February 2021 Reading Thread.

[AE35Unit]

In case you're not aware, there is a fourth instalment to the trilogy, set some time after the holocaust, a graphic novel called The City with art by Ian Miller. I read it as a library loan decades ago. The story wasn't anything special but the art was amazing (and disturbing).

Yes a graphic novel, not something that normally interests me. For collectors only I imagine

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I have started The Sentinel Stars (1963) by Louis Charbonneau. It's a Brave New World sort of book, I think. Folks work to pay off their tax debt to the world-wide Organization, eventually hoping to become one of the "freedmen" living a life of leisure in a walled-off area. (I suspect what's really behind the wall will turn out to be something more sinister.) How many days a week you have to work to pay off your debt determines your status in society. The protagonist rebels by not showing up to work one day, and by having an affair with a woman of another status rather than the one assigned to him by the computers. (There's a hint the woman may be something other than just a fellow rebel.) Right now the protagonist has been caught (you can't do anything in this shut-in world if your identity tag is deactivated, so it's surrender to the authorities or starve) and is being lectured by his interrogator about why this regimented world is a good one.

The author adapted his own novel Corpus Earthling (1960) into an Outer Limits episode with the same title. It's the one where the guy with a metal plate in his head hears "rocks" talking to each other, plotting against humanity. Apparently he also supplied the story for the episode "Cry of Silence," although somebody else did the teleplay. That's the one with tumbleweeds and frogs possessed by an incorporeal alien entity.

 

[Danny McG]

Yet again, every few months I reread this one, and have done so for decades.
The mote in God's eye.
It's a brain comfort thing, I know exactly what'll happen page after page but I enjoy getting lost in that world.
It blew me away as a teenager and still does the same now.

 

[Spade]

I finished up The Midnight Library. It was predictable but I found the main character interesting enough to keep me going. And it was narrated by Carey Mulligan, which was a plus.

I started listening to Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It just throws you right into this weird world of endless rooms with statues by the ocean. I can't imagine there's an explanation for what's going on.

Still reading How to Stop Time at home. I've been voraciously reading at home and listening at work all week. I hope I can keep it up all year.

 

[williamjm]

The Earthsea omnibus I was reading had four miscellaneous short stories after the main books, two written before A Wizard of Earthsea and two from the last decade. The earlier stories weren't bad but felt a bit slight and don't entirely fit with the later works, Le Guin commented in her notes on them that trolls had obviously become extinct in Earthsea since the first story was written. The Daughter of Odren was the best of the shorts and would have fit in well with the Tales From Earthsea stories. The very final story Firelight was a good coda for the series showing an elderly Ged in his last days.

Next up is Adrian Tchaikovsky's Bear Head. It's a sequel to Dogs of War which I thought was a great novel, so I'm looking forward to this.

 

[dask]

Finished this:

Well written and informative. Some of the other Cambridge Histories were hard to get into but this one presented no difficulty.

 

[soulsinging]

might i suggest the count of monte cristo? or the lusiadas if you like verse? actually i don't know if there's an english version... do you know of gil vicente?

I did read monte cristo 4 or so years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not huge on verse but will take a look at that one, as I’ve never heard of it. These 3 all came from friends that said they wanted todiscuss after I’ve read them.

 

[Bick]

Slan is pretty straightforward for van Vogt. No trudging required.

No indeed, I’m over half way through and it’s great - super pace and ideas, and the plot is far easier to follow than some van Vogt. Top stuff.

 

[HareBrain]

Quickly zipped through 1066 And All That, by ... can't remember. Chucklesomely witty.

 

[tobl]

I did read monte cristo 4 or so years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not huge on verse but will take a look at that one, as I’ve never heard of it. These 3 all came from friends that said they wanted todiscuss after I’ve read them.

The Count is my favourite book. As for the Lusiads think the odyssey by Homer , just done totallly in verse
Os Lusíadas - Wikipedia
if you get gil vicente you will like it. think moliere if you know himm or even shakespear

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Finished World of Null A today and while it started out interesting, it just got worse and worse. I thought I would at least be able to enjoy it ironically, but by the end I was hating it. It got a 1.5 from me, which I think is the lowest I've given a book in a quite a long time.

Now moving onto The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin. A promising start.

 

[tobl]

so, hum.... exohunter by jeremy robinson
i guess...if you want something to read and have nothing else near...
look i don't really like the writing... some of his books are passable i guess but even then i think he goes wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy out of board
for anyone here that likes him this is not a critic of the man, i don't know him, but his books... good grief

 

[Dave Vicks]

Up next poems by ee Cummings.

 

[Danny McG]

Yet again, every few months I reread this one, and have done so for decades.
The mote in God's eye.
It's a brain comfort thing, I know exactly what'll happen page after page but I enjoy getting lost in that world.
It blew me away as a teenager and still does the same now.

And now on to the somewhat poorer sequel The Gripping Hand

 

[Paul_C]

I finished That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote by K.J. Bishop, a quirky and weird collection of stories, some without much in the way of an end, so I wasn't surprised to find she's a fan of M John Harrison.

Lavie Tidhar's A Man Lies Dreaming next.

I read Lavie Tidhar's Osama instead, which I liked a lot, I'll get to A Man Lies Dreaming later, I'm sure.

I'm now reading China Miéville's The Last Days Of New Paris and liking it so far.

 

[dask]

Yet again, every few months I reread this one, and have done so for decades.
The mote in God's eye.
It's a brain comfort thing, I know exactly what'll happen page after page but I enjoy getting lost in that world.
It blew me away as a teenager and still does the same now.

Have had this on my book shelf since I was in the Science Fiction Book Club decades ago and just never got around to it. Is It really that good, I mean to be reread like that?

Anyway, started this last night:

Only a few pages into it but so far no hinges need oiling.

 

[Bick]

Anyway, started this last night:
View attachment 76299

Only a few pages into it but so far no hinges need oiling.

Much Nat Schachner, Donald Wandrei and Raymond Z. Gallun in it?

 

[Danny McG]

@dask

Have had this on my book shelf since I was in the Science Fiction Book Club decades ago and just never got around to it. Is It really that good, I mean to be reread like that?

It's one of those 'each to their own' things.
Some readers abhor it, others love it

 

[dask]

Much Nat Schachner, Donald Wandrei and Raymond Z. Gallun in it?

No Schachner or Wandrei but it does have "Davy Jones' Ambassador" by Raymond Z. Gallun.

 

[Bick]

I finished Slan, by van Vogt. I enjoyed it. It's not without flaws - this is van Vogt after all - but it charges along and this very pace helps you from inquiring too deeply how well it all fits together. No sooner do you read a highly fortuitous plot device or some hand-waving technological description and start to think, "Hey, now, wait a minute..." than van Vogt sweeps you off again with the next improbable development and you kind forget the issue you had. Having finished I'm not sure how well it all holds together or not, but I'm not sure I care overly. This was the most popular (or well-regarded) SF novel of the 1940's, probably, so if you're a student of SF literature, I'd recommend giving it a go. "Fans are Slans"!