17 June 2019

Review: The Expanse: Drive by James S.A. Corey

Kindle eBook, n.pag.
Published 2017 (originally 2012)
Read March 2019
The Expanse: Drive
by James S.A. Corey

Drive is an ebook of a short story set in the world of The Expanse, covering the somewhat accidental and somewhat tragic creation of the Epstein drive, the highly efficient propulsion system that makes the quick intrasystem travel depicted in the series possible. It's a decent story, well told, alternating between Epstein's final flight and his life leading up to that point, but I doubt anyone would have taken much notice of it if it wasn't set in the world of a bestselling novel series. There's an episode of the tv show that covers the same content much more efficiently and about as effectively.
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14 June 2019

"Nights could be long and sweet": Never Say Never Again

Famously, due to complicated rights things, Thunderball was adapted into a film twice, the second time in 1983. At this point, Roger Moore had appeared in six Bond films, and would go on to appear in one more, but Never Say Never Again brought back Sean Connery for the first time since 1971.

I spent some time puzzling out how this movie fit into continuity. I mean, obviously continuity in Bond is always loose at best, and obviously that's even more true in this film, but I felt like it posited an alternate world where Connery never stopped being Bond, and so by 1983, he was a dinosaur in a world that was leaving him behind, to the extent that the 00 section is shut down for budgetary reasons by M; the film's Bond is clearly an experienced old hand who is out of step with how things are being done these days. This seems to imply to me that some of the old films had happened, so that Bond has an actual history--- but of course Thunderball itself could not have happened, because no one in this movie ever goes, "Hang on, haven't we seen this all before?"

Anyway, it's okay, better than I thought it would be in some parts, worse than Thunderball in others. Fitting in with what had happened in the Bond films over the past decade, it makes things bigger than in the original; instead of confining itself to the Bahamas, the film moves from there to France and then Ethiopia, which doesn't feel grafted on, and gives the movie a nice sense of scope. I liked the setting of the final battle, an ancient Muslim temple in an underwater oasis.


On the other hand, a lot of the changes are clearly mistakes. Changing the casino showdown between Bond and Largo from blackjack to a cheesy world domination computer game that sends electric shocks to the loser... I know it was the 1980s, but surely this played poorly even then? Nice is a great location for some chase scenes, but that it all ends with Fatima Blush (the replacement character for the awesome Fiona Vulpe in the earlier film) trying to get Bond to sign a declaration that she was the best sexual partner he ever had... lol wut? And though the setting of the final battle is great, the whole thing feels oddly anticlimactic, maybe just because of the nature of underwater fights.

On the whole, it's clear the screenwriters consistently looked at the script for the original film and asked, "How can we do this again, but bigger and more?" I like the increased scope, but a lot of the changes are just answers in search of a problem that doesn't exist; the original isn't a top-tier Bond film, but it was fine as is.

Other Notes:
  • The recasting of some key Bond roles is one of the most successful elements of the film. Pamela Salem is of course charming as Moneypenny; in her 30s at a point where Lois Maxwell was in her 50s, she's much more in line with the idea of the character, too. Bernie Casey is probably one of the better Felix Leiters, managing to demonstrate some actual competence and charisma. But the best bit of new casting was Alec McCowen as Q who might be-- is this sacrilege?-- funnier than Desmond Llewellyn.
  • On the other hand, Rowan Atkinson is in this movie for some reason. I guess why not?
  • Given that this movie was standalone and I don't think (am I wrong?) they expected to make a sequel, it seems odd to cast someone of Max von Sydow's caliber as Blofeld and then not have him receive any kind of comeuppance at the end. If Blofeld gets away at the end of a normal Bond movie, you know Bond will be back to track him down... but Bond retires at the end of this one!

Film Rankings (So Far):
  1. Casino Royale
  2. Dr. No
  3. From Russia with Love
  4. For Your Eyes Only 
  5. Thunderball
  6. Goldfinger 
  7. Moonraker
  8. Never Say Never Again
  9. A View to a Kill
  10. Live and Let Die 
  11. Diamonds Are Forever
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13 June 2019

Audio Catch-up!

At some point, I slipped on cross-posting my reviews of audio dramas over at Unreality SF to this blog, so here is a giant catch-up post, for anyone out there who cares(???).
Uh, that was more than I thought!
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    11 June 2019

    Review: On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

    Mass market paperback, 326 pages
    Published 2006 (originally 1963)
    Acquired April 2019
    Read May 2019
    On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

    This was really good. After the events of Thunderball (allowing for Bond's American vacation in The Spy Who Loved Me), Bond has been tracking down Blofeld, but to little avail, and he feels like he's being wasted on detective work. Driving back from a mission, he meets Tracy, a damaged woman who captivates him, and he ends up helping her feel wanted for the first time in a long while, and her father-- leader of the Corsican underworld-- tries to get him to settle down with her. Then, following a lead, Bond ends up infiltrating an alpine Swiss resort where it seems Blofeld might be hiding; Blofeld's given himself away by writing to the College of Arms to get himself a title.

    Fleming is firing on all cylinders here. Even though the book's two plots could feel only tenuously connected, they interact much more organically than the way books like Goldfinger or Thunderball open. Tracy is a convincing love interest for Bond; one can imagine that he would settle down with her because they clearly love each other for who they are, damage and all, rather than wanting each other to change.

    The parts with Bond infiltrating Blofeld's clinic are good; Fleming's focus on pedantic detail serves him well when writing about heraldry, and when focusing on Bond as an infiltrator. I like how there's a countdown of sorts once the Secret Service agent from Station Z is captured by SPECTRE, and  Bond must work quickly and efficiently but unobtrusively to find a way out of the situation. The way Blofeld's plot slowly reveals itself is well-handled, and the action sequences are excellent, some of the most tense in the series, as Bond must make two escapes down a mountain, one via skis, the other via bobsled. Fleming makes you feel the intensity and the struggle of these escapes. As always, things are difficult and grueling for the literary Bond. The only thing I don't like is that Blofeld's plan feels like a reduction of stakes after the previous book, less grand and less interesting, while it should be bigger and bolder.

    The very end is famous-- I knew what was coming even though I've never read the book or seen the film-- and it works, even if it's obvious. It really is devastating. Overall, this is probably the best Bond book, except for maybe the first one.

    Some other notes: Bond using the phrase "Sucks to you" was not a thing I expected, nor was him being familiar with the St. Trinian's films. There is a nice callback to Casino Royale at the beginning (we are reminded how much Bond cared for Vesper), which sets up the more emotionally vulnerable Bond of this novel. This was the first Bond novel to be written after the film series began, and Fleming explains why Bond has a Scottish accent on screen by explaining that Bond's father was a Scot, something previously not mentioned. He also debuts the (real) motto of the (real) Bond family, "The world is not enough," which would give its name to a Pierce Brosnan film. The weirdest reference to the films, though, is that Bond sees Ursula Andress, who played Honey Ryder in Dr. No, in Blofeld's clinic!

    Next Week: One last James Bond book, but not a novel-- I hit up some 007 comics!

    Book Rankings (So Far):
    1. Casino Royale
    2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    3. Dr No
    4. Thunderball
    5. Moonraker
    6. For Your Eyes Only
    7. From Russia with Love
    8. The Spy Who Loved Me
    9. Live and Let Die
    10. Goldfinger
    11. Diamonds are Forever
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    10 June 2019

    Review: The Expanse: Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey

    Trade paperback, 569 pages
    Published 2013
    Acquired October 2016
    Read December 2018
    Abaddon's Gate: Book Three of The Expanse
    by James S.A. Corey

    I continue to enjoy reading The Expanse. It might not have the literary complexity of, say, the Ancillary series, but Corey's prose is effectively straightforward, the story is interesting and moves in unexpected directions, the characters are (mostly) well drawn, and the themes are more complex than a book of this type arguably requires. Do you like book about interesting, mostly well-meaning, people doing things in space? Then this is the book for you, and it's definitely the book for me. Parts of Abaddon's Gate make it the strongest Expanse novel yet: a real sense of scale and the unknown, and the complexity of the characters of Rachel and Melba. I liked Rachel a lot; she's in an action series, but her power as person doesn't come from her combat abilities, but her ability to talk to others empathetically. It's very well done, and I hope she pops up again in future installments.

    Parts of Abaddon's Gate also make it the weakest Expanse novel yet: the crew of the Rocinante, aside from Holden, are sidelined for much of the book. That's not necessarily a fault of the book, but of my expectations; they're the main characters of the tv show, but they were never the main characters in the novels. It's interesting how the point-of-view characters rotate. Book one gave us Holden and Miller; book two Holden, Avasarala, Draper, and Meng; and now book three Holden, Bull, Rachel, and Melba. Holden is the constant but everyone else changes. But Naomi, Amos, and Alex are never among the point-of-view characters; it's not them who have the emotional arcs, so why would I see a lot of them? Still, I want to, and I hope book four uses them more than this book did. The other thing that bothered me is that Bull is interesting at first, but kind of fades in interest as the novel proceeds; he felt like he was selected as a POV character for plot reasons, not because the character himself was intrinsically interesting. (Also, isn't it odd that most of the "good" OPA characters are not native Belters? It feels very "white savior" in an allegorical sense.)

    So, altogether a quick read despite its length that kept me interested and also has me interested for the next book. Good twists and turns, and interesting challenges.
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    07 June 2019

    "His needs are more so he gives less": Thunderball

    I have a friend for whom this is the quintessential Bond film. That's not the case for me, but I can see it. Watching the films in novel sequence, not production sequence, very much jumbles things up, but you can definitely see how Goldfinger and this defined the film formula going forward: exotic locations, charismatic villains, multiple attractive women, high-stakes conclusions, technical wonderment. (I suppose Dr. No fits into this category too but that one is more gritty than the later ones.)

    In each of these areas, Thunderball succeeds admirably. The Bahamas are a great location for a Bond film, well shown off in a variety of ways: Bond fights sharks, Bond has a chase sequence in a local festival, Bond spends a lot of time underwater. Too much time. The underwater sequences start out nice and creepy (I liked the music when SPECTRE recovered the hijacked plane), but eventually become tedious. The festival chase sequence was good; James Bond films always do well by those kind of things. The shark fights are goofy, but if you don't want to watch James Bond indiscriminately kill creatures who haven't actually done something wrong, then why are you even here?

    I don't think you were supposed to notice there's a glass pane separating Bond from the shark. Oh well.

    Largo is a good villain, if not a great one. There's a good gambling scene between Bond and Largo (another Bond staple, I suppose). We also get some nice insight into SPECTRE, the organization appearing in its most prominent role thus far (aside from Diamonds Are Forever).

    There are four "Bond girls" here; one is Paula Caplan, an American CIA agent that helps Bond and Felix on the case. She doesn't contribute a whole lot (Bond doesn't even sleep with her), which I guess I should have taken as a sign that she was going to die to prove the situation is serious. She's pretty great, though; she commits suicide rather than let SPECTRE get anything out of her. Luciana Paluzzi is also pretty great as Fiona Vulpe, a SPECTRE henchwoman who rides a bad-ass motorcycle, and later seduces Bond. She gets the drop on him, making fun of his belief that he can woo woman to his side by sleeping with them.

    The star Bond girl is Domino, who is above average in these stakes. Definitely not one of the super-competent ones, but willing to give things a go to help Bond, and with a mind of her own. Of course, it wouldn't be James Bond without some messed-up sexual politics, and this movie does worse by consent than most. There's an early sequence where Bond is visiting a health clinic and SPECTRE tries to kill him with some of the equipment. Bond allows the physiotherapist to think his near-death experience is her fault, and then encourages her to sleep with him so that he won't tell her superiors about it. Ugh.

    One of Domino's only outfits that isn't black and white.

    The concluding fight is good, and would be great if it didn't contain the point by which you become tired of underwater stuff. It does get a little implausible how long Largo's yacht is zipping around at unhinged speeds, but it comes down to a man-on-man fight for a adequately plausible reason. I did like the array of gadgets here (even if Q plays little role); a number of them were apparently real, including the rocket jet pack(!) and the raft/balloon rescue system used to recover Bond and Domino at the film's end.

    This is one of Connery's better outings. He works best when he comes across as human (at one point he fumbles and drops his gun!), and when the quips are mixed with brutality; when the violence is sanitized, then they're just flip, but when he can really hurt people, you see how the quips keep everything he does at arm's length. The best scene of that is when Fiona Vulpe catches up with an injured Bond at a nightclub. To keep attention away, he is forced to dance with her while an assassin lines up a shot. He notices at the last minute and turns her into the bullet, killing her. That is brutal enough on its own, actually, but then he places her dead body on a chair, telling the other people at the table, "Mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead!" One can only imagine what happens later when they realize the person slumped over at their table is a corpse.

    Looks good no matter how goofy the goggles he wears.

    For me, it's not in the top tier (#1-3 below), it doesn't have that spark. But it does everything I want a Jame Bond film to do, and does it in an entertaining fashion, making it a good example of the mid tier (#4-6).

    Other Notes:
    • I used to say I liked Felix Leiter, but I actually think Felix is bleh more often than he's not. So maybe I don't. Rik Van Nutter isn't the worst Felix, but like most, he doesn't convince as being an American counterpart to Bond. (The hook-for-a-hand Pinkteron version from the novels is much better; maybe the film version of Felix will finally get better when he's eaten by a shark. Not sure how much longer we have until that happens.)
    • As good as a writer Fleming is, he clearly struggles to plot the Bond novels, and Thunderball was more weirdly plotted than most. It opens with a long sequence where M, on a health kick for his agents, sends Bond to a clinic. While there, Bond discovers a member of SPECTRE-- which turns out to be a total coincidence to the fact that he's soon embroiled in a SPECTRE plot. The film streamlines this. In the novel, SPECTRE bribes a pilot to help them get the plane with the nuclear warheads; in the film, they use the health clinic to replace the pilot with a lookalike. It is a coincidence Bond is staying there, but the fact that the pilot is brother to Domino is the whole reason Bond ends up going to the Bahamas to investigate her, so things tie up a little more neatly on screen than in prose.
    • At the beginning of the film, Operation Thunderball is of sufficient magnitude that M recalls every 00 agent in Europe for the briefing. There are nine chairs arrayed for this, though there could be other 00 agents on assignment outside Europe, one supposes. (In the novels, the designations go up to at least 0011, as per Moonraker.) Interestingly, the scene is shot so that you don't see most of their faces, though you can make out a couple in profile. (One, hilariously, looks bored to find out that the West is being blackmailed with nuclear destruction. Just another Tuesday in the 00 section, one supposes.) Lots of people on the Internet state one of them is a woman, but I haven't seen any evidence of this. We haven't seen any other 00 agents on film thus far, if I recall correctly, aside from 003's corpse in the pre-titles sequence of A View to a Kill.

    Film Rankings (So Far):
    1. Casino Royale
    2. Dr. No
    3. From Russia with Love
    4. For Your Eyes Only
    5. Thunderball
    6. Goldfinger
    7. Moonraker
    8. A View to a Kill
    9. Live and Let Die 
    10. Diamonds Are Forever
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    06 June 2019

    The Scientist in Victorian Literature: Doctor Edred Fitzpiers, Surgeon (The Woodlanders, 1886-87)

    Trade paperback, 360 pages
    Published 2009 (originally 1886-87)
    Acquired January 2010
    Previously read February 2010
    R    eread May 2019
    The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
    "There is a surgeon lately come—and I have heard that he reads a great deal—I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night."
         "Oh yes—a doctor—I believe I was told of him...... It is a strange place for him to settle in."
         "It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology, and metaphysics, and all sorts of subjects." (56)
    This is where it all started for me, you know. Way back in 2010, as a second-year graduate student, I read this novel for the first time in a seminar on Darwin, Hardy, and Woolf. I was intrigued by its depiction of a scientist, and how that scientist's behavior outside of science seemed to be affected by his scientific training. I went seeking a source that could tell me more about this-- and I never found one. So now I am writing one, revising my dissertation project into an academic monograph. One of the sample chapters I want to send in with my proposal is the one that includes The Woodlanders, and I haven't read the book since I took that class almost ten years ago, and now I need to revise it. I am sure that that part of the book needs work, since I have (hopefully) advanced as a writer and scholar in the past ten years.

    What I had not remembered is how much Fitzpiers is an off-stage presence at the beginning of the novel. It initially seems like it might be about Marty South, daughter of a rural woodsman, but soon focuses on Grace Melbury, daughter of a timber-merchant, and whether she should marry Giles Winterbourne, another local woodsman, now that's she's been elevated by a middle-class education out of town. Fitzpiers is spoken of from p. 8 onwards, glimpsed on p. 60, but does not properly appear until p. 92, almost a third of the way through the novel. We hear a lot about him before he appears so, as in the above quotation. We're told he reads Spinoza (45), and that he has widespread interests (56), and that he has paid the Melburys' servant, Grammer Oliver, ten pounds so that he can have her brain after she dies-- he is intrigued because her head is the size of a man's (46). The locals both do and do not trust this highly educated doctor, whose like they don't normally see in a place like Little Hintock. Some think he studies black arts and sold his soul to the devil... but they kind of like that, because the worse the person, the better the doctor! (28) The other local doctor is so nice, he won't even give you foul-tasting medicine, so obviously it's not actually doing anything.

    But it turns out that a bad man is a bad doctor. Like other too-educated surgeons in rural communities (e.g., Thurnall in Two Years Ago, Lydgate in Middlemarch), he struggles to build much of a practice; he's certainly no Mr. Gibson from Wives and Daughters. When he suggests treating Marty's father, who is being driven mad by a tree, by chopping down the tree, Marty's dad dies. Worse than the outcome of the experiment is his highly casual reaction to the loss of a man's life, as he seizes the opportunity to ask Giles about a hot chick he saw the other day:
    Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and came; but uselessly. He [Mr. South] lingered through the day, and died that evening as the sun went down.
         "Damned if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor.
         Dismissing the subject he went downstairs. When going out of the house he turned suddenly to Giles and said, "Who was that young lady we looked at over the hedge the other day?"
         Giles shook his head, as if he did not remember. (94)
    Later, Fitzpiers gets some of Mr. South's brain, and it's while looking at a sample of it that Grace first starts to fall for him!

    Fitzpiers's case is more complicated than many of the ones I look at, though, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. Fitzpiers is a would-be scientist, but as I've said, his interests are diverse: he also studies philosophy, and French romances, and so on. This dilettantism is what's consistent across both his personal and intellectual lives. He wants to do experiments, but cannot follow them through to completion. He falls in love with Grace, but is interested in not only her. Does this mean Hardy thinks he would be a better person if he stuck to science? Then it would seem that science is not the culprit, not entirely, but I don't find this entirely satisfying. Which I guess is appropriate, because the end-- where Fitzpiers resolves to stick to Grace this time-- is not entirely satisfying either.
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    05 June 2019

    Review: The Hornblower Companion by C. S. Forester

    Trade paperback, 140 pages
    Published 1998 (originally 1964)
    Acquired June 2008
    Read March 2019
    The Hornblower Companion by C. S. Forester
    With Maps and Drawings by Samuel H. Bryant

    I finished off my Hornblower journey with this, an official "companion" to the series written by C. S. Forester himself. I was a little surprised, to be honest, to realize that the term "companion" book, which I primarily associate with big media franchises (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi Companion, Doctor Who: The Television Companion), goes back to the 1960s and to literature.

    The first half of the book is a series of maps, covering Hornblower's career in chronological order. Some are big picture, such as one of the entire western coast of Central America, chronicling the events of Beat to Quarters. Others zoom in on specific battles, just showing a few nautical miles. These were neat, but I ultimately flipped through them pretty quickly. Instead of reading them all at once after finishing the novels, I'd've been better off keeping them by my side while reading the novels, to better help me visualize what was going on. Oh well; if I ever read the series through a third time, I will do that.

    The second half is much more meaty, though, a lengthy personal essay by Forester about his history with the Hornblower character, about how he came to write one book, then three, then ten. Very rarely did he set out to do it, so you get a good glimpse into his creative process, how things bubble out of the subconscious and ultimately demand to be written. I tore through it very quickly because I enjoyed it so much. A nice way to tie up my (re)read of these books.
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    04 June 2019

    Review: The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming

    Mass market paperback, 198 pages
    Published 2006 (originally 1962)
    Acquired November 2018
    Read December 2018
    The Spy Who Loved Me
    by Ian Fleming with Vivienne Michel

    One wonders if, having perfected the James Bond plot in Thunderball, Fleming felt his only option for going on was to abandon it completely. The Spy Who Loved Me is told from the first-person perspective of a young Canadian woman who was largely raised in England and is now traveling the United States; it covers her entire life up until she meets Bond, which means he doesn't appear until the 58% mark, when he happens to stop at the motel where she's being menaced by a pair of gangsters.

    I like it but I don't love it. Like with his experiments in For Your Eyes Only, I think Fleming is surprisingly good at straight literary fiction, but this doesn't quite measure up to them. Fleming has an interesting objective here of exploring the tensions between a woman's sexual desires and the kind of sex both men and society expect of her (one gets quite a negative image of "sexual liberation"), and there's an effective undercurrent of minor tragedy to the whole thing. But other writers have certainly covered these areas with more insight than him, and the coda where the fatherly police chief tells Vivienne to get over Bond was a bit obnoxiously paternalistic.

    Still, one is never un-entertained (I can really only say that of one Bond novel so far), and the climax is Fleming doing his Fleming thing the best he can: a small-scale series of action scenes that are nonetheless intense for how real and difficult Fleming writes it. Killing is never easy, even when it's James Bond against two small-scale mobsters. I enjoyed reading it, but it will never be my favorite Bond novel.

    Next Week: Blofeld is back... in On Her Majesty's Secret Service!
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    03 June 2019

    Reading Roundup Wrapup: May 2019

    Pick of the month: Transformers vs. G.I. Joe: The Quintessential Collection by Tom Scioli & John Barber. This month I read many Hugo nominees, so in theory the best sf writing of 2018. But somehow the best book I read was this. Truly the most sublime comic book of all time! Why wasn't this a Hugo nominee when the series wrapped up?

    All books read:
    1. Transformers vs. G.I. Joe: The Quintessential Collection by Tom Scioli & John Barber
    2. Star Trek Omnibus, Volume 1 by Marv Wolfman, Denny O’Neill, Mike W. Barr, Tom DeFalco, Martin Pasko, Michael Fleisher, Alan Brennert, and J. M. DeMatteis
    3. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
    4. Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
    5. The Sixth World, Book One: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
    6. The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
    7. Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon
    8. The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
    9. The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
    10. Star Trek Archives, Volume 6: Best of Alternate Universes by Mike W. Barr
    11. Monstress, Volume Three: Haven by Marjorie Liu
    12. Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
    13. An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000 by Jo Walton
    14. The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars by Michael Dante DiMartino
    15. Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler
    16. Star Trek Archives, Volume 3: The Gary Seven Collection by Howard Weinstein with Michael Jan Friedman
    17. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming
    18. Star Trek: Movie Classics Omnibus by Marv Wolfman, Andy Schmidt, Mike W. Barr, and Peter David
    19. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

    Obviously reading for the Hugo Awards means I have to keep a pretty strict schedule and read a lot of books (ballots are due July 31), but now that the semester is over, I find I have so much reading time I'm reading all sorts of stuff. Seven of these were just for fun, outside of Hugo voting.

    All books acquired:
    1. Legion: Secret Origin by Paul Levitz
    2. Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Early Years by Paul Levitz
    3. Transformers: The Wreckers Saga by Nick Roche with James Roberts
    4. The Undefeated by Una McCormack
    5. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
    6. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
    7. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
    8. Doctor Who: Shakedown: The Monster Collection Edition by Terrance Dicks

     Books remaining on "to be read" list: 652 (up 1)
    Books remaining on "to review" list: 11 (down 11)

    I bought more books than normal this month, but counterbalanced it by reading a fair few off my list. I've been writing a book review every day since the semester ended, which has gone a long way to pushing down my review backlog.
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