March's Mystical Musings Upon Mouth-Watering Manuscripts

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I've almost finished Tolkien's Unfinished Tales. By far, my favourite is the one about the Istari.
 
The Mind Thing by Frederic Brown - a book that, from the internal evidence (a stamp inside the cover from a second hand book dealers that I used to frequent in a town I used to live), has been sat in my To Be Read Pile for at least 25 years.

That's how big my TBR pile is. I need to get a grip.

What Springs said but with bookshops.
 
I finished Atonement by Ian McEwan. I was really disappointed, and didn't see what all the fuss was about it. It took half the book for the 'event' to happen, then some time during WWII, and then the ending (which I wasn't impressed with).


Now I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Hopefully this one will be better.
 
JunkMonkey said:
The Mind Thing by Frederic Brown - a book that, from the internal evidence (a stamp inside the cover from a second hand book dealers that I used to frequent in a town I used to live), has been sat in my To Be Read Pile for at least 25 years.

That's how big my TBR pile is. I need to get a grip.
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I have books like that JM!
 
AE35Unit said:
I have books like that JM!
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Ditto. Less than ten years ago I finally read my copy of J. G. Ballard's The Crystal World, a paperback I know I bought new in a drug store in the late 1970s or early 1980s. And then there's the pb of Engine Summer I occasionally look at that I bought while still in college. And ...

As for current reading, I just started up Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon and Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand.


Randy M.
 
Bick said:
Certainly underrated. And, by coincidence, I just started Nor Crystal Tears, by Alan Dean Foster. Really enjoying it so far.
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Ah I picked that up from bookmooch.com a while ago and is on my TBR pile. Kinda ties into the aforementioned humanx/thranx books I believe.
 
Now finished Tanith Lee's Birthgrave. One major aspect of the ending was poorly judged, in my opinion, but overall I enjoyed it.

Teresa Edgerton said:
As you might expect, it being her first book, it's not her best, though it did make a big splash at the time. I'd read so many of her later books by the time I read Birthgrave I was a bit disappointed.
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Are there any later ones you'd particularly recommend? And have you read the other two in the Birthgrave trilogy?
 
AE35Unit said:
Ah I picked that up from bookmooch.com a while ago and is on my TBR pile. Kinda ties into the aforementioned humanx/thranx books I believe.
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Yes, its the first (by internal chronology) standalone novel from the humanx universe - it concerns the first contact between Thranx and Humans, told from the Thranx perspective. Its really good.
 
HareBrain said:
Are there any later ones you'd particularly recommend? And have you read the other two in the Birthgrave trilogy?
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I wouldn't recommend the other two books in the Birthgrave trilogy, since I don't think they are among her best books, either.

As to what to recommend, it depends on what you like, or are in the mood to read -- she writes just about everything! At least in every fantasy sub-genre I can think of, plus a little science fiction, quite a lot of horror (but that's largely vampires), mainstream, YA, and I've probably missed something.

For sword-and-sorcery I'd recommend the Vis books. For something with a Middle Eastern feel, The Flat Earth books. For rewriting familiar tales there is Sung in Shadow (her take on Romeo and Juliet) or "Red as Blood: Tales from the Sister's Grimmer" (fairy tales). For something a little twisted The Secret Books of Paradys (Volumes I, II, and III -- Volume IV gets too icky for me to recommend it) each book consisting of linked short stories which take place in an alternate fantasy world Paris and spans eras from the Roman to the modern. Or there are her novels set in an alternate Venice, The Secret Books of Venus, not so twisted, but also spanning a great period of time, from the Medieval to some future date. Or ... well ... a lot of other books that aren't so easy to classify. Mortals Suns for instance, or the Lionwolf trilogy.
 
I've finished "Foundation" and am starting "Foundation and Empire". I plan to read the first trilogy.

As famous as this work is, I can't say it's going to be a favorite of mine. I don't see myself in that "world" and don't relate to any of the characters. But I am really intrigued by the idea of psychohistory and how the politics are playing out.
 
Currently reading The Separation by Christopher Priest, my first by this author. Liking its gentle, mannered prose and hints of strangeness that, I'm promised, are eventually going to send this book into quite mind-bending territory. Also enjoy the strong sense of place that Priest manages to evoke with his descriptions of wartime England.
 
Just finished 'Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories' a great collection edited by Ian Watson who is in his own right a decent author.

Now onto Gaiman's 'The Graveyard Book' Hope its a return to form, on par with Neverwhere or American Gods. Found out the other day that he's partner to the singer from Dresden Dolls, trivia fans...
 
Well I finished my re-read of Way of Kings by Sanderson and have moved on to the even larger Words of Radiance by Sanderson. So far it is great.
 
I've just finished "Daughter of the Forest" by Juliette Marillier. I was very pleased to have re-discovered it when I saw it in the list of "mythic fiction books" given in the 75 word challenge last month. I had strong memories of reading a book about a girl having to spin a plant that ruined her hands, and some sort of spell with swans, but had been unable to remember the title/author until now.
It was an even better read than i remembered, but I'm not sure whether to get the next in the series as it swaps POV to one of her children.
 
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