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nocto's reviews
1291 reviews
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef
3.5
It felt like the internet, or at least the corners of it that I frequent, was all over this book a couple of years back. And it sounded right up my street, but I didn’t find a copy of it until I spotted it in the library a couple of months back. But even after I borrowed the book it took me a long time to actually read it. And this is all relevant and somewhat ironic.
The book is all about figuring out what’s actually true in the world. The scout mindset is one that values being right, a mindset where you change your mind when you are wrong, where you don’t over commit to an opinion that you aren’t certain on. A mindset where you judge after the facts not before them. And this is in opposition to what the author calls a soldier mindset, which is one where we defend our position simply because it’s our position. The central difference between the two mindsets is how we deal with new information that doesn’t fit with our current view. A scout asks if they can believe something, a soldier asks if they must believe it.
The irony of me taking a while to get to reading this book is because I thought I knew it all already, and even though I knew that people whose opinions I value had a high opinion of it. I definitely think I have a scout mindset where I think about things for myself and don’t like to go along with the crowd when I’m not sure and am happy to change my mind when I figure out more about what is the truth. But I did read the book in the end because I was too curious about whether I could learn to do more and better. And I think I did. We all have a bit of the soldier in us as well as the scout and this taught me a bit about how that works which I think will make me a better scout. But one of the main things I got from the book was a bit of understanding about how those people who really aren’t scouts at all tick.
Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky
5.0
I feel like all my reviews of VI Warshawski books go much the same way. She’s my favourite and I’m so glad she’s still going and still good. This one is going to be no different. There’s a glaringly awful error on the back cover of this copy - there’s a snippet of a review that claims the series is 50 years old. The first book was published in 1982, which was 42 years ago by my count. I didn’t discover the books until the 1990s but I still feel like I’ve grown up with Vic. One of the weird things about counting a fictional character among your friends is that they don’t grow old at the same rate as you. Vic was quite a lot older than me when we met but now I think she’s much the same age as me.
This book takes her away from Chicago to Lawrence in Kansas, where this series has been before and Paretsky has also written about the city in standalone novels. It’s Paretsky’s home town. Although part of the fun of any long running series is meeting up with the same cast of characters over many years I was pleased there were a couple of new ones who felt like they could appear again introduced here with the new setting. And I liked the space created without the regulars all having to have a cameo (they still did, but with smaller roles than is usually the case). And this bit is tricky to write about as it feels wrong to enjoy someone else’s trauma even when it’s fictional, but I liked that Vic was battling problems here, she always has been but in this book there was more recognition of the toll years of dealing with all the bad guys have taken on her. That she’s bouncing back from that a bit less now makes sense. And I like how the issues she’s dealing with have changed over the series as well as how the crimes have always been the kind of problems the real world is dealing with at the time.
At the end of the book Sara Paretsky notes that she’s working on another project and VI is having a break but she’ll be back. I think she deserves the break and I certainly hope she’s back for more.
Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel by The Authors Guild, Douglas Preston, Margaret Atwood
3.5
This book caught my eye in the library though I hadn’t heard of it before I saw it on the shelf. I can’t remember how they shelved it either, I’ve just gone with “Various Authors” as the author which will cover me if I ever read another book written by a cast of different authors. I’d guess most of the books that would come under that are collections of stories which I don’t tend to read. And this is very much a collection of stories too.
The book is a product of the pandemic lockdowns when a group of authors collaborated on the story. And the story is set in the pandemic lockdown; write what you know and all that I guess. It very much is a collection of stories told by the residents of a New York apartment building who get to know each other better by being confined together through the lockdown. I know some of the authors and have never heard of others; I liked some of the stories and others weren’t especially interesting to me. I didn’t pay enough attention to the afterword that tells you who wrote what to know if those two were related but my guess would be that there’s not that strong a correlation if there is any. I enjoyed it enough to keep reading at any rate.
There’s a twist near the end that, I don’t want to spoil anything, but it would probably have seen me throw the book across the room if it happened in another book. Here though, I was willing to take it. Like any good twist you feel like you could have, maybe should have, seen it coming, but it doesn’t matter that you didn’t. I don’t think it’s a great book, but I do think it’s an interesting cultural artefact and I’m happy to have read it.
Water by John Boyne
5.0
This is the fourth of John Boyne’s books I’ve read and before this he was on two hits and a miss with me. This book is the first of a quartet of linked short novels, I know the second is ‘Earth’ and I’d guess the final two will be ‘Air’ and ‘Fire’ though I guess he could go with ‘Wind’ or take the titles someplace else entirely. We will see (I looked it up, it’s ‘Fire’ and then ‘Air’, no surprises). And I will see because I’m pretty certain I’ll be there reading them.
In this instalment we meet Willow Hale, who just changed her name when she arrived on an island off the coast of Ireland. We quickly learn that she’s escaping from a scandal and it’s gradually revealed what has happened within her family. The story is both big national news scale and small interpersonal relationship scale, but also just about being within Willow’s head as she works through what has happened and examines her own culpability. It’s interesting, absorbing and very well written.
I kind of wish they hadn’t felt the need to trail what happens in ‘Earth’ at the end of the book. That kind of thing makes me feel the way I feel when TV shows run you straight into the start of the next series before the credits have run on the last episode. If I liked it (and I did) then I’m going to keep going, if I didn’t like it I’m not going to be interested. Either way it’s just annoying. I want some space to absorb what I’ve just experienced, to reflect and some space to breathe. Much like Willow needs here. But that’s just me having issues with the marketing, I will definitely be reading the next volume soon, this was another hit with me.
Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World by Laurence C. Smith
5.0
This is a beast of a non-fiction book. I think it’s taken me three library renewals to get through it. Not because it’s tedious or hard to read, there’s just so much detail here and I never really felt tempted to skip bits. And I kept wandering off to look up stuff that was mentioned.
On the back cover the book is tagged as ‘Historical Geography’ which I’d never really thought of as a thing before, but it’s really up my street. The natural course of rivers determines where we live, decides where we draw boundaries, helps us survive, and all kinds of other things. The scale of the book is breathtaking as it passes from ancient agriculture to modern day dams and hydropower via all the wars and floods in between. In fact beyond the dams and the hydropower to how huge infrastructures are now being dismantled in some places and the changes that need to happen to make things sustainable. It’s fascinating. I was struck by the number of examples that I’d already come across, for example, he’d mention the Johnstown Flood which was new to me and I’d think it reminded me of the Bilberry Reservoir collapse in Holmfirth in 1852 and then I’d turn the page and he’d mention Bilberry, a reservoir I’ve lived near, walked around and have learnt its history. There were several examples like that in the book, it connected up things I already knew.
This is pretty much a history of how humans manage to live on Earth, if you just change a few parameters about how rivers work we can’t do that and probably wouldn’t be here today. It’s a really good read.
The Sweet Shop Owner by
5.0
I started reading this and was captivated by it right from the beginning. Darren was surprised, telling me I’d only given three stars to Swift’s book Waterland which won the Booker Prize. I remember that book suffering from me taking ages to read it. This book didn’t suffer that way, I think I finished it in two days. This tells the story of the life of Willy Chapman, the sweet shop owner of the title. It was the author’s first novel and it flows very easily but it’s not told simply. The flow of the story ripples and ebbs and runs into whirlpools. You gradually figure out how the family dynamics between Willy and his wife and daughter has been played out. Then there is his wife’s family who play a much bigger role than Willy’s own parents. The writing is clear and fabulous.
The book was published in 1980 and the story is being told from a viewpoint of 1975ish. This puts it in a weird sort of uncanny valley to me. I’d have been too young to read it on release but if I’d read this as a young adult - in the late 1980s or 1990s - it would have seemed more or less contemporary to me. But now when even the 1980s are the setting for historical novels it gives me this strange feeling of being historical and contemporary at the same time. The high street world of Mr Chapman’s sweet shop no longer exists. If he was still there today he’d have become a vape shop and the red and white barber’s pole that he laments the taking down of would have reappeared and multiplied (I always thought this was just a consequence of a trip to the barbers being something you can’t buy online, but people tell me it’s all money laundering, I haven’t investigated further). The estate agents across the road would probably have been absorbed into a chain though the staff probably wouldn’t be much more competent. So I think it read to me as a different sort of book than it would have done forty years back. I really liked the quiet way the story was told, it’s all in the little details.
Looking back over my write ups it looks like Graham Swift is a bit of a hit and miss author to me but this was definitely a very gentle hit.
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene
4.0
We’ve been moving house, there’s nothing better than that to make you aware of quite how many books you own! We’ve taken a zillion to charity shops and still have more than fit on our bookshelves. Why do we keep them? Mostly I think it’s simply “I’ve bought it so I’m going to keep it!“. We buy them, read them and put them on the shelves. But they become more than just objects. As soon as you read them they have little bits of your memory caught up in them. Even the ones you buy, shelve and don’t read have aspirations shelved alongside them. And the longer they stay on the shelves the stronger the urge to keep them becomes. A paperback I read last year is prime pickings for a charity shop run but a paperback I read twenty or thirty years ago has now become part of my soul.
I’ve been reading a lot of library books lately. And every one I read reminds me that there are plenty of books on the shelves at home that I could choose to read and haven’t done. Not just the ones I bought and didn’t get around to. Half(ish) of the books at home originated with my partner. Our reading tastes have enough overlap that there are plenty of books here at home that I’d like to read but somehow don’t. So consider this some kind of midsummer resolution to read more of the books that I already have at home.
As an object, I love it, and it can definitely stay on the shelf even now both of us have definitely read it. As a book, I enjoyed it. Looking at it from 90+ years after it was written it seemed a bit heavy on the stereotypes - the money making Jew, the masculine looking lesbian - they got subverted a bit so this wasn’t all you saw of the characters but still there was a lot that seemed like pretty shallow characterisation really.
The setting is on the Orient Express train -‘Stamboul’ never seemed to be mentioned in the narrative but it’s an old name for ‘Istanbul’, the train’s destination in the book is given with the old name of Constantinople. I was constantly thinking of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express but actually this is the older of the two books. And apparently this was published in the US as Orient Express which meant that the Christie then had it’s title changed for the US market. So confusion all around.
Anyway, it’s a good romp, exactly what I expect of Graham Greene, who I’ve apparently only read one book by this century: The Ministry of Fear though I read several more in the 1990s (still on my shelves for the most part). They are still easy reading even after so much time has passed since they were written and a window into the 1930s. The problem is that when you look through a window into the 1930s you encounter things like anti-semitism and as a modern reader I find it hard to figure out what’s coming from the author and what’s just the attitudes of the time. I can’t just enjoy the book without looking into it further, and that’s fine, I read books for many reasons and being made to think about things is definitely one of the reasons.
The Vanishing Hours by Barney Norris
3.0
This was very much in a similar vein to Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain which I really enjoyed but I didn’t feel this one was nearly as good. Both books have a strong sense of the place they are set; both books have interesting characters and change narrator as they go along. I don’t mind that the story here was rather off the wall and loopy but it felt like the author had collected a random selection of ideas and squished them into one book. I raced through this but really it was because I wanted to put it down and be done with it.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
5.0
This was fabulous, just the sort of wild romping tale that I was in the mood for. We’re in a near future version of the UK, every bit as dystopic as you might expect plus we’ve got hold of some kind of time travel door which (heavy sarcasm) is obviously going to simplify matters. Our unnamed narrator gets a job looking after one of a selection of characters plucked from history to arrive in modern - well near future - London. The person she’s looking after is Graham Gore who was a real arctic explorer presumed dead in 1847ish.
The book is great, and often hilarious, at showing how Gore and the other ‘expats’ from other times adapt to modern life. It wasn’t clear when I was reading whether the other characters from history were all real people or not - a quick web search makes me think not but I might be wrong. Either way their characters will be mostly invented and they are great inventions. I was particularly fond of Maggie who came from the Great Plague of London but fitted in perfectly as a film-obsessed modern lesbian. The interactions between the characters from different times who come with different expectations and attitudes are lovely. And that’s before you even get to the romance that blossoms between characters put in close quarters with each other, which could have been the whole point of the book but is just a part of the wider story.
What was worrying me as I read was how on earth the author was going to manage to end the book. It was an excellent middle that made me expect to be let down by a bumpy ending. But I wasn’t. Underneath all the fun and danger there’s a more serious undertone lurking, as there often is when time travel is used in fiction, not just about whether we can change the past or the future but a wider story about the politics of space and time and forcibly moving people about that resonates even in a world without time travel. I really enjoyed the book and was pleased with the ending. This is Bradley’s debut novel and I worry a bit that this is so expansive and clever that it will be hard to follow up but I hope to read more books of hers in the future (I don’t think I’ll use time travel to get to it though!).
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
4.0
I thought I had read Claire Keegan before but seemingly not. This was good but it’s more of a novella than a novel and left me with the feeling of ‘yes, but then what?’ wanting more of the story. There’s the odd book out there that I feel goes on too long but mostly it’s the short ones that annoy me.
Bill Furlong is a coal merchant somewhere in Ireland and this story happens in 1985. That makes me much the same age as the Bill’s teenage daughters and I remember all the things that they talk about here, but simultaneously this seems, to me, to be a story from a much earlier era. That’s kind of the point though. The Magdalene laundries were Catholic church condoned workhouses for wayward teenage girls and they were still going long after you’d have thought they would have been. In the end it wasn’t the juxtaposition between myself and Bill’s daughters that seemed a bit weird but the comparison to the girls at the laundry which seemed utterly chilling.
But this felt like a prologue and I was left wondering what happened next.