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@abetterjulie -- yep, The Origin is a fine pop science read, all the better because D had to jettison his plans for a multi volume colossus & focus on the reasoning. Endearingly modest, too -- a whole chapter on all the potential weaknesses. And the Beagle voyage is good too. Also recommend Rebecca Stott's 2 books, D & the Barnacle, and D's Ghosts.

@shauna@books.theunseen.city -- that's a really perceptive explanation of why/how this novel works. Thanks.

Tbh I don't think this matches up to the preceding Wayfarer stories. The scenario strands a few characters in a hotel, a well worn device which you know will lead to self discovery, murder or both. I last saw it in a Maeve Binchy.

Chambers brings out some of her minor, & a couple of her least charming, species & has fun fleshing out their backstories & redeeming features. And she does deliver a good comfort read.

Btw Aeluons - they have no aural/oral sense but they have aural names for their species, planet & individuals. How does that happen? Answers on a (colour) postcard.

@talkingmoose book prices went up after the great fire of London because all the publishers / book sellers were by St Paul's & the books went up in flames -> scarce commodity for a while

@Janne much obliged! I've commented.

@Janne well, you've made me want to go & find a copy. I see Maksymchuk & Rosochinsky have just translated another difficult (?) volume, The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska.

In the UK, Brexit has stoked a sentimental jingoism about the World Wars which peaks every November with, among other annoyances, the boosting of bad poetry. I keep a personal anthology of good war poems as an antidote.

Since reading Burnt Shadows I've wanted to discover more of Kamila Shamsie's fiction. She is a fine novelist. Her prose is never tedious or clumsy. She can manage a range from the everyday to the urgent, and in the everyday she repeatedly slips in observations about how life feels which make me marvel and assent. She can sketch in a character's backstory without boring you. She is wry, empathetic, economical in her effects, truly serious without solemnity, able to handle a variety of narrative viewpoints. I'll be reading more, I hope.

Home Fire (a title which invokes both the family and the military) is set in 2015, when IS was rampant and the UK government was throwing its forces and propaganda behind the security state. Anyone with brown skin was likely to be searched, prevented from travelling, and spat at in the streets -- even more than usual, I should add. British muslims had to consider where they went and what they googled. Shamsie depicts the lives of three siblings who respond in different ways to their time and predicament.

The novel's structure, protagonists and theme are taken from the story of Antigone, which you definitely don't have to know, but can look up if you want spoilers. The epigraph is from Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles's play: "The ones we love ... are enemies of the state." Which is Shamsie's theme.

@Janne Could you be bothered to post this in English? I'd really like to read it.

@MattChambers I guess some of it is superseded, though the other pathogen groups it covers could source the next pandemic. Quammen writes on his website: "Because of those predictions, when COVID-19 began, many people asked me: How were you so prescient? I wasn’t prescient, I said. I just listened to the experts."

@chelifer - chelifers are of interest to unconventional beekeepers - they may have a symbiosis with honeybee colonies - so I happen to know their common name

tx for explanation. I've often read in advice pages that any lexicography-word-based password is vulnerable because it narrows down the number of possible 'moves' ? But maybe I'm just working at a less knowledgeable level than you? (Don't worry about explaining more if I'm being tediously ignorant.)

@Janne - It really is something that needs reading aloud. Milton never saw it in writing, after all, being blind. It was all composed day by day in his head and recited to his daughters.

I've found Pullman's introduction online at the British Library. What do you think of it? www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/philip-pullmans-introduction-to-paradise-lost