June 2020 Reading Thread

[Danny McG]

Try reading Chronicles of Empire 1: Gathering, then get back to me on that.

@tobl ha! That'll teach ya.

Ba-doom-tish!

 

[Randy M.]

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - a 100-page story about a Cuban fishermen who sets out to catch a big fish. In between him talking to himself there are detailed descriptions of him pulling on his lines, having backache, and feeling hungry. It's effect on modern literature is lost to me - perhaps some see in it an epic of man conquering nature, but all I found was a disturbing story about pride driving the mindless destruction of wildlife.

I don't really see the mindless destruction of wildlife. The fish he catches goes to feed the sharks, which it may well have done anyway.

Still a favorite of mine, though with age I see it as a not entirely successful allegory of striving, no matter how great the odds against, to do the thing you do in spite of the diminishing resources of age. At that point in his career, Hemingway was an old man, probably aged more by his life-style (smoking, drinking, multiple concussions over the years while doing the macho things; he'd nearly died in an airplane crash a few years before) and there were some who had written him off since his last novel had been hugely disappointing: Across the River and Into the Trees. (He is said to have finished it quickly because he thought he was dying at the time.)

But the bittersweet ending of The Old Man ... is that marshalling your last fading strength into an effort doesn't guarantee success, though it may validate your self-image and that is a hollow victory. Hemingway puts his thumb on the scale, though, in that his stand-in is a poor fisherman whose only chance of making a living and feeding himself and maintaining the respect of his friends and peers comes from catching a fish. Meanwhile, Hemingway was as rich and successful as a mid-century American writer had any hope of being, and his work was enormously respected internationally. In retrospect, that lends a self-pitying aspect that, for me, doesn't quite swamp the book, but dampens it some.

Randy M.

 

[Brian G Turner]

What struck me about The Old Man and the Sea is that it feels very much in the vein of "Man must conquer Nature to be a Man." The Old Man goes out to prove his masculinity, and it doesn't matter that he ends up killing a dolphin, swordfish, and a handful of sharks in the process, so long as he proves himself.

To me, it's little different from a book glorifying hunting, and I note now that Hemingway was a very active hunter. That may not rankle some people, but for me personally the message that "you're not a man until you've killed other animals" goes down badly. That's all.

 

[hitmouse]

it's called a methafor. lolo try reading with a open mind

JLS is pretty tepid and cosy in terms of metaphor. Falls into that group of books that seem a bit adolescent now but were pretty profound whEn one was stoned in Goa or Kathmandu or Berkeley in the 1970s, along with Godel Escher Bach, the Tao of Physics, Siddharta etc. At least Castaneda was pretending to be an academic even if Don Juan was arrant, hilarious nonsense. I still crack open the Politics o f Ecstasy for nostalgic reasons now and again (a load of tosh but quite engaging.)

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, a brilliant and beautiful book. Over twenty years ago I contemplated becoming a monk and this story resonates nicely with me. And to think there are two more to read afterwards, and now there is a prequel to be released later in the year.

Well after reading over 500 pages I'm really disappointed with it, I'm glad I didn't buy the other two books in the series. Too much politics and power for my liking.

 

[Randy M.]

What struck me about The Old Man and the Sea is that it feels very much in the vein of "Man must conquer Nature to be a Man." The Old Man goes out to prove his masculinity, and it doesn't matter that he ends up killing a dolphin, swordfish, and a handful of sharks in the process, so long as he proves himself.

To me, it's little different from a book glorifying hunting, and I note now that Hemingway was a very active hunter. That may not rankle some people, but for me personally the message that "you're not a man until you've killed other animals" goes down badly. That's all.

Got it. And on that basis, I can understand your aversion, but I don't think it's ultimately a man vs. nature story as much as a "man must prove himself over and over again" story in which Hemingway --falsely -- compares himself to a poor man, a fisher, whose survival depends on catching fish to sell on the market. In doing so he must overcome obstacle after obstacle, and again Hemingway taps into the man vs. nature motif, but again, the ultimate story is about a man proving himself over and over, whatever his actual endeavors, fishing, writing or, I suppose, dentistry.

Which, of course, is no help to any of those fictional fish or the real fish other men were inspired by the tale to go catch.

And you're right about Hemingway; he was one of the macho men of his time, reinforcing and spreading the set of ideas behind what we now see as "toxic masculinity", even as he was rather thin-skinned about his own image and conception of self; his macho was a pose in many ways, and it's hard to reconcile just why he adopted the pose, although the social media of the time lapped it up and made him one of the few writers as celebrities. In the process, he did hunt -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" incorporates it -- and enjoyed the Running of the Bulls and bull-fighting and boxing and various other forms of brutality. He also wrote some damn fine stories and so many sentences that make my teeth ache in envy.

Randy M.

 

[tobl]

@tobl ha! That'll teach ya.

Ba-doom-tish!

don't know why. when i have the possibility i will read the first book by turner and give my opinion. that, however doesn't invalidate the fact that i like jls quite a lot and also other richard bach books. and is too bad more people don't read them with an open mind

 

[MarcUK001]

Still working through the Expanse Series,

 

[P.J. Greystoke]

Just Finished The Chrysalids. Awesome book. Now I'm on 'Contact' by Carl Sagan. Anyone read it?

 

[Vince W]

Just Finished The Chrysalids. Awesome book. Now I'm on 'Contact' by Carl Sagan. Anyone read it?

I read Contact a long time ago, but I loved it. Sagan was not the best writer of fiction, but the story hits all the right notes for me. It remains, perhaps, my favourite first contact story of all time.

 

[Parson]

Just Finished The Chrysalids. Awesome book. Now I'm on 'Contact' by Carl Sagan. Anyone read it?

Also read "Contact" a long time ago. It is a book that stands the test of time. I particularly liked how he dealt with numinous.

---------

Finished Hunt the Lion by Chad Zunker. I did not like it as well as An Unequal Defense or An Equal Justice but still very solid. He's now one of my favorite authors. I'll be looking for more from him. I've now started Don't Make a Sound by T.R. Ragan, this is a thriller which is gripping and I like how she writes, but she always goes very dark. I am always leery about how far she's going to go. Her Lizzy Gardner series (her most well known series) starts in a dark place and keeps pushing the envelope. I did not finish the last book in the series because Lizzy and her friends start executing the "bad" guys. In my opinion when that happens there are no heroes, just villains of different stripes. Why would I want to read about more villains!!?? There's enough evil in the world as there is.

 

[williamjm]

I finished Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth. I thought it was a hugely entertaining read even if there are some aspects of it that I have somewhat mixed feelings about. The first part of the book starts off relatively slowly but does introduce some intriguing mysteries, but the story really kicks into gear once it reaches the giant abandoned palace on a dead world that is hosting the competition to become one of the undying Emperor's personal necromancers. It has elements that might be reminiscent of everything from The Hunger Games to stately home murder mysteries to The Crystal Maze, but I can't think of anything I could really compare to its overall effect. There are several cleverly intertwined mysteries as the characters both try to figure out the challenges that they have to pass while also trying to work out who or what is killing off some of the challengers. It's a lot of fun to read and it does a good job of gradually revealing important information while at the same time raising the stakes and the tension. Like any good murder mystery it does a good job of throwing in red herrings and making all of the characters look suspicious at some point. The resolution to the mystery is foreshadowed enough that it's not really a surprise, but at the same time it wasn't obvious either. A small criticism might be that some of the choices some characters make sometimes feel a bit under-explained.

I think the biggest aspect of the book that I had mixed feelings about was the character of Gideon and in particular their dialogue. She's an enjoyable character to follow and I think having someone with a tendency to be irreverent does help to stop the tone of the book being too brooding. However, her dialogue does often feel really anachronistic, she feels like a modern character transplanted into what is presumably a far future dystopia and there's no attempt at an explanation for why she talks like that.

Other than that issue I think Gideon does have a good story arc, and I also like the parallel story arc that her necromancer Harrow gets. The other necromancers and cavaliers taking part in the challenge are a varied bunch, they don't all get the same amount of character development but I thought there were several interesting characters and the complex way they all interact with each other is also developed well.

It may not have been perfect but I thought this was very impressive for a debut novel and I'll definitely be reading the sequel.

I've now started Charlie Jane Anders' The City in the Middle of the Night which seems good so far.

Started The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. So far, so good. After a slow start it grabbed me. I kept reading until I noticed it was 3am.
I don't think I have read anything from her before. Don't ask me why, because I would have to confess that I don't know. Anyway, if this is her usual writing style, than I can add some more books to my TBR.

It's a great book. I think I've probably read a couple of dozen of Bujold's books and they do pretty much all have this 'is that the time, how long have I been reading for?' effect.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Started The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. The opening couple of chapters felt a bit awkward, but after that it's become really interesting and original.

 

[Paul_C]

I finished The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North. Very enjoyable indeed.

I've started a short story next, New Atlantis by Lavie Tidhar.

 

[Paul_C]

Well, I've been putting off my review of Network Effect by Martha Wells. The reason for the delay is that I'm not sure what to say. First, I think it's highly relevant that I liked the first 4 Murderbot novellas a LOT! In fact, I did something I almost never do and spent nearly $15 on an ebook. In the end I’m not sure it was worth it. I still very much liked Murderbot’s voice. It (I still think of it as a she.) is coming into her own as an individual and as a friend, and that’s what this book is mainly about. It is perhaps a bit too much about that, as it sometimes seems to drag a bit. But the situations it finds itself in are interesting and dangerous. I would say that it is in more danger in this novel than probably anywhere in the previous novellas. I give the book a solid 4 stars, but that is less than the 5 stars I give the novellas, which I believe to be S.F. books which will still be widely read 20 years from now. If the next book were a Kindle Unlimited book I would put name up for the next one, But right now, I’m not ready to preorder the next installment for $13 which isn’t due until early 2021. By then I just might be intrigued again.

I doubt I'm ever going to read more than the first novella. The prices of the rest of them remain (IMHO) ridiculously high in the UK and until they are offered for less I'm going to refuse to have anything to do with them .

Fortunately we seem to be in a period where there are dozens of alternatives to spend my money on, most of them good value for money, so I don't feel I'm missing out on anything.

 

[Hugh]

Philip Jose Farmer "More than Fire"
Last in the World of Tiers series.
A re-read - had forgotten it almost entirely - but I'm pretty certain I appreciated it more on this second read. When I first encountered the first three volumes in my early 20s (early 70s) I thought they were astonishing, one of the best things I'd ever read. I've always been disappointed that Farmer did not build on them more effectively - the first four volumes came out 1965 -70, then there was the disappointing (to me) fifth in 1977, and finally this one in 1993. Maybe the Riverworld series took up his energy, or maybe he just lost interest - he had so many ideas and wrote so much.

 

[Ambrose]

I re-read James Blish, The Devil's Days. 0r is it Day - the book cover and front is not clear. At any rate it originally was Faust Aleph Null, followed about five years later by The Day after Judgement. It was amusing to find, again, that relatively unimportant figure Screwtape quoted by one of the superior demons. But it's fairly dense. It'll be a while before I get back to it again. However, it sparked re-newed interest in Blish. Perhaps his Cities in Flight series, soon.

 

[Bick]

Reading some Plum: The Small Batchelor. Excellent (of course).

 

[hitmouse]

Reading some Plum: The Small Batchelor. Excellent (of course).

I think this one is under-appreciated. One of my favourites.

 

[Hugh]

Re Philip Jose Farmer "More than Fire" that I mentioned above.

I meant to add that the book uses the 17th century term "catchfart" to describe a certain kind of toadying flunky. I don't remember coming across it before. At the risk of indulging my inner adolescent I thought it a wonderfully descriptive term.