Reading Wednesday
Jul. 31st, 2013 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings. This was a very fun, if sort of forgettable, nonfiction book about, well, geography. And basically anything he could connect to that: a chapter on National Geographic's Geography Bee, a chapter on antique map collectors, a chapter on geocaching, a chapter on people who like to travel to random destinations (the places where specific lines of longitude and latitude cross, or the highest point in every state, etc), a chapter on maps of imaginary places (Middle-Earth, Narnia, etc). It's an interesting topic, and Jennings is a good writer for this sort of light, amusing thing.
Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly. I loved this book, of course, no one is surprised. I loved getting to see more of Chloe, and Henri, and Minou (I love that Minou's guess– at the very beginning of the book which everyone else dismisses as her having read too many novels– turns out not to be terribly far off from what actually happened). They are all of them awesome characters. I quite liked Rowena Bray as well, and Mede, who are both very memorable for being single-book characters. I really loved the flashback to Livia (and Ben and Olympe) being bought by Janvier; it was a great flashback. I like Edgar Allan Poe as a fictional character, and I like the various allusions to his writing (I am less happy about him opposing abolition, which I had previously been unaware of, but I suppose that is the danger of writing about real people). I don't like that Rose and Hannibal are hardly in this book, but ah, well.
I think the problems Ben deals with in this book are much more structural than the ones in most of the previous books, which I suppose is appropriate for a book set in DC. But things like being unable to go to the police, Dominique's lack of a place in this city, the killing of Quent (and subsequent penance), who the baseball team can and can't play (or will and won't play)... none f them are the problems of an individual. Although I suppose this is the case in all of the series; I just felt it was a bit more so here.
Anyway, I also feel that– after Hannibal, Lady Jamilla, and Singletary– Ben should open a rehab clinic. It could be his new money-making scheme!
(Is Thèrése a slave? I realized that I had assumed so, but I'm not actually sure that's the case. I'm more sympathetic to Dominique being angry at the end if Thèrése was already free.)
What are you currently reading?
Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. The new PC Grant/Rivers of London book! Very fun. This is the first one I'm actually reading (as opposed to listening to the audiobook), but I still hear everything in Holdbrook-Smith's voice.
India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking by Anand Giridharadas. One of the better ~A Picture of India Today!~ books I've read, though I'm only halfway through.
Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings. This was a very fun, if sort of forgettable, nonfiction book about, well, geography. And basically anything he could connect to that: a chapter on National Geographic's Geography Bee, a chapter on antique map collectors, a chapter on geocaching, a chapter on people who like to travel to random destinations (the places where specific lines of longitude and latitude cross, or the highest point in every state, etc), a chapter on maps of imaginary places (Middle-Earth, Narnia, etc). It's an interesting topic, and Jennings is a good writer for this sort of light, amusing thing.
Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly. I loved this book, of course, no one is surprised. I loved getting to see more of Chloe, and Henri, and Minou (I love that Minou's guess– at the very beginning of the book which everyone else dismisses as her having read too many novels– turns out not to be terribly far off from what actually happened). They are all of them awesome characters. I quite liked Rowena Bray as well, and Mede, who are both very memorable for being single-book characters. I really loved the flashback to Livia (and Ben and Olympe) being bought by Janvier; it was a great flashback. I like Edgar Allan Poe as a fictional character, and I like the various allusions to his writing (I am less happy about him opposing abolition, which I had previously been unaware of, but I suppose that is the danger of writing about real people). I don't like that Rose and Hannibal are hardly in this book, but ah, well.
I think the problems Ben deals with in this book are much more structural than the ones in most of the previous books, which I suppose is appropriate for a book set in DC. But things like being unable to go to the police, Dominique's lack of a place in this city, the killing of Quent (and subsequent penance), who the baseball team can and can't play (or will and won't play)... none f them are the problems of an individual. Although I suppose this is the case in all of the series; I just felt it was a bit more so here.
Anyway, I also feel that– after Hannibal, Lady Jamilla, and Singletary– Ben should open a rehab clinic. It could be his new money-making scheme!
(Is Thèrése a slave? I realized that I had assumed so, but I'm not actually sure that's the case. I'm more sympathetic to Dominique being angry at the end if Thèrése was already free.)
What are you currently reading?
Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. The new PC Grant/Rivers of London book! Very fun. This is the first one I'm actually reading (as opposed to listening to the audiobook), but I still hear everything in Holdbrook-Smith's voice.
India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking by Anand Giridharadas. One of the better ~A Picture of India Today!~ books I've read, though I'm only halfway through.
