February 2016: What are You Reading?

[Cathbad]

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Great book!

 

[tylenol4000]

I reading Genesis by WA Harbinson and really, really loving it. I'm a sucker for Alien/UFO conspiracy type stuff.

 

[tobl]

now reading: that which other men can not do, volume 15 a little help: did anyone everread steven konkoly? if so, opinions? i read the resume from the book but it just didn't cathc me enough. just seemed more of the same.

 

[Ajid]

Currently reading The Complete Robot, and then will start The Fall Of Hyperion.

 

[Toby Frost]

I finished Turtle Diary. Definitely recommended.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I'm most of the way through Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories (2015), a collection of tales by Charles Beaumont, who died of early onset Alzheimer's in 1967 at the age of thirty-eight. He may be best known nowadays for his Twilight Zone scripts (although some of the later ones were ghost written for him when the disease destroyed his ability to write.) It's interesting to note that someone who is clearly a genre writer is now being published as a "Penguin Classic."

 

[J Riff]

The one I remember was Yonder, with a great Powers cover. Nobody had much heard of him then as I recall.

 

[Tricanthos]

The Hugo winners Vol.1 (edited by Isaac Asimov/1972)

 

[Tricanthos]

These stories are worth the read if nothing else the first story in this collection called Darfsteller.

 

[ratsy]

I finally finished Malice by John Gwynne. It was a big, epic book, that starts off the story with a lot of build up. I did really enjoy it, and look forward to making my way to the sequels.

I am also trying to finish My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron on my kindle, and am about 70% through it. At the same time, I started The Hercules Text by Jack McDevitt on a plane yesterday.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm most of the way through Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories (2015), a collection of tales by Charles Beaumont, who died of early onset Alzheimer's in 1967 at the age of thirty-eight. He may be best known nowadays for his Twilight Zone scripts (although some of the later ones were ghost written for him when the disease destroyed his ability to write.) It's interesting to note that someone who is clearly a genre writer is now being published as a "Penguin Classic."

Picked that up and need to get to it. Of course, I read about half of The Howling Man collection a few years ago and keep meaning to get back to that, too. For anyone interested, Valancourt Books has reissued two collections and a novel by Beaumont.

Just started The Flaming Corsage by William Kennedy. Kennedy's books are based in Albany, N.Y. The most famous, Ironweed, was terrific and the basis for a good movie staring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Yet another book I've been meaning to get to for a long time.


Randy M.

 

[J-Sun]

At the same time, I started The Hercules Text by Jack McDevitt on a plane yesterday.

Nothing spoilery but you still may not want to read my comment until after you've finished it, ratsy. Still, figure I'll go ahead and say:

Read that recently in its revised form. Something about the general ending portion wasn't 100% (just 95-99% or so) and maybe keeps it from being an all-time classic but it certainly struck me as an extraordinarily good book. The last part certainly wasn't bad and it may actually be a classic. (Or should be, because I don't think it's actually regarded quite that way.)

(For folks who might be curious it's a remarkably serious and dramatically plausible look at indirect first contact told from the point of view, mostly, of a mid-level NASA bureaucrat and pulls in personal, social, psychological, religious, etc. perspectives - it's like one of the most-used tropes of SF made new and fresh. Excellent characterization and a sense of real people doing real things in real places despite being about utterly far-out concepts.)

 

[VKALFIERI]

Started to read Staked, by Kevin Hearne. Book 8 in the iron druid chronicles. Such a great series!

 

[HareBrain]

I finished Steven Erikson's Reaper's Gale, at last. It was a struggle, though, and I ended up skimming whole sections. There were some character deaths that would have upset me a couple of books ago, but here I didn't care at all -- the whole saga has become, for me, like watching an interesting game of magical/military chess, and having lost any emotional connection with any of the characters, I'm only enjoying it on that level. I don't know if that's enough to carry me through the last 3,000-odd pages of the series.

 

[ratsy]

@HareBrain I have always meant to read these. I finished The Gardens of the Moon (think that's the title) probably 7 years or so ago, and bought the second one but never started it. Now I think it's just too big of a reading investment for me. Maybe one day...

@J-Sun I see what you're saying. It is quite good so far, with very little action. I'm about 100 pages in, and intrigued by it for sure.

 

[Randy M.]

Forgot to mention in my last post that I finished The Black Wolf by Galad Elflandsson, a quite good throwback to pulp story-telling, but with a generally better feel for prose. Paul Damon, on vacation near Thatcher's Ferry, gets drawn into the long antagonism between the inhabitants and the Thatcher family that gives the place it's name. Unfortunately for the townsfolk the Thatchers include some werewolves along with other less savory relatives. There are allusions to Lovecraft's mythos but what the book put me more in mind of was a better paced, more cohesive Darker Than You Think (author, Jack Williamson).

Enjoyable adventure/thriller/horror story.


Randy M.

 

[HareBrain]

@HareBrain I have always meant to read these. I finished The Gardens of the Moon (think that's the title) probably 7 years or so ago, and bought the second one but never started it. Now I think it's just too big of a reading investment for me. Maybe one day...

Ah, it seems you're another one whose alerts I don't see!

I think it's a real shame his books got so bloated (which some have put down to writing them so quickly, in a paradox we're all familiar with), as after re-reading the first three, I thought Malazan was the best epic fantasy series ever. It's still hanging in there, but as I said, my interest is now entirely sustained by plot and ideas, rather than engagement with characters, which is a shame.

 

[The Bluestocking]

Still on my Lee Child binge - currently tearing my way through PERSUADER.

 

[Fried Egg]

I'm doing a fair amount of re-reading so far this year. I've just re-read "The Willows", "Ancient Sorceries" and "The Insanity of Jones" by Algernon Blackwood and now I'm re-reading "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K Dick...one of my all time favourite SF novels. I hope it holds up.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I am partway into An Apology for Rain by Jean Mark Gawron (1974.) This might be classified as New Wave science fiction. What's going on is rather vague. In what seems to be a future United States with a much different culture, a war may or may not be going on, against an enemy which may or may not exist. The actual plot involves a woman on a quest to find her brother who may or may not have started the war. The style is very introspective and difficult to follow at times.