November's Novelistic Nurturings of Natural Numquids

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

I'm in the middle of The Book of Nothing by John Barrow, chapter nought follows the preface. :) That chapter's epigraph Antigonish also featured in the last book I read David Brin's Existence.
 
Finally finished the second book of Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, The Neutronium Alchemist. This book was much better than the first book of the series, which was pretty awful. I still nearly quit this book two or three times a sitting for the first three or four hundred pages. After that I was committed, and the story picked up. I think Hamilton's books are better in retrospect than they are while they are when actively being read. In retrospect I prune the book down to just the fun stuff. I forget the huge tracts of exposition and needless side story arcs (I seem to recall a good deal of time being spent on a trip to buy seafood in the first book, or in his Commonwealth duology, the hundreds of pointless pages spent on Ozzy walking the Silfen paths).

There are aspects of Hamilton's writing that really annoy me. He is a total stranger to subtlety, for example. Do not go into one of his books expecting elegant writing, you just won't find it. And his clumsy head hopping can be very jarring. We'll be chugging along, in the tight third person limited POV of a character in a spaceship hovering over a planet for a page and a half, then suddenly, with no demarcation other than a standard paragraph break, we'll hop over to the POV of a character on the ground. Or in the middle of a paragraph of third person limited narration we'll suddenly switch without any warning to first person interior monologue (no italics, just a very jarring switch from one sentence to the next - this only happens a few times, which makes it stand out all the more). At times his writing comes off as amateurish.

On the other hand, there is no one writing SF (which in this case probably stands for science fantasy, or space fantasy - what with the soul possessions and magic and whatnot) who writes such complete, detailed, and sprawling settings and stories. There are moments of thrilling, breathless action that work perfectly. Or there are times when I'm wowed by the awesomeness of the world and story. Sometimes he just nails it.

His books are worth reading, in the end. I have to really gear myself up for reading one of his books; I can't randomly grab one off top of my TBR stacks and jump right in. It will likely be a few months before I move on to the last book of this trilogy, and I hope when I do it will be worth the 1100+ page time investment.

I'm moving on to Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, a new release and debut novel I've heard very good things about. I'm excited to dive into it.
 
I had finally given time to finish Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. My review from Goodreads with some spoilers of the tone of the book:

This book was very different read for me in that it felt like reading two different types of books at once. There was this imaginative magical fantasy story with sorceress heroine growing up in far future Post Apocalyptic West African setting, culture. A story that build well on mythology,tradition of that culture and it is the kind of well written fantasy that makes me respect World Fantasy Award as literary award.

The creative African fantasy story was also grounded in reality by real world issues. It was profound in the calm way she wrote about seemlessly in a fantasy story things like gender inequality, weaponized rape, tribal and backward values on the worth of men and women. That made the book fell very real that i felt like reading a social realism novel by Chinua Achebe or Toni Morrison.
This book was surprisingly important read and great in many ways.
 
I finished Labyrinth, then moved on to far better writing with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which was excellent, and I'm two-thirds of the way through Bring Up the Bodies, which is even better.

For SF I've read Karel Capek's R.U.R., a play which was about as far from naturalistic as it's possible to get, Olaf Stapledon's Sirius, well written but too cerebral for me, and Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, which I found rather a mixed bag -- some of the short stories I liked, some left me cold, and all were steeped in the sexist assumptions of the 1950s which was very disappointing.
 
Finally finished Stephen King's "Wizard and Glass", (Dark Tower IV). Pretty good, but overly long to my mind. The man can spin a yarn, but he needs a better editor I think. If/when I move onto Book V, I hope his ka-tet of travellers actually make some progress toward the darned tower. In approx 2000 pages, they don't seem to have made much tangible progress.

I'm now reading two books: George Eliot's "Silas Marner", which I started before and have returned to after a hiatus, and yet another P.G. Wodehouse, "Summer Lightning", which is a Blandings novel, and is, of course, wonderful. I have a couple of SF novels winging their way to me from The Book Depository that I'm looking forward to reading: "Mars", by Ben Bova (due entirely to J-Sun's sterling review), and Stephen Baxter's "Manifold: Time", due entirely to positive reviews of Baxter in the literary SF thread on here also.
 
I'm now reading two books: George Eliot's "Silas Marner", which I started before and have returned to after a hiatus, and yet another P.G. Wodehouse, "Summer Lightning", which is a Blandings novel, and is, of course, wonderful.
I re-read Silas Marner every few years, it's by far my favourite of her novels -- more personal and intimate. I don't know Summer Lightning -- I've got most of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, but none of the Blandings' ones, I don't think. Is it a good place to start?
 
I don't know Summer Lightning -- I've got most of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, but none of the Blandings' ones, I don't think. Is it a good place to start?
Blandings books could be read in any order, but the correct order for the best five novels would be:

Something Fresh (1915)
Leave it to Psmith (1923)
Summer Lightning (1929)
Heavy Weather (1933)
Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)

These five books are generally considered Wodehouse classics, with "Uncle Fred" right up there with the very best Jeeves & Wooster novels (i.e. Thank you Jeeves, Right Ho Jeeves, Code of the Woosters, and Joy in the Morning). I've not actually read Something Fresh, the first Blandings novel, as I have found his style is not quite so developed (regards witty dialogue, etc) pre-1920's. However, its reputation is good. 'Psmith' is a very good introduction to Blandings and much is referred to from that novel in Summer Lightning.
 
I have finally made it to read Joe Abercormbie's Red country. So far so good, very "A few dollars more " in places. Before that I read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Blood of the Mantis, the third in the "Shadows of the Apt " series. Set in a world in which the population are all gifted with insect traits, Ant kinden (really Race) are almost a hive mind, Mantis are incredible swords men, Beetle are the engineers of this world, while looking human they are all very very diferent. Looking forward to book four shortly.
 
Greg Bear's Eternity second in the Eon trilogy. I enjoyed this; a good but not excellent book. But good enough that I will eventually read the third book. More here.
 
I finished Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. It was pretty good read, fast paced and fun.

I am on to The King's ******* by Rowena Cory Daniells. I have only read the first 30 pages but it has me on the hook a little bit, even though the writing has some classic sings of a debut book. I am looking forward to reading it though.
 
I finished I, Robot, and I quite enjoyed it. I definitely want to read more by Asimov, as this was my first foray into his work.

Now a re-read of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
 
I finished I, Robot, and I quite enjoyed it.

Oh this takes me back, that was my first "grown up" book, we had a sort of book club at school, you had a big poster of books and you had to choose one off it. I saw the cover on the older kids poster and wanted it. I think I was 10 or so. I enjoyed the Elijah Bailey storys from Asimov think they are his highlight personally. :D
 
Reading Bill Bryson's The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid and laughing a lot. His books really should be on any psychiatrist's prescription.
 
Finished Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice last night. Fantastic book. Best debut I've read in a long time, and probably the best 2013 release I've read. The fact that a dippy, poorly written novel like Redshirts can win the Hugo when a gem like Ancillary Justice is in the running irks me to no end.

Leckie's writing is both subtle and supple. The first person voice of Breq is pitch perfect, and perfectly consistent. Throughout the book I found myself thinking of Iain M Banks because of both the subject matter and the execution. This was a very well written book; a joy to read.
 
I just finished The American Book of the Dead by Stephen Billias (1985). It's hard to describe, but it reminds me in some ways of Vonnegut, Sheckley, and Lafferty. It's a surreal tale of a guy who has all sorts of strange encounters as nuclear armageddon approaches. The novel features two talking primates (one is Tarzan's chimpanzee Cheetah, and Tarzan also appears as a character; another is the Monkey King of Buddhist folklore) and one chapter narrated by an atomic missile, to just give you a hint of its weirdness. Not quite like anything else I have read.
 
Reading Bill Bryson's The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid and laughing a lot. His books really should be on any psychiatrist's prescription.
This was his book I perhaps enjoyed the most - wonderful. I'm looking forward to reading his latest book One Summer too.
 
I've been reading Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld book, Raising Steam, and whilst I don't think it's as strong as some, I still enjoyed it.
 
I finished Bring up the Bodies, then moved on to a couple of Ben Aaronovitch's magic-in-the-Met books, Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground which were fun but read one on top of another a bit too much. After that back to SF with Philip K Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said which rather lost me, and Consorts of Heaven by Jaine Fenn which I thought was excellent.
 

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