Books and Stuff (NS, No 19) - Reading in Aug 2021

I'm sorry that this is a little late; but to be honest, I doubt if any of you were on the edge of your seats waiting to be updated on my reading... 

Patrick O'Brian, The Yellow Admiral

After their long circumnavigation and service in West Africa, Aubrey and Materin are closer to home in this book.  Aubrey is concerned with Parliamentary business (no least opposing the enclosure of the common where he is lord of the manor).  At sea, they are employed in the tedious blockade of Brest with a superior who just happens to have an interest in the enclosure.

And above all is the deadful spectre of a looming peace, with Aubrey close to the top of the Captains' List and in danger of being retired as a 'Yellow Admiral'.

Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days

Well, the peace didn't last for long.  With Napoleon's return to France, a semi-official mission to Chillie is cancelled and our pair return to active service in the Adriatic and Mediterranean.  Much time is spent trying to prevent a shipment of gold from North Africa intended to buy allies for Napoleon in the Balkans.

Maturin goes on a lion hunnt.

Jill Murphy, The Worst Witch, The Worst Witch Strikes Again and A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch

Jill Murphy died on 18 August, so I read some of her Worst Witch stories.

James A Corey, Calaban's War

After watching the first season of 'The Expanse' on dvd (which ended on somewhat of a cliff-hanger), I decided to re-read the second book in the series.  

[It didn't take me long to realise that TV show had played cut-and-loose with the chronology of things - so I had to read the last third of Leviathan Wakes to fill the gap.]

In this book it turns out someone has weaponised the Protomolcule and that the planetary governments are intent on war - on the basis that it's best to sort out local differences before tackling any threat from outside the Solar System.

Books and Stuff (NS, No 18) - Reading in Jul 2021

 

Patrick O'Brian, Clarissa Oakes

On leaving Botany Bay, it takes Aubrey a little while to realise that the odd atmosphere on board is due to an attractive stowaway.  He decides not to return her to the authorities, allows her to marry her lover and undertakes to put them ashore once they reach South America.

This does not solve the problem.

In order to save Polynesia from French Utopianism, Aubrey has to conduct some solid British Imperialism.

Patrick O'Brian, The Wine Dark Sea

The ship finally reaches Peru for Maturin's long-delayed mission in support of Independence.  Let's just say that he ends up fleeing over the Andes, is fed up with guinnea pig and looses some toes.

After a long circumnavigation (five books' worth), home is in sight.

Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore

Aubrey raises his broad pennant and heads out to West Africa on an anti-slavery mission (with some French action tacked on).

Maturin meets a potto.

Charles Stross, Halting State

A cop in newly-independent Scotland is called in to an IT company.  The crime?  A gang of orcs has broken into a bank it runs in a MMORPG.  Soon things become more complicated...

For those who - like me - enjoyed Stross' Laundry Files series, this will be a welcome read.

Jack Finney, Time and Again

I'd not come across Jack Finney before.  I read this book because it as in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series and that (and its Science Fiction counterpart) is a good source of new authors.  Seeing that he wrote Invasion of the Body Snatchers seemed to hold promise.

Sadly this is a book I didn't get on with.  I just found it..  dull.  I read the first hundred pages, but then gave up on it.

For the record, it's the story of a man from c.1970 who's recruited into a secret government time travel experiment.  Said time travel is achieved by immersion in period detail and self-hypnosis.  What happens when he reaches 1880s New York, I can't say - I didn't get that far.  There's a plot summary on Wikipedia.

And according to the Wikipedia page Stephen King, Carl Sagan and Robert Redford think highly of it, so there.

Bridget Collins, The Binding

This starts with a good, strong premise - that in Collin's world books are created by Binders, who take people's memories and lock them away.  Unfortunately, when it moves on to second section of the book (reconstructing the memory) it turns out to be an rather obvious love story and delves into YA melodrama.

I don't regret reading it, but I'm not going to rush out and devour Collin's other books.

Books & Stuff (NS, No 17) - Reading in June 2021

Again, insomnia and being a part-time worker combine to lead to a healthy shelf-full of reading this month.

Patrick O'Brian, The Reverse of the Medal

Several thread come together in this (the eleventh) installment of the Aubrey-Maturin series.  The influencial (and traitorous) men with a grudge against Aubrey finally bring their campaign against him to a head.  He is duped into being the pasty for a stock market buble, which leads to his trial and dismissal from the Navy (as in much of the series, O'Brian is borrowing from history here, leaning on the trial of Lord Cochrane).

Raymond E Feist, Magician

As a palette-cleanser from all this naval derring-do, I've embarked upon another shelf-groaning series, perhaps unwisely.

I've never read any Feist before, and this series (the Riftwars) was recommended as a different take from Vancian magic (I've never read any Vance either, but that's for another time...)

Good competent stuff.  Even reading this first novel, I can see that George R R Martin and Joe Abercrombie have both been influenced by it.  I still prefer Abercrombie, but that's just me.

 Patrick O'Brian, The Letter of Marque

Aubrey, ejected from the Service that has been his life, is in a low place.  Luckily, Maturin has come into a fortune and is this able to buy HMS Surprise -  also retired from service - and set her up as a privateer.  Plans are put on foot to find a Spectacular Action that will justify Aubrey's re-instatement.

Maturin has to deal with his complicated private affairs.

Ted Nield, Underlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Landscape

A geologist muses on the hundreds of thousands of holes - clay pits, gravel pits, quarries and mines - that used to scatter the landscape providing local (often very local) building materials and resources.   

He uses these holes to tell two stories.  On a human scale, he tells us of the generations of his family which lived and worked on the South Wales coalfield.  On a geological scale, he walks us through what science learnt from them and tells that their filling-in or amenitisation will hinder geological education.

Finally, he ponders what it means that we now find it more economical (because of low wages, poor safety standards and under-priced petroleum) to import these earth resources from Asia, and what impact that will have on our planet.  He makes a telling parallel between the unthinking siting of spoil-tips above the village of Aberfan and our persistant burning of fossilised carbon despite the lessons of geological history about its perils.

Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen Gun Salute

Aubrey and Maturin's mission to ferment revolution in South America is blown, so they are given another reason to be in the Pacific - to escort an envoy to negotiate a treaty with a Malay Sultan who's also being courted by the French.  On the bright side, that means that Aubrey is re-instated to the Navy List and they get to give a couple of old enimies thier comeuppance.

Maturin meets an orangutan.

Jonathan Morris, Festival of Death

This is apparently one of the best Doctor Who novels - when eleven books were selected to be reissued as part of the 50th Anniversary celebrations, this was the one chosen to represent the Third Doctor.  Despite this, I'd characterise it as 'for fans only' - but then, perhaps that's the point...

Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation

Our crew manage to escape the island on which they were cast away at the end of the last book (not without incident, of course) and make their way to Java, where Governor Raffles treats them well.  They then go on to the Botany Bay Colony, which is a different story entirely - a squalidf, corrupt and brutal place.

Rats eat Maturin's personal supply of coca leaves and he meets a platypus. 

Books & Stuff (NS, No 16) - Reading in May 2021

 Finished Reading

Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island

Maturin is feeling burnt-out, so a cushy job is arranged for him.  Aubrey is to command a ship heading to Botany Bay to deal with troubles facing Governor Bligh, but the real purpose of the mission is for Maturin to get chummy with a beautiful American spy who is being transported there.  An iceberg intervenes.

Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War

Aubrey and Maturin head back to England - but are interrupted by another disaster at sea and the outbreak of the War of 1812.  The pair find themselves witnesses to and participants in not one, but two, of the famous single-ship actions of that war and are held prisoner in Boston.  Maturin meets an old friend, but his cover is compromised.

Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

The pair are feted as heroes on the North America Station (Aubrey forming an unfortunate entanglement), but finally return to England (where Aubrey's troubles with a landshark and a powerful enemy in the Admiralty are beginning to bite).  A confidential mission in the Baltic proves successful, but Biscay weather leads to capture and imprisonment by the French.

Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

We're now well into 1812, which famously for O'Brian contains 60-odd months (he was running out of war and had a lot to fit in!).

Aubrey is now given command of an aged line-of-battle ship and has to contend with the tedium of close blockade (of Toulon).  Things are livened up though when he is reunited with his old love, HMS Surprise, and the pair and a hand-picked crew are sent to the Ionian Sea to meddle in the politics of the semi-independent states there.

Patrick O'Brian, Treason's Harbour

If not a lot happens in The Ionian Mission, O'Brian makes up for it in Treason's Harbour!

The pair and the remaining Surprises are ashore in Malta, which turns out to be a hotbed of intrigue.  For once Maurin is the subject of espionage rather then pulling the strings himself.  He falls foul of a French spymaster and a high-level traitor.

Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World

Having been told for several books that Aubrey is now too senior to command a frigate and that Surprise is too old and small to face up against the Americans, Aubrey is now sent in Surprise to intercept an American frigate heading out to the Pacific, where it will otherwise be unopposed in cruising against British whalers.

Books & Stuff (NS, No 15) - Reading in Apr 2021

Finished Reading

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

A hang-over from 'March is Mars Month', and I discussed it in the last round-up. 

There I called it a lyrical classic about human baggage, which I'll stick with.

Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

One of Willis' splendid books on the Oxford Faculty for Time Travel.  In this one, everyone has been caught up in a donor's huge vanity project (to recreate the bombed Coventry Catherdral in perfect detail).  Willis is one of those writers who keeps me up all night.

It's both a tribute to J K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and a study of chaos theory.  A hoot.

Ben Aaronovitch, False Value

When I started this I was a little concerned that - at Book 8 - the Rivers of London series might have run out of steam.  I need have only been slightly worried.  Although, not up to the high standard of the first couple of books, this certainly kept pace with the later ones.

The only problem is that I need a concordance to keep up with all the characters and references.  I'm sure there's one online somewhere, but that's not much help to me when I'm sitting up reading at 2.30am.

Aubrey/Maturin Series

Patrick O'Brian

Master and Commander 

Post Captain

HMS Surprise

The Mauritius Command

I had an inclination to re-read some of the Aubrey/Maturin books - not necessarily all of them (that would be too much of A Project), but it seems to be heading that way.  

It was with some surprise that I see that they are older now than the Hornblower books were when I first read those (and then they seemed positively antique!).  Still, they take me back...  I first read them in the 90s when I used to have a long commute (most of my copies were bought at WH Smiths on Liverpool's Lime Street Station).  It was a formative period for me.  At the time I was developed a focus on maritime and naval history which ran as a thread in my career for a while.

Currently Reading

Patrick O'Brian, Desolation Island

The crew head towards the Botany Bay colony (with a few convicts including a beautiful female spy), but run into trouble in the South Atlantic.