January 2020 Reading Thread

[Danny McG]

just found the memory man series by david baldacci. first time in a long time that i find a character i can admire and relate and a writer which actually uses a brain like it's supposed to. those deductions are better than sherlock holmes

Ironically (given that the title of the first book in this series is Memory Man).. I read it myself about three years ago and thought "I must look out for others in this series", then I forgot all about them until I read this post by tobl.
Cheers for the reminder!

 

[Parson]

Just finished Asbadran Solutions by Chris Kennedy. This book leaves me in a bit of a quandry. It started off as a kinda light hearted military S.F. and then for the final 100 pages or so of the book it described this meat grinder of a battle that made me want cover my eyes. I can't say it was bad. I can't say that it's not a realistic ending. But I can say that it's going to be a while before I pick up book 3 of the Revelations Cycle. If I ever do.

I am now reading How Compassion Made Us Human by Penny Spikins. I would not have found this but @Stephen Palmer mentioned this as a book he wanted to read and it sounded great to me. So far, it is pretty great. Thanks Stephen!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

@Parson I'll be reading it in due course... my tbr pile has been augmented by Plato's Alarm Clock and Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales...
Glad you are enjoying it.

 

[biodroid]

just found the memory man series by david baldacci. first time in a long time that i find a character i can admire and relate and a writer which actually uses a brain like it's supposed to. those deductions are better than sherlock holmes

I enjoyed the first book Memory Man but the second book seems to be a bit on the slow side.

 

[Danny McG]

Re-read time this morning
Logan's Run

 

[Bick]

Okay, so I didn’t get on well with Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Unfortunately, Agent of Change was badly written, paper-thin and unengaging. So, I’m leaving that after trying to get beyond page 30 and failing to do so and turning to the next Discworld book in my read through of Pratchett’s series, which is Reaper Man.

 

[Parson]

Okay, so I didn’t get on well with Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Unfortunately, Agent of Change was badly written, paper-thin and unengaging. So, I’m leaving that after trying to get beyond page 30 and failing to do so and turning to the next Discworld book in my read through of Pratchett’s series, which is Reaper Man.

Not surprised. The things that I'v e read by Lee & Miller have always seemed to me to be on light weight side.

 

[Bick]

Interesting, thanks Parson. It just read like a really pulpy airport novel that happened to be set in the future. No sense that any concept or moral dilemma or would be explored. With Honor books, for example, while they are not Tolstoy, they do at least quickly build rounded characters and set up moral dilemmas. Also, Lee and Miller seem to inject lots of pointless detail to their prose (e.g. he twirled the key on his left index finger”); good grief. The lead characters image kept pace with him in the wall mirrors. Well, yeah, it’s a mirror image, so that’s kinda unnecessary to put on record. Basically it’s just bad. Perhaps they got better at it as the series progressed but fans of this book give it 4.17 on goodreads, so it’s hard to judge what any of them will really be like. That score beats War and Peace, incidentally, which has an average score of 4.11! If you want proof Goodreads scores are worthless for SF, there you have it.

 

[Danny McG]

This evening I'm starting the Roses of May, book two in the collector series by Dot Hutchinson

 

[Lisa_Who]

Just reread Children of Ruin (1st reread) by Adrian Tchaichovsky--I hold by my original opinion that it is not as amazing as Children of Time, but it's definitely a book that improves on the reread (no doubt due to complexity--it's far less linear than Children of Time).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Despite having a number of part-read books hanging over from last year -- sorry, HB! -- I decided to start the new year with something fresh, and I chose one of the books I received for Christmas, Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, written in 1926. I'm something over a quarter of the way through its 264 pages but I'm still not yet sure what I think of it -- part-fantasy, part-fairy-tale, it's intricate and elaborate, playful, bewitching, puzzling and obscure and sometimes downright unintelligible thanks to convoluted paragraph-long sentences.

It has long been one of my favorite books, so I'll be interested to find out what you think of the whole when you have finished it.

There was a discussion a few ... or more likely several* ... years ago, after JP had reviewed it, I think, and then (less favorably) Carolyn Hill. (Although considering her references to her "lumpen soul," something I've never detected in her in thirty years of friendship, the criticism there perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt.) You might want to add your bit to the thread, if I can find ... yes, I can ... the link: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.

____
*So it appears to be thirteen-and-a-half years ago. How time flies.

 

[Extollager]

Reading again Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three, a paperback copy I got 50 years ago. The book has a bit of a sour smell, but the story is very good, and a bit more intense than I’d remembered.

 

[hitmouse]

Reading again Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three, a paperback copy I got 50 years ago. The book has a bit of a sour smell, but the story is very good, and a bit more intense than I’d remembered.

Good book. Good series. My kids enjoyed it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

just found the memory man series by david baldacci. first time in a long time that i find a character i can admire and relate and a writer which actually uses a brain like it's supposed to. those deductions are better than sherlock holmes

Have you read any Lee Child? If so, how do the two authors compare? Just that David Baldacci has been accused of trying to imitate Child in order to cash in on his success. Child has even reportedly included a couple of characters in his novels named Baldacci, both of which met violent and grisly ends.

 

[biodroid]

@Brian G Turner - Lee Child has 1 hero that does a lot of damage to baddies, from what I read of Baldacci in Memory Man, the character is more of a normal guy that's overweight but used to be a pro American Footballer whose career was cut short because of a serious head injury that gives him a superb memory. Memory Man was more like a police procedural with an FBI task force as backup. I haven't read any of the others, but book 2 The Last Mile is similar to Memory Man, where Amos investigates the framing of a pro footballer for killing his parents.

 

[The Judge]

It has long been one of my favorite books, so I'll be interested to find out what you think of the whole when you have finished it.

There was a discussion a few ... or more likely several* ... years ago, after JP had reviewed it, I think, and then (less favorably) Carolyn Hill. (Although considering her references to her "lumpen soul," something I've never detected in her in thirty years of friendship, the criticism there perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt.) You might want to add your bit to the thread, if I can find ... yes, I can ... the link: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.

I've immediately hopped over there and read the reviews. At the moment I'm fully agreeing with you and JP about its qualities, but I have a smidgen of Carolyn's reservations about it, though from my point of view because the story feels less fantastical than whimsical, and although it's fine in small doses, I'm not one for unadulterated whimsy. But I'm rather a Hempie in these matters, and throughout his childhood I'd have been telling the young Nat to get over himself!

I hadn't thought of Dorimare resembling the Shire, not even slightly, but oddly enough I'm not reading the characters as real people, not even as humans, indeed, but as something akin to hobbits, albeit with nicely-proportioned and very nicely-shod feet -- Miss Primrose's embroidered canvas slipper had me yearning for a pair of my own!

 

[Hugh]

Aldous Huxley "Crome Yellow" (1921)
Underwhelming, as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately just 170 pages. This was Huxley's first novel and its light satirical banter, based on people in his social circle, made his name, becoming something of a trailblazer for others such as Evelyn Waugh (much funnier). It must say something about the shell-shocked stupefied times just after WWI that this was such a success.
There is a very brief cameo appearance by the former Conservative Prime Minister Herbert Asquith as Mr Callamay who shows an excessive interest in a girls' swimming competition. "Young girls didn't much like going for drives alone with Mr Callaway". I doubt that anyone would remotely have known that Asquith was Callaway if he had not been identified in correspondence (not Huxley's) that has since been published.
The book also features words such as "apophthegm" (a short cryptic remark or aphorism) and "divagate (to digress) which I don't remember seeing before, and will be happy if I never see again.

 

[tobl]

Have you read any Lee Child? If so, how do the two authors compare? Just that David Baldacci has been accused of trying to imitate Child in order to cash in on his success. Child has even reportedly included a couple of characters in his novels named Baldacci, both of which met violent and grisly ends.

yes i read lee child. the jack reacher stories are fine but honestly i prefer david.

 

[Danny McG]

Just reread Children of Ruin (1st reread) by Adrian Tchaichovsky--I hold by my original opinion that it is not as amazing as Children of Time, but it's definitely a book that improves on the reread (no doubt due to complexity--it's far less linear than Children of Time).

I found with Children of Time that I ended up shouting at the book at every new chapter.
"For f***'s sake! Stop this endless messing about and go back to the f***ing planet!"

 

[tobl]

yes i read lee child. the jack reacher stories are fine but honestly i prefer david.

honestly the only character i can compare is m,ark beamon searies by kyle mills