 Karlstar:, >120 Narilka: I'm listening to it now it I didn't realize quite how dark it is. I'm glad I never read this to my kids when they were younger. And it's not like there's any humor to balance out the bleak bits either. Still, I'm enjoying it for the most part.

My recollection of Watership Down is the violence. It wasn't what I expected.

>125 pgmcc:

"Nature red in tooth and claw..."

Forget Disney - nature does not involve cute anthropomorphic animals.

Hence why I tend to avoid the talking animal fantasies out there.

>126 Maddz: I understand your point, but some of this is 'bunny on bunny' maliciousness and violence. As I said, more bleak than I was expecting. I would assume he's trying to make a point about humans, but he claims in the beginning of the book that he is not.

>127 clamairy:

Believe me, it happens in nature. It's one of the reasons I have very little tolerance for sentimental tales about animals.

Like this!
;o)



Sorry, for the thread hijacking.

I don’t consider it hijacked; I’m happy to see people talking here about pretty much anything. :) I just haven’t jumped in yet because I’ve been traveling on business this week and haven’t had much spare time or energy.

I think Watership Down was a case where my read of the book was influenced by some comments I had seen over on Goodreads. I’m going to put my explanation for that statement in spoiler tags. Clamairy, whatever you do, don’t click if you’re still listening to the audiobook. :)

The comments I saw referred to the book as being darker than expected, and I saw at least one comment about it being sad. Based on that, I actually went into the book expecting something darker than what I got. I was convinced Fiver would die by the end because he just seemed to fit the character type. I thought Bigwig was going to die at least a couple of times: first when he was caught in that trap, and then later I thought the author was foreshadowing his death just before he infiltrated the compound when the book mentioned something about how all the rabbits would remember how he had followed orders. Hazel did die at the end, but only after he’d lived a long and productive rabbit life, longer than most wild rabbits live, so it didn’t feel all that sad to me. Maybe if I’d been more heavily invested in the characters I would have felt differently.

I don’t want to sound like I think death is the only way for things to be “dark” but, combined with the “sad” comment, I just had different expectations. I can see though why most people would be taken more by surprise. It does have a more serious tone than the “talking rabbits” premise might indicate and the parts about man’s effect on nature are definitely bleak.

Maybe someday I should read the book version of Watership Down, but the tv version caused some serious childhood trauma - I was very upset and worried that the bunnies would get hurt. I was also very anxious about whether the Rats of N.I.M.H. would get their rock turned in time, so maybe I was just too young to handle this kind of drama...

>118 YouKneeK: Transformation is in my TBR challenge for this year. Alas, not the audio. If I like it perhaps I'll get the follow on in Audio.

>131 Darth-Heather: LOL, I’m glad you survived the trauma. When I was a kid, and often still as an adult, I was always worried about the animals in movies. The worst for me was if it wasn’t actually a movie about the animal in question and it wasn’t always on screen, because then I’d be worrying about where it was when it wasn’t visible.

>132 majkia: I can’t wait to find out what you think about it once you read it!

Review: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett



The Fifth Elephant is the fifth book in the Watch subseries of Discworld. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, my enjoyment of the Watch books has grown as the series has progressed. With this book however, I wasn’t as entertained by it as I had been by the last couple. I’m not sure if it was the book or if it was me, since I was traveling on business this week and I was surprisingly tired even though it wasn’t a particularly strenuous trip. There were also a lot of distractions during the bulk of the time I spent reading it.

As with the last couple of Watch books, this is one of the more plot-driven Discworld books. Vimes is sent on a “diplomatic” mission to Uberwald to attend a coronation but he ends up with a mystery to solve. The plot was somewhat interesting, but not riveting. The humor was there, but it didn’t often have me laughing out loud. While the other characters all had their parts to play, Vimes had the largest role and maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t enjoy it as much. I usually think the other characters in this subseries are more entertaining.

So, all in all, I found this book to be pretty average. I enjoyed it, but it probably isn’t one of the books I’ll look back on with any particular fondness.

Next Book
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

I "endured" the Watch books. Nowadays I'd probably DNF them and stop Discworld altogether. Vimes just never clicked with me on any level..

>135 BookstoogeLT: I've really enjoyed a couple of the Watch books, but the ones I liked best were the ones with more page time for the other characters.

I have only read a few of the Discworld novels and one of them was The Fifth Elephant. It was the one I found to be, as you put it, pretty average. I read it because he was playing with the name of one of my favourite films, "The Fifth Element".

>137 pgmcc: Ah, I haven’t watched that film and so didn’t get the correlation with the title at all.

>130 YouKneeK: Coming back to comment because I didn't read your spoiler until I was done myself. And yes, I agree with everything you said.

Review: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin



The Three-Body Problem was originally written in Chinese and has been translated to English. I read the English translation, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The story had its quirks, but it held my interest well. One of the fun aspects was definitely getting a little taste of Chinese culture and history, since I know appalling little about China. The translator has added a few footnotes to help explain cultural references that wouldn’t make sense to many readers from other countries, and the author also had a few footnotes to explain some science concepts. The book wasn’t overloaded with footnotes; there were 35 in all and they helped add some clarity to the story.

This is one of those books where, early on, you are given a lot of questions and then the answers are slowly revealed throughout the book. This makes it difficult to describe the plot in any detail without spoiling all of the fun of seeing everything revealed for oneself. I’m going to confine myself to describing one of the first plot elements that started the string of questions: something is going on with scientists throughout our world. Many of them are committing suicide.

This is more of a plot-driven book than a character-driven book. The characters were interesting and believable, but this was not a book where I became really invested in the characters. The story was the real draw. I did think there were some aspects of the plot that didn’t really fit together correctly. One of the larger issues I had will have to be described within spoiler tags…

The virtual reality game was entertaining to read about, and it engaged me mentally, but it didn’t seem logical within the context of the plot. What was the real purpose of the game that would justify the resources that would have been required to develop and operate the game? We know the purpose wasn’t to figure out what the problem on Trisolaris was. Obviously the game developers already knew the problem because they used the name of the theory as the name of the game. I don’t think the purpose was to figure out a solution to the three-body problem, because the game seemed to be run by the Adventist faction. That faction didn’t want a solution because they didn’t want anything to dissuade the Trisolarians from invading Earth. There did seem to be an attempt to use the game as a way to recruit people who would support their goals, but surely this game was not the most efficient way to find those people? For one thing, why did they need to recruit people anyway? Trisolarians certainly seemed to have things pretty well under control on their own thanks to the sophons. And if they were trying to recruit people, why would players of this game be more likely to be receptive to the cause than, say, your average asylum escapee? The game seemed more like an intellectual exercise than anything. Experiencing a simulation of what Trisolarians had to live with might inspire some empathy, but that empathy is not going to cause most people to want to sacrifice humanity and let the Trisolarians have Earth.

This is the first book in a trilogy, and it doesn’t really resolve anything. It does not end in a cliff hanger though, and it answered all the main questions brought up throughout the story. It left me very curious about what will happen next, so I plan to jump right into the second book.

Next Book
The next book in this series, The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin.

>140 YouKneeK: I'm very glad to see that you enjoyed it. This one has been on my wishlist for quite some time, but Amazon never seems to have it on sale. I might have to settle for a dead tree copy.

>140 YouKneeK:

I got it at 99p in the Daily Deal on Amazon UK nearly a year ago, and got the sequel and some short story collections more recently. I've still to read them, along with Ken Liu's The Dandelion Dynasty. Him indoors has read the latter (we now have a shared library) and described it as interesting.

Trouble is, these days I need to be 'in the mood' for anything other than fantasy. However, I now have a lot more time for reading having been made redundant (my reading dropped right off a cliff a few years ago when my mother went into nursing care and even with our house move after she died I haven't picked up my reading rate because reading in moving vehicles (aka the mis-guided bus) makes me travel-sick and I don't like audio books).

At the moment I'm now dealing with the bloke's elderly parents (his dad is in nursing care and is going in and out of hospital) and his mum has got bronchitis. In fact, we'll be heading off in a bit for a weekend visit... Luckily, the former is currently out of hospital and the latter managed to get out to see him yesterday so we don't need to go right this minute to see him on the way into town.

>141 clamairy:, >142 Maddz: I hope you both enjoy it if/when you read it!

>141 clamairy: It happened to be the very first free e-book of the month that Tor offered when they started that up, and fortunately I learned about it in time to take advantage of it. It had been on my list for a while too.

>142 Maddz: I hope your visit goes well this weekend. How did the London offer from a while back work out?

That would be rough not being able to read in vehicles. My mom has that problem also and I’ve always been glad I didn’t inherit it from her. Not that I have too many opportunities to read in vehicles anyway, since I’m usually driving, but I did last week during my business trip since our destination was 2 hours away from the airport and another colleague was driving.

I find that I’m usually equally in the mood for science fiction or fantasy, although sometimes I’ll crave one or the other in particular. It’s less common for me to be in the mood for other genres.

>143 YouKneeK:

They actually wanted a social worker who could do data analysis not a data analyst... I think the reason was that the project in the second phase involved getting all the people indentifed in the first phase reviewed because the council was going to start charging them for their care. However, come next month councils will start hiring for statutory returns work so I expect to pick something up then. Plus I think I will get a better per diem as it's my area of expertise and I'm a member of a national user group.

I'm usually driving too but driving into Cambridge is never a good idea because of parking problems when you arrive and what should be a 20 minute drive taking an hour or more in the mornings. The (mis-)guided bus was a perfect alternative because the stop was about 10 minutes walk from the house and the B stopped outside Shire Hall the other end (himself would catch A and I would catch B). The only problem was traffic in Cambridge; as soon as you get off the off-road busway you start crawling...

I can read - just not for very long as I start getting queasy. So I'm best sticking to short stories, magazine or newspaper articles and the like. I'm OK on trains and planes, mostly OK on boats, it's cars and buses where I have problems. I think it's the swaying motion; the only time I felt seasick was on a hovercraft in a mid-channel storm on the way to Guernsey; returning in calmer weather I was fine; oddly my Mum was fine that trip but used to get seasick on a regular car ferry and on a liner. I think with her it was more the plunging motion.

>144 Maddz: Ah. Makes sense, but disappointing. I hope next month has more opportunities!

I would love it if public transportation in the U.S. was even remotely as good as it is in the UK and in other places I’ve visited in Europe. We have a bus and rail system in the Atlanta area, but it only covers a limited area. My current home is a little too far away from any stops or stations for it to be useful to me.

These days, once you're out into the real country, public transport is largely non-existent. Local councils used to subsidise uneconomic rural bus services but these subsidies have largely been withdrawn which means so have rural bus services (you might get a bus a couple of days a week if the village doesn't have a post office).

Rural rail services got axed in the 60s (Beeching); in fact the busway is built on the old Cambridge-St Ives railway. St Ives is a market town and these days is largely a dormitory town for Cambridge; luckily the busway passes through the town once it comes off the guided bit. (If you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway).

Enjoyed your "Why I love fantasy books" post for BookLikes.

>145 YouKneeK: re >147 mattries37315: What's this?

You should definitely post it here or at least a link.
It was a really good post and I wish that they had started doing something like that about 6months sooner.

>147 mattries37315:, >149 BookstoogeLT: Thank you! :) I didn’t think it would be of any particular interest here, really.

>148 Morphidae: This was something on a different site (BookLikes). The staff asked a few members to each write a post explaining why they love a particular genre and they’re publishing one a day during the week of Valentine’s Day. They asked me to do one for fantasy, and they posted it this past Monday. Another member did horror yesterday, and I'm looking forward to seeing what today's is.

Here’s the link.

>150 YouKneeK: Think of it as a blog post and not anything specific about Booklikes. You could have posted it anywhere and it would have been a great post about why and how you love Fantasy :-)

I too am looking forward to what they post next. Unless it is romance. I am not "liking" whatever post they do on that genre...

>151 BookstoogeLT: LOL, I figure there’s bound to be a romance post, but I thought they would have posted that one yesterday on Valentine’s Day itself.

It will be interesting if the person who writes that post can articulate what it is about the genre that appeals to them in a way that even I can understand.

Do you have loading issues at BL still? I still have issues with my dashboard only loading 2 posts unless I refresh about 5 times and I'm wondering if it is still a general problem, or just me.

>150 YouKneeK: I think that's a great post and I agree with BookstoogeLT that it would work on any book blog. Thanks for sharing.

Great article. Reading it I thought that you might like the Kushiel series by Jacqueline Carey as it has "a diverse set of races (well, not races but political structure somewhat based on deities), political intrigue, interesting and well-fleshed-out characters (including one of the villains) (including almost all of the villains but especially the main villain who you end up feeling some sympathy for), some enjoyable friendships, and even a little bit of humor.

Be warned, their country's motto is "Love as thou wilt" and they mean it. Sex is openly partaken of and courtesans are considered to be well-trained and well-paid for artisans. The main character is a masochistic courtesan and very well paid as it's considered a specialty. Read the first two reviews by titania86 and ForeverLostinLit. They do a much better job than I.

>153 BookstoogeLT: Yes, at least on Firefox. For a while it was working well, but the problem started happening for me again this week. It still seems to work flawlessly on IE, but Firefox is my normal browser so I get annoyed when I have to pull up IE instead.

>154 Narilka: Thank you!

>155 Morphidae: Thanks for that recommendation! I’ve actually had it on my radar as a finished fantasy series that I should try, and I even have Kushiel’s Dart on Kindle already, but I didn’t know much about it. From what you’ve said, I need to make it a higher priority. There isn’t too much that will bother or offend me in a book as long as it’s written well.

>156 YouKneeK: I'm pondering a reread of Phèdre's Trilogy. This would be the fourth.

Kushiel's Dart would be the weakest (7/10 stars), then Kushiel's Chosen is the highest (9/10 stars) and Kushiel's Avatar (8/10 stars) in between giving the entire trilogy an average rating of 8/10 stars.

Another warning - hope you like big, fat doorstoppers. Dart is around 1,000 pages.

The second trilogy is about Imriel (average 7/10 stars). And the third is about Moirin (8/10 stars).

The setting is alternate Earth in 1500s - 1600s, mostly Europe. But it is not recognizable as our Earth. The history is totally different as is the religion. I had enough geography knowledge to be able to pick out where they were talking about and if you Google place names, it should help, too.

Let me know if you plan on reading it anytime soon and I'll hold off on my reread.

>157 Morphidae: Wow, four re-reads! You don’t really like it, do you? ;)

I do like doorstoppers, assuming I like the book in the first place. If it’s something I’m really enjoying, the longer the better. It will probably be at least several months before I get to it though, even in its new “higher priority” status. The higher priority status moved it onto my list of 44 books (which doesn’t count all their sequels) instead of my list of 163 (and growing) books. :)

If you are indeed not shocked that easily, than I would definitely add my recommendation to Morphidae's. The Kushiel books are quite something. I think I rated the first three equally (5 stars). The second trilogy I liked as well, but not quite as much. For the third it depended on the book. But even the ones I enjoyed less, were quite good.

These are among the most immersive books I know, world building is excellent, and I couldn't help but love the characters.

>150 YouKneeK: Belatedly adding my praise for your post about fantasy. I think you sum up clearly why so many of us love the genre.

>159 zjakkelien: You two are killing me. :) It definitely sounds like something I’d like.

>160 Sakerfalcon: Thanks!

>161 YouKneeK: Yep, I'm afraid we're aiming for you. Have you been hit yet, or should we keep on shooting?

By the way, was there a link to that post about loving fantasy? I would like to read it. Well, everyone else seems to have found it, so maybe I can too...

Edit: yes, didn't take much googling. I like it!

>162 zjakkelien: For anyone else as well, the link is at post 150...

>162 zjakkelien: Yes, I’m hit, you can stop shooting now! ;)

Review: The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin



This is the second book in the trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, following The Three-Body Problem. I enjoyed it quite a bit, I guess about equally as well as the first book or possibly a little bit more. It had a few stretches where I had trouble maintaining my interest, but it also had some really great and interesting concepts that inevitably pulled my attention back to the book. I also loved the ending, which caught me by surprise and left me very eager to read the next book.

I can’t even hint at the plot without spoiling the entire first book, so I’ll just say that it picks up with the type of events you’d expect. However, the story is fairly twisty and there are several surprises throughout. There were some things I had more-or-less figured out on my own, but there were other things that completely surprised me. It’s often a rather bleak story, but that just made the hopeful parts of the story seem that much brighter.

This book features mostly (but not completely) different characters. As with the first book, the characters were interesting and believable, but the plot is the bigger draw here. I did get slightly more invested in the characters than I had in the first book, but not extremely so. I had a few quibbles with some aspects of the plot, particularly with Hines’ part of the story, but not as many as I did with the first book.

One thing I did have more trouble with in this book was the names. Surprisingly, I never had any trouble with them in the first book, but this book had a few too many names that seemed similar to my uneducated American eyes. Zhang Beihai, Zhuang Yan, and Chang Weisi particularly gave me trouble. There were also some characters who were related and so had the same surname, which is written first. All in all, I was able to keep it straight thanks to the reference at the beginning of the book and my Kindle’s search feature, and it got easier as I got further into the book, but I expended more effort on name tracking than I normally do.

My last comment is about the ending, so it will have to go behind spoiler tags: I was surprised when an apparent resolution to the conflict was reached by the end. I had seen in the chapter headings that the book only covered about half of the expected time until the fleet from Trisolaris arrived, and everything seemed so bleak up through almost the end, that I didn’t expect anything to get resolved in this book. Although I enjoyed this story, I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about having it dragged out for two books, so the end was a pleasant surprise and I thought it was done very well.

I look forward to seeing where the story goes in the third book.

Next Book
The last book in this series, of course. :) Death’s End by Liu Cixin.

I'm getting more and more interested in this the more reviews I read. I think I'll wait to see what you think of the final book before making my decision.

>166 BookstoogeLT: I’d really interested to see what you think if you do read it. I don’t have a good feel at all for whether or not this is something you’d enjoy.

>167 YouKneeK: To be honest, neither do I :-)
I can already tell that I'll be opposed to some of Cixin's philosophical outlook, but then, that is the case for about 95% of the books I read so I'm not sure that will actually impact anything. I'll probably have more of an issue with it being a translated work more than anything. But from what I hear, Ken Whatshisname, is a good author in his own right, so even that shouldn't be an issue.

"Something" vague and unnameable just makes me hesitate.

>168 BookstoogeLT: I haven’t read many translated books, maybe not since my school years, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from that aspect of it. These books haven’t felt awkward or unnatural to me, though. The 2nd book was translated by a different person, I think to get them out faster, but I didn’t notice any jarring differences in tone between the two. (The 3rd book is also translated by Ken Liu.) There’s definitely a feel of experiencing a different culture’s perspective though, which was one of the things I liked.

The main complaint I remember seeing in reviews for the first book was that the characters felt bland, but I don’t really agree with that. I wasn’t terribly attached to any of them, but I didn’t think they were bland.

Review: Death’s End by Cixin Liu



This was the final book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy that began with The Three-Body Problem. Reading the trilogy was an interesting and mostly fun experience.

The story didn’t at all go where I had expected based on the end of the second book. I think, if I’d let things simmer in my head for a day or two before jumping into the third book, my natural “yeah, but what happens when…” thoughts would surely have led me to guess one of the main catalytic events and better predict some aspects of the story. I’m glad I didn’t let it sit, though. It was more fun to just stay on the ride and let the rollercoaster jostle me around and surprise me.

For me, this book was the fastest-paced out of the three and it had some of the coolest ideas to read about. One thing that contributed to its faster pace was the beginning. The first two books took a few pages to hook my attention, but this one sucked me in immediately because it confused me. The story itself made sense but, at first, I had absolutely no idea how it related to the trilogy. Trying to guess how it would all tie in kept me fully engaged. There were a few slow spots here and there in the middle but, for the most part, the various twists and turns in the story held my interest well.

I would caution that this trilogy doesn’t wrap everything up with a neat bow and a happily-ever-after ending. In a story where I become really invested in the characters, this kind of an ending would be more bothersome to me. This story, on the other hand, is much more about the ideas and the plot. Because of that, I was content with the ending and thought it was very interesting. I’m glad this series was translated to English and that I had the opportunity to enjoy it.

Next Book
I’m headed back to Discworld with The Truth by Terry Pratchett. This is the 2nd book listed in the Industrial Revolution subseries.

Well, looks like I'll be adding this trilogy to my tbr...

>171 BookstoogeLT: I can’t wait to find out what you think once you try it. After the 3rd book, I still couldn’t begin to guess whether or not this is something you’d like.

>172 YouKneeK: It'll be a bit ie 18+months before I get around to it. So don't hold your breath :-D

Review: The Truth by Terry Pratchett



The Truth is the second book in the Industrial Revolution subseries of Discworld. The first book had been Moving Pictures and was one of my least favorite, so I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

In this book, newspapers are introduced to Ankh-Morpork. Meanwhile, there’s a plot against Lord Vetinari (yes, another one!) to frame him for a crime. The story was funny and interesting, with some deeper commentary sandwiched within the silliness. I really liked the main character, William de Worde. Since the story is set in Ankh-Morpork, we also see some other familiar characters from the various subseries. Most of the page time goes to William, though, or to the people involved in carrying out the Vetinari plot.

Next Book
Thief of Time, the fifth and final book in the Death subseries of Discworld.

Yes, that will be two Discworld books in a row. Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought about picking up the pace on my Discworld reading. I’m enjoying the series, but there are also a lot of other series I want to read. I’m reluctant to get myself bogged down in more than one large series at a time, so I keep shying away from things I really want to read. I’ve been sticking mostly to trilogies, duologies, and standalones between my Discworld reads.

Alternately, I could just drop Discworld for an extended period of time while I focus on other things. That strategy hasn’t worked well for me historically, though. I tend not to go back to things after long breaks, even things I was really enjoying. It’s all part of that same weird personality quirk that I’ve tried to explain before that drives me to try to read series that are already completed so I can read the books more-or-less all at once.

My new very-tentative-and-highly-subject-to-change plan is to alternate between reading two Discworld books in a row, followed by one unrelated standalone, and then back to Discworld. I think I enjoy the series enough that I won’t get burnt out with it at that pace, especially since I’m well past the halfway point. If I do start to get tired of it, then I’ll back off to a slower pace and/or reconsider the long break idea.

>134 YouKneeK: - I've always found Vimes to be one of if not, the best, of pTerry's characters. Simultaneously practical, cynical, efficient but also honest and caring. The rest of the watch are there for comic relief and muscle when even pTerry can't believe Vimes can do it all on his own. The very best books are definitely when there's interplay between all of the crew though. Politics is obviously an easier target for satire than technology (although the witches and humanity comes close!) and so I think Vimes works better at making more points than just humour.

The most I can normally cope with now is 3 books from one series before I want a change. I have read entire series start to end, but as you've said, some are just too long and you need a break.

>174 YouKneeK: Sounds like a good plan to me!

>175 reading_fox: I’m not sure what it is with me and Vimes. I like him in small doses, when he's just being clever and sarcastic and a little cynical, but he starts to bug me if we spend too much time in his head. I know some people really like him, so maybe I'm just reading him differently. He cares but, the way I read him, he cares self-destructively and has a tendency to sulk. I think he and Carrot are both characters who care, but with completely opposite attitudes and results. Vimes is surely the more true-to-life character, but I also find his head less pleasant to inhabit.

This isn’t a very good analogy, but it’s sort of like two busy people at work who genuinely care about getting their work done, but one person will spend an hour throughout the day griping to various people about how overworked they are whereas the other person will spend that hour (and all the other hours) actually doing the work. It’s an attitude thing. The second person is more pleasant to have on your team than the first person, and is probably more effective besides.

>176 BookstoogeLT: Thanks. :)

Review: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett



Thief of Time is the fifth and final(!) book in the Death subseries of Discworld. I’ve always been a little iffy on this subseries, but I think this was my favorite of the five books. The general story is that an Auditor has commissioned a clockmaker, Jeremy, to make a special clock. What the Auditor doesn’t tell Jeremy is that this clock will supposedly have the power to stop time, bringing an end, or at least a permanent pause, to the Discworld.

Death didn’t actually get that much page time in this book. Maybe that’s partly why I enjoyed it. I like Death in small doses, when he’s being funny or clever or profound, but he starts to grate on my nerves in larger doses. This was especially true in the first three books where he essentially shirked his responsibilities and let other people take up the slack for him. Meanwhile, he went off and had what would be considered a mid-life crisis if he were a human. Happily, Death has seemed better-grounded in these last two books, so I’ve started enjoying his character more.

In this book, we finally get a chance to learn more about the Auditors. Unsurprisingly, Susan shows up again. I enjoyed most of her sections, especially the ones at the beginning. I also really liked the characters of Lu-Tze and Lobsang who take up a large portion of the story. They’re mostly just your stereotypical well-respected and mysterious monk with his exceptionally clever but impatient apprentice, at least at first, but they were fun characters. The master/apprentice portrayal is a common plot device in fantasy, but it’s one that I tend to enjoy.

I expected this book to earn 4 stars up until maybe the last 25% or so, at which point I started to lose interest in the story. Somehow the climatic events were the most boring parts to me, I think because it went too far into “random chaos” territory at times. In the end, I decided on a rating of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 on Goodreads.

Next Book
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

No, don’t adjust your computer monitor, you read that right. Way back in post #34, I considered the possibility of reading one classic book per quarter. Not counting science fiction and fantasy classics, I haven’t read many (any?) classic books since my school days. Of the ones I did read, I remember very little about them. I didn’t usually enjoy them in school, so I’ve never felt very motivated to read them as an adult. I’m 41, so I now have many years of classics-avoidance under my belt! Still, Bookstooge made a great point in post #33, that the classics influenced and are often referenced by modern authors, and that being familiar with them could add more depth to some of my current reading. Besides, every now and then I feel a little twinge where I wish I were better-versed in the classics. It’s just that I usually suppress the twinge until it goes away…

I still have a large list of SF&F books that I really want to read, so I don’t want to take a lot of time away from that, but one classic book a quarter seems like a fairly easy commitment. I’d be surprised if I get hooked to the point that I want to increase that rate in the near future, but it’s always a possibility. Either way, I figure four a year is better than my previous rate of zero a year. Any science fiction and fantasy classics that I read won’t count toward this number, since I would have read them anyway.

For my first selection, I decided to pick a book by an author I’ve never read before. No, I’ve never read anything by Jane Austen. Yes, I realize this makes me a heathen. ;) I see her mentioned so often, usually favorably, that I’ve been curious to try her work. I also had the impression that her work might make for a lighter starting point than some of my other choices. I could be wrong since I tried to avoiding reading many details about the unfamiliar books I was considering. I figure, if I’m going to read it eventually anyways, I might as well be surprised by it when I do.

What I’ll probably do is alternate between books I’ve never read before and books I read during my school years. I'm interested in reading the things I'm completely unfamiliar with, like Austen, but I'm also interested to see if I'll get more out of some of those books that didn't interest me in school if I read them again as an adult.

>178 YouKneeK: I applaud your decision, and I think you've made a wise choice.

I try to read a few classics a year. I'd shoot for one a month, but they are usually so much more dense than today's fare that this would eat up too high a percentage of my reading time. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. (I barely remember my first time through, so it must have been for a college class. When I reread it in my 30s I was completely blown away.)

>178 YouKneeK: Good review. I was sad when I realized there would be no more Death books, but honestly at the time, I wasn't even paying attention to the subseries, I was just devouring Discworld.

As for P&P, I hope you like it. You know I'm not a romance guy, especially after that time last year at Booklikes with MbD and BookCupidity, but even I like Jane Austen romances...

P&P was my set book for 'O' level Eng Lit at school way back when. I much prefer JA to later Victorian authors (or even the Brontes), mostly because her stories are not sententious or sanctimonious. I still have a soft spot for her writing and re-read P&P every few years, whereas others I've usually only read once (Jane Eyre was the exception - I re-read to see if it was as dire as I remembered (it was) and because I had recently read Galen Beckett's Mrs Quent series. The second book in that series riffs heavily on Jane Eyre.

(Yes, you will have a better appreciation of that series if you have read at least some Victorian authors.). Indeed, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell benefits from some knowledge of the literary tradition - especially J S Le Fanu.

Thief of Time was one of my favorites of the Discworld series.

>179 clamairy: Thank you! One a month does seem like it would be a bit much, at least for me. I don’t feel like I have nearly enough reading time as it is. I guess most readers feel that way. :)

>180 BookstoogeLT: I was a little doubtful when I saw Pride and Prejudice referred to as a romance, and I almost picked something else, but I decided to try it anyway with the hope that a romance written in the 1800’s might be more interesting and unique to me than a modern-day romance. It’s reassuring to know that even you like Austen’s romances! ;)

>181 Maddz: I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by any of the Brontë sisters, either. From what little I’ve read of Pride and Prejudice so far, I've seen some similarities with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, at least in terms of the society-based setting and the sarcastic humor.

>182 jjwilson61: I was pleasantly surprised by it. I’ve had a mixed reaction to the various Death books, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I’ve only had time to read a small amount of Pride and Prejudice so far today, maybe 15%, but so far I’m finding it enjoyable and quite readable. I did have to re-read a few passages due to naming confusion. I had trouble when, as an example, the book refers to Jane as “Miss Bennet” when there are five Bennet sisters and some of them are in the same room. I was also slightly confused at first by whether Elizabeth, Lizzy, and Eliza were all the same person. :) Pausing and re-reading until I was sure I knew who was who helped, I think, because now I’m having much less trouble with it.

>178 YouKneeK: Do you have a list of classics you're interested in?

It might help you to research a bit and know what the history of Austen's writing is. I remember being underwhelmed, but at the time I read it, I was not aware of "books of manners." I might view it differently now that I know more about the times.

>184 Narilka: Not really. There are so many to choose from, and trying to pick my first book was a little overwhelming. I started off by referencing this list of 100 World Classics here on LibraryThing. I liked it because it's small and finite, making it a more manageable starting point. It’s missing quite a bit though, so I'm using it more as a source of ideas than as a reading list. If you or anybody else has any good lists that you like, I’d be interested to see them.

It was mostly a coincidence that my first book is actually on that list. I picked three authors from it that I have little to no experience with. Austen, Dickens, and Steinback were my somewhat random choices. I then used Google to see which books from each author are considered more accessible, picked 3 books from each, and chose from there.

I haven't made any definite decisions about the rest of the books I'll read this year, but I have some general thoughts:
2. For my 2nd book, I’m tentatively considering A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I read it in high school but I barely remember it, and it was also listed as one of the more accessible Dickens starting points.
3. For my 3rd, I may choose from the three I was considering from Steinback: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, or Cannery Row. I've never read any of those.
4. For my 4th, I might choose something by Shakespeare since we read so much of him in high school and I didn't appreciate him whatsoever. I'd also like to give The Iliad another try, but I might save that for next year.

>185 MrsLee: Thanks, that’s a good idea. So far I’m enjoying the book and its snarky sarcasm, but it would surely be useful to understand more of the history behind it. I'm sure there are aspects of the writing that I don't even realize are going over my head.

I highly recommend A Tale of Two Cities. Good stuff that!

>188 BookstoogeLT: I expect I’ll wonder what the heck was wrong with my tenth-grade self if I read it as an adult and decide it’s actually good. :)

>186 YouKneeK: Interesting list. I know that I've read A Tale of Two Cities and Of Mice and Men but have absolutely no memory if I liked either. I think it's been too long :) I tried reading The Odyssey a couple years ago had had a miserable time of it. On another thread I was told that the translator can make a big difference in the story. So if you do The Iliad you may want to do some research before picking your version. I like to read one classic a year. Last year I went with The Count of Monte Cristo and it was quite enjoyable. It's a tome though! So many great Shakespeare options to pick from :)

>183 YouKneeK:

Jane, as the eldest (unmarried) daughter would be referred to as Miss Bennet. The other daughters would be Miss Elizabeth Bennet etc.

The Bennet household was unusual because all 5 daughters were 'out' (in society). The usual practice was to launch each girl in turn, marry her off, then launch the next. However, this may have been more usual in the squirearchy (landed gentry) than in the aristocracy because of less opportunity to mix outside the immediate (rural) area and hence meet less potential husbands. London seasons were expensive.

You may find it helpful to read the book in conjunction with some 'notes', or read an annotated version. It will help with some of the language - words with differing meanings in the early 1800s and today, old fashioned spellings etc.

I would agree with >190 Narilka: that the translator can make all the difference. Remember that what's freely available on Gutenberg and elsewhere are usually Victorian translations which have been cleaned up and toned down for Victorian sensibilities, especially for female readers. A good rule would be to check the original publication date of the translation and avoid anything pre-WW1 if there are later translations available.

>190 Narilka: The Count of Monte Cristo sounds like it would be a fun choice! I’ll have to keep that one on my radar. When I was in 7th grade we read a very dumbed down and abridged version of The Odyssey in our class textbook, and I enjoyed it a lot. But when we read a non-dumbed-down-and-non-abridged version of The Iliad in high school, I thought it was mostly torturous. I’m not sure which translation we read.

>191 Maddz: Thanks, that’s very helpful info! It does seem though like Elizabeth is at least sometimes called “Miss Bennett”. I ran across a recent example in Chapter 16, when Mr. Wickham was talking directly to Elizabeth and addressed her as “Miss Bennett” a few times. Jane was there somewhere, but not part of the conversation. Maybe the difference is that he was speaking directly to Elizabeth as opposed to speaking about her?

I think the language itself hasn’t been much of a problem. It seems very obvious when a word is being used differently than what I’m used to, and the context usually makes its intent clear. Since I’m reading on my Kindle, I have occasionally used the dictionary to review the archaic usage notes and it’s mostly told me what I’ve already guessed for myself. I do think it would be useful to read up on the customs of the time, though.

Regarding translations, I still remember the good advice in >36 Maddz: and plan to research very carefully before I settle on a translation for any of the works I read. It’s a great point that the translation makes a big difference.

With the Iliad, there's likely to be bits missing. The Odyssey is more self-contained. Both were written down from the Bronze Age oral canon, so different story-tellers would focus on different bits.

You could also try the Aeneid - that's almost certainly complete as copies were sometimes used for divination in the Middle Ages (open the book to a random page and stick a pin in and see how the passage applies...)

Review: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen



Post #178 above contains the background for why I read this book, if you’re curious and if you missed it before.

I enjoyed Pride & Prejudice quite a bit. It’s full of sarcastic humor, sometimes very subtly expressed and sometimes not. Elizabeth’s father was particularly amusing, and provoked my most uproarious outbursts of laughter. He had some major flaws, of course, and maybe I shouldn’t have found him as funny as I did, but he really was hilarious. Elizabeth herself could be quite funny also. Jane grated on my nerves at times but, in general, I either liked the characters or else I was at least amused by them.

I think this proved to be an accessible starting point for reading classics, with a straight-forward story that left me free to focus more on the writing style and the customs of the time. Pride and Prejudice was published in the early 1800’s, and the language was definitely a bit different from today’s language, but it was easy to understand in context. Even completely unfamiliar terms such as an “entail” were given enough context for me to understand what they meant. By the time I finally looked up more info, I didn’t learn much more than I had already figured out on my own, although it was nice to get the confirmation and see things described a bit more concisely.

The biggest difficulty I had in the beginning was with keeping the characters straight. In that era, people were usually addressed and referenced formally, using their last names. There were multiple characters with the same last name since they were members of the same family, and sometimes I had to re-read passages to make sure I knew who was doing and saying what. I had far less confusion once I got far enough into the story to have a better handle on who the different characters were.

If this same story had been told in a modern setting and with modern language, I doubt I would have enjoyed it nearly as much. I’m not crazy for romance novels, which is essentially what this book is. I’m sure it influenced many of the common romance plot elements found in books today, and I definitely recognized some of them from the romances I read in my youth. At least plot devices like “the big misunderstanding” and “assuming the worst” are somewhat less annoying in a setting where people didn’t speak as openly about things as we do today. It makes the whole thing a little more believable. Those same devices in modern books, where the characters talk about anything and everything except the one piece of info that would cut the whole story short by 200+ pages, annoy the heck out of me. Either way, the romance aspect of Pride & Prejudice was not the main draw for me and was in fact a bit too sappy for me at the end. What I really enjoyed was reading what the characters did in their day-to-day lives, how they interacted with each other, what constituted “civility”, and, of course, all the sarcasm. It was almost like having the chance to visit and learn about a new culture.

Next Book
It depends. (No, that isn’t the name of the book.) The next book on my list is The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett. It’s one of the illustrated books in the Discworld series, and there apparently aren’t any e-book editions available in the U.S. Fortunately my library system has many copies of it in a physical format, but none of them are available at my local branch and I’m still waiting for the interlibrary loan to come through.

If it doesn’t arrive by the time I get home from work tomorrow, I’ll skip to the next Discworld book on my list. The next book is The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. I expect these two books to be completely unrelated, or at least not greatly dependent on each other, so I’m not worried about reading them out of order. (If somebody knows otherwise though, feel free to speak up and I’ll read something else instead!)

Meanwhile, my progress on The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales has been excessively slow lately, so I thought this would be a good excuse to spend some more time on that book. For tonight, at least, whatever reading time I have left will be spent on that.

The Color Purple is a favorite of mine along with To Kill a Mockingbird and Little Women.

>194 YouKneeK: I found Mr. Bennett hilarious, and was disappointed that he didn't play a bigger role in the book.

>195 Morphidae: I’d like to read all those eventually. I’m pretty sure I read Little Women when I was quite young, but I don’t remember the story, so I’m not sure. The others I haven’t read, although I vaguely remember seeing the movie based on The Color Purple when I was a child. “Vague” would describe most of my memories of the classics. :)

>196 SylviaC: He really was funny!

Maurice is a standalone, part of his children's DW books, and as such it actually has chapters etc. However I find it (and all his YA) contain some really dark and cynical imagery - at least form an adult perspective.

>198 reading_fox: Thanks! Happily, my inter-library loan came through today, so I'll be able to read The Last Hero first as originally planned, but the Maurice book will be the very next one. I've been looking forward to seeing what the YA books are like.

>178 YouKneeK: While I enjoy reading classics, I think some of the best uni literature classes I took focused on books that aren't as well-known today. I wound up with a nice mix of the 'expected' classics, like P&P, but also some which are fairly unknown nowadays such as H.G. Wells' social novels. His science fiction novels (well, novellas) are obviously recommended if you've not read them before, but I'd highly recommend his social novels too. ^_^ I loved getting to explore a little off the beaten track. Will you be considering some of those lesser-known books as well, do you think? *nosy*

>190 Narilka: Seconding (or thirding?) that translators make a huge difference when reading non-English classics. It's especially true with poetry because if you want to preserve a sense of the feel and flavour of the original (rather than just mechanically translating the text), it's a lot more complex than translating prose. So if you want to read something like the Iliad or Beowulf, it really pays to do some research into your options and, if possible, to read some samples to see if they style works for you. I'm glad to hear that you're planning on researching translated classics to find one that works for you. ^_^

I'd say that this goes for editions of Shakespeare's work too. An edition with good annotations will make the read a lot more pleasant and it'll better showcase his skills as a wordsmith. I'd also recommend augmenting any read of his plays with finding a performance to watch. There'll probably be some good options for films to rent and, well, plays are meant to be performed. ^_~

>200 dovelynnwriter: In regard to getting off the beaten path, I’m not sure. I would definitely like to get there eventually, but probably not right away considering how few I’m reading per year and how many beaten-path books I’m already interested in. :)

Funny you should mention Wells… The War of the Worlds is actually the next book on my list after I finish my next two Discworld reads. :) I’m not counting it toward my classic reads since I was planning to read it anyway. It will be my first time reading anything by him. I didn’t know about his social novels, so I will at least keep that on my radar, especially if I enjoy his writing.

I love your suggestions for reading Shakespeare, thank you. I’ve been a bit hesitant about the idea of reading anything annotated. I’m afraid it would be distracting and maybe rob me of the chance to figure things out on my own, at least for a first-time read. I hate being spoon fed. But, from my memory of reading Shakespeare in high school, I suspect a lot of it would go over my head if I tried to figure it out on my own, so an annotated version is probably a very good idea. I also really like your suggestion to look for a performance to supplement the reading. I still vividly remember our school field trip to a local university to watch a production of The Comedy of Errors. We didn’t read it, so I don’t know how it compared to the actual written play, but it was so, so hilarious. The I-can't-breathe-because-I'm-laughing-so-hard type of hilarious. It’s probably the only exposure I had to anything Shakespeare-ish in high school that I actually enjoyed.

Glad you liked P&P. I do recommend the rest of Austen's novels as well.

I am also quite happy that it was to your liking. She was a very witty woman, our Jane. :o)

>202 BookstoogeLT:, >203 clamairy: Thanks!

Review: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett



The Last Hero is the seventh book in the Rincewind subseries. It’s actually an illustrated novel, the first one I’ve read. It was only available as an illustrated version (unlike Eric which I read in a non-illustrated format), and I do think some of the illustrations were important to the story. If nothing else, the ending might not make much sense without the corresponding picture. The reader could probably guess what it showed if they’d been paying attention to the story, though.

The story itself is short, but cute. Cohen and his horde of heroes are on a quest, and their heroic shenanigans might destroy the entire Discworld. A variety of familiar characters get involved in trying to prevent this and, naturally, Rincewind gets dragged into things against his will. Sort of.

I’m not a very visual person, so illustrations don’t usually do much for me. Despite that, I still enjoyed the pictures in this book. I particularly enjoyed seeing illustrations for the various characters I’ve read about over the past many books. I can’t say too many of them actually looked the way I had pictured them in my mind, but they were still fun to see. The Rincewind illustrations in particular were great. The one on the cover is funny, but not very representative of the others. The other Rincewind illustrations throughout the book all show him with this perpetual frown and a dejected look that made me laugh every time he showed up in a picture.

I don’t normally include pictures with my reviews but, seeing as how this is an illustrated novel, I thought it would be fun to show one of my favorite pictures in the book. :)


Next Book
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, the next book in the Discworld series and the first young adult novel in the series.

>205 YouKneeK: Love the kitty with Death. Very appropriate. :)

>205 YouKneeK: Beautiful kitty! What does s/he think of the story in general and Death in particular?

>205 YouKneeK: Why isn't the Death of Rats riding your kitty? You need to buy a vintage Skeletor figure, spend HOURS creating a saddle for him that'll fit your cat, then spend even more HOURS getting it on said cat and then take a picture.

Easy peasy ;-)

I've never read this one. I'll have to see if our library has it.

>208 BookstoogeLT: Noting that @YouKneeK will only have about 3 milliseconds to get the picture before Kitty sheds the saddle and vanishes on to another planet until this latest hoomin madness abates.

>206 MrsLee: Have you read this one? There’s a brief but very cute bit of the story on the next page that involves Death and a kitten, so the picture is even more appropriate. At first it seemed completely random and not very relevant to the story, but amusing anyway. Then, after I finished the book, I realized it had quite a bit of significance after all.

>207 hfglen: Thanks. :) Ernest isn’t the brightest of cats, so he tends not to understand the stories. He did, on the other hand, have a very decided opinion about the book itself. I normally sit on the right-hand side of that loveseat to read, and he usually sits on my lap. The first evening when I started this book, he took one look at the gigantic, towering book in my lap and went off to sit on the other side and watched me suspiciously from there.

>208 BookstoogeLT: LOL, my lack of patience is surpassed only by my cat’s lack of patience. I don’t think the two of us are suitable for this project. Maybe you should get a cat of your own! ;) I hope your library has it. I thought it was worth the time. (Edited to clarify that I hope your library has "the book". My "it" was a little vague; it sounded like I thought your library would have a cat...)

>210 YouKneeK: "Unfortunately", I and Mrs B are both allergic to cats. I'm really broken up about that ;-)
I am thinking Sunday sounds like a good day to take a trip to the library...

>201 YouKneeK: There are sooo many books, it's true. ^_^ I hope you'll enjoy the ones you pick a lot!

I hope you'll enjoy it! I don't get on well with Wells' science fiction. It's very much the start of the tradition that science fiction is about exploring ideas and concepts rather than about human nature, afaik, and his social novels are very different in tone. (They're also at least twice as long.)

I'm much the same about wanting to figure things out on my own the first read through, but with Shakespeare there's just a lot that you cannot pick up on if you're not already very familiar with language use of the time. It's usually the introduction that you really need to skip if you want to go in to form your own opinion. From what I remember, most of the annotations in my books were focused more on "This is what is going on linguistically" than on what's happening socially. (I mean, that's there too, but a lot of them relied on you already knowing a fair chunk about the context.)

Ooh, that sounds like a wonderful experience! I was lucky enough to watch Cheek-by-Jowl perform Troilus and Cressida once, and it was fantastic. Not hilarious because it's one of his problem plays, but I really enjoyed it. All the performances I've seen have added something to my understanding of the plays. ^_^

>205 YouKneeK: Kitty! What a gorgeous cat. The Last Hero. I'm not very visual either, but I think the illustrations helped me connect to Discworld. It was the fist Discworld I actually managed to finish.

>205 YouKneeK: What a handsome kitty! Thank you for brightening up my afternoon with his portrait!

Makes me wish I could have a kitty, but him indoors is allergic. The Mach 9 sneezing would scare the poor thing too much.

Plus I have way too much in the way of fragile things (I've never had to child-proof my home) and we both work (at least he does at the moment but I'm working on that) so non-human housemates aren't on. Maybe when we retire a dog would be nice (except I think he would prefer a parrot).

>205 YouKneeK: Love that photo. Looks like your kitty almost came right out of the illustration.

>210 YouKneeK: Yes, I've read the book, I purchased all of the Discworld novels for my daughter, so at some point I will actually have to give them to her. ;) For now, it is on my shelf.

Death has always had an affinity for cats, and they, like wizards and witches, are able to see him, and seem to be attracted to him.

>211 BookstoogeLT: Awww, that’s a shame! ;)

>212 dovelynnwriter:, >213 Sakerfalcon:, >215 Narilka: Ernest thanks you very much for the kind comments!

>212 dovelynnwriter: What you say makes a lot of sense regarding the introduction versus annotations. I think I’ll plan to get an annotated version when I read one of Shakespeare’s works, but save the introduction for last. Thank you!

>214 Maddz: Fragile things can definitely be a problem, at least with this cat. My last cat, a Persian, wasn’t too much trouble. She did like to play, but she wasn’t much of a jumper. The little guy I’ve got right now is like no cat I’ve ever had before. He’s curious about every square inch of my home, from floor to ceiling, and he’s broken more than a few things since I’ve had him. I’ve sworn off buying any more knick-knacks until he’s old and decrepit. :) But he’s the friendliest and most lap-cuddliest cat I’ve ever had, and a constant source of amusement.

He actually does really well with being home alone while I’m at work. That was an important consideration for me when deciding what kind of a cat to get. Some breeds of cat do quite well with it, whereas others can’t stand it, so I did everything I could to make sure I got one who could handle it. The worst thing he ever seems to do while I’m not home is open a few drawers. He likes an audience for his shenanigans. As best I can tell, he spends most of his time sleeping while I’m at work and saves up all his energy for when I get home.

>216 MrsLee: I loved the part associated with that picture where Albert tries to explain to Death about (more or less) Schrodinger’s cat. At first I thought it was just a cute little side trail that didn’t have much relevance to the main story. It wasn’t until shortly after I finished the book, when I was thinking about what happened with Cohen’s hoard, that I finally went, “Aaaaah!” :)

Review: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett



The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is the first young adult Discworld book. It was a short book, and a cute story, but I thought it was pretty substantial in terms of both plot and messages. The plot was certainly more substantial than many of his adult Discworld books. I didn’t think there was quite as much humor, but it had its funny moments.

The basic premise is that some of the rats in Ankh-Morpork, after eating magical rubbish dumped by the residents of the Unseen University, have become intelligent. They can talk in human speech, read, and think rationally. Maurice, a cat, has gained similar abilities. Maurice is, like most cats, opportunistic. He finds himself a “stupid-looking kid” who can play a pipe, and starts up a scam with the rats and the kid in which they all travel to various towns, the rats freak out the residents, and the stupid-looking kid plays the pipe and pretends he’s charming the rats into leaving the town. For a fee, of course. The story begins as they approach a new town where they plan to execute their scam. Things don’t go as planned.

I enjoyed the story pretty well. It had some fun characters, both of the human and non-human variety. I particularly liked Maurice, of course! Even though this may seem like a weird comparison to anybody who has read both books, I kept having flashbacks to Watership Down. The books are very different in most ways, but there were some similarities in tone and even a couple similar events. If I hadn’t read Watership Down so recently, I doubt I would have had the same reaction.

Next Book
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. This will be my first time reading anything by the author.

Review: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells



The War of the Worlds is a classic alien invasion novel written by H. G. Wells. I think it would be difficult for a present-day science fiction reader to be completely blown away by this book when we’ve inevitably read or watched many similar types of stories. However, it was still entertaining and it held my interest well with only the occasional dry spot.

I think what helped the story feel more “fresh” to me was the time period. It’s set at around the same time as it was written – in the late 1800’s. Most of the older science fiction books I’ve read have been set in the “future” as imagined by the author. With this book, I had the fun of visiting a time period I don’t often see in my science fiction reading. Since the author was living in that time period, it felt pretty authentic. That, combined with the matter-of-fact tone the story is written in, almost made it feel like I was reading about a historical event that they forgot to teach us in school. :) The technology of the time played a definite role in how things played out, particularly in terms of the limited transportation and communication options.

The writing style, as I said before, was very matter-of-fact. It was written as a first-person account of events, focusing mainly on the events the narrator experienced. There are also a couple chapters that tell part of his brother’s story to expand the view of what happened in areas further away from the narrator.

Although the story held my interest, there were certain aspects of it that I wasn’t thrilled with, and that I tend to complain about when they come up in other books. This book has those one-dimensionally evil, invading aliens that never hold too much interest for me. There’s also a bit of that “run, find refuge, danger approaches again, run again” circular pattern that I usually find tedious. I wasn’t as bothered by these things in this book, though. I think that was a combination of how short the book is, combined with the interesting time period in which it was set which added a different element to the story than what I’m used to reading.

Next Book
Night Watch, the 6th book in the Watch subseries of Discworld.

Considering it was put on as a radio play and people panicked thinking it was real, I guess Wells did a creditable job of it :-)

And I concur about modern readers being blown away, or not. Too many other books have taken inspiration from it, so the very idea isn't new any more.

>220 BookstoogeLT: LOL, good point. Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing about that.

Do you have a review out there that I missed, or did you read it pre-social-media?

>221 YouKneeK: No review. I read it pre-social media. And much like 1984, I'm glad I read it but really don't want to revisit it again.

Fun Fact: in the movie Buckaroo Banzai and the 8th Dimension, it turns out that Wells radiocast was NOT a hoax but he was then brainwashed by aliens to say it was.

If you ever want a dose of 80's Movie, BB is the way to go:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/

>222 BookstoogeLT: and >219 YouKneeK: I also have a great fondness for this book, in a sentimental way. When I read scifi books of that era, I try to imagine what the reader of that time would be thinking and feeling as they read. Some of the ideas are incredibly prescient.

>222 BookstoogeLT: Some of those 80s movies were so bad that they were incredibly good! :)

>222 BookstoogeLT: I had never even heard of that movie. It sounds amusing. :)

>223 MrsLee: It must have been an interesting time to be a reader, when plots hadn’t been rehashed quite so often as they have been today.

Review: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett



Night Watch is the 6th book in the Watch subseries of Discworld.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this one pretty well. I say “surprisingly” because, as I’ve said in other reviews, Vimes often gets on my nerves. This book focuses on him very heavily, more than any other book since the first Watch book. However, we see more of the sarcastic and clever aspects of Vimes which I do enjoy and far less of the bitter, woe-is-me, self-destructive aspects which drive me crazy.

This is a time travel story. Vimes accidentally gets thrown back in time, to a point shortly after he had first joined the Watch. History of course gets changed, and now he has to make sure events happen that will keep his future in-tact.

It wasn’t a completely riveting story, but it had its fun parts. Some of those fun parts came from seeing various other Discworld characters at an earlier stage in their lives and learning what they were like before the series began. I particularly enjoyed meeting a younger Vetinari, a character I’ve enjoyed since he was first introduced.

Next Book
The Science of Discworld II: The Globe by Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen, and Ian Stewart.

Review: The Science of Discworld II: The Globe by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen



My reaction to the second Science of Discworld book is similar to my reaction to the first. As before, the book alternates between short, fictional chapters that tell a Discworld story and longer chapters that discuss real-world (mostly) science.

I enjoyed the fictional chapters. The story was pretty entertaining, but it made up the smaller portion of the book. The science parts, as with the first book, focus heavily on theory and origin topics whereas I would have preferred a heavier emphasis on more practical topics. No doubt other people prefer it exactly the way it is. There were definitely parts that interested me, and parts that made me chuckle, but there were also a lot of parts that induced yawns.

I also found it rather repetitive. At least a couple things were repeated from the first book, and there were some themes that the authors went on about over and over. My original review contains a few other sentences that I was afraid might cross the line of the forum’s rules, so I’m leaving them out. They can be found on my review here if anybody is curious.

Skimming through some reviews over on Goodreads I don’t see many people who had a similar reaction, so maybe it just boils down to me being the wrong audience for this set of books. In any case, I plan to skip the last two science books.

In the header, I’ve changed my series book count from “53ish” to “50ish”. This accounts for the two Science books I don’t plan to read, plus another book I had on my list that I realized isn’t actually a Discworld story and wasn’t written by Pratchett: Mrs. Bradshaw’s Handbook. It didn’t look terribly interesting to me, so I scratched it off the list also.

Next Book
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

>222 BookstoogeLT: I think Buckaroo Banzai is streaming on Hulu currently.

Some older SF movies had pretty much zero in common with the books beyind titles and possibly a character name or two.

>227 Spurts: It is also streaming on Prime.

>226 YouKneeK: I went and read your review. And what you noted was exactly why I've never read any of Pratchett's non-fiction. Irritated is probably a good word indeed :-)

>228 BookstoogeLT: Probably a good choice! :)

>226 YouKneeK: As far as I know, you are allowed to mention religion if it refers to a book you are reading. I don't see anything in your original review that would be a problem.

>230 Morphidae: Thanks! I wasn’t sure if it would be a problem since I mentioned (briefly and vaguely) my own views.

On another topic, it looks like this thread is starting to get slow to load… I’ll start a new one when I post my next review.