Tag: audiobooks

Review: The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

Some time ago I came upon someone asking what would be a good introduction to the Arthurian cycle and the matter of Britain, and the replies mentioned that this book would be a good one that covered “most of it“.

Dear Reader, if you have been here me for a while you’ll know I am deeply lazy and love “most of it” works, so this piqued my interest.

I am glad it did cause this book was very good, and also extremely odd, but in a good way. Mild spoilers ahead.

The book was actually multiple shorter novels published separately and then bound together in a single volume, and while there is some unity, they read quite differently.

What’s in the books

First, let me mention this: did you see the 1960s “The Sword in the Stone” animated movie from Disney? The one where they turn into squirrels and flirt with other squirrels? The one with the magic battle where they turn into animals and such?

Well, that’s the first book in this saga. Almost all of the movie is from the book. This isn’t Disney making a crab jamaican, it’s 90% White’s imagination.

And the whole saga has all the same character the movie does! It has a ton of anachronisms, Merlyn is a time traveling savant with a bad memory, badgers and urchins (hedgehogs) discuss political systems, Guenevere and Lancelot argue as an old couple (I loved the fact that Lancelot and Arthur call her “Jenny“), the fearsome Questing Beast has to be nursed back into health after falling in love with two knights in a costume (a scene worthy of Laurel & Hardy!). And there is so much more beyond the comedy.

The second book contains the most harrowing unicorn hunt I have ever read (SPOILER!): the children of the Orkney clan (who will end up as the knights Gareth, Agravain, Gaheris, Gawain) saw their Mom going with various man looking for a unicorn in the forest, so the good children decide to hunt one to make her happy.

Except, they end up murdering it. And then decide to carry the corpse to their mother. But they are children and can’t obviously lift a horse, so they decide to hack at its neck to detach the head and then have to drag the poor thing until the castle, crying and commiserating themselves and the creature, finally having to prop the ruined thing on a chair. And their mother does not notice it at all. Until she does, and has the kids beaten.

Look, this single bit may be one of the best bit of literature I have read in my life. I will never forget it. I literally can see the kids doing this in my mind for how beautiful a rendering it was.

Book three is instead a proper cavalry book! With the quest for the grail, and the Lance/Jenny love story. And even here, White is brilliant, even tho he does not make it epic, it’s still great, and as he says “That (Thomas Malory‘s) way of telling the story can only be done once“.

And then we get Mordred’s betrayal and everything else, and we get to the last book, where once again Arthur joins up with his old teacher Merlyn, the badger, the urchin, the snake. And he has more adventures turning into birds, and debating the nature of humankind.

What’s actually in the book

The whole saga might be about Arthur’s (or Merlyn’s) effort to bring might under control, to see whether our species can be better than brutes. That is what Camelot is about! That’s why the round table exists!

The original books were published between 1938 and 1940, with the background of the rise of war and totalitarianism (Merlyn is staunchly individualistic and anarchic and never fails to criticize communism too, although he throws shade on democracy and capitalism too), and these topics come up again and again in the book, but particularly in the last book, written much later. But notice, they are always put in the context of the use of force, e.g. at one point Merlyn says

There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos.

The saga, which opens with hope and a young Arthur which learns from animals, ends up in the same way, except this time he no longer has his life in front of him to fix the world, and has to actually abandon it.

The book has a certain sadness to it, because despite all their efforts, Arthur can’t fix the world, Lance can’t help but betray his king, and Jenny can’t help but end up alone (to leave her lover free of the choice between her and God!). All this while Elaine, Gawaine and all the rest of the cast suffer and die.

And yet, it is a book of hope. The conclusion has this bit

For I am inclined to believe that my beloved Arthur of the future is sitting at this very moment among his learned friends, in the Combination Room of the College of Life, and that they are thinking away in there for all they are worth, about the best means to help our curious species: and I for one hope that some day, when not
only England but the World has need of them, and when it is ready to listen to reason, if it ever is, they will issue from their rath in joy and power: and then, perhaps, they will give us happiness in the world once more and chivalry, and the old mediaeval blessing of certain simple people—who tried, at any rate, in their own small way, to still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun.

(I will note en passant that, like maybe Arthur and many others, Attila’s son Csaba also lays in wait ready to come and help his people in time of need.)

Btw, this is an infinitely quoteable book. I am not aware of a good place for book quotes (wikiquotes sucks for this) beyond goodreads, so go read some there.

Conclusion

This was in no way the book I expected it to be. In almost every way, it was a better book than that. I enjoyed it as an audiobook from Naxos read by Jason Neville, which was a wonderful narrator in many, many morning walks.

So my judgement is clouded by his voice, and if you read the book in dead tree form it might be better, or worse.

And I missed a lot of details, because of that. Audiobooks are great but also terrible. I may re-read it in paper one day.

Vote 8/10: I hope I’ll have time to back to childish things when I’m older, like Arthur.

Review: Il sergente nella neve di Mario Rigoni Stern

Conoscevo il titolo di questo libro da sempre. È uno di quei libri del dopoguerra che hanno formato la classe degli adulti quando io ero bambino.

Ho sempre evitato di leggerlo perché, fondamentalmente, ho avuto un’overdose di racconti di guerra, di olocausto, di fascismo etc.. quanto ero bambino. Col senno di poi, meglio averlo avuto, visto come va il mondo di questi tempi.

La scorsa estate avendo finito la scorta di audiolibri che ascolto quando vado a camminare la mattina, ho provato a cercare qualcosa su MLOL – Medialibrary Online, il servizio meraviglioso che permette di accedere a tantissime biblioteche italiane.

Nella mia ho trovato questo libro in versione audio, e ho deciso di dargli una chance. Sono contentissimo di averlo fatto.

Tanti racconti della seconda guerra mondiale sono stati fatti dalla parte dei partigiani, dei deportati, degli alleati, ed è ovvio il perché.

Questo invece è un racconto fatto da un membro dell’esercito italiano durante la catastrofica campagna di Russia, e della marcia di ritirata.

È un libro delicato, quasi rarefatto. C’è tanta umanità dentro, senza la mitizzazione della guerra, ma anche senza dipingerla come un continuo dramma. Perché alla fine, la guerra è fatta da persone, e le persone non sono mai una cosa sola, quantomeno non per troppo tempo.

Ci ho messo tanto a scrivere questa recensione, e il caso ha voluto che nel frattempo leggessi Tapum, che ha una citazione proprio di Rigoni Stern.

Pare che Emilio Lussu, autore di Un anno sull’altopiano, fosse rimasto deluso dalla totale amarezza del film Uomini Contro, basato sul suo libro, e gli avesse detto che lui lo sapeva, che “in guerra qualche volta abbiamo anche cantato..”.

Era un’altra guerra, ma poco cambia.

Certo, leggendo il libro viene da chiedersi quanto abbia omesso l’autore, che si trova sempre “dalla parte dei buoni” quando si incontra con le popolazioni locali, o quando ha a che fare con altri soldati.

Suona un po’ il solito mito degli italiani brava gente, ma è un mito confortante.

Voto 8: uno dei libri che ho apprezzato di più nel 2025.

Micro Review: Money for Nothing by Thomas Levenson

I listened to this last summer, but it took me a long time to write something so here it is: the book talks about the first great financial crisis, the South Sea bubble.

The actual full title is “Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich” which is an appropriately verbose title to talk about the early 18th century.

The South Sea bubble is one of those things that often come up when talking of the issues of the financial system, together with tulip mania and John Law’s bankrupting of France, but I had never actually understood what happened there.

The book explains that, and it does it in a fairly enjoyable way, without being too preachy and showing how disastrous events came about following a lot of reasonable choices and only a modicum of dishonesty. It also explains how innovations from the era have become staples of our modern world (e.g. ideas on how to compute the value of financial investments).

Where the book fails, imo, is trying to connect the events with contemporary developments in science and mathematics. There are connection (Isaac Newton was Master of the Mint after all) but they seem kinda stretched.

Also, in the most important bits, I felt the explanation could have been better, I could not understand, at first, how the South Sea company could make any sense.

The South Sea company was funded as a way for the government to get rid of a bunch of previous debt obligations: the government allowed the creation of a company that could emit shares in exchange for obligations, and the government would grant the company the monopoly of the South Seas trade (notice the plural, and realize this meant slave trade).

The government would get simplified accounting as it now only owes money to the company (and at a lower rate), the company owners would make money, but why would an investor give their government-baked bonds to the company? Well, because they were forced to, but the book doesn’t really explain why they couldn’t be forced even without the company existing?

I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter, since people were eager to do the exchange as they had very little trust in the government, and because soon the share price was skyrocketing, and stonks only go up is not a modern invention.

Anyway, the book does a pretty good job of explaining the situation before, during, and after, and if you have a casual interest in finance or economics, I recommend this book.

Vote: 7+/10, recommended if you like finance, and seeing the world burn.

Micro Review: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

Another classic by Roger Zelazny, and another one I had in my reading list for years.

The book follows Conrad Nomikos, the titular immortal, as he wanders a future Earth which has become a shadow of her former self, with a tiny population and overrun with mutated and alien lifeforms.

Well, I say wander, but actually Conrad is accompanying some aliens tourists on a visit to Earth’s historic sight.

The book is brilliant for coming up with a novel approach to the post-apocaliptic distopia: failed Earth as a tourist destination§, and I loved the protagonist, who is at least a hundred years, but often speaks as if he’s been around for millennia. Conrad is witty, clever, and nasty in the right amount, e.g. he’s having the pyramids of Egypt torn down to basically spite the tourists.

But the story itself is kinda episodic, and while it has a satisfying ending, I didn’t feel the sense of “progression” that I enjoy in books. Also, some things just didn’t make much sense to me, perhaps I didn’t pay enough attention.

Still, the book was a joint winner (with Frank Herbert’s Dune) of the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel, so I think you should give it more than a chance.

Vote: 7-/10, I wish there were more stories of Conrad Nomikos

Micro Review: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

This book kept being mentioned to me for a decade or so, and I thought I should give it a go, as it falls into a category I think I enjoy, a sci-fi retelling of mythology or religion or classic stories.

The book takes on hinduism and buddhism, and describes a world where the Hindu gods (which are actually people) rule (unjustly) over a world where Buddhism, in the form of the protagonist Sam, is a revolutionary force (or, “accelerationist” as they are called in the book, who want technology for everyone not just the Gods).

Many of the characters and tropes of indic religions appear such as the reincarnation, karma, plenty of deities, rakshasas.. and we even have conflict with Christianity.

The book is written in what I can only describe as “non-epic”. It’s hard to explain, but it seems to be telling big stories with the least possible gravity.

Yet, I didn’t love it, and I found it a bit hard to follow, but it is a classic, and I’m glad I read it.

Vote: 6.5/10, would reread in my next incarnation.

Review: Schismatrix+ by Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling is, together with William Gibson, one of the godfathers of the Cyberpunk genre.

Oddly enough, while I love the aesthetic and the themes, I have not actually read many books in the genre, possibly because the ones I read (e.g. Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy) weren’t much to my liking (see my notes on The Peripheral).

So it’s not surprising that I had not read anything (or if I did, I forgot it) by Sterling, and I decided to give it a try.

Mild spoilers ahead.

The Shaper/Mechanist universe

Schismatrix+ is a book compose of a novel, Schismatrix, and a few short stories set in the same universe, a future where humankind has fractured (see, that’s where the schism in the title comes from) into sects, micro-countries, corporation-states etc, and the major split is between shapers, aka post-humans who believe in improving themselves through genetics, and mechanists, those who prefer cybernetics and a merge of homo sapiens and machine.

There’s more schisms, like in everything, and people drift between one and the other over time so the boundaries are less fluid than the universe would have you believe, but it’s an interesting setting (and not an uncommon one, tbh).

(Sidenote: the Italian translation of the title is “la matrice spezzata”, or “the broken matrix”, which is quite different from the original but it’s quite good)

The place where this happens is the solar system, cause post-humans have not yet achieved interstellar travel, but at some point alien races do appear, the first and chief of which is the investors, a race of space-faring economic-minded reptilians/insectoids.

I really like the concept of the investors, which are, in some sense, a more grounded version of Star Trek’s Ferengi. They are obsessed with wealth, not particularly bright nor threatening, but they are scary in the way that someone far more powerful than you can always be, even if they play by some legalistic and deal-oriented rules.

I also really enjoyed the fact that in this future world there’s a general societal collapse, but we still have patents. Truly a dystopia.

Is this cyberpunk?

I am not sure what cyberpunk is. I thought the core concepts are the fragmentation of society, a lot of computers, the death of traditional nations and rise of corporations. I didn’t expect aliens. By this point of view this is a lot less cyberpunk than, say, Neuromancer or Burning Chrome.

TVTropes says that “Schismatrix is to Neuromancer what Gormenghast is to The Lord of the Rings“, and I honestly have no idea what they mean.

I don’t know, drawing lines hardly ever work, let’s just say this is a book about post-humanism and human societies which got too complex for their own good.

Prigoginic what?

Ilya Prigogine was a Nobel prize winner chemist, who, among other things, studied complex systems.

Sterling heard of him and made up the “prigoginic levels of complexity”. This is akin to old science fiction where “the fourth dimension” was a parallel universe, i.e. it uses some of the vocabulary but fundamentally ignores the actual meaning.

Anyway, in this universe, systems will sometimes make a leap from a level of complexity to another. So, the primordial chaos of the pre-universe made a leap into space-time and matter; matter made a leap into primordial life; life beame intelligent and self-conscious, and here is where we, and the shaper/mechanist universe is.

But the beauty of this post-humanist universe is it’s constantly running, and on the verge of, the fifth prigoginic leap. Something which we cannot describe, since it’s beyond what we can even conceive of.

Here’s an interesting on prigogine and science fiction, written better than I ever could.

Fun trivia: Bruce Sterling in the intro says Prigogine read the stories and said they had nothing to do with what he said, and Sterling agrees.

The stories

Before I forget them completely, these are the specific details about each story.

Here are more spoilers.

Schismatrix

The original novel which got “expanded” in this book. It’s a sort of picaresque adventure following Abelard Lindsay through various adventures, changes of identities, meeting with friends and enemies and so on, across the whole solar system and a span of decades (centuries?). The novel reads lightly even when it touches difficult topics, and it was very enjoyable for me.

It ends in an interesting way, and I particularly enjoyed the irony built into imagining of the various quasi-states, such as the Mare Tranquilitatis People’s Circumlunar Zaibatsu or the Czarina-Kluster People’s Corporate Republic.

7/10

Swarm

Probably the most beautiful story, which has also been made into a very nice animation in Netflix’s Death Love & Robots anthology. It explores the common sci-fi theme of “social insects in space”, but it puts a beautiful spin on it, embracing the idea that the Swarm not only prospers without something analog to our intelligence, but explicitly chooses to avoid it: from its point intelligence is a trait that leads to species fizzling out in a few millennia.

10/10

Spider Rose

Another one used for Death Love & Robots, tho they changed it slightly. I’d argue the original version is better, but the animation is good too. Basically: lonely mechanist receives a pet.

6.5/10

Cicada Queen

We revisit (tho originally this was written before the main novel) the Cicada Kluster, where a mixed community has developed around an investor queen. A Shaper named Landau invents a new kind of jewel, and decides what to do with his new riches. We also get to know the lobsters, a kind of mechanist post-human which wraps themselves in an exoskeleton which allows them to live in the void of space, becoming more and more self absorbed and detached from the human race.

7/10, mostly because of the lobsters.

Sunken Gardens

The people of Terraform-Kluster have been terraforming Mars for a while, and there are regular tournaments/battle between factions of “vassal” tribes to show their skills.

7/10, tho I had to go through it twice to appreciate it

Twenty Evocations

Some experimental post-modernist writing; basically we see the life of a Shaper named Nikolai Leng through fragments of his life in the form of “evocations”: singulat titles like “ECLECTIC EPILECTIC” or “CHILD INVESTMENT” followed by a sentence or a couple paragraphs. Kind of like you could imagine seeing flashes of your life before dying. Surprisingly moving.

7/10.

Conclusion

I think this was well worth the read. I didn’t love everything about it, but I liked a lot of it. This was not the book I expected, but it’s good.

Vote: 7/10, the book is a classic for good reasons.

Review: Greatest Hits by Harlan Ellison

I did not know Harlan Ellison until some time ago. I had read some his work in anthologies or magazines, but I never really pay attention to names.

But then I noticed this collection of short stories, and I realized he’s the author of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, and thought I’d give it a chance.

Mostly, I’m convinced short stories are the format for speculative fiction.

Sure, I enjoyed the whole saga of Herbert’s Dune, or Asimov’s Foundation cycle. but I mostly like ideas, and a short story gives you that in a few pages instead of hundreds.

Anyway, this is an interesting collection; Ellison is an author of his time, and he perfectly embeds the New Wave style of science fiction (experimental writing, social critique, a penchant for shocking the reader). You may like this or not, but I think it’s worth reading it just to get yourself acquainted.

The Stories

I forgot to write this review soon after the book, so by this point I’ve already forgotten some of them… so these are some I do remember.

“Repent, Harlequin,” Said the Ticktockman (1966)

A classic tale of The Fool fighting against the establishment, the broken cog in the perfect machine, the rebel, the joker. I think this is written in an interesting way, but not particularly interesting plot-wise. Stephen King recycled the Ticktockman in his Dark Tower saga (book 3, “Wastelands”), and I think he did it mostly cause it’s just a cool name.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967)

One of the most famoys SF short stories, probably in the top 5 of most memorable ones (I’ll let you pick the others, but I have my choices, if you ask).

It’s harsh, and depressing, and everybody should read it.

The Deathbird

I think the author wanted to tell me something and I didn’t understand it. This one won a ton of awards, but for me it was “meh”.

Jeffty Is Five

Without too many spoilers, the story follows a kid who’s friend with Jeffty, and, well, Jeffty is always five years old. I cannot express how good this story is. It’s deeply moving and by far the better in the collection IMO, even tho the idea is so simple it is completely contained in the title. A masterpiece.

Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes

A great short “amazing stories” kind of tale, palate cleanser.

Mefisto in Onyx

This one also won some awards, also a fun “amazing stories” kind of tale. Follows a telepath who goes to visit a mean on death row, to actually confirm whether he’s guilty or not. Good story.

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

Look, the title is better than the story. It’s a deeply experimental composition with no linear narrative, and while I can agree it’s good literature, I’m not convinced it’s good SF. Wikipedia has the whole plot so you can go read it.

How Interesting: A Tiny Man

Another wonderful simple idea: a scientist creates a tiny man, which is initially considered a fun novelty, and then a target of hate. Very good story, very good writing.

Conclusion

I listened to this in audio form, and Harlan Ellison himself narrates most of it. Ellison was an odd person, and he reads the stories with so much emphasis as to almost be distracting. which in some ways compounds the effect of the stories, and in some others is just, well, annoying.

Still, he’s the author, so that’s how they should be read, perhaps.

I feel some of the stories have lost their power over time, and on the other side some may seem uncouth to modern readers, but I think anyone who claims to like SF should read them.

Also, again, the Jeffty story is wonderful and worth the price of the book by itself.

Vote: 7.5/10, Solid book, plenty of good stories, some iconic ones.

Micro Review: Fragile Things

I started listening to this audiobook around the time Vulture’s article about Neil Gaiman came out.

This book contains some of my favourite stories, not just by the author, but among all stories I’ve read and I remember, such as A Study in Emerald, which is probably my favorite fanfiction of both Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos.

But the behaviour described in the article is so fowl I cannot in good honesty recommend the experience of listening to the author’s voice reading his own words after knowing of the accusations.

I’m no prude, I’m no judge, I’ve got my own opinions and I’ll bite my tongue and keep them to myself.

But I can say this felt like a punch in the gut. The folks over at Fumettologica (in Italian, use some translation service) have a very nice article on why this is so upsetting. We thought Gaiman was one of the good ones, this feels like betrayal (and I am in no way trying to say the fans’ feelings are comparable to the victims’).

Anyways, I’d suggest if you want to experience the stories, maybe get the Dark Horse collection via Humble Bundle, or pick the book at a library.

He’s rich enough and won’t suffer from this either way, but it may make your soul feel a bit better.

Micro Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes

I was reminded of this book while reading the short story The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, by Neil Gaiman, which was reprinted in Trigger Warning.

I realized I’ve read very little of Ray Bradbury, the greatest sci-fi writer in history, and I thought I should fill this void a bit.

Given the crazy amount of stuff he wrote, I would have been troubled to choose. Likely, this one has the catchiest title.

In some ways, it was exactly the story I expected: Small Town America gets in touch with capital case Evil. A Carnival is involved, which seem to be a scary thing in US pop culture, like clowns. Or perhaps they started being scary with this story, it’s hard to tell.

The story has kids in it, so, to me, it felt like going home. How many stories I’ve enjoyed, of kids dealing with the supernatural in small american towns? From King’s “IT” to Netflix’s “Stranger Things”, I’ve visited this topos a hundred times.

And as usual, I enjoyed it. I didn’t find this book particularly original (could be a case of Once Original, Now Common), but it is certainly well written and entertaining, the characters are lively and the dialogs feel real. I also feel I missed some sub-text and meanings, so I welcome anyone who’d like to point me to some literary analysis of the work.

It did not leave me wanting for more tho, so I think it’ll be a while before I move on to other Bradbury works.

Vote: 6.5/10, good, just not as good as I expected.

Micro Review: Way Station

I don’t have proof, but I think the ’60s had the best sci-fi. Looking at the list of Hugo Award for best novel there’s not a book in the ’60s which isn’t absolutely great. But I have not read them all, so I decided to pick up the missing ones.

I think this one is free if you have an audible subscription, so if audiobooks are your thing give it a go.

Way Station by Clifford D. Simak is one I missed. The premise is quite original: Enoch Wallace is an American civil war veteran who ends up managing an interstellar traveling station in his house, apparently made immortal, and being more in touch with aliens who pass by than with his own world.

I won’t give spoilers, but the book seems to have a few ideas that may have deserved a better exposition, and some things seem just a bit forced. Enoch is a wonderful character, but there’s basically little else.

Still it’s a an original and optimistic piece from 80 years ago, and I enjoyed it.

Vote: 6.5/10, you can’t go wrong with the ’60s sci-fi