October Offerings - What tantalising tome are you reading?

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I can't remember if I'd posted in here or not... did a quick scan, but didn't see anything - I'm so flaky lately.....

Anyway - working through Fool Moon for the 4th or 5th time - this time is the 'jot down stuff 'bout Harry and friends' time... ;) I love Jim Butcher's books!
 
As today was a slow day at work, I was able to finish up Armadale, and then I came home to finish up Paladin of Souls (which I really, really enjoyed!). Now I'm off to historical fiction in the American west with One Thousand White Women.
 
I'm done with Frankenstein (1818), which I greatly enjoyed as I thought I would, though as a moving, insightful piece of literature rather than simply as a horror.

I'm still enjoying The Thousandfold Thought, though I've not read much of it in the last few days and don't have anything to add to previous posts.

Now then, I must decide what to read next. I'm leaning towards Meyrink's The Golem, or possibly Don Quixote which has been sitting on my shelf for far too long now.
 
Nesacat said:
Strange Eons by Robert Bloch and liking every page so far. Only wish I were home where there are no interruptions intead of Silverfish Books. But I'd promised to work during my days off this week so am reading between customers.
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Glad you're enjoying this one, Nesa. It's a lovely homage to his mentor, and a fitting capstone to his own Mythos entries. I'll be very interested in hearing your thoughts once you finish this.....
 
I've recently finished reading Ring by Koji Suzuki, and I'm thinking of switching genres to read part of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
 
Have finished Montague Summers' Supernatural Omnibus, and am just beginning Washington Irving's Sketch Book (containing "Rip Van Winkle", "The Spectre Bridegroom" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" among many other tales and sketches).
 
I got into The Thirteenth Tale yesterday. How can I describe it so far? It's like a rich and creamy dessert for readers. The writing style is sumptuous. The protagonist is a lover of books so automatically you can share her feelings for the written word (and I have only just read 2 chapters :) ).
 
Oh, Dwndrgn, I'm glad to hear that! :)

I finished Le Guin's Gifts last night. It's deceptively simple novel: easy to read, a straightforward plot, and thoroughly likeable characters. Overall, the message is explicit, right there on the surface (a message of nonviolence, as in many of Le Guin's books). But that very simplicity is what stops me in my tracks, making a moment or concept more powerful because she's stripped that idea to its essence, made it clean, bare, spare.

In the novel, the narrator has chosen to blindfold himself--to never ever use his eyes for any reason, because his family has the power to destroy things by looking at them. Can you imagine the constant temptation to peek? The will it takes to do such a thing? And how a lesser author might describe that struggle by piling on the angst-ridden adjectives and adverbs in soap-operatic overkill?

Le Guin encapsulates the struggle by having her narrator write, "It's a queer business, making oneself blind. I had asked Canoc what the will was, what it meant to will something. Now I learned what it meant" (132).
 
I havent been about for ages so some of the books I've been chipping away at lately...

Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke) I love a good alien artifact story and this was certainly that, unfortunately all the bad talk about the sequels have made me wary about reading on.

Childhood's End (Clarke), The Infineity Concerto (Bear) were both good. Bear's was a bit harder to get into, no suprise there, but I'm looking forward to coming across the sequel in one of the second hand stores sooner or later.

I had never read any of Terry Prachett's story's before but I noticed the first one The Colour of Magic on one of those second hand rumagings and thoroughly enjoyed it. Read the first three now and a nice quick & easy read to add every now and again between series.

I really enjoyed Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, sure it's dated some but for me things like slide rulers are so unknown its just as easy to picture em as future technologies. A great example of first contact from the other side.

Right now finishing off Fall of Hyperion which is good if not quiet as engrossing as the first one, still I'm looking forward to how it's all wrapped up.

I've still got Zelazny's My Name is Legion, Rutherfurd's Dublin and Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer (all new authors to me) left out of my last book shop raid but I'm thinking a revisit to fantasy would be nice up next :D .
 
I'm currently reading the Panchatantra. This work is originally credited to a teacher of ancient India called Visnu Sarma. As the story goes a king sent his duffer sons to Visnu Sarma to get educated in the mores of their duties as the future heirs of the kingdom and Sarma uses the medium of stories and fables to capture their interest and teach them about 'neeti', which essentially refers to the ideal mode of behavior for a given path of life.

Anyway the work represents the collection of all these stories, many of whch are framed as stories within stories. The stories draw from nature and mythology, several of them having animals as characters. I'm finding this version (translated by Ms. Chandra Rajan and available in Penguin Classics) quite an interesting read. People who liked stuff in the vein of Manuscript found in Saragossa will find something to whet their appetites here.

The only problem I have with the book is that Ms. Rajan often uses English-translated versions of the names of characters and places in the book, which to a good extent dilutes the phonetic beauty of the orginal sanskrit names. I would have preferred she introduce the name with the translation in brackets and continue with the original. But that's a small gripe for what has been so far a very well-presented and highly readable work.
 
elvet said:
I got into The Thirteenth Tale yesterday. How can I describe it so far? It's like a rich and creamy dessert for readers. The writing style is sumptuous. The protagonist is a lover of books so automatically you can share her feelings for the written word (and I have only just read 2 chapters :) ).
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Ooh, good to know. I have that one on my shelf here, but I won't be able to get to it for at least a few weeks, I think. But I've heard nothing but good about it!
 
nixie said:
What on earth is that supposed to mean? Oh and is Wally with you?

Seems very much like typical Brooks so far
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Only that it will be interesting to see if you have the same kind of lukewarm response I did to this one...:D

No Wally isn't with me despite what some people are saying. Must be out on safari...
 
GOLLUM said:
Only that it will be interesting to see if you have the same kind of lukewarm response I did to this one...:D

No Wally isn't with me despite what some people are saying. Must be out on safari...
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I kinda enjoyed it. Or at least I enjoyed it waaaaaaay better than his previous trilogy which was pants.

Armageddon's Children was ok.
 
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