…And then I caught Covid on May 1st, still in Chicago, still in the middle of the Papal Election of 1492, which we had to abruptly move online because Ada and Lauren caught it too. We’d caught it in class; it was the only place we’d been. We caught it despite masking, despite everyone being thoroughly vaccinated. We were sick for a couple of weeks and still positive for a week after that, having an isolation slumber party, but we are all fully recovered now. The weird effect of this is that the whole pandemic now has narrative closure for me. I came home by train late in May, straight into preparations for Scintillation, the small con in Montreal that I do programme for, which is happening in June. And I read twelve books, some great, some strange, and very, very different from each other.
Savages, K.J. Parker (2015)
Thank you, K.J. Parker, for being there for me when I first had Covid and we weren’t sure how to cope and I couldn’t concentrate on any of the things I was reading! Parker is consistently grabby, even when he’s being weird about stuff. This is a book about warfare and logistics, and people despised as savages bringing down what’s perceived as civilization. I realised about a third of the way in exactly what it was doing and watched it unwinding itself beautifully through the rest of the book, like watching a master gymnast go through a perfect routine of breathtaking difficulty and pull it all off to land on a predetermined mark. I continue to have issues with Parker’s use of love and gender, I continue to read him nonetheless, and I’m very glad now I didn’t discover him until 2020 because all of it was there when I needed it. This is as good a place to start as any, if you want to start.
Our Italian Summer, Jennifer Probst (2021)
A romance novel set in Italy, though sadly not a very good one. It seemed promising: a mother, grandmother, and granddaughter go for a holiday together in Italy to bring them together. But—as is for some reason common for American romance novels set in Italy—it regards it as a luxury experience and they make terrible (and expensive) choices that mean they spend more money to have less fun, which is painful to read about. They went on a guided tour that took them on a private bus instead of on trains, to fancy expensive fussy restaurants instead of random, normally great Italian food, and worst of all they chose the expensive Vatican tour that takes you straight to the Sistine and has you miss the Raphael rooms and all the other wonderful things. I read this book constantly tutting at their terrible choices (you know when people say to people in books, “Noooo! Don’t do that!”?). There was romance. There was Italy, but really, they were wasting it. They did figure out their personal issues. Not terrible. But not Nicky Pellegrino either.
Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch (2011)
I don’t usually read urban fantasy, but lots of people have been recommending this series. Specifically, Jennifer Crusie has been talking about them on her blog, so when I saw this on sale I read the beginning, tentatively, and was hooked right away. It’s great. There was indeed too much blood for me, but the first person voice is wonderful, the metaphysics is well worked out, and I couldn’t put it down. It’s a police procedural where the mystery is supernatural. Both the solution and the supernatural stuff fit together in a way that feels right, where so often this kind of thing jangles on me. This is the start of a series, and I plan to read more if the level of horror isn’t any worse than this one.
The Time of Our Lives, Portia MacIntosh (2019)
Slightly less good feel-good romance than the others I have read from MacIntosh, it seemed to be treading much the same ground as No Ex Before Marriage and that one was better. I didn’t warm to Lucia or Tom, or want them to be together, or feel the reason why they weren’t was convincing. Disappointing.
Desire, Una Lucy Silberrad (1908)
This book was amazing. How has Silberrad been forgotten? I don’t understand it. This is a wonderful book about—and here I stopped typing and stared out of the window for a while with the plot and characters of Desire unspooling around me. It’s about life and how to live, and the place of art and love in life, and it’s about a woman called Desire Quebell and a man called Peter Grimstone who form a real and unlikely friendship. It’s about friendship, and making things, and doing things. It’s the kind of book you’d expect to be a classic that everyone has read or at least meant to read, not a book that sold well in 1908 and then fell down a hole. It’s really great, and I’d like everyone to read it and talk about it. Way better than The Good Comrade and I liked that a lot. There are a number of Silberrad’s books on Google Play, does anyone know how to make them into proper ebooks that I could read on my Kindle?
Paul: A Biography, N.T. Wright (2018)
A biography of the apostle Paul. I was not the expected reader for this book, which is always an interesting experience in itself. Unsurprisingly, it was more religious than I wanted, but it did answer some questions I had after reading the Bible. It was mostly interesting, though more so when focused on the details of Paul’s life and less so when talking about how amazing his theology seems to Wright. There’s so much we don’t know, and wish we did, so many unfillable lacunae. But I was hoping for something like the biography of Origen I read a few years ago which was great. Oh well.
Of Solids and Surds: Notes for Noël Sturgeon, Marilyn Hacker, Josh Lukin, Mia Wolff, Bill Stribling, and Bob White, Samuel R. Delany (2022)
A pile of notes by Delany circling and recircling the question of “Why I Write.” Absolutely fascinating, with more about his individual books than usual in explorations of this nature. I laughed aloud at the stuff about demographically diverse people coming up to him intermittently to tell him how much they love specific books, because that happens to me too. Lots of it was thought provoking, even when I didn’t agree, and much of it fascinating in its detail as that detail reflects on Delany and his life.
Princes of the Renaissance, Mary Hollingsworth (2021)
I have now read quite a few books by Hollingsworth, as she works on people and a period I’m interested in. I find all her books somehow unsatisfying; they’re never as deep or vivid as I’d like. But yet, who else is writing about these people and the cities that are not Rome, Florence, and Venice? So I keep on reading her, and keep on finding her books useful but wishing I liked them better. This one has the same organizational principle as The Family Medici where she tells you who appears in each chapter and their ages at the beginning, which doesn’t work quite as well here where it’s not a dynasty but is still handy. This is a survey of the principal patrons of Renaissance Italy, seen very much from a patronage perspective, but with information about marriage alliances and dowries and wars and power mixed in. More valuable in areas where I knew less, like the Farnese family.
A Single Swallow, Zhang Ling (2017)
I wasn’t expecting this book to be genre when I started reading it. I picked it up when the ebook was being given away free on “translation day” or somesuch, when some books in translation were being given away to celebrate translation. It said it was a novel about WWII China, which it was, but… not really a spoiler as it’s clear from chapter one, it’s narrated by ghosts, including the ghosts of dogs. It focuses on the life of a woman who was significant to all three ghosts, and to whom they are all significant, but who never gets her own point of view, though she develops surprising amounts of agency as the book goes on. It’s very good, and although it contains a lot of death and violence it’s overall positive. But it’s very strange indeed. I liked it, and I’m glad I’ve read it and have this different perspective.
Hindsight, Peter Dickinson (1983)
Re-read, bath book. I wonder how many times I’ve read this since first I took it out of the library in 1983? It’s a detective story in the form of a memoir of an evacuated boarding school written by a detective writer for a biographer. It’s a strange and powerful story with memorable characters, and what it’s really about is the reliability of memory and the power of imagination. If any of Dickinson’s mysteries have eluded you until now, do yourself the favour of reading them all, this one included. They’re very much worth it.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets, William Shakespeare (1609)
I had read some, know some by heart, and knew I had not read all of them. I was not expecting the collection to lead off with a number of sonnets in which Shakespeare powerfully urges someone to join a cloning project—that is, to marry for the sole purpose of making sure that a copy of your physical likeness will live on past your death. That’s so bizarre—it’s less bizarre when seen as a cloning project than what it really is. Very strange. I also hadn’t known Shakespeare was lame, which is mentioned a few times here in sonnets as an accepted thing but never has been in biographical material I’ve come across. Disability so often and so easily disappears from our historical memory of high-achieving people, but here it is again. These are very good sonnets, but I wouldn’t have minded a wider range of subject matter, for which I guess I should blame Petrarch but I don’t. It’s obvious to me that at the time Petrarch wrote his sonnets that he simply couldn’t think of anything except Laura, while this is not the impression I had reading these. No wonder people make up ridiculous theories about who Shakespeare was: There’s such a strange mix of candidness and guardedness there and you have to wonder why. Anyway, you don’t need me to tell you these are great. But my favourites are the ones where he writes about something that isn’t love love love all the time, and especially Sonnet 77, where he’s very comforting on the subject of writing.
The Tatami Galaxy, Tomihiko Morimi (2004, translated 2022 by Emily Balistrieri)
I was fortunate enough to be sent an advance reading copy of this fascinating Japanese iterative fantasy. It is well known in Japan, as both a book and a movie, and this is the translation of the original book. Despite high recommendations, I almost gave up in the first quarter of the novel—why was I reading this book about a discontented college kid who did weird things? The first quarter took me as long to read as all the rest, which I raced through delightedly, once it reached the point where his life begins going through different iterations. It’s beautiful and satisfying and coming at things from a different direction from Groundhog Day or Replay (or my own Lent) but still in dialogue with ways this has been done before in SF. Pick it up when you have the chance. It makes me so happy to see more genre novels from other cultures being translated so we can all be part of the same conversation.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and fifteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her novel Lent was published by Tor in May 2019, and her most recent novel, Or What You Will, was released in July 2020. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.
Yes, I’m starting to believe everyone who says we will all catch COVID sooner or later. As you know my wife has it, though she’s feeling much better now. I am fortunate that I still don’t seem to have it (two negative tests so far) — I credit my second booster, two weeks ago. But alas for having to miss Scintillation! I hope it’s going great!
Arin Komins has been recommending Ben Aaronovitch for a long time now, I will have to try him.
I have Silberrad’s The Good Comrade queued up, ready to read, after having enjoying The Affairs of John Bolsover. Maybe I should have bought Desire? I saw some good online mentions of it but also for The Good Comrade so got that first. Next “old popular book” will probably be a Jeffery Farnol, though!
The biography of Paul I’ve read is Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, by A. N. Wilson. Wilson was not a professing Christian at the time of writing that book, though since then he has returned to the faith. At any rate, then, his viewpoint might be different from Wright’s. I did like Wilson’s book.
I haven’t read through the sonnets carefully in years and years. Every so often I latch onto one and am reminded again of Shakespeare’s brilliance.
I totally agree about Dickinson’s mysteries. I started with him very young, with the first Inspector Peebles book, a fortuitous library find, and was surprised to realize soon after that he was also writing SF when I found the Changes books.
I love these columns, and always wind up buying a few books I’d never heard of. This time that means Desire, Hindsight and A Single Swallow, with The Tatami Galaxy added to my wish list.
I’ve read all the Rivers of London books by Ben Aaronovitch, and I really enjoyed just about every one of them. As I read horror as well as SF and fantasy, the violence didn’t bother me much, so I’m not qualified to comment on that part of them, but I can say that I really enjoy the magic system and the characters. Peter Grant wears very well on the imagination, as does Thomas Nightengale.
Thank you for the link to Sonnet 77, and Patrick Stewart’s reading of it, which was utterly delightful.
FWIW, I recall most of the Rivers of London series being way less gruesome than the first book.
I avoided the Rivers of London series for several years, because I don’t normally read urban, or supernatural, or horror. It was the police procedural that finally pulled me in, but the protagonist’s snarky voice and knowledge about the architecture and environs of London that have held me there throughout all the novels, the three novellas/novelettes (or whatever they are) AND all the graphic novels. I’ve reread the series 3 times so far. Obviously, I’m hooked.
I was intrigued by your mention of a biography of Origen; is there any chance that you might be able to provide the author and/or title of that work?
On a wider note, thank you for providing these reviews, and your thoughts; I have always found them to be highly insightful, and greatly appreciated
For a biography of the Apostle Paul that is more rooted in history and less in theology, you might try The First Paul by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
Like @tinsoldier, I’d love to know which biography of Origen you enjoyed, if you can recover it.
Re the Rivers of London series, the audiobooks of these are narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, one of the best audio narrators out there, period. He does all the Afro-Caribbean-English accents with great specificity, many of which I would not have been able to conjure by ear for myself, and has exactly the right degree of snark for Peter Grant. Highly recommended.
@3: I wasn’t sure whether they became less gruesome or I became more inured. :)
@6 — much as one should keep in mind that Wright, a committed Christian, may have his axe to grind from a theological perspective, one should keep in mind that Crossan definitely has his own axes grinding away, and some of views — leaving theological issues aside (though of course that’s hard to do) — such as very early dating of some noncanonical gospels, are very controversial indeed.
Having read Good Comrade, I am now looking forward to Desire. Thank you for getting me started.
A friend have us the first Rivers of London book with his recommendation. I do read some urban fantasy – mostly Charles de Lint but not horror. Somehow the horrific aspects seemed appropriate to an uncaring supernatural spirit. The humour and police procedural kept me from staying in the horror. I love this series.
I’ll second Maddy B.’s recommendation of the Rivers of London audiobooks. They’re great. I listened to them straight through to refresh my memory of the previous books before reading the latest, and enjoyed every minute. I’ve read a few of the graphic books but only because the novels reference them; to me, the voice that stands out in the novels goes flat in the graphics.
Absolutely agree about Dickinson’s books. Book-of-the-Month (remember that?) offered me King and Joker sometime in the mid-70s, and after that I picked up all of his books I could find.
If the Silberrad books are available to download as PDFs, you can download them to your computer and then email them to the kindle. Somewhere in the kindle settings there’s a profile kindle email address (not anything used to set up the account, it’s unique to the kindle device). If you send an email to that address with the PDF attached and “convert” in the subject line it should download it onto the kindle in the proper format.
Regarding reading Google play books on a a Kindle… I think the problem is the other way around: Amazon uses its own proprietary format while the rest of the world (Google play included) uses epub. This said it appears that kindle may finally support epub? See: https://www.engadget.com/amazon-kindle-supports-epub-format-002501848.html
This said the support seems limited. Best of luck. I’m happy to guide you through it if you’d like.
P.s. I love your monthly book reviews.
Jo, I’m very hesitant to say this because I don’t think my opinion is going to go over well at all. I loved the first book in the Aaronovitch series, and I did think it was a bit scary, but a terrific read. Then the second book had something that struck me as more horror than I needed or wanted (I don’t know how much to say about it. It was chapter nine that really bothered me). I’ve read several more books in the series, but I just don’t feel the same way that I did when I started. I’m sorry to say this, because I would like to read the later books, and I’m just not sure I should. I hope this won’t turn you off the series–as people often say on this site, YMMV. Thank you for letting me make this comment.
Very glad you (all) got through COVID.
Another of the many fans of the Rivers of London here, agreeing that nothing in the later books is as horrifying as (2 in my memory) things in the first volume. I remembered finding the second book horrifying, too, but recently reread it, and changed my mind. There are some really evil villains who do really horrible and scary things – in part, I think, to give Peter and Nightingale et al. sufficiently powerful opponents but also, reminding me of Granny Weatherwax’ view that treating people like things is the worst sin, to show what our heroes are fighting for: a respect for the lives and freedom of a very diverse range of beings. Peter is incredibly brave and true, but he takes a great deal of trouble to be kind, as well. And the books also contain many moments of wonder and beauty – Molly and Foxglove dancing under the full moon is perhaps my favorite.
I think Marla’s remarks @14 are valuable! My memory of the series is that the subject matters used for horror vary quite a bit, so whatever freaks any reader out about a case is likely to not come up for several books, if ever. There are maybe a handful of horror tropes, like vampires and mind control, that are present on an ongoing basis, so I’d say each of the fence-sitters will find it worth asking around, if you know specifically what gets to you.
Hey! I think you got the name of the translator for Tatami Galaxy wrong, according to the cover art it’s being done by Emily Balistreri.
@18: You’re right–we’ve updated the article, thank you!
Regarding the Rivers of London graphic novels, I agree with diankah that the graphic versions do not capture the narrator’s voice that I find so captivating in the novels and shorter works. But I do read them, because they fill in details that are mentioned in passing in the longer works, and I am OCD that way—once I love series, I want it *all*!
Jo, you may have figured this out by now, but there is a kindle version of Desire available. I enjoy reading this column, and usually find things I want to read myself, and Desire is one of them this month.
Can anyone expand on the KJ Parker “I continue to have issues with Parker’s use of love and gender” comment? I’m queer/trans and tend to stick to that end of the SFF spectrum but I’ve also had Parker on my TBR list for awhile and now I’m a bit wary. I’m not against reading alternate views of gender/sexuality than my own but I do like to know beforehand.
@17, thank you for the kind words. I really did hesitate over whether or not to make that comment. I appreciate the people on Tor.com who have been so supportive, because that seems to be a rare thing on most sites.
Origen, Scholarship in Service of the Church by Ronald E Heine. I love you people, I wasn’t expecting to check my comments after a busy few days to find everyone wanting to know about the great Origen bio. It is great though!
Maria: Thanks for the headsup
Pie: I’ve talked about this here before, when I read the Engineer books, but Parker appears to believe that love is a very peculiar force indeed, and that women are very peculiar people, maybe not people at all. This isn’t homophobia or transphobia but something much weirder.
Jo — maybe you should write a book like Tooth and Claw, about a different species of fantasy creatures which are actually like Parker’s obsessives!
(Just kidding. Sort of.)
Yes, the “love” relationships between men and women in many of Parker’s books are deeply weird, obsessive, and really quite harmful to both parties. (And they usually know this and can’t help it.) I simply accept it as a feature of Parker’s fantasy “world” and run with it …
Actually, thinking about Aspects versus the Parkerverse — you can make a comparison in the sense that a) both fantasy worlds are based (loosely perhaps) on history; and b) Ford and Parker are extremely interested in 1) how things work; and 2) how SYSTEMS work; and both are very good at explaining that in entertaining ways. But Ford’s human relationships are far far more healthy than in Parker’s stories!
I’m glad you enjoyed Midnight Riot. I like the series quite a lot. There are some unpleasant events that happen in future books but I think they all fit with the story and aren’t gratuitous or too horrible. I really enjoy Peter fleshing out and getting more glimpses into how the Nightingale is put together
Jo, I’m extremely flattered and touched that you acknowledged me, but …it’s Marla. Not Maria. I hope that wasn’t rude of me to correct you.
@21: Looking at what’s available in the “Look Inside” preview of Desire, it appears to be a a direct scan, not a proper conversion. If it’s been reformatted in a way to fit a Kindle screen, it might be worth $7.95, but I’m dubious.
I second or third the comments confirming Rivers of London does not get any more gruesome, I love these books – and the audiobooks too. It’s the only series where I always get both. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is the most amazing narrator. He brings everything a humour and presence that adds to the fun.
Oh gosh Marla I’m so sorry. I was reading it quickly on my phone in a small font with my (perhaps less progressive than they think they are) glasses. I’ll try to pay more attention in future, and thank you for telling me. And again, thanks for the headsup on book 2, I’ll consider whether I want to read it and if I do be more braced.
Thank you for this monthly column, Jo; I always find several intriguing titles.
I picked up A Single Swallow, Zhang Ling on World Book Day 2021, I believe.
Kareni — World Book Day, yes, that’s what it was, well remembered.
I saw the cover, Midnight Riot, and thought good heavens how can there be a Ben Aaronovitch book I’ve not read – then I realised from your comments that it is only Rivers of London renamed (why?) for the US market…. Now I really hate horror and I love these books – since the newest one came out, I had to go back and read them all in order again, for the third of fourth time. The key thing is that they are about London – 21C London, going all the way back to the Romans – and also about Britishness – one of the many joys of the series is the protagonist’s keen interest in architecture of all kinds, so the mise-en-scenes of ordinary (and less ordinary) buildings and streets are all in cool sharp focus, entirely recognisable to anyone who has lived in any UK city. The mythology of the rivers and their personifcations is also brilliantly grafted on to every aspect of British life. Lies Sleeping and Foxglove Summer are perhaps my favourites. Do try them Jo! They are really much funnier, very well plotted, and not particularly horrific. That said, I teach film, and it has occurred to me that every contemporary novel or film or TV show now has a touch of horror in it… Thank you also for reminding me of Dickinson – what a terrific writer – with all his wonderful novels, the imagery sticks in the mind. I will certainly try Desire too, it sounds amazing.
Read all together, Shakespeare’s sonnets don’t read like a set of poems written to a love-interest. For one thing, that’s heckofa volatile relationship. For another, some of them look like they’re kludged together out of leftover good lines — which is the sort of thing you do when you have a contractual obligation to churn out a certain amount of product in a certain amount of time, not when you are trying to impress or honor a love-interest.
I suspect that a bunch of the guys were sitting around the tavern, and somebody says, “Hey Will! Betcha can’t write a sonnet a day!” And then they were giving him details and relationship drama, to keep him from cheating by slipping in sonnets he had already written.
Assuming a bar challenge, probably the love interest was played by the oldest among them, because a bunch of guys on their second pints are likely to think it a tremendous hoot to see younger address elder with all that – I am old and you are young – type stuff.
Then, toward the end of the first batch of sonnets, I get a strong impression that the beloved has died. If this was part of the story-line of the imagined love-interest, it would be explicit – Oh woe! You’ve gone and died on me! It would fit if the friend who was playing the love-interest died. They started the game up again, but some of the fun was gone out of it, and nobody wanted to play the love-interest.
Shakespeare did cheat at least once. #130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is a polished parody of the tropes of love poetry. It’s supposed to go “If hair be gold then fine wires grow on her head” but they’d picked out or invented a dark-haired love-interest for him, so he had to change the line.