December Reading Thread

[Ian Fortytwo]

I've just finished reading North Korea Journal, by Sir Michael Palin. It was a brilliant read telling you about North Korea, and how more open they are slowly coming. A very atheistic country they are, where bibles are banned, and religion is frowned upon. 9/10.

My next read is A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, by Charles Dickens.

 

[Av Demeisen]

I've just finished reading North Korea Journal, by Sir Michael Palin. It was a brilliant read telling you about North Korea, and how more open they are slowly coming. A very atheistic country they are, where bibles are banned, and religion is frowned upon. 9/10.

And where the Dear Leader rides regularly upon a white horse up a sacred mountain. Oh, and he apparently has superpowers like being able to control the weather!

 

[Danny McG]

Good thing the photos don't show the hard pink endpapers then.

Really? Pink? Or are you just fooling?

 

[Av Demeisen]

Really? Pink? Or are you just fooling?

No. I'm deadly serious.

 

[tobl]

I've just finished reading North Korea Journal, by Sir Michael Palin. It was a brilliant read telling you about North Korea, and how more open they are slowly coming. A very atheistic country they are, where bibles are banned, and religion is frowned upon. 9/10.

My next read is A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, by Charles Dickens.

be careful what you see on tv. there's a new version of the carol in tv that is just awful

 

[Parson]

Finished The Solar War by A.G. Riddle good, but a bit down from Winter World the first in the series. I'd have given W.W. a 4+ rating and S.W. a 4- rating. There is a third (and last) in the series, The Lost Colony. I will very likely read it as well but for right now I've done a serious change of gears and am reading The King David Report by Stefan Heym. This is an interesting book to try to categorize. First it is published by The Northwestern University Press. So that pretty much takes out any Christian bias in the book. It also turns out that Stefan Heym is his writer's pen name. His actual name was Helmut Flieg, who died in 2001. He was born in Nazi Germany and emigrated to America during the Nazi era of the 30's. But during the Korean War he became disenchanted with the American way of of life and returned to East Germany! So all of the easily understood reasons why he would move away from the United States after leaving Germany take flight like some kind of erratic butterfly.

I have only read the 40 pages. The author assumes a lot of Biblical knowledge about the story of King David. On the other hand, he seems to believe that the readers know very little in the way of the society of the early iron age (i.e. the writing of history at that time). You would think if your goal was to cut down the Biblical story of David, which is clearly Heym's intent, you would go the archaeological route and point to the paucity of archaeological evidence that there was anything like a vibrant nation state in Palestine in 1000 BC or that kings David and Solomon even existed, let alone were power brokers. But instead he seems to be making Jerusalem and especially the court of Solomon much more significant and urban than even the Biblical account. The crux of the story is an historian who is to write an idealized account of the life of David at the command of Solomon. I have a lot of interest, and will see if the story is worth reading on it's own merits.

 

[Av Demeisen]

Really? Pink? Or are you just fooling?

The artificial light made them look less pink, but think this:

 

[hitmouse]

Now I am thinking of Ann Summers. Please make it stop.

 

[vanye]

And where the Dear Leader rides regularly upon a white horse up a sacred mountain. Oh, and he apparently has superpowers like being able to control the weather!

Pshaw! He didn‘t even do it with a naked upper body like that other great leader that he tries to emulate. What‘s next? The American great leader wrestling cows at a rodeo?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The crux of the story is an historian who is to write an idealized account of the life of David at the command of Solomon. I have a lot of interest, and will see if the story is worth reading on it's own merits.

That does sound like it has story potential. I'd be interested to hear what you think if/when you've read the whole thing, because if you think it's worthwhile I might like to take a look at it myself.*

____
*You know how you can go through a period where certain names keep coming up in unexpected and unrelated places? Just glancing references, but several of them in the course of a few days. They might be familiar names like David and Solomon, or they might be names you hear for the first time (or the first time that you've noticed anyway) and suddenly they seem to be everywhere you look? Well that's been happening with me the last few days with David and Solomon. It makes me curious to read more about them (beyond what I learned in Sunday school and a few historical novels in early adulthood), so for you to mention another such novel right now sounds serendipitous.

 

[williamjm]

I've just finished reading North Korea Journal, by Sir Michael Palin. It was a brilliant read telling you about North Korea, and how more open they are slowly coming. A very atheistic country they are, where bibles are banned, and religion is frowned upon. 9/10.

I did think the TV version of this was fascinating. The bit where they open up an entire airport just for him was particularly surreal.

 

[Parson]

@Teresa Edgerton: I will be sure to report and if you'd like I'll send you my copy to borrow. It's not ready available and so commands a bit of change.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Thanks! That would be awesome if the book is good.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm reading Murder at Christmas, Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season. Authors include Margery Allingham, Ellis Peters, Dorothy L. Sayers and seven more.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm reading Murder at Christmas, Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season. Authors include Margery Allingham, Ellis Peters, Dorothy L. Sayers and seven more.

Sounds fun. After I finish the novel I'm reading, Dread Journey by Dorothy B. Hughes, I'll be dipping into The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. At least, that's what I'm telling myself now.

Randy M.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I have just started Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece (2018) by Michael Benson, a detailed account of the creation of my favorite film of all time.

 

[Hugh]

"The Best of R.A. Lafferty" (SF Masterworks 2019). Twenty two of the best Lafferty stories, each with its own introduction by a different author, and an opening introduction by Neil Gaiman (including an account of the early encouragement he received from Lafferty). I'm grateful to @dannymcg for bringing this collection to my attention as I'd been wanting to read more "Lafferties".
I only discovered Lafferty properly maybe seven years ago when I began working my way through old anthologies, and found that coming across a "Lafferty" was almost always a joy. Reading a collection of his work for the first time is slightly different as there is not the juxtaposition with completely different authors that you get in anthologies, so the "Lafferty" does not get the chance to shine in the same way. Nonetheless this is a great read, and I savoured again those I had already read. I am also slowly working my way through the online collection of his entire short story output "The Man who Talled Tales" (thanks again @dannymcg ) but this will take me several months as I don't enjoy reading a screen as much as paper.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Lafferty is unique. So is the idea of having a different author introduce each story. I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere before.

 

[Bick]

I finished Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban a couple of days ago. For those who don't know, this was written about 1980 and is set in East Kent long after a nuclear holocaust, effectively in a new Iron Age, but with people trying to use shortcuts to recapture the "clevverness" of "time back way back". The star of the show is an element surprisingly missing from Hoban's original conception, the adapted English Riddley uses to write down his experiences. But this is done far, far more cleverly and creatively than just to "devolve" the language to a lower level. I'd go so far as to say that in its language, and its imagination of a very different mindset, this novel is a work of genius, and I can't off-hand think of any others I would say that about. Its plot is fine, and works well with the other elements, but isn't perhaps to quite the same standard, and you could argue it lacks a proper climax. I'd urge everyone to at least try it, though it's a bit of a Marmite book.

I didn't know about this book but it sounds great, thanks for your note.

 

[Parson]

I finished The King David Report by Stefan Heym and I find it really difficult to evaluate it. Purely, as a novel it is nothing more than a somewhat less than average historical novel. The writing was clever in that it read like something translated from a 1000 BC source. But that became very wearing as the story kept on. The book started with King David and the search for his true history as the primary focus, but morphed into a story of the Historian Ethan of Hoshaiah an Ezrahite, as he tries to make at least a somewhat truthful history of King David's reign. (Ethan is mentioned a couple of times in the Bible, once as the author of Psalm 89 and once as one of the wisest men in Israel in 1 Kings 4:31) The story's climax felt tacked on. It was surprising though, the whole book seemed to call for one kind of ending and something I didn't expect showed up at the end. On the other hand if the intent of the book was to show how 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings came to be written from both source material and local legends with a bit of pietism mixed in, I would judge it successful on that level. Perhaps Helm wanted us to see in this novel the completely unsurprising insight that the rich and the powerful have every advantage and are rarely thwarted in their desires. He makes this point clearly, but who is surprised by that insight? So, although I wouldn't call it a good book in the sense of being well written or being especially insightful, or even making David and Solomon seem like capricious tyrants (which I still believe was part of Heym's agenda). I have little doubt that I will think about the kinds of things that were pointed out in this book from time to time and it might just grow on me.

So.... @Teresa Edgerton .... are you interested in reading it?