October Reading Thread

[The Judge]

October already! So what are you reading this month?

I've started Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K Jerome, and I'll be continuing with my slow way through Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Currently reading Making Money by Terry Pratchett, the second Moist Von Lipwig book. So far... underwhelming. The first 25% of the book has effectively been Moist being asked to run a bank, then touring the bank facilities.

 

[HareBrain]

About 2/3 through Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. Enjoying it. Up to this point I was reading quite slowly as nothing was compelling me to race through it, but now the stakes are increasing and I might try to finish it tonight.

 

[biodroid]

Split Second - David Baldacci. I am really liking this guys books, not bogged down in the nitty gritty of police procedurals. I also appreciate that he doesn't make his characters drunkards because their boss hates them and they hate everyone, PTSD, love triangle etc.

 

[HareBrain]

In the end, I'd say Susanna Clarke's Piranesi was a diverting enough read, but slight. It's 250-odd pages of largish print, and not exactly dense with ideas or plot: the ideas it does contain could easily have been developed further. It feels like a padded novella, and the only thing I'm really going to take from it is the imagery of the labyrinth, which is effective. It has something of the feel of Robert Holdstock about it.

After Strange and Norrell, a bit disappointing, I'm afraid.

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

Split Second - David Baldacci. I am really liking this guys books, not bogged down in the nitty gritty of police procedurals. I also appreciate that he doesn't make his characters drunkards because their boss hates them and they hate everyone, PTSD, love triangle etc.

I've been a Baldacci fan for some time now. He's certainly at or near the top in the genre.

If/when you get to the Atlee Pine series, give him a mulligan on the first book. The second is much better.

 

[Paul_C]

I'm currently around half way through Lavie Tidhar's By Force Alone

It started off as nothing more than a slightly off-kilter take on the King Arthur story, but it's got a lot more strange, silly, filthy and amusing and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Fingers crossed that he can keep it going for the rest of the book.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm reading Keith Claire's The Tree Wakers, following a recommendation from Liz Williams.
It's strange... and written very much in "old fashioned" style.

 

[williamjm]

I finished Joe Abercombie's The Trouble With Peace. I always enjoy Abercrombie's books in the First Law world and this one was no exception. It was a bit slow to begin with, which is a common side-effect of books with large casts of point-of-view characters where we need to catch up on what they've all been doing since the end of the previous book. However, the pace soon picks up once the paths of the different characters starts to converge. Abercombie has written some great battle scenes over the years and there is another one here. I think what works particularly well is showing the perspectives of both the people (nominally) in charge of the two armies and also what some of the ordinary soldiers on both sides are experiencing. This both gives a lot of specific detail while also allowing the reader to understand the overall progress of the battle (and have a better understanding than any of the characters themselves do). Away from the battle the is some good character development, particularly for Rikke and Orso, and while some of the plot developments have a lot of foreshadowing there are also a few surprises as well. The last chapters of the book also set up an intriguing plotline for the final book in the trilogy.

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

I'm about half way through Battle Ground, book 17 of the Dresden Files and it's really feeling like the second book of the apocalyptic trilogy that Butcher has said he'll end the series with.

 

[Randy M.]

Right now, reading short stories from The Big Book of Jack the Ripper and The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women. Restricted theme anthologies can get a bit tiring after awhile, so I probably won't finish either but set them aside for something else.

Randy M.

 

[Montero]

Just finished Network Effect by Martha Wells the fourth of the Murderbot books - first three are novella rather than novels. Really enjoying the series. Can be read just for the adventure but you can also enjoy the investigation of whether machine intelligences are alive and all the characters and situation she builds around the interaction between the characters both machine and human.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading Really? By Jeremy Clarkson.

 

[Montero]

I'm just re-reading Scruffy by Paul Gallico - not sf - it's fiction set in Gibraltar at the outbreak of WW2 and is focussed on a young artillery Captain who has been put in charge of the Barbary apes on the rock. Scruffy is a large male who causes a lot of trouble. This was one I read at school and am re-visiting and it's interesting to see it - vividly remember the scenes of Scruffy causing trouble in the town, had forgotten the musings of the artillery officer on how the apes had just missed being people. I'm torn between gladness that he is contemplating the emotions and thought processes of animals and indignation that becoming human is being seen as the pinnacle of evolution.

 

[hitmouse]

I'm just re-reading Scruffy by Paul Gallico - not sf - it's fiction set in Gibraltar at the outbreak of WW2 and is focussed on a young artillery Captain who has been put in charge of the Barbary apes on the rock. Scruffy is a large male who causes a lot of trouble. This was one I read at school and am re-visiting and it's interesting to see it - vividly remember the scenes of Scruffy causing trouble in the town, had forgotten the musings of the artillery officer on how the apes had just missed being people. I'm torn between gladness that he is contemplating the emotions and thought processes of animals and indignation that becoming human is being seen as the pinnacle of evolution.

You need to put that in the context of when the book was written. The popular view of the Darwinian evolutionary tree reflected the attitudes of Victorian times when it was first discussed, with humans at the top. At the time many people would have said white people of north European descent above other humans. Whilst the more racist interpretations were becoming less fashionable in the post war period, the persistant popular idea that humanity was at the evolutionary apex, or even the view that there is an apex at all was still annoying my lecturers when I did a biology degree in the late 80s.

I remember reading the Snow Goose at school, and hearing a very touching reading of it by Spike Milligan, of all people.

 

[Montero]

Oh yes, written in 1960s by someone who was around in WW2 so I suspected it was absolutely accurate representation of the attitudes of the time, but didn't know enough to be sure. I was also just venting a bit and also interested by the differences in what I notice now compared to then. Thank you for the details and glad that your lecturers were annoyed by the idea of apex. My father studied biology and became a teacher before WW2 and he was a great one for lecturing me on not falling into the error of anthropomorphism. I owe him a lot for his enthusiastic interest in nature, but we differed in our views on animals' internal life. (Not saying animals are humans, but boy can I see some parallel behaviour between cats and humans.)
I don't think I've ever read the Snow Goose. I have read Thomasina and I hope I still have my childhood copy somewhere. Rather suspect it fueled my desire to have a ginger cat (or I already had a desire for a ginger cat and that is why it resonated so strongly).

 

[tobl]

I'm about half way through Battle Ground, book 17 of the Dresden Files and it's really feeling like the second book of the apocalyptic trilogy that Butcher has said he'll end the series with.

yeah.... i checked the faq and it still says 25 books. and don't get me talking on that book... why the f.... did he killl that person is beyond me. and what is sugestting with the other... man...

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

yeah.... i checked the faq and it still says 25 books. and don't get me talking on that book... why the f.... did he killl that person is beyond me. and what is sugestting with the other... man...

Yeah, I know he's still claiming 20+ books, but how do you do an encore after battling a freaking Titan. The gods themselves had to team up to defeat those things. When you throw in a certain death...

I guess we'll see what he does next.

 

[tobl]

Yeah, I know he's still claiming 20+ books, but how do you do an encore after battling a freaking Titan. The gods themselves had to team up to defeat those things. When you throw in a certain death...

I guess we'll see what he does next.

don't forget the outsiders. and probably some of then are chutulu

 

[Danny McG]

From September 29th:-

I'm now reading 'To sleep in a sea of stars' by Christopher Paolini.

(I can't recommend this one enough as being great for insomnia, because half a chapter gets your eyes drooping.
So, so, so dull.
DNF I'm afraid.)

Now onto book 3 of the BGT Destroyer trilogy, let's see!