Treason's Harbour (Aubrey & Maturin, #9) Patrick O'Brian, Patrick Tull (narrator) I listened to this audiobook eleven years ago (28-Aug-2011). I no longer have a vivid memory of this specific book, though I do well remember my impressions of the later Aubrey/Maturin novels. As the series continued,  Patrick O'Brian  found himself in difficulties. One of the things we love about these books is their historical accuracy. But as the story advanced to Jack's later years we entered a historical period in which there were few exciting battles of tall ships to recount. One of the ways  O'Brian  deals with this is to tell more stories about Stephen and his dangerous espionage activities. I liked this -- I always loved Stephen, and it was fun to see him as not just a bird-lover, but also a dangerous swordsman. Some of the other late books don't work quite so well. I didn't enjoy the books in which we wallow in Jack's financial miseries, or those in which Step...

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day Seanan McGuire Short stories are different from novels. Some very good novelists (naming no names) are almost incapable of writing a good story. But others write extraordinary stories:  W Somerset Maugham ,  Theodore Sturgeon , and  Roger Zelazny  come to mind. To that list I add  Seanan McGuire . She has written hundreds of stories. Many of them she gives away for free -- see  her website . Authors frequently complain that short stories don't pay well, but the best short story writers apparently can't help themselves. They write stories like they breathe and eat. The reason I mention this is that, despite its novella length,  Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day  feels to me like a short story. It has that kind of single-pointed dramatic unity. In fact, I read it in one sitting, a Sunday afternoon and evening. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day  is a ghost story.  McGuire  has written a lot of ghost stories. Many of her...

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution R.F. Kuang Dark and sad alternative history, not very different from Reality Babel  is an alternative history fantasy. But that characterization, while true strictly speaking, is misleading.  Babel  is actually about real history, and about the present. Before you read  Babel , you should be at least slightly familiar with 19th century English history, in particular the  Industrial Revolution  and the Opium Wars*. Babel  alters the history of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of (or in addition to) the coal and steam-based revolution that actually occurred, there is a Silver Industrial Revolution, that depends on the ability to do magic with silver bars on which are inscribed untranslatable words in two languages. A native speaker, saying the words, can cause an effect corresponding to the gap in meaning between the two words. The upshot of this alternative te...

Darke Angie Sage I read this eleven years ago (28-Aug-2011) and no longer have vivid memories of this specific book. However, I do well remember how I felt about  the Septimus Heap  series -- it is tremendous fun. I recommend it to anyone who likes children's books with a sense of humor. This one, as befits its title, was a bit darker than average. It's not just that the magic, excuse me, Magyk, involves darkness, but the story is about betrayal. It was more emotionally heavy than most of the other books in the series. Amazon review Goodreads review  

Physics of the Future Michio Kaku I read this eleven years ago (28-Aug-2011), and Wow! I really did not like it.  Michio Kaku  doesn't give me the impression of having a deep understanding of physics, or of anything else, for that matter. On a physics discussion board I used to frequent, a student wrote "Michio Kaku is such a w---e!" Although I would not have chosen that word, I understood exactly what he meant. Amazon review Goodreads review

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo Les trois mousquetaires The Count of Monte Cristo The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas I'm going to cheat and review four books together:  Le Comte de Monte-Cristo ,  Les trois mousquetaires ,  The Count of Monte Cristo , and  The Three Musketeers . Of course, that is really just two books, since the latter two are English translations of the first two. I read these in High School, first in English translation, and they quickly became my very favorite novels. (The first time I read  The Three Musketeers  I had no idea of the correct pronunciation of d'Artagnan, and our hero's name was a major roadblock.) I of course read all the  d’Artagnan Romances . They're full of action and adventure. Later I read them in French, which astonishes me now. I took three years of high-school French. If you have ever read a book in a foreign language (by which I mean a language you first learned in school), you know that it is, at the start, a s...

The Mongoliad Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, E.D. deBirmingham, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, Cooper Moo I read this book ten years ago (27-Aug-2012). I don't remember much detail -- just some confused mental images of battles in Asian deserts and forests. I picked it up because of  Neal Stephenson . However, it is a multi-author work, and didn't really feel like a typical  Stephenson  novel to me.  Stephenson  is not to everyone's taste, so that could be a good thing. This was a more conventional adventure and war story. There are many pieces. I generally felt that each piece worked well on its own. They didn't always fit together in a way that made obvious sense to me. Bottom line -- I enjoyed it, but it's never going to be a favorite. I didn't go on to read any of the other books in  The Foreworld Saga , which tells me that I wasn't impressed. Amazon review Goodreads review  

Soul Taken Patricia Briggs Wulfe is someone we've known from the very beginning of Mercy Thompson's story. He's a vampire, second in Marsilia's seethe. He's quite possibly the most dangerous vampire in the Columbia Basin, or even North America. He looks like a teenage boy because that's what he was when he was made a vampire, but in fact he's very old. We know that he made the European vampire lord Bonarata, who is hundreds of years old, although Bonarata later managed to shake him off and is no longer under Wulfe's control. In  Storm Cursed  Wulfe hinted that he is both a White Witch and a Wizard. What makes him especially scary is that he appears to be insane. I say "appears to be" because it's never been clear to me whether Wulfe is actually crazy, or merely strategically faking it. I've long wondered if Wulfe is a bad guy or a good guy. Now that I've read  Soul Taken  the answer is clearer, and, Surprise! Surprise! that answer i...

And with Reveling Seanan McGuire Seanan McGuire  has made a practice of including a bonus novella with each of her published novels.  And With Reveling  is the bonus novella for  When Sorrows Come .  When Sorrows Come  recounts the events surrounding Toby's wedding to Tybalt, culminating after a lot of fuss and bother in the wedding itself.  When Sorrows Come  ends with Toby a married woman and Tybalt a wedded man. (Well, whether Tybalt is a man is debatable, but if you've read previous October Daye novels, you don't need me to go into that.) The wedding is followed by a reception, as weddings typically are.  And With Reveling  tells us what went down during the reception. And it's mostly the sorts of things you expect to happen at a wedding reception: people eat canapés and cake, have conversations, and friends congratulate the bride and groom. That's all pretty dull, which is why only two stars. Long-time October Daye readers will not ...

Math with Bad Drawings Ben Orlin Ben Orlin  is a very funny guy. Let me give you a couple of examples. Pop quiz! What is the basic activity of Wall Street banks? A. Powering the world economy via the intelligent allocation of capital B. Buying Italian suits with blood money snatched from the pockets of the working class C. Pricing things If you answered A, then you work for Wall Street. (Hey, nice suit! Is that Italian?) If you answered B, then I’m honored that you’re reading my book, Senator Sanders. Here's another one, with a point: You can tell your dinner guests that the “average human” has one ovary and one testicle, but will this not bring conversation to an awkward standstill? (I’ve tried; it does.) That joke is not just funny. (Well, it made me laugh, especially the final parenthetical comment -- as a scientist I always appreciate the person who's willing to Do The Experiment.) It also illustrates what's wrong with averages -- the average does not exist. In his Intr...

Those Three Girls from Rush's Bend Seanan McGuire Those Three Girls from Rush's Bend  is  Seanan McGuire 's Patreon reward for April, 2022. It's a brief fairy tale, 8 pages long, about three creatures of  McGuire 's imagination -- girls, the title says, but they are not exactly that. The setting and story are essentially the place where fairy tales live, Once Upon a Time, 昔々ある 所で. It is a little more consciously dream-like than most fairy tales, but clearly Rush's Bend is meant to evoke them. It's a story of self-discovery for three pretty girls who are the best of friends. Patreon post  

CHRISTMAS MOMENT, Moment 4 – The Folly, 24th December 2011 Ben Aaronovitch Molly prepares for Christmas. This "moment" begins with the mysterious Molly dancing through the Folly on Christmas Eve, 2011. She wanders through her memories of the Folly and of Nightingale, whom she calls "The Songbird". It is delightfully weird and revealing. Find it  here .  

Moment 5 - Bailey, Camden, 2014 Ben Aaronovitch This is one of  Ben Aaronovitch 's "Moments" -- very short writings about a character in a moment in time. (I don't want to say "stories", because most of them are not stories in the traditional sense.) This one can be found at  https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=... . It is about Abigail Kamara, and a shy but admiring classmate of hers who takes advantage of Valentine's Day to deniably reveal his (or hers, but I think his) admiration. It is told from his point of view. If you have ever been a teenager in this situation you will recognize the predicament immediately. Abigail's character is illuminated only to the extent that we see how she is viewed by others. It's a charming and relatable story-ish thing. Find it here.  

Dying with her Cheer Pants On Seanan McGuire I expected to have trouble with a hagiography of cheerleaders. As a high school student, my friends and I were united with cheerleaders and football players by strong bonds of mutual disdain.  McGuire  writes Even those of us who don’t like going to class ... or don’t enjoy the company of our fellow students ... understand the sheer necessity of school spirit, which is the glue that binds a student body together. Well, the "sheer necessity of school spirit" is not a thing I ever understood. If the phrase "school spirit" was ever uttered in my presence, I don't remember it, and it is certainly not a feeling I experienced. But I was won over by the poetry of  McGuire 's paeans to cheerleading, These girls, who had seemed like strange, bright birds to me when I stood at the edge of the forest, were birds in more ways than one. They flew. They soared, they twisted in midair, they dropped out of the sky with the absolu...

America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines Gail Collins I read this book ten years ago and barely remember it. I remember my impression of the book better than the book itself.  Gail Collins  is a columnist at the New York Times whose columns I regularly read. This book attempts to redress the male-dominated balance of history as conventionally taught by telling us what life was like for women in American history. In my ten-year-old memory it is not so much as book about Great Women in American History as a book about how life was for women. I particularly remember her showing the heroism of women in bearing children. Childbirth has been extraordinarily risky for most of human history.  Collins  shows us that American women have put their lives more at risk to bear children than have American men in war. About a fifth of the pregnant women in New England died giving birth, and the figures were much higher in the South. Cotton Mather, ever o...

Beware of Pity Stefan Zweig I read this eleven years ago, 21-Aug-2011, and have only the vaguest memory of it now. I'm pretty sure I read it just because I knew that  Zweig  was a very famous author in his time, and I wanted to see why. I apparently read it in English translation, for some reason. (In German the title is  Ungeduld des Herzens , meaning "Impatience of the Heart" -- why the English title is so different I don't know.) All I can really say is that I wasn't deeply interested -- it was tedious and a chore to read, and I have never been moved to read anything else by  Zweig . Hence the three-star rating. Whether  Beware of Pity  is in fact  Zweig 's only novel is debatable, apparently. He was more famous for novellas, and Wikipedia (for instance) appears to be uncertain how to categorize some of these. It was perhaps my error not to choose one of his novellas. Amazon review Goodreads review  

Moment 06 - Thomas and David, Casterbrook, Easter 1914 Ben Aaronovitch This is a brief portrait of Nightingale (and his friend David) in school -- magic school, that is. There is also a fox. Find it  here .

Smoke Bitten Patricia Briggs So, before beginning  Smoke Bitten , let's take stock. We just got out of a huge Werewolves vs witches+zombies fight ( Storm Cursed ). Also, in  Fire Touched  Mercy, on behalf of Adam's pack, took on the responsibility of keeping the Columbia Basin safe from supernatural threats. Then Adam's pack, and subsequently the government of the USA concluded a pact with the fae. Marsilia's Columbia Basin vampire seethe secretly agreed to cooperate. In  Silence Fallen  Mercy and Adam shut down a challenge from Bonarata, the vampire lord of Europe. Well, that all sounds great! Time to kick back for a little R&R, no? No. Adam is not in a good place. As America's Most Photogenic Werewolf, he has to be be perfect all the time. Adam has lived with heavy demands for much of his life -- the alpha of a werewolf pack cannot show weakness. But Adam has a weakness: his wife Mercy, who persists in putting herself in danger. Adam knows, intellectually,...