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О книгах

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Call for the Dead, John Le Carre

Finished listening to Call for the Dead. This is the first Le Carre novel, and for a first one, it’s written pretty well. It was obviously influenced by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg couple.
Listening to it after “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” is interesting, because you can see how Mundt was retrofitted to be a double agent later on. There’s very little wiggle room for that in the original novel.
Also interesting that Dieter, Smiley’s pupil that switched to work for East Germany after the war, is confirmed dead by the end of the novel. I’d thought author would leave it hanging.

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Casino Royale, Ian Fleming

The interesting part about that book is, it’s very much down-to-earth. I’m not sure if it’s the later books that made James Bond “jump the shark”, or if those were the movies. This isn’t even so much as a spy thriller, and more of a noir, to be honest.
Funny, the book was written when Beria was still alive.
One bit that is hard to get used to is the outright misogyny of Bond. And those that know me also know that I don’t use that term lightly.
I’ll just put here the quotes:

“Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.”

“These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men. And now for this to happen to him, just when the job had come off so beautifully. For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ransom like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch.”

Such a hero:

“He gazed for a moment into the mirror and wondered about Vesper’s morals. He wanted her cold and arrogant body. He wanted to see tears and desire in her remote blue eyes and to take the ropes of her black hair in his hands and bend her long body back under his.”

I find it interesting that through the book, James Bond doesn’t actually kill anyone.
The two Bulgarians blow themselves, thinking that a real bomb is the smoke bomb. Le Chifre and his henchmen are killed by Smersh/KGB. Vespa overdoses on sleeping pills, unable to bear the guild of being a Soviet spy.
Also, I thought that Bond’s obsession with food and drink is related to the fact that rationing in Britain ended only in ’54. The novel was written in ’53.

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Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Finished listening to Slaughterhouse Five. Kurt’s writing has all the appeal of an old man yelling at a cloud. It ends quite abruptly. Maybe author got tired of the constant repetition. I felt that he was trying to make a point about the stolen kettle, but forgot what it was.

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Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

This again has very little to do with science fiction. It’s a fictitious account of Battle of the Bulge aftermath and the Bombing of Dresden. Of course America is to blame for everything, and only if it would stop producing weapons all the wars in the world would go away.

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Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carre

Finished listening to Spy Who Came in from the Cold. And I can’t say that I enjoyed it much. Actually, I can’t say I enjoyed this book at all. It’s narrated very well, but that’s part of the problem. The hero is always grumpy, so you listen to a grumpy British actor for some 6 hours, or however long that book takes.
By the last third, the book turns into a procedural. Not sure how accurate proceeding in DDR are, and don’t care much about them. And the finale is just lazy. But that’s nothing new for John Le Carre.
Half of the book the hero tries to convince East German Intelligence Service that their head is a British mole. He fails, they requite him. Then it turns out he is a mole after all.
The girl gets shot trying to climb over the Berlin Wall, and the spy can’t bear that and apparently gets shot too. The end 🤷‍♂️

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Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carre

Started listening and quickly understood that it’s a radionovel, or radiodrama, or whatever it’s called when instead of a book simply read to you, you have different actors, but just the dialogues.
When I switched to a proper audio book I quickly noticed that those that worked on dramatising it, had quite a few liberties with the original book. They added themes, such as the circus theme. In the original book, the Circus is what’s MI6 headquarters is called. But in the drama, Alec is also making a joke about “traveling with a circus and doing a bear act” or something like that, which refers to him spying on the Russians in East Berlin. Or the starting scene, when I spy tries to cross a checkpoint between East and West Berlin. In the drama, there’s a CIA agent that watches it through binoculars and describes everything to Alec. In the book, the CIA agent went to sleep, and Alec even makes a joke about how soft they are.

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Consider Phlebas, Iain Banks

Finished listening to Consider Phlebas. On one hand, I was surprised this book was written in ’87. It seems to be 10 years ahead of its time at least.
But the ending left me feeling unsatisfied, in an almost Warhammer 40K manner. You see, in Warhammer 40K, different factions usually chase an ancient artifact. In case of “Consider Phlebas”, it’s an artifact alright, although not ancient, but brand new: unique kind of AI, that managed to teleport itself into a planet, something no other AI managed to pull previously.
There’s a lengthy sequence of firefight for that artifact between humans and a couple of 3 meter tall warlike “Idiran”. Some people get killed. The protagonist decides to keep one of the Idirans captive. It escapes, and kills or mortally injures everybody else, besides a single crew member, that manages to return the AI to her people.
But then, the AI doesn’t seem to play any role in the ensuing war. Just like in W40K, where every artifact gets destroyed “because Chaos”, or, in other words, because no singular even can have any effect on the overarching story.

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Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks

I’ve been listening to this book for quite a long time now, but still haven’t formed an opinion on it.
It is certainly well written, albeit a bit lengthy on details. It has some interesting ideas: the protagonist can change his appearance, albeit it takes him a few days to look like someone else. He also has implanted poisonous nails and spit.
The intergalactic conflict is between basically humans and a warrior race, but the hero is on the side of the gorillas, because he thinks that humans rely on their supercomputers too much.
But all in all, it’s a pirate story that would fit Stevenson, and I mean Robert Louis Stevenson. The hero is ejected during a battle between two battleships, picked up by a basically privateer crew, gets shipwrecked on a cannibal island. Escapes to follow the privateer captain to basically a poker game. Even him taking over captains identity is exposed so quickly its insignificant.

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Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin

Finished listening to Three Body Problem.
Von Neuman Human Formation Computer was one bit that I found funny. The idea that if you had infinitely organized civilization, like ants, you could build a “computer” from all of them.
Other than that, I found the story to be quite boring. The premise seems to be interesting: imagine Mayans discover that Spanish are headed their way, a civilization that is much more powerful than they are. What would they do? Some would resist, futilely. Others would welcome them, in hopes that a higher civilization would help fix the flaw of their civilization. And maybe some even would think that their civilization is not worth saving. Now replace Mayans with humans, and Spanish with that alien race and you got the second part of the book.
The story takes another turn to the weird with nine-dimensional-proton arc. Ironically, the idea of higher-dimensional being is not new. No other than Lovecraft was exploring it some hundred years ago. Maybe this is novel to someone, though.
Since the author is Chinese, all the main characters are Chinese as well. Besides the guy that wants aliens to destroy everyone. He’s an American, obviously.
Another nice bit is cutting a tanker with a nanowire. Because it ties up nicely with a joke made at the very beginning of the book.

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Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin

I’m hardly a sinophile, but having a sci-fi that isn’t US-focused is somewhat refreshing. It starts in ’67 in China during the Cultural Revolution, when 14 year old girls offed most of the professors, those that didn’t commit suicide themselves. So the Chinese military has to resort to employing undergrads in their projects.
Some fifty years later, and Chinese professors start to commit suicides en-masse again. This time because their worldview of fundamental physics collapses around them.
The chapters dedicated to a communist labor camp were interesting. The chapters of the Universe sending countdown to a particular scientist and the video game based on Warring Kingdoms were boring as hell.

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Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

Finished reading Mistborn.

Reminds me of Hunger Games a lot. It’s enjoyable as long as you read it, but once you stop, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Not much to add to my previous post, really. The most annoying part is how Vin simply states that “Eland is a good man” and she “loves him”. And the rebel leader makes some strategic decisions based on that. Yeah, sixteen year old girls in their first ever relationship are known to be such a good judge of character.
There are some good twists at the end:

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Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

I tried to figure out why the entire Vin/Elend Venture love story annoys me so much. And it feels like Shallan/Adolin Kholin all over again for me. Slightly damaged but oh just so slightly teenage girl falls in mutual love on first sight with a son of the most influential House. Vin, who suspects everyone, but Elend is immediately and immutably “a good person” for her.
I guess this type of Disney-level relationship works for certain people (they’re called teenagers). But not for me. Abercrombie gets it, but not Sanderson. Relationship is struggle, and without struggle there is no meaningful relationship. Relationship is compromises, and neither Vin/Shallan nor Elend/Adolin need to compromise on anything.
This frustrates me, because Sanderson does get so many things right. Like the idea of an empire stagnating. But not relationship.

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Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson

An earlier series from the author of Stormlight Archives.

Interesting that it was published same year as much weaker “Lies of Locke Lamora”, that has a very similar theme of thieving crews stealing from the rich.
The world is a mix of Industrial Britain and colonial America. There’s mist at night, and there’s ash falling from the sky during the day, and most of the population are slaves, working on plantations.
There are recognizable “Witcher” elements as well: as a good-hearted middle aged assassin trains a talented 16-years old girl. Also, they are constantly drinking potions to support their superhuman abilities.
Mistborn are superhumans that get their abilities from consuming (or “burning”) metals.
You can recognize Sanderson’s style – he’s very structural in his descriptions of different abilities: which metal gives which ability, and the different combinations of those. In Stormlight Archives this structure will turn into different types of “lashings” and “spren” and all that.
On one hand, the story seems to be quite a banal combination of “coming of age” from the 16-years old perspective (“Am I a kid, or am I already a woman?” and all that), and a “Count of Monte Cristo”-like story of long-lasting revenge over some powerful people on the other.
But Sanderson wouldn’t be Sanderson if there weren’t at least some interesting twists there. The entity the heroes seek their revenge on is called just Lord Ruler, and he has ruled the Empire for thousand years. Sanderson muses that a country that is controlled by the same person for too long becomes mismanaged, because the oversights of that single person have impacts on everyone. And there’s no way of replacing someone who’s immortal. Story of any dictator.

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Eye of the World, Robert Jordan

Finished Eye of the World.
A rather weak Lord of the Rings fanfic.
Pathways is basically Moria, with Black wind acting as the Balrog. Moraine even says “I hope he couldn’t pass”
And Lan is basically Aragorn, with him being a great fighter and king in exile.
The entire episode with Green Man and finally is rather nonsensical. Forsaken are introduced, we’re told they are immensely powerful, then both are killed, one of them almost by an accident. And the all powerful Dark One is killed with his entire army in a matter of few passages.

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Eye of the World, Robert Jordan

I’m too old for fantasy, I guess. All those names of people and places I cannot possibly spell, like “Nine-eve” or “Emmon’s Field“.
It feels like Jordan was paid by word. Can’t count the number of times he repeats the word “gleeman”. And all those passages about a song called Drunken Peddler was called Tinker in the Kitchen in this village. Why should I care?
It’s interesting that the author split Gandalf in two: there’s Moraine, who has the magic, and then there’s Tom the Gleeman, that had the talk.
The best part of the book is actually the fables. Legend about Emmon’s Field or about the wolves, or about this “King Arthur” that hated witches is far more engaging than anything else.
Matt quickly turns into a Gollum. Just with an encrusted dagger instead of a ring.
For fantasy, there’s a certain lack of imagination. They all drink tea, and smoke tobacco. Literally tobacco. And traveling people are just gypsies. And Children of the Light are just Inquisition.

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A man without a country, Kurt Vonnegut

This is a collection of essay’s from Kurt Vonnegut, that sound like an old man repeating stories he’s been telling for years.
Socialism – good. Fossil fuels – bad. Bush has a stupid family name, so he must be stupid.
Interesting that the “unelected president” narrative didn’t start with Trump. Vonnegut claims the same about Bush. Every president I don’t like is “unelected” and has “staged a coup”.
Funny how he complained about overpopulation, when he had 3 biological children. At least he adopted 4 more to balance that out.

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Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

Finished listening to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions” about a week ago.
As I mentioned, it is a non-fiction posing as a fiction, most of the fictionary stuff happening in the heads of different characters, either because they mentally ill, or write for a living.
The idea of Dwayne Hoover thinking about everyone else as “unfeeling machine” and only him having a free will is the basic concept of sociopathy. This is the definition of it, as far as I know.
The eponymous “Breakfast of Champions” is just a joke a waitress used to make when serving alcohol in the morning. Substance abuse is yet another novel’s theme.
It was an interesting read, because it’s a “zeitgeist”, a timecapsule of what social issues the author worries about exactly 50 years ago. And by far and large, those aren’t much different from today.

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Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

How much you enjoy this book depends on your patience and education. Kind of like late Terry Pratchett books.
It’s not a science fiction. No more than King’s “Hearts in Atlantis” is. And it’s packed with themes, although it glances by most of them. There’s a lot about environmentalism, and “America bad, communism good”, and homosexuality, and one of the characters is a transvestite, and mental illness caused by chemical imbalance, and all of our thinking being chemical reaction.
One of the characters is a failed scifi author, which allows for both unhealthy dose of self-irony and “story withing a story”. Most stories of that author dedicated to how America ruins ecology.

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“SNUFF”, Пелевин

Все без исключения революции в нашем уркистане кончаются кровью, говном и рабством. Из века в век меняется только пропорция. А свобода длится ровно столько, чтобы успеть собрать чемодан. Если есть куда ехать.

Ему безразличны были их чувства, потому что он перестал понимать, каким образом оркская зависть может трансформироваться в его счастье.

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“SNUFF”, Пелевин

Они показывали сами себе кино про других, потом делали вид, что это были новости, доводили себя до возбуждения и начинали этих других бомбить
Люди умны и проницательны. Но они с удовольствием поверят в самую гнусную ложь, если в результате им устроят хорошую жизнь. Это называется «общественный договор». Промывать мозги никому не надо — они у цивилизованного человека всегда чистые, как театральный унитаз
Внизу плохо было всем — и тем, кто любил, и тем, кого любили. Не говоря уже о том, что никто никого на самом деле не любил — орков просто притирало друг к другу бытом.
Любовь — это когда ты хочешь спасти того, кого любишь. Особенно когда это очень сложно сделать. И чем сложнее, тем сильнее любовь
Левей, в колее от колес самосвала,
Лежала большая как спутник свинья.
Спасло только то, что братки еще спали
На ватниках, сене и кучах белья
Юность в своем чистом виде встречается лишь как вспышка отраженного света в сердце того, кто утратил ее навсегда. А у тех, кто действительно юн, на уме лишь тягучие повседневные заботы, мелкая зависть, похоть да тщета
“Мужской модели только сорок два года, и съемка рядом с обнаженной женщиной могла нанести ему неизлечимую психическую травму…”
А пролезать через кровавые гениталии в возрасте ноль лет, это ему травму не нанесло?