November 2022 Reading Thread

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This is (so far) a good post apocalyptic story.
Due to various bio attacks the human race is now sterile so the surviving population is shrinking rapidly.

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Fiberglass Cyborg said:
"Relic" by Alan Dean Foster. The tale of the last known survivor of a human interstellar civilisation. Didn't impress me much at first, but I really got into it after a couple of chapters. Very old-school, in a good way. Some nice nuances in the relationships between the hero and his alien hosts, the Myssari. (Who are non-humanoid, which I always like.)

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St John Mandel. Accidentally absorbed this in a day. A literary-flavoured time travel story, vaguely reminiscent of "Cloud Atlas". Lyrical without being pretentious.
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I'm looking forward to Sea of Tranquillity though I've not actually bought it yet!
 
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Once again Adrian Tchaikovsky blows me away with his versatility! This is exciting space opera painted on a big canvas. The scope and complexity of the story and its setting puts me in mind of Neal Asher’s Polity books, though with the violence dialled down somewhat and very much in Tchaikovsky’s own inimitable style. I found the whole setting intriguing with diverse aliens, all of whom are very much not just human characters in alien form, and the politics between them and the humans are well constructed and believable. All the characters human and otherwise are individual, complex and engaging, and, where appropriate very likeable and human or, where alien, very, well, alien! It’s not a short book but with great pacing it never dragged. Unlike so many series I read these days, the ending nicely resolved enough whilst leaving plenty for the ongoing story arc; I’m very much looking forward to the sequels. 5/5 stars

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos
It’s a difficult one this. On the one hand it’s good well-paced military SF hokum, on the other Kloos seems to have little concerns for factual or scientific accuracy. It starts with good, though fairly standard, military boot camp stuff, moves on to some interesting space opera bits then finally we get Godzilla! Eighty-foot-high aliens three times bigger than Tyrannosaurus Rex whose origins are frankly way beyond scientific plausibility. Up to that point I was almost prepared to live with the (many) smaller faults and continue with the series but once the Godzilla aliens appeared the whole thing died for me. 3/5 stars.

Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
I’m enjoying this historical series set in the early years of the One Hundred Years War. It’s gritty with plenty of grim realism showing the realities of mediaeval warfare in which the battles are horrendous but the suffering of the non-combatants between battles, enduring the depredations of foraging and bored soldiers, is ultimately far worse. His characters are strong and he’s non too precious about what happens to them, and the plot is interesting, if a touch fantastical. But somehow the stories are just not grabbing me in the same way the previous Cornwell series I’ve read have and I’m really not sure why. All the ingredients are there but the mix just doesn’t quite produce the excitement I’ve found in the Saxon and Warlord Chronicles. Still very good but just not quite hitting the same level. 4/5 stars

The Peripheral by William Gibson
There is so much wrong with this book that I very nearly put it down early on, but it did, eventually, grab my attention and keep me reading. And I do mean ‘eventually,’ it is not a short book, and it starts so slowly that I reached a point where I dreaded picking it up again. By 100 pages in a fair bit had happened but none of it made any sense whatsoever. I kept telling myself, this is typical Gibson; he makes the reader work and explains little, leaving the reader to discover everything, so I continued. By 130 pages it was getting to be a very close thing but eventually by 150 pages it finally started coming together; many authors can give you a complete satisfying novel in less pages! From this point in it did improve but only after I managed to condition myself not to scream at then end of each 5-page chapter and scene switch. Between this, in my view totally unnecessary, staccato stuttering structure that I confess I absolutely loathed and his continual invented and unexplained vocabulary I felt like I was reading a throwback to ‘90s cyberpunk; it just felt so dated! But behind it all a very good and interesting story did eventually emerge and keep me engaged, but it so nearly was a DNF. 3/5 stars
 
Vertigo said:
Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell
I’m enjoying this historical series set in the early years of the One Hundred Years War. It’s gritty with plenty of grim realism showing the realities of mediaeval warfare in which the battles are horrendous but the suffering of the non-combatants between battles, enduring the depredations of foraging and bored soldiers, is ultimately far worse. His characters are strong and he’s non too precious about what happens to them, and the plot is interesting, if a touch fantastical. But somehow the stories are just not grabbing me in the same way the previous Cornwell series I’ve read have and I’m really not sure why. All the ingredients are there but the mix just doesn’t quite produce the excitement I’ve found in the Saxon and Warlord Chronicles. Still very good but just not quite hitting the same level. 4/5 stars
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Loved the series, but it's essentially Sharpe in the Hundred Years War. Frankly, all his books are Sharpe in different settings. Still fun though.

Vertigo said:
The Peripheral by William Gibson
There is so much wrong with this book that I very nearly put it down early on, but it did, eventually, grab my attention and keep me reading. And I do mean ‘eventually,’ it is not a short book, and it starts so slowly that I reached a point where I dreaded picking it up again. By 100 pages in a fair bit had happened but none of it made any sense whatsoever. I kept telling myself, this is typical Gibson; he makes the reader work and explains little, leaving the reader to discover everything, so I continued. By 130 pages it was getting to be a very close thing but eventually by 150 pages it finally started coming together; many authors can give you a complete satisfying novel in less pages! From this point in it did improve but only after I managed to condition myself not to scream at then end of each 5-page chapter and scene switch. Between this, in my view totally unnecessary, staccato stuttering structure that I confess I absolutely loathed and his continual invented and unexplained vocabulary I felt like I was reading a throwback to ‘90s cyberpunk; it just felt so dated! But behind it all a very good and interesting story did eventually emerge and keep me engaged, but it so nearly was a DNF. 3/5 stars
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I agree that Gibson makes you work for everything. He invents words and terms and doesn't explain any of them. It's one of the things I've come to love about his writing, but I know it puts a lot of people off.
 
Vince W said:
Loved the series, but it's essentially Sharpe in the Hundred Years War. Frankly, all his books are Sharpe in different settings. Still fun though.


I agree that Gibson makes you work for everything. He invents words and terms and doesn't explain any of them. It's one of the things I've come to love about his writing, but I know it puts a lot of people off.
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I have always managed in the past; loving the Sprawl trilogy and so far loving the Bridge books. Pattern Recognition left me completely cold but not because of this aspect of his writing and I haven't been inclined to read further into the Blue Ant books. So I was a little surprised to find this one so difficult to get into. I don't think the sutteringly short chapters helped but ultimately to have absolutely no idea what was going on after 100 pages is what nearly did it for me. I might not have understood all the terminology at the start of Neuromancer but I picked up the story very quickly. This time it was incredibly hard work until I got past that 150 page mark.
 
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Just started NOT SAFE AFTER DARK by Peter Robinson. Haven't read him before but when I saw it on the shelves, a nice, thick volume of mystery stories, including 3 short stories and a novella featuring his recurring character, Inspector Banks, I decided it was time.

After much American supernatural mayhem, seemed like British human mayhem could be a palate cleanser.
 
In the Shadow Garden by Liz Parker is a charming, magical realism novel about a magical garden, suspect bourbon, two families and missing memories. A light, entertaining read.

And I read How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, because I've had the book languishing on my shelf since my foster brother tossed it out and I've never read it (or watched the movie). It's a typical Dr. Seuss. Funny poems and hilarious illustrations that would work really well read out-loud to a little child.
 
This requires some explanation. Some time ago we watched the oddball movie Queen For a Day (1951), which adapted three previously published short stories and awkwardly linked them to the popular radio show (and later, TV show) of the same name. Obsessives that we are, we then tracked down and obtained the three original stories. Thus, I have the following before me.

The August 1948 issue of Woman's Home Companion, which has the story "The Gossamer World" by Faith Baldwin.

The May 1948 issue of Harper's Magazine, which has the story "High Diver" by John Ashworth.

Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories (2003 reprint of1995 edition) edited by Colleen Breese, which contains the story "Horsie" by you-know-who. It first appeared in the December 1932 issue of Harper's Bazaar. I don't recall if we were unable to find a copy for sale, or if the price was prohibitive due to the age of the magazine and/or the fame of the author.
 
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, a delightfully fungussy retelling of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by E.A. Poe
 
Replay by Ken Grimwood (1986), I was a bit hesitant to read another time travel story so soon after Time and Again by Jack Finney (1970) and I did put it aside at first but I picked it back up again a few weeks later and its a good story built around a Groundhog Day style of time travel.

I'm struggling with Sci Fi at the moment and so its back to Crime with The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M. Cain, 1934) which should be at worst a quick read.
 
I just read Georges Simenon's Pietr the Latvian, which is the first of his Maigret novels. I saw the French film Maigret, starring Gerard Depardieu, a few months ago as part of Auckland's French film festival, and enjoyed it very much. Inspector Maigret is older in the film than in this book, but I still had a picture of the blunt, hulking, Depardieu as the title character in my mind as I read it. The book was good, though it took me a little while to get into its pacing and the way Simenon tells a story. Now I've read one, and 'get' the style, I expect I'll enjoy a return to these books in future. This will be easy, because I found 3 other Maigret books at a used book sale last week for $2 each.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories (2003 reprint of1995 edition) edited by Colleen Breese, which contains the story "Horsie" by you-know-who. It first appeared in the December 1932 issue of Harper's Bazaar.
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Have you read much Dorothy Parker? She's someone I feel I ought to have read. I'm not especially a poetry reader, but I've heard good things about her short stories.
 
I’m starting The Reefs of Time, by the criminally under-appreciated Jeffrey A. Carver. This is the first in a duology (the Out of Time sequence), which make up books 5 & 6 in the Chaos Chronicles. Carver had to self-publish the duology, which reflects much more on current publishing than it does on Carver’s books.
 
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