July's Jesuitical Journeyings Through Literary Juxtapositions

[K. Riehl]

Finished Kings of the North by Elizabeth Moon; starting my advance reading copy of Ghost Ship by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

 

[Connavar]

You should get a copy of The Oxford Book Of Sea Stories if you do nor already have it. Also I believe the Classics Of Naval Fiction series pulbished by McBooks is very good. Here is a link to their site. They specialise in historical fiction. http://www.mcbooks.com/

I enjoyed the Master and Commander novel (and film) written by Patrick O'Brien and you've probably already read Joseph Conrad's Typhoon but his collection 'Sea Stories' is excellent.

Then there's Naomi Novi's Temeraire series. I met her in 2007 at WorldCon before she received the John W Campbell award for best new author and I've got most of the books in the series. They revolve around an alternate history of the Napoleonic wars featuring an air force of dragons and their crew. They're quite fun reads including some naval battles and she's a nice lady, so I'm sure she won't mind you handing over some of your money.....

Cheers.

Im gonna read Master and Commander next when i finish the last two Hornblower books.

I like Conrad and i plan to read his sea stories because he was a real sailor.

Hope the oxford sea stories have historical fiction writers that write good sea stories and not just famous non-genre. Often they try to be snobby. Best mystery collections with Hemmingway,Joyce Carol Oates etc like they wrote the best detective stories.....

 

[GOLLUM]

Hope the oxford sea stories have historical fiction writers that write good sea stories and not just famous non-genre. Often they try to be snobby. Best mystery collections with Hemmingway,Joyce Carol Oates etc like they wrote the best detective stories.....

Well hopefully the following pleases his Lordship....

I think its a pretty good mix of authors albeit several famous names you may not immediately associate with writers of Sea Stories. I think you should give it a go....

1. Initiation, Joseph Conrad 2. The Voyage, Washington Irving 3. A Descent into the Maelstrom, Edgar Allan Poe 4. I Have Been Drowned, Tom Hopkinson 5. Mocha Dick, J. N. Reynolds 6. The Chase, Herman Melville 7. A Tragedy of Error, Henry James 8. High-Water Mark, Francis Bret Harte 9. The Open Boat, Stephen Crane 10. Make Westing, Jack London 11. A Matter of Fact, Rudyard Kipling 12. In the Abyss, H. G. Wells 13. The Cruise of the Willing Mind, A. E. W. Mason 14. The Terror of the Sea Caves, Charles G. D. Roberts 15. False Colours, W. W. Jacobs 16. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad 17. The Ghost Ship, Richard Middleton 18. Ambitious Jimmy Hicks, John Masefield 19. The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, C. S. Forester 20. Poor Old man!, A. E. Dingle 21. Easting Down, Shalimar 22. The Story of the Siren, E. M. Forster 23. The Rough Crossing, F. Scott Fitzgerald 24. After the Storm, Earnest Hemingway 25. The Bravest Boat, Malcolm Lowry 26. Turnabout, William Falkner 27. The Frontiers of the Sea, Peter Ustinov.

 

[Fried Egg]

I finished Alastair Reynolds' "Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days" and now onto a collection of short stories by Henry Kuttner although I hear that many of the stories are actually collaborations with C. L. Moore despite not being mentioned at all on the cover.

 

[GOLLUM]

I finished Alastair Reynolds' "Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days" and now onto a collection of short stories by Henry Kuttner although I hear that many of the stories are actually collaborations with C. L. Moore despite not being mentioned at all on the cover.

May I ask which collection that is? I have a marvellous collection containing all of the Kuttner/Moore collaborations entitled The Two-Handed Engine....

The only Kuttner collection I have is one covering his Elak of Atlantis and Prince Raynor S&S stories plus a few stories in various anthologies.

 

[Fried Egg]

Oops...I forgot to say. It's called "Ahead of Time".

 

[J-Sun]

I finished Alastair Reynolds' "Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days"

What did you think of it/them?

and now onto a collection of short stories by Henry Kuttner although I hear that many of the stories are actually collaborations with C. L. Moore despite not being mentioned at all on the cover.

Odds are good. They wrote some stuff apart after meeting and some stuff was credited to Moore, but mostly they were written together and credited to Kuttner (or one of the innumerable pseudonyms they used, which can be seen as crediting both or neither but, when reprinted, usually got Kuttner's name).

---

I finished The House That Stood Still (which has two variant titles, neither of which were improvements (The Undercover Aliens (wrong), The Mating Cry (cheesy and irrelevant)), when it should have been 'The Changeless House' or something). (If it ain't a mobile home, a house that stands still ain't really all that shocking.) And, probably unfortunately, my 1980 Pocket Books edition seems to use the 'revised' (by other hands) 1960 edition. This means it has a lot of 'She had a surprisingly strong body. She held him almost as tightly as he held her. When it was all over, she lay for a few moments beside him' sorts of 'sex scenes' added by a publisher. Pardon me while I go take a cold shower.

Anyway, that doesn't get in the way too much and the rest is a very strong enjoyable tale from van Vogt that's remarkably coherent. It's not an all-time must-read classic but I definitely recommend it to fans of van Vogt as it's really good - the fast-paced, pile-incident-upon-incident, gripping read that he often excels at. Based on what little I've heard of it, I'd have to call this an underrated book.

 

[J-Sun]

Oops...I forgot to say. It's called "Ahead of Time".

If I'm reading my notes right, that's got 10 stories, of which 6 are in The Two-Handed Engine and "Deadlock", "Camouflage" (as by Padgett), "Pile of Trouble" (a Hogben story), and "De Profundis" are presumably by Kuttner.

(I've got Robots Have No Tails and The Best of Henry Kuttner (Ballantine) (and Bypass to Otherness for now) as by Kuttner, Judgment Night, The Best of C.L. Moore (Ballantine), Northwest Smith, and Jirel of Joiry as by Moore, and The Two Handed Engine as by Kuttner and Moore. I have yet to read 2-Handed or Bypass but heartily recommend all the rest. I'm sure I'll recommend 2-Handed once I get around to it.)

 

[Fried Egg]

I finished Alastair Reynolds' "Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days"

What did you think of it/them?

I thought they were good but not great. "Diamond Dogs had a great premise but somehow failed to deliver (to my satisfaction) and "Turquoise Days" was an interesting exploration of the Pattern Jugglers but was slow going. And they definitely benefit from the reader having prior experience of the "Revelation Space" universe (which I have). Worth reading, especially if you're already a fan of Reynolds.

 

[Ian Whates]

I thought they were good but not great. "Diamond Dogs had a great premise but somehow failed to deliver (to my satisfaction) and "Turquoise Days" was an interesting exploration of the Pattern Jugglers but was slow going. And they definitely benefit from the reader having prior experience of the "Revelation Space" universe (which I have). Worth reading, especially if you're already a fan of Reynolds.

I enjoyed Diamond Dogs in particular, which Al wrote in part as homage to Budrys' classic Rogue Moon, a book I've always loved.

 

[Ursa major]

Diamond Dogs is my least favourite Reynolds story. For me, observing relentless obsession is a bit like watching a fool continually running into a brick wall when an open door is just a metre to one side: it soon loses its appeal (and any initial appeal is more than tainted by sadistic voyeurism).


Anyhow, on to more pleasurable pursuits. And yes, I do mean my re-read of A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin, which I finished a couple of hours ago. Although I've never really been a big critic of this book, I now feel genuine enthusiasm for it. Yes, some of the most intriguing characters (and a couple who get a mixed press) from previous volumes are missing, and the book does visit what seem to be backwaters, and yet even more than in my first reading, I'm beginning to see how big, complicated and interconnected the story really is and this the need for all those chapters in AFfC.

A Song of Ice and Fire is like that fable about the elephant where four blind (or blindfolded) people each get to touch a different part of an elephant and think they've touched different objects: GRRM is letting us see the whole, put only in tiny glimpses. And because of this, I think what we see in AFfC is no less important to understanding the whole than what's presented to us in AGoT, ACoK and ASoS.

Highly recommended.


And now a moan: it's still more than six whole days until the next book, A Dance with Dragons, is in the shops.

 

[J-Sun]

I thought they were good but not great. "Diamond Dogs had a great premise but somehow failed to deliver (to my satisfaction) and "Turquoise Days" was an interesting exploration of the Pattern Jugglers but was slow going. And they definitely benefit from the reader having prior experience of the "Revelation Space" universe (which I have). Worth reading, especially if you're already a fan of Reynolds.

Yeah, that more or less corresponds with my impressions though I think my biggest problem with DD was (spoilers):

Spoiler

with Childe's memory dumps getting passed from clone to clone despite all the horrible ways some should have been lost and with the idea of a carefully assembled team composed of different supposedly vital skills turning out to be mostly useless cannon fodder.

I actually liked TD pretty thoroughly - my biggest problem was with everything being impossible to pronounce (and Turquoise being hard to spell when I write about it). But it wasn't the zippiest story, either.

Diamond Dogs is my least favourite Reynolds story. For me, observing relentless obsession is a bit like watching a fool continually running into a brick wall when an open door is just a metre to one side: it soon loses its appeal (and any initial appeal is more than tainted by sadistic voyeurism).

I get that, but that means he probably did a pretty good job of execution on that part in that case. Actually, there's a bit of sadistic voyeurism in other stuff of Reynolds, such as The Island of Doctor Grafenwalder (actually, "Grafenwalder's Bestiary").

I enjoyed Diamond Dogs in particular, which Al wrote in part as homage to Budrys' classic Rogue Moon, a book I've always loved.

Yep, Rogue Moon is one of the great ones. I think Ursa puts a finger on part of why I prefer the original (aside from technical/logical questions). Budrys' had a bit more compassion or connection to it. And less splatter.

 

[antiloquax]

Read "The Five People You Meet in Heaven". Didn't really enjoy it much. Still reading "Downbelow Station", which I do like! Spending a fair bit of time gathering ebooks to read on my Kindle! The only trouble is there are so many!

 

[Ursa major]

I get that, but that means he probably did a pretty good job of execution on that part in that case. Actually, there's a bit of sadistic voyeurism in other stuff of Reynolds, such as The Island of Doctor Grafenwalder (actually, "Grafenwalder's Bestiary").

Agreed. But when a character keeps doing it to themselves, for no other reason than an obsession, the word that most readily pops into my head is 'Idiot'**. And if that's the main thing driving the plot, I get to wonder why I'm bothering to continue reading the story.



** - Which makes the BDO in the story (okay, it isn't dumb, the character is) an idiot magnet.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Still making my way through Sherlock Holmes Vol 2. But once Tuesday comes around, I will be putting it down for A Dance with Dragons.

 

[Ursa major]

So, I hope, will I, LoW.

 

[Red 13]

Finished Mark Charan Newtons' "Nights of Villjamur" and really enjoyed it,so logically, i went out and bought the next book "City of ruin" and i just started reading it today.

 

[Diggler]

I'm still going on Game of Thrones, but have moved significantly past my better half. So have had to move onto something else. I have chosen Dog Blood by David Moody. This is the sequel to Hater, which I read about 2 years ago. While it's nothing amazing, it's still a solid action shocker that I'm enjoying.

 

[biodroid]

I decided to go with Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan and so far really liking it. It's got a cinematic feel to it.

 

[Ursa major]

Chances are, biodroid, that you will continue to like Altered Carbon all the way to the end.