November Reading! Share your thoughts...

[Pyan]

There are times when I am a bit reluctant to post what I'm currently reading, as it is so far removed from sff that I rather feel people are going to be scratching their heads asking "what the heck is that doing here?"

I thought that as well, j.d. - what I have tended to do recently is to post in this thread if it is an SFF book, but haven't bothered if it's not.

However, it's encouraging to read the comments by both knivesout and GOLLUM on the subject - if that's a common reaction, I may post here more often, even if it's not a genre book...

 

[j d worthington]

Thanks for the pointers, Connavar.

JD: It's interesting the things you find in second-hand bookstores. It's always bittersweet to find a book that was lovingly inscribed to someone and wonder where those people are now and how this once-treasured gift wound up for sale. Sometimes I've picked up portions of collections that once belonged to a certain person - I have upwards of 30 books that belonged to one P. Thomas Chandy ,a fascinating collection with an emphasis on Eastern European and between-the-world-wars British literature and about half as many that belonged to a Diwakaran who seems to have been an academic and a theatre personality. Both these men had extensive and often unusual collections and it seems a shame that neither a library of some kind nor their family thought to preserve their collections. I also have a copy of Christopher Priest's A DREAM OF WESSEX that once belonged to the Indian SF/F writer Ashok Banker!

Sounds like a rather impressive collection on its own, JP....

Yes, such a thing certainly has its sad points, as well as the other side of the coin of actually owning something that belonged to such a person. (Incidentally, I just last night ran across an archived post where someone was selling -- for only $325! -- the copy of Mrs. Miniter's Our Natupski Neighbors which she had inscribed and given to HPL....) I suppose it hits me especially with Sam, as he was one of -- or perhaps the -- earliest science fiction historians, who garnered a massive collection of rare items including not only the majority of the pulp magazines (and often ancillary items such as business papers dealing with the publication of the magazine and/or its contents), but also a very respectable collection of the Munsey magazines dating back into the latter part of the nineteenth century. He was always willing to aid people doing research by providing them with materials, and he himself wrote several valuable histories of the field. To have all that -- one of the largest collections of sf and fantasy ever assembled -- split up that way just seems wrong somehow... but then, the same sort of thing happened with Forry Ackerman as well, so....

I thought that as well, j.d. - what I have tended to do recently is to post in this thread if it is an SFF book, but haven't bothered if it's not.

However, it's encouraging to read the comments by both knivesout and GOLLUM on the subject - if that's a common reaction, I may post here more often, even if it's not a genre book...

Frankly, Pyan, I wish you would. I certainly don't want to skew the thread too much away from sff, but sometimes interesting relationships can show up by bringing in things which aren't actually a part of the field... let alone secondary sorts of things which are more closely related (Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories, Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance, Lovecraft's Collected Essays, Ellison's Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed, etc., etc., etc.)

 

[Taltos]

Finished Gibson Angel Stations - not really impressed. A little bit too much for one book - trying to build world and characters and plot - and to me bot really succeeding in any of this.
Now continuing with Feist Shards of Broken Crown and for travelling Scalzi Ghost Brigades

 

[nj1]

Last month I finished John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting which was OK, I got a bit lost in parts and it felt like i was reading a play at times for some reason.
Also just finished Robert Low's third book in the Oathsworn series White Raven, another good viking romp from Mr Low, really enjoyed this one and if your into Benrard Cornwell etc its well worth a look.

Now reading my first book by Jim Butcher, Furies of Calderon, its early days yet but starts ok, nice style of magic set in a Roman type era. I bought the first two on the off chance so i hope they're good anyway.

 

[Lobolover]

After finishing "Smallcreep's day" I read another two stories by V.M. Garshin , and now have begun to read the wordsworth edition of Andrew Caldecott's works .

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I finished Valentine Pontifex by Robert Silverberg. I enjoyed this book, but maybe not quite as much as the first in the trilogy, Lord Valentine's Castle. I felt like it was a slow read at the beginning, but it definately picked up towards the middle. I enjoyed the chapters about other non-main characters throughout Majipoor, which really let you experience what they were going through. The only negative about the book is I felt the end was very rushed and ended quite abruptly. But still worth a read.

Straying a bit from Scifi/Fantasy, I'm reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and also Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

 

[HoopyFrood]

While on the subject, I've always said what book I was reading, of any genre. Due to my course, I reckon only about half of the books I've mentioned in these threads over the years have been SFF fiction.

Still on Spook Crooks! The author makes it pretty clear just how he feels about mediums and fake spiritualists...Very interesting reading about the many different tricks and gadgets that were used to 'manifest' spirits...

 

[Althain's Warden]

Just finished Jordan/ Sanderson- Gathering Storm. Awesome comback for this series that had largely lost its path. Great work by Sanderson.
Either some David Gemmell or George MArtin's Fevre dream next

 

[Connavar]

I thought that as well, j.d. - what I have tended to do recently is to post in this thread if it is an SFF book, but haven't bothered if it's not.

However, it's encouraging to read the comments by both knivesout and GOLLUM on the subject - if that's a common reaction, I may post here more often, even if it's not a genre book...

Here is my two cents, I really like reading this thread because you see what others specially the regular posters read. You know what SFF books they like. So seeing Gollum read World lit and some others i have never heard of is refreshing,the same with J.D's obscure writers that makes me hungry to read more and more out of my fav fields.

Frankly its not so much fun seeing people read the same fantasy writers the Erikson new book,Jordan's new one,Lynch and co. Nothing wrong with them but you want to know what other type of books you have in common with other chron members and what books you dont have in common.

I used write only SFF books too but then i thought the thread wasnt only limited to that.

If it seems i read alot of SFF its because i'm well read on other fav genres like crime,historical fiction,classic,even some non-genre. I need to read classic SFF and catch up to the years like long time fans.

 

[murphy]

Just finished R. A. McAvoy's In Between and hope that she has taken up writing again. I do enjoy her work. Just started reading a nice bit of fluff by K. E. Mills called The Accidental Sorerer. It seems promising and amusing.

 

[Chinook]

Currently enjoying "Century Rain" - Alastair Reynolds. I've also read Redemption Ark, The Prefect, and Revelation Space by him.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Finished FOXFIRE by Joyce Carol Oates, who I think must be the literary equivalent of Lon Chaney Sr., the man of a thousand faces. Oates is the writer of a thousand voices, and it's impressive to think that same hand penned ZOMBIE, THE MYSTERIES OF WINTERTHURN and FOXFIRE. This one's a novel about a gang, Foxfire, started by a group of teenage girls from a blue collar neighbourhood in an American town in the 1950s. It's gripping stuff, full of biting social commentary and vivid characterisation that build up a picture of young girls trying to be self-reliant and strong in the midst of a time and a society that is unwilling to accept such concepts. And then things go horribly wrong...

 

[J-WO]

"If I want to read a good book, I write one!"

-Benjamin Disraeli

However did he find time to be prime minister?


Recently I have read 'A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich' by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and 'Cosmonaut Keep' by Ken Macleod. Both fantastic books. No way I--or Disraeli--could write them.

 

[Diggler]

Finished Our Friends From Frolix 8 by Philip K Dick. Was a really good book and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you're new to PKD, I would highly recommend this. Very easy, quite linear storyline with fair dabs of action.

I've started on Galactic Pot Healer also by PKD. This is pretty much back into Dick's typical odd writing. I've only read about 20 pages, so not enough to gain any real grasp of the story.

 

[hedgeknight]

Finished The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller the first week of November and now reading the sequel, The Awakened Mage. Very good so far.

 

[Connavar]

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming the second James Bond book.

Once again I'm enjoying the more cerebral,darker literary version of Bond. He is more complex man than the action crazy one in the movies. Its weird how the books are more realistic spy stories and not the action stories the film make it out to be.

 

[dask]

As noted in another thread I'm currently catching up on a back log of comics, a pile about 4" thick. They're great but I need to intersperse some sf into the mix so I've started THE MAN WHO AWOKE by Lawrence Manning, a series of longish stories first appearing in Gernsback's Wonder Stories from 1933. Good stuff. Manning's no slouch of a writer and deals with topics critical to us today such as the wasteful depletion of the planets resources, particularly fossil fuels. Well conceived future society. High hopes for the rest of the book.

 

[j d worthington]

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming the second James Bond book.

Once again I'm enjoying the more cerebral,darker literary version of Bond. He is more complex man than the action crazy one in the movies. Its weird how the books are more realistic spy stories and not the action stories the film make it out to be.

That's an odd one, in that it actually works (in its own odd way) as a horror tale as well. There are hints that the Big Man is something more (or less) than a living human there, and an atmosphere of otherworldly forces that Bond comes into contact with, now and again. And then there's that rather nasty bit with Felix Leiter.....

 

[elvet]

Thoroughly enjoying Sky of Swords, the 3rd book in Dave Duncan's King's Blades series.

 

[ratsy]

I finally finished Shadow's Edge by Brent Weeks, the last book in the Night Angel Trilogy. It was a great series IMO.

I am now reading Bloodheir by Brian Ruckley, the second in the Godless World Trilogy.

Also, I am reading Grave Peril by Jim Butcher and With a Single Spell by Lawrence Wyatt-Evans.