![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[books 2011] catch-up
Sep. 4th, 2011 01:31 pm47. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
Yet another really enjoyable Dresden Files book. Harry's surprise weapon at the end was hilarious yet clever, again.
48. The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
The author, a Cambridge academic, sets out to find out if there are any truly "wild" places left in Britain and Ireland. It starts out with the whiny city-dweller "isn't nature so much better than this" tone that pisses me off, but I'm glad I persisted because that goes by the wayside quickly, and he comes to some surprising conclusions.
Most of his adventures are reasonably interesting. He also pulls a couple of truly stupid stunts, like night time mountain walking in the Lake District during a blizzard. He at least admits that his goal to sleep at the top of a hill on the northern tip of Scotland in a gale might have been a bit unrealistic.
The chapter that came as news to me is that the counties of southern England where the underlying rock is softer are full of ancient roads which over the centuries sank up to a couple of metres below the adjoining land, which Macfarlane calls the Holloways. Some of these have been filled in, but others are still there and completely forgotten but largely impassable as they're full of trees and brambles.
I'm keeping this, because I got quite a bit out of it even though I was probably in the wrong mental place for it, and there's an interesting bibliography.
49.Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
I was suckered into this because the cover proclaimed "if you like Zafon's Shadow of the Wind you'll love this" and Isabel Allende endorses it. I love Shadow of the Wind. A lot.
It's about a boring, set-in-his ways, Swiss teacher of ancient languages who, though a chance encounter and in the middle of a mid-life crisis, buys a book of philosophical musings by a Portuguese doctor in the throes of a mid-life crisis, drops everything and travels to Lisbon to find out more about the author. In the process he has to examine a lot about his life.
It took me ages to get into this (Shadow of the Wind it is not), but I got there eventually. The pseudo-philosophical ramblings of the book-within-the-book are nonsensical and stupid, but it turns out the author had an interesting life, having been in the Resistance against the Salazar dictatorship. It's a gentle, thoughtful book that is a good counterweight to the action-packed Dresden Files books I've mostly been reading lately.
This is another book that I was almost certainly in the wrong mental space to be appreciating, so I'm going to keep it as I may be in a better place to appreciate it at another time.
50. Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason
Got this cheap on a fundraising stall at a National Trust property. I saw the film recently so there wasn't a great deal of surprise plot-wise, but I wanted to know whether I was interested in the rest of the series.
If anything, it's even grimmer than the film, despite the fact that Erlendur does not at any point eat a boiled sheep's head in the book. The prose is very sparse and odd. I'd blame this on the translation, but if what little I remember about medieval Icelandic has any bearing here, I'd say that the translator has gone a long way to make it accessible to English-speakers. There's not a lot to it, but it's quite gripping in places. The verdict is that I will look out for the rest of the series at some point, but I think I'll get them from the library.
Yet another really enjoyable Dresden Files book. Harry's surprise weapon at the end was hilarious yet clever, again.
48. The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
The author, a Cambridge academic, sets out to find out if there are any truly "wild" places left in Britain and Ireland. It starts out with the whiny city-dweller "isn't nature so much better than this" tone that pisses me off, but I'm glad I persisted because that goes by the wayside quickly, and he comes to some surprising conclusions.
Most of his adventures are reasonably interesting. He also pulls a couple of truly stupid stunts, like night time mountain walking in the Lake District during a blizzard. He at least admits that his goal to sleep at the top of a hill on the northern tip of Scotland in a gale might have been a bit unrealistic.
The chapter that came as news to me is that the counties of southern England where the underlying rock is softer are full of ancient roads which over the centuries sank up to a couple of metres below the adjoining land, which Macfarlane calls the Holloways. Some of these have been filled in, but others are still there and completely forgotten but largely impassable as they're full of trees and brambles.
I'm keeping this, because I got quite a bit out of it even though I was probably in the wrong mental place for it, and there's an interesting bibliography.
49.Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
I was suckered into this because the cover proclaimed "if you like Zafon's Shadow of the Wind you'll love this" and Isabel Allende endorses it. I love Shadow of the Wind. A lot.
It's about a boring, set-in-his ways, Swiss teacher of ancient languages who, though a chance encounter and in the middle of a mid-life crisis, buys a book of philosophical musings by a Portuguese doctor in the throes of a mid-life crisis, drops everything and travels to Lisbon to find out more about the author. In the process he has to examine a lot about his life.
It took me ages to get into this (Shadow of the Wind it is not), but I got there eventually. The pseudo-philosophical ramblings of the book-within-the-book are nonsensical and stupid, but it turns out the author had an interesting life, having been in the Resistance against the Salazar dictatorship. It's a gentle, thoughtful book that is a good counterweight to the action-packed Dresden Files books I've mostly been reading lately.
This is another book that I was almost certainly in the wrong mental space to be appreciating, so I'm going to keep it as I may be in a better place to appreciate it at another time.
50. Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason
Got this cheap on a fundraising stall at a National Trust property. I saw the film recently so there wasn't a great deal of surprise plot-wise, but I wanted to know whether I was interested in the rest of the series.
If anything, it's even grimmer than the film, despite the fact that Erlendur does not at any point eat a boiled sheep's head in the book. The prose is very sparse and odd. I'd blame this on the translation, but if what little I remember about medieval Icelandic has any bearing here, I'd say that the translator has gone a long way to make it accessible to English-speakers. There's not a lot to it, but it's quite gripping in places. The verdict is that I will look out for the rest of the series at some point, but I think I'll get them from the library.
