January 2023 Reading Thread

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I'm rereading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for the first time in 25+ years. The opening four chapters were still gold. Right now I'm sort of bogged down in the middle section with Hiro doing research in his virtual library. Hope the book'll pick up momentum soon.
 
I'm reading Much Ado About Mothing by James Lowen, which I got for Christmas last year and have finally got around to.
 
This morning I'm doing a reread :giggle:

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Paul Bowles "The Sheltering Sky" (1949)
Highly praised post war novel about three American travellers out of their in depth in the North African desert. A couple of lists rank it in the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.
Sadly, I found it unbearably tedious.
 
Saad Z. Hossain "The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday"
A mighty Djinn is awakened by water dripping into the stone coffin in which he has been imprisoned, on the slopes of Kanchenjunga, for several thousand years. En route to create mayhem and reassert his earthshattering authority, he encounters the old Gurkha Bhan Gurung busy shelling pistachios, and soon learns that much has changed over these millennia and that the nearest city, Kathmandu, is governed by a benevolent computer.
Very pleasant easy read novella. The title caught my eye in mentions here (@The Big Peat and @Danny McG ) and I then got interested in reading SF by an author based in Bangladesh.
 
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I read Neil Gaiman's eighth Sandman collection, Worlds' End. Throughout the series I have found that the side-stories which aren't directly connected to the main story arcs are usually as good as the stories more focused on Dream and this was true here as well. There's a lot of variety in terms of both plot and artwork between the different stories, I thought all the different stories were good although perhaps some of the best scenes come in the framing story.
 
As indicated earlier, I have moved on from Shirley Jackson's first novel The Road Through the Wall and have begun her second, Hangsaman. The former had a lot of characters, adults and children, and had more of a series of incidents than a straightforward plot, until a melodramatic event near the end. The author examined the foibles of suburbanites as if she were dissecting insects under a microscope. The current volume appears to concentrate on a single character, a young woman about to enter college and who lives in a dream world.
 
Tonight I'm reading a bioterrorism pandemic novel from 2013
The coward's way of war by Christopher G Nuttall
 
Self-editing for Fiction Writers, 2nd ed. by Browne and King.
So far it's a lot of the same advice I've read elsewhere but I tend to need gentle reminders on this stuff all the time, so I'm not complaining. I'm certainly highlighting a lot, so that's a sign I'm getting something out of it.

The checklists at the end of every chapter are a nice feature.
 
I finally got around to Piranesi by Susanna Clarke three days ago and finished yesterday. I read in short bursts, as I've been a bit distractible as of late. The story is part fantasy, part ontological mystery, whole genius. I really recommend this book, especially if you're a C.S. Lewis fan; there are several references to his Narnia book, The Magician's Nephew.

I've posted a thread about atypical fantasy novels; I think this belongs there. It's about a man going by the name Piranesi who resides in a world consisting of an infinitely spacious house full of statues and water. This is the only world of which he's aware. His only company is a man he calls The Other. They meet every now and then to perform magic rituals. One day, a third person arrives, upending everything Piranesi knows and believes. It's a bit short, so I won't say more. Please read.
 
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