{"id":6214,"date":"2015-03-07T08:24:28","date_gmt":"2015-03-07T13:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=6214"},"modified":"2015-04-11T15:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-11T20:07:11","slug":"books-read-february-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2015\/03\/07\/books-read-february-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Books read February"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nA slightly disappointing total of seven books read this month, down from eleven last month. Partially this is because I started a short SF marathon over at my booklog, which I hope to finish on Sunday. At least it&#8217;s up from last year, when I <a href=\"\/wissewords2\/2014\/03\/08\/books-read-february-5\/\">only finished two books<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite><a href=\"\/books2\/2015\/03\/a-history-of-future-cities-daniel-brook\/\">A History of Future Cities<\/a><\/cite> &#8212; Daniel Brook<br \/>\nLooks at the development and history of four &#8220;artificial&#8221; cities and the role they played in the development of their respective countries: Saint Petersburg, Mumbai, Shanghai and Dubai.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>The Myth of the Strong Leader<\/cite> &#8212; Archie Brown<br \/>\nA synthetic history book that takes aim at the desire for strong leaders, both in democracies and autocratic systems.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet<\/cite> &#8212; Becky Chambers<br \/>\nSelf published, old school adventure science fiction about a crew of wormhole punchers who get involved in something way above their pay grade&#8230;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite><a href=\"\/books2\/2015\/02\/annihilation-jeff-vandermeer\/\">Annihilation<\/a><\/cite> &#8212; Jeff VanderMeer<br \/>\nBrilliant first entry in a science fiction trilogy all published last year. It reminded me of <cite><a href=\"\/books2\/2014\/12\/roadside-picni%E2%80%A6s-strugatsky-2\/\">Roadside Picnic<\/a><\/cite> though VanderMeer said to me he hadn&#8217;t read that before writing this.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>The March North<\/cite> &#8212; Graydon Saunders<br \/>\nGraydon is an old acquaintance from rec.arts.sf.* known for his smart but sometimes slightly gnomic posts, this is his first published fantasy, somewhat less gnomic but still smart.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>My Real Children<\/cite> &#8212; Jo Walton<br \/>\nAn alternate history domestic novel that almost made it on my Hugo ballot.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<cite>Sarah Canary<\/cite> &#8212; Karen Joy Fowler<br \/>\nI asked Twitter to choose me a book to read and this is what it came up with, Karen Joy Fowler&#8217;s debut novel, science fiction in name only about a mysterious woman stumbling into a Chinese railway workers camp one day in 1873. If you put your SF hat on, it&#8217;s a First Contact novel, but it&#8217;s easy to read it as &#8220;just&#8221; a story about the mythology of the west, feminism and racism too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A slightly disappointing total of seven books read this month, down from eleven last month. Partially this is because I started a short SF marathon over at my booklog, which I hope to finish on Sunday. At least it&#8217;s up from last year, when I only finished two books. A History of Future Cities &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-posts-interesting-only-to-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6214"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6322,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6214\/revisions\/6322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}