{"id":1403,"date":"2021-01-31T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=1403"},"modified":"2023-10-21T10:11:34","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T14:11:34","slug":"january-2021-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2021\/01\/january-2021-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"January 2021 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><em>Wyst: Alastor 1716<\/em> &#8211; Jack Vance, 1978. The third and last of Vance&#8217;s loosely-linked Alastor series, and my favorite because of the real emotion at the end. The setting is a vivid but not particularly coherent universal basic subsistence society, so it&#8217;s especially interesting these days. The most memorable aspect is the nutritious-but-boring foods provided free to everyone: cake-like <em>gruff<\/em>, white drink <em>deedle<\/em>, and <em>wobbly<\/em> (pudding-ish) &#8220;to fill in the cracks.&#8221; Unfortunately the plot relies on truly eye-popping coincidences that would make even Dickens shy away.<\/li><li><em>Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two<\/em> &#8211; John Tiffany, Jack Thorne, J.K. Rowling, 2016 &#8211; Finishing up my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/12\/december-2020-books-read\/\">Harry Potter kick<\/a> with this. I&#8217;ve read it once before and enjoyed it again. It&#8217;s quite different in flavor from the HP books, not just because it&#8217;s a play script but also because the characters, especially Albus and Scorpius (LOVE HIM!), have emotional struggles of a type that don&#8217;t show up in the original series. I was lucky enough to win <a href=\"https:\/\/hamiltonmusical.com\/lottery\/\"><em>Hamilton<\/em> lottery tickets<\/a> pre-pandemic, after years of trying, and had just started focusing on entering the lottery for this &#8211; the production sounds amazing. When the Great White Way starts flowing again&#8230;<\/li><li><em>The Secret Garden<\/em> &#8211; Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1910. Umpteenth time comfort re-read triggered by a bout of insomnia.<\/li><li><em>My Side of the Mountain<\/em> &#8211; Jean Craighead George, 1959. Same, although I re-read it more as a kid when I wanted to live Sam Gribley&#8217;s life, and less since I got real access to nature and not just Central Park. <\/li><li><em>Nothing to See Here<\/em> &#8211; Kevin Wilson, 2019. Second Monday book group selection, but I didn&#8217;t pull any quotes. <a href=\"https:\/\/themillions.com\/2019\/11\/the-humanity-of-being-freakish-the-millions-interviews-kevin-wilson.html\">Interviews<\/a> with the author explaining his backstory, as well as the group discussion, helped me get more out of it than just an enjoyable-but-slight, slightly-fantastic novel (kids who catch on fire without hurting themselves &#8211; the descriptions of that were the best part), but the writing itself wasn&#8217;t very memorable on first read.<\/li><li><em>Folk of the Fringe<\/em> &#8211; Orson Scott Card, 1985. Re-read subsequent to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/12\/december-2020-books-read\/\">The Postman<\/a><\/em> because of the &#8220;Pageant Wagon&#8221; section with its post-apocalyptic traveling theater troupe. My dad and I, both interested in religious movements (he because of being raised <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exclusive_Brethren\">Exclusive Brethren<\/a>, me being raised by him, both of us agnostic\/atheist but fascinated by why people believe things) talked off and on about going to the (free! but in the middle of nowhere!) LDS <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hill_Cumorah_Pageant\">Hill Cumorah pageant<\/a>. I had forgotten than Card wrote the current script. I just now found out that I missed my last chance and it&#8217;s canceled for good. There are only bootleg clips on Youtube. Darn it!<\/li><li><em>The Overstory<\/em> &#8211; Richard Powers, 2018 &#8211; quotes pulled, tbd<\/li><li><em>Captain Harlock The Classic Collection 1<\/em> &#8211; Leiji Matsumoto, 2018 English translation (originally released in Japan in 1977). Tried the original <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/11\/november-2020-books-read\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1315\">this time<\/a> &#8211; good but still can&#8217;t recapture being 14 and watching <em>Albator<\/em> on French TV. But I did\/do love the crazy over-the-top capsule description: &#8220;A boy&#8217;s eyes burn with hopes for the future. \/The eyes of a young man recall struggles in which he staked his life. It is the way of a man&#8217;s life to grow old without regret&#8230; \/ This is the story of men who sought adventure and romance in the vast ocean called the universe!!&#8221;<\/li><li><em>The Iliad<\/em> &#8211; Homer (8th century BC), tr. Robert Fagles (1998) &#8211; quotes pulled, tbd<\/li><li><em>Normal People<\/em> &#8211; Sally Rooney, 2018 &#8211; quotes pulled, tbd<\/li><li><em>War Day<\/em> (1984) and <em>Nature&#8217;s End<\/em> (1986) &#8211; Whitley Strieber and James W. Kunetka. More in my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2020\/12\/december-2020-books-read\/\">post-apocalyptic re-read kick<\/a>. The first one was really quite good and atmospheric, but the second suffers in comparison because they cram so many plots into it. It&#8217;s not just the earth after pollution (there&#8217;s some climate change too but it doesn&#8217;t wreak much havoc), but there&#8217;s a mysterious Big Bad guru, anti-aging, savior AI, super-intelligent children&#8230; it&#8217;s a mess (that I still enjoy).<\/li><li><em>The Temple of Silence: Herbert Crowley, His Forgotten Works and Worlds<\/em> &#8211; Justin Duerr, 2017. Impulse pick-up at the library of a hugely-oversized (screw legs on it and it could <em>be<\/em> the coffee-table), lavishly-illustrated investigation of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Herbert_Crowley\">creator<\/a> of <em>The Wigglemuch<\/em> (forgotten comic strip, not great IMO) and some fascinating decorative art.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wyst: Alastor 1716 &#8211; Jack Vance, 1978. The third and last of Vance&#8217;s loosely-linked Alastor series, and my favorite because of the real emotion at the end. The setting is a vivid but not particularly coherent universal basic subsistence society, so it&#8217;s especially interesting these days. The most memorable aspect is the nutritious-but-boring foods provided [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1403"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1403\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}