posts interesting only to me

It’s August 1st, so time for a new list of books read. Lots of history at the start of the month, as I had just bought a pile of them in June. Also a lot of Sayers novels, as I’m in the process of rereading them in order. Little in the way of science fiction this time, as I just haven’t been in the mood
for it.

Europe: Privilege and Protest 1730-1789 — Olwen Hufton
A look at European history in the decades before the French revolution would decisively end the world of the Ancien Regime, showing how interlocking systems of privilege ruled this world, both priviledges enjoyed by the leite, but also by more humbler folk. A much more modern history of the same period as covered by Europe of the Ancien Regime 1715-1783 I read at the end of June.

The World Turned Upside Down — Christopher Hill
During the English civil war of parliament against king, there were people who wanted to go much further than parliament was willing to go, to revolutionise class relations in England. Diggers, Levelers and others for a few precious years created a glimpse of a more just, more equal society, a “World Turned Upside Down”.

Europe Between Revolutions 1815-1848 — Jacques Droz
After the French revolution had been finally repressed in 1815, a deliberate attempt was made to restore the stability of the Ancien Regime as well as the authority of the old ruling classes. Jacques Droz is excellent in making clear the stresses and contradictions between the ideal and reality that would ultimately lead to the failure of this.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club — Dorothy L. Sayers
The fourth Wimsey novel, again a novel in which the detective story is used as a lens through which to look at contemporary British society. In this case it’s the impact the First World War had on the lives of an entire generation of veterans, coming to terms with their experiences as well as their difficulties adjusting to civilian life.

The Structures of Everyday Life — Fernand Braudel
The first installment in Braudel’s three part examination of the roots of capitalism, it’s a much easier read than his earlier books on the Mediterranean I read a few years ago. This part examines how ordinary people lived, how they interacted with the wider economy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when our current capitalist societies were being formed.

Strong Poison — Dorothy L. Sayers
The novel that introduces Harriet Vane to the Lord Peter Wimsey series and Wimsey falls in love with her immediately. Some may think her somewhat of a Mary Sue, and there certainly may be hints of Mary Sueness here, but in the end she’s strong enough to be more than that. In the context of reading the entire Wimsey series in order, it’s clear this is a hinge point for it, where you can see the mood of the series shift.

Five Red Herrings — Dorothy L. Sayers
Reading this for the first time I liked it, but was still unfamiliar enough with Sayers to realise how much this not just a traditional detective novel of a kind Sayers never attempts anywhere else, but a critique of them. It’s quite jarring in tone with the rest of the series, not fitting in with either the pre or the post-Strong Poison novels. In fact, it reads like Sayers meant it as an example of how not to write a detective novel, with all its fuzzing about train tables and such.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City — Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A good but limited critique of the United States occupation of Iraq, which concentrates on the blunders made by the CPA, but which doesn’t question the fundamental right of America to actually be in the country.

New Skies — Patrick Nielsen Hayden (editor)
A collection of science fiction stories from the past two decades, aimed at younger readers new to science fiction. Some duds, but on the whole it does give a good oversight of what you can expect from the genre.

Last van de Oorlog — Stef Scaliola
A history thesis turned into a book, this looks at the ways in which the debate about the wars fought by the Netherlands to hold on to Indonesia in 1946-1949, in particular the warcrimes committed during it and how these have been covered up or revealed. Scaliola looks at the roles journalists, historians, politicians and the veterans themselves played in this process of remembrance.

Britain’s Gulag — Caroline Elkins
Incredibly depressing, this is the history of Britain’s attempt to quash the Kenyan struggle for independence, largely by emulating the way the nazis behaved in Poland. Pogroms, a massive concentration camp system in which almost the neitre Kikuyu population of Kenya was held as slave labour, roaming death squads and institutionalised torture of the worst kind were all part of this attempt to crush the Mau Mau rebellion and make the Kikuyu into obedient, loyal subjects of the white settler population. All this seven years after World War 2.

Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side — Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Stafford Smith is one of the volunteer lawyers respresenting the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. This is his personally informed account of America’s Gulag Archipelo and its absurdities. Remarkable funny in places.

Yup, you guessed it: time for another list of books read. We’re now exactly six months into 2008 and I’ve read exactly seventyfive books. Fortysix of these were fiction (of which thirtyone were science fiction even), twentynine non-fiction, with history taking hte lion’s share of that with nine books. Of last month’s crop, I was most impressed with Hal Duncan’s second novel, Ink, as well as Paul Cornell’s British Summer Time which I started with low expectations but which turned out to be pretty good.

Ink — Hal Duncan
The sequel to Vellum. Less coherent, slightly disappointing in the end but a worthy followup to Duncan’s first novel.

The Later Roman Empire — Averil Cameron
I’ve become somewhat obsessed by Late Antiquity and the later Roman Empire this year and this is another book on this subject, focusing on the fourth century in particular.

Whose Body? — Dorothy L. Sayers
The first novel in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. It’s not as good as a her later works of course, but still entertaining and with hints at greatness, though oddly defensive about being a detective novel.

Clouds of Witness — Dorothy L. Sayers
I thought I reread the entire Lord Peter series –or at least the novels, not being too fond of the short stories– in order of publication. This is the second in the series, in which Lord Peter has to save his brother, the Duke of Denver, from the hangman’s gallow.

Swiftly — Adam Roberts
This is Adam Roberts’ latest novel, not to be confused with his 2002 collection of the same name, several stories of which have been reworked here. Sort of a continuation of Swift’s novel, Gulliver Travels, it shows the world roughly a century after Gulliver’s discovery of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians. I came to this prejudiced against Roberts, due to my experience with several of his earlier works and I can’t say this prejudice has been overcome.

Unnatural Death — Dorothy L. Sayers
The third novel in the Lord Peter series. Somewhat of a slog to get through, compared to the first two and more interesting for its oblique look at certain aspects of pre-war England than for the story itself.

British Summer Time — Paul Cornell
A surprisingly engaging science fiction novel that takes Christianity seriously without being preachy or zealous. It’s a rarity in science fiction to even mention religion, let alone Christianity and usually when it is mentioned, the author has a hidden agenda for doing so (Orson Scott Card is one persistent offender). Paul Cornell however manages to created characters who are Christians and have it be just one piece of their background, which is refreshing.

On Late Style — Edward Said
Said’s very last book, completed by one of his students, fittingly examining the way in which late works of artists and philosophers like Beethoven, Adorno and Jean Genet share a common philosophy, despite their differences. Slightly incoherent due to the circumstances under which it was published.

Europe of the Ancien Regime 1715-1783 — David Ogg
An old-fashioned, somewhat dated overview of Eighteenth century Europe between the last spasms of the religious wars of the previous centuries and the start of the age of revolution.

The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler
I’ve never read any Chandler before this, but it was odd to read this, because so much of it has been reworked into cliche by lesser writers.

Righting English That’s Gone Dutch — Joy Burrough – Boenisch
A slim little volume dedicated to show all the common errors and pecularities of style us Dutch make when we write in English. For the most part it’s sensible advice for people who do speak and read English well, but who have less experience writing it, but in some cases the advice given is dubious or slightly too business orientated to be useful for e.g. blog writing… Nevertheless, no doubt you can find examples of most the errors listed in this book on this website.

Yup, you guessed it: time for another list of books read.

Dark Side of Democracy — Michael Mann
S. says this made me depressive and angry, but it was worth it. Mann attempts to find out how genocide happens, what pushes a country from largely ordinary racial/ethnical tension into aggressive ethnical cleansing and mass murder. As the title says, the danger zone is when a country becomes democratic and confuses demos with ethnos.

Evolution’s Workshop — Edward J. Larson
A history of the Galapalos islands in the context of the development of the theory of evolution, from Darwin’s visit to the present day. Worthy but dull in places.

The Case of the Late Pig — Margery Allingham
A cozy mystery starring Albert Champion. There’s no better word for this than amusing.

The Best of Fredric Brown — Fredric Brown
A great collection of short stories by a writer these days unfairly forgotten. Brown specialised in short, sharp satirical stories, and most of the stories here are still fresh, even though written over half a century ago.

Pale Gray for Guilt — John D. MacDonald
A Travis McGee adventure in which McGee avenges the murder of an old friend by swindling those responsible out of the money his widow will need to make sure their kids are taken care off. Yes, this is roughly the plot of every McGee novel, or at least half of them.

Doorways in the Sand — Roger Zelazny
I try to ration my Zelazny, as for obvious reasons he isn’t writing anymore so once I’ve read all his books I’ll never again have the thrill of a new Zelazny novel. Had been wanting to read this one, one of his classics for a long time but had never come across it yet. Read it on the way back from a birthday party, finished the last part next to my bike before cycling home from the station. That’s my Zelazny fix for this year.

Template — Matt Hughes
Matt Hughes offered the possibility to any blogger who asked to read the manuscript of his latest novel. Not something I would’ve read of my own accord, but it was worth the (admittingly small) investment.

Kaleidoscope Century — John Barnes
Nicely dark science fiction story of a 21st century much much worse than our own.

A Crack in the Edge of the World — Simon Winchester
The story of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with digressions.

Bad Monkeys — Matt Ruff
Effortlessly cool grand old American paranoia.

The Best of C. L. Moore — C. L. Moore
Back when women didn’t write science fiction, C. L. Moore was one of the best, like Leigh Brackett writing lurid but literate pulp tales. This is a late seventies collection of her best work, including the two stories that introduced her best known characters, Northwest Smith (“Shambleau”) and Jirel of Joiry (“Black God’s Kiss”). Apart from that, there’s no overlap with the C. L. Moore collection in the Fantasy Masterworks series.

The Mediterranean — Ernle Bradford
An oldfashioned history of the Mediterranean by the author of The Great Siege of Malta, a bit longwinded at the end and of course somewhat on the conservative side.

There Will Be Time — Poul Anderson
A fairly upbeat story about time travel, upbeat by Anderson’s standards that is. Twentieth century society will still disappear in an orgy of environmental destruction and war, but afterwards there may be something better, if Jack Havig wins his battles against the other timetravellers.

Cowboy Angels — Paul McAuley
McAuley is one of my favourite science fiction writers, but lately he’s been mostly writing technothrillers with nary a hint of science fiction in them. Cowboy Angels is still a technothriller, but it’s also firmly science fiction. With the invention of Turing gates back in the late sixties, the Company gets a new mission: to infiltrate alternate Americas and liberate them from communist or nazi oppression if necessary, to bring them together as one country under many skies.

Another month gone by means another list of books read.

The Thief of Time — Terry Pratchett
The first time I reread this. A typical late Discworld novel.

Flat Earth News — Nick Davies
Nick Davies is an acclaimed journalist who here exposes the news media for the shallow spreaders of lies they are. Something of a Manufacturing Consent for the 21st century, though with less analysis and more anecdotes.

Vellum — Hal Duncan
A brilliant fantasy novel that will annoy the fuck out of a lot of people for being so deliberately vague and confusing.

Matter — Iain M. Banks
Banks’ latest Culture novel, which doesn’t disappoint.

Last Days of the Reich — James Lucas
This details the last phase of the struggle in Europe during World War 2, from the battle for Berlin until the final surrender of German forces on May 9, 1945. It’s somewhat marred by the author being slightly too keen to document the outrages undergone by Germany at the hands of the Russians while largely omitting the context in which these outrages happened.

Farthing — Jo Walton
A cozy murder mystery set in 1949, in a world in which Britain and nazi Germany made peace in 1941. The horror of the situation creeps up on you.

Petty Pewter Gods — Glen Cook
An entertaining hardboiled detective story set in a fantasy worlds where the Gods come quite literally knocking on our hero’s door…

Imperial Earth — Arthur C. Clarke
Dated but still interesting late science fiction novel by the last of the Big Three.

The Compleat Enchanter — L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Yngi is a louse! Classic fantasy stories from a time before Tolkien.

The Testament of Andros — James Blish
Classic science fiction stories, some of which now hopelessly dated, some of which deserving of being called classics.

Frederick the Great — Nancy Mitford
Mitford’s classic biography of the great Prussian leader.

The Secret of Sinharat — Leigh Brackett
Eric John Stark, fugitive from the law for supplying the Mercurian tribes with guns, has to stop the Martian lowlanders from rising in revolt in return for his freedom.