September 2019: Reading Thread

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Vince W said:
Sassinak by Anne McCaffery and Elizabeth Moon. I've had this one forever and am finally getting to it. Very good so far.
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Whoa! Blast from the past, it's that long since I read it that I just might do a re-read on it myself.
Good story, iirc there was a series?
 
dannymcg said:
I would say he's done that with at least four of his books, I've read a good few but lost interest in his stuff because they got very 'formula-istic'
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I hadn't read him for a couple of years so I would guess that's why it came as a surprise, and not a good one, to me.

dannymcg said:
Whoa! Blast from the past, it's that long since I read it that I just might do a re-read on it myself.
Good story, iirc there was a series?
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There was indeed a series: The Planet Pirates series. Anne "wrote" them with other authors, but IIRC they were very uneven and Sassinak was the best by far. Seeing as Sassinak was co-written by Elizabeth Moon, Sassinak being the best would not be surprising in the least!
 
Moon co-wrote the first and third, Sassinak and Generation Warriors.

I don't know why it took me so long to get to it. I read Moon's Paksinarion trilogy and really enjoyed it. For some reason or other, I buy Moon's books but never seem to get to reading them. Time to rectify this.
 
Currently I'm reading:
Kobo - Ada Palmer's "Too Like the Lightning"
I've heard nothing but praise for this book, but darned if I can tell why it's so highly praised. So far, about 90 pages in, it has managed to keep my attention, barely, but it won't take much to have me moving on to the next on the infinite TBR list.

Audio book - Preston & Child's "Gideon's Sword"
Just started this one, about 20 minutes in. It's started with a decent premise, but Preston & Child can be pretty hit & miss.

Just finished "Rapture of the Nerds" by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow. Being a huge fan of both authors, this was a huge let down. The collaboration just didn't work. It wasn't bad enough to be a DNF, but it's not one I'll recommend either.
 
dannymcg said:
Now I'm into Going Underground by Michael Leese.
This is the first of the Jonathan Roper books, about an autistic civilian investigator who helps the police crack cases.
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Finished it and straight on to book 2 in the series "I can see you"
 
Finished The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin. I could write a thousand words of well-merited, sincere praise for this book and its prose, its imagination, its drama; yet at the end of it would have to admit I admire the hell out of it without fully loving it. But that still makes it a very good book.

I'm not utterly sure why I don't fully love it yet either.
 
Hugh said:
On 25th August @Victoria Silverwolf wrote

Any thoughts on that?
My personal favourite is "The Epiplectic Bicycle".
I read Alexander Theroux's "The Strange Case of Edward Gorey" (just 64 pages) some years ago and would be interested in learning more.
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He was unique, in both lifestyle and art. Although his manner was outrageously fey -- wearing dyed fur coats, earrings in both ears, fingers full of rings, and so on -- he was also a loner. (If I had to describe his personal life in a few words, it would be that of an asexual gay man. If that's a contradiction, so was Gorey.) An Anglophile who never set foot in England; a creator of strange little works that defy categorization (Children's books? Black humor? Surrealism?); an obsessive devotee of the ballet and late 19th century/early 20th century culture who was also a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; known to millions for his work on the play Dracula and the TV series Mystery! but almost unknown save for a few folks living on Cape Cod for the plays and puppet shows he created for local theater; he was one-of-a-kind.

The biography is detailed and well-documented. It may speculate a bit too much on Gorey's psychology, but never in an unconvincing way. You'll learn a lot, but at the end, you'll share the author's belief that the man and his work are, inevitably, not fully understandable.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
He was unique, in both lifestyle and art. Although his manner was outrageously fey -- wearing dyed fur coats, earrings in both ears, fingers full of rings, and so on -- he was also a loner. (If I had to describe his personal life in a few words, it would be that of an asexual gay man. If that's a contradiction, so was Gorey.) An Anglophile who never set foot in England; a creator of strange little works that defy categorization (Children's books? Black humor? Surrealism?); an obsessive devotee of the ballet and late 19th century/early 20th century culture who was also a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; known to millions for his work on the play Dracula and the TV series Mystery! but almost unknown save for a few folks living on Cape Cod for the plays and puppet shows he created for local theater; he was one-of-a-kind.

The biography is detailed and well-documented. It may speculate a bit too much on Gorey's psychology, but never in an unconvincing way. You'll learn a lot, but at the end, you'll share the author's belief that the man and his work are, inevitably, not fully understandable.
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Many thanks indeed for going into this detail. I'll definitely be reading it. I began with 1980s reprints of several of his small works/books then moved onto the Amphigorey collected works. In truth there are only several of his creations that I particularly like, but they are so wonderfully strange and spacious - "The Willowdale Handcar", "The Doubtful Guest", and "The Epiplectic Bicycle" come to mind.
 
I finished Distaff the other night, thoroughly enjoyed it :)

I'm now a little way into Early Riser - Jasper Fforde.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
I have just started My Life and Times (1926) by Jerome K. Jerome, an autobiography by the fellow best known for writing Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889).
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I wonder if that's where James Thurber got My Life and Hard Times, maybe conflating that title with a Dickens title.

And, to be on topic, now reading The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski.

Randy M.
 
Vertigo said:
I'll be very interested to hear your views on this. It looks quite different to his normal fare.
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I've read 10% so far, and to me it feels very much like a Jasper Fforde book. (I've read 5/7 Thursday Next books and the two Nursery Crime books)
 
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