It's October. What are you reading?

[j d worthington]

Well, at long last I had a chance to finish off Cabell's "Biography of the Life of Manuel" -- took me well over 30 years to track them all down and read them... but, for me at least, it was well worth it. Surely one of the oddest literary journeys I've taken, but one I'll be going back to soon (I hope). This last volume was quite a hodge-podge of things, from essays to short stories to verse to bibliographic material... including much of the legal matter surrounding the obscenity case on Jurgen... and even a fair amount of those papers proved of interest, with a surprising degree of poetic appreciation from, of all people, lawyers representing the publisher! There was also a note in his "Evolution of the Biography" on something I'd not been aware of before: a letter he had written on Eddison's Worm Ouroboros which was published as a foreword to the Charles & Alfred Boni edition; going to have to look that up sometime....

 

[Parson]

J.D. Your patience and endurance are without peer! Thirty years??!!

I've finished Silent Witness by Rebecca Forster. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Forster does internal insight of her characters very realistically. I believe that she writes how people think and how they can come to conclusions which are sometimes insightful, sometimes dead wrong, and sometimes lacking critical information. On the other hand I had the murderer pegged in the first quarter of the book, and the big clues always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Sometime yet tonight I hope to pick another book to listen to while running in the morning.

I am now reading The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen. A military S.F. novel with the hero a chaplain whose tool to save humanity is religious faith? How could I not read this? So far I find it middling but has the time and opportunity to pick up.

 

[j d worthington]

J.D. Your patience and endurance are without peer! Thirty years??!!

Not entirely convinced it has to do with either patience or endurance per se... more like sheer, mule-headed stubbornness....

At any rate, it's pleasing that, after all that time and effort, I found that it was well worth it all. Cabell has definitely moved into my top 5 writers... actually, at this point, I'd put him just a hair behind #1 on the list, and this set (or lengthy novel) as a truly staggering achievement, not likely to ever be matched....

Now on to The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, of which I have read the introduction and foreword. Already I've noted one or two things with which I take issue, and a couple of slip-ups which could have easily been corrected ("Robert E. Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein", for instance, in a list of writers influenced to some degree by Lovecraft). But, overall, these were well done and the notes were at times informative even for a long-time reader/student of Lovecraft such as myself. The illustrations (including HPL and Sonia's marriage certificate; a reproduction of Lovecraft's will; a picture of HPL as an infant which I'd never seen before, etc.) are well-chosen and placed; I just wish some of them were of larger dimensions, to make it easier to con the details....

Still, to be honest, even though I look forward to reading this one, I'm having to fight off a tremendous urge to go back through the "Biography" again... there is soooo much going on there on so many different levels......

 

[Bick]

Swan Song, by Edmund Crispin. T'rific.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

How very bizarre, considering how obscure his works have become . . . I read that book two nights ago. There was one thing that I think he gives readers to make them feel quite clever for guessing it, but the actual solution to the mystery surprised me.

 

[J-Sun]

I am now reading The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen. A military S.F. novel with the hero a chaplain whose tool to save humanity is religious faith? How could I not read this? So far I find it middling but has the time and opportunity to pick up.

I'm going to wait for that to hit mass-market paperback (if it ever does) as I've already read the two stories that form parts of it. I read "The Chaplain's Legacy" first and loved it and then went back and read "The Chaplain's Assistant" (which was the first story) and, perhaps because most of it was implied in the sequel or because it was just less ambitious, I was less impressed. (Still liked it.) But if he's arranged it in the story order, the book should get better for you. If you've gotten to a peace conference with the alien queen and high-level brass (if I recall correctly) it should get pretty cool at that point. But I think he's probably doubled the length - it's not just a fixup of those two stories - and I'm not sure what it's like in book form. Can't wait to find out (in my kind of format). Anyway - hope you enjoy it!

 

[wam]

Finished Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors. Felt like a lightweight attempt at Iain M Banks at times but an easy read and not really challenging. Then Jeff Somers - Electric Church which was a lot more fun, possibly because I didn't have to do it for a book group. Now on something non-SF/Fantasy David Handler - The Hot Pink Farmhouse a simple detective novel. I'm a little further along than half way and don't know who dunnit yet.

 

[BigBadBob141]

"The Quiet War" by Paul McAuley, not bad, about a 100 pages to go.
Can be a bit heavy at times but full of interesting ideas.

 

[Parson]

I'm going to wait for that to hit mass-market paperback (if it ever does) as I've already read the two stories that form parts of it. I read "The Chaplain's Legacy" first and loved it and then went back and read "The Chaplain's Assistant" (which was the first story) and, perhaps because most of it was implied in the sequel or because it was just less ambitious, I was less impressed. (Still liked it.) But if he's arranged it in the story order, the book should get better for you. If you've gotten to a peace conference with the alien queen and high-level brass (if I recall correctly) it should get pretty cool at that point. But I think he's probably doubled the length - it's not just a fixup of those two stories - and I'm not sure what it's like in book form. Can't wait to find out (in my kind of format). Anyway - hope you enjoy it!

I'm not to the "peace conference" part. But I will entirely agree that "The Chaplain's Legacy" chapter? portion? is considerably better than "The Chaplain's Assistant." Right now the four (which I imagine to be the central characters) are slogging through the desert heading to meet others.

 

[ratsy]

I'm reading the new Brent Weeks third book so slow I will soon be reading the second book!!

 

[Toby Frost]

As an aside, the (excellent) 1950s comic book astronaut, Dan Dare, was originally envisaged as a chaplain. The Eagle, in which he featured, was started by a vicar and was supposed to provide some moral uplift compared to other comics of the time. As it turns out, he wasn't a chaplain in the end but the moral uplift was certainly there. Pointless trivia!

 

[Lord Soth]

I put down The Chimera Vector by Nathan M. Farrugia after 50 or so pages, hate to say it but the writing was was too amateurish. Instead I picked up Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos which I really enjoyed - you could tell it was heavily influenced by Scalzi and events like Black Hawk Down in places, but was a fun fast read which lasted a few days. Picked up the second Lines of Departure immediately afterwards.

On audio format, i'm still listening to The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling. I admit I only started it because it was by her, its subject matter is the complete other end of the spectrum to my usual haunts. It is interesting though and very well written, and I hear they are making a film adaptation also at the moment.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Just finished Teresa's fab Goblin Moon, now tossing up between Joanne Harris's Five Quarters of the Orange which should be nice and light, or Robertson Davies' The Cornish Trilogy which will be anything but. Having seen that it's got an extra .1 of a rating on Goodreads than The Deptford Trilogy, I feel it'll be meaty for me.

 

[Parson]

My audio book has moved to War Brides by Helen Bryan. About half done now and it is turning into an interesting novel about the lives of 5 young women (and to a lesser degree their men) during World War II who are thrown together in a British hamlet. I'm finding a lot of interesting things out as an American reading this and wonder how a Brit would see the novel.

Making slow progress on The Chaplain's War.

 

[Vertigo]

"The Quiet War" by Paul McAuley, not bad, about a 100 pages to go.
Can be a bit heavy at times but full of interesting ideas.

I quite liked this one but was consequently very disappointed recently when I read the first of his Confluence books - Child of the River - which was really quite dreadful.

 

[Dinosaur]

Amtrak Wars: Blood River by Patrick Tilley.

I read the first three books back in the 80s and promptly forgot about them as none of the shops stocked further books. Some of the cultural issues are a little jarring these days but it actually does a good job developing a working dictatorship rather than the usual sci-fi form of faceless stormtroops and slums no one cares about.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Elegant Hipsters by Donald Fagen (Steely Dan).

 

[Parson]

I just finished listening to War Brides by Helen Bryan. A cracking good read it was too. I thought the ending left a little to be desired if felt more contrived and much less likely than the rest of the book. The narration was absolutely superb. I missed the narration when I would occasionally read parts of it. Some of the Amazon reviews mentioned some poor editing in terms of spelling, capitalization and stuff but if there were much of that the narration did not reveal it in the least. I heartily recommend it.

 

[dask]

My Halloween novel this year about ghosts which may or may not be real, a house which may or may not be haunted:

 

[HareBrain]

Recently read Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, and Take a Girl Like You by Kinglsey Amis, and now it's back to fantasy with The Queen's Necklace by Teresa Edgerton.