January 2020 Reading Thread

[Extollager]

Rereading Lloyd Alexander’s The Castle of Llyr. Better, more adventurous, than I’d remembered.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke.

I finally finished this, it was quite enjoyable until the ending, which I thought was weak. 7/10.

I'm now reading The Three Hostages, by John Buchan.

 

[Extollager]

Buchan! Bravo!

 

[Vince W]

Just got my hands on Agency by William Gibson. I'm putting everything else aside to read this.

 

[Ann]

Just getting ready to start The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Valente — have heard great things.

 

[Extollager]

I've begun a rereading of Alan Garner's Elidor and am reading Pat Barr's The Coming of the Barbarians: A Story of Western Settlement in Japan 1853-1870, in a Penguin Travel Library paperback.

 

[Paul_C]

I finished Lirael at around 2am (couldn't put it down with 10% left) and started The Strange Bird - Jeff VanderMeer to calm down

I'm just downloading a number of books by Marc Laidlaw which are currently free on Amazon (not an author I'm aware of but . . . free )

 

[Rodders]

Finished John Scalzi's "Zoe's Tale" this morning.

Now on to "The Human Division" book 5 on the Old Man's War series.

 

[Parson]

I just dumped Psion by Joan D Vinge and I was at 77% complete. I just couldn't take it anymore. There were two things which finally caused me enough frustration that I decided that reading the book was not worth it. First, it is incessantly inward looking. After ever development in the plot, Cat (the main character) has to ruminate on it, again and again. Second, and worse, this is a book which can't allow any sort of victory, each victory contains the seeds of a still more disastrous defeat. It reminds me of the Bellamy Brothers song "Old Hippy" whose story is that of a Hippy in the 80's who finds himself increasing less relevant. The verse and line I'm referring to goes:

He was sure back in the sixties
That everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam
On his senior trip
And they forced him to become a man
While he was still a boy
And behind each wave of tragedy
He waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more

I suppose this was magnified when I read the author's preface and she said that she had promised to live long enough to give Cat a happy ending. There are now THREE! books in the series and if they are all like this I will avoid them like the plague.

I've now started Down the Darkest Road by Kylie Brant, which I would guess would be a little ironic because her main character Cadie Maddix has a lot of problems and happy endings so far have always been muted by the story is realistic in that there are some victories and some hope at the end and all through the book.

 

[Danny McG]

I've now started Down the Darkest Road by Kylie Brant, which I would guess would be a little ironic because her main character Cadie Maddix has a lot of problems and happy endings so far have always been muted by the story is realistic in that there are some victories and some hope at the end and all through the book

I've read some of her Mindhunter books, is this similar with psychics and detectives teaming up?

 

[Parson]

I've read some of her Mindhunter books, is this similar with psychics and detectives teaming up?

No, there are no psychics. Cadie is a U.S. Marshall and therefore she works both for the government and with local law enforcement agencies. So some of the story (in the previous novel) is tied up in that relationship. I find it interesting that a large number of her previous books have been romance books and judging by the number of ratings, not all that much read. The romance angle which you might expect to be large in the book, isn't, and small amount I've read of these has no real romance, a little sex, and a lot of hoping for a more normal life.

Hm .... just went for a look. First checked the books listed in the front of Cold Dark Places and none of the books were grouped as "Mindhunter" series. But just to be sure I went to Amazon and sure enough she did write those and they are listed on her "other books written" list in Cold Dark Places but by Title only.

Obvious Romance books.

Hard to Tame; Hard to Resist; Undercover Bride; Heartbreak Ranch; etc.

 

[Bick]

Finished John Scalzi's "Zoe's Tale" this morning.

Now on to "The Human Division" book 5 on the Old Man's War series.

Was it sufficiently different and engaging enough compared to The Last Colony? It retells essentially the same story doesn’t it?

 

[Extollager]

I don't think I like Garner's Elidor a lot. Certainly it keeps your interest -- the weird "electrical" disturbances of the Elidorian Treasures when they are hidden in our world, for example. But maybe in this one Garner's desire to pare things down -- arguably too much -- is at work, so that, for example, either the four children simply are not sufficiently differentiated, or their differences must be worked out by the reader peering closely for subtle clues. I can accept the idea that, despite the title, the novel is not primarily about a strange land called Elidor but about the effects on some people of our world who have contact with it -- but still the presentation of Elidor seems almost perfunctory, almost disdainful, as if the author can't really be bothered to work up much atmosphere of the place, its people, etc.

I wonder if Garner wasn't reacting against his own first novel and its popularity, perhaps being so determined NOT to repeat himself that the book suffers. I wonder further if Garner was reacting against the Narnian books, about which he has said nasty things. Elidor has four children as characters, as the first Narnian books do, and here again it's the youngest (Roland) who believes in the other world most passionately, and whose truthfulness is questioned (cp. Lucy). But where Lucy is vindicated, the implication is that Roland, who was also truthful in insisting on the other world, is headed for a catastrophic breakdown -- which (in a 1973 interview with Justin Wintle) Garner said is what happens. The glorious unicorn Findhorn seems to be a sort of Aslan, who is killed (for reasons not clear to me) by warriors of Elidor. The unicorn's "song" evidently restores Elidor, but Findhorn seems dead. Garner said the novel was the most "nihilistic" thing he'd written. It seems to have been a personal book and perhaps some of the personal issues encoded in it were not as well resolved in the making of a work of art, independent of the author, as they needed to be.

I imagine I'll read it yet again -- and that might be a sixth reading, but I will rate it at the bottom of Garner's four novels four children. (Red Shift, the fifth novel, was published, here in the States at least, as a children's book -- which is ridiculous.)

September 2018: Reading Thread

Next I'm reading my first book by one of the members. Monsters, Maces and Magic: Outpost by @TWErvin2. I read The Sleeping Dragon when it came out in the 80s, which seems to have started this genre. I remember that I enjoyed it at the time. Thanks for giving Outpost a try, Anthoney. I hope...

www.sffchronicles.com

So my ranking of the four children's/YA books:

1.Weirdstone, by far my favorite
2.Owl Service
3.Moon of Gomrath
4.Elidor

 

[Rodders]

It was okay, Bick. Yeah, it was the same as The Last Colony, but told from the perspective of Zoe. Enjoyable enough.

 

[HareBrain]

So my ranking of the four children's/YA books:

1.Weirdstone, by far my favorite
2.Owl Service
3.Moon of Gomrath
4.Elidor

I'd agree, though it would depend on the day whether Weirdstone or Owl gets top spot. (Owl is I think a much more adult book, which suits me most of the time, but Weirdstone has that bit in the tunnel which is possible the most effective piece of writing ever. I almost can't bear it.)

I bought a first edition Red Shift (not that rare/expensive) recently. I'll have to give it another read to see where I think it falls in the children's<->adult spectrum. To be honest I'm not sure its difficulty really decreases with the reader's age!

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Today I read two books in a few hours. One was Forever Knight: A Reference Guide (2003) by Gwenn Musicante, a self-published reference work about that television series. It looks very much like an amateur work, but it's full of information. The other was They Called Us Enemy (2019) by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott, illustrated by Harmony Becker, a graphic novel about Takei's experience of being in interment camps as a young child during World War Two. Both quick reads, but for very different reasons.

Now I am well into Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought (1996) by Douglas Hofstadter and the Fluid Analogies Research Group, which should offer some insight into how cognition works

 

[vanye]

Alex White: A Bad Deal For the Whole Galaxy

A fun continuation of A Big Ship At The Edge Of The Universe. It had been a while since I read the first one, but had no difficulties easing into the sequel. This is great swashbuckling adventure SciFi that does not demand more of the reader than to relax and let the story unfold. A minor quibble is that I do not like my SciFi with magic, but since it is scientifically explained (kinda sorta), I shall not complain too much. Certainly will read the third book in the series once I get around to it.

 

[vanye]

Michael G. Manning: The Line Of Illeniel (Mageborn Series, Book 2)

After the first book in the series (The Blacksmith's Son) had a distinctly lightweigt feel to it as far as the story-arch is concerned, the author sticks to his guns in this one. Problems arise and are dealt with very quickly in short subplots. It makes the reading easier and is also emotionally more rewarding, if you are that way inclined.

The world gets more complex, though, and so do the characters. While in the first book the reader could be fairly sure who the good guys and the bad guys are, we are presented with more ambiguous characters in the second book. All in all, an interesting read and good storytelling, but I could not get the background of the Embers Of Illeniel series out of my head while reading, and so far the two do not square for me. But maybe I'll just have to persist and the author will put it so that even I can understand it in the following books. After all, Embers is a prequel that was written after the Mageborn series.

 

[vanye]

David Weber: Uncompromising Honor

Had this one on my TBR shelf for quite a while, as I have been getting increasingly irritated (in some cases annoyed) with Weber's writing (assuming he still writes his books himself). Even after reading it and enjoying it for the most parts, there are some quibbles I have.

The endless and forever-ongoing info-dumps. People have meetings, don't we all know it all too well from our own professional lives. And Weber gives us page after page of meetings and conversations to relay information to the reader. As a literary device, we could call it teichoscopy, I reckon, but a lot of the information given is not really relevant to the story and oftentimes even a recurring theme, like "Oh, X happened and we'll give it such and such a spin and communicate Y ..."

I really, really prefer to have an author let me experience a story instead of having it told to me third hand. The Weber-style info-dumps are a good way to convey important background information but used this ubiqitously it really is tiresome.

It is also tiresome to have the same joke on each and every page - sometimes several times. Something is ... <insert understated adjective>. Made me want to scream.

On a related note, every character who has a sense of humour, seems to have the same sense of humor. If there weren't names attached, a lot of the characters (and there really are a lot of them) would be indistinguishable.

So, on the whole I think that this book could have used a lot of pruning and editing. There is a good story in there, but it is not presented as well as it deserves imho.

 

[elvet]

Blasted through House of Chains, and now onto a much anticipated The Bonehunters. I love this book almost as much as Deadhouse Gates.