The April 2022 Reading List

 

As I mentioned before, after two months of reading strictly time travel novels, I decided that for April, I'd head off in a different direction. I wanted to read non-time travel books by some of the writers who had made my time travel list. For the most part, I've stuck with that.

There are two exceptions, however.

After having read an article at CNN.com on a report of Harvard University's legacy of slavery since it's founding in 1636, I wanted to read the actual report. A link to the report as a pdf is below. The pdf is 134 pages. I'm counting that as a "book". That report led me to the Booker T. Washington "book" - also linked to below. Next month, I will follow up on this theme with something by W.E.B. Du Bois (to be determined later).

I've reviewed 6 of the books (not including the Washington or Harvard works) and links to those reviews are given below as well.

Declare                                         by Tim Powers
Fledgling                                      by Octavia Butler
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater     by Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds                  by H.G.Wells
The Massacre of Mankind            by Stephen Baxter
The Story of Slavery                      by Booker T. Washington
Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery
Her Fearful Symmetry                  by Audrey Niffenegger

Declare by Tim Powers

With the arrival of April, I decided to leave off my exploration of time travel novels and move on to something slightly different. I would look at the time travel novels and read other types of novels by some of the writers who had been on the time travel list.

I wanted to go on to others books written by the likes of Octavia Butler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Audrey Niffenegger ( to name just three). I had started my time travel adventure with The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers and thought it would be appropriate to begin April with another Tim Powers novel.

Big mistake.

Although I didn't hate The Anubis Gates , I didn't give it a very high rating, so I shouldn't have been surprised that this other book by Powers, Declare , wouldn't be a favorite either. It isn't that I hate Declare , it's just seems to drag on. It's not my cup of Vodka. The book has been described as "a supernatural spy novel" but it doesn't come off, in my view. The supernatural mumbo jumbo seems a bit pointless and the spy novel portion is ho hum.

As I write this, I've read 82% of the novel....it seems like I've been reading it forever, with no end in sight. I'm determined to finish the book, although I don't foresee my changing my opinion on the novel. 

The plot is non-linear, shifting back and forth in time from the 1940s to the 1960s. Sometimes, as with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five the non-lineal skipping works. However, I see it as adding nothing to this story.

One character, Kim Philby, is based on a real person. In the novel, Kim Philby stutters. I don't know if the real Philby stuttered, by I found his dialog in the novel to be off-putting. I'm hoping he really did stutter, otherwise having him do so in this novel would be especially lame.

The Anubis Gates

As I mentioned in my post covering my January 2022 reading list, the first book to be included in February's list would be Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates . Up until just a few days ago, I had never heard of Tim Powers; it was thanks to a post by a Facebook friend (whom I haven't actually met, face to face) who had just finished reading one of Powers' novels. There were four additional novels by Powers mentioned in the comment section, which I made note of.

Going to one of my favorite websites, I was able to download the five novels. Not knowing which novel to read first, I did a little research and learned that of those five novels, The Anubis Gates was the earliest written. The book's dealing with time travel was a point in it's favor as well.

However, I'm giving the novel a rating of 3 stars out of a possible five.

Powers seems to have gone full kitchen sink with this novel. Not only is there time travel to the early 19th Century, with appearances by Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but sorcery and a bit of body-snatching are thrown in for good measure. There are far too many characters making their way through out the novel, and the story seems more complicated than it needs to be. After 3/4 of the way through the novel, I was hoping that the book would finally come to an end.

On the plus side, while reading the book, I was reminded of another time travel adventure that I had read several years ago. While searching for that sci-fi novel, I came upon a list of the 23 best time travel sci-fi books. Why the number 23 instead of say, 25 or 30? I've no clue. At any rate, I've downloaded those 23 books - and a few others as well - and I plan to read exclusively "time travel" novels for the next couple of months, much like I did last year with Agatha Christie novels. It's too early to give out my entire list, but I will say the next time travel novel is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.