November Reading! Share your thoughts...

[dask]

Great cover!

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

That's the edition I have too.

Most of Van Vogt's stories are the same at heart - a person or group of persons are different from the surrounding population in a manner that makes them both superior and the target of prosecution. In the course of the story, they realise their powers and eventually defeat their enemies.

 

[j d worthington]

Well, prompted by GOLLUM's question in the Elric thread, I stopped waffling quite so much, and went ahead and picked up where I left off in my reread of Moorcock (mixing it in with other things, rather than just going on a Moorcock binge, as I usually do), with the collection The Time Dweller -- a relatively early set of tales, most of which were published under his pseudonym of James Colvin... whom he later made a part of his metafiction....

This has always been a collection for which I have a strong fondness; very surrealistic, often dreamlike, and unabashedly allegorical in the strongest sense of the term; yet full of rich visions, charming (and often haunting) conceits, and thought-provoking approaches to some of the fundamental questions about the nature of identity and the human condition. It also has one of his major early stories, "The Deep Fix", from which he took the title for his "band" (also frequently woven into his fiction)....

 

[J-WO]

Yeah, same here. Did you have this addition:

No; mine had this cruddy cover of Gilbert Gosseyn messing about on a big chessboard as I recall. Though that might have been the sequel.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron. This has to be the best new horror collection I've read in a while. Visceral and cosmic at the same time; like Ligotti, Barron is tapping the vein of existential, cosmos-devouring horror first mined by Lovecraft. Like Ligotti, he offers his own unique take instead of engaging in Mythos-expansion.

 

[Fried Egg]

The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron. This has to be the best new horror collection I've read in a while. Visceral and cosmic at the same time; like Ligotti, Barron is tapping the vein of existential, cosmos-devouring horror first mined by Lovecraft. Like Ligotti, he offers his own unique take instead of engaging in Mythos-expansion.

I like the sound of that. Added to my wish-list!

 

[dask]

Sounds good to me, too. Thanks for mentioning it.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I've been hearing good things about this one from several sources for some time now; and yesterday I read a rather detailed review of it which definitely puts it high on the list of things to get. If even a small bit of what I read is accurate, this is one of those books which is deservedly an "instant classic" in the field....

 

[GOLLUM]

Heard of it too....I'll no doubt source a copy at some stage, especially if my learned colleague is comparing this to Lovecraft and Ligotti.

 

[Diggler]

Finished Galactic Pot Healer by PKD. It was really good. While it had Dick's usual philosophy in place. It was lighter, and much easier to follow than most of his novels.

I've started on a a biography called Journey's With Gelignite Jack by Evan Green. It details a 6000 mile journey through the roughest of Australia's terrain in a Mini and an Austin 1800. The aim of this was to test a new form of Castrol oil in 1966. The man Gelignite Jack (Jack Murray) was a legend among Aussie motoring enthusiast... And a really, really funny bloke.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

yesterday I read a rather detailed review of it ....

Was this the Strange Horizons review? That was detailed, but rather odd, it seemed that the reviewer had a certain agenda that he wanted to push over any appreciation of the book at hand.

 

[j d worthington]

No, it was a review in Dead Reckonings....

 

[dask]

Yeah, same here. Did you have this addition:

Here are my copies of the Null-A saga. Paul Lehr does Worlds and Players, Tim Jacobus does the third.

 

[Fried Egg]

And are the sequels worth reading?

 

[dask]

Haven't read them yet, unfortunately. Friend of mine liked the first two quite a bit.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Well, I put The Poisonwood Bible aside for another time. I decided I wasn't in the mood for that book right now. I finished Anne of Green Gables, and also Anne of Avonlea. Great stories...I'm enjoying my reread of them.

Now I believe I will read Anne of the Island, and perhaps The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory. Someday I will get back to SciFi/Fantasy, but not yet.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I've just read the most amazing short story, The Last God's Dream by Russell Kirk in the collection Ancestral Shadows. It's about the emperor Diocletian, the last Roman emperor to be declared a god before the Christianisation of the empire, or rather about a ghostly encounter with Diocletian in his last days. This is turning out to be quite a strong collection, in all. While some of the best stories I've read so far, like the very creepy Balgrummo's Hell have often been reprinted in horror anthologies, there are several new finds for me like the excellent The Princess Of All Lands.

 

[j d worthington]

I used to have the Arkham House collection with that as the title piece. A very nice selection of Kirk's tales, that was:

The Princess of All Lands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

That was one of the collections published in Kirk's lifetime. The one I have omits only three stories, apparently, from the complete two-volume set from Ash-Tree,although comparing tables of contents online seems to suggest only two omissions. That's not enough to justify shelling out for another set...so frustrating.

 

[woodsman]

I finished Anne of Green Gables, and also Anne of Avonlea. Great stories...I'm enjoying my reread of them.

Wow. That's something I haven't read for a while! Good to see them get a mention. Big favourites of my Mum, I always preferred the last one - Rilla of Ingleside to the others but still all good reads.


Just finished Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell and looking for more historical fiction of the middle ages.

Suggestions anyone?

Cheers, Woody.