Some people have falsely equated Christopher Tolkien with Brian Herbert, the son of Dune creator Frank Herbert. In truth, the former (as we all know) simply brought his father's existing unpublished works to light, with extensive and brilliant commentary, and the latter (with a co-collaborator) created numerous mockeries of his father's work.
But now we have new entry in the pantheon of son's continuing their father's legacy. But in this case, the son truly and surprisingly manages to create something new that that is worthy of his father's work.
Nick Harkaway is the pen name of Nicholas Cornwell, the son of David Cornwell, whose pen name was John LeCarre. For those who are not familiar with LeCarre's books, they were very much unique in the spy thriller genre, with an unmatched level of complexity and psychological development. Before he passed away, he made it known that he wanted his legacy to be continued, and Nicholas, a novelist himself who several well-considered books of speculative science fiction was in charge of finding someone to take the task on. However, other family members suggested that he do it himself, and despite initial misgiving, he took the task on. The results are nothing short of extraordinary. I truly would not have thought it possible. The new book, Karla's Choice, is sent in the time period between arguably LeCarre's most successful books The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Harkaway shows an understanding of the characters created by his father and ability to create the same kind of quirky, convoluted yet compelling plot that marked his father's books. If you are fan of LeCarre's I can't recommend it enough. I already look forward to the next one!
What are you reading?
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Voronwë the Faithful
- Aurë entuluva! Day shall come again!
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Re: What are you reading?
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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narya
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Re: What are you reading?
I've heard good and bad about Karla's Choice, but haven't read it myself. I think I will have to read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy first. All three are on my increasingly improbable "to read soon" list.
I have read Harkaway's Titanium Noir and Angelmaker, and both are pegged out on "complexity and psychological development", but as speculative fiction, rather than spy thriller (though if you think about it, there's a bit of the speculative in many spy thrillers). There are certain books that I devour quickly, because I can't put them down, then immediately read them through a second time, at a more leisurely pace, to appreciate how all the parts are introduced and fit together. I did that with both of these novels, so I look forward to reading Karla's Choice.
Currently I'm reading The Last Dangerous Minds, a collection of short stories that starts out with a short memoir by J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) telling how his life was guided from an early age by the writings of Harlan Ellison (prolific short story and screen writer), and their friendship in later days.
I won't list all the books I read since my last book report, but I will highlight a few. And I'm too lazy to post over in the non-fiction thread - I'm adding both fiction and non-fiction here. I recommend all of these to you, with some caveats noted. The other few dozens that I read, well, consider me to be a screening service - I read them so you don't have to!
Recent non-fiction:
* So You Want to Talk about Race, by Ijeoma Olua. This was a recommended read at the end of White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. It is written in the same vein, but more practically, explaining how people of privilege can support people of color.
* War, by Bob Woddward. If I'd known half of what was said behind closed doors in the White House during the early days of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. Scary stuff.
* This Year You Write Your Novel, by Walter Mosley. Only 2 hours long, and a good look inside this author's head, and his writing process. Though he's a horror writer, so don't look too far inside his head.
* The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells. Think of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth with kid gloves taken off. I have been studying climate change professionally for many years, so I no longer have that deer-in-the-headlights look when I read this, but you might.
* Sing Like Fish, by Amorina Kingdon, on how animals communicate underwater. Not just whales, but fish, crustaceans, and people. I read this one, because she will be a guest host at the next Los Angeles Sci Fi virtual book club meeting next Tuesday. Read it if you are into acoustics or marine biology.
* The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides, about the last voyage of Captain Cook. The author makes considerable use of first person accounts, not just by Cook and his crew, but by the people he encountered in Tahiti and the northwest coast of North America.
* Building a Life Worth Living, by Marsha M Linehan, who developed Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), especially for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. TL;DR, you can simultaneously love and accept yourself the way you are, and you can reject the way you are acting now and chose to change yourself for the better. It's not an either/or situation.
* Birding Under the Influence, by Dorian Anderson, about a recovering alcoholic and bird enthusiast who decided to make a "big year" (spot as many different species of birds as you can in one year) by bicycling across America.
* The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris. *Whimper* I miss her already.
* Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance *Yikes!* This guy is scary.
* The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. It's not fair that Amy Tan is not only a great author (Joy Luck Club), but she's also a talented artist and narrator. I got both the text and audio versions of this book from the library, so I could enjoy her artwork and her voice as she discusses her obsession with attracting birds in her back yard. Now I've got 4 feeders up in my back porch and am going through seed and mealworms at an alarming rate. Thanks Amy!
Recent murder mysteries (Yes, I joined a murder mystery book club, well, 2 mystery book clubs, actually, plus 7 other book clubs. My new year's resolution is to trim that down to only 4 book clubs per month.)
* Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto. It's about a delightfully nosey old woman (she's described as old, but she's younger than me) who runs a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. She finds a dead body in her shop one morning, and becomes an amateur sleuth, and matchmaker. And gave me some tips on oolong tea that I didn't know about.
* Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon. This one is actually a grandmother-mother-daughter caper, set in Elkhorn Slough, near Monterey, California. The "murder night" refers to the mother and daughter watching murder mysteries together one night per week on TV, until one of them finds a body and they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation. Part of the side-story is the grandmother coming to live with them while she is going thru chemo. I heard an interview by the author, who said that she wrote this book while her mom was going thru chemo, and she would read each new day's writing to her mom, and discuss it with her. So the book in some ways imitates her real life at the time, except without dead bodies.
* The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides. This is more of a psychological thriller than a classic murder mystery, though there are definitely mysterious, murderous things going on, and a college teacher leading impressionable young ladies in a cult-like setting.
* Everytime I go on Vacation, Someone Dies, by Catherine Mack. A fluffy travel tale, and examination of sisterly rivalry, and a few dead bodies.
Recent other fiction:
* The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty, about a swashbuckling female pirate, with adventures similar to Sinbad the Sailor. I was reading this at the same time as the Cook book, and they paired well.
* James, by Percival Everett, a retelling of the Huckleberry Finn story, from the viewpoint of the escaping slave, Jim, who turns out to be secretly quite erudite.
* The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, and the sequel Forever Peace. There's a third book in the series, Forever Free, that you can skip, but the first two are excellent. Military sci-fi, that questions the whole purpose of military warfare. Time compression due to traveling at a percentage of the speed of light means each time they pop back into normal space, they've skipped a few generations. It was written about 50 years ago, so some predictions about the near future (our recent past) are spot on, some are wildly wrong. The second looks into the concept of forcing peace without war.
* Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, written from the viewpoint of an intelligent, augmented dog who was engineered to be a soldier, and really wants to be a Good Dog, but Master is telling him to do Bad Things to civilians, so what should he do? Tchaikovsky does an excellent job in this book and others of imagining intelligent versions of other species.
* Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies, by Richard K Morgan. Steaming hot cyberpunk. Loved the whole trilogy, though it's definitely not for the more genteel among us.
* Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress, examines what happens if a small group of people become, through genetic modification, more intelligent, more productive, more long-lived, more wealthy, and more hated. The title refers to their discussions of how to make a perfect society. They posit a society in which everyone has a purpose. But what do you do with the person who can't work - do you give him a hand out? What if three beggars ask you for handouts? Where do you stop? Do you help everyone? Even, hypothetically, all the beggars in Spain?
* The First Starfighter, by Grace Goodwin. A military sci-fi bodice ripper. A first for me! Quite amusing.
I have read Harkaway's Titanium Noir and Angelmaker, and both are pegged out on "complexity and psychological development", but as speculative fiction, rather than spy thriller (though if you think about it, there's a bit of the speculative in many spy thrillers). There are certain books that I devour quickly, because I can't put them down, then immediately read them through a second time, at a more leisurely pace, to appreciate how all the parts are introduced and fit together. I did that with both of these novels, so I look forward to reading Karla's Choice.
Currently I'm reading The Last Dangerous Minds, a collection of short stories that starts out with a short memoir by J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) telling how his life was guided from an early age by the writings of Harlan Ellison (prolific short story and screen writer), and their friendship in later days.
I won't list all the books I read since my last book report, but I will highlight a few. And I'm too lazy to post over in the non-fiction thread - I'm adding both fiction and non-fiction here. I recommend all of these to you, with some caveats noted. The other few dozens that I read, well, consider me to be a screening service - I read them so you don't have to!
Recent non-fiction:
* So You Want to Talk about Race, by Ijeoma Olua. This was a recommended read at the end of White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao. It is written in the same vein, but more practically, explaining how people of privilege can support people of color.
* War, by Bob Woddward. If I'd known half of what was said behind closed doors in the White House during the early days of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night. Scary stuff.
* This Year You Write Your Novel, by Walter Mosley. Only 2 hours long, and a good look inside this author's head, and his writing process. Though he's a horror writer, so don't look too far inside his head.
* The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells. Think of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth with kid gloves taken off. I have been studying climate change professionally for many years, so I no longer have that deer-in-the-headlights look when I read this, but you might.
* Sing Like Fish, by Amorina Kingdon, on how animals communicate underwater. Not just whales, but fish, crustaceans, and people. I read this one, because she will be a guest host at the next Los Angeles Sci Fi virtual book club meeting next Tuesday. Read it if you are into acoustics or marine biology.
* The Wide Wide Sea, by Hampton Sides, about the last voyage of Captain Cook. The author makes considerable use of first person accounts, not just by Cook and his crew, but by the people he encountered in Tahiti and the northwest coast of North America.
* Building a Life Worth Living, by Marsha M Linehan, who developed Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), especially for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. TL;DR, you can simultaneously love and accept yourself the way you are, and you can reject the way you are acting now and chose to change yourself for the better. It's not an either/or situation.
* Birding Under the Influence, by Dorian Anderson, about a recovering alcoholic and bird enthusiast who decided to make a "big year" (spot as many different species of birds as you can in one year) by bicycling across America.
* The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris. *Whimper* I miss her already.
* Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance *Yikes!* This guy is scary.
* The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. It's not fair that Amy Tan is not only a great author (Joy Luck Club), but she's also a talented artist and narrator. I got both the text and audio versions of this book from the library, so I could enjoy her artwork and her voice as she discusses her obsession with attracting birds in her back yard. Now I've got 4 feeders up in my back porch and am going through seed and mealworms at an alarming rate. Thanks Amy!
Recent murder mysteries (Yes, I joined a murder mystery book club, well, 2 mystery book clubs, actually, plus 7 other book clubs. My new year's resolution is to trim that down to only 4 book clubs per month.)
* Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto. It's about a delightfully nosey old woman (she's described as old, but she's younger than me) who runs a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. She finds a dead body in her shop one morning, and becomes an amateur sleuth, and matchmaker. And gave me some tips on oolong tea that I didn't know about.
* Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon. This one is actually a grandmother-mother-daughter caper, set in Elkhorn Slough, near Monterey, California. The "murder night" refers to the mother and daughter watching murder mysteries together one night per week on TV, until one of them finds a body and they suddenly find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation. Part of the side-story is the grandmother coming to live with them while she is going thru chemo. I heard an interview by the author, who said that she wrote this book while her mom was going thru chemo, and she would read each new day's writing to her mom, and discuss it with her. So the book in some ways imitates her real life at the time, except without dead bodies.
* The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides. This is more of a psychological thriller than a classic murder mystery, though there are definitely mysterious, murderous things going on, and a college teacher leading impressionable young ladies in a cult-like setting.
* Everytime I go on Vacation, Someone Dies, by Catherine Mack. A fluffy travel tale, and examination of sisterly rivalry, and a few dead bodies.
Recent other fiction:
* The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty, about a swashbuckling female pirate, with adventures similar to Sinbad the Sailor. I was reading this at the same time as the Cook book, and they paired well.
* James, by Percival Everett, a retelling of the Huckleberry Finn story, from the viewpoint of the escaping slave, Jim, who turns out to be secretly quite erudite.
* The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, and the sequel Forever Peace. There's a third book in the series, Forever Free, that you can skip, but the first two are excellent. Military sci-fi, that questions the whole purpose of military warfare. Time compression due to traveling at a percentage of the speed of light means each time they pop back into normal space, they've skipped a few generations. It was written about 50 years ago, so some predictions about the near future (our recent past) are spot on, some are wildly wrong. The second looks into the concept of forcing peace without war.
* Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, written from the viewpoint of an intelligent, augmented dog who was engineered to be a soldier, and really wants to be a Good Dog, but Master is telling him to do Bad Things to civilians, so what should he do? Tchaikovsky does an excellent job in this book and others of imagining intelligent versions of other species.
* Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, and Woken Furies, by Richard K Morgan. Steaming hot cyberpunk. Loved the whole trilogy, though it's definitely not for the more genteel among us.
* Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress, examines what happens if a small group of people become, through genetic modification, more intelligent, more productive, more long-lived, more wealthy, and more hated. The title refers to their discussions of how to make a perfect society. They posit a society in which everyone has a purpose. But what do you do with the person who can't work - do you give him a hand out? What if three beggars ask you for handouts? Where do you stop? Do you help everyone? Even, hypothetically, all the beggars in Spain?
* The First Starfighter, by Grace Goodwin. A military sci-fi bodice ripper. A first for me! Quite amusing.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus
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RoseMorninStar
- Posts: 14051
- Joined: Fri Dec 14, 2007 11:07 am
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Re: What are you reading?
Wow. I can't get over how much you read narya. That's quite a list.
My heart is forever in the Shire.
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narya
- chocolate bearer
- Posts: 5044
- Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2005 7:27 am
- Location: Wishing I could be beachcombing, or hiking, or dragon boating
- Contact:
Re: What are you reading?
I've reported on the 40 books I enjoyed the most so far this year, but there were many more. In 2024, so far, I've actually finished 132 books at least once, and sampled but discarded about 40 more. I can stop any time. Really.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus