What Am I Reading Wednesday - January 11

For as long as I can remember, I've made it a point to finish any book I've started reading. But you know what? A new year brings new habits, and I will try to no longer be in thrall to the sunken costs fallacy and commitment to slogging through things that aren't working for me.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Sandworm – Andy Greenberg
This solid, well written book was a pleasure to read. Greenberg excels at explaining to non-technical readers the complex details of major recent cyberattacks without dumbing things down, and his ability to distill decades—and in the case of Russian and Ukrainian bilateral relations, centuries—of history involving important events in dozens of countries and scores of key individuals into a brief yet readable summaries is also top notch. He stumbles in his insistence that the US should do “more” in response to hacking that affects other countries—from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US doing more to stop something beyond its borders “before it happens to us here” has rarely worked out well for anyone (a fact even he finally acknowledges at the book's conclusion). But that’s a small quibble with this otherwise fascinating and informative book. I really enjoyed this one.


What I Did Not Finish

Sky In The Deep – Adrienne Young
Bonded female warriors fighting in a Viking-influenced fantasy world should be right up my alley. But then the main character lost track of her bonded warrior companion mid-battle because of how strangely attractive she found one of the random enemy dudes. A few pages later her “eyes popped out of her head onto her father across the battlefield”, one of many such unfortunate descriptions. A bit after that she headed into battle beneath a black sky devoid of stars, only to look up at “the sky full of glittering stars” two paragraphs later. Fifty-two pages in, I began to have the sneaking suspicion that the focus was not going to be “Viking lady warriors” so much as “feisty lady warrior is torn about falling in love with handsome man who is also the sworn enemy of her people, oh no” a suspicion confirmed by a glance at the back cover copy. Into the Little Free Library it goes.


What I Am Currently Reading

The Women Could Fly – Megan Giddings
I'm about a chapter in and just getting a sense of the worldbuilding.

Paladin’s Grace – T. Kingfisher
Boy does this get repetitive starting at the 20 percent mark. At the 60 percent mark the narrative finally begins to remember the interesting stuff (Murders? Oh yeah, we did mention murders) but having lost a lot of steam during the pages in between, I put this one down for most of the week.


What I’m Reading Next

I acquired no new books this week; in fact, I sent many on to new homes.

これで以上です。