The Royal Library of Alexandria (SP Book Discussion)

[OhBollox]

The UK political class and commentariat as a whole come out of this book looking especially blinkered and incompetent.

‘Oh no.’

None of this was secret, the negotiating positions were all open, and the weight the EU put on its own red line - the Single Market - was not understood by the UK.

It looks like Davis and Frost did not understand it on purpose; Davis under orders, Frost because he’s a fucking nutter.

Sub-par Laymon in style, and it gets worse as it goes on. Really unfortunate as I was looking forward to some solid no-nonsense horror.

Unusual protagonist, and some proper splatterpunk horror. Not bad at all, very genuine, if a little lightweight.

Don’t introduce a wife just to kill her in the next scene, man, and don’t introduce a child only to kill him in that same scene. Apart from being terrible and cheap, the deaths have no impact. Not bad, but the first third of the book suffers from telling and not showing. Most unfortunate because it’s decently written.

[OhBollox]

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[Mirefox]

And that’s the brilliance of the book! People looking for the book that Grandpa reads don’t even know what they are looking for…

[rinelk]

Recently read the Temeraire series. Starts off like the Aubrey/Maturin series, and then follows the course of the Napoleonic wars, but with dragons (which, oddly, does more to excuse the reading of modern values into the past than to change the course of events, though there’s some of that, too). Not amazing, but pretty good, and easy reads.

Now I’m in the middle of Bring Up the Bodies, sequel to Wolf Hall. I have no interest in the subject matter, but Mantel’s writing feels so insightful at every turn that it’s such a pleasure to read. Need to put more of her stuff of my list.

[Mirefox]

I only ready His Majesty’s Dragon. It’s worth it to continue the series, then? I’ve always wanted to go back to it.

[rinelk]

The first book is the most naval; later ones tend to have the main characters gallivanting all over the place on various exploratory and diplomatic missions (which, of course, require some derring-do) or engaging actively in fighting the war in the air, which mostly means in support of land engagements. It does a bunch of things I liked, including taking logistics seriously. I don’t think it aimed for a higher literary bar than the first book, but if you liked that, it’s a fun series of quick reads which is a touch more edifying and ambitious than adventure fantasy needs to be, without coming across as didactic.

[OhBollox]

That series always made me want a Napoleonic wargame with dragons. Where’s Rachel Simmons when you need her.

[SpiceTheCat]

I dropped out after the fifth book (Victory of Eagles), but I was entertained by the first 4. Somehow VoE was sufficiently eh for me that I wasn’t bothered thereafter, not that I can remember why.

[OhBollox]

Utterly bizarre, unique, never read anything like it.

One of those sci-fi novels with no sci, it’s just a background setting. I like it anyway, it has a lot of wry humour to it and could have used more. A woman takes an interstellar trip, following an interstellar plague, which kills off 99% of the human race. Could have used at least some science, but writers don’t seem to do large-scale stuff unless it’s space opera. Easy to read, a little naive, and perhaps too “Oh, look, a society devastated by disease, look around you right now, hint hint.” for me to enjoy it fully.

A sci-fi murder investigation in space, which doesn’t have enough sci-fi or enough investigation. It’s good, but is toeing a line between the two genres rather uncomfortably, and that approach is robbing both aspects of weight.

[Natus]

I’m a big Pavić fan. I have three of his books, four if you count both Dictionaries!

[SpiceTheCat]

This is a bit of a change from our usual collective reading here, life not being just sci-fi and mil-hist. I know, I know, we try to ignore it but it’s there.

I don’t read sleb memoirs, and I’m not going to change after this, but I was intrigued. Matthew Perry was good in everything I saw him in, and yes that includes Friends, which I rewatched last year. Also it had been reviewed as brave and insightful, and was on discount when I spotted it.

And … yes, well. It’s a very uneven book, the theme of which is that fame, vast amounts of money and sleeping with all the most beautiful women in South California are awesome, and a barely controllable and at times near-fatal addiction to booze, pills and cigarettes is just horrible. The book is essentially a rollercoaster between these two extremes. It seems churlish to say it was quite dull in parts, and I skimmed chunks of it, when the cycle of sober/Emmy nomination/more money/hot girlfriend/oh it’s all gone to shit again cycle got repetitious. Although the bits where his pancreas explodes or all his teeth fall out were notably grim. Very much like a rollercoaster in fact, in that it goes on slightly too long, parts of it are stomach-clenchingly awful and it’s a relief to get to the level bit at the end.

Every now and then however there was a chink of really quite sharp writing, like there was a better-edited book in there waiting to get out, or maybe a couple of books. I’d quite like to know more about the campaigner Perry trying improve the lives of addicts in the face of an uncaring state and exploitative hospitals, who writes amusingly about the spectacular ignorance of Peter Hitchens, and maybe a memoir of the Friends years.

Anyway, back to a revisionist history of Roman Britain, which sadly falls short of its ambition, and waiting for the next Ben Aaronovitch, Charles Stross and Adrian Tchaikovsky releases. Also Emma Southon has a new book coming soon. Normal service will be resumed.

[OhBollox]

back to a revisionist history of Roman Britain,

Oh God, which one.

[SpiceTheCat]

David Mattingly,An Imperial Possession. Not revisionist enough to be honest, given the intent set out in the introduction.

[OhBollox]

https://twitter.com/NuclearTeeth/status/1644073742195146754 - A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is 99p/c and is well worth it.

McAuley is a journeyman writer, and all his novels are competent. I never quite gel with them, but they are well-written and I always feel like giving them a chance. The post-human and post-Anthropocene world here is interesting,

Self-aware and very meta, but not that well written. Has some good ideas.

[rinelk]

In middle school, on a school field trip, I spent all my money on a book in a museum gift shop. I had always adored medieval castles as gigantic puzzles, which various mechanisms and tactics evolved to solve, prompting updated castle architecture, and so forth. So when I saw a big book which looked like it’d really go in depth about that process, I was smitten.

As is often the case with the smitten, I didn’t look too carefully. I was utterly crestfallen, upon returning home, to discover it wasn’t about the fascinating and gorgeous medieval castles and siege tactics, but gunpowder-era ugly bullshit mostly made of fucking dirt. I got no more than 10 pages into a dense treatise full of name-dropping without context before giving up in disgust.

Well, fast forward 35 years or so, and I’m finally kind of interested in this era, thanks largely to Powers’ The Drawing of the Dark and Wheatcroft’s Enemy at the Gate. So I finally pulled it off the shelf and gave it a read. It’s still surprisingly user-unfriendly, happily dropping names with little context, but it did feel more deeply connected to primary sources than anything I’ve read in a while. The 1979-ness of it was a bit offputting, with no discomfort on display when describing Christians who worked with Muslims against other Christians as “unholy” or certain people as “negroes”. Consequently, the somewhat cursory treatment of non-European methods at the end, and Duffy’s conclusions that they basically did nothing very interesting (despite describing a bunch of things, briefly, which seemed pretty innovative), are hard to take very seriously.

I certainly hope there’s a more readable overview available now, but it was pretty neat to go back and finally finish a book I started over 30 years ago.

[OhBollox]

Hilariously, Duffy’s book is still a contender decades on. There are a good few books on siege warfare, but the best ones are definitely by era, e.g. look for ‘siege warfare in the time of the Romans’, ‘siege warfare and the Normans’ etc to find decent books, otherwise all you find are very general overviews that don’t give you much detail because they need to cover hundreds of years of a discipline that changed considerably. Forts and Fortresses by Brice is great, but like a lot of specialist books, can be quite expensive.

It is, however, a fascinating area of warfare where mathematics and physics are elevated to almost an art form; you can see with the development of star forts that working out angles alone could make the difference between a fortification standing in the face of superior force or not; mathing out killing ground, dead space, ranges, angles, elevation, etc took away some of the instinct from soldiering (or at least, combat engineering) and began to push warfare quite firmly into the professional sphere where you either could do trigonometry or you were a bit of an amateur, however talented. This knowledge perfused the officer corps, sometimes in the face of resistance, but maths was of course very popular in logistics, and became even more popular as people realised you can sit down and effectively work out time + men + space equations for troop movements, payloads, supplies, etc and do so in a consistent and standardised manner.

[rinelk]

The Brice was $8 used on Amazon, so I’m not complaining. I expect it to be understandably brief about each topic, but it still looks enjoyable.

[OhBollox]

Roberts’ book isn’t what I wanted from a biography, being more hero worship piled on the reputation of a man who had it built on the back of his own bragging and state propaganda. Zamoyski’s book, on the other hand, is a much more realistic depiction of a talented man whose greatest skill was relentless self-mythologising. Tactically a genius but strategically something of a moron, keen to maximise his victories but erase his mistakes, unable to ever satisfy his ambition even when fuelled by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own men, and powerless to ever establish any happiness in his personal life.

[whovian223]

Zamoyski’s other two books that I’ve read on the Napoleonic years (
Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March and Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna are really excellent.

I’m definitely looking for this one.

[OhBollox]

A lot better than the first. Better writing, but more importantly, better thought-out, an improved plot, fewer errors, and more satisfying characterisation. Probably the least satisfying thing about it are the fights, but they just don’t go in to the sort of detail I expect, which is probably for the best. A surprisingly good read.

Sat down and read it in one go. Mitchell is very much at the height of his powers. Ranked right up there with the alternative history of Powers.

Oh I see how it is. You drop enough scifi in with the romance that I don’t notice the romance! Well, I did notice, but the book is still good. Not what I would usually read, but I have been successfully decoyed.

Up there with Espedair Street. I could easily read this again, and it ties in lightly (but nicely) to some of his other books. Listening to the songs mentioned makes for a wonderful soundtrack. Tracking a band throughout their faltering trajectory, alongside some social change, and setting it amongst arguably some of the most famous music of the 20th century, roots it very effectively. I only wish someone would record all the songs of the titular band.

One of those books that makes me wonder who is really stupid, me for buying it or the writer for creating it. Expedition to super cave, bad and weird stuff happens.

Yes, I have plenty of books on the crusades, but I didn’t have Frankopan’s book on the First Crusade, did I.

Some re-reads because I was tired. Gemmell was never exactly a cutting edge megabrain, but he did do meat and potatoes fantasy, with plenty of fights, desperate last stands and sieges, and people struggling to be good in the face of evil. Solid, uncomplicated, and compelling enough to make you ignore the, often quite obvious, flaws.

Ignoring the ‘Dark Ages’ bit, I will continue to dig more into the period and catch up on some books I have missed out on.