February 2021 Reading Thread.

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Finished Doc Savage The Man Of Bronze. Enjoyable but for being #1 in a long series I'm still not sure of his origin. He's got near super human abilities because of the two hour physical and mental exercise regimen he performs every morning but that doesn't exactly explain the bronze thing. I always figured he fell into a vat of chemicals or something like the Joker but apparently not. Oh well, there are bigger mysteries to ponder I guess.

Now reading this:
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dask said:
He's got near super human abilities because of the two hour physical and mental exercise regimen he performs every morning but that doesn't exactly explain the bronze thing. I always figured he fell into a vat of chemicals or something like the Joker but apparently not.
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According to Britannica.com:
Doc Savage was raised to be the perfect man. A skilled surgeon and a master of many other scientific disciplines, Doc was also trained to physical perfection, and he was called the Man of Bronze because of his sun-bronzed skin.

So, just well-tanned, apparently. The comic went a bit far, perhaps!
 
so i'm always try to find interesting things to read or reread when i have no other choice lol i tried l ron hubbard earth series.... i cannot believe they call that comedy. for a man that wrote a book i actually liked,batlefield earth, this series was just.... BAD. so on to new things or old things, lets see what cames along
 
Now reading a translation of The End by Mats Stransberg.
Think Lucifer's Hammer, think Armageddon.

Basic premise is:- they find out we got 3 months before an unstoppable massive comet smashes up the Earth and humanity is extinct.
Various Swedes react in different ways as the clock ticks remorselessly
 
Danny McG said:
Now reading a translation of The End by Mats Stransberg.
Think Lucifer's Hammer, think Armageddon.

Basic premise is:- they find out we got 3 months before an unstoppable massive comet smashes up the Earth and humanity is extinct.
Various Swedes react in different ways as the clock ticks remorselessly
Click to expand...
3 months? that long? by the way what do we do if bruce willis is not available?
 
I am into reading my third of the Rivers of London series for this month, Lies Sleeping.
I tend to binge. I have the last two of the series (so far) lined up and ready to go.
I set aside the last two leCarre novels unfinished as I got into Aaronovitch. I'll get back to them.
Also have two non-fictions knocking around, including a memoir by Trump's National Security advisor,
H. R. McMaster, fired for telling the truth. Hugely knowledgeable about countries and issues. Takes conservative solutions which I do not always agree with, but more pithy inio re US foreign policy then findable elsewhere.
Have doubts as to exactly when I'll get back because I also have the third Bobiverse novel on order (via the library.)

I rarely buy unless I've already read something and know that I don't want it to go away, or eventually give it away.
I was a librarian for 35 years. First reads are what libraries are for.
 
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pogopossum said:
I am into reading my third of the Rivers of London series for this month, Lies Sleeping.
I tend to binge. I have the last two of the series (so far) lined up and ready to go.
I set aside the last two leCarre novels unfinished as I got into Aaronovitch. I'll get back to them.
Also have two non-fictions knocking around, including a memoir by Trump's National Security advisor,
H. R. McMaster, fired for telling the truth. Hugely knowledgeable about countries and issues. Takes conservative solutions which I do not always agree with, but more pithy inio re US foreign policy then finable elsewhere.
Have doubts as to exactly when I'll get back because I also have the third Bobiverse novel on order (via the library.

I rarely buy unless I've already read something.
I was a librarian for 35 years. First reads are what libraries are for.
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i tend to binge too and i like the perspective on public librarys. by the way the river of london series are 8 books and about 4 novellas. just so you know. i like some of the le carre books but not all. as for memoir... really? you couldn't read a bookwith 2 paragraphs? :)
 
My phrasing was perhaps unclear. By "Third" I meant third this month. I will have to track down the two novellas that I have not seen.
One of the "last two - ready to go" is The October Man a novella. I found the first, The Furthest Shore novella #1, to be of a much lower quality than the novels.
;)Quite the opposite re McMaster. He do go on. With more detail than any but an absolute nerd could get through. Personally being a moderate nerd I expect to eventually stagger through it.
 
pogopossum said:
My phrasing was perhaps unclear. By "Third" I meant third this month. I will have to track down the two novellas that I have not seen.
One of the "last two - ready to go" is The October Man a novella. I found the first, The Furthest Shore novella #1, to be of a much lower quality than the novels.
;)Quite the opposite re McMaster. He do go on. With more detail than any but an absolute nerd could get through. Personally being a moderate nerd I expect to eventually stagger through it.
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i liked ben when i found him a few years ago. however lately i found that i lost the taste, i guess, for some types of books. and i have quite a few i liked when i read them but now i just can't seem to bother even picking them up... considering the genres maybe i was depressed at the time and ressonated better with some types... thank god now and then i find some new books to try and some of them i actually like lolo. have 2 new authors to try, let's see what comes of it. by the way his boss memoirs are going to be an encyclopedia right?
 
Culture Series of Iain M Banks: A Critical Introduction by Simone Caroti - an excellent critique of Banks' Culture books. More here.
Look To Windward by Iain M Banks - I'm loving these books even more on my reread. Excellent! More here.
State of the Art by Iain M Banks - State of the Art is only a short novella contained in a collection of short stories of the same name. It is particularly interesting for two things. Firstly in that it gives a little more background to Diziet Sma who appears much more prominently in Use of Weapons and secondly, and more interestingly, it is the first and, I think, only time that Earth appears (very unflatteringly) in the Culture books and where we learn that the Culture has not grown from some kind of Terran diaspora but actually already existed before we learnt to talk. Interesting and worth reading for a Culture fan but not brilliant. I really don’t think the short form was Banks’ forte! 3/5 stars
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway - bizarre but excellent, I think, debut novel. More here.
 
I read Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu. I know that it was published many years after the first three books (even if it starts just before the end of the third book) but it does seem fitting that after the earlier books had shown different stages of Ged's life that we also get to see him in what is effectively retirement. It is a rare example of a fantasy novel focusing on the characters after their great deeds have been done and they are trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. I thought the book was at its strongest when focusing on the relationship between Tenar and her adopted daughter as she tries to help Therru recover from horrific trauma. I felt some other parts of the book were a bit less successful, one of the antagonists is a wizard who barely appears in most of the story until he shows up at the end to deliver a monologue about his evil plan, although admittedly the conclusion to that story was very satisfying. I wouldn't say it was the best book in the series but it did add some interesting elements to the overall story.

Vertigo said:
State of the Art by Iain M Banks - State of the Art is only a short novella contained in a collection of short stories of the same name. It is particularly interesting for two things. Firstly in that it gives a little more background to Diziet Sma who appears much more prominently in Use of Weapons and secondly, and more interestingly, it is the first and, I think, only time that Earth appears (very unflatteringly) in the Culture books and where we learn that the Culture has not grown from some kind of Terran diaspora but actually already existed before we learnt to talk. Interesting and worth reading for a Culture fan but not brilliant. I really don’t think the short form was Banks’ forte! 3/5 stars
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I did think it was one of the weaker Culture stories, although it did have some good scenes in it.
 
I've finished Mackey Chandler's Family Law series with Friends in the Stars. It does not often happen that the last book of a series of 15 books is the best book of the series. (counting both series which come together in this book) But I really feel that way. Here at last the characters become a little less self-centered. A little more able to cooperate with others not exactly like them, and willing to end a conflict without huge numbers of civilian deaths. More than that, he introduces new and interesting characters, and what may be new plot lines. If he writes another in the series I will likely read that as well.

Next up is undetermined. I might read T. A. White, Rules of Redemption or a blast from the past an omnibus Star Soldiers by Andre Norton, or I might give The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manar another go. Stay tuned.
 
Finished The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Excellent Gothic with its roots in Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw. Vida Winter is billed as the 20th century Dickens and now, aged and ill, has decided to finally tell the truth about her life. Since her illness makes it difficult to write, she hires Margaret Lea to tell her story. Like Winter, Lea has secrets of her own, secrets that resonate with Winter's story, and so this turns into two life stories by way of family stories and merged to a degree with a detective story, where Lea has to research to be sure Winter is telling her the truth. Oh, and there may be a haunting as well.

If you're susceptible to 19th century fiction, even though the bulk of this story takes place sometime after automobiles and billboards become common but well before cell phones and the Internet, and if you enjoy stories of women struggling against obstacles, a story by turns sad and dire with something like redemption possible, and all in excellent, evocative prose, you would find this novel hard to put aside.
 
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