As someone who is lately reading a lot of philosophy (starting from the classics, with all the Plato’s dialogues), this “Time of the Magicians” book has been a nice discovery, thanks!
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oh hey I’m slowly reading my way through Plato as well!
Have you read The Just City by Jo Walton? It’s Athene and a bunch of time travelling scholars try to build an experiemental society based on Plato’s Republic. I found it fascinating when I first read it years ago, sort of kickstarted my interest in philosophy, though I haven’t revisited it since I actually started reading Plato myself.
Well, it doesn’t start until April 1, but I got the e-mail announcement today that the folks behind Dracula Daily are going to be starting another book with the real time delivery format, this time doing the Honeywood Files, which is a story about the design and construction of a house told through letters. I’ve loved my annual slow read of Dracula over the last few years and I loved shows like This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop as a kid, so I’m looking forward to it… if anyone else is interested, the subscription link is:
Tetralogy. There are four books in the Terra Ignota series, so yay, you get a 33% bonus! Also, Sniper is completely made of awesome, and makes me wonder whether Ada Palmer has a dollification kink.
I’m currently reading Ann Leckie’s Translation State, set in the same universe as Ancillary Justice.
My TBR pile is literally measured in centuries, but the next few items on it are Katabasis (R. F. Kuang), The Everlasting (Alix Harrow), In Universes (Emet North), The Shattering Peace (John Scalzi), and Everfair (Nisi Shawl). Recent reads include Impossible Creatures (Katharine Rundell), Trilby (George du Maurier), When The Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi), and Interior Chinatown (Charles Yu).
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Hadrian Sun Eater IV: Kingdoms of Death takes a very dark turn. After the interstellar explorations of the previous installments, and after showcasing some truly (quantum woOoohooOoo) superhuman abilities, Hadrian Marlowe is captured by the Aliens and broken down by physical and psychological torture to less of a man than he ever was.
Good thing from both a Watsonian and a Doylist perspective. The character gains depth by distress and separation from his friends in-story, and out-of-universe, the superpowers-creep is broken off so the author can take some rest from inventing ever more impressive feats of power and start a fresh arc with the broken hero as a starting point.
Very grim, but a welcome and well-written turn in the story of Hadrian Halfmortal.
No, I hadn’t heard of The Just City: another one to the wishlist, which keeps expanding too fast… I’m actually currently reading Republic, so it seems like good timing, hehe. Thanks!
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Still catching up on Robin Hobb, and still loving it. I read the first book of the Tawny Man-trilogy (yes, I know the Farseer-trilogy comes first, but I like reading out of order…).
Fool’s Errand was great! Undercover kidnap-recovery, lots of magic(religious) prosecution, deep character work.
My current main reading, on my Kindle, with utterly gargantuan font needed for disability reasons. A mix of fiction and non fiction, history, SFX magazine columns, and oh so very much Venice. I’m starting a virtual tour of Venice for a few months (self directed), and reading is part of it.
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Screenshot of a Kindle Paperwhite in portrait mode, with black and white / greyscale screen. Two rows of 3 book covers are visible. On the top row are “Echolands: A Journey in search of Boudica” by Duncan Mackay, “The Glassmaker” by Tracy Chevalier, and “The SEX Column and other misprints” by David Langford (the first collection of his SFX magazine columns). On the row below are “Venice Tales: Stories selected and edited by Katia Pizzi” (with a gondola on the cover), “Restoration London: Everyday life in London 1660-1670” by Liza Picard, and “A History of Venice” by John Julius Norwich (the cover didn’t download properly).
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A week in a small cottage in France. Hikes, good food, and reading.
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The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes: History of Romantic Science, a period which Holmes situates broadly between two great explorations: the circumnavigation of the world by James Cook, with botanist Joseph Banks as a pioneer ethnologist on Tahiti in 1769, and the voyage of the Beagle with the young Charles Darwin with his discerning eye, his inquisitive mind, and a copy of Lyell’s Principles of Geology, gathering data and knowledge about the enormous diversity of Life, and ushering in the more specialised and professional age of Victorian Science.
Many natural philosophers/scientists are presented, with the main emphasis on the astronomer brother and sister William and Caroline Hershel, and Humphry Davy as the main protagonist in the develoment of Chemistry, the leading Science in this period.
What struck me most about this history is the close interconnection of Poetry and Science, with similar attitudes towards the Genius and the inspiration by the Muse, and the eagerly taken opportunity to actively intervene in natural processes through the development of electrical and magnetic apparatus.
The Age of Wonder - Wikipedia -
Heralds of Empire by Agnes C. Laut. A 1902 historical novel about the fur-trade in the high North of the American continent, the rivalry between New England and New France for dominance in what would become Canada. For the most part an adventure novel, with quaint authorial interjections about the contrast between the Old World and the New World. Here’s the dedication of the book:
DEDICATED TO THE NEW WORLD NOBILITY
—Now I learned how the man must have felt when he set about conquering the elements, subduing land and sea and savagery. And in that lies the Homeric greatness of this vast fresh New World of ours.
Your Old World victor takes up the unfinished work left by generations of men. Your New World Hero begins at the pristine task. I pray you, who are born to the nobility of the New World, forget not the glory of your heritage; for the place which God hath given you in the history of the race is one which men must hold in envy when Roman patrician and Norman conqueror and robber baron are as forgotten as the kingly lines of old Egypt.—
And now I’m looking for some more agency in my reading. Time for Spring Thing!
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I’ve been reading loads this year. I started off the year reading the other Queens of Crime beyond Agatha Christie. So Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L Sayers, of course, but then also Josephine Tey, Gladys Mitchell, Christianna Brand, and even a Georgette Heyer.
Of them all, I’ll say that Allingham had wonderfully drawn characters though the mystery wasn’t really sustained, and the tightest clockwork puzzle box might have been London Particular by Christianna Brand. Georgette Heyer’s Why Shoot A Butler? was entertaining but the thing only works because the detective never shares his thoughts with the reader.
Then I decided to reread the Witches Discworld novels, but also read the original works they were parodying. So I read Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and now I’m making my way through The Phantom of the Opera.
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I’ve been reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and just came across this little aside that amused me:
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The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom tells the sprawling story of Europe in the time period from 1900 to 1914. Scientific and technological progress is reaching ever-higher peaks, but the confidence and hedonistic joie-de-vivre of the fin de siècle is gone. Instead there is a rising unease with where all this futuristic progress will take humanity next, a fear of stubborn women insisting that they should have the right to vote, and a general nostalgia for the more manly and militaristic virtues of only a few decades before.
Very interesting, but, inevitably, by the breadth of its scope, fragmented and dijointed. I personally enjoyed his A Wicked Company about the Enlightenment radicals more for it tighter and more focused history.
Philipp Blom - Wikipedia -
Raoul Schrott’s novel Tristan da Cunha is a difficult, deep, emotionally moving and intellecually challenging literary experience. Four narrators tell their story about lost love, a yearning for peace of mind, a restlessness of their soul. At the eye of the storm of their narration is always the South-Atlantic island group Tristan da Cunha. Throughout the novel, he reader gets to know the history of these islands from 1500 to the present day. It serves as a symbol for mankind’s need of utopias to project their wishes upon, and the inevitability of a utopia paradoxically becoming less real the closer one gets to it.
Beautiful nature imagery, deep character studies, broad naval, natural, and cultural history.
Raoul Schrott - Wikipedia
Besides these static fictions, I’m still reading Peter Levine’s The Anachronist for the IF Marathon event.
It’s turning out quite a bit longer than I expected. It’s also a captivating read.
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My annual reading of Dracula via Dracula Daily started on the 3rd. Today’s installment consisted of Lucy’s first letter to Mina, in which we first here of Arthur Homewood and a not yet named owner of a Lunatic Asylum.
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Happy new Dungeon Crawler Carl day.
I was able to make reading the newest Murderbot that came out last Tuesday take exactly a week.
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Dracula Daily is a neat idea. I’ve actually just been reading the novel for the first time (after reading The Vampyre and Carmilla in advance of reading Carpe Jugulum) and have greatly enjoyed the first three chapters.
What I want to say about vampires is that the early stories are about the fear of harm coming to women from wicked charmers. And what Dracula manages to do is overlay so much more gothic and supernatural elements, so the horror of the vampire isn’t just one kind of horror but several all at once.
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Ooooh, I always envy someone about to read Sir Terry for the first time. 
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I’m actually doing a reread of the Witches books, as I’ve read all of Discworld except for the last two Tiffany Aching novels, and it’s been a long enough time (maybe 15-20 years). This time around, I’ve been reading the source material for the parodies before each one. So I read Macbeth before Wyrd Sisters, Midsummer Night’s Dream before Lords and Ladies, and The Phantom of the Opera novel and musical (and an episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em) before Maskerade. And so now I’m reading the vampire canon before Carpe Jugulum.
This extended read has enhanced my enjoyment of the novels, though the direct comparison doesn’t always favour Pratchett. The books are very lightweight, and I usually fly through them in a few days. They’re funny, there’s usually at least a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, and the characters become richer the longer he goes. But Roundworld casts a long shadow over Discworld, and I feel that the parodic elements often undermine the dramatic potential. This is a pitfall for any work that relies on comedic references.
For example, the original Phantom of the Opera is a ridiculously melodramatic work, but I became thoroughly engrossed in Raoul and the Persian’s descent into the underworld beneath the opera. In Maskerade, there are many funny scenes, but no risk. Our sometime protagonist Agnes is never in any danger. It’s not interested in those kinds of stakes.
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Well, they are certainly different. What they lack in melodramatic tension (they have a different type of tension), they make up for in energy, vigour, and - I think - surprising insight, and a real emphasis on people rather than, say, “themes” and “plot contrivances”.
I have read Leroux’s, and I remember little. Masquerade has stayed in my heart. That means something.
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Just finished my first Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness. Interesting, but not my favorite flavor of reading.
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