posts interesting only to me

Saturday — Ian McEwan
Sometimes you need to read a book knowing you’ll hate it, just to be able to be more informed in your hatred. Saturday is McEwan’s tedious emulation of James Joyce’s Ulysses taking place on 15th February 2003, the day of the worldwide anti-Iraq war demos, in which he shows how much richer the inner life of his middle class protagonist si than that of the confused muddle going on the London demo…

The Iron Wall — Avi Shlaim
Avi shlaim is one of that generation of revisionist Israeli historians who looked behind their country’s founding myths to record the truth. The Iron Wall examines the development of Israeli policy towards its Arab neighbours and the Palestinians, showing both the differences and the continuity in it.

Intifada — Zachary Lockman & Joel Beinin (editors)
A compilation of essays examing the first Intifada, published in 1989. During Israel’s War on Gaza an astoningly stupid controversy erupted here in Holland when one Dutch Socialist Party MP called for Intifada and this was equated with support for terrorist attacks by local Zionist propagandists. This anthology shows the reality.

The Great War for Civilisation — Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is one of the best, if not the best journalist reporting on the Middle East. This is his magnus opus, part history, part autobiography, part journalism. Fisk is an engaging writer, but the history of the region does not make for nice reading: betrayal after betrayal, ethnic cleansing following genocide, one futile war after another.

Byzantium — Judith Herrin
On a much lighter note, Judith Herrin’s Byzantium is a sort of sampler course in Byzantine history, an attempt to explain to the curious why Byzantium is worth studying. I’ll certainly read more of her books.

Only Forward — Michael Marshall Smith
My girlfriend has been reading Michael Marshall’s thrillers, so when I saw this, his first science fiction in a secondhand bookshop I took a chance. It reminded me somewhat of Jonathan Lethem’s first novel, which had a similar if more pronounced absurdist feel to it.

The Deep Blue Good-by — John D. MacDonald
Another Travis McGee novel; the first in fact. Interesting to see the formula firmly established already this early.

Creatures of Light and Darkness — Roger Zelazny
My new Zelazny book for the year. He’s a writer I want to read sparingly, because you can only read a new Zelazny for the first time once and he’s obviously not producing anything new anymore…

Gather, Darkness! — Fritz Leiber
A reread of a novel I first read ages ago. In a future oppressed by a technocracy masquerading as a warped Christianity, the only hope for freedom lies with a rebellion based on witchraft…

I wasn’t sure I was going to continue with the monthly book reports, but I couldn’t resist it. Sixteen books read this month, of which no less than thirteen were detective novels and of those ten were by the same author, Ngaio Marsh. It helped that I was poorly for a week and unable to concentrate on anything more strenuous than formula fiction. Cozy detective novels are the perfect thing to read in that condition: I can read it almost on autopilot and a good detective writer is engrossing enough to still be entertaining.

The Quick Red Fox, Darker Than Amber and The Scarlet Ruse — John D. MacDonald
Three Travis McGee novels read in quick succession at the start of the year. Each has the same plot: a friend of Travis gets into trouble, gets murdered or in another jam and Travis solves the problem. The appeal of these books however is not in the plot but in the execution and the style with which MacDonald writes. These really are the apogee of intelligent formula writing.

Black as He’s Painted, Photo-Finish, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, False Scent, Death and the Dancing Footman, Death in a White Tie, The Nursing Home Murder, Artists in Crime, and Overture to Death — Ngaio Marsh
Ngaio Marsh is another writer of intelligent series fiction, one of the four “Queens of Crime fiction” (can you tell me the other three). I never really got her until my girlfriend got me to read Black as He’s Painted and then devoured the rest of these books, picked from her shelves as they appealed to me. Marsh had a long career, her last novel, Photo-Finish, was published in 1980 and it’s interesting to see the cozy detective formula being applied out of its home era (1920s to 1950s at the latest), the way in which Marsh was both contemporary and old fashioned, not quite keeping up with changing mores and styles. In contrast, the pre-war novels are much more in synch with the times, the contemporary cultural and political scene.

The Strange Death of Tory England — Geoffrey Wheatcroft
A chatty, informal history of the Tory party and its strange downfall just after its period of greatest succes, as if its reason for existence had disappeared with it. The author is definately a rightwinger, which caused me some slight irritation and sometimes a bit too chatty for my liking, but on the whole this was quite interesting.

Red Army — Ralph Peters
A WWIII novel written in 1989, just as the USSR started to collapse. Par for the course for infinity star general Ralph “blood n guts” Peters, who these days is trying to sell the existential threat of Islamofascism to the US. It is surprisingly readable though.

Dansen Met De Duivel — Peter Rensen
Peter Rensen spent several months infiltrating the Centrumdemocraten, a party best compared to the BNP, just before the city council elections of 1994. This election turned out to be the high water mark for the party, which afterwards slowly dwindled until it was disbanded in 2002. Rensen sketches a portrait of a deeply racist party many of whose activists are not just racist, but open nazi sympathisers. At the same time, he also shows the party is deeply disorganised and not prone to do much activism other than putting out party political broadcasts.

So we finally come to the grand total of books read this year: 152, or almost three books a week. Yes, I’m quite proud of that.

The Horned Dinosaurs — Peter Dodson
An excellent overview of what we know about Triceratops and its relatives. Dodson doesn’t just tell what we know, but how we got that knowledge and isn’t afraid to show what isn’t known or cannot be known about Triceratops.

A Savage War of Peace — Alistair Horne
George Bush was supposed to have read this. In the unlikely case that he has, he may have noted the resemblance between the French experience in Algeria and what American troops were dealing with in Iraq.

Psychohistorical Crisis — Donald Kingsbury
A reworking of/semi-sequel to Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series that’s much better than Asimov’s own sequels.

Web of Angels — John M. Ford
A proto-cyberpunk novel by a vastly underrated author, with a style of storytelling that reminded me in equal parts of Zelazny and Delany.

Candle — John Barnes
A Barnes novel that actually ends on an optimistic note and with a protagonist that isn’t some masochist? Miracles still happen it seems.

War for the Oaks — Emma Bull
I don’t particularly like urban fantasy as a genre, but this is one of the novels that defined the genre.

The Perspective of the World — Fernand Braudel
The third and last volume in Braudel’s Civilisation and Capitalism series, taking a global look at the development of capitalism between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Prince — Niccolo Macchiavelli
The book which gave us the adjective “macchiavelian”, it has a mostly undeserved reputation as an amoral treatise on how to stay in power as an autocrat.

KV – 1 & 2 — Steven Zaloga & Jim Kinnear
Another Osprey war nerd volume, on a Soviet World War II tank series not so well known as the T-34, but almost as important in the first stages of the Great Patriotic War. Heavily armoured and armed with the same 76 mm gun as the T-34, when these tanks first appeared the Germans had nothing to stop them with…

Bagration 1944 – The Destruction of Army Group Centre — Steven Zaloga
One of the most important campaigns of World War II, overshadowed by the Anglo-American invasion of Normandy in the same month. The speed and efficiency with which the Russians destroyed a German force much larger even than that during the battle for Stalingrad was a major reason for the almost complete collapse of the Eastern Front in 1944.

Anathem — Neal Stephenson
As is almost always the case with Stephenson, don’t read this novel for the plot, but read it for the various ideas he chews through on the way.

The Dutch Republic — Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall — Jonathan I. Israel
A very thorough if somewhat exhausting and occasional tedious history of the United Provinces, from its earliest roots in Burgundian times to its ultimate dissolution by Napoleon. It cost me a year to read this.

The Dragon’s Waiting — John M. Ford
A fantasy novel set ib a world in which Christianity didn’t break through, the Byzantium empire managed to restore much of the old Roman empire and some kinds of magic are real. This reminded me of some of Mary Gentle’s stories, especially the White Crow series.

The 2006 Lebanon Campaign — Stephen Biddle & Jeffrey A. Friedman
A US Army sponsored inquiry into the tactics and strategy employed by Hezbollah in the defence of Lebanon against Israeli attack in 2006. Was Hezbollah behaving as a typical guerilla movement or more like a proper army and what are the implications for US army policy?

Saturn’s Children — Charlie Stross
The last book I finished in 2008. A typical Stross novel, fastpaced, fun and smart. Awful cover on the American edition, but it is actually quite faithful to the description of the protagonist, who is in fact a redhaired sexbot whose nipples go spung. Yes, this is Stross doing Late Heinlein, warts and all, making it work.

Bleak Seasons — Glen Cook
The sixth book in the Black Company and the first to star Murgen rather than Croaker or the Lady. Grim and gritty in a good way.

The Road to Verdun — Ian Ousby
I hadn’t heard of the author before, but this turned to be an immensily interesting book on not just the military history that led to the battle of Verdun in World War I, but which also explains the cultural and historucal background of this battle, of how the War of 1870 was echoed in Verdun.

Voice of the Whirlwind — Walter Jon Williams
Not his most famous cyberpunk novel (that’s Hardwired but still an excellent example of a second generation cyberpunk novel.

The Situation — Jeff Vandermeer
This was given away as a free e-book by Wired and PS Publishing. I had heard of Vandermeer but not yet read anything by him and this was a good introduction, as it was a chapbook less then fifty pages long. A fairy tale of office politics and the post-singulary (I think).

Kingtiger Heavy Tank 1942 – 1945 — Tom Jentz, Hilary Doyle, Peter Sarson
The first entry in Osprey’s New Vanguard series of short books aimed at serious tankheads. A reasonable overview of the development history of this tanl, but with little attention paid to the operational history. Yes, this is me indulging my war nerd side.

Driftglass — Samuel R. Delany
I’ve been looking for this collection of short stories for a long time. Delany isn’t much of a short story writer, more a novelist and hasn’t written many; the ones here were all written between 1965 and 1968. Reading them in sequence gives a good overview of recurrent themes and images in his work.

Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks — Christopher Brookmyre
If Richard Dawkins wrote thrillers and had a sense of humour this would be the book he’d write. Brookmyre’s hero Jack Parlabane gets involved in a suppsoedly scientific experiment to prove the psychic powers of an American medium, only to get involved in a much larger complot. Religion and mysticism do not quite get a fair hearing here.

Plagues and Peoples — William H. McNeill
Here’s a book written some two decades before Jared Diamond’s Gun, Germs and Steel which covers much of the same terrain: the way in which diseases and plagues shaped human history.

H-Bomb Girl — Stephen Baxter
I’m not a great Stephen Baxter fan, but this was quite good. Written as a young adult novel, this will give some bright twelve year old nightmares for years –in a good way.

Cry of the Newborn — James Barclay
It was only because Steve Erickson provided the cover blurb that I picked this book up. Unfortunately it turned out to be just another middle of the road epic fantasy. What’s more, I found the side the author wants us to cheer for — the hegemonising faux-Roman Empire attempting to conquer the world to bring peace and prosperity — morally repulsive.

Kingdom of Shadows — Alan Furst
Alan Furst specialises in writing interbellum thrillers, set in the late thirties with world War II looming in the background. Even when his protagonists win their battles, you know their victories are ultimately futile when Europe gets swept up in a new world war. It makes for sombre, slightly depressing reading which works well in small doses.

Peace & its Discontents — Edward W. Said
A collection of Said’s columns written during 1993-1995 for various Arabic newspapers, explaining how the Oslo peace process had let down the Palestinian people.

Life on a Young Planet — Andrew H. Knoll
Excellent overview of what we know of what life looked like and evolved in the billions of years before the socalled Cambrian Explosion.

Hons and Rebels — Jessica Mitford
An autobiography of the communist member of the Mitford sisters. Understated humour.

Have Space Suit – Will Travel — Robert A. Heinlein
Another of Heinlein’s juveniles ticked off. Good entertainment as always, but better read if you’re twelve.

Here are the books I’ve read last month. Less than I wanted to read to keep on track for my goal of 150 books read this year. Oh well, guess I have to read more in November and December…

Europe unfolding: 1648-1688 — John Stoye
Excellent narrative history about one of those interludes in European history that don’t really fit a period. As this is an English history, Europe means the continent, but it’s very good at covering the whole of Europe and not just western Europe.

Dreams of Steel — Glen Cook
The fifth Black Company novel (not counting The Silver Spike) and the first not narrated by Croaker. Gripping as always.

The Witches of Karres — James H. Schmitz
Schmitz is not an author I had heard much of, until ten years or so ago, when Baen started to reprint his work, but in an “updated” version. I got this book as an indirect result of the controversy this update caused in rec.arts.sf.written, as Jo Walton handed it out as a wedding present, echoing the old Hobbit tradition of giving away presents on your birthday. An entertaining read, which means I will search out more Schmitz.

Slan — A. E. Van Vogt
First time in decades I actually read some van Vogt. Slan is one of those stories that had an influence on science fiction all out of proportion to its qualities, just because the idea is so good. The first chapter especially is so good in establishing the emotional truth of poor old Jommy Cross’ situation, twelve years old, a superhuman mutant with intelligence and strength far above normal people but all alone in a world that fears and hates him and his kind.

1491 – New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles C. Mann
I got this on a recommendation by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Mann is one of those people who’s able to take what the experts known on pre-Columbian America and make it available to the general public. The revelations here -that America was much more populated, had a much longer history and was much less wild than recieved wisdom would have it- are not new to those in the field, but have so far not quite penetrated public consciousness yet. 1491 might just be the book to do it.

Time Patrolman — Poul Anderson
Two long stories about the Time Patrol, as also seen in The Guardians of Time. A nice study of contrast, as the first story is one of cheerful high adventure, the kind of sotry which got Anderson his fame in the first place, while the second confirms his reputation of Gloomy Dane he got later in his life.

The Final Programme — Michael Moorcock
The first Jerry Cornelius novel, almost a word for word rewrite of the first Elric novella, the Dreaming City. Setting Elric’s story in a near contemporary England makes clear the banality of it all.

A Cure for Cancer — Michael Moorcock
The second novel in the Cornelius Quartet, more ambitious than the first, flawed but interesting.

The English Assassin — Michael Moorcock
A return to a more conventional structure but with a much less coherent (deliberately) storyline.

The Condition of Muzak — Michael Moorcock
In this one everything has degenerated, given in to entropy.

Wall Street — Doug Henwood
A somewhat dated (published in 1997) but still relevant examination of the financial industry from a leftwing, marxistoid point of view.