December's Deliciously Delirifacient Dabblings Into Fictional Diversions

[D_Davis]

I quite liked VALIS, but I was hoping for something of the calibre of "Scanner Darkly" and didn't get it so it was disappointing in that sense.

I can understand that.

They're both intensely personal works that reflect the incredibly disparate personalities inhabiting Dick's brain.

 

[FireDragon-16]

Recently finished The Final Hour by Andrew Klavan.

Got started on The Winter Prince by Julie Kagawa as well as One for the Money by Janet Evanovich.

One for the money is amazingly funny and I'm interested to see if Katherine Heigl will be able to play the role well when the movie comes out

 

[Mouse]

Oh it's not for want of trying, I've picked it up and read the first 3/4 chapters around 3 times now and I just can't get the energy to plough through the remainder of it. I need to be in a certain place to go back to that world and immerse myself in the characters again and I'm just not there.

Another thing about it is that the gap has been too long, I loved books 1 through 5 (4) and my hunger for them was insatiable but all these years later, the hunger just isn't there, I feel like I'm reading it purely to finish the story. Once I get over that, I'll pick it up.

xx

Again, I'm exactly the same. Except that I've only read the prologue.

Currently still reading The Possessions of Doctor Forrest which is getting pretty good. Got to page 69 (a while ago now) and suddenly had a moment.

 

[soulsinging]

Finished My Dead Body, which was a pretty solid ending to the Joe Pitt saga. I had a bit of trouble recalling who everyone was at first though.

Now I'm picking up my first fantasy epic in a while, 'Tigana' by Guy Gavriel Kay.

 

[Rosemary]

Finally got my copy of Legacy Of Kings by Celia Friedman! The last book of her trilogy Magister.
A marvellous writer, creating rather interesting characters and creatures!

 

[J-Sun]

Finished Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist yesterday after idiotically letting it sit on my shelf for a decade (it's a Y2K book). Sterling's one of my favorites but this ostensibly SF novel seemed initially to be mainstream fiction, became a bit of a surreal fantasy in places and the vaguest touch of AltHist in others, and was basically a bunch of symbolism. I spent the first half having a blast until the idea that I didn't know what the heck he was really on about (and that I still wouldn't by the time it was all over) became overpowering. While there were a couple of annoying tics, the prose was classic Sterling and, insofar as the characters were "real", it had great characters but otherwise it just kind of wandered around being clever. I'll keep it for an eventual re-read (when I re-read all of Sterling and write my best-selling critical survey, ha ha) and it may grow on me but I can't really recommend it at this point.

Examples of fun prose:

In one of our many settings:

As an outlaw state the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus had no flight clearance with the world's many grim, self-important civil air authorities. So the Republic's primary airport was, by necessity, a rather modest place. The terminal was flat and dusty, and surrounded by unkempt flowering shrubs. The airport's rusty radar scanner resembled a barbecue grill.

The starstruck young daughter (Zeta) of our protagonist (Leggy Starlitz) meeting the stunning superstar-to-be (Gonca) (who's the girlfriend of the Turkish heavy (Ozbey)):

Starlitz watched from a careful distance as his daughter approached Gonca Utz. Zeta bravely traipsed around the perimeter of Ozbey's thick-necked bodyguards, and intruded herself upon the actresses's attention. Miss Utz put down her clipboard, plucked out her Walkman earplugs, removed her Milanese sunglasses. She offered Zeta a radiant, unguarded smile that would have killed and cooked any male human being.

On a plane:

A stewardess passed down the aisle, with the trance-like step of a professional who lived between timezones.

Starlitz passed her three empty plastic liquor bottles and five disemboweled foil bags of peanuts.

And that's just some of what struck me randomly on pages 115-137 when I stopped long enough to note some. The whole 280 pages is full of gems. On the other hand, the "Dad! - What? - Dad! - What? - Dad! blah blah" and the "Yes, no, maybe" verbal tics of Zeta and Leggy, respectively, get a bit old and, while Sterling's fashion-statement descriptions serve a purpose and do good work, he relies on them too much and makes them do too much work.

And, as I say, plotwise and possibly symbolically/thematically, it's something of a mess. A con-man hustler manages a fake girl group (is there any other kind?), gets a daughter dropped on him, goes through some changes and some very strange "scenes", and observes the lunacy that was the 20th Century and that is the fin de siecle.

 

[Lobolover]

After many years of intending to do so, I've read M.P.Shiel's "The Lord of the Sea".

And well......saying I disliked the main character would be an understatement

Spoiler

especialy when he enacts his own version of the Norimberg Laws, pretty much verbatim because he wants to "help" Jews. And then there's his firing on a loaded passenger ship and sinking it, along with twelve others, as well as imposing his pseudo naturalist ideologic theories about ownership and land ownership upon the world like it was the Ten Commandments the Extended edition....but somehow he's still supposed to be the good guy

Spoiler

No Jew might own or work land, or teach in any Cheder or school, or
be entered at any Public School or University, or sign any stamped
document, or carry on certain trades, or vote, or officiate at any
public service, and so on

Still, good guy

 

[CyBeR]

I'm currently scouring my book shelves. After previously running into the unexpected gem that is Fredric Brown's Paradox Lost (which I can't properly explain how much I loved it), I'm currently dabbling into The nest beyond the shadow by Renato Pestriniero.
It's actually quite interesting, with a very Italian mood to it, and that wonderful feeling of old sci-fi and fantasy where the rules of reality take a very long vacation in a very far away place. I'm really enjoying it right now, though things have yet to really start moving (almost halfway through). It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma and sprinkled with Italian seasoning. Fun stuff.

 

[Vertigo]

Looks like I'll have to get it then! I think 'exquisite' is the word my friend used too! And Amazon keep insisting that I'll like it.

(I'm doing exactly the same as you with ADWD, by the way!)

Don't worry about it I have the whole series (Except for ADWD) staring at me sulkily from my bookshelves (which is unusual enough since I'm mainly into ebooks now). But that is probably the problem; having them all staring at me is just a little daunting - books that big could do some real damage - I think I'm just intimidated!

I've been in lodgings without internet since mid October and working horrendous hours so haven't been in here much and haven't posted any of my recent reading. So here is my reading since beginning November:

Flatland - Edwin A Abbot - excellent little book. thanks to Anthony for bringing it to my attention.
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny - enjoyed this much more than I expected to; very good.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe - All a bit too surreal for my tastes.
The Poison Belt - Conan Doyle - brilliant if a little preachy towards the end. I really have to read more Doyle.
Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game - Lois McMaster Bujold - good enjoyable adventures.
The Engines of Dawn - Paul Cook - my first book of his. Excellent idea, plot and storytelling but let down by some clumsy writing and/or sloppy editing.
Overtime - Charles Stross - nice dark SF/Fantasy take on Christmas. It's a free downloadable short story from the author's web site.
Gateway and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon - Frederick Pohl - I enjoyed the first book but was rather disappointed by the second.

Now reading Cowl by Neal Asher.

And a Merry Christmas to all!

 

[J-Sun]

Gateway and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon - Frederick Pohl - I enjoyed the first book but was rather disappointed by the second.

Right there with you - I loved Gateway but not the second. IIRC, I even made it as far as the third (not the fourth, I don't think) and quit. Fortunately, I remember the first working as a standalone. It certainly left a lot unanswered, but in a larger context - the book itself is "finished". But it's been a long time - that one's fairly high on the re-read list... which means that I might get to it within the decade.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Actually doing some -- gasp! -- reading again. Well, picking up Tom Holt's Flying Dutch in spare moments. I'm finding the humour a little forced, and the edition has some silly typing errors, but it's light enough and easy enough to get me back into the swing of reading.

 

[No One]

Same here with the reading. With exception to Pratchett & Gaiman's Good Omens (which was excellent) I've really tailed off on the literature.

However, I've got a hankering to re-read Tom Holland's fantastic Persian Fire, so will start that before the end of the week.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Too many distractions. That's what I blame.

 

[No One]

Too many distractions. That's what I blame.

Hah! Well I was gonna say...

 

[CyBeR]

Right there with you - I loved Gateway but not the second. IIRC, I even made it as far as the third (not the fourth, I don't think) and quit. Fortunately, I remember the first working as a standalone. It certainly left a lot unanswered, but in a larger context - the book itself is "finished". But it's been a long time - that one's fairly high on the re-read list... which means that I might get to it within the decade.

Yes, the first one really did not much need any sequels. I got to the third book and left it there. As curious as I may be about Annals of the Heechee (the fourth) I just can't have realistic expectations that the series would become as good as Gateway was.
Still, it's a much better series than Card's Ender's saga turned out to be.

 

[Vertigo]

Right there with you - I loved Gateway but not the second. IIRC, I even made it as far as the third (not the fourth, I don't think) and quit. Fortunately, I remember the first working as a standalone. It certainly left a lot unanswered, but in a larger context - the book itself is "finished". But it's been a long time - that one's fairly high on the re-read list... which means that I might get to it within the decade.

Yes, the first one really did not much need any sequels. I got to the third book and left it there. As curious as I may be about Annals of the Heechee (the fourth) I just can't have realistic expectations that the series would become as good as Gateway was.
Still, it's a much better series than Card's Ender's saga turned out to be.

Interesting, I was wondering whether to go on with them. The first was very good so maybe best to leave it there. Did much the same with Ender's; read the first two but haven't gotten around to continuing. I was fine with the first book's unanswered questions; all added to the Heechee mystery.

 

[GOLLUM]

The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe - All a bit too surreal for my tastes.

Interesting observations. Certainly Fifth Head, whilst I regard it as one of Gene's best works, is possibly not one of his most accessible given how it is constructed but with all things Wolfe a second reading is almost obligatory to gain further insight from the text. Have you read what most people consider to be Gene's greatest work, namely Book Of The New Sun? If the answer to that is NO I would still encourage you to do so. You are probably aware that Gene Wolfe is my favourite living SFF author..possibly my favourite living author right now, so my views are possibly a little biased but I do think Book Of The New Sun is definitely something every SFF fan should have a go at.

Happy reading and a Merry Christmas to you...

 

[Vertigo]

Interesting comments Gollum. I'll be honest, I think a lot of it went over my head. So yes a re-read will probably be in order. I felt it was maybe a brilliant book but couldn't understand it well enough to decide for sure I've not read Book of the New Sun but it is on my list.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Saw a tiny bit of the animated version earlier and it gave me the urge to start reading The Lord of the Rings again. So I am.

 

[gully_foyle]

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I'm a techhead so I got it for xmas. Interesting insights.