magpie's shiny things

I’ve missed a lot of read­ing time this week. We saw some awe­some music.… Knopfler and Dylan on Saturday, Andras Schiff played all of Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier on Monday and last night Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden and a world pre­miere — Dai Fujikura’s
Mina, Concerto for 5 Soloists and Orchestra. That last piece was, erm, challenging.

Speaking of chal­leng­ing. I gave my best shot but I could­n’t get it down, Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. Clumsy is the only word I can think to use for his prose. Sorry fans.

Forensics for Dummies — D. Lyle. Finished ear­ly this week. It’s a place to start. But if this is as far as you go, your edi­tor is going to charge back all of the time she has to spend fact check­ing your crime nov­el. Also suf­fers from falls flat attempts at humor. I“ll let you know when I find the “cool” books.

The Fractal Prince — Rajaniemi. Just start­ed this. So far I’m hav­ing a good time with it. 

Also picked up Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City. Post-something, maybe apoc­a­lypse — maybe just a real­ly bad elec­tion year. South African. She’s got a wicked voice and a bitchin’ smirk. It’s my ice cream reward for get­ting a cou­ple of not so fun tasks tak­en care of next week.

What have you been reading?

Things I’m in the middle of:

Forensics for Dummies, Douglas P. Lyle — What it says on the tin. Simplistic but it does the trick as all I’m look­ing for a smat­ter­ing of back­ground and some vocab­u­lary lessons. The inter­est­ing stuff will come later. 

29th Years Best Science Fiction, Dozios — Dipping in and out. This will take weeks.

For the Love of a Dog, Patricia B. McConnell — Do dogs have emo­tion­al lives? 

Poems (pub­lished in 1820), John Keats — because I’m lis­ten­ing to Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. Making my brain mushy. 

Catching up on some old issues of Clarkesworld, Azimov’s, Analog, etc. I’ll owe you all a post on a cou­ple of short sto­ries that you should look up.

Things I finished:

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine — A rust, and brown, and dark­ly stained cir­cus of half humans and half mon­sters (or are they?) trav­el­ing through an equal­ly stained world. There are love sto­ries, and war sto­ries, and a bit of a caper. But most­ly there is an odd, eerie, strange­ly hope­ful mag­ic. It’s creepy; I loved it. 

Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim), Richard Kadrey — Fourth in the series that shows clear signs of hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been intend­ed to be a tril­o­gy but now extend­ed to at least six. Stark, who is now Lucifer, escapes too eas­i­ly from Hell to L.A. Too eas­i­ly con­sid­er­ing the so much was made of the impos­si­bly of said return in the pre­vi­ous book. Also a lot of jokes about Hell’s bureau­cra­cy. Rote appear­ances by cast mem­bers from the pre­vi­ous books — just so you remem­ber them and the oblig­a­tory roman­tic com­pli­ca­tion that has all the heat of my break­fast. Weak enough that I may not both­er with the remain­der of the series. Not weak enough that I’ll pass on any­thing else Mr. Kadrey writes out of hand. Butcher Bird which was, by his own admis­sion, con­sid­er­ably less com­mer­cial, remains one my favorites. BTW — there are some excerpts from a Locus inter­view with Kardey posted. 

Up next:

I also spent a lot of time sam­pling mate­r­i­al and adding to the “Read Next” pile. Most of the sam­ple are of books about foren­sics, some pop­u­lar some tech­ni­cal, that I’m look­ing over while I con­tem­plate how to divvy up foren­sics capa­bil­i­ties in a mixed tech world. I’ve also come to the con­clu­sion that one of my dream library jobs exists, that it’s local, and that I’d have to com­mit mur­der to get it. (There’s an incum­bent and mur­der­ing a ref­er­ence librar­i­an who man­ages a foren­sics library has got to be one of the stu­pid­est ideas ever. But it might make a good sto­ry plot. Hmmmm…)

Going onto the Read Next — Fiction pile are the newest from C. Valente The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. Also Hannu Rajaniemi brings back Jean de Flambeur (Quantum Thief) in The Fractal Prince.

Also seek­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from any­one who has read Stewart O’Nan. Best book to start with?