first tier list.. first time since I was a kid reading this much. most as an adult were around 20 books a year. I am really proud and happy 🖤

Great reading year so far!!

Very sad and melancholic story about freedom and morality set in rainy Seattle. If you like sitting in the rain and feeling sorry for yourself this is for you. Fire up the Elliot Smith for this one.

It’s not just melancholic and full of ennui though. It’s rainy and miserable and it’s about pool hall junkies ultimately getting up to no good and being, well criminals. But there’s moments of good, honest philosophical insight.

These characters are gridiron tough. At moments they seemingly get everything they want and can feel trapped. Other moments they are in prison and feel more content and free than they ever did on the outside. Is their ‘imprisonment’ even their own fault really? And if you get freedom, what do you even do with it if you have no purpose ?

I think you need to be in a particular mood for this one - think dreary, sad, woe is me, violent, contemplative, and lonely. If that’s what you’re into, this will hit the spot.

"Circe" is another book that has a habit of ending up in everyone's S tier so I knew I needed to read it for myself. Now I have. Every sentence is a work of art. Some passages landed so hard I needed to stop and recover before I could keep reading. It is utterly spellbinding. The scenes with young Telegonus were a particularly poingant depiction of the joys and miseries of parenthood.

Much of the Greek Cannon is retold here, yet it is framed and iterated upon in a way that is completely novel: the life and times of the immortal she-witch Circe. It is a woman's story, told by a woman, and written by a female author. If any of those things make you lose interest then I challenge you to overcome your rectal-cranial inversion because it's keeping you from a legendary book.

Although it was written in 2012, it really does speak to the industrialists of present-day America (erm, Rockefeller ain't got squat on ol' Zuckerberg, am I right?).

All kidding aside, I'll be honest: I only enjoyed the first 77% of this book because those were the bits that focused on SAM THE BANANA MAN (not SAMA, though, again, today's technogarchs are hard to ignore, no?). I enjoyed learning about his immigrant past and how he carved out a niche in the banana biz when there really was none before him.

What I sort of didn't understand, or enjoy, was the author's use of the first person and how he (again, here, read, the author) became a sort of character-narrator on someone he'd never met nor been related to.

Just odd. Still a great book, but, yea, odd.

Anyways...

More thoughts here --> https://katepapenberg.substack.com/p/book-no-58-of-72-couldve-been-scripted?r=2seqlu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Read this now --> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13166586-the-fish-that-ate-the-whale

Reviews copied from my Goodreads.

Second Stage Lensmen by EE Doc Smith

2.5/5 (Caveat in that I bought this not realising it was book 5 of a series when I bought it, it was on those tables that shops have with a selection of books on so logically I assumed it was book 1)

The book follows a lensmen (a telepathic agent) called Kim Kinnison who is the universe's top gigachad who is perfect in everyway (seriously on the back of the book he's described as the number one man of his time) on his adventures with the Galactic Patrol to protect Civilisation (with a capital C) against various threats mainly Boskonia which is corrupt and evil in every way.

The writing is quite dated but for me it was sort of entertaining. At one point Kinnison ends up on a planet where women rule and men are subhumans who only existing for breeding purposes. And he immediately just starts with the insults and berating them. If you've ever played the game Alan Wake its like the bit where the FBI agent shows up and starts with the insults and names within 5 seconds.

The reasons for my low rating are as follows:

The main character was way too perfect. He had no flaws whatsoever so nothing was a threat.

My main issue was the story was just disjointed. The plot on the back of the book about infiltrating the enemy society and rising to the top to give the orders that would destroy them from within (the reason I bought the book) is the final act and Kinnison faces no real challenge in doing this. Most of the book is just dicking about.

The Prophet of Lamath by Robert Don Hughes

3/5 Weak characters and basic plot saved by an interesting world. Overall it was fun though.

It's easier to describe the world first. It's a fantasy world with only humans that has been divided into 3 kingdoms, a theocratic northern kingdom, a definitely not Scottish clans kingdom in the west, and a fairly standard medieval kingdom in the south. The only easily accessible route between the 3 kingdoms has been taken over by a two headed dragon who refuses to let armies through and only allows traders through if they offer a heavy tribute in people to eat. So slavery has come back, the kingdoms are in constant states of low level warfare for slaves/prisoners to sacrifice but can't outright fight each other, and trade is dominated by a handful of highly influential merchant houses who can afford the tribute. The political machinations here are some of the more interesting parts of the book.

The plot itself is a fairly basic adventure. As a trade caravan heads through the dragon's pass an enslaved entertainer named Pelman (who has a different personality and skills depending on which region he is in: entertainer, sorcerer, prophet) and a princess (the southern king's heir) kidnapped for political reasons escape and go on the run. During the escape Pelman, currently in entertainer form, uses his skills to give the two headed dragon an existential identity crisis by making it learn that the two heads are different beings with their own minds. The books follows firstly Pelman and the princess on the run and the attempts to capture them. And the wider story of the impact of the dragon's identity crisis on the world.

Pelman's story with the princess is quite boring. The dragon and the politics are way more interesting. When there are large battle sections they are written pretty well.

Next up on the fiction is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K Dick. I’ve just watched Blade Runner 2049 for the first time so it seems appropriate.