Lindsay Ellis Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Eighteen Books read out of my Twenty Books Yearly Goal

Good Morning Friends! This year has been extremely unusual in that I have been consuming more books than I have likely ever consumed in a single year before. Previously I needed to do a disclaimer because the year I burned through ten Dresden Files books in rapid order might have completed. However, now that I have reached the point where I have finished eighteen books out of my original goal of twenty books for this year… I am absolutely certain that I’m treading undiscovered territory. The weird part about this is that I have always loved books, and will never turn down a chance at going to a used bookstore. However my entire life I have struggled with some general feelings of anxiety over how slow I actually read. Granted I’ve not proved this wrong time and time again this year, but I still feel like I do not read anywhere near as fast as my wife does. She is I think on book 38 of the year for reference.

Libby App Screenshot showing three library cards on my account

This rapid transformation has been due to a few different variables clicking into place. Firstly we “discovered” the Libby App, or in truth were painfully late to that party. This gives you easy access to all of the books and audiobooks available in your local library collection. In my State there are effectively three Library systems: The Tulsa City-County Library, the Metropolitan Library System covering the Oklahoma City area, and the OK Virtual Library which allows smaller rural libraries that can’t afford their own access to sign on to a collective system. Recently we got the third of these accounts and now in theory have access to the collections of all of the libraries in our state. This has been deeply beneficial because not all of these accounts are created equal and some systems have had books that others did not. Even more common is that the hold lines for a given book may be shorter out of one of the collections than they are out of our “home” TCCL collection. Granted we are now also paying $50 a year for our OK Virtual Library account and $75 per year for the Metro Library account… but we figure the money goes to supporting the public library system in general which is another win.

The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi

When last I updated you on my book journey, I was about a third of the way through The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. I have to say this is probably the best book I have read all year to this point, and it is very unlikely that another is going to dethrone it. It feels like the love of Kaiju seems to be one of the common GenX traits, and I grew up watching the original Toho Godzilla films broadcast each summer during “monster movie” weeks from my local “pre-Fox” UHF channel. Now I just desperately want the KPS to exist and for me to somehow end up as an IT Guy for it. This was precisely the sort of read that I needed following Red Seas Under Red Skies. The Locke Lamora novels are so dense with plot elements and I have never really understood the concept of a “light read” until this point, but I was desperately in need of it. I guess I should warn you that this is very much also a novel about the pandemic and how it changed society set against the pastiche of giant Monsters. There are just so damned many things I loved about this read, and I realistically burned through it in less than a week at my oftentimes sluggish before-sleep reading pace.

I only really know about this book series in the first place, because I have always loved Lindsay Ellis and her long-form video essays. While other YouTubers were securing book deals to talk about themselves… she pitched a handful of science fiction novels. Axiom’s End was excellent and I have described it many times as X-Files meets WikiLeaks meets E.T. but with a cast of adult characters. It is so rooted in the early 2000s internet nonsense that it was this weird delightful trip down memory lane, as well as setting up some of the more interesting extra-terrestrial interactions I had seen in a while. The problem with the first novel however is that Linsay is a researcher at heart, and the novel was so filled with random Apocrypha of the early 2000s, and random bits of information that take a while to click into place tightly.

The sequel is no different, including random screenshots at the head of some of the chapters of AOL chatroom-like interfaces with discussions related to the events of the novel. Thankfully coming off of the “light read” of KPS, I was ready for more nonsense detail and this book delivered. I’ve described this story as Enemy Mine meets Pretty In Pink meets the Iran-Contra scandal. Essentially we get to know so much more about the Amygdalan species, their cultures, and how widely different their personalities can be. There is a somewhat creepy relationship that bothered me a bit in this book featuring some sorta fucked up power dynamics, but if you can look past that the book is centered around a very imperfect human being trying to make the best of a sort of fucked up situation that they have been thrust into. I will absolutely read the third book which is set to come out later this year.

I have no clue who suggested this book to me, but it is essentially my first playthrough of Skyrim or at least feels a lot like that. In that very first playthrough, I was a Nord warrior that aligned himself with The Companions of Whiterun, and the whole dynamic of that group, feels deeply similar to the Bloodsworn from this novel. They are a band of warriors known throughout the land by their “Battle Fame” and one of the core characters is a former slave a “thrall” that just happened to find their way into the group. The novel shifts back and forth between a few perspective characters that weave in and out of the narrative and give us a view into different points in the plot.

I will say at the first… this novel maybe felt a little “Too Norse” for my tastes. I mean I have always loved all things Norse… but this was a lot and forces you to get used to a number of very specific terms for things. However about halfway through the novel my brain got used to it all and was able to spend less time trying to imbibe words, and more time focused on the story as it evolved. I am absolutely going to continue forward in this series, but I would throw it in the “heavy read” column and it was maybe a mistake rolling straight to this after Truth of the Divine. In truth, it was chosen in part because my hold came open and it was available. I think I am going to need some lighter fare for the next book.

So originally prior to divine into Truth of the Divine, I was originally planning on rolling into the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles series. I think I am probably going to pick back up that plan because the first novel in that series was fairly light. I could use a bit of formulaic fiction for the moment to sink into like a warm blanket. Unless something changes and one of my holds comes open, I am likely going to start on this one tonight. It has been interesting how quickly this whole “always reading a book” thing has become a habit. I’m kind of mad at myself for not doing this sooner, but really… it is the easy access to books that have made the key difference. Then there is also that subtle pressure of knowing that once I start something… I have to finish it because I have a very limited amount of time that I can borrow the book. In past years I had a night table full of partially read novels, and being forced with a timetable helps me actually keep moving forward.

The only negative of this whole thing… is that I have all but stopped watching television or any of the big series. I have yet to start the new season of The Mandalorian for example, and I still need to sit down and finish The Bad Batch. It is like I have shifted all of my energies that used to rapidly consume series… to rabidly consuming books.

Good Morning Friends! I am on my fourth day this weekend and as a result, it has made me terribly late to sit down and write a blog post. When last I shared my progress in this year’s bookish journey, I had finished my tenth book. As of about 11 pm last night, I have now finished my thirteenth. I find myself in a position currently where none of my holds are available and I have nothing currently checked out of the library. So once I finish writing my morning post, I will begin the process of sifting around and trying to land on my next novel. I have a handful of ideas but ultimately it will be determined by what is actually available. I acquired the Iron Druid series from something other than Amazon or the Libby app, so I might start down that road next. I am thinking about starting an audiobook section of my Plex Server so that I can use that to keep track of my progress and shift between machines while listening to the same book.

The goal of this weekend was to acquire two shiny new library cards. That did not exactly work as expected, because thankfully I consulted one of my librarian friends first. It turns out that most of the smaller libraries are all signed on to the “OK Virtual Library” which was a way of allowing smaller communities with smaller budgets to be able to afford the trappings of full access to digital materials. However, this means that one Library card at the OK Virtual Library system is effectively the same as any other card, meaning that if I really want a third card to expand my access… I will need to make a trek down to the Oklahoma City Metro Library system. I’ve already noticed a difference in what I have access to through Libby however, so our trip to Bartlesville is definitely a net positive. I also got to hang out albeit briefly with my friend who is a Librarian there which was also extremely good.

When last I shared my journey through books, I mentioned that I was about to start Heroic Hearts. This is a collection of short stories from various authors, but the primary reason I was interested is it includes another tale that takes place after the events of Battle Ground involving Major General Toot-Toot Minimus and Lacuna… and to a much much much smaller extent Harry Dresden and Will the Werewolf. The story itself was fun, but I stuck around and consumed a number of the other tales including one set in the Iron Druid Chronicles focused around the dog Oberron and his point of view. Probably my favorite of the stories was The Dark Ship by Anne Bishop… which means I need to do some searches to find out what else that author has written. I think this is why I have always liked these anthologies of short stories because it gives you a view into the world of a lot of authors in a short condensed manner. I have to admit from the short focusing on Oberron I am thinking the Iron Druid Chronicles might be a little too “captain planet” for my tastes, but I am still willing to give it a shot since it was suggested by a good friend.

Next up I dove into Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis. This has been on my list of books to read for a long while because I am a big fan of Lindsay’s long-form YouTube video essays, and wish that was a thing she was still doing. I remember listening to some podcast discussion centered around the creation of this book and how one of the things about being a popular YouTuber is that book deals appear out of the woodwork, and how she waited for the right one that would more or less give her free reign. What we get in Axiom’s End is a nostalgic trip through that particular brand of internet weirdness that was the late 2000s, more specifically 2007. Effectively this novel is Dubya-era nonsense blended with Wikileaks scandals, a bit of the X-Files, and the movie E.T. centered around a fully adult cast rather than a group of kids.

It takes a bit to really get engaged in the setting because it starts throwing out what sounds like important vocabulary without really explaining what any of it means. It reminds me of reading Dune for the first time and having to interpret a lot of things through context clues, the key difference being there was a thick glossary at the back of that novel… which is lacking here. I like the central character of Cora Sabino and the journey she goes through during the course of the pages. It is a bit of a weird romp, but well worth your time sticking around until it properly grabs you. There are a few unanswered questions that you sort of have to roll with because I still have no fucking clue why the first events of the novel actually took place. There is a logical sequence that never really resolves that you sort of have to hand wave away, but the rest of the novel resolves neatly.

Most recently I finished up Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher… who is the son of Jim Butcher the author of the Dresden Files series. While digging around to catch up on the Dresden series I stumbled upon the existence of this novel which immediately placed it on my radar. My friend the aforementioned Librarian said that they were reading the novel, and funnily enough, my hold kept them from extending their own old so I technically finished it first. At its core… Dead Man’s Hand is the most generically competent urban fantasy novel you have ever read. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it feels like a setting you have been to before with highly regulated magic users and a not-quite-ministry-of-magic governing them and their actions. I guess one of the things that do make it more interesting is this is a post-unmasking society where “usuals” and “unorthodox” have learned to live together in a somewhat unsteady peace.

One of the cardinal sins of this novel is that it has some truly awful character names like the primary protagonist of Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby. At face value, it is a slightly awkward first novel from an author that at times feels like a caricature of his father’s writing style. That is probably unfair however because if I did not go into this expecting at least some similarities due to my extreme familiarity with the other’s body of work… I would likely judge it more positively. The novel did manage to make me care about the characters and make me interested in hearing more about this world. The second book in the Unorthodox Chronicles series has already been announced and will be called Long Past Dues releasing this October. I am interested enough in GG Grimsby, Huntsman Mayflower, and Wudge to definitely throw that on the list of must-reads. If you like magical detective stories, and more specifically like the buddy cop dynamic of a completely green rookie and grizzled grumpy veteran, then this is probably worth a read for you as well.

More than likely I am going to be starting book one of the Iron Druid Chronicles at some point today. The series begins with a book called Hounded, which I am guessing will dive into the bond that the main character has with the hound Oberron that I met in the short story discussed earlier in this post. I liked Oberron quite a bit, so if nothing else I think I can limp through a novel just based on that alone. My friend mentioned that it felt a lot like Dresden Files and even though the story I read was from the point of view of the dog, I can absolutely see some similarities. It still floors me that I am thirteen books into this journey with no real signs of slowing down. I know at some point I will probably stall out at least for a bit as I will want to play some narrative games this year, namely the new Jedi Survivor game coming out in April. Tomorrow I will likely share my progress in Guild Wars 2 that I made over the weekend.

Hopefully, you have a great week and as always feel free to drop me any suggestions for novels I should explore. I will say that I am not terribly interested in anything with a more romantic focus. That isn’t really my jam, as I tend to skip through romance scenes in novels because I find them exceedingly awkward most of the time. I might have to dive into a few at some point because I happen to be friends with several romance authors, but I am largely putting that off for now lest I get bogged down.