It's January. What are you reading?

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Re-reading, for the first time in about 10 years. but for probably the 10th time ever, the fabulous The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe. My copy was bought in a second hand bookshop in Bedford Place, Southampton, in the very early 80s, mainly because Bruce Pennington's cover caught my eye:

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Fortunately the book was even better than the picture. In the days before the internet I went up to Andromeda Books in Birmingham to see if I could buy the next in the series. They did not have it unfortunately, and I had to make do with Titus Groan and Swords and Deviltry (the first Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories, a US import, not available in provincial bookshops) so I did not do too badly. The cover art for Titus by Alan Lee was almost as good as Pennington's Wolfe cover, in any case.
 
Just finished another Culture novel, The Hydrogen Sonata (Banks). A thoroughly enjoyable read, if not an outstanding one. Strange in an sf author, but for me it's the humour that's probably the most memorable facet of Mr. Banks' writing style.

On to Erikson's Willful Child ...
 
Just finished Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. The writing is beautiful and funny, and I really like the characters. It's the only zombie novel I've ever read (except half of World War Z, years ago) and surprisingly lovely. No, really.
 
@Hex , have you seen the movie? My wife just loves the movie and I was wondering how it compares to the book

I finished Firefight by Sanderson and it did not disappoint. For me this is a great example of fiction done right. The pacing is so perfect that you can read 100 pages and not even realize you've been sitting there for an hour and a half.

I've moved on to Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes. I had to try the guy just because he seems like such a character himself. I am curious to see where the book goes because in the first 60 or so pages, not a whole lot has happened but the writing is interesting enough to keep me intrigued.
 
I've just finished When Giants Walked the Earth, a biography of Led Zeppelin by Mick Wall. I now feel more prepared for the lifestyle that awaits me when I get published.

Next up: Truth and Fear, Peter Higgins's sequel to Wolfhound Century.
 
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@ratsy -- your wife has excellent taste (well, obviously). I liked the film a lot, and they're very similar but the book is even better.
 
I'm reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter's Chronicles of Mars and enjoying it in a funny sort of way even though I think if anyone tried to submit this standard of writing to an agent or publisher these days it wouldn't be read beyond the first paragraph. It could be the companion volume to Mittelmark and Newman's How Not to Write a Novel. Still, it's kind of addictive in a masochistic way.

I hadn't read Burroughs since I was a teenager and I hadn't been impressed then (Tarzan, I believe), but I wondered if maybe my memory was at fault. I don't think it was.
 
Ran across this word of wisdom: VULGARITY is “the impulse to submit the rich substance of human experience, sentiment, value and aspiration to a radically reductive leveling or simplification; the urge to assault the validity of sustained gradings and discriminations of value, so that in some extreme instances the concept of vulgarity is dismissed as up-tight or a mere mask for repressiveness.”
--Irving Howe
Critical Essays on Philip Roth, p. 243
 
Hex said:
@ratsy -- your wife has excellent taste (well, obviously). I liked the film a lot, and they're very similar but the book is even better.
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Well, yes, obviously good taste :whistle:

I will recommend the book to her. We saw it in the theater and I got her the Bluray at Christmas time this year. It is pretty good.
 
Kerrybuchanan said:
I'm reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter's Chronicles of Mars and enjoying it in a funny sort of way even though I think if anyone tried to submit this standard of writing to an agent or publisher these days it wouldn't be read beyond the first paragraph. It could be the companion volume to Mittelmark and Newman's How Not to Write a Novel. Still, it's kind of addictive in a masochistic way.

I hadn't read Burroughs since I was a teenager and I hadn't been impressed then (Tarzan, I believe), but I wondered if maybe my memory was at fault. I don't think it was.
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I had never read Burroughs, but I just read "A Princess of Mars" for the first time earlier this month. I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped. I thought it started off okay, but the hero gets more and more full of himself as he goes on. He is way too "perfect". He learns the language in just a few days, and can also read their minds but the can't read his. He has superior strength, skill, and intelligence, and is able to befriend each warring race separately. He is always at the right place at the right time to save the day, etc. And why does no one notice or mind that he is an alien who is actually killing a lot of their people?

Ate least I now know who John Carter is. But he is too much the stereotypical "hero" to hold up today.
 
Kerrybuchanan said:
Yep, I match all the above points and raise you by numerous examples of dodgy grammar, poor plot design, convenient plot devices which miraculously save the hero time after time, etc., etc. The list goes on.

I'm still reading it though....
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Love these books, in the same way that I love the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials. Pure, silly escapism. Not literature, but unrestrained imagination and excitement.
 
Now reading Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series. Not bad at all but not as addictive as, say, Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series, Simon R. Green's The Nightside series, or Sherrilyn Kenyon's Chronicles of Nick series.

Hmm... I seem to be on a roll with Urban Fantasy...
 
Extollager said:
Ran across this word of wisdom: VULGARITY is “the impulse to submit the rich substance of human experience, sentiment, value and aspiration to a radically reductive leveling or simplification; the urge to assault the validity of sustained gradings and discriminations of value, so that in some extreme instances the concept of vulgarity is dismissed as up-tight or a mere mask for repressiveness.”
--Irving Howe
Critical Essays on Philip Roth, p. 243
Click to expand...

Interesting. I think "vulgarity" is also sometimes a reaction to perceived pretentiousness. At least, that's my justification for certain of my reactions upon reading certain of Henry James' works.


Randy M.
 
just finished with star vikings by vaughn hepner. always quite a ride lol
 
Holy cow, Rain in the Doorway turned out to be a wild book. In a nutshell, a guy waiting in a doorway is pulled through it into a department store and forced by its three owners (a combination of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers) to become a partner, leading to all sorts of mad misadventures and situations appropriate to a sex comedy. Whether it can be considered fantasy, or merely a novel where all kinds of crazy, wildly unlikely things happen, is open to interpretation, although I think I see hints that the doorway in question opens into a world which is not quite our own.
 
Just finished Morgan's "Altered Carbon". About to start "Wolf Hall", Hillary Mantell.
 
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