Mary Brodd
Meh. This was a bit of a slog (it almost became “quit before finishing” book). Too much jumping around, and a prose style just unriveting enough to make it easy to put the book down to go do something else. But wow, the Nazis - just when you think you know how utterly beyond any sort of decency they were, they surprise you by going EVEN FURTHER.
One of my favorite kinds of non-fiction - a vague theme allows the author to wander around and examine all sorts of different things. Surfing, climate, nuclear testing, you name it, it's in this book. Lends itself to starting and stopping, which is how I tend to read these days. Overall enjoyable and informative.
Takeaways - the more things change the more things stay the same - people have been bitching about “they” as a second-person singular pronoun since at least the 18th century. Who knew. Debate over dictionaries/grammar books being prescriptive vs. descriptive also nothing new. Title of this book somewhat deceptive as it continues into 20th-century dictionary debates, but still a bit of a fun read if the subject matter is of interest.
Interesting near-future military SF, with a cynical but probably all-too-true view of the role of private armies and international business in modern and future warfare. Interesting characters, with interesting tech toys to play with. Looking forward to reading the 2nd installment, lined up on my Kindle already.
I checked this out after seeing the movie “Bridge of Spies” and found it to be generally interesting. It's a lot more courtroom drama than international-espionage drama - the swap and the events leading up to it are really a very small portion of this book. What I found most interesting about this book was the degree to which the author seemed able to set aside the whole “Red Scare” mentality and develop a good relationship with and respect for Rudolf Abel. I've returned the book to the library already so cannot give exact quotes but the author's belief in the rule of law, and belief that a fair and transparent trial was always going to be the best demonstration of American civic virtue regardless of the verdict, I feel are sadly lacking these days.
Very interesting story. Not what I expected, definitely. I think the main character, Ren, qualifies as an “unreliable narrator.” The description, from her point of view, of her hoarding disorder was very well done, especially how it related to the backstory of this colony. In most cases I enjoy being tossed into a story and expected to figure things out based on clues in the text, but I did think that some of the background, especially the religious nature of the colony, was a bit thin.
This book describes a horrible world with terrible people who do terrible things to each other and yet I was compelled to finish it, even though I had to take it in small doses (which probably didn't help me keep the various plot threads clear in my mind). The writing was brilliant. I honestly can't say right now whether I hated it or not.
Read it in one sitting and really enjoyed it. Plausible political thriller, interesting near-future setting which is mostly believable, and a very engaging main character. (I knew from reading the author's blog that the gender of the main character was deliberately not revealed. I still found myself thinking that “Chris” was male, to be honest...)
I went into this not knowing it was a you-know-what novel, because it had been mentioned often on file770.com. Despite it being basically a horror novel I found the gross-out factor to be tolerable, with interesting characters and much to ponder once I had finished, especially the actions of the title character at the end. Very gripping and recommended for fans of dystopias, especially if you can stand a bit of gruesomeness.
Main takeaway - “gendered” reactions to pandemic - (male) doctors felt sense of failure from inability to “cure” disease and from death of patients, while (female) nurses were able to care for (nurture) the ill regardless of outcome - even if patient died, nurse had done her job to best of ability. Not sure if this was worth the read. Still looking for something will tell me why this pandemic seems to have fallen into a memory hole for American society. This wasn't it.
I couldn't put it down, and am praying that the sequel is still on the shelf at the library where I saw it last week. The somewhat stream-of-consciousness writing can be confusing, but as another reviewer noted, if you keep in mind that “he” in most instances is Cromwell, you will be OK. Other reviewers have also noted the need for family trees and access to Wikipedia while reading, which is not a bad thing. I have never been able to wrap myself around the whole York/Lancaster genealogy, but I'm closer now, having read this book and subsequently (within a week!) two non-fiction books about the Wars of the Roses and the rise of the Tudors.
Not much of a review, is it? I'll repeat that I couldn't put it down, and a lot of that had to do with just how funny a lot of the book was, surprisingly. The Cromwell of this book may bear no resemblance to the historical Thomas Cromwell, but the book version is hilarious. I like that in a book, and will definitely read the sequel, and be looking at the author's other novels.
Interesting book, poorly organized.
Some takeaways:
Typical British working-class diet in lead-up to war was appalling. Army diet was much better calorically and w/regard to protein intake.Challenges of providing cooking ovens for the scale needed, and then moving them over and over (Soyer stoves, Aldershot ovens, ovens built in the sides of trenches), were huge.
Transporting food long distances while keeping it hot/cold.Scale of food needed - 2 million men time 1lb meat/bread/tea/sugar/cigs/etc etc EVERY DAY - railway challenges.
*And don't forget the HAY for the tens of thousands of HORSES.
This was an interesting read in a “pull the curtain back” way, but it read very disjointedly - diary excerpts and drawings and so on are scattered heavily throughout the text in a way that I found very distracting.
If I am honest this is probably a 3.5 stars. It was a fun, quick, silly read, quick because I probably skipped 25-30% which consisted of techno-babble (the further along I got, the more tech-talk I skipped - it was pretty interesting in the beginning to watch the main character work out how to grow food, for example). The main character is certainly engaging, and the interactions between him and the NASA people on Earth are pretty hilarious. I can see why this is already being made into a movie, and I will for sure see it.
I greatly enjoyed the world-building in this novel (luckily there is a sequel out there already!) and the POV of the main character, once part of a larger “hive mind,” so to speak, now struggling to live inside his/her own head while trying to figure out what happened to the rest of him/her. I can't pick a pronoun because one of the features of this book is a language where the default pronoun in use is “she.” So, a) I don't really know what the gender of the main character is and b) I had to work at remembering that not every character in the novel was female and I guess c) I had to consider whether it mattered. This is one of the things I enjoy about science fiction/speculative fiction - having to think about non-human perspectives makes you really consider what your definition of “human” is in the first place. A very interesting read.
I enjoyed reading this book and learned a great deal (e.g., this project is where Bechtel got its start, and Kaiser Permanente could be said to have been born here too). Almost more interesting than the construction details was the information on the living conditions at the site. Men flocked to Black Canyon before construction started, hoping for work, and ended up living in camps in the most squalid conditions, some with their families in tow! Reading about the eventual improvements in living conditions, along with the occasional organized-labor conflicts (IWW and UMW), and the incredibly authoritarian governance of the whole area (it was one big Federal camp, essentially), was very interesting. If you've been to Hoover Dam, or plan to go, this book will add greatly to your appreciation of what you're seeing. (I do wish it contained more photos, though.)
