![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eor19. Vaseem Khan "The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra"
I wanted to like this book. I am always looking for new detective series. Even better if it takes place in a culture I'm not all that familiar with. But it just didn't make it.
20. Terry Pratchett "Guards! Guards!"
It was so much fun re-reading "Guards! Guards!". I had forgotten much of the plot. My memory had mixed in bits of different Watch books and left out some significant bits of what was there. Sybil rocks so hard in this book the trolls should give her an honorarium. Some of the lines are so very perfect for our current political discourse that it's scary. I mean current political discourse is scary and it must have taken one cynical mind to come up with it in 1989. Prime Pratchett.
21. Tom Clancy "Red Storm Rising"
This was a re-read from back in the '90's. Back in the day I read the first few Clancy books then got turned off by the direction of the Ryanverse. This book feels incredibly well researched. When I first read it I didn't pick up on the construction, but it is a good lesson in how to write a huge book. It spans a lot of places, time, and storylines. It does that by picking up specific characters and following them through each of the story arcs. Some come onstage for only a brief time, so persist for much of the book. As I was reading it, the jumping from character to character in the different plotlines reminded me of Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying it's anything like LOTR in other aspects. But the way of dealing with OMG what a long and complicated story by breaking it up into bite sized chunks following specific characters is similar.
"Red Storm Rising" is very much retrofuturism now, but some of the assumptions made by characters in the book and some of the results ring awfully close to what we have seen in Ukraine.
22. Terry Pratchett "Eric"
At some point I have to read "Faust". I mean so many authors riff on it. "Eric" isn't my favorite Pratchett book. It has its funny bits, but I think Pratchett is much better when he's running in an open field chasing whatever butterflies inspire him.
23. Abbott Payson Usher "A History of Mechanical Inventions"
I picked this book up at a book sale who knows how many years ago. It is a reprint of an imprint from 1954. When I started it, I was disappointed how much time it spent on theory and how little depth it seemed to go into of each aspect of mechanical/technical development. This isn't a book which would guide you to rebuild civilization. But it does do a good job of illustrating its main theme: it takes village or many villages. It argues that there isn't one big invention. Each invention is a whole lot of stage setting, the actual invention or many inventions, and a whole lot of refinement and improvement. Often one person gets credit because their name is written down somewhere, but usually they just got lucky enough to get written down. When the knowledge gets distributed and multiple people start to refine it and expand on it, then things really start to roll.
I must admit, I spent way too much time reading this book for that one lesson. I might have been better off focusing all the time on learning the details of any one of the chapters. There was a lot of "there is too much material for a detailed study within the scope of this work".
I wanted to like this book. I am always looking for new detective series. Even better if it takes place in a culture I'm not all that familiar with. But it just didn't make it.
20. Terry Pratchett "Guards! Guards!"
It was so much fun re-reading "Guards! Guards!". I had forgotten much of the plot. My memory had mixed in bits of different Watch books and left out some significant bits of what was there. Sybil rocks so hard in this book the trolls should give her an honorarium. Some of the lines are so very perfect for our current political discourse that it's scary. I mean current political discourse is scary and it must have taken one cynical mind to come up with it in 1989. Prime Pratchett.
21. Tom Clancy "Red Storm Rising"
This was a re-read from back in the '90's. Back in the day I read the first few Clancy books then got turned off by the direction of the Ryanverse. This book feels incredibly well researched. When I first read it I didn't pick up on the construction, but it is a good lesson in how to write a huge book. It spans a lot of places, time, and storylines. It does that by picking up specific characters and following them through each of the story arcs. Some come onstage for only a brief time, so persist for much of the book. As I was reading it, the jumping from character to character in the different plotlines reminded me of Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying it's anything like LOTR in other aspects. But the way of dealing with OMG what a long and complicated story by breaking it up into bite sized chunks following specific characters is similar.
"Red Storm Rising" is very much retrofuturism now, but some of the assumptions made by characters in the book and some of the results ring awfully close to what we have seen in Ukraine.
22. Terry Pratchett "Eric"
At some point I have to read "Faust". I mean so many authors riff on it. "Eric" isn't my favorite Pratchett book. It has its funny bits, but I think Pratchett is much better when he's running in an open field chasing whatever butterflies inspire him.
23. Abbott Payson Usher "A History of Mechanical Inventions"
I picked this book up at a book sale who knows how many years ago. It is a reprint of an imprint from 1954. When I started it, I was disappointed how much time it spent on theory and how little depth it seemed to go into of each aspect of mechanical/technical development. This isn't a book which would guide you to rebuild civilization. But it does do a good job of illustrating its main theme: it takes village or many villages. It argues that there isn't one big invention. Each invention is a whole lot of stage setting, the actual invention or many inventions, and a whole lot of refinement and improvement. Often one person gets credit because their name is written down somewhere, but usually they just got lucky enough to get written down. When the knowledge gets distributed and multiple people start to refine it and expand on it, then things really start to roll.
I must admit, I spent way too much time reading this book for that one lesson. I might have been better off focusing all the time on learning the details of any one of the chapters. There was a lot of "there is too much material for a detailed study within the scope of this work".
