sophia_sol | Entries tagged with pub date: 1997

This month I read two non-fiction books by Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World and Salt: A World History.

Both books are excellent at providing lots of historical details to give the reader a good sense of how vital each of these commodities was, and the scope of their effects on human cultures and industry. I particularly loved the book on cod, and it really made me want to try eating salt cod sometime to see what it's like!

I felt that the salt book was somewhat weaker, though. Sometimes the book was presenting information generally chronologically, sometimes it was focused on a particular location, sometimes it was following a particular product or trade over time or over space. It made it feel a bit jumbled and disorganized, going back and forward in time and hopping around the world. The cod book had a bit of that as well, but by the nature of the subject the issues were more limited so it wasn't as big a deal.

The salt book also had multiple particular details that got my back up.

One was the old chestnut about x species having not evolved for x number of millions of years, when talking about sturgeons. No, that's not how evolution works? like, yes sturgeons have maintained the same basic form for about 100 million years, because it's an extremely successful strategy for their context and continues to be so, but genetic changes will still happen in a population over so much time! probably if you took a modern sturgeon and a sturgeon from the cretaceous they would not even be able to interbreed!

The other was

palestine

that in a chapter about salt in Israel from ancient times to today, Palestinians weren't mentioned at all?! wtf, author!

All of a sudden I had the inexplicable desperate need to reread this duology. I haven't read these books since....probably since I was a teenager I think so it's been a while. But they are pretty much exactly what I remember them being and I enjoyed the experience of rereading them exactly as much as I expected.

Which is not to say that they're perfect books, because they're not, they're just very much the kind of thing they are.

The setting: a version of Regency England where magic is a thing. The plot: mostly capers with a low-key romance.

The main character, Kim, is a petty criminal who at the beginning of the first book has been hired to snoop into the belongings of a passing stage magician. The stage magician, Mairelon, turns out to be also a real magician in disguise who is on a somewhat foolish quest to find a set of magical objects that people mistakenly believe he stole. Hijinks ensue.

In the second book, Kim is introduced to Society and begins the process of learning to be a magician, while also helping Mairelon with uncovering a magical plot. Hijinks that are slightly easier to follow (and also slightly more serious) than the first book's hijinks ensue.

The first book is hampered by the sheer quantity of involved characters and trying to keep track of who's who, who's wanting to do what, who's related to whom, and who knows what about what other people are doing. But if you just decide that keeping close track of the plot doesn't really matter, then it's a fun time to just read through and enjoy the doings of Kim and Mairelon, and the general shape of the silly plot.

The second book, the plot is easier to follow and also the Problem That Needs Fixing seems to have actual stakes rather than just being for the sake of Mairelon's pride, so it is an improvement on the first one, much as I do enjoy the low-stress fun of the first one too.

As well as of course enjoying the two main characters, I really like the various secondary female characters in these books. I love Renee and want to see more of her friendship with Kim and Mairelon! And Mairelon's mother is of course great. But even Mairelon's Aunt Agatha who is a regular thorn in Kim's side has her moments of not actually being an antagonist. (Also Kim's extremely practical abigail who doesn't blink at anything Kim does is great too.)

( cut for minor thematic spoiler )

Series consists of: Pagan's Crusade, Pagan's Exile, Pagan's Vows, Pagan's Scribe, and Babylonne aka Pagan's Daughter

This is a series of children's books about a Templar knight (Roland) and his Palestinian-born squire (Pagan) and, eventually, Pagan's scribe and Pagan's daughter. The books are written in an extremely distinctive style - it's like, the most immediate possible version of first-person, the first three books especially - and it's very effective at making things feel in the moment, but I do not actually like it. BUT I care about the characters enough that I don't care. And the period feel and the earthy historic details are wonderfully well done too. The author is apparently a medieval scholar and it shows in the best possible ways.

The degree to which Roland and Pagan care deeply about each other, and work to take care of each other, despite the two of them being very different people who often do not understand each other, is wonderful. And it's a main focus of the series, their relationship with each other.

( spoilers for the fourth and fifth books )

Back in the days after I'd started keeping a list of all the books I read each year but BEFORE I started posting reviews of them, I kept desultory personal notes (ranging from a single word to quite a few paragraphs) on some of the books. And I always vaguely forget I have, and forget where exactly to find them, and I'd like to just have them on my dw so they're FINDABLE again for me. And also some of you might find these interesting/amusing? (N.B. some of these contain what I would now classify as INCORRECT OPINIONS.)

SO HERE'S THREE YEARS' WORTH OF BOOKS IN ONE POST, OKAY GO.

( expand this cut to see nested cuts listing all the books )

Hey so the fic I wrote for yuletide this year was the following!

One Step (1786 words) by sophia_sol
Fandom: Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Areida & Char & Ella (Ella Enchanted), Char/Ella (Ella Enchanted)
Characters: Areida (Ella Enchanted), Ella of Frell, Prince Charmont

Summary: On Ella and Char's first official state visit to Ayortha after King Jerrold's death and King Char's crowning, I did not expect to see them for more than a brief night's stopover. What would keep them in Amonta, after all, when the politics happen in the capital?

And now that reveals are past, I can also post my book thoughts about this book without revealing what I wrote for yuletide!

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine

A charming retelling of the fairy tale Cinderella! I read this book a lot as a kid, and I still really like it. The basic premise: Ella was given a gift/curse by a fairy as an infant, and as a result she must be obedient to any direct commands from anyone.

( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://sophia-sol.livejournal.com/269618.html

I haven't reread the Emelan books in forever and I was in the mood so I reread the five that I own! Which are the four Circle of Magic books plus The Will of the Empress, since I was never as into the Circle Opens books (possibly because they're all about serial killers). At any rate it works very well to read just these five books as a complete set.

( thematic spoilers only )

Crossposts: http://sophia-sol.livejournal.com/268113.html

I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK.

Walter Alvarez, the author, was one of the central people in the development of the theory that a cataclysmic impact caused the major extinction event at the KT boundary - which included everything from foraminifera to dinosaurs. And this book is about how they figured this out. It is clearly aimed at a general audience and it is immensely readable and delightful.

( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://sophia-sol.livejournal.com/218615.html

For inexplicable reasons (no really I have no clue why) this was the Pratchett book I reread the most often as a teenager. As such, rereading it was a deeply familiar experience. So it's hard to be objective about a lot of it? Because it has been a part of me for so long!

One major difference this reread is that I have since read a whole bunch of meticulously researched Age of Sail novels (thank you Patrick O'Brian) and thus have an entirely new sense of UTTER HORROR at Vimes's behaviour on that boat. AUGH VIMES NO.

Also I've never been fond of Colon-and-Nobby storylines and that's only gotten worse as I've gotten older. I ended up skimming or skipping over those scenes this time.

But overall the reading experience was just nice nostalgia. (and also a creeping realization of how utterly bone-deep familiar Pratchett's narrative voice is for me. I read SO MUCH PRATCHETT as a teenager! I guess it was kind of inevitable!)

Crossposts: http://sophia-sol.livejournal.com/210405.html

Yeah, so there's a lot of books I've read in the last little while when I haven't been posting regularly, so there's a bunch to report back on! Some I have more, uh, extensive thoughts than others. I'll start with a compilation post for a number of the books for which I had less to say. But after posting this I am taking my beloved computer off to the repair shop to get a serious overheating problem looked at, so my presence may be erratic until the repairs are complete! (depends on how often Mara needs her computer, how often I go to the library, and how often I decide that the frustrations of internet via iPod are worth facing :P)

( The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, by S Bear Bergman )

( Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton )

( Magician's Ward, by Patricia C. Wrede )

( H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian )

( Dragonbreath, Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs, and Dragonbreath: The Curse of the Were-Wiener, by Ursula Vernon )

( Drystone Walling Techniques and Traditions, by The Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain )