The Books of August - Summer reading at it's finest

[brightcrow]

Dawndragon, did you finish Wood Wife? I absolutely loved it. She's been promising a second book, Moon Wife, for years....but has recently given up much of her editing work to focus on writing again. I hear through friends that she's finishing up Moon Wife as we speak . Hurray!

 

[dwndrgn]

Yes, I finished The Wood Wife and really enjoyed it. I'm glad people here recommended it because I normally wouldn't have read it otherwise. Another book from her sounds good. I think today I'm going to hit one of the other branches of my library that are open. The book I'm really waiting for is the next installment in the Outlander series. I wish she'd hurry up!

 

[Sirathiel]

Ah, it has been a long time that I've read Outlander and the subsequent books. Up until "The Fiery Cross" which I haven't finished... I don't know why though... Hm, I might want to think about picking it up again. Great books!

Same goes for the Cronwell Arthur trilogy. I've read all of them some years ago. Loved them, too.

I've finished Angels and Demons and I've read it with a critical eye. But I couldn't help being captivated by the flow of the story. I thought the end twist to be very interesting as I didn't expect it. Concerning the several traumata of the main characters... Langdon seemed to go from enclosed space to enclosed space.... A bit too much. But overall a very exciting book. It's a thriller and it has suspense.

I've know started reading "The Da Vinci Code". I have to admit that it shares some elements with "Angels and Demons", but it's not the same concept. It makes a difference if you're trying to solve a riddle under time pressure and as the expert or if you are doing it while you're on the run... So far it's quite interesting, can't wait to see what it holds in store for me.... Suspense!

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I've just started out on Steph Swainston's The Year of our War. So far, it's pretty captivating. I like the lack of infodump here, the way she's thrown the reader into the thick of things, to figure them out as the story progresses. The element of drug addiction is interesting, and the descriptions of flight seem very realistic, although I've never actually flown powered by my own wings so I wouldn't know.

Also a little over halfway through David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It's totally brilliant so far, and I intend to post a review later on. The book's just been longlisted for this year's Booker by the way, and it's pretty much specualtive fiction in the broad sense. The Susanna Clarke book is also on the list.

 

[brightcrow]

I posted this to another forum as well...I hope that's not bad manners...I normally don't do that but wanted to share my first impressions here too.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I read pretty slowly so I don't fly through trilogies like popcorn...for me to complete one is a challenge, and usually a disappointment. I've just this moment finished Crown of Shadows, the last book of the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman. I can't remember ever before feeling this utterly satiated by an ending. I don't mean simply tying up all the loose ends, but every resolution was so perfectly right. The amount of not only creative, but ethical, spiritual, and romantic thinking required to bring things to this remarkable conclusion leaves me stunned and contemplative. I bow to this author. More thoughts later after some digestion.

Note: I took my time reading each book of this trilogy, and inserted other books between installments. A thought occurs to me now: for all my complaining about reading slowly, there is indeed something to be said for experiencing a trilogy over the course of time...the extension of the experience mimics the story told and makes it more feel more substantial.

 

[brightcrow]

Also a little over halfway through David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It's totally brilliant so far, and I intend to post a review later on.

A long time ago I bought Ghostwritten by Mitchell and never got around to reading it. Now I'm not so sure if I want to, it sounds so random. Knivesout, what did you think of it?

Sirathiel, I'm probably the only person on earth who hasn't read da Vinci Code, yet I was one of the first to buy it before it 'caught on', based on the prepub hype I confess. Someday, lol. And yes, it also has a place in one of my crowded TBR bookshelves.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I've read series straight through, and I've read them with other books in between. I think I like the second option the best.

I read the two Thomas Covenant trilogies straight through. I was exhausted at the end. Well, those are exhausting books, anyway, but still, I don't think I would have had the same reaction to them if I'd read them one at a time, over a longer period of time.

On the other hand, I read Donaldson's two-book series, "The Mirror of Her Dreams" and "A Man Rides Through", as they came out, with other books in between, and that was quite a satisfactory way of approaching them. I don't think anything was lost by doing that. I also read Tim Powers' semi-trilogy consisting of "Last Call", "Expiration Date", and "Earthquake Weather" over a period of time, with other books between, although on a much shorter timeline than I did "Mirror" and "Man". This also did not hamper my enjoyment of them.

And then there is Kage Baker's novels of the Company. I've read this series three or four times, at least. The first time, I read them with other books between. Then I read them right in a row. Maybe it was because it was the first read-through, but I have to say that I enjoyed them more with some time between the books.

So, now I am reading "Outlander". There are, what, four sequels? I am enjoying it so much that my first impulse is to go out and get the others and read them straight through. But I don't think I'll do that. (For one thing, I can't afford to go out and buy all of them at once.) I'll let one digest a bit before I tackle another. If I can find the restraint.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

A long time ago I bought Ghostwritten by Mitchell and never got around to reading it. Now I'm not so sure if I want to, it sounds so random. Knivesout, what did you think of it?

Sirathiel, I'm probably the only person on earth who hasn't read da Vinci Code, yet I was one of the first to buy it before it 'caught on', based on the prepub hype I confess. Someday, lol. And yes, it also has a place in one of my crowded TBR bookshelves.

Well, Cloud Atlas is the first one by him that I've got. I suspect I'll enjoy the other ones though - I'm known to have a very high tolerance for randomness, open-endings and general postmodern trappings. Oh, and I belong to Chronicles' Official Dan Brown Spitball Club. Still, different strokes and all that.

 

[ravenus]

The Adventures of Conan Doyle - Charles Higham

This is a biography of Conan Doyle where the author also tries to trace the influences for the Sherlock Holmes adventures and other Doyle stories from his life. It was a pretty decent read for the (second-hand) price I paid.

Higham is a bit too eager to draw connections for every character to some real-life equivalent, almost giving no quarter to the author’s imagination. Some of the connections, for all his cocksure assertions, are at best tenuous. Some are pointless because of the marginal nature of the character under focus. He also suffers the modern literary critic’s tendency to find sexual portent in just about everything. Apparently the drill boring into the earth’s center in ‘When the World Screamed’ (a Professor Challenger tale) is a phallic symbol, and the fact that Doyle doesn’t specify in which orifice of the murderess The Leather Funnel (water-torture implement in the story of the same name, from Tales of terror and Mystery) is inserted is indicative of sexual possibilities…D-UH.

But all is not bad…the book still remains a fairly well done piece with lots of interesting, humorous and otherwise, anecdotes from Doyle’s life and an insightful look into his persona. Doyle’s nature combines the garrulous cheer and robust patriotism of Watson with the scientific curiosity and intense analytical aspect of Holmes. It is interesting to see how the different phases of Doyle’s life affected the direction of his output. His young life and the perennial influence of his mother, quitting his medical practice for a writing career, fondly raising family, repeatedly going into service for his beloved country, then his interest in spiritualism. There is also references to true-life cases that Doyle tackled in the interests of serving justice against a biased law. Doyle comes across as a truly interesting person, the sort you feel, “It’d have been really great to be able to make acquaintance with such a guy.”