May's Magical Meditations on Masterfully Manafactured Manuscripts

[HareBrain]

Thanks Gollum. I like Patricia McKillip's writing in Solstice Wood, but wasn't that impressed with her Riddle-Master. Le Guin is up there, but what I've seen of the others I wouldn't put with Kingsolver ... but I freely admit that might just be a personal response to her style (or the style she uses in this book). There are others on your list I really should seek out, so thanks for providing the impetus.

A chapter from Lacuna I read last night contained a perfect description of what I like about her, and my other favourite authors. One character, writing about another, says:

"So fine for speaking, you asked him things just to hear what words he'd pick out in answer, for they'd not be the ones you expected."

I think one of the qualities I most love about her writing is that unexpected way of phrasing things, which because of their unexpectedness dart like a needle straight to your brain or heart or something. David Mitchell comes close to that, but some of his freshness of expression feels self-conscious.

 

[GOLLUM]

I picked Riddlemaster as much because it's one of her better known works and one I do admire. I like almost everything I've read to date by McKillip as I think she just writes such beautiful prose..

You are right though, in the end it comes down to personal taste..but I begin to better understand what you are are driving at...to this end I would certainly recommend Calvino, Carter and Schulz if you've not read anything by them before as I love their phrasing.

Still both of us are in agreement that Kingsolver (yes I finally spelt it correctly) is a fine writer.

Good night from OZ!

 

[Grunkins]

I'm hard pressed to come up with anyone who definitely writes better prose than Guy Gavriel Kay, whether literary or genre. Iain M Banks (don't think he's been mentioned yet) can hold his own in most circles as well.

That's rabbits! Get it wrong again and I shall declare warren you.

^I think you just won something.

 

[D_Davis]

The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry

The Last Picture Show is populated with some of the most despicable characters I've ever met. I've never encountered a group of characters as small-minded, petty, and bored as those found in Larry McMurtry's portrayal of life in the small Texas town of Thalia. People use each other, abuse each other, and bully each other, and basically do whatever they can to ruin each others' days and lives through selfish acts of infidelity and manipulation, and spreading lies of rape, homosexuality, and pedophilia.

Like Loneseome Dove, I'll never forget many of the moments in this novel. From the nigh-unbelievable and incredibly hilarious antics of the worst basketball game in history, to Sam the Lion's anger at growing old, the book is simply overflowing with passages detailing the lives of characters who find themselves' half-way to nowhere on a dead-end highway of life. They're all going nowhere fast, left without a snowball's chance in hell, and they all know it, and, what's more, they all know there really isn't a damn thing they can do about it.

There is a pervasive sense of sadness to this novel, a sadness that comes from a realization. When we're young, the world is before us, and it appears to us that our elders have it all figured out. And then as we get older, we begin to wonder if people do have it figured out, and it seems to us that there are some people who don't, and as long as we don't end up like that we'll be OK. And then we get old, and we finally realize that no one has **** figured out, and everyone is basically living one day at a time trying not to **** stuff up too badly.

It's all we can do to hold on.

That's life. Holding on. And what we need to do is find the stuff that is worth holding on to, and not letting go no matter what.

 

[Coragem]

I'm finally reading Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes. Just over half way through and so far 10/10.

The more I read the more I'm convinced. The Heroes is a masterwork.

No, it's not a sweet or romantic story about how dark ugly enemies are killed by attractive elves. But it absolutely succeeds in what it tries to do – expose the futility of war, with an ambitious few seeking recognition at the expense of the majority.

The characters are done to perfection, every scene is perfection, the writing is superb, the dark humour is genius.

It scares me to think how talented Joe Abercrombie is.

Coragem.

 

[Extollager]

I've been reading around in Tom Shippey's third Tolkienian book, Roots and Branches, a collection of essays. Most recently I've tackled "Noblesse Oblige: Images of Class in Tolkien," which starts with Shippey alluding to a Times reporter ringing him up for a comment on Michael Moorcock's assertion that Tolkien represented the values of a "'morally bankrupt middle class.'" Anyone who's curious about the topic should look up the essay.

 

[Randy M.]

Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem.

After the death of his wife, Abby, in a house fire, Richard Carter and his young daughter Serena go to live in the Deadfall Hotel, where rooms appear and disappear and the hallways sometimes start on one floor and end on another, and sometimes stretch the length of the hotel and sometimes farther. Richard has been chosen as the new proprietor under the guidance and tutelage of the Hotel's former proprietor, Jacob Asher.

And that's pretty much the plot in a nutshell. In the process of learning his job, though, Richard learns more about grief and its management, about loss and love and the resiliency of children. There is an except of the novel at Weirdfiction.com where some of the comments by Jeff Vandermeer allude to Bradbury, Peake, Edward Gorey, Peter Straub, and John Gardner. Heady company. I'd suggest especially that line of descent could probably be traced to Something Wicked This Way Comes (the first chapter is titled, "Funhouse" and that's a recurring allusion not far from Bradbury's carnivals) and some stories from The October Country, but it also reminded me of Gaiman's Coraline and The Graveyard Book if those novels had been written from the perspective of an adult rather than a child.

Not sure if DH is quite on a par with any of the works it draws from, but it's a very good novel and deserves a spot on the shelf beside them.

 

[gully_foyle]

The Penultimate Truth by PKD.

 

[elvet]

I'm still in the throws of my Malazan re-read. I'm on Return of the Crimson Guard by Esselmont.

 

[Grunkins]

Starting Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons today. I'm excited. Lots of people say it's his best.

 

[Timba]

Just finished The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle and really enjoyed it, looking forward to the sequel.

Finally got around to Hunger Games and it was certainly the page turner people promised it was. Currently reading the second in the series but literally just got started so do not have an opinion yet.

 

[Rodders]

Finished the Age of Zeus. Now on to The Age of Odin by James Lovegrove.

 

[FireDragon-16]

I'm reading Born of Silence by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Love her books!

 

[vanye]

Finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt). It came highly recommended and it did not disappoint. A "damn yankee" explaining the South. Now, that's comedy and I loved it.

Have started In Fire Forged (David Weber). Fun, so far.

 

[vanye]

No, it's not a sweet or romantic story about how dark ugly enemies are killed by attractive elves.

I share your appreciation of Abercrombie, too.

 

[Extollager]

Read Harlan Ellison's I, Robot screenplay. I enjoyed most of it, but I can see why it was, evidently, not deemed a good bet for filming, in that so much of the evident impetus (?) of the plot is the revelation that Byerley, the "messianic" world leader who has died, was one of Susan Calvin's robots, rather than being her secret lover; many viewers would have surmised as much, and word would get around that this is the solution to the movie's big mystery. Also it just isn't that interesting. Apparently solving the problem of interplanetary war was no big deal to this robot; the audience doesn't have that much invested in this escape from cosmic disaster, which is over when the movie begins and (unless I missed something in the barrage of flashbacks that makes up most of the movie) is never dramatized. I didn't find the investigative reporter for "Cosmos Magazine" an interesting protagonist (nor his lover). It doesn't seem to me the movie would have been fascinating -- which Ellison's Outer Limits teleplay "Demon with a Glass Hand" is.

 

[Grunkins]

Started Agincourt By Bernard Cornwell last night. It's my first Cornwell novel.

I finished Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks, and I really don't know how I feel about it.

 

[Extollager]

Question -- is there a readily available book collecting Lovecraft's early astronomical writings?

 

[j d worthington]

Yes. It's volume 3 of the Collected Essays, Science. This also contains both sides of HPL's contretemps with the Providence astrologer, J. F. Hartmann....

I am curious, though... why do you ask?

And, with the way this week has gone, I've barely made it through the first hundred pages of The Silmarillion....

 

[Connavar]

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

I have been reacharging my mental energy the last week for this i havent read PKD in over a year,way too long. This novel feels like it has more weight,realness behind it. Dick prose is crisp, his intelligence, his story is hard hitting from the start. What a haunting, nightmarish future.

The Final solution to African Problem mentioned in the book i dont want to know the full detials of no thank you!