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hawkwing_lb"-and the fiery bulk of the further wall across the great valley".
Books 2010: 31-42
non-fiction
31. T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London, 1935. (Wordsworth Classics Edition, 1997.)
"Lawrence of Arabia" is made famous, of course, by the film of the same name. The Lawrence of this memoir is a man at odds with himself, filled it seems with a horror of his own and female bodies, conflicted between his duty to his superiors and his attachment to the Arab movement, self-loathing, introspective, and self-reflective.
The work itself is less a war memoir than a paean to landscape. Lawrence has an eye for vast and impressive places, and a keen ability to evoke their vastness and beauty on the page. The desert, in its blazing, freezing extremes, its suffering hardness, and striking rock - dolerite, granite, basalt, sand flats, valleys, peaks, oases - is brought to life.
Hard life, in a war of movement that has more to do with cutting railway tracks and telegraph lines than the bloody murder of the trenches on the killing fields of France and Germany, but there is sufficient savagery of war even here to appall the reader, and, it seems, Lawrence himself. It ends in the horror of a Turkish hospital in Damascus, where all the horror of war that has been passed over more lightly in preceding pages is brought home to roost.
Lawrence's racism and sexism is unavoidable and discomforting. On the other hand, the book is justly a classic, and many of its passages have a sweeping beauty and an almost epic scope. (And humour: one Arab woman says of Lawrence's blue eyes that they were like the sky shining through the sockets of an empty skull.)
32. John Man, The Great Wall, London, 2008.
This isn't as good a book as his Genghis Khan. It is, however, a reasonable overview of the history of the Great Wall (or "Long Wall" or "Long City" in other translations), with an understandable focus, given Man's primary interests, in the 'barbarians' from beyond the wall.
It would've been much improved by the inclusion of more specific academic - at least archaeological - information regarding the Wall(s), and just a little less travelogue. As it is, the travelogue, rather than the history, is the more detailed part of the work.
Still. It's an easy read, and worth the reading.
33. Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Penguin Classics, London, 1979.
I'd been working my way through Polybius for very nearly three months by the time I finished it, on a train leaving New York city. It's hard going, because Polybius is a stickler for detail - the kind of historical detail that is a boon for researchers, and makes simply reading the book a wearisome chore.
Still, it's packed full with interesting historial episodes about the Punic Wars and contemporary happenings in Greece, and I am very happy to have finally managed to read it through to the end.
fiction
34. Matthew Stover, Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor.
Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels were my introduction to science fiction, and from nostalgia, I think, I kept reading SW novels long after I should've given up the ghost. Sometimes, though, it leads to good things, and Stover is one of them. He takes the pulp material that is Star Wars and gives it refreshing power and depth.
I liked this one. Quite a lot.
35. E.E. Knight, Fall with Honour.
Seventh novel featuring David Valentine, set in a post-apocalyptic US where alien vampire-like beings - the Kurians - hold sway and an armed resistance is attempting to push back against them. Entertaining, if occasional brutal and disgusting.
36. Patricia Briggs, Hunting Ground.
Werewolf romance with an established relationship and some political capers. Not terrible, but my enthusiasm for supernatural romance is, shall we say, not of the highest.
37. J. A. Pitts, Black Blade Blues.
This book, I read courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala's generosity. It is urban fantasy with Norse mythology, dragons, dwarves, and blacksmiths. The heroine is a little bit too competent at kicking ass to be readily believable, the pacing is somewhat uneven, and the relationship drama made me want to grab the main character and kick her brain back up between her ears.
On the other hand, the flaws are forgivable, and the Norse mythology is eminently refreshing in urban fantasy. It's not half bad.
38. Lynn Flewelling, The White Road.
A new Alec and Seregil novel is a good thing in the world. On the other hand, there are next to no women playing major roles in this book, a thing which I am grown more and more sensitive to as time goes on.
It does have capers, disguises, infiltrations, and daring escapes, though.
39-40. Timothy Zahn, The Third Lynx and Odd Girl Out.
Odd Girl Out has been on my bookshelf for months, waiting for me to find a copy of The Third Lynx so I could read them in order. They stand alone pretty well, though, but I like to line my ducks up neatly when I can.
These are the second and third books featuring Frank Compton, a former intelligence agent co-opted into a secret war against the galaxy-spanning hivemind called the Modhri. A lot of Compton's time is spent aboard the Quadrail, the interstellar train that's the only means of FTL transport, controlled by the pacifist Spiders.
Train travel! Spies! Plots! Daring capers and double-crosses!
Compton is an unreliable narrator who keeps things from the audience to heighten suspense, which is a dirty trick but one that Zahn just about pulls off by using maybe only once or twice a book. The Modhri is both terrifying and alien, and the relationship between Compton and his partner, the not-quite-human Bayta, is believable if a little one-sided.
I like these books. I like them a lot.
41. Violette Malan, The Soldier King.
Good, solid, standalone fantasy in a traditional mode, featuring two mercenaries, Dhulyn and Parno, who get caught up in an affair featuring a lost prince, a mage, and some nasty politics. Also featuring disguises, travelling players, and various alarms and excursions.
It's significantly better than the previous book, The Sleeping God, since the fate of the world is not notably at stake. I'm not a fan of Fate of the World Resting on Our Heroes' Shoulders books, since that's a cheap way to raise the stakes. This one's a little predictable, but remarkably engaging.
42. Lisa Shearin, The Trouble With Demons.
The previous Raine Benares novels read like an adaptation of someone's RPG campaign, with elves, goblins, and magical artifacts all crammed into cities with tunnels and caverns. So does this one, but on the other hand, they're very engaging, light, and quick.
This one has demons.
I'm hoping, in the next little while, to finally make a significant dent in my 'unread books' shelves. On the other hand, tomorrow I should - finally! - get my postgrad application all squared away and sent off (I have been waiting on my last academic reference, so I can put it in the package), and when that's done, I need to talk to some people about reading recommendations for the research, and to someone about this Thessalonica thing.
And find a job, but, well. That doesn't seem likely.
Anyway. How are you all, internets?
Books 2010: 31-42
non-fiction
31. T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London, 1935. (Wordsworth Classics Edition, 1997.)
"Lawrence of Arabia" is made famous, of course, by the film of the same name. The Lawrence of this memoir is a man at odds with himself, filled it seems with a horror of his own and female bodies, conflicted between his duty to his superiors and his attachment to the Arab movement, self-loathing, introspective, and self-reflective.
The work itself is less a war memoir than a paean to landscape. Lawrence has an eye for vast and impressive places, and a keen ability to evoke their vastness and beauty on the page. The desert, in its blazing, freezing extremes, its suffering hardness, and striking rock - dolerite, granite, basalt, sand flats, valleys, peaks, oases - is brought to life.
Hard life, in a war of movement that has more to do with cutting railway tracks and telegraph lines than the bloody murder of the trenches on the killing fields of France and Germany, but there is sufficient savagery of war even here to appall the reader, and, it seems, Lawrence himself. It ends in the horror of a Turkish hospital in Damascus, where all the horror of war that has been passed over more lightly in preceding pages is brought home to roost.
Lawrence's racism and sexism is unavoidable and discomforting. On the other hand, the book is justly a classic, and many of its passages have a sweeping beauty and an almost epic scope. (And humour: one Arab woman says of Lawrence's blue eyes that they were like the sky shining through the sockets of an empty skull.)
32. John Man, The Great Wall, London, 2008.
This isn't as good a book as his Genghis Khan. It is, however, a reasonable overview of the history of the Great Wall (or "Long Wall" or "Long City" in other translations), with an understandable focus, given Man's primary interests, in the 'barbarians' from beyond the wall.
It would've been much improved by the inclusion of more specific academic - at least archaeological - information regarding the Wall(s), and just a little less travelogue. As it is, the travelogue, rather than the history, is the more detailed part of the work.
Still. It's an easy read, and worth the reading.
33. Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Penguin Classics, London, 1979.
I'd been working my way through Polybius for very nearly three months by the time I finished it, on a train leaving New York city. It's hard going, because Polybius is a stickler for detail - the kind of historical detail that is a boon for researchers, and makes simply reading the book a wearisome chore.
Still, it's packed full with interesting historial episodes about the Punic Wars and contemporary happenings in Greece, and I am very happy to have finally managed to read it through to the end.
fiction
34. Matthew Stover, Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor.
Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels were my introduction to science fiction, and from nostalgia, I think, I kept reading SW novels long after I should've given up the ghost. Sometimes, though, it leads to good things, and Stover is one of them. He takes the pulp material that is Star Wars and gives it refreshing power and depth.
I liked this one. Quite a lot.
35. E.E. Knight, Fall with Honour.
Seventh novel featuring David Valentine, set in a post-apocalyptic US where alien vampire-like beings - the Kurians - hold sway and an armed resistance is attempting to push back against them. Entertaining, if occasional brutal and disgusting.
36. Patricia Briggs, Hunting Ground.
Werewolf romance with an established relationship and some political capers. Not terrible, but my enthusiasm for supernatural romance is, shall we say, not of the highest.
37. J. A. Pitts, Black Blade Blues.
This book, I read courtesy of
matociquala's generosity. It is urban fantasy with Norse mythology, dragons, dwarves, and blacksmiths. The heroine is a little bit too competent at kicking ass to be readily believable, the pacing is somewhat uneven, and the relationship drama made me want to grab the main character and kick her brain back up between her ears.On the other hand, the flaws are forgivable, and the Norse mythology is eminently refreshing in urban fantasy. It's not half bad.
38. Lynn Flewelling, The White Road.
A new Alec and Seregil novel is a good thing in the world. On the other hand, there are next to no women playing major roles in this book, a thing which I am grown more and more sensitive to as time goes on.
It does have capers, disguises, infiltrations, and daring escapes, though.
39-40. Timothy Zahn, The Third Lynx and Odd Girl Out.
Odd Girl Out has been on my bookshelf for months, waiting for me to find a copy of The Third Lynx so I could read them in order. They stand alone pretty well, though, but I like to line my ducks up neatly when I can.
These are the second and third books featuring Frank Compton, a former intelligence agent co-opted into a secret war against the galaxy-spanning hivemind called the Modhri. A lot of Compton's time is spent aboard the Quadrail, the interstellar train that's the only means of FTL transport, controlled by the pacifist Spiders.
Train travel! Spies! Plots! Daring capers and double-crosses!
Compton is an unreliable narrator who keeps things from the audience to heighten suspense, which is a dirty trick but one that Zahn just about pulls off by using maybe only once or twice a book. The Modhri is both terrifying and alien, and the relationship between Compton and his partner, the not-quite-human Bayta, is believable if a little one-sided.
I like these books. I like them a lot.
41. Violette Malan, The Soldier King.
Good, solid, standalone fantasy in a traditional mode, featuring two mercenaries, Dhulyn and Parno, who get caught up in an affair featuring a lost prince, a mage, and some nasty politics. Also featuring disguises, travelling players, and various alarms and excursions.
It's significantly better than the previous book, The Sleeping God, since the fate of the world is not notably at stake. I'm not a fan of Fate of the World Resting on Our Heroes' Shoulders books, since that's a cheap way to raise the stakes. This one's a little predictable, but remarkably engaging.
42. Lisa Shearin, The Trouble With Demons.
The previous Raine Benares novels read like an adaptation of someone's RPG campaign, with elves, goblins, and magical artifacts all crammed into cities with tunnels and caverns. So does this one, but on the other hand, they're very engaging, light, and quick.
This one has demons.
I'm hoping, in the next little while, to finally make a significant dent in my 'unread books' shelves. On the other hand, tomorrow I should - finally! - get my postgrad application all squared away and sent off (I have been waiting on my last academic reference, so I can put it in the package), and when that's done, I need to talk to some people about reading recommendations for the research, and to someone about this Thessalonica thing.
And find a job, but, well. That doesn't seem likely.
Anyway. How are you all, internets?
