octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

Yeah, this is... not for me. It's basically a series of guided imaginative exercises for pagans to connect with Celtic mythology, a nice idea I guess. I mean, I'm pretty solidly atheist but I'm predisposed to give some credit to spiritual systems that prioritise environmentalism and imagination, so I thought I'd give it a read in my ongoing quest to sample a wider variety of books. It just left me cold. A lot of it, I'm sorry to say, reads like a bad fantasy novel, and the thinking seems woolly and verges in places on just plain sloppy. For example: "Of approximately 374 Celtic god names, 305 occur only once. Of the nearly forty remaining god names, just four or five occur more than once..." (17). I did not find this a promising beginning. Though, as I said, this is not the type of book for which I hold any natural sympathy. Other people may find it more appealing.

A retelling in novella form of the golem legend, set in Prague (where I happened to buy this English translation, many years ago). The story itself is a solid three stars, with a young man setting out to meddle in he knows not what and predictably coming to a sad and sticky end. What elevates it to four stars are the illustrations - they're simply amazing. Very simple, and single-coloured, done with a pencil it looks like (I'm not exactly arty, so don't take my word on that). But they are astonishing.

Apparently the Celts had a zodiac of their own. Who knew? Theirs seems to be mostly based around different trees and plants, and this book is mostly about the various myths and folklore connected with those plants. Which should be super interesting for someone like me who likes myths and plants, but it's sprinkled through with astrology which is not something that I find convincing. "The science of astrology" is not a phrase anyone should spout without having fruit chucked at them as far as I'm concerned. So two stars for the text (some of the myth/folklore stuff is genuinely interesting) but it gets bumped up another star because the illustrations are beautiful. Margaret Walty is to be congratulated for her art, because it is detailed and lovely.

One of my all-time favourite reads, containing as it does my favourite Austen couple: Jane and Mr. Bingley. Don't get me wrong, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy come a close second, and they are witty and entertaining beyond the rest of Austen's creations. Every time I've read this - and I've read it a lot - I am rapt with amusement. But that sweet secondary romance percolating in the background, if less flashy, is just as wonderful, and the characters more deserving.

Also worth a mention is the humour of it. P&P is, I think, heavier on the dialogue than the rest of Austen? (Understandably so, no-one wants to see Fanny Price moan any more than she already does...) But that dialogue is sparkling. And the humour is so finely drawn, and expressed in so many different ways. Mr. Collins, in all his awful presence and smug, pompously vengeful letter-writing, is worth the price of admission alone, and Mr. Bennet is hardly less entertaining, not to mention Elizabeth and all of Austen's caustic asides.

One of the greatest novels ever written, and deserves all the praise it routinely gets.

Pretty average collection of Wyndham stories, mildly enjoyable but not up to his usual standards I think. There's only five stories in here - more novelette/novella length than typical shorts, with three of them concerned in some way with space exploration, whether of Mars or Venus. One of the others ("The Third Vibrator") is the worst of the lot and pretty dire really, but it's balanced out by the best, a creepy Venusian alien of terrible hunger in "Invisible Monster".

A collection for Wyndham completists more than anything else, I think.

3.5, rounding up to 4 stars. It's nice to see some optimism in science, and this book made me think about population in ways that I hadn't before. I found a lot of it to be convincing - the point about immigration contributing positively to a decline in population growth makes absolute sense, for instance. And I enjoy that Dorling takes a wider perspective in some areas, for example in his discussion of economic inequality (aka The Spirit Level argument). That said he gets a bit misty-eyed when it comes to children. Oh, we can't blame children, it's all the stupid adults! Well, yes, but children require clean water as well as adults, and regardless of fault. Oh, but children contribute to the sum of human happiness! Which doesn't mean squat to the species going extinct because they're being crowded out of habitat.

This is a very human-centric book, is what I'm saying. There is some small acknowledgement that we share the Earth with other species, but not much care about what happens to them as long as we're alright. And while Dorling's point about resource use vs. population is well-taken, he seems to me over-optimistic in the idea that we'll find a happy medium of ecological responsibility. (I note that the copy of the book that I'm reading says nothing about being printed on FSC approved paper, for instance.)

An extremely well-written biography of the New Zealand astronomer Beatrice Tinsley. Notable mostly for its sympathetic treatment of the subject, especially as Tinsley was in many ways held back in her pursuit of science by sexism, especially in how supportive she was expected to be as wife and mother while getting very little support in return. Thankfully for science, she got herself out of the backblocks of 1960s/70s Texas and off to Yale, where she immediately made an impact.

This is such an easy book to read - the writing is polished and friendly, the subject exceptionally entertaining - a really fascinating character. I was absolute engrossed. There is, however, one glaring gap. Nowhere in the book is there an exploration of Tinsley's research - not on even the barest level. It's made clear that she's a huge innovator in studying the evolution of galaxies, but not only am I left with little to no understanding of the particulars, I am left with the suspicion that Cole Catley knows nothing of them either.

An easy read, fairly undemanding but well-written, in which a young woman who can see fairies recovers from a magical event that left her disabled and killed her twin. I liked the main character very much, and I was really interested in knowing more about her relationship with her sister and mother. Alas, it was not to be. This story is very centred around books - Mori loves SFF and gobbles her way through every fantasy and sci-fi book she can get her hands on. Which, I sympathise, I was that way myself, but there's only so often I can read her reactions to whatever book she's on without wanting to shake her. I have no interest in reading about how much she likes Zelazny, yet again, when it's been 50 fucking pages and neither the plot nor the backstory has advanced an inch. It started out being irritating and very quickly became deeply annoying - it felt, very clearly, as if this was the author's teen reading experience. I don't care. I want to read a novel, not follow her reviews on Goodreads. This is how SFF bloats up to 400+ pages: the indulgent inclusion of background that matters more to the author than the reader.

That said, apart from that one giant flaw it was an enjoyable read. Would have been four stars if the endless referential nods to SFF were excised. I did like the deliberately muted drama and I thought the end was lovely. It could still have been lovely if the book were half the length and focused more on being a story than being about them.

This is a tension-filled and well-written story about a young girl surviving in a remote valley after apocalypse. I was engrossed enough to read it in a single sitting, but it is also deeply, deeply irritating. You see, a man comes to the valley - another survivor, perhaps the only other one. And for about half the book I was thrilled, because I'd feared this was going to go the sexual assault and control route so beloved of post-apocalyptic narratives, and initially Z for Zachariah looked as if it were going to be original enough to avoid that.

Of course it wasn't. Of course it wasn't! What was I thinking...

It turned, abruptly, into every "edgy" unsavoury narrative of its type, but it doesn't even have the saving grace of a successful heroine. Ann, competent in every area but common sense, apparently, lets herself be chased out of the valley and into wasteland. Oh, it's presented with a veneer of agency, but she leaves her home, her animals, everything left she has to love because she doesn't have the gumption to shoot the person who tries to rape and cripple her, despite many opportunities to do so. He uses her dog to track her, and all she decides to do is try and shoot the dog! I don't know why teen girls are meant to be so soppy and self-sacrificing, always worried about the monsters who hunt them, but I for one am sick to death of reading about it. She even says if she finds others she'll try and send help - what the hell for? So that this person can be inflicted on the rest of the surviving world? Forgiveness of this level is not a virtue, and nor should it be presented as one. I'm damn sure if Ann were Andrew, he wouldn't be expected by the author to keep excusing his attempted rapist.

Promising beginning, interesting premise, but falls very quickly into cliche and ends as ultimately enraging. There is nothing empowering about this. Nothing.

Exceptionally well-written post-apocalyptic tale, a little repetitive but I think that is a deliberate decision to underline the monotony of following the road in the first place. Particularly interesting is the refusal of McCarthy to make clear what caused the environmental apocalypse in the first place - for the man and the boy I suppose it simply isn't relevant. However, the last couple of pages is a bit of a let down, having the feeling of an extremely tacked on happy ending. Still, I suppose one can't have everything, and this is streets ahead of the dreadful Z for Zachariah, which was a recent read on a very similar subject.