nocto's reviews
1309 reviews

Notes on Surviving the Fire by Christine Murphy

challenging dark emotional inspiring fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was a random selection from the library’s new books shelf that really fired me up. The very first page has Sarah telling us about field dressing a deer she’s hunted and killed. I had no idea what “field dressing” was before this. It’s a disturbing description to read but this is a story about sexual assault and rape and it is not going to get any less unsettling. The voice of the narrator here is very strong and individual and I loved it.

The story is set at UCST, a California university that I initially wasn’t sure whether it was fictional or not. It became clear we were at the University of California at Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa is fictional, at least as a city this big, but I realised that Santa Teresa is also the home of Kinsey Millhone by Sue Grafton. Grafton used it as a stand-in for Santa Barbara where she lived, and I think the details given here match up to Murphy using the same substitution. Either way it looks like homage to Grafton and that sits very nicely with me. I also liked the name of the main character being Sarah Common. There’s enough everymen in literature and an everywoman is welcome.

The little details like this were in addition to a great narrative though. It’s one of those books that won’t be to everyone’s taste - and that’s always fine. But I wouldn’t want anyone to shy away from it because of the subject matter. There are some weird turns in the plot, but nothing weirder than in a lot of mystery books and probably less than in real life. For me the Sarah’s style of narration made the book hard to put down and I found myself willing her on and really enjoyed the book. It’s a strong debut and I wonder what on earth the author could come up with to follow it, but I’m glad to have read this.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault

Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow

informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Third of the Martin Hench books, the first had Marty dealing with corporate corruption in the current day, and the second in the dot-com boom. This time the author takes us back to the eighties to see how Marty started out. And I really enjoyed this. Though the early days of Silicon Valley are a million miles from where I was at the time - a kid loving computers in the UK - the whole vibe of the book feels bang on. A lot of it is very nostalgic to me but nostalgia doesn’t always make a book good, and most of this isn’t particularly rose-tinted nostalgia, there’s plenty of bad stuff going on as well, for example the book didn’t shy away from addressing that this wasn’t a great time to be queer, but also, it was and things would get better.

There’s a lot of Marty’s back story for build-up before you get to the main story that’s about a computer company that’s founded by ex-employees of another computer company and of course there are a stack of scams and legal-loopholes for Marty to unearth and Doctorow to explain to us how they all work. I’m plenty familiar with a lot of the background here but there was also new stuff I hadn’t come across and the way some of the devices were employed in service of the plot was very entertaining. Some of the plotlines seemed kind of ludicrous but in an “I expect stranger things have happened in the real world” kind of way. There were some great strong female characters and I wish some of them had had more time on the page.

I’d definitely recommend this episode in the series to anyone with an interest in retro-computing, I’m not sure how great it would be if that’s not your thing, but it’s mine and I really enjoyed it. I’m not sure whether there are plans for more books in this series since Marty has explored three different eras and I think that might be the optimal amount for fictional Martys (though I’m no expert having only seen the first film in that series). I’d certainly be very happy to read more about this Marty’s adventures in the past, present or future though.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I saw this book recommended on social media in a thread that mentioned some other authors I’d enjoyed, Becky Chambers was there certainly, and picked this up from the library on that recommendation. Then I sat down at home and glanced up at the bookshelf and saw the exact same copy of the book looking back at me. So I took the copy back to the library and read Darren’s copy of it instead.

I certainly can’t complain that this book is too short! The book is set on a planet that appears to be dying, or at least cycling through a bad phase in its evolution, I was never quite sure which. I belated realised there’s a glossary in the back of the book explaining the terms that are in use in the book, but it’s not really needed, I like to pick up words by figuring them out from their context. The most important is probably orogeny: the ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic and related forms of energy to address seismic events and the main characters in the books are orogenes, the people who have this power. Far from being revered for their ability to connect with the land and avert disaster though they are basically outcasts being exploited by the rest of society. It’s an interesting setup for sure. I really enjoyed my slow discovery of how the world worked and what the problems with it were.

The book has three threads. The major thread features Syenite, an orogene who is sent out on a mission with a mentor in the dying world. Another concerns Essun, a woman wandering and looking for her missing daughter. The third thread tells the story of Damaya, a young girl thrown away from her family and taken to the school where orogenes are trained to handle their powers. I saw where two of the threads were going to link up early on, but the third dangled loosely until almost the end of the book and made the book feel a little disjoint. Perhaps I missed the clues as to the connections between that thread and the others and the connection made sense when it was revealed but it seemed to spend too long apart from the other parts of the story. In the end all was good, and I certainly enjoyed the read. The next one in the series is sitting on the shelves at home as well and I plan to read that in the near future.

The Midnight News by Jo Baker

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I started reading this before Christmas and the beginning was a little intriguing but rather slow going and I put the book down for a few weeks. The library renewal came round and I almost took it back in but decided I’d enjoyed the books of Jo Baker’s I’d read in the past enough that I’d give it another go.

I’m really glad I gave it a second chance. The slow start feels like it was necessary in order for the rest of the book to work. We meet Charlotte, twenty years old and trying to make her own way in life away from her overbearing father, I think he was a baronet or some such. It’s 1940 and the Blitz is on in London, I grew up with Second World War stories and definitely have a soft spot for them. There’s a lot that’s familiar here but also tons of little details that feel right, the author has clearly done her research as well as drawing on popular culture. I have read too many books with dodgy anachronistic trivia in them and it was pleasant to feel like this one was pretty much correct.

The story is woven very well, those details mean that the important threads are blended in with the background. It’s only looking back over the book as things fall into place that you realise you already know what’s happening. It’s not a mystery but it feels like one for a bit and I enjoyed that.

That the slow start left me wondering whether to continue is my only real criticism of the book, and perhaps that was just me being a little stressed rather than the book’s problem. I’m very pleased I kept going as the latter half of the book is a real gem.

The Home by Penelope Mortimer

emotional funny sad

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I’ve come across the British Library Crime Classics, bookshops have seemed to be full of them in the last few years, so presumably readers like them too, but I’ve only been tempted to read them a couple of times and haven’t been that impressed. I hadn’t realised they were also pulling other lesser known works out of the archives and publishing them though. This book is part of the British Library Women Writers series, which is “a curated collection of twentieth-century novels by female authors who enjoyed broad, popular appeal in their day”. This is the kind of thing that sounds right up my street. I hadn’t heard of the series until I perused this one in the library but this won’t be the last one I read.

This book was published in 1971, set in contemporary times, and focuses on Eleanor who is divorcing from Graham; they have five mostly grown up children who wander in and out of the story as Eleanor tries to find her feet in her new home. You can see why it got picked for republication as it was published in the year that the divorce laws were reformed to allow no-fault divorces in the UK. That aspect of the divorce isn’t particularly called out here though, it’s clear pretty much straight away that there have been affairs on both sides during Eleanor and Graham’s marriage, though it’s Graham who is instantly set up with a younger girlfriend.

It’s the aspect of the younger girlfriend that really dated this book for me. There is lots of other stuff that feels rather hideous today, chiefly the attitudes towards homosexuality from some of the characters, though a lot of it was benign and affectionate. But it’s the casual way that every single character in the book thinks that older men are obviously destined to hook up with younger women that really felt out of place today. The book is a comedy, and I have a history of missing the point in comedies, so I can believe that perhaps that was something being played for laughs and I just let the point whizz right over my head. But much comedy, and this definitely isn’t the laugh out loud farcical kind, has some kind of seriousness at its heart, and this book is a good insight into the prevailing attitudes of 1971. I’m glad to see that some things have definitely improved since then, even if everything is far from perfect today.

I really enjoyed the book though! There’s three generations of the family featured and we see how they interact, what they think of each other in private and how they treat each other in public. One thing that surprised me when I started thinking about how old everyone in the book would be now was realising how young all the characters were. It’s mentioned that Eleanor was in her late teens when the couple met and married, which makes them unlikely to be much beyond their mid forties in the book, I’d say that was hardly decrepit by modern standards but perhaps I’m just showing my own age!

It was a good thought provoking and entertaining read and I’ll have my eye out for other books being republished in this same series by the British Library.

Slow Productivity : The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport

informative inspiring fast-paced

4.0

I remember working in an office, circa 2000, and everyone being told we needed to stay at our desks late on a Friday afternoon so that higher management could see that we were working hard to get the software release out of the door. Which was ridiculous because at that point there were maybe two people out of the forty odd in the office who were actually working on that. Everyone else had finished their parts of it and leaving early on a Friday was just making us happy; we were all working on the next thing. All that happened was that we all got annoyed and felt undervalued. The memory of that ridiculous edict has stuck with me and there’s a very similar anecdote that opens Chapter 1 of this book.

But now what really annoys me is that even after more than twenty years of working for myself, I still fall foul of what Newport terms pseudo-productivity. I know full well that sometimes the most productive thing I can do is to not do anything productive but still I sit at my desk when I’m stuck on things, and am amazed when I give up and go outside and then find I have the answers when I come back to my desk. The author makes it clear that this isn’t a book for everyone, not everyone has full control of their time, but for me, the nail is hit firmly on the head and I’m reading this book for my own enlightenment.

There’s three parts to Newport’s theory of slow productivity, and they’re written on the book jacket so I’m not spoiling anything by writing them here.

1. Do fewer things
2. Work at a natural pace
3. Obsess over quality

The first two are ideas I’ve figured out by myself over the last few years but it’s good to have them written down like this and expanded on. I like that he makes clear that doing fewer things doesn’t mean having fewer ambitions or getting less done. It’s just stop trying to pretend you’re doing a hundred things at once. Say no to stuff you don’t have space for at the moment. You can actually end up getting more things done over time this way. This one I find comes pretty easily once you let yourself go with it.

The second point is another that has slowly dawned on me over time. I often think I’m procrastinating when actually I’m just not ready to do things yet. Often a project needs to simmer in the back of my brain for a while before I’m ready to put it together. Once I sit down to do something I’m often surprised by how quickly I can do it, but that’s a product of the fact it’s been simmering away. If I try to do complicated things as soon as I think of them then the results are often substandard. It’s not procrastinating, it’s working things out. And my brain can work things out while swimming or biking better than it can at my desk a lot of the time. I found there was a lot of useful advice in this section of the book about embracing things like a shorter workday and having slow seasons.

The third point, that you should obsess over quality, is the one that I struggle with the most. The point of when does this become perfectionism is addressed but not really answered. I have a lot of thoughts on this - society often tells you not to be a perfectionist, but that’s simply how you get to be good at stuff, you worry about the details that other people wouldn’t do. I often find myself not finishing projects because I’m not happy with them though, which can make the whole thing feel like a waste of time. There’s a balance to be found here and it’s not one that I find naturally. This section of the book is definitely the least developed but the one I wanted to read the most. There’s a big focus on music and cinema projects, and whilst I can see why the author took that line, they didn’t feel as relevant to me as the rest of the book.

All in all though, it was a good read that straightened out some ideas I’ve had myself for a while now. I’ve read a couple of Newport’s books before (though weirdly I seem not to have reviewed them here). I’ve had issues with some of his assumptions (so maybe not so weird that I never got around to reviewing them then) but this one felt better balanced, or perhaps it was just that this one was a take that I was already ready to hear.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

dark funny mysterious fast-paced

4.0

I managed to miss something in the very first line of this book where Mary Katherine introduces herself as eighteen years old and for a large chunk of the book I was torn between thinking she was a lot younger and quite a bit older. Which only added to the sense of unreliable narration that the book gives you. She’s telling us about her isolated life in her family’s rather Gothic sounding home, with her older sister Constance and Uncle Julian who is elderly and disabled. You find out early on that the rest of the family died in an incident a few years earlier, and that Constance was acquitted of this crime. It’s not a whodunnit by any means, it slowly dawns on you whilst you are reading what probably happened and then other incidents in the book act as confirmation.

The book was written in 1962 and I’m not clear when it was supposed to be set but I got the impression of the 1940s or 1950s from the writing, and the writing is super evocative bringing back memories of all the New England horror stories I read in my youth (weirdly not including Stephen King, something I should remedy sometime). Though this isn’t a supernatural horror story at all. My partner read it before me and told me it was a black comedy, that aspect of it didn’t really stand out to me at first, but by the end, yes, definitely.

It’s a short book, and easy reading in one way but quite disturbing in others. Definitely worth a read.

Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester, Simon Winchester

challenging informative slow-paced

4.0

Well, I finished this at the end of January and I haven’t known where to start with writing something down about it. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit. Usually if I leave something as a background process in my brain for a while something vaguely coherent pops out. It feels a little ironic that a book subtitled “How we acquire, retain and communicate knowledge from ancient times to the era of big data” is proving to be something I find difficult to communicate about! And also maybe to retain. Anyway I now feel it’s getting in the way of me retaining knowledge of the books I’ve read since because I want to post about this one before I get to those. And maybe then it’s also getting in the way of me reading books because I don’t like to carry a backlog.

Page by page it was a super interesting book. There’s hundreds of anecdotes, mostly facts in fact, about information here. The book is at it’s best, and it’s most memorable when the author is speaking from his personal experience. An account of the fallout from the Bloody Sunday massacre that he reported on in 1972 and testified in its two enquires with very different results - the first just after the events exonerating the British Army and the second in 1998 condemning them - was the standout passage of the book for me. It comes just after an account of how young Chinese students today don’t know ‘Tiananmen Square’ as signifying anything beyond than the geographical location, I was aghast at that and then quickly set straight on how knowledge is manipulatable all around the world.

To me it seemed that it was an all encompassing sort of a book, but it shone best when it zoomed in on a tiny aspect of knowledge. Aspects of it have seeped into my brain and I think they’ll keep occuring to me in the years to come. And the books going to stay on my shelf for reference. But in another way the whole thesis of the book is kind of forgettable. We’re a curious species, we obtain knowledge and we somehow forget we ever didn’t have that knowledge. The book reaches as far as the dawn of the ChatGPT era and here’s a quote related to that:

If there is no pressing need to know much about anything, nor much of a need to remember anything, then a previously unimaginable corollary is on the horizon. There will very soon be no particular need to be intelligent at all.

Which is rather chilling. I certainly don’t want a machine to do the thinking for me; and I don’t think AI is “intelligent” really. But here I am forgetting the details of the book I read just a handful of weeks ago already. I guess an LLM could have churned out a much better summary of this book for you and maybe I should pay more attention if I want to keep up with them. But this is what I have. It’s my impressions of the book and what made it valuable to me, and that interface between the printed page (which is increasingly my preference once again by the way) and the squishy malleability of my brain is still something only I can come up with.

The Venetian Sanctuary by Philip Gwynne Jones

lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

3.0

I don’t feel like I have many series reads on the go at the moment, I used to have zillions and I’m pretty certain there are still many authors writing series so it seems it’s me that’s gone off the idea. This one is a series where I’m waiting for the author to write a new book with the same characters so I can get my hands on it as soon as I can though.

I’ll check before I post this but the only authors of contemporary series I can remember that I’ve read that have handled the Covid pandemic within the timeline of the books are Elly Griffiths (I got annoyed with Ruth and Nelson breaking the rules) and Sara Paretsky (VI was a stickler for the rules). (I did check before posting and didn’t find any others.) This is another to add to those. The author mentions at the end that he was advised not to write a Covid novel, but I agree with him that the strange times are something worth preserving. I feel it would be weird to base a series in contemporary times, and Nathan has already been dragged through Brexit after all, but then have the pandemic mysteriously not affect Venice.

The previous book was, I seem to remember, set in early 2020 as the world began to twig that something was up - and this is set later in the year as people are getting together again in Italy. Most of the book is set in an isolated monastery on an island in the Venetian lagoon which I was pleased to find out is a real location and looks to be the one photographed on the book cover. Lots of good stuff, as well as the setting there were some great characters. The thing I get a little tired with is the device of letting the dead body speak their own chapters from beyond the grave - it might have been used in all this series, it’s certainly been used in the last few so it wasn’t a surprise, but I’m definitely weary of it. But overall this was a good story as well as a time capsule and I’m still in for the next book if not perhaps quite as enthused about it as I have been, but mostly I think that’s me and not really a reflection on the book.

The Party by Tessa Hadley

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

So I'm really not a fan of short stories, I don't like how I just get to know the characters and the setting and find out a little of what's going on and then it's done. Where's the rest of my book?! Novellas though I thought I could handle. And Tessa Hadley's definitely become a favourite author so I really wanted to love this and enjoy its brevity. But.

It was the same old story - I just wanted there to be more. Tell me more about post war Bristol, tell me more about the sisters: Evelyn's studying French and Moira's studying fashion, how did they get there? Is their parents' relationship just going to fizzle on like this forever? What happens to the nice guy Evelyn ignores, do the bad guys have any redeeming features? I often want to know more about the background characters in a book, in a novella it feels like even the main characters are background characters. You can sketch in all sorts of things behind them to fill out the picture and maybe that's the beauty of it. You rather know what happened before this and you can take a good stab at what happens next. 

I just put the book down feeling a little short-changed. It's definitely not a bad book, it hinges on a turning point in the lives of two sisters, and if you want a quick read that's actually full of detail then I could almost recommend it. It's just that I really wanted it to be a prelude and not the whole thing.