December's here! And you're reading....?

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AE35Unit said:
Err well I've read Tiger Tiger! Aka The Stars My Destination and I can honestly say its nothing like one of those silly horror stories. Not having read The Count of Monte Cristo I can't comment on its similarity that tome tho-never heard such a connection before!
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This is one of those things that is what one might these days call a "little-known well-known fact".:D It is unabashedly modelled on Dumas' book as far as general plot and structure, and Bester was playing with the same sort of "anti-hero" heroic idea as well as the concept that such stories repeat themselves throughout human history; but beyond that, it is very much his own.

Connavar: I think you'll find the John Silence stories are not your "typical" psychic detective tales. While not always among Blackwood's best, some are, and the others are at least well into his mid-range. "Ancient Sorceries" is a Silence story, and it is also one of Blackwood's supreme achievements....

drush: Peter Straub said something of this sort a while back; that when it was putting together the Lovecraft volume for the Library of America series, he sat down and read the stories, recalling HPL's work to be overblown, lacking in imagination, even bad... and found that instead he deserves the reputation his work has earned. Simply put, he is a good (if difficult or unappealing to some) writer....

As for myself... things have been so hectic lately (I'm finishing off a 10-day work "week", for example) that I've had very little time for reading anything... but I did manage to finally get back to re-reading the rest of Ramsey Campbell's Demons by Daylight. It really is amazing what a good book this is, especially considering it was only his second collection (it would still be some time before he had a novel to his credit). Some of the tales are more than a bit elusive, or even impossible to quite pin down, but the magic is definitely there, and I still say this is one of the best modern horror collections....
 
j. d. worthington said:
drush: Peter Straub said something of this sort a while back; that when it was putting together the Lovecraft volume for the Library of America series, he sat down and read the stories, recalling HPL's work to be overblown, lacking in imagination, even bad... and found that instead he deserves the reputation his work has earned. Simply put, he is a good (if difficult or unappealing to some) writer....
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In my own case I think I've matured as a reader, remember being easily bored when I first read them. Lovecraft's prose deserves to be savoured and digested. Finding I'm dwelling on what I've read long after reading it :cool:
 
j. d. worthington said:
As for myself... things have been so hectic lately (I'm finishing off a 10-day work "week", for example) that I've had very little time for reading anything... but I did manage to finally get back to re-reading the rest of Ramsey Campbell's Demons by Daylight. It really is amazing what a good book this is, especially considering it was only his second collection (it would still be some time before he had a novel to his credit). Some of the tales are more than a bit elusive, or even impossible to quite pin down, but the magic is definitely there, and I still say this is one of the best modern horror collections....
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Great! I look forward to reading that collection myself shortly...
 
I finished Despair by Nabokov. Another remarkable novel by this master of the elusive narrative, in this one it's particularly intriguing how Nabokov manages to convey a larger sense of the narrative than the first-person narrator is able to perceive. That's a very tricky achievement, added to which are the two levels of wordplay - the narrator's own somewhat obvious and laboured puns, and a subtler level of typical Nabakovian wordplay.

Now reading All Saints' Eve by Amelia B. Edwards. Some of these are ghost stories, but the rest are mysteries of tales of suspense, sometimes with a supernatural element. Reading the common-or-garden Victorian ghost story only brings home what an achievement the best tales of Le Fanu, Blackwood, Machen and M.R. James are. Edwards' ghosts are generally mere mechanistic revenants, replaying the last act of their lives like an endless looped recording (which was one of the credulous-yet-trying-to-be-scientific explanations of ghostly phenomena popular among the spiritualists), a far cry from the sinister vectors of menace conjured up so subtly by James in particular. Some of the non ghost stories are quite effective, especially the creepy tale of wholesale murder in the Black Forest, A Night On The Borders of the Black Forest. A Railway Panic is about a man who encounters a homicidal maniac on a train journey and manages to keep him talking until they reach the next station. I wonder if Adolphe De Castro ever chanced upon this particular tale?

Also dipping into The Fungal Stain and other dreams by W.H. Pugmire.
 
PLANET OF THE DOUBLE SUN by Neil R. Jones. First of four Professor Jameson adventures. Well, JD warned me Jones's prose could be rough and yep, it did more than creak, it cried out for WD-40. But he could tell a good story and hold your interest so you had to read a little into the next chapter before turning out the lights. Virtually immortal machine men from the planet Zor are driven murderously mad and suicidally insane by bat-like creatures from another dimension. Only one survives, Earthman Professor Jameson, whose brain had been previously transplanted into the metal body of a Zorome and who now joins an expeditionary force comprised of alien tripeds who enter the dimension of the bats to exact revenge for destruction brought against their race. If this sounds like old-fashioned Golden Age fun, it is, including aliens described exactly as if Frank R. Paul drew them. But don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Jones has a mean streak matched by few others and can be quite vicious. When the battle with the bats was over I literally had to set the book aside and catch my breath. And while it has an upbeat ending it's hardly happy. Good stuff.
 
Oh dear,am not finding Richter 10 the most exciting book! Its more of a political techno thruiller type story with lots of intrigue and little speculation. But then its not really Clarke is it!
 
I have started reading The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

40 pages in i like the tragic Glokta. Also good smooth prose makes this book very promising read so far.
 
AmazingJan1960.jpg


Checked the post-holocaust article in the SF Encyclopedia for reading ideas and Peter Nicholls called this cover story "extremely savage" so thought I'd give it a try. I like the gloom and ruin of this type of story and so far it's all here. Fritz Leiber, not one of my favorites, sad to say, is in top form. Even his constant use of first person narrative is appropriate. I prefer third but doubt this "book-length novel" would be as effective without first. In addition to extremely savage it's also extremely strange. Don't know where it's going or how it will end but so far I'm hooked. Also titled "The Wolf Pair" in Leiber's THE NIGHT OF THE WOLF collection. Cover by the stalwart Ed Valigursky. This is the January, 1960 issue, by the way.
 
Fried Egg said:
CyBeR

Well, good luck with the rest of it if you persevere. But to be honest, if Corwin annoys you that much, I'll be suprised if your opinion is turned around.
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Well, your socks are ready to be shocked off.
I finished 'Nine princes in Amber' by Roger Zelazny (took me WAY too long to actually get into it enough to pull through). And...I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it quite a lot actually. Because once I got through with the book I was quite saddened by the fact that I did not purchase the second book of the series as well when I had the chance.

What happened is this:
I took to Corwin. Not completely and not easily...but I managed to come to terms with the ass after a while, more precisely after he reveals his condition. When the mind games stop, the book becomes enjoyable...it stopped feeling strained and at that point things start going my way.
I think I'll get the whole series soon and get some serious reading done with it.

Right now started on 'Moving pictures' by the incomparable Terry Pratchett. Always a pleasure hehe.
 
Congrats on discovering Amber (and Zelazny, too?), CyBeR, and welcome to The Chrons. Curiously enough, I'm reading Zelazny also, but it's the 4th Book in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Last Exit to Babylon.
 
Good to see CyBeR enjoyed Amber book 1. I enjoyed Zelazny writing in that from page 1.

Frankly its a bit weird to me people reading 800s pages of some contemporary epic authors and then saying i gave up on Nine Princes of Amber....
 
Just finished brave new world, which was pretty good but not as much as I'd hoped itd be.

Now I'm torn between reading gates of fire and the stand... Both come highly recommended!
 
CyBeR said:
Well, your socks are ready to be shocked off.
I finished 'Nine princes in Amber' by Roger Zelazny (took me WAY too long to actually get into it enough to pull through). And...I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it quite a lot actually. Because once I got through with the book I was quite saddened by the fact that I did not purchase the second book of the series as well when I had the chance.
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Well, I am surprised but glad you enjoyed it in the end. I expect you may well enjoy the rest of the series now...
 
Reading Malpertuis by Jean Ray as well as WRACK AND OTHER STORIES by "Dermot O'Byrne" .
 
Re-reading King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard - I found my old 1965 Puffin p/b, with the wonderfully evocative drawings by Paul Hogarth.
 
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