posts interesting only to me

Books read July

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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I suppose the thing I find most tedious about Internet people is that a lot of them make a careful count of all the books they read in a year.

Nick can’t be talking about me, because I count how many books I read in a month. Ten this time. More than I thought I would manage this month, but there’s a lot of fluff on this list.

The Early Middle Ages — Rosamond McKitterick (editor)
This is intended as an introduction to and broad overview of (West) European history from 400 CE to 1000 CE, in which it succeeded reasonably well. Having some prior knowledge of this period helps though, especially if you got some grasp on the rough chronology.

The Sacred Art of Stealing — Christopher Brookmyre
Brookmyre’s slightly anarchistic thrillers are pure comfort reading.

An Imperial Possession — David Mattingly
A postcolonial history of Britain under Roman rule. What did the Romans ever do for us? Exploit our natural wealth, make our warriors into slaves and force us to grow cash crops for absentee landlords is the answer. This review at Blood & Treasure is why I bought this.

King of the Rainy Country — Nicolas Freeling
Another inspector van der Valk murder mystery, taking him far from his hometown of Amsterdam all across Europe.

Zoo City — Lauren Beukes
In Beukes’ near future/alternate South Africa (not quite clear which is the case) being a murderer can quite literally land you with a monkey on your back, or in Zinzi December’s case, a sloth. It makes her one of the new underclass, the Animalled, having to make a living exploiting the small magical talent to find anything she got along with her totem. Then she’s asked to find a lost person rather than a lost property.

Whoops! — John Lanchester
Readable if slightly out of date overview of why we were dropped in the shit when the financial crisis hit in 2007. Lanchester is the same guy who has written on this subject for the London Review of Books.

The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny — Simon R. Green
Green is a cheerful hack writer (and probably the last to deny this) and this is a volume in his urban fantasy series. The whole experience is like reading a mediocre superhero title (Alpha Flight say) long after the talent left. Still enjoyable though.

A Point of Honor — Dorothy J. Heydt
Mary Craven is a world renowned player in the VR game of Chivalry, whose alter ego Sir Mary de Courcy is that game’s current champion of the Winchester Lists. And now she has stumbled on a real world secret hidden in the game, people are trying to kill her and she has to fight both offline and online for her very life. Dated in its technological assumptions, but something of a precursor to novels like Charlie Stross’ Halting State and Walter John Williams’ This Is Not a Game.

Trading in Danger — Elizabeth Moon
Entertaining and competently written adventure science fiction. First in a series, but enjoyable on its own.

Making a Killing — Iain McDowall
Treading some of the same ground as Ian Rankin, this is a slightly disjoint police procedural set in the fictional town of Crowby.

Life abides

Natural World, posts interesting only to me
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office plant in bloom

In a shocking development that has to be symbolic of something, the horribly ugly chosen because it’s hardy and can handle neglect office plant located next to my desk has actually flowered, which is the first time I’ve ever seen one of them do that. You don’t expect this from this sort of plant, which as well could’ve been plastic for all anybody cared, but there it is, spreading a lavender sort of scent reminiscent of the better sort of public conviences. Doesn’t do my headache any good.

Did remind me of a short story in one of thos Gardner Dozois Year’s Best Science Fiction bricks, about a team of biologists specialising in finding thought to be extinct plant species and such in office gardens and such. Nothing else remains from that story, but that stuck with me.

ABC book sale loot

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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Pile of books I bought in the ABC sale

Above is the pile of books I bought in the ABC book sale: five euros per kilo of books, bring large bags. All of this cost me twentyfive euros, which is not bad for thirteen books. From top to bottom:

  • The Edge of Reason — Melinda Snodgrass. This looked okayish and it’s a writer I haven’t read anything from so I took a punt
  • Wyrdest Link — Pratchett and Langford: Discworld quiz book
  • Africa –John Reader. One volume history of the continent
  • The Extremes — Christopher Priest
  • The Cretan Runner — George Psychoundakis. A classic schlachtbummeler book, about the occupation of Crete in WWII
  • The Vengeance of Rome — Michael Moorcock. Last of the Colonel Pryat Quartet
  • Mythago Wood — Robert Holdstock. Read this in the library decades ago, this is the twentyfifth anniversay edition
  • A Distant Mirror — Barbara Tuchman. Replacement copy as mine had split in half
  • Beat Master’s Planet — Andre Norton. Collection of two classic novels, best known for inspiring the not that bad Marc Singer movie
  • Tiptree Award Anthology Vol. 2
  • Whoops — John Lanchester: I recognised his name from his articles about the economic crisis in the LBR; this is the book treatment of same
  • The Half-Made World — Felix Gilman. A much discussed book in sf&f circles
  • Penny Arcade vol. 2 More reprints of the webcomic

This was on my mind today

Life under Capitalism, posts interesting only to me
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In the midst of his vacation, Timothy Burke had to take an unforseen trip to the emergency room. Not a nice experience at the best of times, but this was in America and things are done differently there than in civilised countries:

After waiting two and a half hours, I began to get the picture. The nurse on duty repeatedly called patients who were not present, who had checked in and then left later on. At first I thought it odd that they kept calling and calling for almost thirty minutes for people who were very obviously not there while not calling cases of people who were present. Every once in a while, someone who was there was called and seen, though in a few of those cases, the nurse on duty simply took vitals again and sent them back to the waiting room. At the limits of my endurance, I finally went up to ask how long I might expect to wait. “We’re still seeing cases that checked in between one or two p.m. today,” I was told. Meaning it might be four in the morning before I was seen, I asked, stunned? Yes, that’s very possible, said the nurse. I gave up at that point: infection, disease, whatever it was, if I was going to continue to worsen overnight, I’d damn well go back and do it in my hotel room and hope for better in San Francisco. (Which I found, thanks in part to my Facebook friends.)

And why it’s on my mind is because I read about while I was waiting around an emergency room myself, as once again poor old S. had to be taken back into hospital. In our case though she was seen and helped within minutes and was it just the medicial process itself of getting her stabilised, getting an I.V. hooked up, blood tests, x-rays unsoweiter that took a long time. Bureaucratic nonsense? Much less. So whenever I’m starting to wallow in self puity I remember things could be much worse and we could’ve had all this shit in America and we’d been bankrupt or dead by now.