From Way, Way Back in Your Reading Life

[Extollager]

I also tried to re-read Swords against death by Fritz Leiber but couldn't be bothered to finish it.

That's funny ... I think I liked those stories quite a lot when I first read them, but now they don't seem to please me much, though I like some of Leiber quite a lot after all these years.

 

[Mr Fraaz]

That's interesting. Swords against death is the only Leiber book I ever tried. I should probably have a look at something else by him.

 

[Extollager]

That's interesting. Swords against death is the only Leiber book I ever tried. I should probably have a look at something else by him.

You might try You're All Alone. I read it every once in a while. The edition I have is this:

 

[clovis-man]

That's interesting. Swords against death is the only Leiber book I ever tried. I should probably have a look at something else by him.

You might try a collection by him such as Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber. 400 pages and 17 stories including a couple of Grey Mousers and the classic "Gonna Roll the Bones" and "A Pail of Air". A very good sampler. Complete story titles:

Smoke Ghost
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes
Coming Attraction
A Pail of Air
A Deskful of Girls
Space Time for Springers
Ill Met in Lankhmar
Four Ghosts in Hamlet
Gonna Roll the Bones
The Inner Circles (aka The Winter Flies)
America the Beautiful
Bazaar of the Bizarre
Midnight by the Morphy Watch
Belsen Express
Catch That Zeppelin!
Horrible Imaginings
The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars

 

[Mr Fraaz]

Great! Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

I am currently re-reading The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey. I absolutely loved these books when I was in high school, and so I wanted to do a reread to see how they stand up now. I started this reread at the end of 2009, and only got through the first two books. Not sure what happened there but I am picking up the third book now.

 

[Extollager]

This is self-indulgent, but maybe someone will be amused.

The line "Let's debag old Kingers!" from a poem that I was pretty sure had been published in the excellent, defunct magazine Encounter had stuck in my mind since I ran across it, at the University of Illinois Union Building library, in the 1980s.

I have just tracked down the poem at last, after some earlier unsuccessful efforts. It may be conveniently read here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yR2k3INNNacC&pg=PT209&lpg=PT209&dq=%22let%27s+debag+old+kingers%22&source=bl&ots=QEylE9TeSP&sig=is85hagslP5SWFhkXRUs6p2soAw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j_1yUa66A-Pm2gXG7IHICg&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

I remembered it, however, from the Nov. 1983 issue of Encounter:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1983nov-00094

Only -- would it have been a zipper? Buttons, wouldn't it rather?

Kingsley Amis was a writer of, and about, science fiction, although that doesn't figure into this poem. Hands up all you who have read something by him in addition to Lucky Jim.

I am far, far more interested in Sir Kingsley than in his fashionable son.

 

[hitmouse]

Yes to Kingsley. He used to live just around the corner from my current home in Swansea. He is remembered as a prodigious drinker, which is something in this town of prodigious drinkers.

His book New Maps of Hell is well worth tracking down.

Jake's Thing is quite good.

 

[Extollager]

Since 1974 I've kept a list of books read. Recently I happened to notice a Sept. 1984 record for the junior Bruce Bliven's Book Traveller. I had no recollection of it. I got hold of a library copy just now. I won't reread it now (though it is only 62 pages). It's a 1973 volume, taken from The New Yorker magazine, about George F. Scheer, a traveling trade book salesman or "publisher's commissioned representative." Bliven Jr. accompanies him to independent book stores (no chain bookstores) and says that the "total driving distance around Scheer's territory....is about twelve thousand miles." Scheer and another salesman "cover twelve states (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee)." The book's first stop is New Orleans. The changes in bookselling and book stores from 40 years ago must make an ironic parallel to the changes in New Orleans in the same period. I don't mean that the changes in bookselling and the closing of independent bookstores is comparable to the human tragedy of NOLA, but that, looking over the junior Bliven's book, I was struck by the sense of profound change for both business and city.

 

[GOLLUM]

Kingsley Amis was a writer of, and about, science fiction, although that doesn't figure into this poem. Hands up all you who have read something by him in addition to Lucky Jim.

I am far, far more interested in Sir Kingsley than in his fashionable son.

Ditto on that last statement. Mind you Martin is a talented writer in his own right.

I remember reading one or two things by Amis Snr. aside from Lucky Jim but it was not poetry. New Maps of Hell I agree is a useful work in the study of SF.

 

[GOLLUM]

I am currently re-reading The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey....I started this reread at the end of 2009, and only got through the first two books. Not sure what happened there but I am picking up the third book now.

UM..being on this forum may have had something to do with it...

I too quite liked McCaffrey. The original Dragons of Pern trilogy is arguably her best work...I recall reading later works but not being as impressed by those.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

UM..being on this forum may have had something to do with it...

I too quite liked McCaffrey. The original Dragons of Pern trilogy is arguably her best work...I recall reading later works but not being as impressed by those.

I am sure you are right.

The original trilogy is pretty good, but I rather liked some of the later novels as well. (I haven't been a big fan of the ones with Todd McCaffrey). I think Dragonflight is the weakest of the original trilogy, but if people can make it through that one, it only improves from there.

But that is partly why I was doing the re-read. To refresh my memory as to what happens in each book, but also to see how I like them now that I am older and have read more.

 

[Extollager]

I remember reading one or two things by Amis Snr. aside from Lucky Jim but it was not poetry. New Maps of Hell I agree is a useful work in the study of SF.

Has anyone here read his other sf novel, Russian Hide-and-Seek? His earlier sf novel, The Alteration, is fairly well known, but the Russian book never was published here in the US, so far as I know. I would have to get hold of an interlibrary loan copy again to give an informed opinion; over 25 years ago, I thought it was pretty good.

 

[Extollager]

Time to revive this thread -- I hope! How about it, people? What are you rereading these days that you first read years ago? I'd be surprised if there isn't some of that going on in the group right now. JD recently reread "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"....

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/548494-excellence-in-lovecraft-3.html#post1819742

I believe that I read about half of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in a 1975 science fiction class that I took from Brain Bond. I've started reading the book again with the intention of completing the reading this time.

 

[svalbard]

I first read Rosemary Sutcliffe's Sword at Sunset back in 1986. At the time it was an eye opener, a window into a world that was rich, vibrant and thrilling. It was the story of King Arthur except there was no Merlin, no Lancelot and no knights in shining armour. This book also introduced me to the wonderful prose and imagination of a very talented writer.

Late last year, at home suffering from a bad dose of the flu, and in need of some comfort I perused my book shelves and picked out my old copy of this book. It was like (I know this sounds corny) meeting an old friend and sitting down to reminiscence about better times. The book had lost none of its magic.

 

[Extollager]

Here's a related discussion over at Black Gate:

Black Gate » Blog Archive » In Praise of Paperbacks

 

[The Bluestocking]

On my Re-Read From Long Ago list:

1. Jane Austen's novels
2. Sherlock Holmes
3. Anne of Green Gables
4. Harry Potter
5. LOTR

 

[j d worthington]

Well, as I mentioned over in the monthly reading thread, I've begun a re-read of Herbert S. Gorman's The Place Called Dagon last night... it's been at least 30 years, probably closer to 35, since I read this one. I'm certainly catching things this time 'round that I missed last....

 

[psikeyhackr]

My very first science fiction book was:

Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18492/18492-h/18492-h.htm

I was totally mind blown when I read it in 4th grade. I probably read it half a dozen times before I went to high school, but that is what got me hooked on science fiction.

In 1998 when I began using the Internet regularly I had to select a handle so I used Alta Vista to search the net for "Dal Timgar". That is the name of the alien protagonist in the story. It was not on the Internet at all in 1998. So I used it for a while. It began appearing in 2002.

So I had to create a new unique handle.

But since the book is in the public domain it has turned up on Librivox and I have listened. I still think it is a decent story though technologically dated in a number of ways. But it was written before heart transplants and that operation is part of the story line.

psik

 

[Extollager]

My very first science fiction book was:

Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse

Has anyone read Nourse's The Universe Between? When I was a lad of about 12, I'd see that one in the kids' section of the public library but I'm not sure I ever read it, somehow. Should I have?