August 2019: Reading Thread

I am currently reading Ruin Island by Kate Rhodes which might have the most passive detective I've ever come across in literature.

And listening to Still Life with Crows by Lincoln Child/Douglas Preston
 
Just finished Where the Forest Meets the Stars a debut novel by Glendy Vanderah. This is a quite fine novel. I was intrigued by the premise: A young woman comes across a child who claims to be an alien. Although romance was a fair hunk of the novel, it never felt to me like what I would call a "romance" novel. The characters were extremely honest with one another but it is the young "alien" who brings them together and drives the plot.
The frustrating thing for me was that there was no alien. Just a highly intelligent and highly troubled youngster. An alien would have been much more exciting!
 
I had to have some major maintenance work done on my car, so while I was waiting, I managed to read all of Patricia Highsmith's 1954 suspense novel The Blunderer. In brief, it involves a man who murders his wife and a man who doesn't murder his wife, and how their lives become intertwined. It's a very dark psychological portrait of all the characters involved, and a grim meditation on the thin line between innocence and guilt.

I was at the car shop so long I got started on my next book, Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994), a collection of written interviews with Samuel R. Delany on the various topics in the subtitle. Always interesting, if sometimes way over my head.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
I had to have some major maintenance work done on my car, so while I was waiting, I managed to read all of Patricia Highsmith's 1954 suspense novel The Blunderer. In brief, it involves a man who murders his wife and a man who doesn't murder his wife, and how their lives become intertwined. It's a very dark psychological portrait of all the characters involved, and a grim meditation on the thin line between innocence and guilt.

I was at the car shop so long I got started on my next book, Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994), a collection of written interviews with Samuel R. Delany on the various topics in the subtitle. Always interesting, if sometimes way over my head.
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Sounds similar to her book: The Stranger on the Train.
 
Parson said:
Just finished Where the Forest Meets the Stars a debut novel by Glendy Vanderah. This is a quite fine novel. I was intrigued by the premise: A young woman comes across a child who claims to be an alien. Although romance was a fair hunk of the novel, it never felt to me like what I would call a "romance" novel. The characters were extremely honest with one another but it is the young "alien" who brings them together and drives the plot.
The frustrating thing for me was that there was no alien. Just a highly intelligent and highly troubled youngster. An alien would have been much more exciting!
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This looks to have very good reviews on Goodreads... how did you come across it, or decide to read it, was it a recommendation?
 
Tobl, is he the chap who write Wizard's First Rule?

I started that (if I remember rightly). Found the writing quality very good but the sheer pile up of coincidences was literally incredible. And I stopped reading.

Also, rivers don't go across mountains. Rivers are famous for not going uphill.
 
thaddeus6th said:
Tobl, is he the chap who write Wizard's First Rule?

I started that (if I remember rightly). Found the writing quality very good but the sheer pile up of coincidences was literally incredible. And I stopped reading.

Also, rivers don't go across mountains. Rivers are famous for not going uphill.
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yes, the wizzard. also tried jack l knapp new frontier series... not enough to catch my interest. now with the ritualist
 
Parson said:
.
The frustrating thing for me was that there was no alien. Just a highly intelligent
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Major Spoiler :-

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Bick said:
This looks to have very good reviews on Goodreads... how did you come across it, or decide to read it, was it a recommendation?
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It was suggested to me by Amazon. I would bet that Amazon thought it would appeal to me because of my huge interest in S.F. "The Stars" part of the title, and I've been known to read quite a few mysteries/police procedurals which have more than a smattering of romance, voila! this is a book Parson might read and enjoy. And I did. If I were to judge it only on the "Romance" angle it would have to be the best most adult romance I've ever read. --- When I say adult, I am not using the word as place holder for hot sexual scenes. I actually mean romance as two people who are truly adult can experience it.

I decided to read it because it looked interesting. I love first contact books. It was a part of Kindle Unlimited, so I did not risk any extra money. And I saw that it was highly rated.
 
Chugging my way through a number of Serge Storms books by Tim Dorsey.

Kind of low-rent, rancid Florida noir. Redneck Carl Hiaasen, if you like. The eponymous antihero is a psychopath (this preceded Dexter by a number of years) with an obsessive love of Florida's trashier low-brow cultural and historic aspects, and an unfortunate need to end people who do not see things in the same way. Clever, funny, and very rude.
 
I am also about 80 pages into The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottleib. This is a history of Western philosophy from the late 16th-late 18th centuries. Fascinating. Nearly done with Hobbes. Spinoza next up.
 
Roger Zelazny: "Nine Black Doves. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume 5".
Short stories, essays, musings @1982 - 1990. Includes those in the "Frost and Fire" collection, and the last three Dilvish short stories.
I always find Zelazny's thoughts on writing SFF very interesting. Of the short stories I was amused by "LOKI 7281" in which the starting premise is that Zelazny's computer writes Zelazny's stories, not Zelazny. Zelazny is totally unaware of this. The story is narrated by the computer: "And reviewers say he's original. He hasn't had an original thought for as long as I've known him. But that's all right he has me". "I think his mind is going. Booze and pills. You know how writers are. But he actually thinks he's getting better".
There are also some extracts from his fan mail (which of course he answered less and less as it increased as he became more well known). For instance: "Earth's natural moon is gone. Incandescent balloon replicas are being used to replace it. This evil fact should be in textbooks, but isn't. Now what are you going to do about this?"
 
Finished Neal Asher's Brass Man. Pretty good. I wonder if we see Mr. Crane again.

On to David William's "When The English Fall", which looks like if could be something quite special judging by Werthead's review.
 
The ritmatist series is funny. A bit full for some People perhaps but i like it
 
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