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

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Recently finished Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold. Not as tightly written as the First Law Trilogy, but still contained many of the elements that made those books so enjoyable.

Hints and teasers in the closing scenes that bode well for future books in the same world.
 
I am a newbie, but have just discovered Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden and I am working my way through the series reached "Grave Peril". One benefit of coming late to a series of books is no waiting for new stories.
Also about to re-read Erikson's "The Bone Hunters". This will keep me out of mischief for awhile.
 
I finished Anne of the Island and am now onto Anne's House of Dreams (both by LM Montgomery). I'm loving Project Gutenberg right now, which has these stories for free.
 
Ramage by Dudley Pope.

My first foray in nautical historical fiction series post C.S.F
 
Scete said:
I am a newbie, but have just discovered Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden and I am working my way through the series reached "Grave Peril". One benefit of coming late to a series of books is no waiting for new stories.
Also about to re-read Erikson's "The Bone Hunters". This will keep me out of mischief for awhile.
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Hey, Scete> lots of Butcher and Erikson fans here, so don't be shy! Introduce yourself in the Introduction forum and you'll be assured of a warm if somewhat demented welcome.
 
j. d. worthington said:
At any rate, glad it is this edition, as it contains the properly restored texts, rather than relying on the older, often very faulty texts of earlier editions. (I made the effort of comparing some of these at one time -- the number of mistakes, elisions, excisions, and simple rewriting, for purposes of being "politically correct" or otherwise -- was simply astounding).
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Is there any place one may read the detailed comparison? Who prepared the earlier edition?
 
Just finished "Blue World" by Jack Vance and back to "Ancient Sorceries..." by Algernon Blackwood.

That was an excellent novel and has reinvigorated my thirst for Vance's work. Bring on "Tales of a dying earth"...
 
Is this the first time you're reading Vance's fantasy? Tales From THe Dying Earth is quite different from Vance's SF, although similarly imaginative and wonderfully written. If you have the whole omnibus, Cugel's Saga will be more the sort of narrative you are used to, The Dying Earth itself being a series of more or less linked short pieces.
 
No, I've read the "Lyonesse" trilogy and I loved that.

Unfortunately, I don't have the whole omnibus of "Dying Earth", only the first book of which it comprises. I hope to find the rest in second hand stores...
 
knivesout said:
Is there any place one may read the detailed comparison? Who prepared the earlier edition?
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The earlier edition was edited by August Derleth, who not only made editorial changes but was often very lax about textual accuracy in other ways -- one can see this by comparing the versions of "Medusa's Coil" in Marginalia with that in the first edition of The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions... and then with the new edition, this becomes even more evident.

There are several pieces on different aspects of this, but such things as "Lovecraft's Revisions: How Much of Them Did He Write?" and "Who Wrote 'The Mound'?" (the first to be found in his Selected Papers on H. P. Lovecraft, the second in Crypt of Cthulhu No. 11) go into fairly good detail on several of these; An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia, by Joshi and David E. Schultz, covers this sort of thing in the individual entries on the stories, as I recall....
 
Finished "The Elixir", the last story in Laurence Manning's THE MAN WHO AWOKE. At first glance this appeared to be a "revelation of wonder" story, a strange departure from the previous four adventures. Far from it; this was a carefully wrought thoughtful discussion, not about the meaning of life, but the purpose of creation and the need "by definition" of a creator. Not a human creator certainly, nor a god. Manning, or rather his pontificating character (poised on a galactically pea-sized planet at the very rim of the universe which "did not turn on its axis, but remained with one face forever fixed toward its life-giving sun") posits a "superanimal" capable of "superthinking" and the purpose of our existence is not a physical one but extends beyond the padded room of three dimensions into the "extraphysical."

Usually every book has at least one sentence worth quoting and this is no exception: "The road to good intention is probably paved with Hells." More than a catchy saying to boost one's image in coffee shop palaver, it's the thrust of Mannings story. Upon reflection, this is a very underrated book.
 
I'm reading Ghost Train to the Eastern Star - Paul Theroux retraces his journey by rail across Europe and Asia that he first travelled in The Great Railway Bazaar thirty years ago.
 
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