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Books!
So, a couple of days ago, I got a package in the post from Angry Robot Books. I was mystified. I opened it, and there was a slip reading, "With Compliments."
And then I remembered: Matthew Hughes offered copies of the book to the first 25 people to e-mail him, promising him they'd blog about it in return. I did just that, and apparently I was one of the first 25, because I got one - and the book doesn't even get released until the end of this month.
Somehow I'd forgotten all about it until the book arrived. Still, I did promise to blog about it - and I will. This is not that blog entry because I haven't finished reading it yet, although I am a chunk of the way into it. (You can read the first 10,000 words at Mr Hughes' webpage. I'm a bit further in than that, but it's enough for you to get a solid idea of what it's like, I think.)
It's been a long time since I read a new novel - I'm quite a rereader of fiction, and an extensive devourer of new non-fiction. I'd forgotten, therefore, the feeling I hate that is part of why I so rarely do read new novels: the twisting, anxious feeling that I don't know what's going to happen, and yet there's this complicated situation the characters are in, and - aaaahhh!
Plus novels are so long, something I don't care about once I start reading them, but which seems daunting at the outset. (For the same reason, I hardly ever watch movies.)
Anyway, based on my impressions so far, if I were to condense my forthcoming review of this book into one of those, "If you like X, you'll love Y," statements, I'd put it this way: If you liked Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, you'll probably enjoy The Damned Busters. It's not quite so apocalyptic - since, at least in part one of this trilogy, it's not so far actually about the Apocalypse - but it's the same kind of interestingly pretty-much-accurate-yet-unusual approach to theology and myth combined with wit and humour.
I like it, but I suspect I won't love it until I'm rereading it, and can appreciate it, engaging story and clever writing alike, without that anguished tension of not knowing what's going to happen.
I have to say, given I essentially have a review copy of this book and an obligation to review it since I promised to blog about it, I'm somewhat relieved that it's actually good.
I have some other books, too, but I actually paid money for them. I ordered some books from Amazon UK all of two days ago, taking advantage of the free shipping that now and for the time being extends to Australia, and they arrived today.
I have:
The Wonderful Future That Never Was, by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics: visions of what the future would be like, from the first fifty-odd years of the magazine Popular Mechanics. Because that kind of thing is the kind of thing I utterly adore.
The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists & Secret Agents, by Alex Butterworth. Radical politics circa the turn of the last century, written as a sort of non-fiction novel.
Molotov's Magic Lanter: Uncovering Russia's Secret History, by Rachel Polonsky. Begun when the author was given access to Molotov's private library.
Red Plenty, by Francis Spufforth. "Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream."
Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962, by Megan Prelinger. I'm fascinated by the advertising of past eras - commercial or propaganda, but especially, really, propaganda, or propaganda-adjacent activities.
If I ever do get around to doing postgraduate work in history, one of my nominal thesis concepts is: How Vera Lynn Defeated Hitler: The Home Front of the Second World War, and it will be about the frequently-disregarded issue of how and why British civilians, especially the women who shouldered a burden that was almost without precedent, held it together and in doing so brought down the Wehrmacht.
And then I remembered: Matthew Hughes offered copies of the book to the first 25 people to e-mail him, promising him they'd blog about it in return. I did just that, and apparently I was one of the first 25, because I got one - and the book doesn't even get released until the end of this month.
Somehow I'd forgotten all about it until the book arrived. Still, I did promise to blog about it - and I will. This is not that blog entry because I haven't finished reading it yet, although I am a chunk of the way into it. (You can read the first 10,000 words at Mr Hughes' webpage. I'm a bit further in than that, but it's enough for you to get a solid idea of what it's like, I think.)
It's been a long time since I read a new novel - I'm quite a rereader of fiction, and an extensive devourer of new non-fiction. I'd forgotten, therefore, the feeling I hate that is part of why I so rarely do read new novels: the twisting, anxious feeling that I don't know what's going to happen, and yet there's this complicated situation the characters are in, and - aaaahhh!
Plus novels are so long, something I don't care about once I start reading them, but which seems daunting at the outset. (For the same reason, I hardly ever watch movies.)
Anyway, based on my impressions so far, if I were to condense my forthcoming review of this book into one of those, "If you like X, you'll love Y," statements, I'd put it this way: If you liked Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, you'll probably enjoy The Damned Busters. It's not quite so apocalyptic - since, at least in part one of this trilogy, it's not so far actually about the Apocalypse - but it's the same kind of interestingly pretty-much-accurate-yet-unusual approach to theology and myth combined with wit and humour.
I like it, but I suspect I won't love it until I'm rereading it, and can appreciate it, engaging story and clever writing alike, without that anguished tension of not knowing what's going to happen.
I have to say, given I essentially have a review copy of this book and an obligation to review it since I promised to blog about it, I'm somewhat relieved that it's actually good.
I have some other books, too, but I actually paid money for them. I ordered some books from Amazon UK all of two days ago, taking advantage of the free shipping that now and for the time being extends to Australia, and they arrived today.
I have:
The Wonderful Future That Never Was, by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics: visions of what the future would be like, from the first fifty-odd years of the magazine Popular Mechanics. Because that kind of thing is the kind of thing I utterly adore.
The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists & Secret Agents, by Alex Butterworth. Radical politics circa the turn of the last century, written as a sort of non-fiction novel.
Molotov's Magic Lanter: Uncovering Russia's Secret History, by Rachel Polonsky. Begun when the author was given access to Molotov's private library.
Red Plenty, by Francis Spufforth. "Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream."
Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962, by Megan Prelinger. I'm fascinated by the advertising of past eras - commercial or propaganda, but especially, really, propaganda, or propaganda-adjacent activities.
If I ever do get around to doing postgraduate work in history, one of my nominal thesis concepts is: How Vera Lynn Defeated Hitler: The Home Front of the Second World War, and it will be about the frequently-disregarded issue of how and why British civilians, especially the women who shouldered a burden that was almost without precedent, held it together and in doing so brought down the Wehrmacht.