December's Daring Descent into Dynamically Divergent Documents

[GOLLUM]

You know the drill...

Let us know what you have been reading in the final month of 2013.

 

[Extollager]

I'm reading a novel of the fantastic imagination that should be much better known, C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. This will be my tenth reading. It is remarkably different from his Narnian books or sf trilogy. I don't know that it is much like anything written by genre writers, so I am at a loss as to what I could compare it to that I could assume lots of Chrons people know. I will say this, that no one who has not read it should presume to speak about Lewis's "attitudes towards women." The narrator is a woman and her sisters are key characters. Somewhere in another dimension Emily Brontë has read this novel and had interesting things to say about it.

I'm also reading Rider Haggard's She again (sixth reading) and continuing with Michael Meyer's biography of Ibsen. Late-night reading bounces around between Peter Ackroyd's London, Eric Newby's The Great Red Train Ride, and William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, the last two being travel books.

 

[BetaWolf]

Finished Christy King's Talia last night. Good book about a young queen struggling against a vampire invasion. I'm currently reading Melissa Drake's Daughter of Mythos, about a teenage girl who has some weird supernatural powers. Good so far.

Picked up S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire, so I guess that's next.

 

[Ogma]

I am still reading Downbelow Station. I finished Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten by Bradley Beaulieu and started reading Mysterious Ways by Michael Stackpole.

 

[Bick]

I am still reading Downbelow Station.

What are your thoughts on it? I keep meaning to read it.

I'm currently reading Ben Bova's "Mars". Enjoying it, though reading it after Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars doesn't especially help it. I think Bova's book was released one year earlier.

 

[Ogma]

Hi Bick,

I am really enjoying Downbelow Station so far. The only exception to that was Chapter 1 which really was a ten page potted history of space exploration (with an emphasis on the role of the stations) up to the start of the story. I suspect that it was originally a prologue, and imho it would have served the book better as such rather than being the first chapter. I like reading history real and imagined but I found that chapter very dry and personally I didn't feel that it was required to follow the later chapters.

 

[Grunkins]

To offer a quick contrasting voice, I loved the first chapter of Downbelow Station. I thought it was well imagined and thrilling. A very impersonal, macroscopic future history of human expansion into deep space. I am a sucker for that sort of thing though.

 

[Grunkins]

Finished Iain M Banks' The Algebraist. It was pretty much distilled, pure Banks. I read an interview in which he said he wrote the book to see if he still had anything to say in the science fiction genre. He wrote it as a test of sorts. The book is packed wall to wall with SF goodness. He threw a trilogy worth of material and world building into it. Obviously he thought he passed the test because he went on to write numerous SF novels afterward. It was a slow read (lots of made up science fictiony words, especially early on, slowed it down) and much longer than the trade paperback's 434 pages would seem (lots of words on each page, larger than average sized trade paperback physically as well), but great fun. Sadly I'm down to only one M Banks book left - Feersum Endjinn (to be saved for a later date).

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Just started The Martian ambassador by Alan K. Baker.

 

[Vertigo]

Finished Iain M Banks' The Algebraist. It was pretty much distilled, pure Banks. I read an interview in which he said he wrote the book to see if he still had anything to say in the science fiction genre. He wrote it as a test of sorts. The book is packed wall to wall with SF goodness. He threw a trilogy worth of material and world building into it. Obviously he thought he passed the test because he went on to write numerous SF novels afterward. It was a slow read (lots of made up science fictiony words, especially early on, slowed it down) and much longer than the trade paperback's 434 pages would seem (lots of words on each page, larger than average sized trade paperback physically as well), but great fun. Sadly I'm down to only one M Banks book left - Feersum Endjinn (to be saved for a later date).

That was the first Banks I read, and I was sold. I loved the book and its enormous scope. And you're right it felt like I'd read a trilogy!

 

[Randy M.]

The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff

This is a solid entertainment dealing with a haunted house and coming-of-age-in-college. Tailor made for a movie adaptation, it still manages to get across five distinct and plausible personalities, and present an evil that is monstrous if a bit too ravening; I prefer it's quieter, wilier moments.

The first 3/4 of the novel are very effective build up of five students encountering each other over a Thanksgiving holiday where the campus is otherwise deserted and they have to cope with each others' company, settling in, becoming aware of the evil in the dormitory, suspecting each other ... Nothing really new here, but handled well and convincingly. The last 1/4 isn't quite as strong; the best ghost story/haunted house novels have a resonance off the page and into the reader's life, and I didn't feel that with this one. But the novel has a quick pace that drew me along and, again, I was entertained.

One of the blurbs on the paperback says it's a mash-up of Poltergeist and The Breakfast Club and that's not an altogether misleading description of the story and a fair summary of the commercial appeal of the novel.

Randy M.

 

[AE35Unit]

Next up, Antic Hay, my second read by Aldous Huxley. The other book of his I read was Crome Yellow

 

[Grunkins]

Finished Vicious by V. E. Schwab. Excellent book! Fast paced, compelling story, nuanced and well rounded characters (even the lesser characters).

The book starts with the well-used format of a chapter telling the current story followed by a flashback chapter showing the history of the main characters, but then it changes this up and uses the flashback chapters to go back to whatever character the story was referencing at that particular point (and, tastefully in my opinion, is not consistent in giving a flashback every other chapter, but has a few back to back current story chapters - I like it when there are inconsistencies in a format, it keeps things from feeling too pat and gives a book more texture). Also the chapters are very short. The author has a real talent for telling large amounts of story in small bits of narrative.

The book twists the superhero trope of hero vs villain into a more realistic realm of very flawed protagonist villain vs very flawed antagonist villain. The only real hero in the book is perhaps a dog. The story made me quick to suspend my disbelief, and otherwise unrealistic issues regarding physical health and the legal system didn't bother me a bit.

I hope (predominantly YA author) Schwab continues to write books for adults because I'll continue to buy them.

 

[hitmouse]

Finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This was the first of hers that I have read, unlikely to be the last.

One of the most refreshing novels I have read recently in any genre. Witty, sparkling, very clever. Terrific.

 

[HoopyFrood]

My reading since April...May? Has been taken up with Wheel of Time (with a break for the arrival of Scott Lynch's new book of course, woot) and it looks like that'll continue for a while longer. Currently on the tenth book but I think I'm starting to pick up reading speed again at least.

 

[GOLLUM]

Finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This was the first of hers that I have read, unlikely to be the last.

One of the most refreshing novels I have read recently in any genre. Witty, sparkling, very clever. Terrific.

I also enjoyed her Doomsday Book but it's not to everyone's tastes. Note also the recent SF Masterworks edition Time is the Fire : The best of Connie Willis. I've not dipped into my copy yet but it might be something worth purchasing, especially as some critical reviews of Willis that I have read conclude she is a far better short story writer than a 'novelist'.

Cheers.

 

[hitmouse]

I have just taken delivery of Doomsday Book. Sounds a bit different from To Say Nothing of the Dog.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint by Marc Bekoff (2010)

I picked this up at a thrift store which benefits the SPCA, appropriately enough. It's pretty much Animal Rights 101, compared with a more radical and profound book like Peter Singer's classic Animal Liberation. It's also much less controversial than Singer. Bekoff seems to be a very gentle guy who doesn't want to make anybody angry as he quietly suggests that you think about eliminating, or at least reducing, meat in your diet, and so on. Hardly anybody is going to openly disagree with what he says, unless they really like to hurt animals. A bit touchy-feely and anecdotal for me, although his heart is certainly in the right place.

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss (2005)

The author of the famous best-selling punctuation book Eats, Shoots and Leaves tackles various annoying aspects of modern behavior, from the loss of "please" and "thank you" to littering to businesses that expect the customer to do all the work to acting as if you are alone when there are other people around you that you are bothering. Written in a humorously curmudgeonly style, the book places much of the blame for this sort of thing on new technology (cell phones and the Internet.)

 

[Extollager]

I'm reading a novel of the fantastic imagination that should be much better known, C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. This will be my tenth reading. It is remarkably different from his Narnian books or sf trilogy. I don't know that it is much like anything written by genre writers, so I am at a loss as to what I could compare it to that I could assume lots of Chrons people know. I will say this, that no one who has not read it should presume to speak about Lewis's "attitudes towards women." The narrator is a woman and her sisters are key characters. Somewhere in another dimension Emily Brontë has read this novel and had interesting things to say about it...

Just finished that 10th reading. I warmly, even urgently, recommend it. I don't think it is a difficult book, but it is more challenging than most fantasy fiction or most novels because it offers so much. You should give it that first reading so that you can soon read it again...

A Latin teacher praises it here, but perhaps tells a little more of the plot than you will want. On the other hand...

http://mirabiledictu.org/2013/09/11/c-s-lewiss-till-we-have-faces-a-novel-of-cupid-and-psyche/

 

[BetaWolf]

I was a last-minute beta reader for one of my FB friends. Her book called The Saga of Menyoral: Hard Luck, is on Amazon. Excerpt: M.A. Ray | Reading, writing, and general weirdness. I'm reading more e-books by new writers and having fun networking with them than reading paper and glue books.

I enjoyed reading Till We Have Faces in college--my brother had to read it for a class then passed it on to me.