Reading in June 2023

My deep-dive into The Hobbit continued.

John D Rateliff, The History of The Hobbit

JRR Tolkien; Douglas A Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit

Bryan Perrett, The Hunters and the Hunted: The Elimination of German Surface Warships Around the World, 1914-15

At about 150 pages with no notes or indication of sources, this is something of a whistle-stop tour and lacks context.  This means that some of the chapters raise more questions than they answer (which is fine - a prompt for further reading).  Nevertheless, it's a decent read for sitting out in the garden now the summer's here.

Neil Gaiman & Collen Doran, Troll Bridge

A graphic novel adaption of Gaiman's coming-of-age story that I picked up in a charity shop.

Elmore Leonard, Out of Sight

More summer reading, this from the master of the wise-cracking thriller.  I think I'm right in saying that they made a George Clooney film out of this one.

Even typing this, I'm temped to grab another Leonard off the shelf and go and read it!

Giles Foden, Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika

Foden's account of the Naval African Expedition - the transportation overland of two motor boats in order to wrest control of Lake Tanganyiki from the Germans in World War I ("It is bother the duty and the tradition of the Royal Navy to engage the enemy wherever there is water to float a ship" as the First Sea Lord put it).  Improbably enought, it was a mostly successful endeavour.  

The book makes much of the antics of the eccentric commander of the expedition, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson.  When it came out, this was something of a sensation and best-seller.  It's a very good read.

V E Tarrant, Battlecruiser Invincible: The History of the First Battlecruiser, 1909-1916

Another short read (how could be be otherwise?), but this is much better than The Hunters and the Hunted.  It starts with a scathing examination of the design criteria that lead to Invincible's destruction contrasting Fisher's misconception that 'speed is the best protection' and 'hitting is the thing' (at a time when the Germans were building faster ships and when Invincible's turrets didn't work properly and she was supplied with dud shells) with von Tirpitz's view that a ship 'must, what ever else, be able to remain afloat and stay in action'.  There follows excellent accounts of the battles of the Falklands and Jutland as well as the rest of Invincible's short carrier, drawing heavily on diaries and eye-witness accounts.  Of particular note are the 14 pages of maps (out of a total of 1558pp), which must be the envy of longer, more 'authorative' works.

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 and Stuff (NS, No 30) - Reading in Jun-Jul 2022

 A two-month survey this time, because I ran out of blogging and reading steam...

Nicholas Monsarrat, The Kappillan of Malta

Does anyone still read Monsarrat?  I suspect very few, which is a shame, as he tells a good story.  Even I, who thought I was fairly aware of his work, hadn't realised just how much he'd written (I'd never heard of this book until I came across it recently in a charity shop).

This is one of his later works and is a love-story to the island and people of Malta (and Gozo, where Monsarrat lived).  It tells the story of a priest living through the World War II siege, and the inspiration he draws (and shares) from its history.  A very good read.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

An epic book (I started by writing "big lump of a book") from Gaiman, his imagaining of how the gods transplanted to America through different waves of imigration might survive into the modern world and be challenged by our modern obsessions.

Every so often I feel that I should read Gaiman, and that it'd be my sort of thing.  I enjoyed this book, but I'm not convinced to go out and get the rest of his work.

Jeremy Mercer, Books, Baguettes and Badbugs

In 2000, Canadian journalist Jeremy Mercer became of of the gang of aspiring writers, drifters and drop-outs who lived and worked in the (second incarnation of) the legendary Parisian bookshop Shakespeare & Co.

Sadly, I didn't find Mercer and his fellows particularly engaging, and so gave up on the book halfway through.

Mary Roach, Packing for Mars - For Kids

Obviously, I'm not the target audience for this book, but I won it in a competition, and it was a quick read, so I gave it a go.

It's not about going to Mars, but instead the practical challenges of visiting and living in space.  It consists of anecdotes from the Apollo Programme and low earth orbit exploration.  As suits its pre-teen audience, a good third of the book is about going to the toilet.

Mark Gatiss, The Vesuvius Club

Gatiss's light-hearted take on an Edwardian James Bond.  

Given Gatiss's track-record I'd expected something a lot cleverer and witty than this turned out to be.  I had the second Lucifer Box book lined up to read after this but, disappointed, didn't bother.

Charlotte Higgins, Under Another Sky

Higgins undertakes a tour of Britian, looking for Roman remains,  She gives us not only a history of them, but reflections on the history of archeology and their interpretation.

This one I enjoyed, it will almost certainly be one of my picks of the year.

Jack London, Five Great Short Stories

It's decades since I read any Jack London, and I'd forgotton what a good storyteller he is.  I'll be reading some more soon.