April 2018 reading thread

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I've just started Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier.
I think I'm going to like it.
 
I'm maybe a third of the way through Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King.
Not as horror driven as some of his work, more how people react on different levels to a very weird situation.
 
Just finished what I think is the complete collection of James White's Sector General stories, in 3 chunky Orb paperbacks.

These are interesting, humane and frequently funny stories about the characters working in a giant space hospital, where the staff and patients hail from a wide variety of different species, which causes interesting situations and a number of existential difficulties.

The stories have interesting moral aspects without ever being preachy or leaden, and they lack cynicism, whilst still taking a wry view of personal idiosyncracies.

recommended.
 
A month ago I compiled a list (which I've edited from time to time since then) of a four-year reading project focused on the British (mostly English) 17th century -- the century of Milton, Bunyan, George Herbert, Pepys, Dorothy Osborne, and others. I've read Richard Ward's 1710 Life of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More since then, and am well into Keeble's edition of Richard Baxter's Autobiography. When I was an undergrad, somehow I read remarkably little from this century -- a manifestation of an electives-based curriculum (and this was as long ago as the 1970s). In fact, it's a rich and (for me) increasingly fascinating period. I want to restrict myself mostly to writing from the period, rather than reading a lot of material about the period.

I'm reading Bradbury's Illustrated Man and rereading Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. Still at hand for selective reading are Dickens's edition of the London clown Grimaldi's Memoirs, and the Letters of Robert Southey, which I started almost two years ago. This isn't a complete list of current reading. Several books are on their way from the interlibrary loan department of the library and the post office, too. Plenty of good things to read!
 
Rummaging through my loftspace I found SciFi author, Peter Beere's "Trauma 2020" trilogy of paperbacks first published way back in 1984-5, and as I recall hugely entertaining on first reading back then.

So have dusted them down and given then another airing, starting with the grim and dark-humoured "Urban Prey"
 
Reamde by Neil Stephenson.
The hard back is a brick which is too heavy to hold comfortably or trasport easily. It is a good argument for the Kindle.

The book itself is a rollicking page-turner of a techno-thriller. The plot hinges in a ridiculous twist in the middle, but if one can accept that it is a fun read.

Compared to his early SF, and the Baroque cycle, this is second-rank Stephenson.
 
hitmouse said:
Reamde by Neil Stephenson.
The hard back is a brick which is too heavy to hold comfortably or trasport easily. It is a good argument for the Kindle.

The book itself is a rollicking page-turner of a techno-thriller. The plot hinges in a ridiculous twist in the middle, but if one can accept that it is a fun read.

Compared to his early SF, and the Baroque cycle, this is second-rank Stephenson.
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i liked the Cryptonomicon. the others not so much
 
I've started a back to back re-read of the five Discworld books about Tiffany Aching, this ends with the last Terry Pratchett book "The Shepherd's Crown".

Is there a fancy name for a 5 book series?
 
I think they could also be quintet. Four-book series are almost always called a quartet. Would one change from -logy to -tet and then back again? Maybe one would. It's a crazy old world.
 
Finished Isaac Hooke‘s Flagship (Captain‘s Crucible). I really like well-written military SF, but this is one I would not count as such: cardboard characters, a pointless story and some of the most unemotional space battles in the history of SF (Our ship is hit and badly damaged. 235 crew members died. That‘s bad. Let‘s do better so we can win this battle). Needless to say I won‘t read any more of what seems to be an ongoing series.
 
I am about to start Warped Factors (1997), an autobiography of Walter Koenig. While I was at home relaxing from my cholecystectomy, I read both The Longest Trek (1998) by the late Grace Lee Whitney and Beam Me Up Scotty (1996) by the late James Doohan. Of course, I've also read biographies of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner and DeForest Kelley and Nichelle Nichols and George Takei and Gene Rodenberry . . .

Yeah, Star Trek biographies are my comfort food.
 
Just finished The Fifth Season, very good indeed.

It became clear eventually the reason for the 2nd. person narrative, and by then I had got used to it to some degree, but I still don't like it ;)
 
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