June 2020 Reading Thread

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Parson said:
I finished The Martian Wind by Rosie Oliver otherwise known as our own @Serendipity .... This novella was a breath of fresh air. I said up thread and @dannymcg agreed that so much of SF seems derivative. It's just another version of one of the same few stories. The Martian Wind is NOT like that at all. This is hard S.F. at its best. Interesting tech and a captivating story line. Here's my Amazon Review and I gave it one of my very rare 5 star ratings.

In a day when much science fiction seems to be one clone of one series or another. This novella is a breath of fresh air. The technology is believable, and the story is eminently readable. I don't know of any story that is very much like this and for me that's a very good thing. I am looking forward to another one of these "archer" stories. Or pretty much or anything else Rosie Oliver decides to write. Highly recommended.
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Thank you very much, Parson. I'm glad you liked it.
 
Extollager said:
Finished a rereading of Asimov's Mysteries (skipping a couple of the stories). I don't suppose anyone would say any of these stories is among Asimov's very best. I also reread, after perhaps 52 years, Lester del Rey's Outpost of Jupiter. It was pretty good, better than a couple of other del Reys I reread after half a century (The Runaway Robot and Siege Perilous). Happily, this Outpost book was free of del Rey's emotional robots.

Question: Has anyone here read the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant? I have had the impression that this book (written with some help from Mark Twain) is really great. Anyone agree with that?

(Thanks for catching the typo, Danny.)
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Yes. When I was over in the US a few times last century mainly in DC I had a car and went round many Civil War battlefields, including the law few, I got a pb copy of Grant's book at one of the sites. It is good indeed. I think I read some where that Twain encouraged the writing, not more than that Though as President there were those troubles and the later threatened bankruptcy. Shelby Foote's 3 vols on The History of Civil War is excellent - and, of course, there is the marvellous Ken Burns tv series on 1990 or so. Take all three together, slowly.
 
HareBrain said:
Finding I'm too familiar with The Hobbit to be gripped by it. Might go back to it, but in the meantime I'm rereading Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, which I've only read once more than thirty years ago. The original and best, as far as I'm concerned -- feels fresher than anything of his I've read since, and his authorial voice is lighter and less obtrusive.
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About 70% into TCoM, and it's not holding up too well, I'm afraid. There are fewer laughs than I expected, and though there's quite a good adventure plot on the face of it, it's not very deep, given the nature of the book. Its classic fantasy also feels very much of its time, though that doesn't bother me.

Going back several decades even further, I've returned to The Hobbit and am now finding I'm almost able to recapture the magic of first reading it. The section in the Misty Mountains is superb.
 
reading play to live by d rus. i understand why he and mahanenko sold so much in russia.great imagination
 
Gunship by JJ Snow, written in 2013.
So far it's a very good and fast moving military sci fi.

@Parson have you read this one?
 
dannymcg said:
Gunship by JJ Snow, written in 2013.
So far it's a very good and fast moving military sci fi.

@Parson have you read this one?
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I have not. It is on my list to investigate beginning as soon as I vote in the 75.
 
Well, That was interesting! Gunship by JJ Snow is only available in the U.S. by an Amazon seller for $902.81 new, but there is a used copy for $1004.24. It only has one rating, and that rating is a 1 with one of the most devastating reviews I've ever read. And there was not even a blurb about the book. My guess it is a GB or Europe release only.

But I suspect that I'd like it because @dannymcg and I usually have similar tastes.
 
Parson said:
My guess it is a GB or Europe release only.

But I suspect that I'd like it because @dannymcg and I usually have similar tastes.
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Since you are talking about a printed book, it is possible you could buy it (or any other book you want that isn't available over here) from amazon.co.uk. I used to buy a lot of books from them, and the cost of shipping to the US wasn't prohibitive.
 
Parson said:
Well, That was interesting! Gunship by JJ Snow is only available in the U.S. by an Amazon seller for $902.81 new, but there is a used copy for $1004.24. It only has one rating, and that rating is a 1 with one of the most devastating reviews I've ever read. And there was not even a blurb about the book. My guess it is a GB or Europe release only.

But I suspect that I'd like it because @dannymcg and I usually have similar tastes.
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I found that review (Abe books) and you're right, it is devastating.
I got the book last year for 50p in a charity shop so I wasn't aware it was so hard to obtain!
More reviews on Goodreads:-
www.goodreads.com

Gunship

When Captain Reilly Campbell and her gunship crew left …
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com
 
I was going to say that for second hand books I've found Abe Books to be cheapest but then I Googled and found that out that it is all Amazon anyway.
AbeBooks Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. AbeBooks, an online bookselling pioneer, was acquired in December 2008 and remains a stand-alone operation with headquarters in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and a European office in Munich, Germany.
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I’m still reading Hellstrom’s Hive. It’s crazy. You’d think the way things were I’d have finished it by now. Finally nearing the end though. An interesting read.
 
Dave said:
I was going to say that for second hand books I've found Abe Books to be cheapest but then I Googled and found that out that it is all Amazon anyway.
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Abe Books may be owned by Amazon, but it is still basically a market place for independent used book dealers, who specify their own prices.
 
I'm not going to pursue Gunship by J.J. Snow any further. But it was not available from Abe Books and on the Amazon UK site I reached it only had the same two books at the same prices I could get from Amazon US. --- This makes me suspect that since I was ordering from the U.S. only the U.S. books were actually available to me. If memory serves I had that problem once before.
 
Heijan Xavier said:
Would love to see Orwell's political stance today.
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Nah, because that would be politics and we don't discuss that here. :)

In the meantime, finished The Bat by Jo Nesbo - a strange and quirky detective novel set in Australia with a Norwegian cop. It started out well enough, but got bogged down in an awful lot of chattiness to make up for the lack of character POV. This resulted in the main character doing a lot of things without the reader having any idea why, including a few pages where he spoke to the mysterious murderer without the reader being told who he was speaking with.

In the end, this is a rough first novel, and nowhere near as good as some of Nesbo's later writing.

Am now reading Total Recall, Arnold Swarzenegger's autobiography.
 
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