BC: Library haul #1

This Book Chat sees the books I have recently checked out at the library. I think that libraries are often overlooked or forgotten about – especially on the most popular BookTube channels, but I have recently renewed my membership and I’m loving having free access to so many books.

 

Quite a varied trio here. First, we have The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley‘s second novel, which I picked up after reading her first one (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street). I found her debut to be very entertaining due to its use of non-linear narrative devices and rather well thought out characters, but it did suffer from some pacing issues and odd choices towards its conclusion. The Bedlam Stacks sees an expeditionary sent into uncharted Peru to bring back the only cure for Malaria. Of course, it isn’t as easy as that, and there are suspicious, very likely magic-related, deaths also taking place. I will be getting around to this soon. Did anybody else read Pulley’s first book? Or even this one?

 

The central book is Basic Techniques of Photography, by John P. Schaefer, a study of the famous Ansel Adams and his photographic techniques. From a quick flick through, I can already tell that this nonfiction book will help me understand the uses of different film stocks, as well as provide compositional guidelines too. I will be dipping into this before my next photo outing in the coming days.

 

The final book here is the long way to a small, angry planet, by Becky Chambers. At the time of posting this little piece, I am on page 205 of 404. Wow. This book (my first true science fiction/ space opera) wonderfully encapsulates a lot of the issues we have on Earth today and projects them across multiple species and histories: I am truly in awe of how Chambers writes so successfully in such a condensed and simple-to-understand novel. I will most likely write a review for this book at some stage and plan on reading the sequel stories sooner rather than later. Do you have any experience with the series?