Three for the Month (September 2019)

Steph P. Bianchini September 5, 2019 5 Comments

In these difficult (in the sense of super-busy) days at work, it is never an easy task to find time to read a new book (not related to the daily job, that is). So I’ve decided to pick, at the beginning of each month, three books I’m going to read no matter what. It’s a minimum objective, but one I commit to. It is also a good way to set priorities right. So, these are my chosen ones for September.

1. The Murderbot Diaries – Marta Wells

I have heard so much about this series of novellas (which just won a Hugo and a Nebula Award, by the way) that became imperative to give it a go. The first one of the series is All Systems Red. Blurb: “on a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.” For more about the author and the series, see this.

2. A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine

If you don’t know who Arkady Martine is, stop, and go immediately to read some of her short fiction available on the web: she writes beautifully and her stories are always gems. Her debut novel, space opera with historical flavour (at least for me), doesn’t disappoint. I have just started and I can’t literally put it down. “As A Memory Called Empire begins, Mahit, who for her entire life has feared, adored, disdained, and emulated the Teixcalaanli, must survive in their world as an outsider in every way. More than that, she must reckon with a malfunctioning imago, tenuous alliances, and strange and charismatic enemies.” (From Tor‘s review of this novel).

3. To Calais, in Ordinary Time -James Meek

Differently from the other two, this book is not about SF or even speculative fiction.

It is a fine and well-written historical fiction (see this excellent review) set in one of the most fascinating and together horrifying historical times: the years of the Black Death in Europe.

“Set in 1348, it’s the story of three young people from very different backgrounds – an aristocrat, a farmer turned mercenary, and a proctor – making their way across England to British-held Calais against the backdrop of the hundred years war and the fast-approaching plague.”

Praised by the Economist and endorsed even by Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall). What else do you need to give it a try?