Archives for category: Fiction
« Older Entries

Books 2025

January 4, 2026 //
0

I’m usually more on top of tracking my books in Goodreads – just didn’t this year until I noticed a couple of hours ago that I’d recorded two for 2025. Busily added the rest that I’d read/listened to as noted in my journals. Grand total (I think) of 31.

Dutch:
I’ve started reading Dutch kids books that I find in Little Free Libraries. It’s helping a little bit. I’d do myself a greater favour by reading the kranten (newspapers – I learned yesterday the root of this word is ‘courant’ a French term for newspaper also used in English). Anyway:

Wipneus en Pim bij de Trappertjes by B.G. Van Wijckmade

Lotje Met Chimp naar het Circus by Jaap ter Haar

Audio:

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan (highly recommended – fascinating stuff)

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

To Hell With Poverty by Jon King (narrated by the author, a history of the initial run of the band Gang of Four. Andy Gill had passed away before its publication, so can’t argue with King’s general assessment that he was a serious expletivedeleted.)

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang (depressing insofar as the inherent sexism of the Valley hasn’t changed in 40 years and it’s only getting worse. But a great piece of reporting.)

Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn.

Speaking My Mind by Leo Varadkar (Very interesting, but I fear he’s too protective of his own [well-earned, don’t get me wrong] legacy. He could have taken more risks with it. Also: before reading, bone up on the main Irish political parties. He writes for an audience that knows one from another.)

Head On by John Scalzi

Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri

Other stuff:
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis (This is an early 19th C. Brazilian classic read by just about every high school student there – it was recommended to my office book club by a Brazilian colleague. I quite enjoyed it, but what I really wanted to talk about in our discussion of it is how it’s informed by Vita Nuova (see above), Tristram Shandy, and Candide. Which no one else in the group had read. I doubt I’ll make the time to write the essay that ties them all together, but I want to.)

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Light slightly fantastical reading that I enjoyed. Read it for both the office book club and the local expat book club this year.)

Nana and Luna by Delacorta (same main characters as Diva – light reading if you can ignore the 14 year old protagonist’s highly sexualised presentation. The 80s were a different time.)

Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett (Classic Pratchett.

Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis (expat book club entry – interesting but ultimately depressing to me. As a new dog owner, I found the deaths of dogs hard to take.)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Gorgeous. Highly recommended.)

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred Year Old Man by Jonas Jonasson. (If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll enjoy this one too.)

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Moreno-Garcia is an excellent writer and this one’s a treat – super-creepy mid-20th century set take on the old gothic novel, with nods to The Yellow Wallpaper.)

The Planets by Andrew Cohen and Brian Cox (Gorgeous tour of the solar system with the depressing notation that the likelihood of other planets like Earth in our galactic neighborhood is very slim.)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (I enjoyed this one and am likely to check out more – pretty sure I have Daisy Jones and the Six in my TBR. Hugo is an actress from the golden age of Hollywood who contracts a writer for a Vanity Fair-like mag to write her life story. With twists.)

The Fisherman by John Langan (Recommended by my friend Matt, this was a doozy. I don’t do horror, generally, but I was intrigued by his description of it being stories within stories. Langan was meticulous in his construction of this tale. I’m going to read more by him, but this is his only novel. Several short story collections await.

Patti Smith – Just Kids (reread for expat book club – so good, but so sad. While I’m well familiar with the setting and the people Smith talks about, the Dutch members of the club – not entirely expat, come to think of it – and the 28 year-old Ukrainian woman found the name-dropping a little hard going.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick (It’s PKD – if it weren’t weird, you’d be surprised.)

Strange Angels by Andrea Speed (sweet queer fantasy of competition between gods among other things.)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Gorgeous and winding and it helps to create a family tree in the first chapters so you know what’s going on later. Very sad but so well done. Roy definitely earned her Booker with this one.)

Unleashed by Emily Kimelman (Sydney Rye Mysteries #1) (Beginner detective takes on the powerful of NYC with the help of a fantastic dog. #2, Death in the Dark, is a novella. I’ve got #3, Insatiable, queued up.)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands-set novel of a trio of siblings and the strange history of the house their parents bought after WW2. Also: The best-written sex I’ve come across in ages. Some, but not all, members of the office book club were put off.)

James by Percival Everett (I enjoyed this retelling of the Huck Finn story from Jim’s perspective. A Pulitzer Prize in literature is usually a mark of quality. Amusingly, the woman at Marcus Books in Oakland who sold it to me said that she’d read several other works by Everett and didn’t think this was close to his best.)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (I missed this when it was in competition with Grisham’s The Firm for the book everyone on Muni was reading, and I think it would have served me better had I read it at 25 or so, but I enjoyed it. Very strange to read a tale of a shepherd boy in search of Truth just before picking up my current reading, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago.)

Categories audiobooks, books, Fiction, Literature

Books read in September, 2022

October 5, 2022 //
0

Victoria Aveyard – Red Queen – Enjoyable YA (sort of) fantasy. A bit dystopian, I really liked how Aveyard set up the opposing factions. However much I was satisfied with the ending, I’m not driven to pick up the next ones in the series.

Marcus Alexander Hart – Alexa vs. The Afterlife – Ah. Alexa vs. The Merry Menace makes a lot more sense now. Former child star now slightly alcoholic punk discovers magical powers with the help of a couple of interesting undead folks. Very amusing.

Paul Verlaine – Poems of Paul Verlaine – Having passed by Verlaine’s birthplace on an overnight visit to Metz, I thought it a good time to read some of his work. Very beautiful stuff.

Cosey Fanni Tutti – Re-Sisters (audio) – Absolutely fascinating memoir/double biography, taking in the lives of medieval mystic Marjorie Kemp and modern electronic musician Delia Derbyshire. Cosey wraps their three lives together with some gorgeous insights into the nature of recording one’s life.

John Scalzi – Agent to the Stars (audio) – Another great Wil Wheaton narration. Protagonist, a Hollywood agent, is roped into figuring out how to negotiate first contact with gelatinous aliens. With an absolutely appropriate in context side trip into Holocaust territory. Beautifully done.

Tags , , , , , ,
Categories audiobooks, books, Fiction, Writing

Books read in June, 2022

July 3, 2022 //
0

Sanford Greenberg – Hello Darkness, My Old Friend (audio) – Memoir

Confucius – The Analects (translated by James Legge) – Philosophy

Travis Baldacre – Legends and Lattes – Fantasy

Lina Rather – Sisters of the Forsaken Stars – SF

P. Djeli Clark – A Master of Djinn – Steampunk/Detective

Tags , ,
Categories audiobooks, books, Fiction

Books read in May 2022

June 8, 2022 //
0

Lina Rather – Sisters of the Vast Black – Very good novella of nuns in space in a sentient organic spaceship. This does not do it any justice. Definitely for fans of Becky Chambers, MR Kowal and the like. Looking forward to sequel Sisters of the Forsaken Stars.

Gertrude Bell – The Desert and the Sown – Gracious, but this took me ages to finish. I’m pretty sure I started reading it about eight months ago. Bell’s travels in 1903 Palestine and Syria are fascinating. She tells of her meetings with the members of various tribes with the eyes and ears of an archeologist, linguist and historian. (Bell is namechecked in a book I read last year by Vita Sackville-West and I had to find out who she was. Often referred to as the female Lawrence of Arabia, she led a fascinating life. And was recently portrayed by Nicole Kidman (Queen of the Desert which is on my to-see list).

John Doe, et al – Under the Big Black Sun (audio) – Gorgeous evocations of the late 70s Los Angeles punk scene as told by members of the various acts who made it happen including (but not limited to) Doe, Henry Rollins, Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey, and the man who later became El Vez. I was just a little too young at the time, I remember the acts and the times with greatly renewed fondness.

Joshua Winning – The Shadow Glass – Written for all the fans of gorgeous 80s fantasy movies. A beautiful homage to the ones who’ve kept the fandom going. Follows the estranged son of the recently deceased creator of a perfect movie that stands alongside Labyrinth and The Neverending Story who doesn’t quite know what to do when his father’s creations come to life. The fandom come to his aid.

Jessica Khoury – The Mystwick School of Musicraft (audio)
Jessica Khoury – The Midnight Orchestra (audio) – These two middle-grade (9-12 year old target audience) stories are absolutely charming and I recommend them highly. Khoury was interviewed on the Exolore podcast about cartography and mentioned these books in closing. The narrator earns a spot in the the titular Mystwick school and adventures ensue with new friends and new adversaries. Extra shout-outs for inclusivity and fantastic sound design. (These are also free if you have an Audible subscription.)

Tags , , ,
Categories audiobooks, Fiction

The Sandman Audio Drama

December 8, 2021 //
1

Last year I signed up for Audible for the sole purpose of listening to the new audio version of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. And I enjoyed it greatly, even though it comprised only a small portion of the 75-issue comic that ran between 1989 and 1996. I think there must have been a selection process to determine whether there was sufficient interest to cover the whole thing. The first release included Morpheus’ first trip into hell, the brutal Collectors episode, Calliope, Facade, The Dream of a Thousand Cats, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But wait! What about Orpheus, Augustus, and The World’s End? Well, fast forward to a few months ago when Audible released Sandman Act II.

Ah, there we find some more of my beloved favourite stories. It seems like they’re working around to doing the whole thing. Eventually. In Act II, we meet Orpheus (in the French Revolution-set Thermidor – Where do you hide a severed head?) and having met his mother in Act I.

In general, they’re doing a good job of telling the essential stories – there are so many characters and there’s so much rich storytelling in Gaiman’s original material (not to mention in Gaiman’s own source material, which includes Shakespeare, Greek mythology, science, fiction, and the mythologies that make up a lot of history) that planning this out required a lot of choices regarding order and the transition from illustrated storytelling to audio. When the original run of Gaiman’s Sandman concluded in 1996, it was obvious that its conclusions had been in mind from very nearly the beginning (this remains a spoiler-free zone, note). Almost everyone we meet has a role.

My main issue, has to do with that very transition. When you read a graphic novel, there’s no reason to describe all the characters – we can see them. What we get in the audio drama is a lot more exposition than perhaps the story needs. We know what Dream and Death, Desire and Despair look like from their first descriptions. There’s no need, usually, to repeat. And it’s okay for the listener to fill things in that are left out of the text. These stories are especially strong and, mellifluous as Gaiman’s voice is, this kind of exposition could have been trimmed in favour of more showing. (I’ll note that being familiar with the source material, I can picture a lot of the story based in the original illustrations. I do wonder what listeners coming to this without the prior experience think.)

Having finished the last couple chapters (The Hunt, Soft Places, The Parliament of Rooks, and Ramadan), I’m overall very pleased with the production values, the acting, and the script. My gripes regarding exposition are minor. I think a lot depends on the story. I didn’t feel the descriptions were problematic or overtaking the stories as the audiobook progressed.

It’s interesting how the people working on this have balanced the overarching story with pieces that are one-offs in context. The framing of Three Septembers, for example, provide some background on the conflict between Dream and Desire. The last four stories are all self-contained, but provide more context about who Dream is. Weirdly, Act II’s centerpiece, A Game of You, only has a couple of scenes with Dream at the very end. And it can be hard to see how it fits into the greater narrative. (In this moment it comes to me that it bears a structural affinity to The Hound of the Baskervilles in which Sherlock Holmes only shows up at the very end.)

In considering the stories not yet shared in audiobook form, I wonder if a forthcoming Act III or Act IV will cover The World’s End which had some insanely good artwork and at least two wordless two-page spreads that will be hard to describe. As the series progressed, the art got more and more interesting (and even the earliest issues weren’t slouching in this department). This might also be why the audio exposition is so detailed sometimes.

In any event, I definitely recommend it, whether you’ve read the graphic novels or not.

Tags , , , , ,
Categories audiobooks, Fiction, Writing
« Older Entries