chlorine jumps in for the last quarter

Hello everyone,

I'm Clémence from Paris, France. I've been on and off (but mostly off) a member of Club Read or the Category Challenge. Rencently I've started following some of the members' threads so I figured it would be nice to start a thread of my own.
I was glad to see here some people who I remember from when I was previously a member. :)

I read mostly fiction though I try to read 10 nonfiction books a year (I still have 2 to go). I read mostly contemporary fiction, and try to explore different countries of the world (I take part in a challenge on the French website babelio.com whose aim is to read one book by an author from each country in the world). I also read a lot of speculative fiction (science-fiction, fantasy and connected genres) and I really like how this genre explores ideas about society and human relationships.
I've started recently to read quite a lot of short stories in this field. I won't be able to review them all but I'll try to point out the ones I liked the most.

Here are two short reviews of books I recently finished:

What if? 2 by Randall Munroe

This is brilliant, as the first what if books.
Munroe answers absurd questions (some examples are "Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire surface of the earth?", or "What if all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops?") with at the same time great rigour and great humour.
Even if the question does not seem very interesting, he manages to make the answer interesting both by explaining some scientifical facts and by drawing very funny conclusions or extrapolations, perfectly complemented by his very expressive figure stick drawings.

The best science fiction of the year Volume 6 edited by Neil Clarke

I have previously read the anthologies of best science fiction short stories edited by Jonathan Strahan and really loved them. I was really sad that he was not able to continue the series. After some research the series edited by Neil Clarke seemed to be the next best thing for my tastes.

I thought the qualities of these short-stories was high overall. Although non was outstanding IMO, there are several I really liked and only one that bored me (I have to point out that I only read the stories that were not also included in the Strahan anthology for the same year so this may have slightly lowered my appreciation).
I like that stories from authors of different nationalites were selected, and that the topics were varied. I'll probably read the following books in this series.

The two stories I liked the most (Uma by Ken Liu and Elsewhere by James S. A. Corey) aren't the most ambitious regarding new ideas but were the most moving. Coincidentally they both explore the idea of remote controlling robots to be able to access places the charcters can't go to, but they still are very different from each other.

I also liked a lot The long Iapetan Night by Julie Nováková, who created a very stressful atmosphere about a space expedition on one of Saturn's mood, when things begin to go wrong for mysterious reasons.

Hi, Clémence! Nice to see you again!

Another fan of xkcd... I happen to be reading a French sf from 1925, Les Hommes frénétiques, does it ring any bells? So far so weird.

>4 LolaWalser: Hi there! :)

Les Hommes frénétiques does not ring _any_ bell but then I'm shamefully ignorant about French SF. How did you get by it?

Hi Clémence, welcome back! I’ve been interested in shirt stories too lately, so I’m taking note of Strahan and Neil Clarke. Unfortunately I have bought or downloaded way more collections than I have read ☺️

>6 FlorenceArt: Hi Florence! :)

As I read mostly ebooks I buy them just before reading them so I don't have a TBR problem for commercially sold books _but_ I download many short stories that are available online to my ebook reader so I have a lot of _those_ to read! Maybe I'll have to work on making a priority list. :p

Welcome back to Club Read, Clémence! I look forward to following along with your reading. What sorts of nonfiction do you like?

LibraryThing also has a Global Challenge, if you are interested. Although the original admin for it set the challenge up for five books from each country, people have adapted it to all sorts of things, including books and movies. Some people also break out the different subdivisions of certain countries. It's a fun group, too.

>8 labfs39: thanks! :)

I don't have set preferences concerning nonfiction. I can be interested in biographies of interesting people, scientific or psychological topics, society, or trying to understand how the world works (I'm currently reading a graphic book about the French economic policies and their impact on unemployment that seems to show that I'm not the only one who's not understanding the full scheme of cause and effects between taxes, loan rates, currency values, etc. and that is a bit worrying to me).

Thanks also for pointing out the Global Challenge group! Five books per country seem a bit daunting. I was quite happy to locate a book by an author from the Cook Islands a few days ago and I highly doubt I'll be able to find 5! (though I stll have a life expectancy of approximately 40 more years so there's time for new books to be written. ;)
I'll check the group out at least to see what people have been reading.

>9 chlorine: Ooh, another graphic books reader. I'll look forward to seeing what you read there as well. As for the Global Challenge, some people are just reading one book per country or one fiction and one nonfiction or some other combination. It's really just a place to keep a list of countries and books read. I get lots of good ideas from others on that thread when I get stuck for a country. Like the Cook Islands! I was excited to get a book each from Guinea Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe this year while doing the Africa Challenge.

>10 labfs39: Guinea Bissau and São Tomé and Principe do seem like countries for which I would need suggestions and I like the idea of having a place to keep stock of what I have read. :)

I was quite excited to have found a second had copy of a book by an author from the Cook Islands for my read around the world challenge, as there are very few such authors as far as I can tell, and their books are out of print.
I received the book today and it appears to be in dutch (which is not a language I know...). Oh well...

Ouch!

>13 FlorenceArt: Yes. And I checked the description again and I had clearly overlooked that the book is listed as being in German, which is incorrect but I'm still at fault for not paying attention so I won't try to return it.
On the plus side I had done my research badly before ordering it and it's available on kindle format for only 3€ so no bit loss for me and I'll be able to read it. :)

BTW I'm skimming over your thread but haven't commented yet because it makes little sense to comment before I've reached the end. Sorry to hear your year was not looking good in January, I hope thinks have somewhat improved.
You have done lots of interesting reading. And I smiled when you said that you associated the word "fuck" to American English because to me that word is so evocative of the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral. :)

Welcome back, Clémence!
>12 chlorine: >14 chlorine: Sorry, but this is funny :-D What's the title of the book? If it's available as an e-book in a language I know, I'd be interested...

>15 Dilara86: Hello! :) It was actually our talk on the SFF Kit that brought me back here so thank you for that. :)

It is funny indeed! :)
The book is Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka by Johnny Frisbie, and is available as a kindle ebook on amazon.fr. The search for this book has been made complicated by the fact that Johnny Frisbie is an alias for Florence Frisbee, and that Florence Frisbie is the daughter of Robert Dean Frisbie, who was an American writer who went to live in the Cook Islands and married there. He wrote a book called The book of Puka Puka whose title has some similarities with the one written by his daughter.

So I was feeling _really_ tired lately and I attributed it to stressful situations at work. Well the stressful situations may have played a role but most of all I was coming down with COVID.
I'm feeling alright, just headaches and fatigue. I have a job in which I can mostly work remotely but the official instructions are super vague and that is maddening. Basically they suggest to "avoid contact with fragile people", which doesn't tell me if I can take the tube to work or not.
I guess I'll stay put for this week.

>17 chlorine: That sounds safer, since practically nobody is wearing a mask these days. Hope you get better soon.

>17 chlorine: I currently have a bug of some sort as well. Because of the fatigue in particular, a prominent symptom in both of my previous covid infections, I took a test last night. It was negative, but the accuracy of the home tests is not failproof, so I still wonder. I hope you have a mild case and feel better soon.

>17 chlorine: Ugh, poor you. I hope you're feeling a bit better by the time you read this...

>18 FlorenceArt: >19 labfs39: >20 rachbxl:
Thanks for your thoughts! :)
I'm actually feeling much better. I can't say that I'm boiling with energy but I'm cured and the good suprise is that I did a test and it's almost negative: the bar can be seen but hardly, so it means I will be able to get back to work without endangering anybody next week.

The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough didn't quite work out for me.
This is a fantasy book taking place during the war in Vietnam. Kitty is a young American nurse and the first part, which could almost be a non fantasy novel, describes her work in the hospital, the patients, both American soldiers and friendly vietnamese (i.e., not vietcongs) patients, and her relationships with other people. I thought that first part well written and quite engaging.
The second part however seemed to me to be going every which way. The fantasy elements, which had been toned down almost to inexistence in the first part, suddenly took a huge part in a way that was hard to belive (if I can say that about fantasy elements), and the plot advanced with a succession of twists that felt artificial to me. I realised I didn't care much what happened to Kitty (though the last 10 pages were again engaging and well written).

Rating 6/10

I'm stealing Nickelini's "Why I read this now because I like it and I think it's perfect for Club Read)

Why I read this now: this was the book of the month for a discord group in which we read one novel which has won the Nebula or Hugo award each month. This is part of my larger challenge of reading all works (short-stories, novelettes, novellas and novels) which have won one of these awards.

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

This is the third and last book in the Interdependancy series.It's difficult to say much about the plot without spoiling previous books. The general context is a space empire in the far future in which different worlds are connected by the "Flux" which is a way of traveling faster than light. Most of the worlds are inhabitable and can be lived on only through the help of resources coming from other worlds, and the Flux is starting to collapse.
This third book was not as fun as the other two books, but it was still fun and I was glad to meet with the characters again, especially Kiva. I thought the book took maybe too long to start and was wrapped up too quickly, but it was still an enjoyable read, and the ending even got me steamy eyed (which often happens!)

Rating 6/10

Why I read this now: I came down with COVID this week and the other books I was reading were not holding my attention so I wanted something quick and fun, and this was exactly what I needed.

And with this book I completed my personal challenge of reading 50 books this year. It's getting hard for me to count books read because there were a few DNF, and also very short books that I do not want to count towards my challenge, and also this year I read _many_ short stories that are available online and I don't know how to count that.
I think next year I might try to aim for a given number of pages instead. We'll see. Anyway I'm not taking these challenges too seriously and want them to be fun and motivating.

Maybe I should give Scalzi another try. I read Old Man’s War years ago and the story was interesting, but I wasn’t crazy about his writing style.

>25 FlorenceArt: The writing style in The Interdependancy is similar to Old Man's War's so if you didn't like one I'm not sure you will like the other. The characters in the Interdependancy do less feel like clones of each others than in Old Man's War though. Me I just like the witty retorts of his characters, all his books I've read are full of it. :)

I've been reading several books concurrently these last few weeks and made slow progress on them all, and finally am at almost finishing point for all of them, so I may finish them all this week-end. Here comes the first review.

Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh

This is a collection of interrelated short stories about a character which is 68% autobiographical and 32% made up, according to the author. Gretchen is a deeply troubled person. Her sister has very serious mental health issues, her dad dies when she is still relatively young and she doesn't know how to mourn, she suffers abuse and develops self harming behaviour.
The stories are told out of order, so we learn about her life little by little, touch by touch, while many things are left barely hinted at. The stories do tend to go more forward than backward in time as the book progresses, though, so that we get an idea of how the character evolves through the years. Though the topic is very difficult, the main character does not seek to attract pity and on the countrary the book is told with some sort of detachment that can veer to dark humour.

I thought this was really well written and I felt deeply moved by Gretchen's character and rooted for her to be able to be well in the end. I can't believe this book is not more widely known.

Rating: 8/10

Why I read this now: A few years ago I read, quite by chance, So happy it hurts by this same author, and I really liked it. This had some common ingredients with Bridget Jones' Diary, with the main protagonist keeping a diary and having a messed up relationship with her boss, but think a much darker Bridget, with a serious drinking problem and a messed up life, while still managing to retain some humour.
Since then I really wanted to read other books by this author and this was the only other one at the time (apprently she has written other books since) and it was out of print. I was finally able to find a second hand copy recently (I can't understand why there isn't an ebook edition, given that's it's not an old book).

Basali! Stories by and about women in Lesotho

As far as I understand K. Limakatso Kendall was an American who got a scholarship to go and work at the National Lesotho University. During this time she organised a workshop to encourage participants to write in English, with a reflection on how "Lesothan English" should have its specificities. Some of the stories include several Sesotho (the language) words, with a glossary provided at the end.
This short books collect the very short stories written in this context.

The authors are mostly women and many stories are autobiographical or are true stories which were told to them (the stories by the few male authors belong in this last category). The book was published in 1995 and the authors were mostly telling stories about their youth, and the overall impression I had was that many of these stories took place during the 1960s or not very long after (Lesotho became an independant country in 1966).
This was an interesting read and it really was a window into Lesotho's life for me. Unfortunately some of the things described were so unknown to me that I was a bit lost sometimes (for instance I have no idea what a circumcision school for girls is; in the story it seemed to be a school for learning how to do domestic chores and no mutilation was mentioned).

Why I read this now: I participate to a challenge aiming at reading a book by authors from all countries around the world on babelio.com. There is a game aspect to this challenge that assigns random letters to challengers so that they can get a bonus if they read a book from a country beginning with that letter.
I was assigned the letter L. I have mostly read book from easy countries up till now and took the occasion to look for a book from a country with fewer authors. I was lucky to find this out of print book on ebay at a reasonable price.

>24 chlorine: Congratulations for completing your personal challenge.

>29 Trifolia: Thanks! :) This is not a very challenging challenge for me but it still feels good to complete it. :)

Caught up on your reading... I think the last book I read connected to Lesotho was Singing Away the Hunger : The Autobiography of an African Woman by Mpho Matsepo Nthunya I wrote the review in 2007! (I was reading a lot of African lit back then and wanted to read something from every African country)

Looking forward to stopping by occasionally.

Congrats on meeting your personal challenge and knocking off a new L country, one I have yet to do, so I'm noting both books by you and Lois/avaland.

>31 avaland: Thanks for stopping by! :) I ran into Singing away the hunger when I was looking for books from Lesotho, but unfortunately I was unable to find a copy.

>32 labfs39: I hope you'll be able to find a copy of one of these books!

Le choix du chômage (the choice of unemployment) by Damien Cuvillier and Benoît Collombat

This is a graphic documentary (I'd say a "graphic novel" but it's not fiction) about the history of the economic policies in France since the end of WWII up to current days. The authors did a phenomenal amount of work interviewing many people who played a role in these processes as well as review archives and documents. The claim of the authors is that at all points in history, the policies that have been set in place have been the opposite of what would have been needed to promote a high employment rate.

Unfortunately, at least for me, the output of all this work is not synthetized so we jump from interview to interview. There is not even a clear chronology as the time line goes quickly from WWII then slows down on Mitterrand's first term in the 1980s, then goes back to WWII and studies the construction of Europe. The book seems moreover to be addressed to people who are highly knowledgeable in economics, which is not my case, so many things flew completely over my head: sentences such as "Euro was too strong for the southern countries' economy, whereas the trade benefits of Germany increased" (roughly translated by me so I may have the terms wrong) are dropped as if they were self explaining while I would have needed much much more context and explanations to understand them.

What's frightening to me is that it seems to me from reading the interviews that the people doing the decisions do not understand completely the mechanics of economics either. It is at least clear that many decisions were made for ideological reasons rather than based upon a well understood cause and effects system.

I almost gave up on it once I realised I was not in the target audience but kept reading in hopes that some notions would stick in my mind, but I find that doubtful. I'm writing down one thing here in hopes it will help me remember at least that: the question of forbidding or allowing banks to do both commercial and investment operations (in French banques de dépôt et banques d'investissement).

Why I read this now: A few months ago I realised I'm vastly ignorant of how the world works as a whole, why some countries are rich and some aren't, why some countries can't seem to shake off corrupted governments, what role do the states of the "West" play in this, and many similar questions. So I wanted to become more literate in this topic that I don't even know how to define and involves parts economics and parts international relations, and when I asked around at work if people knew of books that could help one colleague lent me this one.

L'enfant Océan by Jean-Claude Mourlevat

This very short book tells the story of seven brothers on the run away from home, in France at of the 1990s. Their travel is told in very short chapters in which they and people they crossed paths with each tell a small bit of the story. There are magical realism elements and the boys, with three pairs of twins and one brother who is very small, is a reference to Hop-o'-My-Thumb (according to Wikipedia this is the English name of Le petit Poucet?!). The kids and the story are endearing.

Ce très court livre raconte l'histoire de sept frères qui s'enfuient de chez eux, en France à la fin des années 90. Leur périple est raconté en une succession de très courts chapitres où eux et les gens qu'ils ont croisés racontent chacun un petit bout de l'histoire. Il y a des éléments de réalisme magique, et ces gamins, qui sont formés de trois paires de jumeaux et d'un tout petit, en référence au petit poucet, sont attachants.

It struck me that this book, written in 1999, features both the franc currency, which disappeared in 2002, and 10 digit telephone numbers, which appeared at the end of 1996. These things have coexisted for such a short period of time...

Why I read this now: I picked this up some time ago in a little free library because Mourlevat is an author I like. I'm trying to reduce my TBR so I picked it up at random among my TBR fiction books.

>35 chlorine: Le petit Poucet is Tom Thumb where I'm from (north of England) but may well be known as Hop-o'-my-Thumb elsewhere. By the way, I like your comment about the very short period during which the franc and 10-digit phone numbers co-existed - such (I assume) incidental details which would actually allow for a really precise dating of the book. Interesting.

>35 chlorine: As others have said, Good to see you back.

Enjoyed your reviews, but really liked seeing this bilingual one, and also liked the sound of the book.

>36 rachbxl: Tom Thumb does seem more familiar to me indeed.
About figuring out dates I witnessed a much advanced example on reddit when people were trying to date an old map of the Paris tube/subway: people were noticing stations that were on the map that meant that the map had been made after a given date, and other stations or lines that were lacking which meant the map was at most another date. It was really impressive.

>37 SassyLassy: Thanks for stopping by! :)