September 2018: Reading Thread

[Randy M.]

Who's Stan Freberg?

Dask, just to add to Victoria's comment, St. George and the Dragonet is one of those things that gave me a case of the giggles first time I heard it as a kid. What rarer is that I still found it funny when I was much older. Freberg had a kind of free-wheeling and mostly good-natured humor that poked fun at the absurdities inherent in his subject rather than trying to gut them. I'd put his humor on par with that of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, if you're familiar with those.

Randy M.

 

[soulsinging]

Finished off Six of Crows by Leigh Burdago. It was pretty fun, but at times seemed every bit the YA title it is, while at other times being disconcertingly not YA. I often found the notion of this tough as nails gang being a bunch of teens a little hard to swallow (if anyone has seen the great and underrated film Brick, it kind of reminds me of that in a lot of ways, only Brick is somewhat satirizing noir and thus the disconnect works for its humor which I don't think is the intent here). Still, it was paced very well, had some truly memorable (and gruesome!) scenes, and the characters were both fun to root for and had solid chemistry. Still, a bit too breezy to really love.

So now I'm on to the opposite end of the spectrum with The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. This was highly recommended by my high school Latin teacher (surprising right?) many years ago and I've been wanting to read it ever since my wife and I visited the Abbey of Fontenay (name-dropped early on in this novel actually!). I'm long removed from my latin studies and my immersion in obscure Catholic theology and history, but am really looking for to finding out how much of this I'm able to understand and appreciate.

 

[tobl]

So now I'm on to the opposite end of the spectrum with The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. This was highly recommended by my high school Latin teacher (surprising right?) many years ago and I've been wanting to read it ever since my wife and I visited the Abbey of Fontenay (name-dropped early on in this novel actually!). I'm long removed from my latin studies and my immersion in obscure Catholic theology and history, but am really looking for to finding out how much of this I'm able to understand and appreciate.

you can also see the movie

 

[dask]

Sounds good. And, yeah, I'm no stranger to Rocky and Bullwinkle. That's how I found out what a flounder was.

 

[Parson]

Finished The King of Tides by James Swain. It is a solid mystery but not quite up to the level I thought such an awarded novelist would write.

 

[janeoreilly]

Read vivian shaw strange practice and now reading the follow up, dreadful company. I really like these. Paranormal/UF with a mystery plot - the mystery TBH was pretty thin in strange practice and it happened around the heroine rather than her proactively working to solve it, but the worldbuilding and characterisation are really strong, and she has a fun take on the vampire myth, as well as throwing in extras like mummies and ghouls.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Next up is an old, diminutive volume entitled Little Journey to the Home of Robert G. Ingersoll (1903) by Elbert Hubbard. Apparently this is one of a series of "little journeys" by the author; short biographies of illustrious persons. It's a pretty little book, although damaged by time, with lots of color illuminations within and around its text. A look at the first tiny chapter, which starts with two-year-old Ingersoll present at his mother's funeral, and ends fifty years later at Ingersoll's own funeral, suggests this will be more of a romantic, poetic paean to the "Great Agnostic" rather than a scholarly biography.

 

[Randy M.]

Finished Final Girls by Riley Sager. Good thriller, nicely incorporating a slasher movie narrative into a more developed and satisfying mystery plot. Quincy is dubbed a final girl -- in slasher film terminology, the last woman standing at a slaughter -- by the media, but she can't recall all that led her to being the only survivor of a massacre of her friends, and some of what she can recall she is ashamed of. Samantha is another "final girl". A third final girl they both know of commits suicide. Except it's not; closer examination shows it was murder. Now the two "final girls" have reasons to be suspicious of each other.

There are twists in the story, and the final one doesn't seem quite as surprising to me as some reviewers have claimed, but it fits what came before and for me ends the story satisfactorily. This is a good read if you like thrillers.

Randy M.

 

[Danny McG]

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith, number 4 in the Cormoran Strike series.

What a load of padded out absolute twonk this turned out to be.
The main story arc hasn't moved at all and the characters in this tale were all thoroughly unbelievable.

Not recommended

 

[Hugh]

Jack Vance’s Cadwal Chronicles: Araminta Station, Ecce & Old Earth, and Throy.
Much of the time, somewhat annoyingly, I felt compelled to keep reading at the cost of doing other stuff.

 

[tobl]

Red War- kyle mills/ vince flynn new book

 

[thaddeus6th]

Begun Silent Heroes, by Evelyn le Chene.

It's about animals who won the Dickin Medal, the equivalent of a VC. Only a little way in, but enjoying it so far.

 

[Anthoney]

Legion by Brandon Sanderson. I have never been able to stand the mutant character Legion. Not in the comics or the Fox TV show. I was a little worried by this book. Since Sanderson is one of my very favorite authors I gave it a shot. I'm about 25% done and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. While both Legion characters have some similarities this one is handled much better. He's likable and way easier to relate with.

 

[dwndrgn]

Got halfway through We are Legion (We are Bob) and got bored and put it down. Listening to The Serpent on the Crown by Peters and Baptism of Fire by Sapkowski in audio and reading Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey in digital form. The thing about the Valdemar books is that most of the main characters are Mary Sues but the stories are uplifting and make me happy so I like the books in spite of that.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Got halfway through We are Legion (We are Bob) and got bored and put it down.

My wife was the same - I really enjoyed it, but she was put off by the lack of emotional content.

 

[ChrisVH]

Just started Michael Moorcock "The Warlord of the air" its very good

 

[Hugh]

Herman Hesse's "Journey to the East". Wonderful. Only around seventy pages or so. I read it thirty or forty years ago, and thought it was OK at the time, then years later I found something of it was still with me and continued to nourish me. I'm wary of reading stuff again as it can be disillusioning, but I admired the simplicity of the prose even in translation, and loved his account of his youthful quest.

 

[Danny McG]

I've watched the film a few times over the decades and this weekend (way outside my normal reading preferences) I'm finally having a go at the book.

Margaret Mitchell
Gone with the Wind

 

[Paul_C]

The Masked City - Genevieve Cogman finished - after a number of books I've tried have ended up abandoned recently this was a nice change. Nothing special perhaps, but fun to read.
I've got the next one on my kindle, but after reading the review of Ninefox Gambit I thought I'd better get Raven Stratagem read before the review of that pops up

 

[williamjm]

I finished Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, which I thought was very good. While it clearly takes a lot of inspiration from various faerie tales (most obviously Rumpelstiltskin), it does weave an original story out of them, with some unexpected turns along the way. I liked the characterisation, all three of the main protagonists were interesting, and the book did a good job of making even characters who initially look like antagonists turn out to be somewhat sympathetic (with a couple of notable exceptions). I thought the setting was also done well, the beautiful but deadly realm of the Staryk was particularly atmospheric. I really liked Novik's Uprooted as well, this is probably similar in quality.

Next up I'm going to read Peter F. Hamilton's Salvation.