bitesizedreading | Weekend reading roundup

Entry tags:

weekend reading

Weekend reading roundup

How did your weekend reading go? If you planned on anything specifically, did you read it? (Reminder link to intended weekend reading post)

(Posting a bit earlier than usual because I'm away until late Thursday night.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I finished Cyberpunk: Malaysia. Wasn't that excited by the last couple of stories - think the best stuff was sandwiched in the middle. Also read bits of the new Chemistry World, the Economist (obit of Oliver Sacks, sniff), and Nature.

Haven't started The Martian yet, but am bringing it on my work trip.

Edited 2015-09-06 21:05 (UTC)

Emma by Alexander McCall Smith. Really odd updating, which somehow manages to make it far lower stakes than the original and has everyone's characterisation all over the shop, especially Mr Woodhouse and Frank Churchill's, neither of whom are allowed to pose any real threat to Emma herself.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel which, broadly speaking, I loved (has this fallen out of Hugo eligibility, by any chance?) Some awkwardnesses of phrasing, but I carried on thinking about it long after finishing it, even though what I'd originally hoped for was a Slings and Arrows post apocalpse.

Neil Young's second memoir, Special Deluxe. More focussed than his first one from a couple of years back, the new volume nevertheless is strangely compelling reading. Nothing like your normal celebrity tell-all, let alone the even more common self-hagiography, it is instead a pretty honest glimpse into the obsessions of one of pop music's most iconoclastic (who else has been sued by his record company for making music "unlike" himself?) and vital creative forces.

I'm guessing he wrote the book via a microphone. Like its predecessor it feels a lot like one is sitting in an all-night diner across the table from the author while he rambles on telling you stories that are important to him. And somehow, they become important to you.

A great book? Definitely not. It's not even a particularly useful look back at a time and place. But as a voyage into a creative mind, it's fascinating.