Reading in February 2023

 

Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

I continued reading the Gentleman Bastards sequence from last month.  In this installment, Locke and Jean are employed by their worse enemies to rig a city election.  To stir things up a little, their opponents' campaign is being run by a long-lost friend.  A side-plot told in flashback is the story of the young Bastards' first forray - blagging their way in the company of actors.

A very enjoyable and fun read.

Richard Osman, The Bullet That Missed

Another outing for the Thursday Murder Club, this time looking into a cold-case involving the disappearance of a reporter.

Neil Gaiman, Stardust

A tale about a young man venturing into Faerie to fulfill a quest for his Lady Love.

Everything a modern fairy story should be.  Quite sublime.

Bayt al Azif, No 4

Another issue of the annual(ish) journal for Cthulhu mythos roleplaying.  It has all the features we've come to expect - high quality production, an over-veiw of publications (in this case for 2020), three scenarios, interviews (here including Mike Mason) and articles.

Brian Lumley, Return of the Deep Ones and Other Mythos Tales

This I'd picked up on a whim because it was heading to the bin.  It was much better than I expected - I thought it was going to be 1980s schlock-horror.  One tale dragged on rather, but the title story was pretty good.

Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy

I couldn't resist this beautiful hardback edition by Everyman Press collecting the original Foundation books.  It must be over 40 years since I last read them, but I thought they held up rather well.

I dipped into Trillion Year Spree, and Grumpy Old Brian Aldiss tells me not to bother with the very belated sequels, so I won't!

Reading in Jan 2023

 The first two are books left over from December.

CS Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The book that introduced me to Narnia over 45 years ago.   I wrote about it last month.

Peter Moore, Endeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World

I really enjoyed this splendid biography of Capt Cook's ship, covering  1764-1778.  As the author says, these years  “form a mini-epoch in the development of Western society”, and he was able to use the ship to explore that.  

I knew Endeavour ended up in the American War of Independence, but it was news to me that she was instrumental in the early British settlement of the Falkland Islands. 

CS Lewis, The Silver Chair

Things start to get a bit darker in Narnia.  

This and Dawn Treader were always my favorite of the Chronicles.  Quite possibly because Eustace Scrubb is a lot less annoying than his cousins and I always liked Puddleglum.

Bayt al Azif: A Magazine for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying, No 3

An interesting read, as always.  I must have had this on my to-read pile for over a year, as I see that No 4 is already out.

The main articles were the round-up of mythos gaming publications in 2019, a look at why Call of Cthulhu is the leader in the Japanese TTRPG scene, and an article on using Sanity loss.  There were three scenarios, which all looked interesting, but you never know until you play them.

Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Casting the Runes: Occult Investigation in the World of M R James

A guide to running RPGs in the world of MR James and other horror writers of the 1900s-1920s.  It's a setting that I'm interested in (I consider myself a fan of James), and I will certainly steal the premise if I ever get around to running a horror game.  The reservation I have is that it's written for games using the GUMSHOE system, which I don't know.  Quite frankly, I don't want to go down the rabbit-hole of a new system, when I haven't really got my head fully around Call of Cthulhu: if I was to run a game it would be using CoC or Pulp Cthulhu.

CS Lewis, The Last Battle

Narnian eschatology.

Everyone's least favourite book in the Chronicles.  Partly because of the subject matter, partly because Lewis allegory (and some would say, racist elements) are the most heavy-handed here.

And I really should mention Neil Gaiman's short story 'The Problem of Susan', which deals with Susan's exclusion from Narnia and paradise for liking nylons and lipstick too much.  It can be read here (but isn't suitable for youngsters).

Various, Murder Under the Christmas Tree

Another from the anthology series I read back in December.

Publishing this sort of thing must be money for old rope when people are desparate for Christmas presents!  But it was a good mix of stories.

Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

This is the first in the 'Gentleman Bastards' series about a group of conmen and theives.  I was re-reading it because, although I've read the first two books in the trilogy (and typically, I see that there is a "second trilogy" planned), I've only just acquired the third.

In this instalment we're introduced to the Locke Lamora and the Gentlemen Bastards, a gang of conmen posing as petty theives.  While secretly doing one of thier Big Jobs, they get entangled in a bloody underworld succession battle.

I'd remembered this as a masterclass in world-building, and the opening pages confirmed this.  It's really an excellent piece of work.  Whether reading three 600-odd page books after another is sustainable remains to be seen.

Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

Locke and Jean flee their home city and plot a casino heist.  But old enemies follow...

And there are pirates!

Books & Stuff (NS, No 8) - Reading in Nov 2020

Finished Reading

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

A very good book: a beautiful book.  A book about isolation and being at peace with that: it’s perhaps fitting that I read it on the eve of 2nd Lockdown.  I liked it.  

A lot of fans of Jonthan Strange and Mr Norrell – who've been looking forward to this book for years - will be disappointed that it’s not set in their 'verse.  I think, from the hints about the subject matter that have emerged from time-to-time, that there was some expectation that it would be set on Strange’s Faerie Roads.  That's certainly what I expected.  It's refreshing to get something different.  If anything, it reminds me of books by David Mitchell: and that’s not a bad thing. 

I’d deliberately avoided reading any reviews or anything that might have given a synopsis; and I’m glad.  Not that I like to read reviews anyway (at least for fiction).  I’m not terribly interested in what other people think, preferring to form my own opinion on something as subjective as fiction.  Professional reviews are bad enough, but Goodreads is the worse.  I use it as a useful tool, but the reviews!  When they’re not just gushing fans, they’re people churning out half-remembered and never-fully-understood concepts from High School: talk of ‘poor characterisation’ and ‘crass diction’, etc. 

HP Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

A young scholar becomes obsessed with an ancestor who practiced the Dark Arts.  A newly-discovered portrait shows an uncanny likeness between the two.  What could possibly go wrong?

Despite everything about Lovecraft, it must be admitted that he writes well.  Although the reader has a pretty good idea of what's going on from the very beginning, tension is held as the protagonist gradually uncovers the dreadful truth.

Simon Harris, The Other Norfolk Admirals: Myngs, Narbrough and Shovell

It took me a while to get into this (a couple of months on these round-ups!), but having done so, it was very interesting.  

It could have done with a stronger editorial hand, which surprised me as it was published by the excellent Helion & Co.  But though it's a strong piece, it doesn't pretend to be an academic work and, as a labour of love by an enthusiast a lot can be fogiven.

Bayt al Azif: A Magazine for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games, Issue 2 (Aug 2019)

Another thing (along with the Norfolk Admirals) which has been languishing by my bedside for months.  I decided to finish it off on finding out that Issue 3 is now out (in pdf  at least).  

I keep half-promising to do proper reviews of these: for now, I'll just say that if anyone is interested in Mythos Roleplaying they are must-reads.

Quintin Barry, From Solebay to the Texel: The Third Anglo-Dutch War, 1672-1674

A very good summary of the naval side of the Anglo-Dutch Wars - despite the title, almost the first half of the (short) book deals with the first two (which is fair enough, they can't be taken in isolation).

Purely narrative: don't come to it expecting any analysis.

Currently Reading

Fritz Leiber, Swords in the Mist

A collection of some of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, which are quickly becoming favorites of mine.

Books & Stuff (NS, No 5): Reading in August 2020

Robert A Heinlein, Starman Jones

The Heinlein juveniles are dear to my heart, and I occasionally pick one up to re-read.  Starman Jones was the first (and the first Heinlein) that I read, aged about 12 (so around 1980!).   

The plot of the book revolves around the use of log tables, which I'm just old enough to have done at school (probably a year or so after first reading it).  The prompt to pick it up was an exchange in a Discord channel about log tables (in the context of AD&D).

Stanley Ellin, The Speciality of the House

It took me months, but I've finished this great collection of short stories.  I find that if I read too many short stories one after another I loose the effect, so I'm treated it as a book to dip into.  Well worth the effort.

Bayt al Azif: A Magazine for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games, Issue 2 (Aug 2019)

Number 2 of this magazine, which keeps up the high standard of No 1 (which I read back in June).  I keep thinking I should do a proper review of both issues.





Currently Reading

Simon Harris, The Other Norfolk Admirals: Myngs, Narbrough and Shovell

Biography of the aforesaid admirals.  Another study of the Restoration navy.

I'm only nominally reading this - I don't think I've picked it up for weeks!

Books & Stuff (NS, No 4): Reading in July 2020

So what did I read in July?  Furlough for me ended on 23 June, and I practically been pulling six-day weeks since then, so reading time has cut-back.  Nevertheless...

J D  Davies, The Blast that Tears the Skies

The third in the Matthew Quinton series about the Restoration Navy.  It's 1665: the year of the plague and the Battle of Lowestoft.  How can it not be exciting?

In this one Quinton is given command of a large but ancient ship and tasked with the dealing with the (historical) rumour that twenty captains from the old Parliamentary Navy will defect during the first battle with the Dutch.  There's also various politicking within his family.

Jen Campbell, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

A moderately amusing collection of odd and annoying things people have said to booksellers.  It will appeal to anyone who has worked in a shop and ever thought that life would be a lot easier without customers.

Currently Reading

Stanley Ellin, The Speciality of the House

I'm carrying on with this great collection of short stories.  I find that if I read too many short stories one after another I loose the effect, so I'm treating this as a book I'm dipping into.  As it's a rather large collection, it'll be a while before I get to the end.

Simon Harris, The Other Norfolk Admirals: Myngs, Narbrough and Shovell

Biography of the aforesaid admiral.  Another study of the Restoration navy.

Bayt al Azif: A Magazine for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games, Issue 2 (Aug 2019)

Number 2 of this magazine, which keeps up the high standard of No 1 (which I read back in June).  I keep thinking I should do a proper review of both issues.

Books and Stuff (NS, No 3): Reading in June 2020

So what did I read in June?

HRF Keating, Mrs Craggs: Crimes Cleaned Up

As I recall it, I read a book by Keating (probably The Perfect Murder) when I was in Sixth Form and trying out all sorts of things to see where my tastes lay*.  I remember not being very impressed and wondering why people rated him.  This book hasn't done anything to change that opinion.  Back when I was 17 I would have felt honour-bound to finish a book I'd started (this is only about 200 pages); but now I know better, and I gave up on it after the first two stories.

If your tastes run to comedy Cockneys and char-lady-puts-The-Establishment-in-its-place, this might be the book for you.  It's not for me.

*As it happened, a few years later I was given a masterclass in appreciating C20th crime fiction by my eventual wife.

Peter Le Fevre and Richard Harding (edd), Precursers of Nelson: British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century

I've really enjoyed reading this, despite some of the fifteen chapters (fifteen subjects and fifteen authors) being distinctly dry.  Over the years I've read a lot of naval history, and it was good to return to a subject I've neglected of late.

In addition, most of my reading has been from the Revolutionary/Napolenic Wars onwards (the studies in this book start with the Restoration Navy and the 'Glorious Revolution'), so it was instructive to read about an earlier period.  That, of course, was the avowed purpose of the volume, which was published during the 'Nelson decade' (ie, beteweeen the bicentenaries of the Battles of the Nile and of Trafalgar).

Given this, and the JD Davies fiction I've been reading lately, don't be surprised if I go on a C17th and C18th naval binge (as far as my home library will allow)!

Deborah Cadbury, The Dinosaur Hunters

This is a well-writen and readable account of the dawn of geology and paleontology as sciences in early C19th Britain (the word 'scientist' is a neologism of 1834 arising from popular discussion of these debates).

If I may be allowed some more autobiography*, this book invoked some pleasant memories.  Back in 1980-something when I was wondering what to study university I briefly considered History of Science (blame James Burke's 'Connections', Carl Sagen and Saturday mornings watching Open University programmes before the Westerns came on) before settling on Theology.  A course on The Church in the Modern World included a section on (Geology and) the Victorian Crisis of Faith, and installed in me a fascination with C19th Church History.  Various things followed, and one of the places I ended up working in had walls that look like this...

All very obscure, I know: but that's 'connections' for you.

*And this is my blog: so yes, I will be.

Bayt al Azif: A Magazine for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games, Issue1 (Oct 2018)

There's a detailed review here which says more about the magazine that I could here: though I wouldn't be so hard on the production values, which I didn't have a problem with.

For me the stand-out articles are the Reveiw of 2017, the scenario by Jared Smith set in C8th Damascus and a scenario by Rich McKee set during the Vietnam War (with added pointers to a world-wide DELTA GREEN type campaign).

If money was no object I'd be buying more on Cthulhu Mythos RPGs, but it isn't and most of the stuff out there is too expensive for me.  The eternal truths will have to remain shrouded from my prying eyes...

Currently Reading

Stanley Ellin, The Speciality of the House

A collection of short stories in the Crime Masterworks series by an author I'd not heard of before.  These really are well-crafted little gems - most dryly humorous.