The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Tag: books

  • Books 2019

    Books 2019

    A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay

    This was a re-read for me, as it just became available on Kindle.  It in fact wrapped up my complete re-read of Kay’s fiction, which I mostly handled in 2018.

    Grant by Ron Chernow

    After reading the award-winning (and musical-inspiring) Hamilton by Chernow, I was moved to pick this one up — especially after a positive review by the Grant-fanatic in my life.  I’ve only read through the start of his presidency, but Chernow delivers the same unaffected but impactful style and brings his subject to life.  Incidentally, there are a lot of books about the Civil War; they often neglect the western campaigns. This book covers the War, of course but its subject requires Chernow to pay attention to that part.

    The Prophecy Con by Patrick Weekes

    Book 2 of the Rogues Of The Republic, a follow-up to The Palace Job

    The Paladin Caper by Patrick Weekes

    Book 3 of the Rogues of the Republic.

    Taken together, these three books are a decent if low-impact fantasy series. Intentionally or not, they have a real Leverage vibe (especially the third one), although they’re not quite as polished as John Roger’s classic TV show. Con jobs in fantasy settings are becoming more common (The Lies of Loch Lamora, the Mistborn series) but they all seem to veer into straight up combat at some point. Weekes does a decent job moving the plot along and the (huge) team of players is well-constructed, with everyone getting sharply-drawn personalities.

    The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

    The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas pere

    Solaris Rising Vol. 2 anthology

    Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

    A People’s Future of the United States anthology

    Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie

    A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay

    Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe ed. by Robert B. Parker

    The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

    Thrawn by Timothy Zahn

    The Raven Tower by Anne Leckie

    Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

    John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub

    An excellent biography of the 6th President, whose term in the Oval Office was in fact one of his lesser accomplishments in the fields of diplomacy and public service.

    James Madison

    The Clockwork Dynasty

    Neverwhere

    The Collapsing Empire

    The Consuming Fire

    A Wizard of Earth-Sea

    Fall, or Dodge in Hell

    The Collected Works of Arthur C. Clarke

    The Map of Knowledge

    Nevernight

    Everless

    The Fifth Season

  • What is a library?

    What is a library?

    I am far from the first to ask this question in an increasingly-electronic age, and I am sure that my answer will be far from unique.  But my wife and I have batted the question around a couple of times and I wanted to get my thoughts down.  The proximate cause of our discussion was an meditation on the large space allocated to the library in the school where I teach, the dusty and ill-utilized books moldering there, and the concern that the library might come to be seen as “wasted” space.  The thought of a college-prep school without a library seems equal parts worrisome and absurd, yet it’s hard to argue in favor of the proposition that the stacks continue to serve their traditional vital role in education.  Can the library be saved when books have fallen out of favor?

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  • What I’m Reading: 2008 July

    This is the first in a regular series of posts meant more for myself than anyone else. I just want to keep a record of what I’m reading.

    So far in July:

    • Public Enemies: The True Story of America’s Greatest Crime Wave by Bryan Burrough (552 p)
    • Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning by Sol Steinmetz (258 p)
    • The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English by Mark Abley (233 p)
    • Steampunk edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (347 p)

    Of these, the two etymology books were oddly disappointing, most especially because they in fact gave no model for how or why language evolves. Each was just a litany of words and trends in English. *Sigh*

  • Review: His Dark Materials

    His Dark Materials:

    • The Golden Compass
    • The Subtle Knife
    • The Amber Spyglass


    a triology by Philip Pullman
    InstaRating: 4 out of 5

    This trilogy has apparently sparked quite the bitter controversy, especially online. It’s a tale of High Fantasy, quite consciously in the vein of Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, but it takes a tack quite different than, say, The Chronicles of Narnia. Rather than a vague naturalistic faith that is actually Christianity in disguise, Pullman’s universe has Christianity in fact — but it’s unremittingly evil, dedicated to snuffing out all that is light and free in the world. I can see why believers are outraged…

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  • Review: The Book of Lost Things

    The Book of Lost Things
    a novel by John Connolly
    InstaRating: 5 (out of 5)

    This is simply a good book. I would not have thought anything would rank up next to a new book by Guy Gavriel Kay (Ysabel, which I’ll review some other time), but this one easily meets that standard. One of life’s greatest treasures, for me, is a book that compels me to keep reading at an ever-more-breakneck pace. I love a book that gives me the sensation that I’m missing details because the vision is so extravagant and the journey so enthralling that there just isn’t time to savor everything. I love a book so good that, around page 50, I start calculating how long I have to wait so that it will be fresh when I re-read it.

    A short summary: David is a pre-teen in World War II Britain, who loses his mother to an unnamed lingering disease and his father (as David sees it) to a stepmother and half-brother. David starts to hear books whisper to him and then, in an ancient house, hears his mother’s voice calling to him. He ventures into the garden just as a Luftewaffe bomber crashes, propelling him into an alternate world where strange versions of well-known fairy tales seem to be true. He meets a kindly Woodsman and a questing knight, but is menaced by the half-wolf Loups, by harpies, trolls, and above all by the Crooked Man, an indistinct but terrifying menace who wants, for reasons left unexplained, for David to tell him the name of his half-brother. At the suggestion of the Woodsman, David travels east toward the castle of the ailing King and his magic Book of Lost Things. What he discovers — there and along the way, in the King and in himself — ends up changing everything.

    More detail will inevitably involve spoilers, so I’ll hide them below the fold. If you’re looking for whether this book is a good read, but you don’t want to know the ending, stop here and take my word for it: This is a good book. It will richly reward you for reading it. Connolly shows himself to be a master of atmosphere and foreshadowing. If you need to hear more, and don’t mind knowing what’s coming, read on…
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  • Review: Echelon

    Echelon
    a novel
    by Josh Conviser

    InstaRating: 2 out of 5

    This book\’s title caught my interest because I keep up with surveillance tech and its social implications, and ECHELON — the alleged US NSA electronic sifting program — is the monster of all surveillance programs. Although I knew this was a spy thriller, I thought there was a chance that it would delve deeply into some of the issues revolving around the invasive new technologies coming online. Alas, it didn’t pan out that way.

    More below the fold — warning: Spoilers to come.

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  • Review: World War Z

    World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
    by Max Brooks

    InstaRating: 5 out of 5

    After the debacle that was The Stonehenge Gate, I was looking for something good to read, to wash the taste of failed prose from my mouth. Happily I picked up this piece of psuedo-history. Written by the author of the offbeat, tongue-in-cheek The Zombie Survivor’s Guide, this book purports to be an oral history compiled and published ten years after the end of The Zombie War, a global outbreak of the undead as in The Night of the Living Dead.

    Spoilers and more after the break.
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  • Review: The Stonehenge Gate

    The Stonehenge Gate
    a novel
    by Jack Williamson

    InstaRating: 1 out of 5 … maybe less

    During those moments when I delude myself that I’m a writer, I pursue an odd oscillation in my reading. I like to read great works of fiction, to have something towards which to aspire. But I like to leaven that mix with bad writers, people so hackneyed or incompetent that I can realistically say, “Well, if even Writer X can get published, I have a real shot … at least my stuff is better than that.” After reading Oryx and Crake, I was in a bind, because I hadn’t read anything truly bad for a while and I felt the usual intimidation rising up again.

    Luckily, then I picked up Jack Williamson’s The Stonehenge Gate and now all is right with the world: This is a truly bad book.

    More details, including spoilers, follow the break.

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  • Review: Oryx and Crake

    Oryx and Crake (a novel)
    by Margaret Atwood

    InstaRating: 4 out of 5

    In brief: Snowman is the last (traditional) human alive in a world curiously empty. He bears the secret of what happened to civilization and slowly reveals it to himself as he watches over the successor species: humans carefully designed to thrive in the ecologically-devastated world of tomorrow.

    Spoilers and a more complete review follow.
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