July's Jesuitical Journeyings Through Literary Juxtapositions

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HoopyFrood said:
Once I've read enough to familiarise myself with it (my memory of it is spotty at the moment, it was during the time of running through books at a mad pace) I shall certainly let you know!

As you're a fan, you've probably read Eric Ambler? Background to Danger is another book I'm getting the urge to read, which I may have to do after Conrad.
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Eric Ambler is one of those authors i have look at books of from the shelves many times without actually looking remembering afterwards what he is about. Apparently he is important spy,political thriller writer. His books looked classics cozy mysteries cover wise though.

Secret Agent was the first book i saw from Conrad before i read Heart of Darkness in Uni class. It was a new paperback and the title interested me of course but i thought to wait until i read Heart of Darkness.
 
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Thank you for the heads up HoppyFrood- I just may have to borrow that book from my friend once they have completed devoured it.
 
A young adult book called A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I bought it very much by chance because I needed a 3rd book for the 3 for 2 offer at Waterstones in Amsterdam. It's a beautiful book.

I read the end and cried. Then I read the book through and cried some more.

The yew tree is the monster who calls “just after midnight. As they do.” It is a larger than life entity, a giant green man, a primeval force. It is life and death; past, present and future; terrible and true, dreadful and magnificent. Its voice is arrogant and wise, impatient and compassionate. Like life, it is ruthless. Yet it offers solace too.


Conor, the boy, needs solace. He is 13 years old, scared and lonely, and filled with guilt and rage. Conor’s mother has cancer and she’s dying. What does such knowledge do to a 13-year-old? What feelings and thoughts and wishes does it provoke?


Conor is trapped by the truth. He wishes for release, but dreads it. He wants to be happy but is afraid of its price.


The monster comes to Conor. Its purpose is to tell Conor three stories. When it has done that, Conor must tell the monster a story in return and it must be the truth.


The monster’s size and power, strangeness and intensity are intimidating but it is its knowledge of Conor’s secret that strikes the deepest fear in the boy’s heart. The secret must be spoken. The secret is Conor’s truth, the truth that the monster seeks. It is the truth that will set Conor free.
 
Speaking of non-genre reading (in a number of threads), I just started reading Muriel Spark's first novel, The Comforters. I am a huge fan of Spark; she has a unique style overflowing with wit, charm, and absurdity. I've read two of her books so far: In The Driver's Seat and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I do think that genre fans would get a lot out of her fiction. In some ways she reminds me of Philip K. Dick, in that her characters seem to each occupy their own personal realities, and even though they interact with other characters they are having their own personal trips.

There is a character in The Comforters that hears the sounds of a typewriter and voices in her head, thus causing her to wonder if she is a character in a novel. I'm wondering if this was the inspiration for Stranger Than Fiction?

And Spark also wrote some ghost stories which have been collected into a single volume.
 
Finished Neal Asher's Line War which is the last of the Cormac books. I actually found this one of the weaker Asher books I have read so far. The story, characters and action were all every bit as good as usual but, for me at least, the actual stoytelling was a bit muddled. There were a lot of POV's sometimes with large gaps between visiting them, leaving you wondering what that POV was up to last time it was active. The latter part of the book, as they all come together, was less muddled and built up to an excellent, if by then rather predictable, ending. This ending did redeem the book somewhat for me.

Now reading Torch Of Freedom by David Weber.
 
Not sure I've ever read anything Jesuitical ;) As a non-conformist protestant there's not a great deal of that kind on my TBR pile.

Currently reading Figures of Earth - James Branch Cabell.

having no internet and no academic reading to get through, whilst avoiding the Victorian winds, I've read through the following over the past week:
The Dancing Floor - John Buchan
The Scandal of Father Brown & The Secret of Father Brown - Chesterton.
Tales of Wonder - Lord Dunsany.
Skulls in the Stars, The Phoenix on the sword, The Scarlet Citadel and Worms of the Earth - R. E. Howard.
and The Crystal Crypt - P.K. Dick
 
D_Davis said:
Speaking of non-genre reading (in a number of threads), I just started reading Muriel Spark's first novel, The Comforters. I am a huge fan of Spark; she has a unique style overflowing with wit, charm, and absurdity. I've read two of her books so far: In The Driver's Seat and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie..
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is exccelllent. Intrestingly enough China Mieville recommended that book to me and I'm glad that he did.....:)

I've not read any of Muriel Sparks other works yet but I may do so now.
 
Am about halfway through Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis.

In this book Kublai Khan sends Marco, Niccolo and Maffeo Polo on one last quest before he will allow then to return to Venice forever. The Khan has grown older. He's not the man he used to be. he suffers from gout. His favourite son his dying. His grandson Temur is still too young to hold the reins of the empire. Whispers have come to Kublai Khan of a beautiful princess who has been asleep forever. He hopes that she knows the secrets of immortality and will pass them on to him. So the Polos go off on a quest to find this mysterious princess sleeping among thorns in a land far far away.
 
I'm still on an apocalyptic binge. I'm bouncing between Dawn's Uncertain Light by Neal Barrett Jr. This the sequel to Through Darkest America, but I have had no luck tracking that down. Plus In the Drift by Michael Swanwick.
 
GOLLUM said:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is exccelllent. Intrestingly enough China Mieville recommended that book to me and I'm glad that he did.....:)

I've not read any of Muriel Sparks other works yet but I may do so now.
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Mieville's a fan, eh? That's cool.

She's amazing. In the Driver's Seat is a masterpiece. One of the best character studies I've ever read.
 
For my part, I'm done with Lord Foul's Bane. I liked it. A pretty good read, but the endless whining of the Unbeliever does get a wee bit tiresome. Hopefully, there's less "woe is me" and more plot developments in the rest of the series. And on that note, I have now started the second Thomas Covenant book, The Illearth War.

I am also reading The Lies of Locke Lamora on my Nook simultaneously. (Well, not really simultaneously. I can only read one at a time...)
 
D_Davis said:
Mieville's a fan, eh? That's cool.

She's amazing. In the Driver's Seat is a masterpiece. One of the best character studies I've ever read.
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Indeed. I've had the good fortune to meet China a couple of times now and chat with him. An incredibly articulate individual. Like Gaiman, amongst the most personable SFF authors I've met and always willing to share some of their experiences in books...:)

I'll follow-up on In The Driver's Seat.
 
GOLLUM said:
Indeed. I've had the good fortune to meet China a couple of times now and chat with him. An incredibly articulate individual. Like Gaiman, amongst the most personable SFF authors I've met and always willing to share some of their experiences in books...:)

I'll follow-up on In The Driver's Seat.
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Very cool.

While I don't care for Gaiman's writing at all, he does seem like an insanely nice and affable guy. He'd probably be a blast to sit and talk with.

Oh, and the Spark book is just called The Driver's Seat - for some reason I always want to add an In in there. :)
 
Rereading E.T.A Hoffman's short, The Sandman. Little bit obsessed with the Sandman figure at the moment, it would seem.
 
I have finished S Andrew Swann's Apothesis trilogy (Prophets, Heretics, Messiah) - a decent sci-fi trilogy in all, although suffered from Deux Ex Machina at the end and some of the I got a little bored of the nano-technology 'magic' that pervaded throughout.

Have just started Tony Ballantyne's Twisted Metal, a few chapters in and it promised to be a great start to a series - a novel look at AI and the lives of robots. Looking forward to this.

Oh, and GRRM's book is on its way, although I think I'll do a re-read before I start on that, and I have the HBO series to go through too...
 
Devil's Advocate, I've also ordered A Song of Ice and Fire. Should arrive soon, hopefully.

The Lies of Locke Lamora has a slightly slow start, I thought, but once it gets going it's fantastic.
 
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