June 2022 Reading Thread

[hitmouse]

I think they should stop doing Shakespeare plays. They have done them already.

 

[The Big Peat]

I've just read this too, but think I made an error in not reading the most recent two books set in this universe (I have read Al-rassan and Sarantium but years and years ago) and it felt like a lot of time was spent with minor characters unnecessarily. It felt loooong. But also beautifully written and a fully realised world!

Yes, there's definitely some continuity playing out from A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky.

It flew by me. Two sittings, the first one only finished because it was bed time. But its themes really hit home with my circumstances, so I am not the most objective judge.

 

[Rodders]

I must confess that the advertisement for The Midwich Cuckoos has my interest and I want to read the book.

This is where I think that remakes and reboots come into their own. A new product brings peoples attention to the original. I’ll be interested to find out whether sales of John Wyndham’s books have increased recently.

I also have to read The Day of the Triffids, too.

 

[tobl]

I must confess that the advertisement for The Midwich Cuckoos has my interest and I want to read the book.

This is where I think that remakes and reboots come into their own. A new product brings peoples attention to the original. I’ll be interested to find out whether sales of John Wyndham’s books have increased recently.

I also have to read The Day of the Triffids, too.

look i understant your point, i truly do. But BEN-HUR win 11 oscars. How do you top that?
And the movie from the midwich of the fifties can't be surpassed in atmosphere and acting, so what's the point? like i said there are plenty of books out there they can transform into movies if they want. As for attention to the original, do you have any idea how many times people get surprised that there's a book?

 

[dspowell]

I've not done a lot of reading over the last month, and only one vaguely SFF, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, a feminist whinge re-telling of Ariadne's story (she who helps Theseus defeat her half-brother the Minotaur and then he dumps her on Naxos and marries her sister).

I'm continuing the non-genre today with The Optickal Illusion by Rachel Halliburton, based on a true story about art and a particular female artist at the end of the C18th.

What are you reading this month?

Just finished Stoner by John Williams. It's a sad and slightly depressing book in places but undoubtedly a masterpiece. It is certainly involving and I found myself shouting at the protagonist several times to 'buck his ideas up and stand up for himself'.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading Skandar and the Unicorn Thief, by A. F. Steadman.
A cracking read about Unicorns with a difference, I think it is the first in a series.

 

[Bick]

…about Unicorns with a difference,

Do they have two horns each?

 

[williamjm]

I've started She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

Do they have two horns each?

No, the unicorns are not the cute ones usually associated with novels. They are hatched from a very large egg, which can be ridden. Some are bonded with children, and the others are wild, which is dangerous.

 

[Danny McG]

. They are hatched from a very large egg, which can be ridden

So have the eggs got like legs and saddles?

 

[hitmouse]

So have the eggs got like legs and saddles?

This dates me:

 

[Danny McG]

Just starting this one, it's good so far, a space fleet comes under attack and a young ensign saves the day and is a hero for a couple of days.
Then the marines track down and board one of the enemy's derelict ships and find it's crammed full of five and six year old kids who've been killed by the ensign's torpedoes .... that's as far as I've got

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@Parson
This really is a good mil sci-fi, recommended.
I'm trying to get book 2 now....book 3 is due out in three weeks

 

[Pyan]

Reading a biography of Jackie Fisher, father of the Dreadnought battleship and the battlecruiser. Excellent, if you are interested in the subject.

 

[Hugh]

Frank Waters "Pumpkin Seed Point"
Niche reading: some reflections by the author on his three year stay with the Hopi in the late 50s/early 60s that resulted in his account of their mythology/beliefs, published as "The Book of the Hopi" (influential in the 60s). Parts of this I found very interesting, for instance the series of four dreams that he had soon after arrival that enabled his acceptance by the Hopi elders. I've a longstanding interest in the author.

 

[Parson]

Against All Odds is now on my list of TBR.

Thanks.

 

[Elentarri]

This weekend I finished:
1) Tapestries of Life by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, a brief overview of all the benefits that nature provides, and humans are generally too oblivious to notice, or too concerned with instant financial gain to give a damn.
2) Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari. An interesting and important book for anyone in this day and age (unless you happen to live under a rock in the middle of nowhere).

 

[Dave Vicks]

Eudora Welty stories.

I never have seen her books in bookstores or Libraries.

 

[AE35Unit]

Reading a Time-Life book about the Grand Canyon, published in the late 70s

 

[Parson]

I finished Acheron Inheritance the first in the first in the Federation Chronicles series, after reading and being impressed by the prequel Acheron Rising. The good news is that the book was really good and fully intend to read all three books in the series (or in the series presently?) The bad news is that the prequel starts a story that is never told in the series. The prequel I understood to be a lead up to some great great empires at war. Instead the series starts after that war and another and the great powers are in ruin. If I hadn't read the prequel I likely wouldn't have started the series, but it good sound SF, just not the fleet action I love the most, or at least not so far.

 

[Randy M.]

Eudora Welty stories.

I never have seen her books in bookstores or Libraries.

That surprises me. When I was a young I saw a lot of her work in bookstores. I have the collected stories I think because of a class I was in in the '80s. I've only read a handful, but they were good.