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More 2024 Reading
Dec. 22nd, 2024 10:42 pmHe Who Drowned The World (Shelley Parker-Chan) (2023): Sequel / second of the duology started by She Who Became the Sun.
The duology is totally doing a bunch of tropes that aren't my tropes, and that's cool. But if the novel can start with Zhu Yuanzhang doing massive construction to re-create a city in the image of his capital, why isn't it until the end that Zhu Yuanzhang can start with social construction? "Now we can make the world we want to live in." Well you've been making a world with sword and powder for the last several hundred pages, let's think about that a bit.
I'm also a little dubious about how to put together the historical inspiration of the Hongwu Emperor, who had many consorts and many children, with the monogamy portrayed in the novels. And then there's the statecraft and nation-building issues, which I'm not qualified on at all, but get right back to my issue with "you've been making a world for the last several hundred pages."
Solid, interesting duology, worth reading, but aimed a little off to the side of what I like the most.
Exit Strategy (Martha Wells) (2018): Reread in audiobook. I meant to pick up the latest Murderbot, but I wanted to reread the one before the latest, and forgot which was penultimate in the current series, and which was ante-penultimate. Exit Strategy does fine as read by Kevin Free. He does voices, which is good, though I'm not sure I agree with all his choices. Hazards of reading the novels before listening to the audiobooks, you make up your own voices.
Network Effect (Martha Wells) (2020): Actual penultimate novel. Previously read, apparently not previously logged. Started in audiobook, finished in ebook, as one does. Murderbot hates on planets and the Corporate Rim, has a minor breakdown (maybe not so minor?), picks a fight with its best friend, makes ethically complicated killware with its best friend, etc. A+ will read again.
System Collapse (Martha Wells) (2023): The Murderbot series has included The Power Of Narrative as a theme since page one. I completely understand that. Murderbot taking control of the narrative and using video media as a persuasive tool against a Corporation Rim entity is absolutely on brand and a fantastic evolution of that theme. I am all for this. However, I also read the Expanse novels more recently than I reread Murderbot, so I am having a moment where The Power Of Narrative has intentional and also unintentional consequences.
I've seen some remarks that System Collapse reads as the wrap-up of Network Effect, which I can understand. But I also think it's setting up a chain of events where increasing numbers of SecUnits get access to ( spoilers ). So I wonder how the Network Effect and System Collapse sequence will look when another couple of stories are out.
Sweet Promised Land (Robert Laxalt) (1957 / 1974): Journalist goes to French Basque country with his father, Dominique, who emigrated 47 years previous. The epilogue focuses on Robert's brother Paul. The copy I found in a Reno bookstore has a "compliments of Senator Paul Laxalt" stamp on the frontispiece; I suspect the epilogue was added to a print run related to his 1974 campaign.
Robert Laxalt summarizes his father's pre-Depression success as a sheep-herder and ranch owner, followed by the Depression bust, followed by decades of herding in the Nevada ranges and the Sierras. The family of four boys and two girls was mostly raised by their mother, sometimes a hotel owner and business manager. Only a sister's stroke and decline convince Dominique to come away from the sheep. The author recounts his father's quirks factually, from the family scheme to get the trip to Basque country rescheduled from an ever-receding "next year" to his compassion for his fellow countrymen, American and Basque. It was a pleasant reflection on a sliver of early Nevada immigrant experience on a weekend I was unexpectedly in Reno.
People Make the Hospital: The History of Washoe Medical Center (Anton P. Sohn & Carroll W. Ogren) (1998): My other Surprise Reno Weekend local history reading. Medical history is my jam and the only thing that could make this more my jam would be The Pathology Department: A Retrospective, by Multiple Medical Professionals. This isn't the strongest entry on the theme, but filled some time.
The first three chapters are relatively dry recitations of facts. Carroll Ogren arrives at the hospital, the focus goes to his recollections of hospital construction and changes for chapters 4 - 6. Chapter 7, "The People Make The Hospital", is 30 pages of brief reminiscences on Washoe Medical Center employees. Chapter 8 touches on early Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) inspections, and sweeps on through school of nursing and school of medicine challenges of the '70s. Chapter 9 is attributed to Anton P. Sohn, sketching out the hospital lowlights and highlights between 1978, the last year of Carroll Ogren's administration, and 1998, the year of the book's publication.
The Preface, Forward, and first chapter (slightly confusingly titled "Introduction") have some of the strongest "the past is a different country" content. The disparagement of 1998 health care is an experience, particularly the denigration of the County Commissioners that "left me with little hope that any governmental institution could effectively compete with the private sector." (Foreward, p xxi) Yet the solution put forth to combat "merger mania has infected the hospital industry attracting for-profit corporations with their greedy appetite for profit, and therefore, perpetrating fraud with unnecessary hospitalization and laboratory work," in the first chapter is to vote! (p 3) Oh to be a retired Nevada health administrator in 1998, when the scam was running more people through the hospital to drive up billable work, instead of living the 2024 challenges of insurers denying coverage for expensive but effective surgeries and treatments.
What's both old and current is Ogren's heartfelt admission in the Forward that he was fired from Washoe Medical Center for what seems to have been uncontrolled alcoholism. "I spent a year in a recovery mode with the help of a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous friends and a higher power. During my earlier years of denial, there were many who tried desperately to help me fend off my demon. Among those I tearfully and gratefully acknowledge are..." and half a paragraph is named, many of those names to reappear elsewhere.
( Additional highlights from this history of Washoe Medical Center under the cut. )
The duology is totally doing a bunch of tropes that aren't my tropes, and that's cool. But if the novel can start with Zhu Yuanzhang doing massive construction to re-create a city in the image of his capital, why isn't it until the end that Zhu Yuanzhang can start with social construction? "Now we can make the world we want to live in." Well you've been making a world with sword and powder for the last several hundred pages, let's think about that a bit.
I'm also a little dubious about how to put together the historical inspiration of the Hongwu Emperor, who had many consorts and many children, with the monogamy portrayed in the novels. And then there's the statecraft and nation-building issues, which I'm not qualified on at all, but get right back to my issue with "you've been making a world for the last several hundred pages."
Solid, interesting duology, worth reading, but aimed a little off to the side of what I like the most.
Exit Strategy (Martha Wells) (2018): Reread in audiobook. I meant to pick up the latest Murderbot, but I wanted to reread the one before the latest, and forgot which was penultimate in the current series, and which was ante-penultimate. Exit Strategy does fine as read by Kevin Free. He does voices, which is good, though I'm not sure I agree with all his choices. Hazards of reading the novels before listening to the audiobooks, you make up your own voices.
Network Effect (Martha Wells) (2020): Actual penultimate novel. Previously read, apparently not previously logged. Started in audiobook, finished in ebook, as one does. Murderbot hates on planets and the Corporate Rim, has a minor breakdown (maybe not so minor?), picks a fight with its best friend, makes ethically complicated killware with its best friend, etc. A+ will read again.
System Collapse (Martha Wells) (2023): The Murderbot series has included The Power Of Narrative as a theme since page one. I completely understand that. Murderbot taking control of the narrative and using video media as a persuasive tool against a Corporation Rim entity is absolutely on brand and a fantastic evolution of that theme. I am all for this. However, I also read the Expanse novels more recently than I reread Murderbot, so I am having a moment where The Power Of Narrative has intentional and also unintentional consequences.
I've seen some remarks that System Collapse reads as the wrap-up of Network Effect, which I can understand. But I also think it's setting up a chain of events where increasing numbers of SecUnits get access to ( spoilers ). So I wonder how the Network Effect and System Collapse sequence will look when another couple of stories are out.
Sweet Promised Land (Robert Laxalt) (1957 / 1974): Journalist goes to French Basque country with his father, Dominique, who emigrated 47 years previous. The epilogue focuses on Robert's brother Paul. The copy I found in a Reno bookstore has a "compliments of Senator Paul Laxalt" stamp on the frontispiece; I suspect the epilogue was added to a print run related to his 1974 campaign.
Robert Laxalt summarizes his father's pre-Depression success as a sheep-herder and ranch owner, followed by the Depression bust, followed by decades of herding in the Nevada ranges and the Sierras. The family of four boys and two girls was mostly raised by their mother, sometimes a hotel owner and business manager. Only a sister's stroke and decline convince Dominique to come away from the sheep. The author recounts his father's quirks factually, from the family scheme to get the trip to Basque country rescheduled from an ever-receding "next year" to his compassion for his fellow countrymen, American and Basque. It was a pleasant reflection on a sliver of early Nevada immigrant experience on a weekend I was unexpectedly in Reno.
People Make the Hospital: The History of Washoe Medical Center (Anton P. Sohn & Carroll W. Ogren) (1998): My other Surprise Reno Weekend local history reading. Medical history is my jam and the only thing that could make this more my jam would be The Pathology Department: A Retrospective, by Multiple Medical Professionals. This isn't the strongest entry on the theme, but filled some time.
The first three chapters are relatively dry recitations of facts. Carroll Ogren arrives at the hospital, the focus goes to his recollections of hospital construction and changes for chapters 4 - 6. Chapter 7, "The People Make The Hospital", is 30 pages of brief reminiscences on Washoe Medical Center employees. Chapter 8 touches on early Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) inspections, and sweeps on through school of nursing and school of medicine challenges of the '70s. Chapter 9 is attributed to Anton P. Sohn, sketching out the hospital lowlights and highlights between 1978, the last year of Carroll Ogren's administration, and 1998, the year of the book's publication.
The Preface, Forward, and first chapter (slightly confusingly titled "Introduction") have some of the strongest "the past is a different country" content. The disparagement of 1998 health care is an experience, particularly the denigration of the County Commissioners that "left me with little hope that any governmental institution could effectively compete with the private sector." (Foreward, p xxi) Yet the solution put forth to combat "merger mania has infected the hospital industry attracting for-profit corporations with their greedy appetite for profit, and therefore, perpetrating fraud with unnecessary hospitalization and laboratory work," in the first chapter is to vote! (p 3) Oh to be a retired Nevada health administrator in 1998, when the scam was running more people through the hospital to drive up billable work, instead of living the 2024 challenges of insurers denying coverage for expensive but effective surgeries and treatments.
What's both old and current is Ogren's heartfelt admission in the Forward that he was fired from Washoe Medical Center for what seems to have been uncontrolled alcoholism. "I spent a year in a recovery mode with the help of a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous friends and a higher power. During my earlier years of denial, there were many who tried desperately to help me fend off my demon. Among those I tearfully and gratefully acknowledge are..." and half a paragraph is named, many of those names to reappear elsewhere.
( Additional highlights from this history of Washoe Medical Center under the cut. )
