Week Fifty Two: Mythos

Going out with a bang and crash, a peal of thunder and a bolt of lightning. Mythos is like hearing a very adult bedtime story straight from Stephen Fry's lips.

Make no mistake this is not light reading, but it says much about human nature and the breadth and history of misogyny that we created such rapey, violent and childish gods, for our own excuses.

Still a cracking good read, as quoted on the cover.

Maybe time for one quick book before New Years Day, and then the inevitable best of/worst of list.

Week Fifty One: Between The World and Me

A stunning and potent read about race and growth and humanity.

Starts off as a polemic but soon becomes so much more as the author tracks his own growth without disowning the underlying premise of an inherently racist/prejudiced system in America, and the world.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but of you want to understand racism and prejudice, privilege and power; there are not many better places to start.

Week Fifty: Mrs Sherlock Holmes

Much like the reality it's retelling, this was a little dissatisfying and odd that the protagonist never really finds her true potential and becomes a victim of a misogynist time in history, largely forgotten.

And now when she's remembered it's as an almost great, one who could have been amazing if not for the time and her own occasional obsessions (which lead to mistakes).

Gets way too bogged down in the detail to be a good narrative and to factual to be very exciting once the main case is 'solved'.

Week Forty Nine: Brief Answers to the Big Questions

Another winner, it's been maybe 25 years since I read A Brief History Of Time, and I can't say my understanding of Quantum Physics has improved nearly as much as Stephen Hawking's ability to communicate complex concepts, concisely, has.

In other words this is a surprisingly good read and fairly easy to follow, unlike the gruelling work I made of the first book of his I read.

Good answers, somewhat technical but with enough metaphor and illustration (via words) to make a number of succinct points.

Also he has a funny, incisive and occasionally bitchy sense of humour.

Spoiler Alert: There is no god.

Week Forty Eight: Persuader

At the risk of annoying more fans of existing authors, here's another book I really disliked. I kept meaning to read one or two of these, always available at good airports, novels.

It (to me) fetishises masculinity and violence, with a product placement strategy in place for guns, gear and things that appeal to the readers of these kinds of things. It's also obsessed with details, like Tom Clancy was. Probably why fans hated that Tom Cruise played him in the movies because he wasn't tall enough. Of all the characteristics that are at play in this, height is hardly anything that matters by comparison.

It's also a little misogynistic, or maybe the exact opposite of that - Propoandist maybe? Hyperandrocentric? 

Either way it became quite weary with constant escalation and the blatant 'bad guys are evil and hurt people to death, good guys are protectors who defend people, to death' mantra.

I'll give the rest of the series a miss.

Week Forty Seven: Primates of Park Avenue

Another rapid read, this time a thinly disguised anthropology essay masking itself as the new Sex and the City. But where I found the likes of the Eat, Prey, Love and The Goldfinch as vapid 'rich peoples problems' and a waste of time, I found this delightful and witty and surprisingly educational.

Not how the rich set live, but how humans (all of us, east,west and all compass points) and primates are not that dissimilar, no matter what you may think.

Hilarious and touching, bitchy and supportive. Could not put it down. Mostly because this was an audio-book, but you get the metaphor.

Week Forty Six: Zen and the Art of Murder

It seemed like a good premise and it started interestingly, but by about a third of the way through it didn't change pace, or pick up or really grab my attention.

Not that mysterious and not that exciting, apart from confusing bursts of sudden death, it felt a little empty by the end.

Peppered with Buddhist ideas and history, it felt a little shoehorned in and the villains had no real threat or idea as to why and what they were doing.

Not bad exactly but not the gripping exceptional novel that the awards promised.

Maybe it was more exciting in German...

Week Forty Five: A Tale Of Two Cities

Deeply disappointed.

Sometimes you read a classic and understand why it is one, and then there's this.

Misogynistic, racist, imperialistic, florid and overwritten. The unforgettable opening line is instantly undercut by pointless repetition.  The final unforgettable line is undercut before it's delivery by suggesting the quote was purely imagined. 

I did not know that much of Dickens life before I read this, but afterwards I was so disturbed by his female characterisations that I had to look it up. Frankly his personal (and worrying) behaviour towards women had obviously bled through to this and other works.
And before anyone points out that he wrote it 150 odd years ago and times were different, Shakespeare was by far a large superior and predates Dickens, and Jules Verne was a contemporary and is also.

Week Forty Four: No Friend But The Mountains

Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I detest the Australian position on refugees and the practice of imprisonment, dehumanisation of the men, women and children set adrift on the surface of this world.

But it's a hard read, not because of the content, I knew what that was already, but because of the poetry that punctuates events and ideas, it slows the flow and confuses the senses. A large swathe of the book is very Arabic in it's sensibilities, focusing on people, who and why they are that way, and how that leads to the next thing. Same style as Frankenstein in Baghdad, hard to follow if it's not what you're used to.

And the endless switching between reality and surreality, makes it hard to distinguish sometimes and harder to pin down the facts.

But beautiful too, painful and flawed, horrific and transcendent in places.

It's a dichotomy, and hard work, but would I recommend it?

Yes. 

Week Forty Three: Girl Walks Into A Bar

OMG this is hilariously funny. It's the perfect set of celebrity insight, the behind the scenes "I wonder what it's like" and then BAM! A real life with dating and self image problems and exactly the right amount of (just my sense of) humour mixed in.

I've always found her funny on SNL, but then she dips away and her celebrity fades out of the limelight, yet underneath it all she's just as funny and so incredibly endearing.

I loved Bridget Jones (the first one anyway) yet if you took away the self-indulgence, ramp up the humour and made the protagonist 3x more likeable (that's how good I found this), you'd find Rachel Dratch.

Highly recommended to all my female friends single and the ones not so much...

Week Forty Two (B): The Big Sleep

I can't believe it's taken me this long to read Raymond Chandler, considering how much I liked the movies and Bogart in particular.

Witty, self-deprecating, intelligent and so far ahead of it's time. Chandler's writing is so often copied and imitated (badly compared to the whip smart writing in this).

The influence he laid down is wide and varied and so much sounds like a derivative of him. Now that I have read this, it's almost impossible to believe this was written in 1937.

Harry Dresden is a direct descendant of this, I thought it had a witty noir feel to it, but reading this takes the shine off Butcher's work a little, because this is sublime and perfect.

Whedon, Bucther, Eddings, Evanovich all take their queues from here and for good reason. It's like watching Fritz Lang's Epic "Spies" from 1927 and seeing every movie cliche laid bare as they are all used for the first and only original time in one go.

Recommended for all old movie and good book lovers.

Week Forty Two: The Walking Dead Vol 1

The Walking Dead Vol 1 is the collected first half dozen issues of the comics series as a seamless, one story graphic novel. I loved the TV show initially, but soon grew weary of it. I can see how they changed some characters and drew them in slower, more TV friendly arcs for the show, but as a comic book I think it works better.

The TV show felt taciturn and plodding at times, certainly repetitive. Can't say about the rest of the comics, but these first issues are tight, well drawn and dialogue heavy (for a comic). The opposite you would expect from a book to a video medium,

Week Forty One: In a House of Lies

Twenty Two novels on and each one is as easy and familiar as spending time with friends not seen in a while.

Rebus takes a back seat to Clarke and Fox, and with so many characters the story is starting to fracture a bit when trying to follow it, yet it still works and I'll happily read them until they stop.

Good story, well written. Always good value.

Week Forty: White Night

Surprisingly good read. I don't generally like long running series (ahem except for next weeks book) and generally find genre books tedious and repetetive with broad and often demeaning charcaterisations to move plot and stay the course.

But...

I actually really enjoyed this, self deprecating enough (instead of the omnipotent hero who always knows the exact everything), this one has enough self awareness to know and counter (most of the time) inherent social bias and occasional misogyny.

Charming, witty and irreverent in places, yet still true to it's roots and providing an exact delivery of 'what the reader wants' which is what these books are for.

I will probably read one or two more, though not the nearly twenty(?) or so that are in the series.

Harry Dresden has been on my 'must read' list for a while, and it doesn't matter that I dropped in on book 12(?) of the series. Only picked it up because the Library App featured it. Good call Auckland City's Libby...

Week Thirty Nine: A Talent For Murder

Well it seemed like a good idea, and it started out like one but quickly became disappointing. While we may never know what happened during Agatha Christie's missing 10 days, I have to hope it was nothing like the 'fictionalised' version in this book.

Far from celebrating the authour's genius and talent, the writer has instead diluted her brand entirely. She appears weak and manipulated by the most cartoonish of villains and the most ridiculous of plots. The Villain stinks of foul breath, the policeman is fat and stupid, and at every turn the plot shoehorns in a 'fact' from the time to validate each decision as far fetched and silly as it may seem.

It was readable and gripping but instead of putting Ms Christie's undoubted genius int he forefront, she is batted about by plot and machinations of everyone else and is merely along for the ride.

It also annoys me when writers retconn credit for other peoples ideas into their stories, like a time traveler suggesting some of Shakespeare's best lines and him going 'I might use that!' it dilutes the power of the character and the person. Might be funny in a comic setting (like the awesome Upstart Crow) but not when played 'seriously' like this.

Week Thirty Eight: Six Wakes

Surprisingly good if you can get past the first 100 pages or so, a rollicking good read once you realize what's really going on.

For once the "save the surprise" would have been probably better to know at the start, because then people being and acting the way they do would be less of an initial problem, and the surprise would have been 'why would you' and 'what do they do about it'.

But once I got over that hurdle the remaining 200 pages flew by and I was engrossed.

Good little sci-fi one-off novel, good beach read.

Week Thirty Seven: Buffy Season 11 Vol 1 & Vol 2

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season N continues on where the TV show left off. This was in two 160-ish page volumes from the local library and made for a good bus read, but also made me happy that the TV show ended where and when it did.

Apparently instead of being freed from the constraints of time and budget, the cracks are amplified not covered over.

Still a competent enough read, it just felt more like a cover band than the original.

Week Thirty Six: I Love Dick

Nope, I haven't been hacked.

This is supposedly a feminist and 'important' book but mostly it was a chore and an irritant.

What I took away from this was that the massively self-indulgent and deluded 'struggling' artist of the narrator was a female version of Lolita, where the obsession and constant justification for stalking was as invalid and as abusive as I found Humbert Humbert to be.

Not feminist, not much use, not much to take away from the rants about places of people in the 'art' world as it's far removed from reality.


In My Opinion, obv. 

Week Thirty Five: Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens

Funny, touching and surprisingly educational about being different and how to be OK and just move forward with it.

Third biography in a row for me and fairly similar to the first, and vastly different from the second. Love Eddie Izzard and have seen him live, so the cadence of his peculiar voice is a familiar thing to read.

BUT

So much better as an audiobook. I tried it in parts of the Audio and Ebook variety, and with the tangents, footnotes and chaotic nature of his threads, it is so much better read out, by the author.

Week Thirty Four (B): Edcuated

I had no intention of finishing two books this week, but this one just took hold of me and would not let go until it had torn me to shreds.

Holy shit what a book, what a ride and what a raw emotional experience this is.

Full of so much that it left me crying as I read it, shaking when I finished it.

Thank you to everyone who recommended it, I cannot even comprehend how affecting this is just yet.

Week Thirty Four: Back Story

Entertaining enough but I think it pales in comparison to his comedy partner's book. Which is a very unfair comparison to make.

Harder to read because he speaks in more complicated sentences, with caveats for almost every thing he says.

Where it really shines is the second to last chapter where he suddenly, unexpectedly and most importantly, charmingly, falls in love with Victoria Coren.

A good laugh, light enough to read through and not particularly deep or meaningful, which I more than suspect is very deliberate, he pretty much states that he's not deep at all.

I think it's probably much better in audiobook format as he writes like he speaks, which is somehow harder to read than you'd think.

Week Thirty Three: The List

It was well written but annoying. I guess that makes it closer to Salman Rushdie than whoever wrote Twilight... I really enjoyed the style of the book and the writing, got caught up very quickly and could not put it down .... at first.

Loads of cliches about the end of the world and eco-disasters, evil dictators whose logic defies logic, and whose capacity for stupidity is parallel to their capacity for spitefulness.

The language-reduction-premise sounded good, but by the time they start explaining it it fell apart rapidly.

Also not sure of this book's message or politics here? The world is heading to an ecological disaster, but the people trying to stop/save the world are evil pricks? So they're right but also inhumane and insane?

Also, Flood, Ark and a protagonist called John Noa? Get a sledgehammer, it would be more subtle.

Ok that last bit was a bit bitchy, but I also just watched the end of the Maze Runner series and it does the whole 'evil-leader-end of the world-stupidity-torture-porn' the same way.

Week Thirty Two: Flashpoint

Busy week this week and while I am reading too many things at once (in reviews to come when I'm done) I put some time aside to finish a Graphic Novel that's been on my list for years.

Flashpoint. Worth the hype, very well composed and realised.

Week Thirty One: Frankenstein in Baghdad

Umm.

Not sure about this. It was very good in it's portrayal of a bunch of people, though most seem superfluous to the larger story which it was very hard to keep track of.

However it did sound very much like middle eastern people tell stories, at least based on my experience. Every person has a backstory that tells you something about them, something hidden and something related to the thing that just happened.

Dark though, and oddly compelling even if it ended abruptly with the old 'and it's all true as told to me the author' bit.

Not particularly funny, but definitely interesting and powered by the image and sense of war.

Week Thirty: 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy

Big bowl of ... meh.

Loads of interesting 'facts' but not often that well substantiated unless you want to check the references in the back of the book.

I understand it was from a podcast, or radio series or something I can't be bothered chasing down.

As a book it was too lightweight and twee, and each 'thing' felt like it was an hour of 'Connections' boiled to a 5 minute summary (minus most of the facts).

Occasionally very interesting things though, just not all of them have much more than dubious nods to the global modern economy...

I bought this one year ago (July 22nd 2017) to read on the plane home from Sydney, and quickly realised it was too light (even for a flight).

Week Twenty Nine: Artemis

There are quite a few things wrong with this book.

1. The first third is world setting with very little idea of what plot is coming
2. The second third is pure policitcal/criminal thriller all of a sudden and unexpectedly murderey
3. The last third is all science in furtherance of solving  the first two thirds

And lastly the main character is an answer to the question, 'what if the guy in the Martian, was a girl?'

Didn't like it and it occasionally has some dodgy ideas about life, society, underage sex (weirdly), and human behaviour.

Not deeply uncomfortable, but a lot of this bugged me.

Week Twenty Eight: Dietland

Really not sure about this book (just yet). I mean it is VERY GOOD. It is also not quite sitting right with me, but probably for the wrong reasons (as a writer not a reader). It is VERY engaging and I could not put it down, whether I agree with it's purpose/point or not.

Very feminist and empowered, it's hard to take in some places but should still be taken for the reasons that this is good and important.

I felt like the explaining who Jennifer Is/Was diluted it's power and derailed it's meaning. Yet now I feel like I'm betraying the author by mansplaining the bits I didn't like. Which is a fair reaction considering that this book is just the latest in series of feminist works that have impacted me directly this last year or so.

Read it, make up your own mind.

Still not sure about my own mind on it, maybe it needs to sit with me like The Handmaids Tale did (I had a similar writers reaction after reading the book last year and then ended up settling on 'loved it').

Week Twenty Seven: Borrowed Time

Very curious how this would be considering how much I LOVED The Power and how many decades I have been a Who fan.

Did not disappoint. Fans of Alderman may not get the plot/characters and the general feel of a Who story, and fans of Who may not appreciate the biting satirical elements and the general disdain of human behaviour when given free rein.

Twice now she's written works about how the Lucifer Effect (see Philip Zimbardo/Stanford Experiment) takes hold in people, and I don't know if it's because she believes it or is fascinated by it.

Either way its a cracking read for me, a fan of both.

Week Twenty Six: This Is Going To Hurt

Week Twenty Six and at halfway through the year, another 26 weeks to go. This is another highly recommended read, but beware as the title suggests it will hurt. If it doesn't then there is something seriously wrong with you. Mostly hilarious and insightful, it takes a deft scalpel to life as a Junior Doctor (plenty of other critics have many better puns, but this one feels appropriate).

However when it turns on you just before the end, it's like going to a hilarious stand up show and the last joke is the comic killing himself (no that's not the end of the book, but it hits just as hard) after telling you none of it is funny.

It made me cry, suddenly and shockingly it hit me square in the face.

Read.

Week Twenty Five: A Day In The Life Of Marlon Bundo

Hah! Excellent trolling but also a cute and funny tale (not tail - puns are nor welcome here).

A short but pleasing read, while I edit the manuscript I'm working on this week for publication next week.

W

Week Twenty Four: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Definitely for novices to Astrophysics as it takes great pains to lightly describe concepts that are already quite well known. So I found most of it was retreading ground already covered in other works, and therefore a bit slow to engage.

But I can hear NDGT's voice delivering some of the more witty pieces and can forgive the repetition because occasionally I learned something I had not picked up elsewhere.

So if you know little and want to know more, go ahead, but if you're fan of Hawking, Greene or Gribbin's much more detailed works then this may be the equivalent of a remake of a rerun of a television show you've seen many times already.

Week Twenty Three: One Way

Well it was a quick and intriguing read, but very dissatisfying, well before the end. The mystery is far from hard to guess, but thats not really a/the problem. It's the characters.

Everyone is a dick.

I'm really tired of conservative values, anger and 'serves you right' and 'shut the fuck up' thinking, especially in a book I spend time on.

A little bit The Martian, a little bit Tom Clancy, and a lot of Fox News.

Annoyed me.

Week Twenty Two: The Outsider

Been a while since I read a King book, and I don't generally read horror OR supernatural. BUT he's a bloody good writer and this is no exception. Finished the 500 odd pages in 4 days, and if I hadn't been busier I may have finished it in two.

Gripping and engaging, still weaves a fairly solid narrative and draws you in with well thought out characters and rarely feels like you don't know who is talking in a conversation, a rare skill I always have problems with as a reader and a writer.

If you like King then this is a no-brainer. It does start quite horrifically so if you're of a more delicate sensibility, just take my word for it.

Week Twenty One: When

Another great sociology book, this concentrating specifically on the timing of things. A pretty easy read with LOADS of references (always a good sign) and insights, practical advice and case studies.

Worth a read and it should be adhered to more often, we've been saying for ages that teenagers sleep in and aren't worth much in the morning, and yet we do nothing about it.

Can't be that hard, just try FFS.

Week Twenty: Technically Wrong

Possibly the most personally affecting book I have read since How To Win A Cosmic War. Instead of a epiphany of belief it's been an heart-breaking embarrassment of many of the things I have said and done in my tech career.

I am (what I would call) a feminist, and a fair minded person, and I try to do what I think is right. But I was occasionally appalled by what I read in this book, not because it's surprising (it is not) but the behaviours called out are ones I have/do employ, and the reasons for defending that behaviour are the very reasons I have used to declare myself ok.

I'm not, it's not, and I should not remain that way now I can see that.

Not beating myself up at all, but now I can actually see it and I can't believe I was so easily convinced that wrong was right, and worse that I convinced others of that too.

Do better.

Week Nineteen: The Bat

Not read any of his before and so it was on my list to read at some point. This heavily discounted copy was on sale at Book Depository and the rest was a matter of international postage times.

Better than expected, as it does not suffer from 'impossibly expert hero" syndrome and neither 'deeply flawed bucket of angst' syndrome. Instead there's an alcoholic who falls off the wagon, makes loads of mistakes, totally misses the point half the time and then slowly works it out and luck plays a huge part of it.

So you know, like real people with real jobs and assumably cops and doctors etc...

Refeshingly normal 'hero'

Does suffer from 'single voice' and occasionally lazy exposition, but charming enough to not care as much.

Week Eighteen: Surfacing

Not sure what to make of it, which I suspect is the author's intent. It's deliberately obtuse, allegorical and metpahor abounds to the point where things happen, then they don't and the protagonist narrates her descent into madness (or clarity, again I'm unsure which it is).

It is however well written and engaging even if oblique to the point of frustrating resolutionlessness (yes I know it's not a real word, but what is real anyway? Grow some fur and sleep in a den, it'll make more sense then).

Week Seventeen: Nudge

 Not sure if this is a light science book or a heavy big budget movie?

Starts off with a hiss and a roar and is majorly engaging. Delivers what it says on the tin. But drags a little in the middle then redeems itself at the end.

No superheroes in it, so it must be the book. Loads of very interesting tidbits, but it overestimates how much interest we have on ... well ... interest, really. It weighs itself down when looking at healthcare, mortgages and heavy finance. Which is kind of the point it makes, repeatedly, but still hard work in places, worth it in others.

Week Sixteen: Here is Real Magic

Well written, well meaning and a good light read.
Wasn't really sure what it was about, even after reading it (which is not a bad thing at all) but it was short and seemed intriguing.

And it was, the perfect antidote for last weeks self absorbed introspective train wreck, this was a delightful and curious examination of the self from a much less selfish perspective and I was genuinely entertained even i the book turned back to a solution that you could have found on page one.

Week Fifteen: 12 Rules for Life

Just don't.
I have better uses of my time than to review this waste of time any further.

Week Fourteen: The Power

One of the best, if not THE best, books I have read in years. I cannot recommend it enough. It does exactly what it says on the tin. Holds a mirror to Men, Women, Misogyny, Power, Abuse ... there are so many things I could say about this book, I whipped through it carefully, if such a thing can be true.

It's very violent and dark in place, and not at all far fetched if you simply change the pronouns.

And unlike the morality tales of the many imitators of true dystopian fairy tales, this ends where it should and serves the story, not a moral and not a central character's arc.

Scarily Good.

Week Thirteen: American Gods

Since I had finished the disturbingly bad book so quickly, I had more time to read something longer and something much MUCH better.

Definitely a good read and recommended, even though it's a bit hard to follow as reality bends and twists to encompass ideas over plot, and metamorphosis over reality.

Full of heavy imagery and occasionally challenging to get through, the shocks and sudden lurches in plot, violence and character all work. It feels like 5 books in one, a journey, a mystery, a scam, a legend and a memoir all within the realm of fiction, fantasy and excellent writing.

Worth the effort. Been on my list, started twice before and never got round to getting past the first 100 pages, glad I did finally.

Week Twelve: Something is Rotten

Nope. I've written post-it notes better than this. As much as it pains me to make the obvious joke, The Rotten Something ... is this book. Two nights of my (reading) life I won't get back.

I feel really bad sometimes, especially when I criticise other writers work, because it makes me think that mine must have similar issues or tonal problems and I just can't see them. Like these two authors, who openly pose as a fictional author of a work of fiction, which contains another, worse, work of fiction within it. I get the idea, a play within a play, a book within a book, so much Hamlet!

Every character spouts exposition in long dialogues, there's a weird fascination with baths and showers, and hair. The story is ridiculous and the characters with less depth than cardboard cut outs.

Two good things, if this can published surely anything can? And it was short, mercifully so.
 

Week Eleven: Modern Romance

Another winner, easy to read and mostly digestible without leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Most 'relationship' books fall into one of three categories: Funny (and can't be taken seriously), Academic (and dry and divorced from actuality) or opinionated claptrap selling a franchise of ideas as a silver bullet once you accept the authors patented approach to it all.

Modern Romance is the only one (I've read) I can recall that is both of the first two in that list but with none of the third.

Funny and erudite, it does a lot to fill in the gaps on human behaviour while backing it up statistically and anecdotally with real world examples. Mostly drawn from his time on the road talking to the wider, younger public (who go to his shows, so that demographic anyway).

Another highly recommended read.

Week Ten: The Buried Giant

A book full of symbolism, allegory and recollection. So it's not an easy read, even if you're just trying to follow the plot. It whips back and forward ever so slowly, but each transition is jarring and yet gentle.

A book of contradictions, beautiful language and plot delivered inside dialogue. Often Ishiguro will recall conversations between people and events, so you jump to a new chapter and there are people and things that were not there before, then a character will recount how that happened. Occasionally hard to follow, worth the effort though.

Never really sure where it would end up, who was important and who was not, and what it all meant. Until the Buried Giant is revealed and the Ferryman remains unpaid.

Week Nine: MegaTokyo Vol 01 to 03 Datapack

Weirdly a long hard read even though it was originally an episodic web comic.

I used to really enjoy reading this online, but in a collected volume like this it really suffers, OR, it was bad and seeing it all in one go highlighted that?

Hard to know, starts well but seems to lose it's way with plotting, character and the underlying themes somewhere after the 3rd year or more.

I've had this for ages and struggled to finish it and it's close to 400 pages of pure storyline before all the special features kick in.

Unless you're a fan or ... well only if you're a fan I think.

Week Eight: The Spaceman of Bohemia

What a great book. This is the kind of Sci Fi I really like, it's not about science OR fiction, it's centered on big ideas that you can only come to via a story that uses both these things to show more about reality from a surreal angle.

Ostensibly it's just a story, similar in plot to Gravity, but instead of Sandra Bullock, this is a protagonist flawed and deeply scarred, though not aware at all. Until he runs and falls to ... well no spoilers, but it's well done.

A story of love, revenge and pirates (no wait, thats the Princess Bride)... it's surprising and light, logical and deep.

Loved this.

Easy to read, easy to immerse yourself in someone else's tragic backstory and marvel at the author who weaves a complex, intersecting web of real people into a simple narrative, with an extraordinary premise.

So yeah. Loved it.

Week Seven - The End of Mr Y

Started promisingly enough, ended poorly. In the authors own words it could have been viewed as a Shaggy God Story.

Because it was.

Tarted up in Philosphy and Pseudo Science.

Well written and constructed in one or two different ways, and I'm sure it appeals to some others, someone reccomended it to me some years ago and I never got into it. Hence on my list for another reading year.

I can see its appeal.

I can also see it's conceit and pretention.

Oh well, I was a conscious effort to read and as such it worked.

Week Six: The Three Body Problem

The first book I think I have read cover to cover on my phone as an E Book.

I have a IP7 Plus but even so it was a bit of an ask... anyway.

The book was intriguing at first and the more I go into the mystery of it the more intriguing it got. The book started to fall apart when it became less mysterious and the explanations were forthcoming, then it started to be annoying.

Motivation carries a lot of weight, and in the case of this you have to suspend disbelief a TON to make the story work. Not because it's Sci Fi, and not because the premise is hard to fathom, but because human beings don't just act like this, well not to this scale anyway.

And aliens, don't act like humans do they? I mean as a trope they do, but this seems like the perfect opportunity to explore possibilities that don't require everyone to be dicks.

Sigh.

But. Part one of a three-parter and I kinda want to know if they fix that in the end?

Warning: A lot of Math and Physics and Philosophy that does kind of make sense, but doesn't really. Nothing new there, I guess.