pickWhat would happen if the karmic effects of our actions appeared almost immediately? When this becomes a reality, Lama Tashi, who lives in a small town in Colorado where he runs meditation classes, guides those ready to hear his message through the consequences.
so-soFrances's husband is working in Saudi Arabia as an architect in the 1980s. Joining him, she is Isolated by the strictures placed on women and the lack of anything in common with other expat wives, she descends into paranoia - but perhaps they really are out to get her.
Beautifully descriptive writing but I didn't feel engaged apart from a few chuckles at the start as I recognised a few situations and characters from living abroad in the 1980s.
Honorable mention to "When the Saints Go Marching In" by Anthony Bidulka
pickArguments from evolutionary biology and quantum physics that we do not perceive reality anything like as it is.
I managed to keep my head above water till we got to the use of game theory and statistics to show that evolution drives us towards useful perceptions rather than accurate ones and in fact eliminates accurate perception. At that point, I just had to take the author's word for it. ⬇
In February of 1962, Joseph Bogen and Philip Vogel sliced in half the brain of Bill Jenkins—intentionally, methodically, and with careful premeditation.
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#FirstLineFridays
so-soA sapphic retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in a Vietnamese culture in a world plagued with mutant viruses unleashed by the Vanishers.
Disappointing. I spent too much of the time trying to understand what was actually happening while the author concentrated on physical descriptions and emotional states.
pickFictionalised biography of Henry VIII's fourth wife.
Since Anna was only married to Henry for about six months, there doesn't seem to be that much about her in the historical record so the author ekes it out with a love affair which she admits in an afterword is purely fictional. ⬇
pickThree women and a boy are found shipwrecked on a small island in the South Pacific. They refuse to leave without someone from the CDRA. Adam Saint takes on the mission with the help of his sister and his nephew.
Plenty of twists and turns in another thriller. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger but since the book was published 11 years ago, I don't suppose we'll find out what happens next.
pickIntelligence agent Adam Saint returns from a mission to devastating personal news. He resigns from the agency but finds he needs to put his skills to work again.
At the beginning I thought this was going to be a bit of a cliche with a deus ex machina at the end, but then it took off in all sorts of unexpected directions. Lots of fun.
pickAn anthology for dipping into rather than reading right through. Like most anthologies, the stories vary in quality but there were definitely some whose authors I'd like to read more by.
pickChildren plus dog explore the island in the cove where one of them lives and look for treasure.
Pure nostalgia with the book which is my earliest memory of owning a book. Read in memory of my uncle who gave it to me and who died last week.
pickA nun joins a group of “roving contractors“ who are on their way to make a delivery while avoiding bandits and mata (some sort of paramilitary secret police?).
I enjoyed this stand alone novella, though it did feel more like an incident taken from a much longer work. If that longer work exists, I would definitely read it.
#QueerBC @PuddleJumper
pickThe CEO of an AI start-up specialising in translating medical research into Asia-Pacific languages is found murdered outside his office. Did somebody object to the business or was it something more personal? Kimo and Ray investigate.
I put two and two together very early on and got somewhere in the region of four and a half. Kimo's personal life is interesting without straying into soap opera territory or bashing us over the head with politics.
panThis Orcadian verse SFF novel with accompanying standard southern English version tells the story of a student returning to a space station from her art studies who forms a relationship with a visitor to the station.
While it was fun matching up the two versions and listening to the audiobook on Everand, there seemed to be a lot missing from the actual story which suddenly just stopped in the middle of the action. A disappointment.
pickThe author's account of how as an adult his Catholicism re-asserted itself and what that meant as the Church hierarchy threw itself into the fight against even secular civil gay marriage in the mid 2000s. ⬇
pickHari Seldon uses the statistical techniques of psychohistory to foresee the coming collapse of the Galactic Empire and starts a Foundation which will help shorten the coming period of barbarism since the collapse of the Empire is now inevitable. We observe the course of history through a series of snapshots in the first couple of centuries of the Foundation's existence. ⬇
pickA book of SF short stories with religious themes written between 1940 and 1970. It has one of my favourite of such stories, Arthur C. Clarke's “The Nine Billion Names of God“, which I still think has one of the best last sentences ever.
Of course it is noticeable from a 2020s standpoint what or rather who is left out of this collection of 13 stories, but I don't know which of these stories I would omit to make room for other voices.
pickI knew nothing about Schopenhauer going in, and if asked I would probably have guessed that he was a composer. I didn't really understand the explanation about Schopenhauer's theory of the Will as the meaning seemed to slip and slide about and just as I thought I was beginning to understand it the concept changed. I don't know who was at fault, me, the author, or Schopenhauer.
pickWe follow the ups and downs of the relationship of two haenyeo (sea women) played out against a backdrop of Korean history from 1938 to the present (2008).
As someone with only vague knowledge of the barest outline of Korean history (Japanese occupation, Korean War, brutal dictatorship, democracy), I found that aspect of the book very interesting. I don't think I'd ever heard of the April 3rd Incident, which plays a pivotal role in the book. ⬇
pickOne of the astronomers helping Julius Caesar with his reform of the Roman calendar is found murdered. Caesar takes this personally and orders Decius Caecilius Metellus to investigate.
Liberal use of famous names as red herrings made this, the last book in the series, even more fun. I accidentally skipped the penultimate volume so I still have that to look forward to as well as some short stories.
A memoir. It's the highest on my TBR list but I might end up reading something lower down first
#SundayFunday
@BookmarkTavern
pickWhen a priest's daughter is murdered in the luxury resort of Baiae, local opinion fixes on the son of a Numidian slave trader as the culprit. Decius Caecilius Metellus thinks the young man is innocent but he only has a couple of days before the trial, which is certain to find him guilty.
As usual great twisty fun much enhanced by Metellus's comments on the action as asides in the narration.
It was a good year for me, even if it was a bad one for Rome.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl
pickThe author uses diaries, library records, and other papers as well as elocution guides to reconstruct who was reading what in the 18th century and how. Reading was much more of a shared activity with people reading aloud to each other from newspapers, periodicals, non fiction, joke books, and religious works, and a good reading voice was essential.
pickImmediately after the end of WWII, the patriarch of a rich Japanese family dies leaving a will designed to set his three grandsons and their mothers at odds with each other. The bodies of members of the family start piling up. Can Kosuke Kindaichi solve the case while there are still some heirs left?
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#teaandabook
I read the first chapter and realised I'm going to have to read it again and construct a family tree while reading it.
