November's Novelistic Nurturings of Natural Numquids

[GOLLUM]

One of my odder titles as I was partly pressed for time...

Please post what you have been reading in November.

 

[dask]

Started UNDAUNTED COURAGE by Stephen Ambrose.

 

[Connavar]

I'm reading Colossus and Other poems by Sylvia Plath.

A writer I knew very little about beforehand but reading her poetry and the brilliant way she puts words together she is the type of poet I prefer. Style, wordsmith over poets about social ,political content or those that write playing literary games of writing difficult poems that just put words together.

Thankful for Plath's morbid taste in the topics of her poems in this collection. The poems in the middle of the collection became cute ones about the glory of nature. The last ones became again about twisted, dark things like death, old God's,dead animals,twisted muses. She is better with those

 

[Boreas]

I am finishing off "Myths of Light" by Joseph Campbell and am going to start off with "Startide Rising" by David Brin - a novel that's long been in my 'to be read' list and am just now getting around to it after 15 years of being stored in a box.

 

[dask]

Finished the Doc Savage adventure, pretty good. But books only get so much mileage on the literary concourse. Now it's time for pulp overdrive:

Look, if the Bestseller Police come by, just pretend you don't what I'm reading next. Okay?

 

[Danny Franks]

Read Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson.

A nice, short novel, from what must be the busiest man in writing at the moment (seriously, he seems to have a new book out every few months). Very cool premise, based on some 'cataclysm' giving select people incredible, supernatural powers, in the vein of comic book superheroes. Only, it seems these "Epics", as they're called, invariably use their powers for ill.

This is a world with so much potential, so it's good to hear he's planning two more books in the series. A great take on the idea of superheroes.

 

[j d worthington]

I've been off on an unexpected tangent lately, due to a number of factors. I actually found myself going this way in late October, simply because the material was so familiar that (unlike the mostly new -- to me, anyway -- things I was reading at the time) having to take it in very small installments was not a problem... and then I found myself simply hooked into the entire cycle again....

I'm talking about rereading Tolkien, which I've not done in any major fashion in about ten years (though I have dipped into some things, or even reread one or two, now and again). So far, I've reread The Silmarillion, and am about two-thirds of the way through Douglas Anderson's annotated edition of The Hobbit. I don't know whether this will continue for any length of time or not, but so far it shows no sign of abating. And frankly, I'm very much enjoying the experience, savoring the man's writing again by being forced to take it at such a pace, with no necessity to move on to something else....

 

[Stephen Palmer]

At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum, a YA novel by Mary Hooper. Very good indeed.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Doctor Sleep, which I'm finding surprisingly good having been off King for a while.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm reading several things, as usual, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare. The man's knowledge knew no bounds!

 

[ratsy]

Read Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson.

A nice, short novel, from what must be the busiest man in writing at the moment (seriously, he seems to have a new book out every few months). Very cool premise, based on some 'cataclysm' giving select people incredible, supernatural powers, in the vein of comic book superheroes. Only, it seems these "Epics", as they're called, invariably use their powers for ill.

This is a world with so much potential, so it's good to hear he's planning two more books in the series. A great take on the idea of superheroes.

I am still in the middle of this one...it is really good so far, I just have not spent enough energy sitting down to read...maybe this weekend

 

[Bick]

Doctor Sleep, which I'm finding surprisingly good having been off King for a while.

That's good to hear. I'm also reading the King: I'm still wading through "Wizard and Glass" (Dark Tower IV). It's picked up to be a good driving narrative (after a few hundred pages of being a bit slow). Enjoying it now, and only about 150 pages to go, which is good as I have heaps of other stuff I want to move onto now.

 

[Vertigo]

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. I'm planning on reading/re-reading all of John Wyndham's SF and this was first up. A re-read and it didn't disappoint. I thought it would feel more dated (having read it previously over forty years ago, eek!) but it actually still felt fresh despite a rather typical '50s preoccupation with radiation mutants. A very very good early post-apocalyptic book; highly recommended. More here.

 

[Ogma]

Plan to finish Steamscape by D. Dalton by the weekend. Then on to Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Recently finished The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. I enjoyed it, but it fell a little flat for me. Still one of the better books I've read recently though...and definitely will buy the next one the day it comes out.

Now I'm reading I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Finishing Drug of Choice by John Lange (Michael Crichton), which is a sort of psychotropic/speculative mystery. Not sure what I'll read after that!

 

[Kyza]

Literally just started reading THEM: Adventures with extremists by Jon Ronson. Not sci-fi technically, perhaps the ideas he normally promotes certainly seem very sci-fi however. I love Jon Ronson's previous books, and cannot wait to see how this turns out.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Literally just started reading THEM: Adventures with extremists by Jon Ronson. Not sci-fi technically, perhaps the ideas he normally promotes certainly seem very sci-fi however. I love Jon Ronson's previous books, and cannot wait to see how this turns out.

That book is hilarious. A bit dated, but hilarious.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Just finished the excellent At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum

one for fans of Anne Lyle who like YA.

now reading The Blue-Eyed Aborigine based on the wrecking of the Dutch trading ship 'Batavia.'

 

[Ursa major]

I rarely post in these monthly reading theads these days - the consequence of not reading much fiction in 2012 and then getting out of the habit of posting here - but I'll resume my practice of avoiding mentioning things like plot, but quoting the opening paragraph of a book.


I've just finished reading the debut novel of Stephanie Saulter, Gemsigns; the author was on a couple of the panels I attended at BristolCon.

Chapter 0 (at last: software rather than hardware numbering ):

When describing a circle one begins anywhere. Each point precedes and succeeds with no greater or less meaning; the tale they tell remains unvaried. There is neither cause nor consequence, for every moment is both. It is curious the resignation with which we decalre this pattern in human affairs, and the virtue with which we credit it in nature.
​

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For a first novel, the author has risked doing things that I, as an aspiring writer have tried (though not always successfully) to avoid. Chapter 0 - a prologue by another name - is, essentially, written in third person omniscient. (Long ago, so was mine, until an agent said that this wasn't done these days; I think he was right, and still is.) There are also what could easily be seen as infodumps; but as the plot revolves around the happenings at a conference, and the infodumps were excerpts from papers being presented to it, I wasn't really bothered by this (even though infodumps are also heavily frowned upon). Perhaps less forgivable are the handful of scenes where there is a (small) degree of head-hopping. There are one or two fantasy elements in the story, although it's written as SF. (The setting is a future Earth (22nd century) after the partial collapse of civilisation.)

However, I did enjoy the story**, and it was well constructed, delivering the effects I think the author sought at the times they should have been. And although one of the points of the novel is to introduce us to difference (and the different ways we might react to it), the novel did a good job of getting us to empathise with those who were different. (A good part of this is the result of using a "non-different" character as the main narrator.)

As an aside, I was very much reminded of some of Ken MacLeod books in some of the scenes, at least in terms of including political debates. This is not to say the author is writing from Ken MacLeod's perspective, of course.

Gemsigns is the first book in what I believe to be a trilogy. (The second book is with the publishers.) Even so, the book came to a pretty definite end. There is plenty of scope for the sequels, but the reader isn't left hanging at all.


Anyway, I fully intend reading the next book in the series. (I expect it'll be out in 2014.)



** - Although I write space opera - with all that entails (such as interstellar travel) - I admit to being drawn to biological SF. I was therefore drawn to a novel where the issues are very much played out in the open.