I’ve been reading
Which is far more interesting than you might think.
Also
5 Likes
Bear in mind that one of my favourite non-fiction books read in the last few years is The Box, the history of the shipping container. 
5 Likes
Hmmmm…need to look for that one.
There appears to be a sequel
Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas
2 Likes
Awesome is Best 'Mech.
2 Likes
Alien: Colony War, about half way through. Comes with a scenario for the Alien Role Playing Game, which was half my reason for buying. Some reviews of the book were not complimentary. But so far it’s fine. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll play the scenario.
2 Likes
- Crown of Swords (Wheel of Time Book 7) - audiobook. Its the only way I can get through these. I should give up but I actually want to know what happens in the end.
- Winters Gift’s (Rivers of London 9.5) - the only one I haven’t read. Its ok - Peter is a much better protagonist but I’m enjoying expanding the universe into other countries.
- Jade City (Green Bone Saga 1) - everyone seems to recommend this series. I’m actually finding it quite slow and it hasn’t really grabbed me - that said, I am enjoying it. Only read it in short bursts.
*Jews Don’t Count - David Baddiel’s polemic saying that anti-semitism is deeply institutionalised but unrecognised in Britain, in all parts of life. Very interesting - I can definitely see his point but it is a bit repetitive. - Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez - an absolutely frightening book in many ways about how women are just largely ignored in all sorts of ways you wouldn’t expect.
- The Great Influenza by John M Barry - an account of the ‘Spanish’ Flu and the race to contain it.
I really should read fewer books at a time.
5 Likes
I finally managed to finish Ministry for the Future.
Very impressive, just like New York 2140.
Not much plot. More like a collection of ideas.
Next up I think I’ll go for something a little lighter. My brain wants some of the Seanan McGuire books I got via the humblebundle.
2 Likes
Here’s my rundown on Wheel of Time:
1-4 Essential reading
5-6 Quite enjoyable, no reason to skip
7-8 Good enough to read, barely over the line
9: Skip the book and read chapter recaps, unless you are really invested. Read the last two chapters which hold the only major plot development of the book.
10: Skip the book and read chapter recaps. Really, nothing happens. Don’t read this book. You just need to “track changes” so you can link the end of book 8, the last two chapters of 9, and the beginning of book 11.
11: 11 is pretty bad as well. Jordan had committed to end the series in 12 books and he threw away two of them (9 and 10). 11 is plot point after plot point and development after development. You need to read it because so much is happening but it’s not great from a craft perspective.
12-14: Essential reading, as good as the first four. This is where Sanderson and Jordan become blended.
And then read Dune so you can get pissed off at Jordan for plagiarizing the Fremen. I still love the Aiel but the degree of plagiarization that happened there is staggering.
4 Likes
I think I would halve those initial numbers for my ratings (so 1-2 essential, 3-4 enjoyable), then run through the following four books as read any chapters with Mat and Perrin, as they are the only likable characters with everyone else feeling like prats, and then abandon the series after book 9 when you learn book 10 is utterly pointless.
1 Like
I stopped at 9 when I was following the publication of these books - I’ve tried a few times and never got any further!
Which is why I’m doing it via audiobook - its good for an hour a day while I walk the dog!
1 Like
My takeaway from this is that the “Malazan” series is something where the entire story was carefully plotted out from the beginning and then skilfully executed book-by-book, while the “Wheel of Time” series became a hot mess that the author didn’t know how to finish (and didn’t).
3 Likes
And I did! Sort of. I read The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson, which is a fictionalised story incorporating real people/places/events surrounding the 1612 Lancashire witch trials (Pendle witches - Wikipedia).
I wasn’t familiar with that history at all, and hadn’t previously realised this was where Pratchett and Gaiman had borrowed some of their Good Omens character names from.
I pulled out Winterson’s The Gap of Time to read next, but also got a hankering to read the Victoria Wood biography Let’s Do It, and the latter is what I’ve actually started on. That’ll keep me occupied for a while.
3 Likes
I abandoned Wheel of Time after book 3. It just felt outdated to me, the beginning way too much like LotR, I should have probably read it in my youth before I had more fantasy series / books to compare it too.
My takeaway from this is that the “Malazan” series is something where the entire story was carefully plotted out from the beginning and then skilfully executed book-by-book, while the “Wheel of Time” series became a hot mess that the author didn’t know how to finish (and didn’t).
Malazan is a series about themes, there are still gripping stories but when you read it for the first time you may wonder why certain story lines exist. But especially on retrospect / a second read it is clearer because you have the whole picture.
Erikson said he wanted to create something which can enjoyed more than once and offer you something new every time. And he managed to do that.
I enjoyed my first read a lot, there is always some magic to experience something for the first time. I still remember what I did and where I was when I read the ending of book 3. Oh my…
But every read afterwards gave me more insight into this world, the series’ themes and what kind of story Erikson wants to tell. And I learned to appreciate it more and more. Also my opinion on every book and ranking changed every time.
Also his humor (especially the Malazan soldier banter) never gets old 
In WoT we learn right at the beginning there is some prophecy and an evil that has to be stopped (Though I liked the ambiguity at the start about who could fulfill the prophecy. But on the other hand it kinda seemed obvious too.). Basically like LotR with the ring. And the series is all about that (that’s my guess, because I never finished it tbf).
In Malazan it is very different, you could kinda say that the first 5 books are roughly setup (setting things up in different places, book 1 and 2 as an example only share a very small part of its cast) and the latter 5 are bringing it all together. Therefore the journey to the end is way more obscure to the reader. Partly because the whole world / events are so huge that you can’t imagine it anyways. I mean in book 5 he introduces a whole new continent with a whole new cast and you are wondering “Why? What’s happening here? Where are my people?”. It pays greatly off but that was the first time I struggled a bit with a new Malazan book till it grabbed me. I got nervous at some point if Erikson manages to pull off a satisfactory ending but he did.
Erikson’s ambition is breathtaking. I can recommend reading his preface to the first book in the series “Gardens of the Moon”. Here is the link. It is very interesting, no matter if you want to read the books or not.
4 Likes
Regarding Wheel of Time… in Jordan’s defense he had the whole thing outlined and wrote the end along with the beginning. He knew where it was going and how he wanted to tie it all together. He just got so lost in world building that he stopped pushing from A to B. And the ending is good. It’s the middle that’s disappointing.
Regarding Malazan - I’ve been eyeing this for a long time. I’ve heard it is dark, rougher? How dark is it? That’s one thing that’s kept me away. The other is a 10 book commitment for what I’ve heard is not a passive read. I had my season of reading the Russian doorstop books and Moby Dick and all that and right now I need lighter fare until I can get into a new season of regular reading to power through long, complex works.
As for now, I’m trying out Ringworld by Larry Niven. I’ve been digging older (pre-Star Wars) sci fi that isn’t so tied to the hero’s journey. Ringworld is, by all accounts, hugely disappointing. One part is akin to Die Hard - I saw that movie after seeing so many clones (Air Force One, Fifth Element, etc.) that had used the basic formula that the original felt derivative. “Ringworlds” are so pervasive now that there’s no wonder left in the original. The other part is just that the writing is so bad. Bad pacing, bad characters, bad descriptions, bad explanations. Did writers used to get away with this? Did writers used to win Nebulas with this?
A few mid-read reviews confirm that I’m not imagining it. I’ll finish, it’s easy going and I want to check the box on the old classics. So not bad enough to table it, but pretty disappointing.
3 Likes
I reread Ringworld a few years back and was struck by how much more fun the pre-crash sequences were than the later stuff. (Except anything with Teela in it.)
3 Likes
It also has the least satisfying SF swear word I’ve ever encountered. ‘Tanj!’ really doesn’t help when you hit your thumb with a hammer.
2 Likes
I’m definitely going to get on a ramble here, because I find this question (and the answer) kind of fascinating to think about. Science fiction as a genre didn’t really become a thing until the early to mid 1900s, and even then it was largely relegated to short stories and serialized novels. It was a genre literally defined by how cheaply it was made; “pulp fiction” refers to a much larger group of genres, but sci-fi is the only one birthed in that miasma of low costs and even lower standards. That period was so foundational to the genre that one of the most prestigious science fiction awards today, the Hugo award, is named after a publisher of pulp science fiction stories, whose most notable writing credit is to one of the worst novels in existence.
Also, science fiction represents the first time authors started to describe worlds and ideas that were outside the realm of normal understanding, but within the grasp of human achievement. Myths and fables have long dealt with the fantastical, but those stories always involve forces outside humanity’s control–fate and destiny, gods and monsters, etc. Science fiction trades in those same themes, but suddenly the gods were ordinary people, and the monsters were built by them, by us. It was the first, minute opening of a door leading into a infinite multitude of worlds beyond anything people had experienced in their entire lives.
So, inevitably, when the first authors reached their hands through that door and pulled out a handful of dirt and debris, it was easy to treat it like a wet clump of untold riches. It didn’t matter if the writing was uninspired, or the characters paper-thin, or the plot barely interested in its own resolution; the important output was the ideas, these things never before put to paper on such a grand scale until this moment. When Ringworld came out, the moon landing had only just happened, a feat people literally didn’t think was possible at the time, and which many people today still don’t believe in–and here was this tale of a massive construct, a created thing, that not only dwarfed the Earth in size and scope, but claimed dominance over a frontier that humanity had only just been granted access to.
By being so new, so unformed, science fiction was able to get away with a lot of mediocrity that other genres didn’t. Imagine if, after 50 years of life, you suddenly discovered you had arms attached to your body the whole time–and in exploring the joys of touching, of holding, of reaching, you forgot how to stand and collapsed to the ground. It’s not that your standards for existing had slipped, more that you have just discovered a new dimension of existence, so that any action you took before feels woefully inadequate.
Nowadays, I think the genre is held to much higher standards, almost impossibly so. I’s not enough to have a new idea, a new paradigm (which in itself is more and more difficulty to do, with how fast technology moves)–you also need interesting characters, a captivating story, a believable world! You have to do everything a literary fiction book needs to do, with the additional handicap of needing to invent a universe from scratch like some kind of dime-store deity. It’s a tremendous undertaking, and a great science fiction novel is almost incomparable in its achievement–but it can make the “classics” feel dated and childish in comparison.
Sorry, ramble over! In short, I do think older science fiction tends to age poorly (I recently read Dune, and wow is that an incredible world in search of anything resembling a story), but that’s only because the tools we have to analyze and criticize it have matured so much since its inception. Just so I’m not wasting everyone’s time, I recommend Ancillary Justice if you’re in the mood for some great modern science fiction. Finished it a couple weeks, and am still thinking about it.
9 Likes