Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

 Two Americans writing a novel about 19th century England.  So much Victorian slang that you'd need Websters and Wikipedia on quick dial.  It is like they purposely chose all the obscure words that are not used for one and a half century now.  When you look up the words they use in Websters, almost always there would be a note next to it of "obsolete", "archaic" and "dated".  Of course, they want you to feel authentic in their invented world, but it makes for extremely tedious and burdensome reading.  Definitely not a "light reading".

And what's up with naming every single street in downtown London? I really don't want to know which street Mallory or Oliphant turned into, crossed to, made a turn onto.  Who cares? It doesn't make it authentic - I can open Google maps and look them up, but why? It is just unnecessary detail that doesn't add to the story or experience at all. I've been to London many times, and never paid attention to any of the street names.

The parts with Sybil Gerrard are the best parts of the book, and I bet Gibson wrote them.  The parts with Timothy Oliphant are the worst parts of the book and I bet Sterling wrote them.  They exchanged floppy disks between themselves, writing from Vancouver and Austin. 

This is the "original" Steampunk novel, although the authors never intended it so.  There is lots of "engines" and "ordinateurs", basically early computers run on steam according to the ideas of Charles Babbage.  In the real world Babbage never constructed his machine.  In this alternate world he did, and made England superpower who intervened in the American Civil war and kept the North and the South (and Texas) from uniting, so North America is in a perpetual state of warfare, with thousands American refugees streaming into Europe.

There is lots of brass and wooden handles, and spinning cogs and wheels, however at the end of the day, the book is more of a novelty than real literature.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami

 Murakami is my favorite writer and he doesn't disappoint here too! Although there is no magical realism in this book, it is still perfectly written and even the most mundane moments like making tea are made interesting.  It starts with Tsukuru trying to find out why his four best friends cut him off many years ago when he was still a student.  His older girlfriend Sara wants him to clear things before they can move to a serious relationship, so Tsukuru takes vacation from work (he builds Railway Stations) and goes on a pilgrimage to find the truth.

When he speaks to the color-ful friends, the two male ones tell him that one of the girls said he raped her, so they all had to cut contact with him.  This, of course is not true, and Tsukuru eventually finds the fourth girl in Finland (the third girl, who said she was raped by Tsukuru was murdered six year prior) and she told him that the third girl had mental health problems and that someone indeed raped her, but she blamed it on him because she needed to blame someone.  

Tsukuru eventually goes back to Japan to see Sara, but she is seeing another older man, and she gives her a choice to make in three days between him and the other man.  The book ends when Tsukuru is waiting for Sara's call on the third day.

Although the ending is unsatisfying, and there are several threads left unfinished (like with the Death Mark), it is a very deep and interesting I-Novel, in the Japanese and Murakami tradition.  Definitely worth the read.

Ancilary Justice by Ann Leckie

 I really don't understand what the hype is about here? This book won all the sci-fi awards and for what? It is a very boring story of Empire - bad, individual - good.  Throw in some AIs that are ruling the world and have many bodies (ancillaries) and that's pretty much the whole book.  Oh, yes, the AIs don't understand human gender, so everyone is a "she".  So what? Is that supposed to be new, cool and original? There are better AIs in Dan Simmons' Hyperon Cantos. The ancillary bodies are better done in Altered Carbon.  The "she" aspect of gender is way better done in the "Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guinn.  So, what is special about this book at all?  Why all those awards? 

The characters are bland and completely unrelatable.  The writing is dry and distant, no attachment possible.  Plot is pretty much non existent.  The final twist (spoiler) that different sub-personalities within the main AI personalities are fighting each other is completely unoriginal and uninteresting.  Again, the question: how could this book win all those awards? On what merit?

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

This book and this author have received so much praise (and a Pulitzer!) that I had to check it out.  Very disappointing.  This is another of those books which were considered "revolutionary" when they came out (1961), but look decidedly unimpressive from the point of view of 2022.  Thomas Pynchon is another of those authors whose books were "revolutionary" in the 1960s, but are the most boring drag to slag through nowadays.  So what is exceptional about this book, "Rabbit, Run" which apparently took its title from a WW2 popular song, as if anyone today in 2022 would have even heard it?  

Well, the language is interesting, pretty much like a "stream of consciousness" but limited only to paragraphs and pages.  There are some paragraphs which are two-pages long, and only consist of Updike's random memories, loosely and barely tangentially related to the story and plot, while using obscure, made-up words and terms, which probably sounded cool in 1960, but today are just a bore.  You can pretty much skip all the paragraphs that don't have a dialogue, and still get the full story, without the ancillary garbage.  

The story is boring, already seen a million times before, and nothing to write home about.  Harry Angstrom, whose nickname "Rabbit" seems to serve absolutely no other purpose in the entire book but to add "flavor" and "spice" and "recognition" - is just yet another mid-western man with little to no education, dead-end shitty job, shitty marriage to a woman he only occasionally feels like fucking (and who drinks barrels of alcohol while pregnant? what kind of child brain development will that result in?), until one day he just doesn't feel like he'd ever want to fuck her again.  So, he does what every average, under-educated, under-achiever would do, and leaves her and his son, and goes to live with a part-time hooker, whom he also manages to get pregnant (praise under-educated sperm!).

Then it gets into melodramatic bullshyte, like his drunk wife drowns the new baby in the bathtub and then goes crazy, and this extremely annoying protestant preacher just yaps his gobbler the entire book with all this sanctimonious bullshyte, which really means nothing in the end.  Pretty much describes every sticks and boonies backwater town in America.  Thanks, but I have better things to do with my time.

Mysterious World by Arthur C. Clarke

 "Mysterious World" by Arthur C. Clarke, and the other two guys, who actually wrote 95% of the book, but pretty much never get credit anywhere, was the first book from Clarke I ever read, and it got me onto reading his entire (sci-fi) bibliography.  Reading it again now, it looks pretty non-impressive, however for my 9-year old mind, all these "mysteries" (many of which were not), were the most magical, most exciting thing I'd ever known (in my first 9 years of life).  Although I still have the original book (in Croatian translation, and looking pretty shabby 35 years later, although the initial seller cheated me and sold me a damaged book for the price of new, but hey, it is my own fault, right?), I actually re-read a PDF from the web of the original British mail-order edition.

I was not impressed.  From my "middle-aged man with multiple graduate degrees" point of view, the book is pretty disappointing, just another cash-grab to follow the (mediocre) series from 1980 on Yorkshire TV.  But hey, my childhood memories are still fresh and brilliant, and this book is an indelible part of them, so there's that.

I do still credit this book for getting me onto the next "real" Clarke book, "Against the Fall of Night",  written when he was 29, and much better than the later "re-work" (basically, another cash-grab) "The City and the Stars".