nocto's reviews
1309 reviews

x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender by Eugenia Cheng

hopeful informative

4.0

The subtitle of the book is “A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender” and boy, do I have all the thoughts about this one. I’m not at all sure I can get them from my head onto the page in a way that’ll make much sense to anyone else. But the primary reader I have in mind whenever I write anything on this site is future-me (who is, btw, a complete idiot who forgets everything) so I’ll do my best.

The first half of the book explains a lot about maths and what it comes down to, to me, is showing how maths takes concepts to pieces to analyse them, abstracting them, sometimes simplifying them, so that we can get insight into the actual mechanics that are at play rather than getting caught up in complex interplays of different ideas or names for things that we have preconceptions about. And then the second half of the book is applying that by giving other names than ‘male’ and ‘female’ related ones to things so that we remove the gendered associations from them and can analyse what’s actually happening. I love the way it’s done. The first half of the book was great, the second half I had more issues with, mostly because I wanted things to go further, to get split into more dimensions and find more answers. But I think Cheng’s decision to keep it simple was probably the right one, both to keep the book on track and to seek out solutions to problems with a simple model. The solutions found by the simple model might not be perfect but they are something to look at and see how the model could be improved next, and that is very much how maths does solutions.

My interaction with the book was hugely complicated by my own personal history as a drop-out of the research maths game. Cheng’s examples come primarily from the intersection of maths and education and the text kept pinging up examples in my own mind of where my own fledgling research career went awry and my PhD research was never completed. It’s not something I usually dwell on these days but it does go round in my head from time to time and over the years I’ve gone from feeling like a personal failure to realising that at least some of the responsibility for the failure was with the system (which encompasses the whole world) I was working in. And this book has given me some more ideas to work with in my own mind that I hadn’t thought about much before. What saddens me now is that there’s no real way I can harness the thirty years of thoughts I’ve had on the subject in any way that would help others.

The most valuable section of the book might be the at very end where Cheng lays out ways you can take the insights from the book into the real world. I especially liked the role-play section at the end, not least because in getting to it I learned why, on the odd occasion when I have a good wisecracking reply to a put down I hate myself if I actually get to use it. Which wasn’t really the insight I was expecting to get from a book about maths, but I’m happy with it!

All in all, I thought it was a clever book that took an idea that didn’t seem like it could be mathematical and ran with it and came up with interesting insights.

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.0

I’ve read several of Ambler’s books in the last few years and they’ve all been pretty entertaining, and make for fairly light hearted journeys into a version of the past that’s grey but not too dark. This one was written in 1962 and is set sometime post-second world war. Arthur is a petty crook in Athens who picks on the wrong target and unwittingly gets himself involved into a bigger kind of crime than he’s used to.

My problem here is that I’m pretty certain I’ve never read this before and yet so much of it was so very familiar to me. Maybe I’ve read it before? But I haven’t logged it here with all the other books I’ve read since 1999 and though I know I’ve missed a few out over the years I was pretty certain Ambler was new to me when I first read A Kind of Anger. Maybe he wasn’t, and maybe I read it sometime 25+ years ago. Or maybe it’s just that the kind of devices in use here are the kind that are used and re-used in all kinds of spy and crime fiction so this felt derivative where it probably wasn’t at the time it was written. It made for an odd read anyway; mostly I just thought I was reading a familiar genre until one section late in the book made me think I’d really read this before.

Specifically, and with spoilers, if there’s another book out there that features a break in to a palace like this going up to the roof and coming down, with a reluctant member of the team, then I’d love to know what it is!

Whilst there were details in the book that annoyed me I didn’t really think they were related to the fact that I was reading sixty years after its publication. If anything, Arthur’s mixed Egyptian and British ancestry garnered less trouble in the book than I’d expect today, and viewing the tribulations of a character who’s pretty much rendered himself stateless was interesting. I thought it stood up pretty well as entertainment, I just wish I could work out whether it was a re-read or not!

Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes

3.5

In the 90s when I discovered mysteries featuring female private investigators Linda Barnes was one of the first authors I came across. In my mind at the time she was one of the big four authors in that genre along with Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton and Marcia Muller - and they all blew my mind one way or another. Whereas the other three continued to publish new books for me to read I really thought I’d read all of the Carlotta Carlyle mysteries and she hadn’t written any more. But I was digging through my book database a while back and realised that I’d listed nothing after reading The Big Dig in 2003 which was the 9th in the series but there seemed to be twelve books in the series. So I went looking for number 10.

I downloaded the sample as an ebook and the beginning of this was familiar - not just vaguely like I thought with The Light of Day - I had definitely read this opening chapter with a chase through a Harvard bookstore before. Perhaps I’d read the book and not noted it down? But as I went on I realised I definitely hadn’t read any further. So I suspect I’d read the first chapter as one of those sample chapters at the end of the last book. I’ve given up reading those for just this reason, but I obviously read this one before I reached that resolution. It’s good to have evidence to back up my reasoning for not reading them though.

My notes show I didn’t think the last book was great and it was twenty years ago. I worried that this would seem dated now and I’d hate it. Whereas actually it being a little dated was lovely. Cell phones are still something that not everyone has, though the batteries are as terrible as ever. The capitalisation of “Web site” took me back, I’d forgotten that was ever standard. Just a load of little things throughout the book that made me realise how much things have actually changed in twenty years.

And beyond my own nostalgia trip I thought the whole thing was enjoyable on its own merits as well. The plot was pretty decent, there were good characters, and the advancement in the cast of recurring characters that every long running series has was judged pretty well too. I’m definitely going to finish the last two books in this series soon!

Any Human Power by Manda Scott

adventurous challenging inspiring medium-paced

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

5.0

Manda Scott is another author I first came across in the 1990s when I devoured her three book mystery series about Kellen Stewart, a doctor in Scotland. Since then she’s written many more books but the last book I finished was No Good Deed which I think was a standalone mystery and that was in 2001! I’ve started a few more of her books - I have a copy of Into The Fire that I was enjoying years back but got put aside for reasons I can’t remember that I ought to finish someday - but not finished any of them. So I started this with a determination to finish something this time!

And the book starts very strangely indeed with the death of the main protagonist, Lan, and her journey into the afterlife. There are times this would have immediately made me put the book down but I think I’m more amenable to this kind of thing in storytelling these days and besides I was determined to read this. There are basically three books here in one. The first is concerned with the interface between the afterlife and the dreams of the living - definitely not really my thing; the second is more or less a political thriller - more my thing; and the third is a manual for how to save the planet - also more up my street really. Combined they make for a blockbuster of a book that despite my initial misgivings I found pretty compelling.

The beyond-death aspect of the book and the ways in which Lan basically goes into a Monte Carlo simulation of all the ways we can screw up the planet and then goes back to try to help her descendants find the ways that don’t end in disaster is a necessary framing for either of the latter two aspects of the book to work. In the end I really enjoyed the book and the characters and I’m glad I read it. Informative and entertaining.

The A303: Highway to the Sun by Tom Fort

slow-paced

2.5

I’ve seen this book around bookshops for years. The subject matter is a road in south & southwest England, and this kind of intersection of history and geography and nostalgia culture is the kind of thing that I enjoy but I’ve never been tempted to buy it because I don’t really know the road in question. I’ve certainly travelled bits of it at different times, mostly as a child, but it’s not something I know well. Spotting it on the library shelf though was enough to make me pick it up and give it a go.

It turned out that my first impression was correct and I should have left it alone. I feel like the book should have stood up to my not having a close personal connection to the road. I’ve travelled many other roads across England and I feel it should have resonated with me by proxy. I like random bits of local history even when I don’t know the places very well. I don’t really know why this didn’t work for me.

Partly it’s that even though the book covers a load of different topics there’s a big emphasis on Stonehenge, which is entirely understandable, and as someone who grew up in England I don’t really know what I have against Stonehenge. I’m pretty certain I’ve only seen Stonehenge from the road as a child, presumably the A303. And I should probably remedy that sometime. When I lived in Wiltshire, not very far from the A303 in fact, for a while as a child, we would visit the stone circle at Avebury and everyone told me it was bigger and better than Stonehenge, and it was much more open access. So still as an adult, many years later, my eyes glaze over at the mention of Stonehenge. And I know it’s not really fair of me to judge the book (or Stonehenge!) on that basis. But that’s my own personal history.

Yet the book opens with a section about Little Chef which is, for reasons I cannot truly fathom, one of the shining beacons of my childhood. And it was written before the restaurant chain’s demise and this edition was revised after it which makes it all the more interesting to me. So basically I’m concluding that the book is squarely aimed at an audience like me but not exactly me, and I’m kind of disappointed in myself at not enjoying it more and the M5 will continue to be my own highway to holidays.

Body Tourists by Jane Rogers

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

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

5.0

All those people who get cryogenically frozen in the hope that science will some day figure out how to bring them back to life? This is the book for them. Or maybe they shouldn’t read it…

The book is set sometime in the not too distant future and a scientist hasn’t exactly figured out how to bring Walt Disney back from his cryogenic suspension into eternal life but he has figured out how to take the memories of people who have been frozen when they died and have them take over the bodies of young adults for a couple of weeks. Which is a far more interesting setup really. First, it’s all rather shady so there’s a limited amount of people willing to have their bodies taken over which makes the choice of who to give a couple of weeks of extra life to a bit of a dilemma to start with. Then there’s the viewpoint of the people whose bodies are used and how they feel about it. And also by using young healthy bodies for the procedure but mostly the memories of elderly people who have died you are giving those people a chance at being young again so they aren’t really the same people they were.

There’s a number of scenarios in the book, some of them go really well and many of them go badly. I thought the book was very well thought out and the topic explored nicely through a range of different characters. And that’s before you get onto the kind of dystopian future that’s running around in the background behind the story which is set dressing that could have been a book in itself. All in all, a really good read!

Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

This was just a fabulous read. The story of a man whose wife has died unexpectedly recalling and recounting the years of their marriage doesn’t sound particularly enthralling but really it was. And it left me feeling uplifted as well. I’m not sure I can explain why I thought most of the book worked so well. David and Mary Rose had one of those relationships that looks impossibly perfect to a lot of people, and that, of course, has it’s cracks on the inside, but it’s not a book that exposes the rot within, it just shows something that seemed very realistic.

I liked the way that the narrative of the marriage unfolded in more or less chronological order but was told from David’s viewpoint as he tried to come to terms with it. In particular I loved all the supporting characters. The families and the friends, both how they were when Mary Rose was alive and how they responded to her death. There was a part at the end of the book that seemed, maybe a bit too neat, but it certainly wasn’t unrealistic, perhaps it could have been foreshadowed a little. But it worked with the story and overall I enjoyed the book a lot.

Definitely an author I’ll look out for again, I really liked her storytelling style.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

medium-paced

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

2.0

I picked this up to read because I wanted something light and quick and Christie’s always a good read isn’t she? Hmm. I don’t think I’ve ever read this before but the plot was terribly familiar. I suspect I’ve half listened to the radio play at some point without really taking it in. So I knew enough to get bored but not enough to remember what happened and stop reading. So rather than light and quick it became dull and slow-ish to read. I should probably have given up and picked something else.

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

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

4.0

I read the beginning of this as a sample ebook a while back but I’m rapidly running away from ebooks these days it seems. Paper books are back to holding my attention a lot better. So I didn’t carry on after the sample chapter at that time but I did check the book out when I spotted it at the library.

The book is set sometime in the future on another planet where the descendants of a group of people have left the dying earth are settled. The initial story is set in the city of Xiosphant and centres on Sophie who is a student there. Xiosphant is a disciplined and divided society. The city is regulated into an artificial day and night cycle that its inhabitants must abide by. The inhabitants themselves are regulated into some kind of caste system, Sophie’s roommate Bianca comes from a higher class than she does. Early on in the book Sophie gets thrown out of the city for a minor offence and how she deals with that event sets off the chain reaction of the plot for the rest of the book.

I really enjoyed the story, it’s a wild adventure tale for a lot of the time and the world building is fantastic. The planet comes to life as you read. Though much of it is inhospitable to humans it’s not just an empty backdrop for human colonisation. You gradually uncover what’s happening elsewhere. Another main character comes on the scene and the story swaps between the two viewpoints.

In some ways the book was longer than I felt I wanted it to be, but yet there were characters who I wanted to know more about who didn’t get enough time on the page so I think that’s pretty balanced really. Definitely an author I’ll look up again.

A Change of Circumstance by Susan Hill

3.0

I feel like it's been a while since I've read one of this series. Four years in fact (this is one reason why I like to keep records). But it looks as if I'm up to date now. Which is both pleasing and disappointing. 

The series hangs less around Simon Serrailler with every book. I find his sister and her family far more interesting characters to return to and now his sister's married his boss he feels all a bit irrelevant, though the boss is even less interesting. I'm ever bemused by the author's decision to make Simon and Cat two-thirds of a set of triplets and then never have the third triplet feature in the series. Possibly I'm forgetting something, and I know there are series-adjacent novellas (or possibly short stories) that I haven't read so maybe Ivo turns up there. I should probably check them out for completeness sometime. The 'Change of Circumstance' title seems though to be the author trying to get Simon out of the boring rut he's driven himself into and to metamorphosise him, perhaps, into a slightly different character, though I thought the way he was going about it was both very in character and not really very nice all at the same time. 

Anyway, so much for the family saga, the plot here concerns county lines drugs gangs who use young children as drug runners. There were some good characters featured here, and I'd have liked some of them to have had more time on the page, but some details just didn't seem to add up and that spoilt the ending of the book a bit. Basically it felt like there was a lot of character and not a great deal of plot. Which is fine really, and I enjoyed the read, and I'm presuming that there will be more in the series and I'll enjoy them too but I won't be rushing out to read them either.