February 2019: Reading thread

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Finished The Russia House by John le Carre. The actual espionage stuff was as good as ever, but there was too much extraneous material an editor should (IMO) have weeded out, meaning I skimmed a fair bit, and overall I'm left with a sense of dissatisfaction and jadedness, despite the ending by no means being as bleak as some of his others. It strikes me now that all le Carre's books I've read seem to have the same tone. I think I'll give him a rest for a while.
 
HareBrain said:
Finished The Russia House by John le Carre. The actual espionage stuff was as good as ever, but there was too much extraneous material an editor should (IMO) have weeded out, meaning I skimmed a fair bit, and overall I'm left with a sense of dissatisfaction and jadedness, despite the ending by no means being as bleak as some of his others. It strikes me now that all le Carre's books I've read seem to have the same tone. I think I'll give him a rest for a while.
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Sort of mirrors my own feelings. I think with every Le Carre post-Karla, I read a lot of the book while enjoying it a lot and then at some point I've just had my fill and either skim to the ending or put it down. And then pick up a new Le Carre and enjoy the start of that a lot too.
 
Ian, what d'you make of it? Just curious.
 
The Big Peat said:
Sort of mirrors my own feelings. I think with every Le Carre post-Karla, I read a lot of the book while enjoying it a lot and then at some point I've just had my fill and either skim to the ending or put it down. And then pick up a new Le Carre and enjoy the start of that a lot too.
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Have you read A Perfect Spy? If I do read another soon, that would probably be the one.
 
Cheers, Ian. A while ago, when I had time/money, I was considering getting it but opted for something else.
 
I enjoyed Dorsai - it’s pretty good, and recommended as a piece of classic “mil-SF” for those who like the genre.

I’ve now cracked open The Old Curiosity Shop, by Dickens.
 
nixie said:
Every now and then you pick up a book and it's just what you need. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, thought provoking or even well written. All it needs to do is entertain and shut out the world, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids, fluffy, far fetched, with I feel a nod to the famous five ( Blyton Hill, even the dog's called Tim) and Scooby doo ( pretend monsters, traps) it kept me highly amused, I missed my stop on bus I was so engrossed.
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Good to hear. I picked it up recently and have been considering it for later this month or next.

Randy M.
 
Bick said:
I enjoyed Dorsai - it’s pretty good, and recommended as a piece of classic “mil-SF” for those who like the genre.

I’ve now cracked open The Old Curiosity Shop, by Dickens.
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I really hope you'll comment on it, in due course, here:

Ranking the Novels of Dickens

It's not one of the greatest novels, but here's one reader who thinks it is often under-appreciated.
 
HareBrain said:
Finished The Russia House by John le Carre. The actual espionage stuff was as good as ever, but there was too much extraneous material an editor should (IMO) have weeded out, meaning I skimmed a fair bit, and overall I'm left with a sense of dissatisfaction and jadedness, despite the ending by no means being as bleak as some of his others. It strikes me now that all le Carre's books I've read seem to have the same tone. I think I'll give him a rest for a while.
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I've got all his books and oft do re-reads, him and Len Deighton do the gritty downtrodden spy stuff so well
 
Finished two of my mystery/thriller books by Kendra Elliot: A Merciful Silence and A Merciful Fate. Both were solid stories which to me grip me right where I live about the importance of family and a life where struggling for what's right is highly difficult and often dangerous, but it is in the end victorious.

Not sure what's up next. I am reading a paperback?!!! Hate the size and inconvenience of the thing, but the story seems pretty good so far. Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale. S.F. wise I'm without. Will have to go hunting.
 
I finished Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside. It was a fun book to read, I'm not sure it quite has the depth of Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy but it might be better paced. Whereas the magic in his previous series felt more miraculous and unnatural, this time it is one of those fantasy settings where sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology with an early industrial society having being built on the magical scrivings. I did quite like the way it all worked, where the magic is essentially trying to trick objects into believing they are something other than what they actually are. The characters are likeable, although perhaps surprisingly it is the character who is a sentient magical key who is probably the most interesting of them, and the interactions between Clef and Sancia form the heart of the story. It comes to a satisfying conclusion for a first book in a series, although there are strong hints of where the plot is going to go in the sequel(s) (I'm not sure how many books are planned?).

Next up I'm going to start Josiah Bancroft's The Hod King. I enjoyed the first two books in the Tower of Babel series (although they weren't without some flaws) so hopefully this will be good as well.
 
Just finished Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings. It starts appealingly but slow, then starts really going strong once you understand what's going on, then it ends a bit abruptly.
 
About halfway through Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It has its flaws, but I expected some clunkiness in the writing going in. The characters are likeable enough, so I'll probably continue with the Dragonlance books and see if Weiss and Hickman improved their prose.
I just finished A Fire Upon the Deep by Virner Vinge. Scifi classic, I would say. Brilliant ideas, executed well.
 
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