Anna > Recent Status Updates

I put off reading Losing Earth for years because I knew it would be a downer of unprecedented proportions. Finally I've seized the moment after finishing Here Comes The Sun, the only genuinely hopeful non-fiction book about climate change for at least a decade. That hope somewhat counterbalances the sadness provoked by Losing Earth, but not the intense rage. Fucking RONALD REAGAN!!!!

That's it, I'm done.

Reading this for book club and I hate it, but the writing style is basic so it goes quickly. I'll probably continue in order to have a fully formed opinion, unless a kid gets raped. In that case, I'm out.

Rereading this for book club. As I suspected, it's not as much fun when you already know what happens. Still entertaining and readable, though. I'd forgotten how much Ryland Grace uses microsoft excel (my nemesis).

'The King was mightily pleased by this news and so took me by the hand and talked a little of it...' Pepys has come a long way.

The Great Plague is well underway. 12th August 1665: 'The people die so, that now it seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at 9 at night, all (as they say) that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for ayre.'

I do enjoy Pepys' bitchy comments. My favourite insult so far is 'bragging Bufflehead'.

'...then to the King's Theatre, where we saw Midsummers Nights Dreame, which I have never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.' Pepys is a harsh theatre critic!

'...thence to the Opera and there saw Romeo and Julett, the first time it was ever acted. But it is the play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that that ever I saw these people do...'

Goodreads is truly unique. Every other website and app is desperate to send me notifications about every little thing, while I constantly fight to disable them. Whereas goodreads stopped notifying me about new comments on my book reviews months (years?) ago. I have the notifications switched on, they simply do not work. Apologies to the commenters whose comments I did not see - it was goodreads' fault.

In case you're curious about how many of my 100 favourite books you've read: listchallenges.com/annas-top-100-books

I'll post my review of 2024 in a couple of days when I get home. Happy new year!

It's baffling how completely I am bouncing off this book. While other Adrian Tchaikovsky space operas have enthralled me (e.g. the brilliant Children of Time trilogy), I can't seem to get a hundred pages into this one after weeks of trying. The setup seems familiar from Alasdair Reynolds' oeuvre and the protagonists aren't weird enough. I'm just not into it, so time to give up I think.

Just when I least expected it, Benjamin is explaining his methodology!

Amid the dense commentary on Baudelaire, Benjamin periodically slams the reader with incredible one-liners such as, 'Fashion determines, in each case, the acceptable limits of empathy.'

This is more than I wanted or needed to know about Baudelaire, but I will persist nonetheless.

This is an excellent, engaging, informative book about statistics. However I am a statistician so it's engaging Work Brain on a Friday night. The current chapter also reminds me of the tough time I had five years ago trying to teach Central Limit Theorem to business students. If this book had been published back then it would have gone straight to the top of the reading list.

To be honest, I'm getting nowhere with Salvation. A scene which commented disapprovingly on the excessive cleavage of a supposedly non-binary omnigendered person was followed by a lengthy sports match. I felt compelled to read three nonfiction books instead, two of which were about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. They were more fun than this.

I'm into it now! Around page 150 I became accustomed to Jameson's prose, transforming the book from exhausting to enjoyable and rewarding.

While the topic of this book is of the greatest interest to me, the writing is often dense as a neutron star. Yet Jameson comments in chapter 5 that, 'I am probably not alone in finding the latest hard SF based on informational processes (even by so estimable a writer as Greg Egan) relatively unreadable'. Authors who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Recently I've been reading unusually compulsively even by my standards; six books in the past week. Don't know what that's about, but to make best use of it I'm having another crack at my great white whale. I've been trying to read Archaeologies of the Future for thirteen years! Not letting myself start another novel until I'm more than 100 pages in.