December 2021 Reading Thread

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Toby Frost said:
I did think they would do, and he'd just cycle out characters and replace them with similar ones. Still, I enjoyed the end of the last one, with the strangely familiar villain's minion getting his just desserts. I've also got a book of his called Reconstruction, which seems to be a spin-off.
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Reconstruction is from his Oxford series about a woman PI and her hapless male assistant.
I've just got a book, Dolphin Junction, by him that features several short stories - the blurb says one of them is a bit of backstory on Jackson Lamb, the Slough House head
 
I adored the Lensman series when I was about 14, tried one re-read in my twenties and gave up very rapidly. I remember the books I adored, as it were, not as they are.
Very fifties feel, lots of imagination on the psychic powers, good people doing good things, larger than life villains. Cat like aliens.
 
Just finished a book (told in two different books) by Andrew Mayne the book(s) are Station Breaker and Orbital. Now, to be fair, there is an ending to the first book. If the last chapter had not been added, then you would be in ordinary sequel category. But the last chapter leaves the main character on flight back to earth to face his fate, so it felt like one of my least favorite ploys a chopped ending leaving you little choice but to buy the next book.

Okay, I've got that off my chest. ---- The writing in both of the books reminds me a lot of an Indiana Jones movie crossed with a MacGyver episode. Non-stop action, really inventive situations, and escapes by thinking really when facing life threatening situations. If you are willing to suspend belief that all of these things could happen to the same person in a very short time, and that he'd manage to survive in fully recoverable conditions, you might really like these two books. The science seems to be pretty solid. One bit about a make shift space suit might be wrong, but I'm not sure how to check that out. Andrew Mayne says that these are novels of the "very near future." I agree, IF you consider very near future 50 to 75 years from now. The story might smack of fantasy, but the science is all conceivable by today's abilities or that which should be possible shortly.

Andrew Mayne is one of my favorite authors right now. He also writes some really good crime stuff, his Jessica Blackwood series is particularly beguiling because she's an FBI agent who is also a top level magician. It's doubly interesting because Andrew Mayne is a professional magician as well, touring with some magicians with worldwide acclaim.
 
hitmouse said:
Triplanetary is terrific, in the same way that the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials are terrific. Suspend disbelief, relax, enjoy.
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That's certainly my approach. I've enjoyed quite a lot of Golden age SF on that basis.

Truth be told, this is, strictly speaking, a re-read. I had the same Panther edition pp with the Chris Foss cover in the early '80's, and I have foggy memories of reading about the fall of Atlantis. But that aside, this is effectively a first read, my memory of it being so minimal.
 
I’m almost finished The Midnight Library. It’s been very enjoyable. Makes me feel very small thinking of all the strands of a life we could follow in our existence.
 
Starting Charis in the World of Wonders by Marly Youmans. Like some other current fiction, it was striking me at first as maybe overwritten, but I intend to stick with it for a bit at least.
 
Montero said:
Trying a sample of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and um..
So
Well written.
Clever
Atmospheric
Imaginative
Very narrated
Witty in the depiction of the characters, their motivations and their misunderstanding of others
Victorian feel (or is it Georgian I've lost track)
Has a slightly Trollope quality etc.
And I'm getting bored as I just don't gel with Victorian/Georgian tributes of this type and none of the characters are people I can warm to. Honestly, they all have a broad streak of plonker, to put it politely.

How did others do with this?
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I loved it from the very start. All I can say is that the style grabbed me from the beginning. I can see why others would not care for it.
 
I am well into Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (written sometime between 1765 and 1780, published posthumously; my copy is translated by Martin Hall, 1986) by Denis Diderot. It's sort of a little bit Don Quixote and a little bit Tristram Shandy. The servant Jacques, who believes that everything that happens is "written above," relates the story of his love life to his nameless master, but this is constantly interrupted by their various misadventures, stories within stories, and dialogue directly between the author and the reader. It's a post-modern novel when the novel was still new.
 
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