[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

I have now started GNOMON, by Nick Harkaway

To call Gnomon a work of genius is not entirely a compliment. Nick Harkaway’s epic, unwieldy, unpredictable new novel is outwardly brainy and pridefully digressive, and the distance it projects from its reader feels excruciatingly deliberate. Harkaway (Tigerman) wears his deep, fabulous vocabulary on his sleeve, and he’s unafraid to ruminate on the seemingly irrelevant in great detail. The sheer intelligence of the book feels almost beside the point; it’s to be taken as something of a given.

If Gnomon is not exactly a departure from Harkaway’s previous work, it’s at least his rawest effort, a window into his writerly impulses and motivations — into what separates him from the pack. It’s why, at first glance, Gnomon nicely stands out as a dystopian novel that manages to approach the genre uniquely and push it forward. The book arrives stateside after a year in which 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale skyrocketed on best-seller lists and found popular adaptations in theater and television, respectively. More broadly, the genre has felt appropriately ubiquitous in a tumultuous and unsettling political era.

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Ooooh, I just read a good book review about Gnomon by Mark Harkaway, in The Guardian.

It looks like an good book to read and I hope to find it at Powell's.



LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ment-110011379

I finished GNOMON last night. It was loooooooong and a little confusing and got a little slow toward the end but i enjoyed it. I have read at least one of his other novels that i liked better, though

Now i am reading FORGED IN CRISIS (Nancy Koehn) for book club and FADING DUSK (Melissa Giorgio) for fun.

FORGED IN CRISIS:

This “engaging, unusually rewarding book…[which] will foster a new appreciation for effective leadership and prompt many readers to lament the lack of it in the world today” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, examines five masters of crisis: explorer Ernest Shackleton; Abraham Lincoln; abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.

FADING DUSK

In the gritty city of Dusk, seventeen-year-old Irina makes her living as the street magician Bantheir’s assistant. The job isn’t glamorous, but she loves the crowds, the shows, and most of all, the illusion of magic. But Irina’s world is shattered the night she is arrested and charged as Bantheir’s accomplice to murder—murder by magic.

Real magic, the kind that’s been forbidden since the old wars.

Irina finds the idea of flashy showman Bantheir using actual magic to kill someone laughable, but she’s the only one who sees how ridiculous the claim is. But how can she convince everyone Bantheir is innocent when they’ve already made up their minds?

i am reading that second one because the author is a friend of a friend. I like to support indies and that friend has good taste so i bought it.