Pete's Log: May Reading
Entry #2316, (Books, Writing, n such)(posted when I was 44 years old.)
- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
A year or two ago, I read The Bedlam Stacks, which is apparently the second novel set in this universe. Since I enjoyed it, I figured I should read the first novel. There's no real story or character overlap, so reading them out of order was fine.
It's hard to describe too much of the plot without giving things away, but the premise of The Watchmaker was fun, and initially the characters were all quite likable. In the second half of the book they started becoming confusingly hostile towards each other, which was a bummer. I also found the dialog confusing at times—it was just written in a way that made it easy for me to lose track of which character was saying which sentences. Might've needed one more round of editing.
In the end, I didn't enjoy it as much as The Bedlam Stacks, but I enjoyed it enough that I would probably read more books set in the same universe.
And it did give me a number of good laughs, such as with "it was a gamble to say anything; he had only just learned to dance and talk at the same time." - Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
This is a book about why we are losing our (individual and collective) ability to focus and what we can do about it. I wish I could make everyone read this book. It covers everything from sleep to algorithms designed to keep you stuck in an app to pollution and the lack of unstructured play kids get growing up these days. And it makes a convincing case that we're not going to solve these problems individually. So while there our some things we can do to help our own attention, we need to take on the larger forces at work.
I'll probably be digesting this one for a while. - Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet
I picked this book up at Barnes & Noble on a whim a few months ago and finally picked it up. It was a super quick read—I finished it in a day. It's well written and the characters are likable, especially the protagonist Gil. In the opening chapter he unscrews the light bulb from his back door light because a mourning dove has made a nest on top of it, and I was instantly very fond of him.
It's hard to say if the novel wasn't just a little too tidy, but I enjoyed it and it gave me a few good chuckles along the way too.