In a strange way, some of those work. Little Women in Maoist China? 1920s Macbeth? Far From The Madding Crowd transported to rural Japan? All interesting reinterpretations. A female Hamlet, wandering mad and naked and thinking a shell is her friend’s skull? Cool, I’ve seen at least one worse staging.
Most of the rest is pure rip-off copyright-infringing nonsense of course.
Oh, except the toy dinosaur, which is a splendidly ironic cover for the Lost World.
I haven’t read it for years, but the discussion of Queen’s Gambit over in the TV thread got me thinking of the book The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte. In it, the main character is trying to solve a mystery by playing in reverse a game of chess depicted in a painting. Interesting, at least, though I don’t remember much.
The Queen’s Gambit, the book, is very good.
Finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, so it was a no-brainer to pick this one up.
First of all, it’s short. I read on Kindle so not sure of actual page count, but finished in a day and I’m not a fast reader.
Secondly, it’s…weird. The story is told in journal entries and is mostly nonsensical. The interesting part is figuring out the mystery of just what the hell is going on. As such, I won’t give any spoilers here. It’s not a hard mystery to solve (I kind of knew what was happening by mid-book), but the little details of of the story add more and more as you go on, fleshing it out.
All in all, I enjoyed it and would recommend for a quick read. Doesn’t rise to the epic feel of her previous novel, but I really do like her writing style and it feels like a book for adults (if that makes sense), which is nice considering the plot involves magic, etc.
I remember really liking Jonathan Strange when it first came out but don’t remember a lot about it any more.
For German speaking readers:
I am “reading” Qualityland from Marc Uwe, and it’s awesome. It’s a futuristic book, with many similarities to 1984, only much funnier. I’m laughing tears and having a good time imagining the upcoming future. I put reading in quotes because I am listening to the audiobook through Audible.
Edit: the name of the author is Marc-Uwe Kling
Just As Well I’m Leaving Michael Booth. Very Bill-Bryson-esque travelogue from Denmark to Turkey following Hans Christian Anderson’s travels. Fine, entertaining enough.
The 99% Invisible City From the 99% Invisible podcast, elements of design in the urban landscape that are easily overlooked or taken for granted. Lots of very short chapters, actually too short. I can imagine Roman Mars reading them.
We Are Anders: Endlich Ordnung im Brexit Chaos Ludger Fischer. Because I’m a masochist, a book in German with a satirical, bordering on amusingly insulting, look at Brexit Britain. Half-way through. I’ve finally found a use for the iOS multi-window function with a dictionary open in the other window 
Possibly the funniest book I’ve read (heard) this year. The audiobook is read by the man himself, so it only gets more amusing for me, as Ayoade digs into View from the Top, a completely awful film from 2003, starring complete space cadet Gwyneth Paltrow. Ayoade approaches this cinematic turd 100% seriously, taking as a given its status as a masterpiece in his own personal canon, and apart from digging into the tiniest on-screen minutiae to justify his unhinged opinion, he regularly engages in diatribes and strikes off on unrelated tangents. His parents (a mother allergic to dust, a father allergic to levity), his childhood (solitary, mostly spent looking for clothes like those of Holden Caulfield), his meaty quads, it’s all there.
I thought it was from an economist, but Graeber is actually an anthropologist, so there’s a lot more about debt throughout human society.
Evans is a very solid historian, and here he documents the enormous changes taking place in Europe, as massive surges in population and communication and the concomitant booms in industry and infrastructure change the face of a continent, and change its relations with the rest of the world.
It took me over a month to read The Pursuit of Power, but it was so interesting that it was well worth it.
Just finished the audiobook of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust read by the author himself. Gaiman’s reading is, of course, wonderful, and the opening is absolutely charming. However, the immense promise of the novel dissipates as soon as the protagonist reaches the center of Faerie, where the story turns into a Hitchcockian hunt for the McGuffin, which wasn’t quite what the initial chapters promised. The central romance itself is undercooked, which was a disappointment. I like Gaiman enough to read his other titles, but I continue to engage with his post-Sandman oeuvre with a bit of bit of skepticism and impatience.
This is pretty much how I feel as well. There are some people who are in love with the sound of their own voice; I think Gaiman really loves to read his own writing.
And I also agree 100% about the romance being the biggest let-down in Stardust. I was reminded of the McGuffin pivot in that book when I read the last book of Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, which seemed to pivot so far away from the promise of the first book that if he’d simply changed the names of the characters, it could easily have been from a completely different series.
That is hilarious. I started at the bottom, around the comments from 2009 and worked my way up. Some real gems in there.
Pretty decent fantasy novel, setting’s a bit more imaginative than usual, plenty of distinct ideas, prose not amazing but passable. I should be more enthusiastic about it.
Russia after the fall of Communism, from the POV of a businessman trying to keep his life in order in a capitalist nightmare, where bribes are required to get anything at all done. All businesses are somehow involved in illegality, but for a man who runs several concerns, including a bank and a business that professionally forges documents, life is always challenging. Vividly written and a deeper look into Russia than the usual, a society happy with violence and clashing minorities.
If you want something along the lines of The Gutter Prayer but actually well-written and with more/better protagonists, try Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. I tried TGP after the Bardugo books and stopped halfway through. I mean, you’re right–it’s not without attributes–but there’s so much really good fantasy in the world, we do not need to plod through average stuff anymore.
Too right. I’ll read that, thank you.
Provenance, Ann Leckie. Stand-alone story in the Ancillary Justice universe, but best read after that series. Enjoyable, with a more intimate focus. I wish more authors did work like this. Leckie’s clearly not out of ideas, but not everything needs to be about the most important events in history and the fundamental concepts of personhood. Sometimes it’s just a bit of reflection on how families are hard in an adventure affecting less than all of humanity. It’s a different enough setting to give readers the opportunity to draw a variety of parallels to their own experiences while keeping everything at enough of a remove to allow them to be gentle with themselves. Not as startling as the Ancillary series, but it’s refreshing that it doesn’t feel like it has to be; it can just be a fun read.
Re-read The Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks. I think this might actually be the best Culture book. Banks was always best at writing sharp, brilliant, vignettes. The structure of this book, alternate chapters with one strand contemporary and going forwards in time, the other heading backwards in time, each being reflected in the other, plays into that strength, each chapter being almost like a self-contained short story. Funny, dark, action-packed, ambiguous, cynical, idealistic - everything good about IMB’s writing is in here.
