Arlie Reads Some More in 2024 (Thread 2)

I'm Arlie, a retired software engineer, four months into my fourth year of the 75 books challenge. I'm Canadian, but live in California, USA, where I moved in pursuit of career opportunity in 1997. My household consists of two retired adults and one aging dog. We also feed an ever changing menagerie of stray and feral cats.

I read about 60:40 fiction and non-fiction; the former mostly SF/Fantasy, and the latter mostly science and history, with sprinklings of biography, economics, politics, and whatever else catches my fancy.

This is my second thread, started on European Labour Day (May 1) as has become my custom. My third thread will be started on North American Labour Day (Sep 1) if all goes more or less as I expect.

Goals and Structure

1. Participate in the War Room Challenge (January thread at https://www.librarything.com/topic/356820)
2. Dip into the Nonfiction Challenge from time to time: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356227
3. Make progress with unread books I already own, as well as reading new discoveries and books from my virtual TBR list.
4. Get most books from libraries, rather than purchasing them. If I must purchase books, try to buy them second hand.
5. Actually read something in French this year, or in German. Even a reread of a graphic novel would be better than nothing. 2 French graphic novels read in the first third of 2024.
6. Very slowly reread all the fiction I own, in shelving order, de-accessioning anything I find that I really don't want to reread.

My rules

The whole book must have been read, part of the reading must have happened in 2024, and I can't count the same read for multiple years - it's either 2024 or 2025, not both, unless I read it twice.

When rereading a book that has a large excerpt from some other book at the end, as a teaser for something else by the same author or publisher, I don't have to reread the teaser to count as having reread the book, even if the page count includes the teaser.

My Rating System

5. Excellent. Read this now!
4.5. Very Good. If fiction, well worth rereading; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
4. Very good, but not quite 4.5. If fiction, likely reread; if non-fiction, I learned a lot.
3. Decent read, but not special in any way.
2.5 Why did I bother finishing this?
2. Did not finish.
1. Ran screaming, and you should too.

Links

My 2021 thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/328797
My 2022 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337717
My 2022 thread, part 2: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341510
My 2023 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346763
My 2023 thread, part 2: https://www.librarything.com/topic/350549
My 2023 thread, part 3: https://www.librarything.com/topic/353373
My 2024 thread, part 1: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356637

Jan-Apr 2024 Statistics 1

Total books: 47

Fiction: 22
Non-fiction: 25

First Time: 35
Reread (best guess in some cases): 12

Total pages read: 18,253
Average Pages/Book: 388.4

Books read in English: 45
Books read in French: 2

Library Books: 34 (5 inter-library loan)
Owned books: 13 (0 recent purchases)

Jan-Apr 2024 Statistics 2

Fiction Genres:

portal fantasy: 2
present-day fantasy: 1
other fantasy: 5

total fantasy: 8

alternate history: 5
graphic novel: 2
historical fiction: 2
post-apocalyptic: 1
science fiction: 4

Non-fiction genres:

biology: 3
human evolution: 4

total science: 7

biography: 2
history: 13

total history: 15

bridge game: 1
politics: 1
practical self help: 1

Jan-Apr 2024 Statistics 3

Copyright Decade:

1960-1969: 2
1970-1979: 2
1980-1989: 3
1990-1999: 7
2000-2009: 10
2010-2019: 11
2020-2024: 11

Jan-Apr 2024 Author Statistics

In all cases, any author who wrote more than one of the books I read this year is counted once per book.

Author Gender

Male: 42
Female: 14

Author Nationality (at birth):

Canada: 1
China: 1
France: 3
Netherlands: 1
United Kingdom: 13
United States: 37

Author Birth Decade

1920-1929: 5
1930-1939: 4
1940-1949: 19
1950-1959: 10
1960-1969: 9
1970-1979: 1
1980-1989: 1
unknown: 6

Author Profession

academic historian: 5
academic scientist: 6
other academic: 1

total academics: 12

amateur historian: 2
popular historian: 4
scientist: 1

total in often academic fields without academic career: 7

blogger: 1
comic book artist: 2
comic book writer: 1
journalist: 1
novelist: 28
writer: 4

total of various kinds of professional writer: 37

Books Completed May 2024

48. A continent erupts : decolonization, civil war, and massacre in postwar Asia, 1945-1955 by Ronald H. Spector
49. Toll of Honor by David Weber
50. Swords of the Horseclans by Robert Adams (reread)
51. The Thirty Years War : Europe's tragedy by Peter H. Wilson
52. 1638: the Sovereign States by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett
53. Good enough : the tolerance for mediocrity in nature and society by Daniel S. Milo
54. Revenge of the Horseclans by Robert Adams (reread)
55. Slouching towards utopia : an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford DeLong
56. A Cat of Silvery Hue by Robert Adams (reread)
57. The Napoleonic Wars : a global history by Alexander Mikaberidze
58. The Savage Mountains by Robert Adams (reread)
59. Empires of the sea : the siege of Malta, the battle of Lepanto, and the contest for the center of the world by Roger Crowley
60. Clean sweep by Ilona Andrews

Books Pearl Ruled in 2024

1. Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2. American midnight : the Great War, a violent peace, and democracy's forgotten crisis by Adam Hochschild

Come on in; the thread's all set up and all it needs now is visitors.

Well, maybe also more books read ;-)

Happy new one, Arlie!

Happy new thread, Arlie!

Happy Labour Day and happy new thread!

Karen O

Happy new thread Arlie!

Happy new thread and Labour Day, Arlie. xx

Happy new thread, Arlie!

>16 drneutron: >17 atozgrl: >18 klobrien2: >19 quondame: >20 PaulCranswick: >21 FAMeulstee: Thank you all, and a belated happy Labour Day wish.

The local library has been having fun with me. I picked up two inter-library loan books there on April 25; later the same day I got an email that one of my holds was ready for me. I picked that up on April 30; today - which would have been the last day to pick it up - I got an email saying another hold is ready for me.

Total haul:

- The Napoleonic Wars: a global history (ILL, 936 pp)
- Good Enough: the tolerance for mediocrity in nature and society (ILL, 310 pp)
- Toll of Honor (Hold, new book, 2 people waiting so won't be renewable, 512 pp, fiction)
- Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (from shelves, 386 pp)
- The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (from shelves, 395 pp)
- 1638: The Sovereign States (Hold, new book, not yet picked up, fiction)

48. A continent erupts : decolonization, civil war, and massacre in postwar Asia, 1945-1955 by Ronald H. Spector

This book is a mostly military history of parts of Asia in the decade after World War II. Many areas had been occupied by Japan and were happy to see Japan defeated. They generally weren't at all happy to have Japan replaced by their pre-war colonial masters, and segued from resisting the Japanese to resisting whichever colonial power believed it had the right to reclaim them. Many Asian populations - or their elites - agreed only that they wanted freedom and independence; beyond that, they disagreed about who should rule their nations, and under what type of government. Many violent conflicts resulted from both of these factors.

At the same time, the Cold War began pretty much as soon as the second world war ended, if not a hair sooner. The United States and the USSR began dividing the world into spheres of influence, and supporting the spread of leaders and government systems favorable to them. Foreign support made civil wars longer, as both sides would wind up attached to and supported by one or other Cold War bloc. Sometimes the foreign supporters even sent parts of their own military to assist. With Japan no longer involved, all of the would-be colonial regimes in Asia were European (or American?), so they were all automatically US-aligned and generally US-assisted. This caused the liberation movements to seek Soviet assistance, aligning themselves with the Soviets in the process. (There were also plenty of honestly left-wing people involved in independence movements; it wasn't all a matter of the-enemy-of-my-enemy.)

This book focusses on military conflict, but also covers some of the politics, both in Asia and in European/American participant nations. It would be an excellent choice for the War Room challenge, except for not fitting any specific month, leaving it as merely "wild card". I didn't pick it up for that reason, though; I found it on the new books shelf when visiting a library, and it looked interesting enough to bring home.

I learned a lot. I was born two years after the end of the period covered by this book. By the time I became aware of current events, it was no longer topical - but it also hadn't properly entered history, at least at the K12 level. Thus I never learned much about it, except for minimal awareness that there had been a Korean War involving the US, resulting in partition, and that the French had been involved in War in Vietnam, before the US took over their unsuccessful war. It was good to fill some of the vacuum in my knowledge of that period, though to really solidify my understanding, I'd need to read several more books, perhaps individual studies of each of the individual conflicts.

Recommended, if you are the sort of person who participates in War Room challenges, and does so by reading non-fiction. Also recommended if you have the same hole in your historical knowledge as I did, and would like to fill it. Not recommended if military history bores you silly.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, American, born in 1943, academic (military history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 538 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 18-May 3, 2024, book not previously read

49. Toll of Honor by David Weber

This science fiction novel, a new addition to the popular Honor Harrington series, is not up to the author's usual standard. It's not as bad as The Gordian Protocol, which I pearl-ruled last year - perhaps because it lacks the latter's co-author - but being solo-written, it make me more concerned that the author has lost his touch.

He's still doing many things as well as always. His characters are distinguishable, except possibly the throw-aways brought in to give a viewpoint among surprised enemies who are just about to die in a space battle; even them at least correspond to identifiable types, not always the same in each case. Banter between characters is fun to read. Main characters are heroic and dedicated to their duty, as is appropriate for the series. In fact, there's nothing wrong with any single chapter.

The problem comes when you put all the chapters together, and realize that very little of the book is new. There is a supposed main/viewpoint character, who we see for the first 21 pages of the book - and who then essentially disappears until page 231. Worse, we're seeing her reactions to events already covered in a previous book, with new writing but really no new insight. Mostly we're seeing familiar characters reacting to familiar events - basically a rehash of Field of Dishonor.

This is the first book of a new sub-series. The plan is to go back to earlier events, and look at incidents of interests in Honor's life and that of her parents, filling in incidents not otherwise covered. That could be fun, especially for a completionist like me. But not when handled the way it's done here: either give me a new character, seeing events from a different viewpoint, while mostly involved in their own concerns, interesting in themselves. Or give me a detailed expansion of something barely mentioned earlier, making it more interesting than I'd guess from the earlier mention. Don't try to do both, and worse yet, do neither well.

The detailed expansion part is the courtship of two likable characters who'd both been on ships captained by Honor, then got assigned to other duties. When they reappear on another of Honor's ships, some time after Field of Dishonor, they are married, much to many people's surprise. That courtship occurs in Toll of Honor, on a ship not captained by Honor. Unfortunately, we don't see much of it, and never get into either participant's head. One of them gets badly injured protecting the other in the line of duty, and suddenly they've got tears in their eyes. We never even see them decide to marry, or even to share a bed for a night; instead, we see another character speculating on the possibility.

I read this book in three days, not because it was especially gripping, but because on the one hand there were three holds on it at the library, and on the other I kept hoping the next chapter would get into the real meat. It's also quite readable - nothing individually wrong with any of the chapters.

Don't purchase this book, unless you are a raving completionist and have all the rest of the series. Don't even read it, unless you love military fiction involving duty-bound military people, and heroes bravely overcoming personal tragedy. And even then - you should either be somewhat of a series completionist, or not have read Field of Dishonor.

I gave this book 3 stars, rather than 2.5, only because I know why *I* finished it.

Statistics:
- fiction, science fiction (military), series (not first; also start of a sub-series), 2024
- Author (David Weber): male, American, born in 1952, novelist , author of several books read in 2023
- English, public library, 512 pages, 3 stars
- read May 1-3, 2024, book not previously read

Books Completed May 2024

48. A continent erupts : decolonization, civil war, and massacre in postwar Asia, 1945-1955 by Ronald H. Spector
49. Toll of Honor by David Weber
50. Swords of the Horseclans by Robert Adams (reread)

50. Swords of the Horseclans by Robert Adams

This the second installment of the Horseclans series. This is a fantasy series for people who want to imagine themselves as an honour-mad warrior in a society full of similar people (mostly male). Leaders are often officially absolute, though they may have to work around political or international reality - aka "if I were to do *that* my troops would all desert; if I were to do *this* my neighbours would attack. But most of them are good, generous, honorable, etc.; those that aren't are generally over-the-top evil, providing some of the opponents to be fought, though plenty of good people are also opponents.

In this volume, we have multiple invasions to deal with. One comes from the "Witch Kingdom", of technologically-assisted vampires - their tech is used to transfer their consciousness and memories into new, younger bodies as they age, or sometimes into the bodies of those whose states they want to subvert. The other is a simpler case of international politics. Both are, naturally, trounced by the good guys, witch much loss of life but few lasting hard feelings.

I like to imagine living in a society where people were either honorable or very much not, and those who weren't were easily identifiable and moreover generally got their comeuppance. I don't have much use for the pugnacity that's part of the series' depiction of honour, except in fantasy, where I can of course imagine myself as a near superhuman combatant - and imagine the victims of the constant violence as NPCs, lacking moral relevance. (And to be fair, the ruler in this story is trying to reduce the violence within his borders, redirecting it towards external threats.) But I'm happy with their disdain for dishonesty, loyalty to oaths given, and similar.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), series (not first), 1976
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author of my #47 for this year
- English, own shelves, 180 pages, 3 stars
- read Apr 30-May 5, 2024, book previously read

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is book 10 in shelving order, and the 7th book I've completed during this reread.

51. The Thirty Years War : Europe's tragedy by Peter H. Wilson (Peter Hamish Wilson)

This book is pretty much exactly what it says in the title - a history of the thirty years war. I knew very little about it when I started the book, and most of that came from novels set in the period; that gave me familiarity with names of some of the key players and not much more; I also didn't know what parts of the novels were invented rather than historical.

I read this book for the April installment of the War Room challenge: Wars of Religion.

This book was very through, but my memory wasn't up to retaining it all; so my knowledge has expanded, but not by as much as it could have done, from reading this one book. To retain more, I'd need to read other books about the same period, preferably before this one fades too much. And this is where my one complaint with the book comes in - plenty of footnotes, but no bibliography. I'd like to have had an easily-mined list of suggestions for farther reading, ideally complete with author's comments.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2009
- Author: male, British, born in 1963, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 997 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 1-May 5, 2024, book not previously read

52. 1638: the Sovereign States by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett

This novel is an adequate but not outstanding addition to the Ring of Fire series, itself a sub-series of Assiti Shards. (Don't trust the series contents as listed in LibraryThing, BTW, particularly for the Ring of Fire.)

The main author and coordinator of the series died in mid-2022, but books already in the publishing pipeline continue(d) to appear. This is one of them.

Eric Flint invited others to contribute to the series back when it was still quite small, and there are already a number of books written by other authors, as well as a large active online group devoted to the series. I expect more books to continue to appear for some time, even without Flint. OTOH, without his editorial leadership, I fear the series will change in ways that make it less appealing to me; even before his death, I preferred the novels by Flint to those by many of the other contributors

1638: the Sovereign States is a case in point. The co-authors presumably wrote and plotted a significant part of this book, and like other books I've read with these authors, it's OK but not great.

Beyond the intangible yawn-factor, one issue I have with this book is that the characters go from triumph to triumph, taking risks but never failing. The tech level in 1638 Russia (6 years after the event that transported a modern American town into Germany) seems implausibly good. How did they get that far, that fast, even with the Americans sharing information with anyone who wants it? Engineering development takes time.

Nonetheless, it's an adequate light read, and I don't actually mind stories where the characters are implausibly far out on the ability bell curve - except perhaps when there are too many super characters, and no realistic challenge. These characters have things too easy, but I've read a lot worse. And of course if you are a series completionist, you have to read all the offerings. (Even I don't do that - some of the non-Flint offerings are both (a) sub-standard and (b) not available from any local library; I'm not about to pay real money for a probable DNF.)

Statistics:
- fiction, alternate history, series (not first), 2023
- Author 1 (Eric Flint): male, American, born 1947, novelist, author of my #1, #4, #6, #10 and #14 for this year
- Author 2 (Gorg Huff): male, American, age unknown, novelist, author previously read
- Author 3 (Paula Goodlett): female, American(?), age unknown, novelist (ex-military), author previously read
- English, public library, 330 pages, 3 stars
- read May 7-12, 2024, book not previously read

53. Good enough : the tolerance for mediocrity in nature and society by Daniel S. Milo

This was an interesting book.

The author's thesis is that most of the time, for most traits, natural selection is very relaxed - the "good enough" survive and breed, accumulating ever more variation. This variation often costs more (metabolically, etc.) than more efficient variants, but not by enough to affect the reproductive success of variant individuals. Life is generally not a struggle where only the very fittest survive and produce offspring. Luck (randomness) has more effect than small differences in fitness. Seriously lethal genes get eliminated, but not genes having tiny statistically negative effects.

The above is my rephrasing, based on my understanding of evolutionary biology. The author doesn't speak "biologist" entirely fluently, or chose not to do so because he's writing for lay people. Or perhaps it's that he doesn't think like a biologist.

The result is that in reading the book, there were extended sections where he was arguing in support of things that I'd thought were obvious to all thinking people familiar with modern work in evolutionary biology, against what the author represented as common opinion among biologists, never mind the general public. There were other sections where I thought the author was just plain wrong. And then there were the sections where my best guess was that he was talking biology but really thinking about politics. (He does get around to talking about politics somewhat more directly; the thesis then is that not only is human existence not a struggle where only the fittest survive, but people have based that claim on analogy to a flawed understanding of biology.)

The author is not a statistician, and clearly hasn't played with digital models of evolutionary change. Instead, he approaches traits phenomenologically - this trait's become dominant in species X, where it has more disadvantages than advantages; instead of trying desperately to prove it was selected, we should just see it as evidence that selective pressure often fails to dominate other factors. He's also a bit weak on thought experiments like "what kind of past environment have made this trait advantageous, rather than a now-negative leftover?" Indeed, he tends to lack a gut feel for the way environments are constantly changing, such that no population is ever 100% adapted to its precise environment today.

He is, nonetheless, pointing out something important. The popular "myth" of evolution does tend towards only-the-fittest-survive. People do use this "truth" in support of political arguments ("never help the less successful; that's just promoting unfitness", and its less blatant variations). And plenty of biology students don't "get" the timing and statistical effects. The same is surely true of the general public, even many of those who once took a biology class.

Rather than talking about relaxed selection pressure, standard biology would say something like "If a particular variant gives its possessor a .01% edge in reproduction, it will take many many generations to become dominant - by which time conditions will have changed several times. It may well have gone from .01% positive to neutral to .01% negative, and back, during this time. Meanwhile, unless populations are very very large, random factors dominate tiny effects."

To Milo, selection pressures get tougher in bad times, and that's when new species arise. The rest of the time, "good enough" is "good enough" - that trait has no effect at all, until bad times arise. Sure, the possessor of the trait may need to eat more than one without it, and has no advantage in getting food - but this doesn't matter except in times of food shortage.

Arguably, this is just an alternate way of seeing things. Maybe it's a more useful way for those who don't have good statistical intuitions.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, biology, series: n/a, 2019
- Author: male, Israeli (Israeli-French), born in 1953, academic (natural philosophy), author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 310 pages, 4 stars
- read May 6-14, 2024, book not previously read

The new recommendation system has informed me that I have more than 1000 new recommendations. I feel completely overwhelmed, and more likely to post about the silliness of some of the titles than to evaluate them for additions to my TBR list.

Consider for example the fourth recommendation on my list: How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now. This seems a bit elitist - apparently illiterates are not and never were human, and neither were completely illiterate cultures. Also, of course, it's perfectly OK for humans (the literate elite) in pre-modern periods to appropriate so much of the production of their human-shaped livestock (the poor, particularly peasants), that those livestock barely manage to survive - how else can the true humans have time for their important human activities.

Yes, I'm reaching a bit here, but this really was my first thought, after "since when aren't illiterates human?" Apparently my mind serves up different connotations than the author and publishers of that book.

The classic recommendation system, on the other hand, only offered me 6 new recommendations, and two of them look interesting; three if I were in the mood for children's historical fiction. I imagine at least 4 of this 6 are in the giant heap from the new system, where I'd be unlikely to notice them. I definitely prefer quality to quantity in this context.

New additions to my extended TBR list:

- The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East by Nicholas Morton
- Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
- Knight's Fee by Rosemary Sutcliffe

54. Revenge of the Horseclans by Robert Adams

This the third installment of the Horseclans series, which I'm in the process of rereading. This novel is set about a hundred years after the first volume. The Horseclans have settled a much enlarged version of the territory conquered in volume one, and interbred extensively with the inhabitants, as well as adopting many of their customs. Most people, whether they identify as Horseclan or Ehleen, are in fact mixed. But the nobility tends to be more Horseclan, and commoners more Ehleen.

In this book, a young man named Bili is summoned back to his home; his father is dying, and Bili is heir to his duchy. When he arrives, he finds that all is not well in the duchy; Ehleen animosity to Horseclans has increased substantially, and is already giving rise to violence. The rest of this book deals with the consequences, and how Bili deal with the situation.

True to the pattern in this series, this involves a lot of violence, and behaviour that I'd find disgusting in real life, or even if I could take it seriously. (Instead, my emotions tend to class it with the "violence" in Sunday morning cartoons for children.)

It also involves a lot of working out details of the various cultures of North America perhaps a thousand years after the apocalypse that destroyed our current civilization, wiping out most of the population in the process. In many ways that's the part I love best. For example, Bili has 2 mothers, sisters, both married to his father, polygamy being normal to several of these cultures. We see him interacting with his mothers, and them interacting with each other.

Once again, as is common in this series, most of the enemy are painted as disgustingly over-the-top evil. In this case, they practice a perverted form of what was once Orthodox Christianity, featuring human sacrifice among its other evils. Slavery has become illegal, but high ranking Ehleen-identified enemy still keep slaves - predominantly for sexual use. One character in the current novel starts out as such a slave, but is freed by the good guys early on.

Overall, the novel is a nice light snack, provided you don't let your imagination engage with the sometimes sadistic violence. We have heroic warriors doing their thing successfully, and we get to imagine ourselves among them - without the downsides that this would have in real life, or even in a more balanced portrayal. The good guys are practically assaulted by women eager to bed them. (Only the bad guys are rapists, except perhaps during the sack of a city - and no cities are sacked in this book.)

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), series (not first), 1982
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author of my #47 and #50 for this year
- English, own shelves, 181 pages, 3 stars
- read May 15-16, 2024, book previously read

My project of rereading all my fiction in alphabetical order by author continues. This is book 11 in shelving order, and the 8th book I've completed during this reread.

55. Slouching towards utopia : an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford DeLong

This does what it says on the tin, except the "twentieth century" discussed is what the author calls "the long twentieth century", from 1870-2010. Also, it does a better job of covering the global north than the global south.

It's a good and informative book. I'd never tried looking at that period as a whole, a time when material prosperity increased substantially, and the improvements reached more than the upper classes, leaving many people living in what would have seemed utopian conditions to earlier generations.

Moreover, while I had at least some idea of the later half of this period, having lived through most of it, I knew more political than economic history of the earlier parts. So I learned a fair chunk.

Like everything involving macroeconomics, politics is present implicitly and sometimes explicitly. The author clearly likes social democracy, and regrets its replacement with neo-liberalism. But he's honest about it, rather than playing the too common game of "the Truth(TM) of (Macro)Economics requires xyz political system".

Still, I liked the earlier parts better, where the politics was less present.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history (economic history), series: n/a, 2022
- Author: male, American, born in 1960, academic (economics, economic history), author not previously read
- English, public library, 605 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 11-May 17, 2024, book not previously read

Wow! It's getting close to the end of May, and I'm getting close to finishing the 900+ page book I'm reading about the Napoleonic Wars, so I did my usual search for book recommendations for the next month's war room challenge.

LibraryThing's recommendation system produced no books in the history genre related to the English Civil War - at least, none it thought I'd like.

Not one.

I don't think I like this algorithm, or perhaps the data that feeds it.

I'd have expected it to find books similar *in style* to books I loved, though not on the same precise topic.

>35 ArlieS: FWIW, I just use Google & find lots of options.

>36 ChrisG1: That didn't occur to me to try. I wound up searching Library Thing for something like "English Civil War", then following recommendation chains, while paying attention to LibraryThing's predictions of whether I'd like the books. There also turned out to be a Civil War book bullet from Paul in my long TBR list, and at least 2 civil war books in the War Room list.

Of course the next problem was seeing what my local libraries had. The more convenient (walkable) local library had none at all. (Maybe it had other books in that category.) The more distant one (half hour drive; worse in rush hour) had two, and in a fit of greed - but also because they were more attractive than the ones at either library - I summoned 3 more to the local library via Inter Library loan. (Sometimes I wonder what proportion of the inter-library loans sent to that library are destined for my household - I actually summon very few, compared to my housemate, who's insatiable.)

For the record: I'll be very surprised if I read all 5 of these books, though stranger things have happened. These are less than half of the haul I planned out today, and will collect some time in the next week - the others come either from my overgrown TBR list (aka "book bullets that hit me"), or from my LibraryThing recommendations.

>37 ArlieS: My son is currently reading The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England by Jonathan Healey which looks quite good. But it covers a wider time period then just the civil war.

>38 SandDune: That does sound interesting. And miracle of miracles, the more distant of my local libraries has it, and it isn't even checked out.

56. A Cat of Silvery Hue by Robert Adams

I'm continuing my project of rereading all my fiction in shelving order, and discarding anything I find that I really do not want to reread. This book is volume 4 of the Horseclans series, and book 12 of my fiction in shelving order, the 9th one I've completed during this reread.

The series continues to provide a pleasant fix of heroic male wish fulfillment. This one features a valet, not trained to war, who in an earlier book accidentally killed a couple of opponents while fleeing from them, and was taken by others as both competent and brave. In this book, he's living his former fantasies, as a well-regarded sergeant in a mercenary troop, when with hysterical strength he saves the life of a noble officer trapped under a burning beam that should have been far too heavy for any single man to lift. He's thereupon ennobled, as well as being given the prestigious medal that provides the title of the book.

All this takes place to a background of general derring-do in the course of putting down a rebellion inspired by over-the-top evil adversaries, and staffed by a mix of vicious religious fanatics, deluded fools, and agents of the real adversary.

Overall, it's another lovely visit to a world where violence really is a good solution, heroism matters, and all the best people are honorable, even most of the upper class rulers.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), series (not first), 1979
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author of my #47, #50 and #54 for this year
- English, own shelves, 167 pages, 3 stars
- read May 15-16, 2024, book previously read

57. The Napoleonic Wars : a global history by Alexander Mikaberidze

This is a very good, very detailed study of the Napoleonic Wars, with a little bit about other aspects of Napoleonic rule. It makes a point of covering more than just events in Europe. Given that I knew the European history better than the rest, the non-European coverage was most interesting to me.

It's also very much of a chunkster, weighing in at 936 numbered pages, along with xxiii pages of front matter (introduction etc.). I'm somewhat impressed with myself that I managed to finish it during the relevant month of the War Room challenge.

I half wish I'd accumulated a group of overlapping books about the Napoleonic era, and read several; then I'd probably retain rather more of the contents of this one. But May is almost gone, and I'm already gathering books for the June episode of that challenge.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2020
- Author: male, Georgian, born in 1978, academic (history), author not previously read
- English, public library (inter-library loan), 936 pages, 4 stars
- read Apr 26-May 22, 2024, book not previously read

Yesterday's library haul:

- Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews - fiction; part of an attempt to explore new (to me) authors
- Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor - fiction; part of an attempt to explore new (to me) authors
- On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency by Emily R. Transue - recommended by LT's new recommendation system
- The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables by Alexander Adam - recommended by LT's new recommendation system
- The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin - Another one from LT's new recommendation system; this one turned up when I searched for genre "history", tagged "war", looking for books for the War Room challenge.

I'll be making another library run next Thursday, to the library it takes me at least half an hour to drive to.

I've also got 3 inter-library loans on the way to the more local library. All are for the June War Room challenge, i.e. the English Civil War.

58. The Savage Mountains by Robert Adams

This is volume 5 of the Horseclans series, and book 13 of my fiction in shelving order. It's much the same as the rest of the series - lots of heroic male wish fulfillment. The leader of the still-resisting rebels from volume 4 is redeemed at the very start of this book, and most of his surviving followers pardoned, as the ultimate enemies who incited the rebellion have been discovered to have incited an invasion by neighboring tribes. (Fighters are needed to deal with that invasion, rather than continue the siege.)

This particular book is on the ugly side for the series, in terms of some of the violence portrayed. Specifics would require trigger warnings as well as spoiler warnings. This doesn't bother me - my mind processes it much the same way it handles the violence in Saturday morning cartoons. But I can easily see a lot of people - some of them regular posters in this group - DNF'ing the book and never revisiting the author.

Read this book only if you know you like this kind of thing. But if you do, then go ahead and read the whole series.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (post-apocalyptic), series (not first), 1979
- Author (Robert Adams): male, American, born 1933, novelist (science fiction and fantasy), author of my #47, #50, #54 and #56 for this year
- English, own shelves, 165 pages, 3 stars
- read May 22-24, 2024, book previously read

I think I may have found my theme for 2025: political systems, in all their variety.

I tend to spend a year or two achieving depth in a topic I'm interested in, but know only vaguely; then I mostly run out of worthwhile reading in that area, until there are new developments or at least a lot of new writing. I've done evolutionary biology and (macro)economics in the past few years, but while there's always more to learn, I feel I've achieved an adequate state of literacy in both areas. So this year, I've been mostly using Pauls' War Room Challenge as my theme.

I'm thinking that for 2025, I might investigate political systems and the associated theory. I know the basics - I can name and identify the more commonly mentioned systems and theories - but it occurs to me I could learn a lot more detail and nuance.

Perhaps political systems is the wrong term. Maybe it's more like "where does/should legitimate authority come from, and what responsibilities and duties does it have?" Of course this varies *a lot* if you look at history.

Wow! LibraryThing's new recommendation system has recently decided that I have an intense desire to read health books that push panaceas of various kinds. My latest batch of recommendations is full of them. I'm using the dismiss button on the worst of them, and laughing at the list.

See what I get for recently recording my ownership of a very small handful of classics in that field, such as one of Linus Pauling's books on Vitamin C.

It also offered me yet another edition of the King James translation of the Christian Bible. I'm not sure why anyone would need more than one of any particular translation.

And then there's this gem:

The Witches' Almanac: Spring 2003 to Spring 2004 by Elizabeth Pepper. The amusement value here is in the book description: "The statistical theory of unimolecular reactions is now universally known as RRKM theory. This textbook covers the basics necessary for the understanding of RRKM theory in its original and variational, phase-space and angular momentum-conserved incarnations. After a review of the Kassel quantum model and the theory of Slater, the specific-energy RRKM rate constant k(E) is derived. ..."

Other than that, the bot hopes I'd like to learn Lithuanian, Yiddish, Portugese, and Russian, in that order, as well as acquiring more basic books on French and German.

And I might also need 5,203 Things to Do Instead of Looking at Your Phone.

OMG, the Witches’ Almanac mid description is fantastic!

59. Empires of the sea : the siege of Malta, the battle of Lepanto, and the contest for the center of the world by Roger Crowley

This is a somewhat breathless account of conflicts in the Mediterranean between the Ottoman empire, and various Islamic pirates, on the one side; and the Knights of St John (aka Christian pirates), Venice, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papacy, on the other, from 1521-1571.

The conflict is framed as between Christendom and an Islamic equivalent (though the term Dar al-Islam is never used). This is probably how contemporaries mostly saw it. But in fact the various Christian participants had conflicting goals. Venice in particular routinely made treaties with the Ottoman Empire.

Primary sources are used and quoted extensively - there are lots of quotes from texts written by participants, diplomatic paperwork, etc.

It's a very visual book; there are a lots of descriptions (of Janissaries, war ships, etc.) in contexts where I wouldn't expect this much description in a history book.

The conflict is presented as being for control of the Mediterranean, with the outcome being a bit of an upset - the Ottomans didn't need to lose the battle of Lepanto - didn't even need to fight it. Moreover, if Lepanto hadn't been fought, the author expects that Ottoman expansion would have continued unchecked, with their forces eventually reaching Rome, leading to an entirely different European future.

I don't have enough general knowledge to evaluate that suggestion. Certainly the Ottomans were in that period a lot more united than the European Christians, or even the Roman Catholic subset of European Christians. They didn't waste their efforts with conflicting secret orders to their supposedly co-operating military leaders. OTOH, they had a bad case of bureaucracy and political infighting, which probably had similar effects, except when they had a particularly effective sultan.

Overall, a worthwhile read, that taught me a lot I didn't know. It would have been nice to have a wee bit more attention to context - what else was going on at the time? I was surprised by some of what I found when I checked the timeline after finishing the book. But readers can do what I did to get that context, if they are as unclear on what else was going on as I was.

Statistics:
- non-fiction, history, series: n/a, 2008
- Author: male, British, born in 1951, non-academic historian, author not previously read
- English, public library, 336 pages, 3.5 stars
- read May 16-28, 2024, book not previously read

I didn't record why I picked up this book. It could have been one I noticed looking for books for the War Room challenge.

>46 drneutron: Isn't it just!

Today's library haul:

- Starter Villain by John Scalzi - new fiction
- To Challenge Heaven by David Weber - fiction, part of a meh series by an author who's usually better
- Where Peace is Lost by Valerie Valdes - fiction; part of an attempt to explore new (to me) authors
- Cromwell: Our Chief of Men by Antonia Fraser - non-fiction, biography, for June War Room challenge
- The King's Peace by C. V. Wedgwood - non-fiction, 1st volume of a series about the English Civil War, for June War Room challenge
- A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England by David Underdown - non-fiction, for June War Room Challenge
- Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself by David Toomey - non-fiction
- Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos by Lisa Kaltenegger - non-fiction
- Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande - non-fiction

>49 ArlieS: Have fun with Starter Villain. I did.

60. Clean sweep by Ilona Andrews

I've been exploring new fiction authors, hoping to expand my set of reliable authors to include more that are still alive and writing. This is the first of them which I've finished - it jumped the queue when some dastardly fellow library patron put a hold on it.

I'll get back to Just One Thing After Another real soon, I promise, just as soon as I finish the other borrowed novel that has a hold on it, and maybe make some progress with non-fiction acquired by inter-library loan, which can't be renewed as many times as books borrowed directly from libraries local to me.

Clean sweep is an urban fantasy novel. Books in this genre are set on earth as it exists at the time the novel is written, except that some kinds of magic works for at least some people, and there may be various non-human sapients living among the humans. It's common for the magic people to be organized enough to cooperatively conceal their existence from non-magical humans. Often they resemble various beings from actual mythology: vampires, were-wolves etc. are common, but not required.

In Clean Sweep the first magical person we meet is an Innkeeper, who operates a hotel for what turns out to be any kind of hidden magical person who cares to pay to stay there. Innkeepers have magic of their own, dependent on the magic of their Inn, and much stronger within it than elsewhere.

Dina gets involved with a local problem outside of her inn, violating traditional innkeeper neutrality. Something is killing and mutilating neighborhood dogs. We get a partial tour of the overall setting as Dina deals with the problem, with the assistance of another covert-living paranormal.

There's a fair amount of humor, and various people are "characters", easily played for humor. This allows things to be kept light. That said, both lethal and potentially lethal violence are present, but the style is cosy rather than horror or noir.

It was a nice light snack, and I'm ready to read more, just as soon as I'm a bit less overbooked. (There are already 5 books in the series, so I shouldn't have to wait for more; moreover the author has written a fair number of other books.)

My one complaint is that, as with many of these books, the solution to whatever problem the heroine has very often involves new revelations about the setting. Suspense tends to be limited to "what will the author produce to solve this"; the reader lacks the knowledge to try to speculate in advance about how the heroine can handle her problems.

Statistics:
- fiction, fantasy (present day), first of a series, 2013
- Ilona Andrews is the pen name of a husband and wife duo:
- Author 1 (Ilona Gordon): female, USSR (naturalized to US), possibly born 1976, novelist (urban fantasy and romance), author not previously read
- Author 2 (Andrew Beauregard Gordon), male, American, age unknown, novelist (urban fantasy and romance), author not previously read
- English, public library, 227 pages, 4 stars
- read May 28-29, 2024, book not previously read

One of the books in this series was recommended to me by one of LibraryThing's recommendation series. It might not have been the first; my custom is to always start with the first, unless I encounter reviews that warn me that a series started badly, and only gets worth reading at a later stage. I selected the series from fiction recommendations involving authors I don't regularly read.

>50 ChrisG1: I'm enjoying it so far. Scalzi is usually reliable for me

Hi Arlie!

No chance of completely catching up, so here I am with a very belated happy second thread.

>31 ArlieS: I like the way your mind works because it sounds elitist to me, too. I’ve had to do quite a bit of deprogramming over the years in most aspects of how I was raised. It's an ongoing task.

>32 ArlieS: Color me surprised – I didn’t even realize there was a new Recommendations system, and I’ll be checking out my favorite genre soon.

>41 ArlieS: Congrats on finishing The Napoleonic Wars : a global history by Alexander Mikaberidze.

>45 ArlieS: I’m smiling at It also offered me yet another edition of the King James translation of the Christian Bible. I'm not sure why anyone would need more than one of any particular translation. I have literally dozens of Bibles, and I’m not even Christian. Many are family Bibles, some are specific translations. New Testaments, too.

>53 karenmarie: Hiya Karen,

It's good to see you here.

At this point, you get the new recommendations by default, and have to select "classic" to get the old one.

I'm also not Christian, with multiple copies of the Christian Bible, but they aren't heirlooms. What I have are most of the translations into English, and at one time I had a soft copy of Luther's German Bible as well. This is because I'm fascinated with theology, which led to some academic work a couple of decades ago; the books are still with me. (For the record, I also have copies of the Quran and the Book of Mormon, various Hindu scriptures, and more I'll only think of after I drink my morning coffee.)