What I've Been Reading Recently

Still can't write about politics for the time being, so here are the books I read during June. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of science fiction.

Bloody Panico! by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Shelter by Dave Hutchinson
Nova by Samuel R Delany
Run, Come See Jerusalem! by Richard C Meredith
The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley
White August by John Boland
Stars and Bones by Gareth L Powell
The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown
The Aesthetic Dimension by Herbert Marcuse
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

What stands out the most? Why, it's our old friend Marcuse! Still a bit of a dead dog where social theory is concerned (despite the valiant efforts of friend-of-the-blog Paul Ewert and his case for Marcuse's continued relevance), nevertheless his book on aesthetics has been on the to-read list for a very long time. And, though it's been even longer since I last read any of Herbs's screeds, this came across as accessible and super interesting. A far cry from the footnote it usually receives in Marcuse primers. As it's "safe", I might write something on it should the mood take.

Starting with novels that didn't quite make the mark for me, Dave Hutchinson's Shelter is a great post-apocalyptic number ... until it isn't. Skipping along at a decent pace with great characterisation and vivid world building, in the middle of the book there are a series of indiscriminate and cruel murders which, when all is revealed, does not fit the character responsible. I won't say more than that, except I found it jarring and not believable. Delany's Nova didn't do it for me either. Perhaps because of illness I couldn't focus on it, but for such a comparatively short and well-regarded book I found it something of a chore. Whiteley's The Loosening Skin had an intriguing alt-history premise. People shed their skins reptile-like about every 8-12 years, leading to different psychologies - shedding skin often occasions the break up of relationships and individual reinvention. This is also a world where the discarded skins of celebrities and prominent people are sought after. Loosening starts well with the disappearance of a film star-turned-actor's skins from his vault but after the half-way point it peters out and gets lost in its own meander. You might say the book sheds its own plot and decides to do something different. Our last deflation comes from Gwyneth Jones. Probably a comment on how Tony Blair fancied himself a rock star PM, in her near future Jones imagines a Britain where rock stars take over and have to deal with Islamist uprisings, celebrity sex crimes, and bringing together a shattered England. It's well written but, for me, doesn't go anywhere or say anything particularly pertinent.

On the better pile, Herbert's third Dune book was alright, but hardly a masterpiece. It certainly hasn't dissuaded me that if you show me someone who says Dune is their favourite sf novel, you're actually showing me someone who hasn't read much sf. I enjoyed Run, Come See Jerusalem! - a time travel story that's short but as interesting as it is entertaining. The wild card here was Boland's White August, a 1950s proto techno thriller that involves evildoers plunging Blighty into a permanent snow storm in the middle of August. It's a race against time to find the culprit before everyone dies. Because the snow is (inexplicably) radioactive. Silly fun told from the standpoint of scientists and prime ministers, but nowhere near the heights of a Wyndham or John Christopher. Gareth L Powell's Stars and Bones was a well put together modern (2022) space opera. If you like the doings of Peter F Hamilton, you'll get on well with this further episode in the left's take over of sf's dominant sub-genre. But my book of the month is Eric Brown's The Kings of Eternity. Like his Kethani, there's a lot of food, drink, and immortality. There's also a laid back, life-is-good quality to Kings as well, even as the stakes build and there's a growing realisation that not all is well with the world. Brown here is gentle, but not cosy, and so manages an ambience that is uniquely his among contemporary sf writers. A real shame he's no longer with us.

What have you been reading recently?