Reviews and Comments

It is the early 1600s, and Johannes Kepler's mother is accused of witchcraft. I love historical fiction. Apparently this was on CBC Canada Reads last year, but I only found out about it very recently.

Part of the historical background of this story is that "between 1625 and 1631, under the Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, the Holy Roman Empire saw one of the biggest mass trials in European history, with an estimated 900 people executed in the Würzburg witch trials." (From wikipédia)

This just floated across my feed and it looks really interesting. Throwing it on the TBR.

The Earth is a dynamic planet of shifting tectonic plates that is responsive to change, particularly when there is a dramatic climate transition. We know that at the end of the last Ice Age, as the great glaciers disappeared, the release in pressure allowed the crust beneath to bounce back. At the same time, staggering volumes of melt water poured into the ocean basins, warping and bending the crust around their margins. The resulting tossing and turning provoked a huge resurgence in volcanic activity, seismic shocks, and monstrous landslides -- the last both above the waves and below. The frightening truth is that temperature rises expected this century are in line with those at the end of the Ice Age. All the signs, warns geophysical hazard specialist Bill McGuire, are that unmitigated climate change due to human activities could bring about a comparable response.

Ça commence très fort!

He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson and no one could bear to listen to him.

It is time. I read Piranesi last year (2021) and was completely transported. I knew I wanted to pick up Norrell&Strange but the size is daunting and I want to give it proper attention. Hopefully I will have good reading time in the next couple weeks. Wish me luck!

(Also I sadly don't have a physical copy of this bad boy, I have a trusty epub instead!)

Done, by the end it was a relief to put this one away. The first part of the book was a very quick read through the factual details of the case. Become less readable in later chapters, as these are in fact episode transcriptions, and without facts to rely on, the discussions about conjecture become repetitive and tedious.

At one point they mentioned factual issues with Robert Graysmith's seminal yellow book on the Zodiac killer, and I really wish they had discussed those in further detail.

Interesting if you need an overview of the facts in chronological order, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend sticking around past those chapters.

There were the odd spelling errors, typos, and mispelled names of places or people. Probably awkwardness left over from the transcription.

(I should have waited until I was at 69% so I could have just made a single-word comment!)

Despite it seeming like I'm barely above half-way through the book, because of how big the footnotes/attached materials are, I'm actually getting pretty close to the end of the actual chapters of this. The moment the book departs from the facts and enters speculation territory (apart from an interesting episode on some very preliminary code-breaking basics) it really loses steam for me. There's a chance I won't finish this.

Throwing on the TBR based on Darius' notes.

(Wait, I thought I imported the English book, but I guess it's the French one. Well, note to self, this is originally in English, get that version if you can.)

Recommended to me by @la_panique! Irish literature! Somewhat Joycean in spirit!

About to start chapter 10. We're getting heavy into the speculation and "never before revealed/seen" suspects of these unsolved cases. The book is divided pretty neatly into the first 7-8 being a fairly straightforward chronological narrative of the 5 murders and sightings/communications with the zodiac, and the 4-5 last chapter are really about the suspects and what the evidence does and does not say. However, important to remember fact-checking here, as there was probably very little done.

The typos start to make themselves apparent around chapter 4 or 5, which is fun, but thankfully nothing too awful. Seems like transcription leftover awkwardness that got missed during the editing phase. A good reminder that these nonfiction projects often have non-existent fact-checking to go along with the inconsistent and very rushed copy proofing. While I haven't read anything so far that jumps out to me as incorrect based on my own cursory googling (not to be confused with research) it's still something to keep in mind with all this True Crime stuff.

👀

So I finally rewatched the David Fincher film Zodiac (2007) yesterday (I had forgotten Jake Gyllenhaal's portrayal of Graysmith had really touched me when I was younger, because I was also called those names and considered creepy/obsessive as a young person — but I digress) and it made me want to reread in depth about the Zodiac, but I remembered that there were some fact-checking issues with Graysmith's original book. I don't like listening to podcast (or audiobooks, for that matter) which is unfortunately where most of the "True Crime" universe seems to live, so it felt lucky to stumble upon this book, which is essentially a write-up+documents+extras of the Morford and Ferguson podcast about the Zodiac case. Presented in chronological order, it's a very fast read, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

A friend marked this as their favourite novel... I should check it out!

From the PM Press box. Can't wait to read.