September 2017: reading thread

[Connavar]

I'm reading Ancillary Justice right now, its so fascinating to read, think about the use of language, the way its used to approach gender and pronouns. The way she, he is used, how as a reader not used it, has to confront the way we think, expect to see gender, gender roles.

It reminds me alittle of Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypa series, the way it explored, played with masculinity, feminity in the male, female characters, making Rhys the more "feminine" of the two and Nyx the more "masculine.

 

[Parson]

@Vertigo .... I went to have a look at Remnant Population. With your recommendation I would have gotten the book with Amazon Unlimited, or paid 2 or 3 dollars for it. But the Kindle version is $9.99 so I just couldn't make myself do it. I have pretty much stopped buying any "real" book because they are just to troublesome to read and store.

 

[Vertigo]

@Vertigo .... I went to have a look at Remnant Population. With your recommendation I would have gotten the book with Amazon Unlimited, or paid 2 or 3 dollars for it. But the Kindle version is $9.99 so I just couldn't make myself do it. I have pretty much stopped buying any "real" book because they are just to troublesome to read and store.

I know what you mean about paper books being a pain and yes I paid £8.64 for the eBook so much the same price in sterling as dollars and rather more than I usually like to pay. It's really a bit of a crazy price to put on a book first published in '96 though I'm seeing that more and more often nowadays; I seem to pay more for older books, now sold as digital, than new ones; the latter can so often be bought on some kind of offer.

I would still recommend it though!

 

[Parson]

I may think again. Thanks for not reading me the riot act for being such a cheapskate.

 

[Vertigo]

I may think again. Thanks for not reading me the riot act for being such a cheapskate.

No I sympathise; I scare myself with how much I spend on books. My last little flurry came to over £150! I really ought to use the library more but my local library has a pretty useless collection of SF.

Shame I'm not allowed to sell you my digital copy 'secondhand'.

 

[Parson]

Shame I'm not allowed to sell you my digital copy 'secondhand'.

True that. I guess that there is a way to share your books if you are in the same place. At least I think I remember reading something like that.

 

[Vertigo]

True that. I guess that there is a way to share your books if you are in the same place. At least I think I remember reading something like that.

I think we might not be quite classified as "the same place"

I meant to mention in my review that the book has definite overtones of H Beam Piper's Little Fuzzies. Different certainly but in some ways a similar feel.

 

[Parson]

Little Fuzzies! you are dating yourself there! They made for interesting reading, but in my opinion far from top notch S.F. I left reading that book thinking the author must have really, really, liked cocktails, because they were such a necessary part for every social interaction. And.... I didn't find the back story for how the Fuzzies got there to be very likely.

 

[Vertigo]

Little Fuzzies! you are dating yourself there! They made for interesting reading, but in my opinion far from top notch S.F. I left reading that book thinking the author must have really, really, liked cocktails, because they were such a necessary part for every social interaction. And.... I didn't find the back story for how the Fuzzies got there to be very likely.

Yes, I read it back to back with Scalzi's re-write of it (and quite recently actually) which I thought much superior and more believable. As I would also consider this Remnant Population to be!

 

[The Big Peat]

Finished Three Parts Dead. There are, I think on very cold reflection, a problems of substance, but the sheer style and wonder of it all completely overwhelms this. As a match of really cool idea and damn stellar writing goes, it beats everything I've encountered since... at least Lies of Locke Lamora/The Goddess Project, possibly as far back as Pratchett himself. I think I'm prepared to give this a 6/5 and, while I am a mostly generous marker, I don't usually feel the need to scream "Your rating system is invalid for how awesome this book is!"

I'll have to come back and revisit my feelings once they've cooled a little.

 

[Danny McG]

Finished Three Parts Dead. There are, I think on very cold reflection, a problems of substance, but the sheer style and wonder of it all completely overwhelms this. As a match of really cool idea and damn stellar writing goes, it beats everything I've encountered since... at least Lies of Locke Lamora/The Goddess Project, possibly as far back as Pratchett himself. I think I'm prepared to give this a 6/5 and, while I am a mostly generous marker, I don't usually feel the need to scream "Your rating system is invalid for how awesome this book is!"

I'll have to come back and revisit my feelings once they've cooled a little.

I have Three Parts Dead and am planning to start it Saturday afternoon (decorating/painting until then)

I note it says "book 1 of the Craft sequence" - do you know if there are further books in that sequence?

Thanks

 

[The Big Peat]

I have Three Parts Dead and am planning to start it Saturday afternoon (decorating/painting until then)

I note it says "book 1 of the Craft sequence" - do you know if there are further books in that sequence?

Thanks

There are five full-lengths, I think a few short ones, and another one coming soon (I think...) - I got the first five in an omnibus Kindle edition. The first five are in published order but not chronological order because... well, because, as far as I can tell.

 

[Danny McG]

Cheers for this.
I'll use book one as a taster then - in the past I've got three or four books of a series and not enjoyed them.

I don't mind just getting a 'book one' as long as it's clear that it is a 'book one'. I really hate it when a book just stops dead halfway through a story with no explanation (John Scalzi, or his publisher, did this recently with his new book 'Collapsing Empire' - nowhere in the book or on the cover did it say it was the start of a series. I bought it in good faith and was like "what?" when it suddenly finished)

 

[The Big Peat]

Cheers for this.
I'll use book one as a taster then - in the past I've got three or four books of a series and not enjoyed them.

I don't mind just getting a 'book one' as long as it's clear that it is a 'book one'. I really hate it when a book just stops dead halfway through a story with no explanation (John Scalzi, or his publisher, did this recently with his new book 'Collapsing Empire' - nowhere in the book or on the cover did it say it was the start of a series. I bought it in good faith and was like "what?" when it suddenly finished)

I would like to think I'm a mild-mannered, respectful, fair-minded man, but that sort of thing justifies some fairly Ghengis Khan-esque reprisals in my book.

Something I failed to mention - the Craft series is, insofar as I'm aware, a series of complete stories linked by being in the same world and the occasional repeat character, not a series of linked stories about the same people that are only complete if you read them all. Gemmell's Drenai chronicles rather than the Wheel of Time if that makes sense.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Finished Tacitus' Complete Works, now reading Dodge's biography of Caesar.

 

[Abernovo]

Finished Tacitus' Complete Works, now reading Dodge's biography of Caesar.

Tacitus? Takes me back to learning Latin (never very good). Agricola was fascinating, though.

Presently reading Waters and the Wild by @Jo Zebedee at the minute. Took a while to get started, due to recent increased workload.

 

[tobl]

Finishing WHEN EMPIRES COLLIDE by Stephen Bennett. Book 7 of the koban series.

 

[williamjm]

I finished Jo Zebedee's Inish Carraig which I enjoyed reading. I liked the characterisation showing how a group of fairly ordinary people coped with an extraordinary situation of trying to survive an alien invasion. I liked the setting as well, I thought it did a good job of giving the story a Northern Irish feel which distinguished it from all the other alien invasion stories.

There are five full-lengths, I think a few short ones, and another one coming soon (I think...) - I got the first five in an omnibus Kindle edition. The first five are in published order but not chronological order because... well, because, as far as I can tell.

I think book 6 has just come out (I saw people saying they were reading it on another forum).

Cheers for this.
I'll use book one as a taster then - in the past I've got three or four books of a series and not enjoyed them.

I don't mind just getting a 'book one' as long as it's clear that it is a 'book one'. I really hate it when a book just stops dead halfway through a story with no explanation (John Scalzi, or his publisher, did this recently with his new book 'Collapsing Empire' - nowhere in the book or on the cover did it say it was the start of a series. I bought it in good faith and was like "what?" when it suddenly finished)

I've read the first three books in the series so far and they would all stand-alone fairly well. The second book, Two Serpents Rise is set before the first in a different part of the world and has only a couple of supporting characters in common while the third book Full Fathom Five is in yet another location and has a mostly new cast (although some of the events in the first book have implications here). By the way, the numbers in the book titles indicate how they fit in chronological order, so Three Parts Dead is the third book chronologically although the author suggests reading in publishing order rather than chronologically.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I finished Jo Zebedee's Inish Carraig which I enjoyed reading. I liked the characterisation showing how a group of fairly ordinary people coped with an extraordinary situation of trying to survive an alien invasion. I liked the setting as well, I thought it did a good job of giving the story a Northern Irish feel which distinguished it from all the other alien invasion stories.

Thank you so much! Made my night

 

[Vertigo]

The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell - I have found Cornwell's writing to be very consistent throughout this series so far, and consequently I haven't written a 'review' of this one as pretty much everything I've said before applies equally here; great storytelling, gruesome but not gratuitous coverage of the inevitable violence, reasonably historically accurate and he always identifies deviations or speculative aspects in the historical notes (in this case he confesses to being a little unfair to the historical Aethelred!). So 'just' another great book in this series.