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2018 HLP Book Club

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Luis Dias:
Kinda late to build this thread, but here we are. It reflects my total lack of book reading for the past 5 years now, due to personal family complications (also why I basically stopped playing games as well), but recently I managed to restart this all too precious activity.

I obviously kickstarted all of this with Seth Dickinson's Great debut.

I had lots of thoughts about this book, but not very clear headed nor systematic, so I refrained from commenting on it when I finally read it two months ago. Here are some of them, fragmented as they may be:

English is not my first language, and thus I am not a good critic of its usage in the aesthetical sense. Nevertheless, I could only feel its total mastery at the helm of the entire book. I loved several things in it. I loved the intrigue, obviously, but the politics as well. I loved this notion of power dynamics overwhelming human relationships to the point of demanding discipline in all human behaviors to the point of oppression, in order for something as powerful as the masquerade empire to function.

I loved the Herbert elements in it, basically exchanging magic for "Mentats" in a fantasy medieval setting, and the whole book almost reads like science fiction: what would happen if you could have such incredible knowledge about economics and sociology (at perhaps even better levels than our actual world currently), so that you could dominate colonies and foreign territories with mere brains and very subtle, systemic interference?

Related, my favorite part of the book is when Baru carefully explains how she is going to destroy the entire first rebellion.

Spoilers ensue, so beware. (no, I hate spoiler tags, so beware again.)

The plot moves fluidily through the various themes of the book, apparently never letting anything insightful out of the hook. I'd suggest that the way the empire is constantly portrayed as this evil thing from the get go, makes it slightly less nuanced and interesting. Surely this object should have some benefits for its existence, but they're never even referenced, as far as I remember (I can be awfully wrong, ofc).

And then there's that final bit. I can't quite put my finger on exactly why I kinda disliked it, but the word that comes to mind is "tired". Hyperboling a bit, it's as if at this point, the story is just going through the motions which were long before decided, but no longer really believed. I won't say it's a Shyamallanian twist, because that would be too harsh, but I can't but feel this weird turn of events reeks of some ... lack of restraint.

I know, the overall trilogy plot needed this twist, I know. I just don't feel it works that well. And it sort of kills the main character for me going further. Why would I care about this character which is utterly destroying everything in her path, in order to get herself into maybe, possibly, perhaps, in a position where she can do some harm in the Masquerade? It looks a tad ridiculous. Why wouldn't the Masquerade just kill her on the spot right there at the end? Are they so naive they don't know her intents? How can such an empire read through all of what she accomplished in that last rebellion, knowing full well she was on their pocket all the time, and then fail to understand her to the end?

I dunno, I feel all of this was not well set up for me. Nevertheless, on the whole I really loved reading it, and it was a breath of fresh air, coming out of a celibacy of this stuff right into a great book as it is.




My second book (books) were the Three Body Problem trilogy.

Wow. I had no idea what I was going to get myself into. It blew me away. But my time is up here, so all I can really say about it is how incredibly powerful most of its ideas were, and I'll never forget the picture of a flattened bunch of planets as a landscape of glooming impending final doom. Just delightful books. I cannot recommend them more, but I'm also sure most of you already have read them a long time ago. Oh well.

0rph3u5:
I don't find the time to read as much fiction as I want to recently either - in part because the ammount of non-fiction I have cram for my thesis and papers (esspecially stuff like Architecture and Literature of which I don't actually have any in-depth academic knowledge, so I actually have to work to put out a 2.0*-grade paper) *German academic grading system has a kind of "inverse scoring", so 1.0 is the best grade you can get and 4.0 is lowest passing grade.

So, I started cheating a bit last semester and decided to enroll in Literature classes for the languages, I speak relatively well.

First book of the year comes in that vein: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger (1987)

The book is written form the perspective of Claudia Hampton, a fictional historian who was born in the late 1900s, and at first reads like the manuscript of an autobriography or final book of hers, until for the first time the perspective shifts to the world outside her mind and you learn that she is at present in a nursing home and that both her health and her mental faculties are declining due to her advanced age (the book never quite gives the time of its present but e.g. Claudia having a grandchild is mentioned at one point).

With a few exceptions of interludes in the present day, the story continues as Claudia's recollection of the events of her life; Not in a chronological fashion instead it is organised as a narrative that at first serves a train of thought about the nature of her work, but soon the autobiographical examples take over and her recollection of these structure it going foward.

The non-chronological nature of the account plays well with the idea that memory is not systematic and gains inflection by the act of recollection. The present day interludes, which are accompanied with shifts in perspective, contexturalise Claudia's account through observations from or about characters in her recollections (e.g. her daughter).

One of the book's biggest strong suits is how it handles the framing of history has a narrative, esspecially the interplay between Claudia rejecting the orthodoxy of the "great white men"-theory by styling herself as an exceptional woman.

The biggest drawback is that despite being organised into chapters, the shifts in persepective and style come and go with little warning. While they all have their place and serve a purpose upon revisitation, these shifts make it really difficult as casual read.


Starting this semester's syllabus, I am playing hard and loose here with the definition of a book: Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (1853)

Narrated by an unnamed Wall Steet-lawyer the short story follows the events that are set in motion by the hire of the name-giving character.  Most of what happens is not only disruptive to the law-firm in minor, yet impactful ways and infused with a slight surreality that it calls into question if Bartleby is in fact real and/or human. While the notion that something supernatural is at play is openly dismissed, the question of the nature of Bartleby as a person remains at play until the end....

...of which, I would prefer not to report. ;)

The short story is actually quite funny at parts (though you won't laught out loud) but, as it is the nature of absurdist texts, quite thought-provoking. Esspecially now in a time where the political narrative of the "forgotten men and women of [country X]" is used a lot.


Next up on the list: Wilhelm Raabe: Die Akten des Vogelsangs (1896)

(For those who don't speak/read german, the title translates to "The Files of Birdsong", "The Files on Birdsong" or "The Files regarding Birdsong", depending on grammtical inflection. And yes, this syllabus is building up to a work from Kafka.)

Det. Bullock:
After a year and a half or so of complete burnout during which I've read only a couple of Star Wars tie-in books (Ahsoka and Catalyst, both rather good, especially if you like to know more lore about the kyber crystals) some time ago I decided to try the kindle app for the smartphone my family decided to saddle me with (frigging touch screens...).
Since I had heard there was this nice military sci-fi series whose first two ebooks were free I ended up buying the remaining books on the app one at a time in the last few months.
The series in question is the Honor Harrigton series by David Weber, a nice light reading with political intrigues, spaceships going boom, a protagonist that is very good at her job but always gets in the worst situation possible because politics and has an empathic bond with a sentient six-limbed alien cat.
Of course the author seems to be a bit obsessed with telling how much socialism is bad, but fortunately the enemies aren't depicted as strawmen, mostly, and kind of eases up on that by book 8 (that I'm currently reading right now).
There are also some rather ponderous infodumps here and there that sometimes seem a bit lore for lore's sake though and that might not be everyone's cup of tea.

The E:

--- Quote from: Det. Bullock on April 21, 2018, 11:14:20 am ---The series in question is the Honor Harrigton series by David Weber, a nice light reading with political intrigues, spaceships going boom, a protagonist that is very good at her job but always gets in the worst situation possible because politics and has an empathic bond with a sentient six-limbed alien cat.

--- End quote ---

Here's a piece of advice, should you decide to stick with the series: Absolutely, positively stop reading after either Ashes of Victory or At All Costs. The series takes an absolute nosedive after that, as Baen stopped doing editorial oversight on Weber and he started to use dictation software to write (Shadow of Saganami is, imho, the only exception here; that book is actually decent).

Det. Bullock:

--- Quote from: The E on April 21, 2018, 11:27:10 am ---
--- Quote from: Det. Bullock on April 21, 2018, 11:14:20 am ---The series in question is the Honor Harrigton series by David Weber, a nice light reading with political intrigues, spaceships going boom, a protagonist that is very good at her job but always gets in the worst situation possible because politics and has an empathic bond with a sentient six-limbed alien cat.

--- End quote ---

Here's a piece of advice, should you decide to stick with the series: Absolutely, positively stop reading after either Ashes of Victory or At All Costs. The series takes an absolute nosedive after that, as Baen stopped doing editorial oversight on Weber and he started to use dictation software to write (Shadow of Saganami is, imho, the only exception here; that book is actually decent).

--- End quote ---
I'm at the second half of War of Honor at the moment and it's still fine IMHO.
Sincerely I'm used to read mostly old 18th century and 19th century stuff often originally dictated to a secretary (like Goethe used to do for example) so the lack of editorial oversight is not exactly a deal breaker for me, at least nothing has reached Ann Radcliffe level of dispersiveness of content and convoluteness of phrasing until now.

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