Random Thoughts

This is a slightly odd grab-bag of stuff. It’s got three proper short stories, one thirty page deleted sequence from one of the books, several things that I can only describe as “scenes”, and some “myth” recounts. None of these pieces would make much sense to somebody who hasn’t already read all the Paksenarrion books.

I found the “scenes” to be, er, not thrilling — most of this was originally published on Moon’s blog, and I can totally see these things making sense in that context. But two of the short stories were properly exciting, but most of all it just made me want to go back and re-read the original Paksenarrion trilogy.

Deeds of Honor (2014) by Elizabeth Moon (buy new, buy used, 4.34 on Goodreads)

I got If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino as an Xmas present when I was seventeen, and I loved it to bits. Absolutely amazing book. But why am I talking about Calvino? Because I think I’m suffering from some obscure disease probably called something like calvinoecotrepidatioensis, wherein every time my eyes read the characters forming the name “Umberto Eco”, what reaches my brain is “Italo Calvino”.

It even happened when I picked this book up and sat down to read it. I though “ooh, can’t remember this Calvino book” and then I flipped to the copyright page and back and forth and finally “darn!! It’s Umberto Eco!!!! Again!”

I assume that the same thing happened when I picked this book up on a sale in 2019. I don’t know where the confusion originates — I’ve barely read any Eco (I think perhaps just one book — The Island From The Day before, which I quite enjoyed), while I’ve read a lot of Calvino’s books.

Uhm, uhm, uhm… I don’t really know what to say about this book. It’s obviously an Old Man Yells At Clouds type of book (it’s his last one), where he just bitches about all the things that annoy him. The main target here are those nefarious, untrustworthy, horrible nihilists in the press. Journalists! He hates them soooo muuuuuch. But there’s also just random things, like how things like mobile phones suck (which is a strange thing to include in a book set in 1992).

The other parts of the book are the kinds of things I’ve always imagined that Eco specialises in — there’s a lot of conspiracies and stuff. But also other typical Old Male Author Staples, like having the protagonist be an old male author who is inexplicably attractive to a much younger woman. And pages and pages and pages of stuff about WWII. This stuff is told with a very Italian slant, so he natters on about Mussolini minutiae that’s perhaps known to Italians, but he might as well be reciting car stats. Which he also does! There’s a half a dozen page monologue where he explains that all available options for buying a new car sucks, because of various car stats.

So this all sounds like the worst book ever, right? No, I kinda liked it. It’s oddly well written, and parts of it are downright exciting. And there’s a lot of witty dialogue, like the bit where they mouth off jokes to one another for four pages like “Why is it that God must be a completely perfect creation? Because if he were completely hopeless, he’d be my cousin Gustavo.”

Numero Zero (2015) by Umberto Eco (buy new, buy used, 3.17 on Goodreads)

I guess this author duo has a special place in the hearts of all Norwegian nerds of a certain age. Not only did they champion science fiction in Norway in the 70s, but they edited a number of anthologies, got a bunch of classics translated, wrote sci-fi TV series… and also wrote a bunch of science fiction books themselves, and some of theme were geared with lased sharp precision at nerdy kids: The most successful book series was about a kid who flew around in space on a library space ship! These days you’d guess that something like that would be the result of extensive booktok market research, but I guess they’re just built that way.

The problem is… once I got older, I realised that they were (and there’s no polite way to say this) not good writers.

So I haven’t read any of their stuff for at least three decades, but I picked this 2014 book up at a book sale a few years ago, and then didn’t read it. Until now.

I kinda enjoyed it? And also, it sucks.

Let me explain: It’s written in a way that went out of style in the 1950s: We’re following an investigation taking place in 2084, and most of the space is devoted to explaining all the technical wonders of 2084. But written squarely to a contemporary audience. Like, imagine a sci fi short story written in 1945: “He pulled out his aetherium-powered pen, which worked as if there were an extremely tiny gasoline engine embedded (but without the fumes) that melted the lead and allowed the pen to write in a very fluid, manly manner.” That sort of style used to be a thing, but nobody writes that way any more.

I just found it to be an amusing read, because the authors’ enthusiasm for describing the World Of The Future is palpable. And like those oldee tymey sci fi stories, the protagonist has virtually no interior life or any character to speak of. While I was reading this, I was thinking “whew, people are gonna hate this!”, and I just checked Goodreads: Yup — it’s got 2.93, which is extremely low for that site.

The plot is stupid, and the ending is risible, but I enjoyed reading it anyway.

London 2084: en fortelling om fremtidige forbrytelser (2014) by Jon Bing & Tor Åge Bringsværd (2.93 on Goodreads)

Of all the things I opine on that I’m utterly unqualified to opine on, poetry is the thing that I’m unqualifiediest (that’s a word) to opine on.

But I’ve never let that stop me before, so:

Eh, it didn’t grab me. I have no idea, of course, whether it’s the translation that’s the problem (this was originally Los perros románticos, or The Romantic Dogs in English), or whether the poems are just kinda flat, but it feels oddly lifeless and not very interesting. And that’s certainly not a problem with Bolaño’s novels.

I did like this one, though.

The Romantic Dogs (1993) by Roberto Bolaño (buy used, 3.95 on Goodreads)

Oops! I was hung over today, so I decided to read a mystery.

This is a quite original concept — it’s about a bunch of people in line for days for a huge sale, and the “mystery” bit is about whether the people in the queue have other motives for sleeping on the sidewalk than just getting a good deal.

As usual with Babson, it’s pretty well written on a page by page basis, but she needed, like, more more. You can tell that it was a struggle even to fill the 170 pages of this book, and she starts repeating herself around the two thirds mark.

Still, it’s a perfectly pleasant way to spend a day when your brain’s not working well.

I was actually trying to find a different Babson book — the first of the Trixie Dolan & Evangeline Sinclair series, which I know I have here somewhere. But I just couldn’t find it. So I thought I’d just re-buy it as an ebook, but nope! Not available. I guess neither her publisher(s) not her heirs (I think she’s dead?) are confident that anybody would want to read these old and not exactly celebrated books these days, so even if scanning, OCR-ing and proffreading a book wouldn’t be very expensive, it’s not worth it?

Anyway, The Internet Archive has that book, but as a scanned PDF. You can only “borrow” it, but there’s a plugin to allow you to download things anyway, and:

But… eh. Epaper contrast is already pretty sucky, but here we get almost-black on quite grey. I mean, I could fix that up (threshold everything over #aaa to #fff), but the resolution on this thing still wouldn’t make that particularly pleasant.

And I just couldn’t be bothered, especially since I was just trying to find something to read while feeling sorry for myself today.

Line Up For Murder (1980) by Marian Babson (buy used, 3.55 on Goodreads)