July 2017: What are you reading?

[Bick]

A new month dawns. What are you folks reading?

I've just started In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford.

 

[Fedos]

I just started The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams.

 

[nixie]

Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives part one.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis & Zen Buddhism

 

[Danny McG]

I'm kicking off the month with R Scott Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" trilogy.
Think it's maybe the first of his work I've ever looked at

 

[Vertigo]

A new month dawns. What are you folks reading?

I've just started In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford.

I'll be interested in how you get on with that series. I loved the first, liked the next three, but found the last two became just too weird for me to wrap my poor little head around.

 

[Vertigo]

Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis & Zen Buddhism

If you are interested in Zen Buddhism I highly recommend Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel which is nothing like the rather more famous Motorcycling book but is rather a serious examination of Zen through archery. It was at one time required reading for the British archery team (which is how I originally came to it not that I was in the team!!!) but is really more about the philosophy than the archery. It is also quite short and eminently readable.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

It's more the Erich Fromm I'm interested in!

 

[tobl]

just tried neal stephenson's seveneves; ralph kern Unfathomed and tom holt, the management style of supreme beings. none of them caught my interest

 

[Extollager]

Current reading includes poetry of Walter de la Mare; The Water of the Wondrous Isles by William Morris, in the Ballantine Fantasy series; The Scientifiction of C. S. Lewis by Jared Lobdell; and A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson.

 

[Paul_C]

Still working through Gun, With Occasional Music which was described as hard-boiled detective crossed with sci-fi, but to be honest it's mostly hard-boiled detective with a light, fairly pointless dusting of sci-fi on top.

Not awful but not really sci-fi.

 

[williamjm]

As part of my quest to read at least of some of this year's Hugo nominees I finished Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning today.

I have mixed feelings about it, its ambition is admirable but sometimes it felt the book wasn't as clever as it wanted to be. I know the characters are deliberately archetypes but I find a bit disconcerting that none of the character really feel believable and although I found some of the characters interesting it felt like too many of the characters were lacking nuance. The world-building also felt a bit shallow, I like the general idea of the ambiguous utopia setting but it didn't feel like it had much depth to it and we barely got to see anything of what regular life in that society would be like since we spent almost the entire time focusing on the couple of dozen people who seem to make up everyone of significance in the world - again I think this is deliberate and even an important plot point but it does meant the world feels a bit empty. On the plus side, the plot does build up some interesting mysteries and does a decent job of gradually revealing plot points and putting in some well-concealed plot twists (particularly in regard to Mycroft's background). Initially I felt there was a bit of a disconnect between the plot about Bridger and the more general mystery plot, but I'm willing to believe that they might converge in the concluding volume - I think this is a story which might be suffering a bit from being split into two parts when it would work much better as a single novel.

 

[Bick]

I have mixed feelings about it, its ambition is admirable but sometimes it felt the book wasn't as clever as it wanted to be.

Ha! Nice turn of phrase that must apply to an awful lot of books.

 

[dask]

Finished these within a week of each other:

Montague's biography, while not an in depth study, offers a good and satisfying glimpse into the life of this reclusive author whose influence on 20th century horror can't be understated (though Ron Goulart in his otherwise excellent Informal History of the pulps makes the assertion that "much of Lovecraft's work is spoiled now by an unwitting silliness...).

I like Neal Stephenson. He tells good stories into which he pours a virtual Niagara of thought and ideas, but do his books need to be so long? Not valid criticism, I know. A book needs to be as long as the author and his editor feel it needs to be. But it still takes me a long time to read it. I'm glad I finished it but I doubt I'll ever reread it.

 

[dask]

The Scientifiction of C. S. Lewis by Jared Lobdell

If you can judge a book by its title, this should be a great one.

 

[MemoryTale]

I'm halfway through the Belgariad. I'm classing it as the Street Fighter movie of fantasy - dumb, but ever so much fun

 

[Dan Jones]

Just started IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. Only a few pages in, but already I've got the feeling that the rabbithole typical to Murakami's novels is not too far away. Am hoping it will be as good as it promises to be.

 

[Danny McG]

I'm kicking off the month with R Scott Bakker's "Prince of Nothing" trilogy.
Think it's maybe the first of his work I've ever looked at

I tried about 150 pages but really couldn't get into the mindset required to read all this trilogy.
Think I was daunted by having the next two big books looming in the background. This trilogy is now on standby for long winter's nights.

Instead I'm setting off with the four Major Maxim stories by Gavin Lyall.
I have, many years ago, read book two in this series, however I'm still going to re-read it once I get through book one "The Secret Servant"

 

[HareBrain]

I tried about 150 pages but really couldn't get into the mindset required to read all this trilogy.

Same happened to me. I think it is challenging and takes a particular kind of reader. I read most of the two (!) long prologues to book1 as a sample download on Kindle, and there was some effective stuff there, but everything was so slow and there was no trace of humour anywhere. Then I tried book4 (the start of the second trilogy, set several years after the first, and so I hoped a reasonable alternative starting point) and found the same. Some books I can open pages at random and find myself captured, even knowing nothing about the story. With Bakker I tried the same and found myself rebuffed or skimming. Which is annoying, as it seems to be one of the few truly heavyweight epic fantasies, and I wanted in. But I just don't think it's for me.

 

[hitmouse]

I have just ordered The Complete Novels of Flann O'brien to take on holiday.