Sunday Morning Book Thread - 1-12-2025 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (requires two Horadric cubes). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

This grotesque monstrosity is the Geisel Library at the University of California-San Diego. It was renamed the Geisel Library in 1995 to honor Audrey and Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. The top of the building features a carillon of chimes that sound out the hour throughout the day. The university even has a carillonneur to play live concerts.

CLASSICS RESOURCES

Moronette KT sent me a link to the Antigone website, which brands itself as "a new and open forum for Classics in the twenty-first century. It's a treasure trove of classic works in their original language. It's a great resource for scholars and anyone who is interested in broadening their knowledge of the ancient world by reading works from that era.

THE PROBLEM WITH PREQUELS

I'm no stranger to reading prequels. I have quite a few prequel novels and series in my personal library. Prequels in and of themselves are NOT bad (unless the writer is a terrible writer, of course). But I do think that prequels by their very nature have one key limitation that prevents them from outshining their source material.

We know how it ends. In other words, because the prequel is spawned from a previously written novel or series of novels, and it takes place before the events in that source series, we know that certain events MUST happen in a particular way in order to for that following series to happen. Characters MUST survive that are instrumental to the plot in the source series.

However, that doesn't mean an author can't have fun with a prequel, taking it in interesting directions as we see the characters in an earlier state of being. Maybe we get to see the character development of key characters in the source material so that we have a better understanding of their motivations. Or we get to see some of the tough challenges in the past that shaped their character when they are fully mature. We get to witness them work through key traumatic events in their backstory. This can even apply to the villain as well as the hero.

In the Malazan series, for instance, Esslemont shows us how Cotillion, the patron god of assassins, rises from a skilled killer to become the most feared assassin who ever lived. Kellanved, his companion in the prequels, demonstrates his insane audacity more than once, resulting in him becoming the god of manipulative bastardry (if that's such a thing).

One of the additional problems with prequels is that the author runs the risk of ret-conning a character by including details that don't quite match up with our first encounter with them in the source material. R. A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy does this a bit by establishing his main character Drizzt Do'Urden as being quite young (for an elf) when he meets up with the dwarf Bruenor Battlehammer. However, in The Crystal Shard, which introduces Drizzt for the first time, Drizzt states that he's a couple centuries old by that time. It's a minor blip, but it does affect the way Drizzt behaves in the first novel compared to his actions in the prequels. On the plus side, Salvatore was able to really develop dark elven society and culture for subsequent novels.

Which prequels have YOU enjoyed or found problematic?

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I expect to finish off The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey today. I really like this book, there is something about alien species with value systems orthogonal to ours (in general) that I find fascinating. Corey is a pen name for two guys, who also wrote The Expanse series, a good (but slow, as always) streamer series.

The most interesting part about this book is the exploration of collaboration with conquerors. Acquiesce and live to fight another day, or fight and die? What if the fate of our species rests on not fighting? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, but can you make that decision for all of humanity?

Posted by: Candidus at January 05, 2025 09:23 AM (DcZ8z)

Comment: A sad fact of life is that humanity conquers. If aliens aren't around, we're more than happy to conquer each other. History has demonstrated again and again and again that not all cultures and societies place an equal value on the lives of others. Some cultures and societies were so repugnant that wiping them out completely was a net benefit for mankind. Dealing with the eccentricities of truly alien cultures (i.e., those of extra-terrestrial origins) is a standard trope in science fiction. I, too, find that fascinating as two wildly divergent cultures seek to understand each other.

More Everest stuff, so I'll be brief. Shook by Jennifer Hull is about a 2014 expedition. They were doing acclimation, to get ready for the climb, when an earthquake hit base camp. About 200 climbers were stranded on camps 1 & 2, which had to be rescued by helicopter. The entire season was shut down and many Sherpas were killed at the mountain and in their homes. Well written and a good read. It was Dave Hahn's last trip to Everest.

Also finished Michael Groom's Sheer Will. He's an Australian climber with a long career. The book is about his climbing history (with an Everest summit without oxygen). He had to add a chapter about the 1996 climb, when he was a guide. It's pretty brief and limited to only what he personally experienced. I saw complaints about him on You Tube and wound up arguing with strangers about Jon Krakauer. I try not to do this but Krakauer made up some things when he wrote Into Thin Air. I have a couple more books to read on that climb, mostly from the IMAX team.

Posted by: Notsothoreau at January 05, 2025 09:33 AM (NQtI0)

Comment: Mountain climbing is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of preparation and skill to make that final ascent to the top. Although, if you look for pics of the summit of Mount Everest, you can see that there's a pretty steady line of people working their way up and down the summit. Almost like a trip to the local scenic view. I think mountain climbing is emblematic of the human spirit to conquer nature as well as each other. We climb those mountains because they are there! Now, who's up for a trip to Mars to climb Olympus Mons?

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Paths to Ascendancy Book 4 - Path of the High Mage by Ian C. Esslemont

This takes place a couple decades after Book 3. By this time the Malazans have expanded out from their single island and have conquered most of the continent of Quan Tali. Now they turn their sights on the Falar archipelago, which consists of several islands linked by their worship of the sea god Mael. To defend themselves against the Malazans, they unleash a terrifying force that can wipe out entire cities. Meanwhile, the Malazans have to deal with the awakening of the Mountain that Moves, an ancient device that allowed the precursor race of saurian K'Chain Che'Malle to rule the world in the distant past.

There are a lot of crazy storylines in this one novel, so it can be a bit difficult to keep track of what's going on at any given time. Several different groups (Malazans, Crimson Guard, a crazed Jaghut tyrant, and so forth) are all vying to rule the seas of Falar and while some factions will align with each other, they don't all get along at all. The Crimson Guard will go on to become one of the Malazans' chief foes in the coming decades as the Malazans continue to expand their empire.

Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont

This is the first book in a open-ended series of Malazan novels by Ian C. Esslemont. This is a fairly small story, keeping the action confined primarily to Malaz City, where the Malazan Empire began. It's been almost 100 years since the founding of the Empire. Kellanved, the Emperor, and his associate Dancer have been missing for quite some time. Their Imperial Regent, Surly, makes a play for the throne on an ominous night, as the Shadow Moon rises, bringing with it ill omens and portents for the future. The Deadhouse is awakening and one of its inhabitants seeks his freedom from confinement. It's up to a battle-scarred veteran and a plucky street kid to resolve the issues that plague the city on this dark night. Staying alive is their biggest challenge as terror stalks the streets.

Destination: Void by Frank Herbert

This is a prequel of sorts to The Jesus Incident, though Herbert wrote this several years before the latter novel. Humanity is reaching for the stars by sending out a colony ship to Tau Ceti. The colonists (clones) are kept in stasis while a skeleton crew maintains ships operations. However, the Organic Mental Cores that control the ship have gone insane, killing half the crew. Now the remaining crew must figure out a way to keep themselves and their cargo alive or the entire future of humanity may be over before it begins.

Their plan involves jury rigging an artificial consciousness using the resources and materials they have on board, since they are billions of miles from home. Oh, and because this book was written in the 1960s, that means using ANALOG computers...

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 1-5-2025 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 200 quatloos.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

| Access Comments