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Church and Mountain and London
Oct. 31st, 2025 06:01 pmI read three books in the past week and a half, and all three of them non-SFF. It's been a while since that happened! And probably will be a while after that: the next couple of books on my reading list are all SFF again.
Conclave, by Robert Harris: It's always tricky to read a book after watching the movie made based on it, but in this case it felt like both a good book to the movie, and that the movie was a good adaption of the book. It was very difficult not to see the characters from the movie while reading, even the main character who was the only one who got a different name in the movie. The book had a few details the movie couldn't fit and otherwise some minor changes, and I think if I felt more fannish about it comparing them would be very interesting but I'm not quite invested enough.
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer: A gripping personal account of a Mount Everest expedition that ended in disaster.
Reading this was a bit strange because I kept getting a feeling of déja vu, but I can't recall reading similar books. I think I was probably remembering a couple of documentaries I watched as a kid (several of them featuring Reinhold Messner, probably - for some reason for some time I thought he was "just" the best Austrian (actually South Tyrolean/Italian) climber and didn't realize he had so much global fame.) Very little in the book I found actually surprising, though some of the details were even harsher than I'd expected, like how difficult it even is to eat that high up.
Funnily enough I kept thinking about the post-main-story snippet for the Superstition series that recalls how Jacks almost broke up with Luc because Luc decided he had to climb Mount Everest after retiring from the NHL, something Jacks considered extremely risky and irresponsible. And with good reason!
The book did a good job showing how a couple of not-so-egregious-on-their-own mistakes that under ideal conditions would have barely mattered added together under not-ideal conditions led to disaster. One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was the interplay between "on the mountain" and "the outside world." Reading a little more about the reception of the book afterwards, it's shocking how the survivors have seemingly had to justify their actions for the next years and decades and how fixated other people who weren't there and had little if any personal connections became on who was to blame.
Slow Horses, by Mike Herron: I actually don't remember where I got this recommendation - I might have just seen it in the "new books" category from the library? It's been a while since I read a spy thriller and I was in the mood for one for some reason.
It took me a while to get into this, and at first I was not even sure I would continue because I dislike "everyone is miserable and nobody likes each other" settings. But fortunately it gave me enough hope it would get better (and eventually did get slightly better) until the exciting spy and action parts kicked in, and those were indeed fun. I put a hold on the next part of the series just in case.
Conclave, by Robert Harris: It's always tricky to read a book after watching the movie made based on it, but in this case it felt like both a good book to the movie, and that the movie was a good adaption of the book. It was very difficult not to see the characters from the movie while reading, even the main character who was the only one who got a different name in the movie. The book had a few details the movie couldn't fit and otherwise some minor changes, and I think if I felt more fannish about it comparing them would be very interesting but I'm not quite invested enough.
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer: A gripping personal account of a Mount Everest expedition that ended in disaster.
Reading this was a bit strange because I kept getting a feeling of déja vu, but I can't recall reading similar books. I think I was probably remembering a couple of documentaries I watched as a kid (several of them featuring Reinhold Messner, probably - for some reason for some time I thought he was "just" the best Austrian (actually South Tyrolean/Italian) climber and didn't realize he had so much global fame.) Very little in the book I found actually surprising, though some of the details were even harsher than I'd expected, like how difficult it even is to eat that high up.
Funnily enough I kept thinking about the post-main-story snippet for the Superstition series that recalls how Jacks almost broke up with Luc because Luc decided he had to climb Mount Everest after retiring from the NHL, something Jacks considered extremely risky and irresponsible. And with good reason!
The book did a good job showing how a couple of not-so-egregious-on-their-own mistakes that under ideal conditions would have barely mattered added together under not-ideal conditions led to disaster. One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was the interplay between "on the mountain" and "the outside world." Reading a little more about the reception of the book afterwards, it's shocking how the survivors have seemingly had to justify their actions for the next years and decades and how fixated other people who weren't there and had little if any personal connections became on who was to blame.
Slow Horses, by Mike Herron: I actually don't remember where I got this recommendation - I might have just seen it in the "new books" category from the library? It's been a while since I read a spy thriller and I was in the mood for one for some reason.
It took me a while to get into this, and at first I was not even sure I would continue because I dislike "everyone is miserable and nobody likes each other" settings. But fortunately it gave me enough hope it would get better (and eventually did get slightly better) until the exciting spy and action parts kicked in, and those were indeed fun. I put a hold on the next part of the series just in case.
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