MaddAddam (MaddAddam #3)

#1089
Title: MaddAddam (MaddAddam #3)
Author: Margaret Atwood
Year: 2013
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Pages: 416

The third and concluding volume of the trilogy beginning with Oryx and Crake.  Unfortunately, although each has its cleverness, Oryx and Crake was electrifying and though-provoking, while The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam are average works. Here, a formerly bad-ass female character become a soppy, mooning, and rather inadequate lovesick drudge. The charm is in the telling of stories to the Crakers, and the joke shared between author and reader about how the story of the bygone world and Crake and Snowman is mythologized. It's enough to read it for, but not enough to make this the sort of stellar novel Oryx and Crake was.

Around the World in 72 Days

#1087
Title: Around the World in 72 Days
Author: Nellie Bly
Year: 1890/2013
Publisher: Heraklion Press
Pages: 213

The original cover, not the Kindle one.

Having read a book about Bly's race around the world (Goodman's Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World), I thought I'd read the account by her. The two together tell a nicely rounded story of her trip, and have inspired me to download Bly's Ten  Days in a Mad-House as well.

It's fun for me as a female traveler to learn about Bly's luggage, interactions, and preoccupations, and as a travel blogger to see how she constructs her journalistic narrative and what she chooses to emphasize or include.

Alas, Babylon

#1086
Title: Alas, Babylon
Author: Pat Frank 
Year: 1959/2012
Publisher: J. B. Lippincott/Brilliance Audio
Pages: 323

Filling in my historical post-apocalyptic science fiction reading, I decided it was time for Alas, Babylon. "Alas" I agree with. Moralistic, priggish, male-centered, and conservative, it's like bad Heinlein without the warm yet crusty fellow who makes you care about the action. Recommended only for historical purposes; it has not aged well.

METAtropolis [The Dawn of Uncivilization] (METAtropolis #1)

#1085
Title: METAtropolis [The Dawn of Uncivilization] (METAtropolis #1)
Author:  John Scalzi, Karl Schroeder, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Tobias S. Buckell, Michael Hogan
Year: 2008/2010?
Publisher: Audible/Tor
Pages: 288

A collection of stories related by the underlying meta-questions of what makes a city a city and how its inhabitants see themselves in relation to it. Though the quality is a little uneven, it holds together well and the stories reflect each others' realities and preoccupations successfully.

A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean

#1084
Title: A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean
Authors: Melinda Blanchard and Robert Blanchard 
Year: 2000
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 295
Country: Anguilla (British overseas territory)

This is beach reading about starting a restaurant in Anguilla, with the travails and triumphs one might imagine are associated with such a venture. It's not deep or emotional, but matter of fact. 

It also provides a shocking contrast to looking around if one reads it in an impoverished Caribbean community, as I did. I wish the Blanchards all success, but it was a very weird thing to read about going to another island for kitchen supplies while watching children wearing nothing but ripped underwear eating beans with their fingers on a dirt street. I'd have been more comfortable with a memoir that more explicitly recognized the poverty around it. There was a start at this, but it remained superficial.

Snakes with Wings & Gold-digging Ants

#1083
Title: Snakes with Wings & Gold-digging Ants
Author: Herodotus
Editor: John M. Marincola 
Translator: Aubrey de Sélincourt
Year: ~400 BCE (excerpted)/2007
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 118

A bit of "travelogue" excerpted from Herodotus. I really like this Penguin Great Journeys series. I bought this and the James Cook excerpt at Daedalus, but might go ahead and pay retail for the rest of it. I deeply love careful descriptions and explanations of scientific and anthropological phenomena that don't make sense to the author. It abounds here.

Zendegi

#1082
Title: Zendegi
Author: Greg Egan
Year: 2010
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Pages: 278

I keep going back and forth on this novel. I liked the scope, I was invested in the characters, I enjoyed the action, and then felt let down by the ending--maybe. Wherever I land on this, there was some sabotage at the end that too tidily disposed of complications. Was the ending earned? Is it sufficiently literarily sufficient that no, what one of the protagonists tried to do couldn't be done? If so, so what? If so, what's compelling about telling this story? In some ways it's like a study that fails to disprove the null hypothesis. This may be useful but it's not, ultimately, exciting to read.