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walkitoutI read the sample for _Behind the Throne_ by K B Wagers. It’s okay? Space opera / political story based on Indian culture seems potentially cool, in the hands of a seemingly white author seems potentially fraught. If it had really grabbed me, I would probably have continued, but absent a friend who tells me, oh, no, really, it’s absolutely worth it, probably not.
I’ll go find another to try . . .
ETA: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. Who knows why I downloaded this sample! A big chunk of it is lists of the various people who presumably appear later in the book, and even some genealogy. Why even include it — you could look all of it up on wikipedia or whatever. Mantel tells the origin story of Thomas Cromwell. This is a novel, obviously, so she gets to decide which bits of the history to treat as true and which not. She lands pretty hard on the Walter Cromwell was a horribly violent man theory.
This is very much not the kind of book I would normally read except possibly for book group. It is engaging and well-written (duh — you know that, won the Man Booker prize in 2009). And I don’t see any obvious reason to continue, especially since this is apparently a trilogy and that level of commitment needs a lot more than it’s a really great book of the sort that I have absolutely no interest in.
next up!
UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration
Wow, this one really brings me back. I _think_ I got this sample when the boat was stuck in the canal. There was a bunch of loose talk in news coverage over many aspects of the situation, which provided hours of levity at a time when we really all needed it. I got pretty interested in the How Do You Settle Disputes Between … like, internationally, when the boat belongs to a company in one country and the people running the boat are in another company in another country and it gets lodged in a canal in yet another country impacting boats and businesses from all over the planet. Because disputes are going to happen! This book is about how that shit gets worked out, not always, but very often. The introduction is absolutely worth reading. The sample contains the introduction and lists and bios of contributors and authors and abbreviations used in the text and their meaning and lists of treaties and enabling legislation at the country level where that has happened and a variety of other things. Mostly tho just that introduction. I am probably not ever going to pay the $250 to buy the book or read it, because that’s an enormous time commitment not just to reading it, but just think of all the other shit I would have to look up to make sense of it. You never know where my obsessive research will take me, but today, it won’t be taking me through any more of this.
I’ll go find another to try . . .
ETA: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. Who knows why I downloaded this sample! A big chunk of it is lists of the various people who presumably appear later in the book, and even some genealogy. Why even include it — you could look all of it up on wikipedia or whatever. Mantel tells the origin story of Thomas Cromwell. This is a novel, obviously, so she gets to decide which bits of the history to treat as true and which not. She lands pretty hard on the Walter Cromwell was a horribly violent man theory.
This is very much not the kind of book I would normally read except possibly for book group. It is engaging and well-written (duh — you know that, won the Man Booker prize in 2009). And I don’t see any obvious reason to continue, especially since this is apparently a trilogy and that level of commitment needs a lot more than it’s a really great book of the sort that I have absolutely no interest in.
next up!
UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration
Wow, this one really brings me back. I _think_ I got this sample when the boat was stuck in the canal. There was a bunch of loose talk in news coverage over many aspects of the situation, which provided hours of levity at a time when we really all needed it. I got pretty interested in the How Do You Settle Disputes Between … like, internationally, when the boat belongs to a company in one country and the people running the boat are in another company in another country and it gets lodged in a canal in yet another country impacting boats and businesses from all over the planet. Because disputes are going to happen! This book is about how that shit gets worked out, not always, but very often. The introduction is absolutely worth reading. The sample contains the introduction and lists and bios of contributors and authors and abbreviations used in the text and their meaning and lists of treaties and enabling legislation at the country level where that has happened and a variety of other things. Mostly tho just that introduction. I am probably not ever going to pay the $250 to buy the book or read it, because that’s an enormous time commitment not just to reading it, but just think of all the other shit I would have to look up to make sense of it. You never know where my obsessive research will take me, but today, it won’t be taking me through any more of this.