I DID finish Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz, which was good nonfiction about "abandoned" ancient metropolises. I read books like that for insights into how different cultures arrange themselves, and this book did a good job of that. It did suffer from the usual archaeology problem of them just...not knowing exactly what had happened because there were no written records, but still...interesting read.
Now I am reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett,(uuuuuh fantasy Sherlockian mystery in a world that's a cross between Standard Eurocentric Medieval, Morrowind, and Pacific Rim? I've yet to figure out if I'm going to find the main detectives boring and wish that the setting had some different main characters) and Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction by Brian Clegg (nonfiction about various weapons of mass destruction and apocalypse scenarios.) The former came up on my library loans, and the second is an actual physical book from my bookshelf that I picked up because watching the Fallout TV show gave me End of the World on the brain. So far Armageddon Science is ok, but he lost points for starting with the DUMBEST and least plausible armageddon scenario: that the LHC would create weird runaway quantum effects that destroy the universe. >_> Not sure what he or his editors were thinking, there. But now we're into nuclear bombs, which is more of what I'm wanting. :D
I gave up on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I usually self-select better and don't DNF things, but this was the first of his books I'd read, and he's just not the sort of writer that I enjoy overmuch. Very creative worldbuilding, very nice hardish science, but...gosh, I got about 17% in and there wasn't yet a character I knew enough about to care what happened to them. And that's just a deathknell for me: I need good characterization. And my loan was expiring, and it was SO LONG of a book, and I was reading reviews and heard how there was a lot of churn in characters and I just...decided to part ways with it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-04-26 01:24 am (UTC)Now I am reading The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett,(uuuuuh fantasy Sherlockian mystery in a world that's a cross between Standard Eurocentric Medieval, Morrowind, and Pacific Rim? I've yet to figure out if I'm going to find the main detectives boring and wish that the setting had some different main characters) and Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction by Brian Clegg (nonfiction about various weapons of mass destruction and apocalypse scenarios.) The former came up on my library loans, and the second is an actual physical book from my bookshelf that I picked up because watching the Fallout TV show gave me End of the World on the brain. So far Armageddon Science is ok, but he lost points for starting with the DUMBEST and least plausible armageddon scenario: that the LHC would create weird runaway quantum effects that destroy the universe. >_> Not sure what he or his editors were thinking, there. But now we're into nuclear bombs, which is more of what I'm wanting. :D
I gave up on Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I usually self-select better and don't DNF things, but this was the first of his books I'd read, and he's just not the sort of writer that I enjoy overmuch. Very creative worldbuilding, very nice hardish science, but...gosh, I got about 17% in and there wasn't yet a character I knew enough about to care what happened to them. And that's just a deathknell for me: I need good characterization. And my loan was expiring, and it was SO LONG of a book, and I was reading reviews and heard how there was a lot of churn in characters and I just...decided to part ways with it.