August's Reading

Here's this month's batch. Here is what Make Tea Not War read (no overlap this time).

Monthly score: 10, Year so far: 112.

Beyond the Reef, The Darkening Sea and For My Country's Freedom by Alexander Kent. Still going strong on the Bolitho novels, and the end is now in sight (although he just wrote a new one, apparently). Still good.

A Sheltered Life by Paul Chambers. A light but interesting history of giant tortoises. Not a good story for the tortoises but many of the people involved with them on the way were fascinating.

Sin City: The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller. Well written but totally grim comic. I can see why people like it, but personally I'll stick to things where I might have some sympathy for some of the characters. If you want to see bad things happen to bad people, you can't go wrong with this.

Point Blank by Ed Brubaker and Colin Wilson. Lead in to the Sleeper comics. Great stuff, although not quite as good as Sleeper. Nicely reminiscent of the Lee Marvin trippy action film.

Proof of Concept by Larry Young. A selection of trials for possible graphic novels by the author of Astronauts In Trouble. Interesting. Several of them look like they'd be as good as the astronauts stories, too.

Losers: Trifecta by Andy Diggle. Part three of the story carries on the main plot and also reveals a lot of the team's history. Good stuff, can't wait for part four.

To Rule The Waves by Arthur Herman. A history of how the British Royal Navy shaped the course of world events. Interesting, but has two flaws. Firstly, I think he gets into too much detail about individual events. Secondly, I think there's a lot of overstating the influence of the Royal Navy on world events (presumably because he's looking for that in particular). Neither flaw should prevent you from reading it, it's still a fine history.

Black Jade by David Zindell. Finally the third of the Ea stories is published, and it is good. Initially I did not like Zindell's fantasy as much as the SF Neverness books, but the characters have grown on me a lot. And it's basically about the same issues. The only problem with this is that it takes him so long to write each volume, I expect it will be two or three years before I find out what happens next.