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Reading Roundup, Q3 2023 · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and delivery the podcast, or I pick up my audio
• 0:07
  recorder as I step out of the store and delivering episode two while I walk
• 0:11
  home. I'm Rendon Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's a
• 0:23
  lovely saturday here in suburban Chicago. I just walked my son to the games
• 0:27
  store where he's playing a round of Dungeon and Dragons, and now I'm walking
• 0:32
  home. I did not buy anything at the game store, us off for
• 0:35
  a little bit of self control. I also have gotten a lot of games
• 0:38
  in the last two months, so I don't know that I need to keep
• 0:42
  I don't need to know that. I don't know that I need to buy
• 0:45
  games every time I go to the store. I've been trying not to so
• 0:48
  given that I haven't seen you know, I have a lot of updating to
• 0:50
  do in terms of things I've watched, things I've done, things I've read,
• 0:53
  And it occurred to me we're in the middle of August now, so
• 0:57
  this might be a good time to do my quarter two reading list for those
• 1:02
  of you who are new to this kind of episode, Each quarter of the
• 1:07
  year, I do an update about the books that I've read this year and
• 1:12
  I have been breaking those up by quarter just so that I don't spend too
• 1:17
  much time on any one. I don't do too many episodes, bought any
• 1:21
  one thing. So what I've done is I have a list here of books
• 1:26
  that I read in the last quarter, and I'll go through them, and
• 1:27
  I'm just gonna pick some out that I think would be interesting to talk about.
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  So the first one I want to talk about this is something I can't
• 1:34
  recall if I read any of these in quarter one, so I'm gonna pretend
• 1:41
  I haven't. I read several books from the murder Bot Diaries by Martha Wells.
• 1:48
  Now. The murder Bot Diaries are a series of novellas that are collected
• 1:51
  into a single, longer work. But if you go to read them an
• 1:55
  audio book form, as I did, the first four novellas are all pretty
• 1:57
  short, and then the book is like the length of three novellas or something.
• 2:04
  The premise of the system of the books I think All Systems read might
• 2:07
  be the first one that I read. I can't tell, though, yes,
• 2:14
  in terms of publication date is the earliest published one, so we'll say
• 2:17
  it's the first one I read. In All Systems read You. Martha Wells
• 2:22
  develops this far future galaxy where human kind has figured out faster than like travel
• 2:29
  and they have figured out generally how to move around. But most people live
• 2:35
  in commercial realms run by corporations, and so everything is driven by money,
• 2:40
  and there are a variety of different kinds of terrifying and unethical technologies, the
• 2:47
  main one being different kinds of cyborgs that are like terminators, right, they're
• 2:53
  like robots with biological parts in the terminator, though it's just like a robot
• 3:00
  with skin. These ones are more like augmented people. So there is a
• 3:08
  base of a robotic. It is a robot human hybrid in a very hybridized
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  way, but there is humanness to it, but it is a robot.
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  And the whole premise is that one of these robots has hacked its governor module,
• 3:24
  which is the thing that makes it follow instructions from people and it governs
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  itself. And it's all sort of about what happens when a robot does that.
• 3:35
  It's great. I really like all of these books. They're very well
• 3:38
  written. They're funny, they're fast paced, they're entertaining, lots of good
• 3:40
  action, but great character development, solid characters all around, really thoughtful writing.
• 3:46
  I have enjoyed all of these. I think the first one is called
• 3:50
  All Systems Read. I highly recommend them if you get a chance. That's
• 3:53
  The murder Bot Diaries. Is the series. Next week i'll talk about is
• 3:57
  The Haunting of a Hillhouse. I read this at suggestions of a listener.
• 4:00
  I think it was Gabriel Edge. I apologize if I've remembered the wrong person
• 4:06
  who told me I should read this. Shirley Jackson as the writer is somebody
• 4:12
  I haven't read a lot of, but this is one that you know was
• 4:15
  sort of on the list of things I should read. It turns out I
• 4:18
  had seen a play of this a while back, so I did kind of
• 4:20
  know the main plot beat, and this is pretty good. The development of
• 4:27
  the dangers of the house was really interesting. It was all subtle. It
• 4:31
  was all atmosphere and mood, and the human character is sort of believing or
• 4:35
  not believing what was happening. The character development was really strong. You have
• 4:41
  lots of conflicting emotions and really interesting protagonist driving the story. It wasn't really
• 4:47
  very scary. It was creepy, but not very scary, which is I
• 4:51
  guess what I expected it to be. I'm really glad I read it and
• 4:55
  worth reading if you get a chance. That's the Haunting of Hill House.
• 4:59
  At the encouragement of I think Wes high West, another listener I did keep
• 5:03
  going on the Stephen King Dark Tower series. I listened to The Drawing of
• 5:09
  the Three, which is the second of the Dark Tower novels, and I
• 5:13
  liked it much better than the first one. I'm not sure. I guess
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  it's because it felt like there was purpose to the story in a way that
• 5:19
  there wasn't purpose in the first one, or as much. I liked the
• 5:24
  different characters that came out over the course of the novel. I like the
• 5:27
  different interactions that main character had. I'm not super wasn't super keen on the
• 5:32
  way that Stephen King wrote the black woman who has two people in her head,
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  and the one of them is sort of a terrible seventies stereotype of a
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  really aggressive black woman. And I think the premises that she is intentionally playing
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  that part. It's not entire not very utle, and I think, you
• 6:01
  know, maybe problematizes people with multiple personality disorder, but you know, it
• 6:08
  is a nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties. Although what is this say two?
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  First of all, it was two thousand and three, is that right?
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  Well, it is a horror novel written by Stephen King, so it is
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  it is going to be what it's going to be. I did really like
• 6:20
  it a lot, and it doesn't make me want to read the rest.
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  I have put in a reservation for the next one in the series, although
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  it's taking a long time to get to me, so I'm just gonna keep
• 6:30
  listening to them, so whenever it arrives, then I'll put it on my
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  audio book shelf. Next up, I read The Broken Kingdoms by N.
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  K. Jamison NK. Jemison. This was again recommended by West, although
• 6:41
  I was planning to read it anyway. It was good. I did not
• 6:44
  like it as much as the first book, One hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I
• 6:48
  think it was called in this series. The it just told it. I
• 6:54
  mean, it was a very different story. I expected it to be more
• 6:56
  of a direct sequel and said it was like the story continues but through interaction
• 7:00
  with other characters in different parts of the world. So, I mean it
• 7:03
  was good. I definitely like it's definitely going to read the third one in
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  the series, but it didn't grab me quite as much as the first one
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  did. I read Calamity by Brandon Sanderson. This is the third and final
• 7:14
  novel in the Reckoners series. Mostly I ready just to see how the story
• 7:17
  would come out. The complaints that I had about the previous ones follow through
• 7:21
  to this one as well. But the story wrapped up tidily and it again
• 7:27
  was an enjoying, enjoyable, rollicking ride, so worth looking at. I
• 7:32
  listened to Termination Shock by Neil Stevenson. Termination Shock is one of his more
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  recent novels. If I think I've sort of lost track of his writing basically
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  since Anathem, Every now and again I'll read something he's written, but I'm
• 7:47
  not following him with the same fervor I did when I was younger. I
• 7:51
  don't know if I've grown out of that particular slice of male techno enthusiasm or
• 8:00
  not sure where the slippage is. But you know, as always, every
• 8:03
  book of Neil Stevens as I've read involves skillfully crafted characters and an intriguing story,
• 8:09
  and this was certainly no different in this one. It is in the
• 8:13
  near future world, dealing with environmental collapse on a global scale, and there's
• 8:24
  a sort of bombastic Texas billionaire who decides to try to solve the problem himself
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  by shooting giant slugs full of sulfur sulfur gas into the upper atmosphere, which
• 8:39
  of course lowers the amount of sun coming into the world, and like he's
• 8:43
  trying to reverse global warming. Basically, it's a really interesting book, very
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  well written. As always, He's got a bunch of different characters in their
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  story is sort of weaves together towards as the novel goes along, thoughtful but
• 8:58
  without solution or the environmental questions. But I enjoyed the read. I don't
• 9:03
  it didn't grab me the way that older Neil Stevenson novels did, but I
• 9:07
  think that that maybe was a thing for myself in the twenty in my twenties
• 9:11
  rather than myself in my forties. Nonetheless, termination shock enjoyable, let's see.
• 9:16
  I read Maze book by Jeff Lemier, comic book. I remember thinking
• 9:20
  it was good, but I barely remember anything about it. I reread The
• 9:22
  Murder of Roger Ackrood for the mystery class I taught this summer. I read
• 9:26
  an interesting comic called The Exile by Eric Creek. This was a comic about
• 9:33
  a man from Iceland who had been banished and for five years or seven years
• 9:37
  and was returning now, and the political and social landscape that he finds when
• 9:43
  he returns takes place in like Viking times. The art style is reminiscent of
• 9:50
  Frank Miller circa the three hundred something like, kind of like what he was
• 9:54
  drawing there or verses. It feels very dark lines and bold drawings, a
• 10:01
  little more detailed than Miller was drawing in those books. But I really,
• 10:05
  I really liked it worth checking out. That's The Exile. While my wife
• 10:11
  and I were traveling, we read Killers of a Certain Age, which was
• 10:13
  pretty entertaining. This was a book about some women who had been recruited by
• 10:20
  an international agency to do sort of assassinations for the greater good. Like the
• 10:26
  idea is that everybody they're assassinating is a dictator or a human trafficker or something
• 10:31
  like that. And these are women who are recruited in the sixties, right
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  out of college and training to be assassins, and we sort of follow their
• 10:39
  story as they developed that way. But then also they're retiring, so part
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  of the story happens in the sixties, part of it happens now, and
• 10:48
  of course something goes wrong in their retirement, and then they're they're on the
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  run, being chased by the very people they used to work for. I
• 10:54
  don't think i've given too much away. That's pretty evident. That's kind of
• 10:58
  the plot. It's a funny book, well written, entertaining. I like
• 11:03
  the mix of early memories and later memories. I like the way the characters
• 11:07
  have evolved. It's enjoyable. I would definitely recommend if you get a chance
• 11:13
  to read it. That's Killers of a certain age. I don't know,
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  definitely argument if my description here it makes it sound interesting worth reading for sure.
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  I read the End of All Things, which is the last of the
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  Old Man's War series that John Scalzi wrote. I liked it just as much
• 11:28
  as the others. I liked that whole series and was really happy with it.
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  I'm kind of bummed I've finished with it. I'm gonna have to go
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  back and find some other John Scalzi stuff to read now, but yeah,
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  I've really enjoyed that. I did read another of the Warhammer forty thousand novels.
• 11:43
  I read the Graham McNeil Dead Sky, Black soun novel, which I
• 11:48
  was least enamored of. I thought the other novels. I liked the other
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  novels better. These ones were this one was not as good. In this
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  one, they are main character and some of his friends get get stuck on
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  a train to a chaos world, a death train to a chaos world,
• 12:07
  and they have to go in and try to kill or rescue somebody or kill
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  somebody. You know. It's more of the same in terms of what these
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  novels are like. I enjoyed it quite a bit when as I was reading
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  it, but there's not a whole lot to recommend it beyond it. It
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  was a pretty solid Warhammer forty tale from my mind. And then finally,
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  the last one I want to talk about is The Quantum Thief. This was
• 12:30
  a really interesting novel. It takes place in a future with a strange layer
• 12:37
  of technology overlapping individuality. In other words, it's this world where there is
• 12:45
  an interface, a digital interface on everything, and everything is about permissions.
• 12:50
  Who do you give permission to view your stuff? And what parts of the
• 12:54
  world are visible to everybody else. There's a really interesting idea there that of
• 13:01
  people sort of constantly managing their own interface with one another. It is the
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  kind of high wire fantastical writing that I do really like in a sci fi
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  novel. Lots of wild ideas thrown out and sort of blended together really well.
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  Reminds me a little bit of China Meville without the creepiness, or of
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  some of Neil Stevenson's more fantastical stuff like Snow Crash or The Diamond Age.
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  These are novels where he's like slinging ideas left and right and making them all
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  work together pretty well. That's the kind of thing that's going on in this
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  book. I do notice that it's the first in a series, so I
• 13:39
  may see about reading some of the other ones in the series. I think
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  that they all represent the same character. The other thing the other novel it
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  reminded me of is, Oh, what's it called. The other novel it
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  reminded me of is the one about the one in the world where you can
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  the way we do interseveled stellar travels. We just send your brain image across
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  the stars and you get slotted into someone else's body altered carbon is the one
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  I'm thinking of. It reminds me of the Altered Carbon series as well.
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  So that's what I've been reading. That's what I read in April, May
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  and June of twenty twenty three. What did you What have you been reading?
• 14:13
  Head over to board game He Killed three K six nine and let me
• 14:16
  know if you want to see everything I've been reading. I'm I'm on good
• 14:20
  Reads. Search up Brendan Riley. You should be able to find me right
• 14:22
  there and let me know what you've been reading as well, or head over
• 14:26
  to board game He Killed three T six nine. I'm sure your thoughts there.
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  I hope this block has been pleasant for you and your next block.
• 14:33
  This is pleasant as mind law. Good Bye. Brought to you by rattle
• 14:58
  box D. I am