Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: A Pox On Me

I just finished a week off, for which I'm appropriately thankful. I can't wait to see what kind of mess the office is in.... Nah, I'm sure everything is fine. I work for the gubmint, after all.

Even with the week off, I didn't get much reading done. I blame HBO's free weekend, or something. Truth be told, I'm still trying to finish The Black Count (highly recommended).

But for the sake of this feature, I started something new last night: Jennifer Lee Carrell's The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox.

I'm only a chapter in, so it is a bit premature to be assessing. My main fear is that the author is trying to hard to story-ify the history. Whereas Tom Reiss's The Black Count manages to tell an engaging story while clearly maintaining a popular historian's quasi-scholarly edge, Carrell's book (or the first chapter, at least) swings much further into literary territory, striving to read more like a novel.

That said, others have praised her book for historical and medical accuracy. So, she's got that going for her. I'll see how far I get.

What are you reading?

How do you read?

ebook

Once upon a time, a book was, to quote my friend Merriam-Webster, "a set of printed sheets of paper that are held together inside a cover." Of course now we can read books on phones, tablet computers, or dedicated e-reading devices (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc.). I've recently been curious about how the nation reads--both how you prefer to read and how you actually read. If you use some kind of electronic contraption for reading, do  you use it for all of your reading or only some? Continue reading How do you read?

First Monday Reading Day: Links and Stories

That's right, reading day. I haven't read a book in a two months. Having all of our books still packed makes it difficult to find the few I haven't yet read and more difficult still to contribute to DG's book exchange (see, still haven't forgotten).

Instead, I have been chipping away at the 3626 pages in Tor's short story bundle. 828 pages in and I discovered one thing: I detest short stories that are actually excerpts of books. Fortunately, after reading more about each book, I found that none of them interest me much. Still, it's frustrating to pulled into a story only to have it abruptly end. For the actual short stories, they have been mostly good. I'm not used to constantly having to figure out the world in which the story is set, so that has been a bit challenging. Not a bad thing, but different from what I am used to doing.

Along with many short stories is something else I have wanted to include here previously: links to longer-form writing on the web. Unfortunately, I don't read many in a month and the ones I do read I forget to save the link. Therefore, what follows is what I did remember to record over the past year along with some notes from each. Some of these are "long" in the twitter sense; you could read them in a few minutes. I just didn't want my list to be even shorter.

Continue reading First Monday Reading Day: Links and Stories

First Monday Book Day: The First Musketeer

Going to an airport with only a few pages left on your book is a rookie mistake. Which I'm happy to have made recently. The Boy and I were flying back from the ABQ via Lost Wages, laying over for a couple hours. So I wandered into the book store and found this inviting biography of Alex Dumas, swashbuckling father of the famous novelist.

Tom Reiss's biography garnered him the 2013 Pulitzer. It's certainly a good read so far (~150 pages in). Dumas, the son of a ne'er-do-well French nobleman, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and a black slave woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). Davy had been sponging off his younger brother, Charles, until they had a falling out in 1748. Antoine disappeared into the wilderness with three slaves and lost all contact with his family for 30 years. Charles eventually returned to France to take over the family estate, under the presumption that Antoine had died. In 1773, both Charles and their youngest brother, Louis, died. Somehow, word of this got back to Antoine, who then apparently sold Marie-Cessette and Alex's two siblings, but took Alex with him back to France to claim the estate in 1776.

France was an odd place in the late 18th century, both racist and progressive. Alex was raised as the legitimized son of Antoine, thus earning a title of "Count" as the son of a Marquis. He ws trained as a gentleman and swordsman at the academy of Nicolas Texier de la Boëssière, learning his swordcraft from the most famous swordsman of the day, the Chevalier de Saint-George, who also happened to be a mixed-race black man from the Caribbean. But Alex, as a care-free knockabout (taking after the old man), eventually clashed with his father over money (he was spending it fast, while his old man was going broke of his own accord), and, in a huff, ran off to join the army.

Rather than pressing his case as the more-or-less legitimized son of a nobleman, and thus receiving a commission, Alex joined up as a mere enlistee under his mother's name, Dumas, in 1786, only 13 days before his newly re-married father kicked off. The old man had sold the estate and squandered the fortune, so there was only an empty title to be had anyway. Alex entered service with the Queen's Dragoons and was posted off in a provincial town, where, as luck would have it, he boarded with the family of a local inn-keeper and rising Republican. Dumas became engaged to the innkeeper's daughter and went off to serve the emerging Republic. He quickly rose through the ranks and in October 1792 accepted a commission as the second-in-command of the "Black Legion." In July 1793, he was appointed brigadier general in the Army of the North and, by September was commander-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees. These were exciting times, with French generals being denounced and executed left and right. But eventually he would win the (guarded) respect of Napoleon and be appointed commander of the cavalry for Napoleon's campaign in Egypt.

I've got a long ways to go in this book. It has some flaws -- fundamentally misinterpreting Rousseau's famous opening words from The Social Contract ("Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.") as fundamentally a commentary on slavery in the age when that quote really has almost nothing to do with the institution of slavery at all. But Reiss is an entertaining storyteller and the book is a wonderful introduction to the history of the French Caribbean, pre-revolutionary France and, of course, the Revolution, the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. Dumas was fated to have a tragic ending -- dumped by Napoleon in Egypt, imprisoned in Taranto and all but forgotten for two years before being freed, a broken man.

Dumas' imprisonment provided much of the inspiration for his son's famed novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. This book helps bring the historical Dumas back into clearer focus. The book may not reach the majesty of a Robert K. Massie or the scholarly qualities of the Roommate, but I highly recommend it as a fun and informative read.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day: One baad Mother

I have never been a major consumer of Poul Anderson's prodigious output, but I remember with great fondness one novel of his that I read in my youth -- the masterful Tau Zero. In retrospect, that book was so great that I really can't explain why I haven't read everything he ever published.

Add to that the fact that Anderson grew up on a farm in Minnesota and earned a B.A. in physics from the U, and again, I'm surprised I haven't explored more of his oeuvre. So when I happened upon this volume on the discount rack at my local used book store, I figured I could afford 50 cents for a hardback.

Mother of Kings is much more an historical novel than a fantasy work, although the dust jacket had some blurb trying to compare it to Marion Zimmer Bradley's magnificent feminist take on the Arthurian legends in The Mists of Avalon. It centers on the life of Gunnhild, the historical "mother of kings" as wife to Eric Bloodaxe, king of Norway in the mid-10th century.

The book plays off the Icelandic Sagas of the 13th century. The first couple of hundred pages (or, how far I've gotten so far) are thick with faux-period speech and turns of phrase, and there's lots of hewing and hacking and wenching to be found. The thickness of the patois has abated somewhat as I've gotten deeper into the book, but it is a bit annoying. And with all of the familial references (soandsosson) and obscure-to-me titles (hersir, jarl, etc.), the bear grease got a little thick. But, like I said, it seems to be lightening up as I get deeper into the book.

Gunnhild is a conniving beeyatch from a tender age, determined to use whatever skills at her disposal to rise in the world (and succeeding). Some of the characters hint at being sympathetic ones, but those hints don't seem to last too long.

If you have a hankering for some Norse historical novelization, this might be up your alley. So far it has held my attention. What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day: Paranoia Strikes Deep

Mother Nature has a deathgrip on the Far West this week, with a forecast high of 112 deg. F. for my neck of the woods today, after 109 on sunday, 104 saturday, and 101 friday. The high school jazz camp closed out Friday evening with a gig at the local pizzeria, playing in an outdoor courtyard. Amazingly, only one kid got sick. The crowd plowed through about 20 gallons of ice water, along with lots of beer and 'za.

This miserable weather did not stop me from my appointed task, however. I know how much this post means to all of you...

So, yea, I finished a book this month. Actually, I finished two books: Last month's selection as well as this one's. Both just so happened to have been co-written by Larry Niven. I guess I'm on a kick.

This month's pick is one of the prequels to Niven's 1970 classic, Ringworld. Juggler of Worlds was the second of a sequence of prequels. Luckily, it did not matter. This book stands on its own as an entertaining, well-crafted and complete story, particularly if you have not read a number of Niven's prior Known Space works with which this one overlaps/intersects (for a decidedly less positive interpretation, see this capsule Kirkus review). I think we've pretty well established that I am easily entertained.

Anyway, I found the adventures of paranoid-schizophrenic genius superspy Sigmund Ausfaller to be quite entertaining. Earth, for not-well-explained reasons, suffers from what its world government regards as severe overcrowding and some fascistic governmental interference in individual liberties, despite possession of FTL technologies that enable interstellar colonization. Interspecies politics and machinations are the focal point of this volume, but it is not nearly so deadly dull as that might seem.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day: Beowolf in the skies

Hey, what what! I'm back with a book post, and on time for a change.

This month's selection was a page-turner from those icons of hard-core, oft-times military-glorifying sci fi, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, along with that odd duck of sci fi, an African American male, Stephen Barnes, a frequent Niven collaborator, also well-published in his own right. Published in 1987, The Legacy of Heorot is very much and very self-consciously a retelling and retooling of Beowulf, set on a far-away world where a small cadre of human colonists are trying desperately to establish a foothold. (indeed, Heorot is the name of King Hroðgar's mead-hall and palace).

Like I said, a page-turner. The pacing is taut with tension, both sexual tension between the Beowulf-protagonist and another character, and dramatic tension as the story's perspective shifts between protagonist and alien antagonist(s). As is typical with Niven/Pournelle stories, the science is pretty solid and used to good, dramatic effect. The action is frenetic and compelling, but well-interspersed with dialog, descriptive exposition, and character development. This book would make a tremendous foundation for a summer blockbuster horror flick. I wonder why no one has tried to film it yet?

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day – Hugo Awards (and others)

It's that time again, to survey the various science fiction and fantasy awards and see what kinds of interesting short fiction we can find.

2013 Hugo Award Nominees

2012 Nebula Awards

2012 British Science Fiction Association Shortlist

I've read the majority of the short story nominations for those three awards. The three up for the Hugo are all excellent. My favorite is probably "Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard. It's about a society that uses avatars to keep harmony between conqueror and conquered, and the identity confusion that results.

Of all the awards, my favorite story might be "Limited Edition" by Tim Maughan about a group of hoodlums going after a load of precious cargo.

I'll put more extensive links in the comments if people are interested, but that should at least get us started on some book talk.

First Monday Book Day: No Foolin’, It’s a Whole New Ballgame

Yea, yea, it's April Fool's, which means that most of you (or at least the two of you who even thought about it) were assuming that my threat to deliver a First Monday post today was just another joak. Ha. Joke's on you. I actually did read a book this month.

In fact, I read it in about two days: the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time prequel, New Spring.

Jordan, who had the poor manners to die before completing his opus, somehow managed to squeeze in the time to knock out this short novel, which was published in 2005. It was a light, enjoyable read.

The book focuses fairly heavily on the relationship between Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche, with a secondary story attempting to develop Lan's character a bit as the plot leads up to the point at which Moiraine takes Lan as her Warder. If you are addicted to the Wheel stories, you've probably already read this one. If you are not and never plan to be, this one is forgettable. If you enjoy the Wheel stories and are twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next book to arrive, you might enjoy this one.

Overall, the writing style is pretty easy. As I said, I blew through this one in a couple of days. My main problems with the book are its implausibility (within Jordan's universe, obviously). Moraine and Siuan are presented in this volume as young Accepteds, in their early 20s or perhaps very late teens, at the time of the Dragon's rebirth. This means that within far less than 20 years, Siuan has to rise to the Amyrlin Seat not via a civil war within the Aes Sedai. That. Would. Not. Happen. Siuan is presented in the series later as a mature, powerful, imposing personality, all of which possibly could come to pass in that time frame, but it just isn't long enough to be credible.

For her part, Moiraine comes across as incredibly naive, petulant and, well, arrogant. Nothing like the character she becomes.

Jordan introduces the Black Ajah in this book, but in ways that I found pretty unsatisfying. And the book wraps up entirely too conveniently and quickly (hard to believe for a Jordan novel). As one reviewer put it, "The term padding comes to mind soon and often as New Spring blooms. Perhaps it should have been left a short story, and perhaps only Wheel of Time junkies will genuinely enjoy it." I think that comes pretty close to the truth. The book fills in some background material, tells a mildly interesting set of stories, and is over with pretty quickly. Not Jordan's best effort, but I didn't feel too cheated by my purchase at a used book store.

What are you reading?