What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

[Sean Hayden]

Nice. Herodotus tells some great stories.

[Brian Peacock]

The Dawn of Everything. From archaeologist David Wengrow and anthropologist David Graeber. 2021.

10 years in the writing, this is an incredible piece of work, though not heavy in it's style or spproach. Basically, a thoroughly researched exploration of the sheer variety of forms of social organisation humans have created, experimented with, and lived under over the last 5000 years or so. Challenged every single assumption I had about ancient and pre-enlightenment societies, and many assumptions I had about post-enlightenment societies too. Far more in scope and scale than a mere social history, I haven't had my brain peeled like this since Dennett's The Mind's I.

★★★★★

[rasetsu]

[macdoc]

The Dawn of Everything. From archaeologist David Wengrow and anthropologist David Graeber. 2021.

Looks good but a few ahead in the queue...

[rasetsu]

I have a substantial stack of books on Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, and Indian Philosophy from the library.

[JimC]

[Brian Peacock]

Tore through Alastair Reynold's final inspector Dreyfus offering. The man certainly knows how to construct a pot-boiling page-turner.

[JimC]

I might check that series out, Brian...

[Brian Peacock]

I can thoroughly recommend his Revelation Space books, which all inhabit the same universe. He's been doing them for 25 years now (with a bit of break in the middle) and the early ones still stand-up very well imo.

- Revelation Space. 2000.
- Chasm City. 2001.
- Redemption Ark. 2002.
- Absolution Gap. 2003.
- Galactic North. 2006. (short stories and novellas collection)
- The Prefect/Aurora Rising. 2007. (Dreyfus)

- Inhibitor Phase. 2021.
- Elysium Fire. 2018. (Dreyfus)
- Machine Vendetta. 2024. (Dreyfus)

You can read the Dreyfus stories as a separate set as they pre-date the others in the fictional timeline, with the plots essentially running contiguously. Chasm City stands on its own to some extent, as does Galactic North.

He's also written an excellent near(ish)-future trilogy under the 'Poseidon's Children' moniker, and a series of space-pirate novels in the sensationalist style of authors like Robert Louis Stevenson or Russell Thorndike - but they feel kind of weird to me: "Avast me hearties! Bring 'er about an' make ready to unleash the photon cannon on them scurvy space dogs, yarrr!" etc.

[JimC]

One of my favourite military space opera authors, David Weber, channels Hornblower to an extent in his "Honour Harrington" series... She starts as a Midshipman, and ends as a Fleet Admiral. He has just as many powerful female figures as males, and steers his politics towards a centrist position, with grasping and corrupt Trans Stellar Corporations and authoritarian planetary governments as the villains of the piece. Unlike other, more modern authors, he can't quite bring himself to have gay characters...

[macdoc]

Finished Book 3 of 10 - that was a challenge. Maybe too many interwoven tales at once....but what spectacle if they ever filmed it.

[JimC]

I'm re-reading a couple of books by an interesting UK author, Charles Stross - Halting State and Rule 34...

[pErvinalia]

Just randomly picked The Blank Slate off the shelf and started reading it. Dunno if I'll stick with it, but it's on the coffee table ready to go.

[rasetsu]

[JimC]

Just randomly picked The Blank Slate off the shelf and started reading it. Dunno if I'll stick with it, but it's on the coffee table ready to go.

By Pinker, isn't it? Read it a while ago, generally good, I thought...