This year I’ve had little time or patience for denser reads, so I read mostly novels, mostly scifi or scifi-adjacent (I’m now taking a break from literature and going into Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads), and a lot of Neal Stephenson.
Here are the books, in no particular order, with some notes.
Nostromo (Joseph Conrad)
Great book, but quite a slog for the most part. Nothing really happens until basically the very end of the book - which is brilliant. In the book’s introduction, there was this quote from Jacques Berthoud: “[this is] a novel that one cannot read unless one has read it before”. That sums it up quite nicely. The racial supremacism backdrop is jarring for modern sensibilities, but this of course is a book from 1904.
Children of Time series (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
I love these kinds of books - weird, imaginative and entertaining. The first one (Children of Time) establishes the premise and basic concepts, while the sequel (Children of Time) is also fun, but a bit derivative - you kind of know where things are going after a short while. Still, both are pure joy to read.
Illium series (Dan Simmons)
Dan Simmons is probably one of my all-time favourite authors. I loved Hyperion and Endymion. Illium and Olympos are fantastic books, and have some of the funniest passages I’ve ever read, like when Achilles, in the alternate timeline, saves and marries Penthesilea, and after five minutes can’t stand her constant nagging and wants to kill her (but physically can’t, because he’s under a spell from Aphrodite). There are three parallel storylines going on, one in Earth, one in Mars, and one in between. They are all equally entertaining.
Sadly, Simmons’ creepy prejudices, hinted at on later Hyperion cycle books, play a central role here (especially in the second book). Impossible to say a lot without spoilers, but some crucial narrative choices later in the book reflect a depressingly shallow and prejudiced worldview from Simmons.
Although mostly reasonable and in-context, parts of the book go out of their way to describe sexual encounters with in great detail - anatomist-level detail. It feels out of place and just plain weird, like watching two zebras humping at a zoo.
The Terror (Dan Simmons)
This might be my favourite read for the year. It is a convincingly accurate historical with breathtaking ambiance and beautiful Inuit mythology. There’s a good AMC mini series loosely based on the book, which I watched years ago and vaguely remembered. The book is so much better though. Somehow it manages to be a cozy and satisfying read while also being despairingly bleak. This is Simmons at his finest.
The Iliad (Homer)
Got started on this one right after reading Illium. Reading ancient literature isn’t exactly fun for most of us, but it is interesting and at times shocking. The Greek relations to their gods are pretty different from anything we come across with in modern societies.
Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
This more or less kickstarted a Neal Stephenson infatuation I’m still working through. I’ve read Snow Crash a couple of years ago and liked it, but haven’t gotten back to Stephenon until this.
Cryptonomicon is split between World War II and the 1990s. I enjoyed much more the former than the latter. I feel this was partially because of the duller story (one features World War II generals, Nazis and hidden gold, while the other is lead by a pudgy nerd running a dotcom-era startup), but also part because of the many technical exposition Stephenson goes into on things that were then cutting edge, but by now are either banal or obsolete. Tech snapshots are fine in college textbooks but don’t age well in literature.
Speaking of expositions, Stephenson’s digressions are hit and miss with me. Some are amusing, some are very lame. I remember a two-pager where the aforementioned pudgy nerd rambles the optimal way to eat a specific brand of children’s cereal with milk. I get the character and the stereotype Stephenson was going for, but it was a bit too much, more so coming from a not very likeable character.
REAMDE (Neal Stephenson)
This one meanders through Canada, US, China and a fictional MMORPG. The game parts were interesting, reminding me a bit of Three Body Problem. Some more or less repeated archetypes can be traced between this and Cryptonomicon (Waterhouse/Peter, Shaftoe/Sokolov), while others are more original (Richard, Zula).
I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel a weird vibe from most Stephenson books, something akin to orientalism. I get the sense that a very specific place and time in the world are good and wholesome for Stephenson, and the rest is more or less barbaric.
Polostan (Neal Stephenson)
Historical-ish drama set in early 20th century US and the Soviet Union. Not a bad book, but didn’t grip me as much as Stephenson’s other books. The story takes some implausible directions at times. The overall anti-Soviet tone of the book is expected and even mild for an American author, but is oversold at times. A more nuanced take would feel fresher and more original, especially in these times, but then again I believe Stephenson started this one many years ago.