February's Fantastic Folios and Fascinating Fables

[GOLLUM]

Wow...disturbing stuff Hoops.

I have a copy of that but I've been too scared to open it yet....

 

[soulsinging]

STILL reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... it's pretty decent so far, but the toll my new career is taking on leisure reading is so depressing it's kind of tainting the experience

 

[Taltos]

Finished novel by H.L. Oldie - which is a pen name for two Ukrainean authors - The Way ( or should it be The Road (it's Doroga in Russian)) - there are so many aspects to their writing I can't start to describe what this book is about. In the broadest sense it's about intelligent things and where this could bring humanity.
Their books really should be translated to english and other languages - but it would be tough job. Lets just say they usually are playing around with different mythologies (Indian, Japanese, Greek etc.) making it more realistic and at the same time linking it with our time.
If anyone didn't understand from the description above - I'm a big fan and usually I'm the one who doesn't understand fanatism too well.
Now almost finished with Scalzi The Last Colony - I really like his sense of humour and the action scenes aren't too bad either.

 

[Hypnos164]

Finished Shadowline by Glen Cook

Told from 4 separate view points in a non-linear fashion - each chapter has dates and it skips backwards and forwards from the narrative "now", the time of the shadowline war, on a chapter by chapter basis.

The plot superficially concerns the fighting of "the last merc war" ... but is really focused on the cycle of violence, revenge, obligation and obsession that lead to this final show-down, hence all the flashbacks...

The writing style is terse, even for Cook, and I can't help wonder if it’s a deliberate attempt to capture a particular style or feel (if so it’s not a form that I immediately recognise). The problem is that the "clipped" style doesn't leave a lot of scope for building any real sympathy with or feeling for the characters.

Epic in scope and stylishly executed but hard to connect with

Next up Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn

 

[purple_kathryn]

I actually enjoyed New Spring (WoT prequel) it made me want to read A Gathering Storm.

I haven't actually read book 11 yet though. Which is several books away on my "to read" pile

 

[Taltos]

Finished Scalzi Last Colony - I was "laughing out loud" (especially when there was dialogue between John Perry and his assistant) at some points and turning pages as fast as possible in others. I can recoment this book, and other books in this serie, to anyone who would ask about it.
Now back to Oldie Twilight of the World (from a serie which could be translated as Abyss of Hungry Eyes)

 

[J-WO]

MAN PLUS by Frederick Pohl. I love his deceptively simple prose. I read Gateway a year back and loved that too.

His blog is also fantastic by the way. A real piece of oral history regarding 20th century SF.

 

[GOLLUM]

If you like Pohl's work J-Wo, then you may like to get Platinum Pohl, a 30 story "best of" collection spanning 5 decades of his SF stories.

I've only dipped into it periodically but I think it's a very good representative collection of what Pohl has to offer.

Night......

 

[Talysia]

I'm having a change of genre now, and picked up Dissolution by C.J. Sansom.

 

[Toby Frost]

At the moment, Avilion by Robert Holdstock. It's a direct sequel to Mythago Wood, and to an extent is that story told in reverse, but there's more to it than that. Holdstock's not the greatest writer of dialogue, but his approach to fantasy is original and dreamlike. He effectively acknowledges that mankind invented mythical beings, but goes on to give these inventions a life of their own. I like the way he manages to introduce mysterious creatures without removing their mystery. There's nothing by-the-numbers about the world he creates.

Overall, I slightly prefer Mythago Wood so far, but this is an interesting book and it's worth reading just to be back in Ryhope Wood again.

 

[j d worthington]

Finished Macdonald's The Moving Target -- the man's prose is quite amazing at times, and the novel holds up well on rereading. Have now moved on to Before Adam, by Jack London; a book which may have influenced HPL with "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and almost certainly influenced REH with his James Allison tales (and possibly a little something here and there with his Hyborian tales as well....)

 

[J-WO]

If you like Pohl's work J-Wo, then you may like to get Platinum Pohl, a 30 story "best of" collection spanning 5 decades of his SF stories.

I've only dipped into it periodically but I think it's a very good representative collection of what Pohl has to offer.

Night......

Cheers. Definitely have to check that out; I've never read any of his short stories. What with this and Vandermeer, you're giving me quite a shopping list, G!

 

[GOLLUM]

Cheers. Definitely have to check that out; I've never read any of his short stories. What with this and Vandermeer, you're giving me quite a shopping list, G!

I haven't even warmed up yet...

Glad to be of assistance and let me know how you fare!

Cheers....

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

It's been ages since I've read a van Vogt novel, so I'm quite enjoying Mission To The Stars, although it isn't really one of his best novels.
Check this out for a sample of Van Vogt's romantic dialogue: "I would not have withheld myself in any event. But is is pleasant to know that I like you without - "she smiled- "qualifications."

 

[J-WO]

Reads more like a job interview than a romantic scene.

 

[Connavar]

Finished Macdonald's The Moving Target -- the man's prose is quite amazing at times, and the novel holds up well on rereading. Have now moved on to Before Adam, by Jack London; a book which may have influenced HPL with "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", and almost certainly influenced REH with his James Allison tales (and possibly a little something here and there with his Hyborian tales as well....)

Heh interesting Jack London writing,themes, seems to me have influenced most REH. When i read London i saw similarities in their writing.

Certain themes they have in common, plus the energetic,vivid,emotional writing.

Before Adam sound biblical.

I will be reading his short stories next, George Orwell seemed to think they are underrated works of his.

 

[SpaceShip]

Finished writing my fourth novel last month and am now reading all my stuff so that I can tie up all those loose ends in book 5 which I shall start just after Easter. Hope I finish them soon as I have a pile of stuff ready to read, such as:

Jingo - Pratchett
Warlock - Wilbur Smith
Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England - Ian Mortimer

 

[Toby Frost]

I recently finished The Time Traveller's Guide - an excellent book, and especially reccomended for fantasy writers.

 

[Hypnos164]

Finished Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn- enjoyable, urban fantasy stuff; doesn't break any new ground but is well executed.

As I finished that and Shadowline earlier than I expected I'm going to have to go to Waterstones before I get my train home and take pot luck with whatever they have in stock (or have no book for the journey).

 

[j d worthington]

Heh interesting Jack London writing,themes, seems to me have influenced most REH. When i read London i saw similarities in their writing.

Certain themes they have in common, plus the energetic,vivid,emotional writing.

Before Adam sound biblical.

I will be reading his short stories next, George Orwell seemed to think they are underrated works of his.

The few examples of his stories I've seen, I'd tend to agree....

As for Before Adam -- not biblical; in fact, I would imagine it raised something of a stink with the more fundamentalist crowd, as it is on the theme of evolution.... It is the tale of a modern man who recalls his "other self", Big-Tooth, a protohuman somewhere between the very earliest stages of our separation from the other primates, and the Neanderthal. These memories are from his dreams, which as a child he simply could not understand, and which terrified him (especially as he was a city boy, and here he is dreaming of the savage life of an early hominid in the raw), but who eventually, as a man, learns the key to them. The novel is his piecing together of these memories into a coherent story -- quite an entertaining one, too.

It isn't only the theme (modern man recalling a barbaric past life), but the handling, and even some of the phrasing and thought expressed, which makes me pretty darned sure Howard read and was very taken with this one. The similarities just are a bit too strong otherwise....

At any rate, I finished the book, and am going back to Poe after something of a lengthy hiatus....