April Reading Thread

[hitmouse]

Just began Walter de la Mare's short story collection The Connoisseur with a fine first story, "Mr. Kempe," which somehow reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson -- not Treasure Island -- as well as of de la Mare's own (later) story "The Recluse." This has an element of physical excitement one might not usually expect from this author, with the storyteller recounting his crawl across a narrow path above sea-waves.

My wife and I have begun to listen to audio books, and are now finishing Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile, which I'd already read.

In recent years I've tried to reread some books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was a favorite author back around 1969-1970. Usually now ERB doesn't hold my interest, and that was the case with this one, Llana of Gathol. I think the only ERBs that I have finished in the past ten years or so were At the Earth's Core, The Land That Time Forgot, and A Fighting Man of Mars, which, perhaps significantly, were all among the first I revisited. Couldn't stick it out later on with A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, Pellucidar -- was there anything else? I'd not read Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar before, but when I tried it within the past few years, nope, it didn't hold my interest. I think part of the problem is that I habitually read things that take a degree of concentration, attention. I might be able to finish an ERB novel if I read rapidly. I don't know. Anyway, I think I'm probably done with trying to read again this old favorite, although I might have a go at the first Tarzan book. (Even when I was reading lots of ERB, I didn't try to collect all of those books, and in fact probably didn't read more than about four out of -- what is it, 24 books?)

I have started Ruth Downie's Medicus. I think I will stick with it. But it seems I'm reading less fiction these days, especially novels, and relatively more short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. However, I have little doubt of finishing the Aubrey and Maturin books (The Wine-Dark Sea is next up) and C. P. Snow's Brothers and Strangers sequence -- I have about three of those to go. I'll probably read another Vorkosigan book within the next few months.

I reread the first Tarzan book a couple of years ago. ERB had an undeniable skill producing page-turners, as well as some compelling characters and worlds. So it was good, if you can deal with some pretty eye-watering racism compared to which the characterisations in the Barsoom books are just slightly dated fun.

 

[Extollager]

I'm currently reading The Call of the Dead, by John le Carre.

Let us know what you think of it.

 

[Extollager]

I reread the first Tarzan book a couple of years ago. ERB had an undeniable skill producing page-turners, as well as some compelling characters and worlds. So it was good, if you can deal with some pretty eye-watering racism compared to which the characterisations in the Barsoom books are just slightly dated fun.

This is from Wikipedia:

Burroughs strongly supported eugenics and scientific racism. His views held that English nobles made up a particular heritable elite among Anglo-Saxons. Tarzan was meant to reflect this, with him being born to English nobles and then adopted by talking apes (the Mangani). They express eugenicist views themselves, but Tarzan is permitted to live despite being deemed "unfit" in comparison, and grows up to surpass not only them but black Africans, whom Burroughs clearly presents as inherently inferior, even not wholly human. In one Tarzan story, he finds an ancient civilization where eugenics has been practiced for over 2,000 years, with the result that it is free of all crime. Criminal behavior is held to be entirely hereditary, with the solution having been to kill not only criminals but also their families. Lost on Venus, a later novel, presents a similar utopia where forced sterilization is practiced and the "unfit" are killed. Burroughs explicitly supported such ideas in his unpublished nonfiction essay I See A New Race. Additionally, his Pirate Blood, which is not speculative fiction and remained unpublished after his death, portrayed the characters as victims of their hereditary criminal traits (one a descendant of the corsair Jean Lafitte, another from the Jukes family).[40] These views have been compared with Nazi eugenics (though noting that they were popular and common at the time), with his Lost on Venus being released the same year the Nazis took power (in 1933).

....I bought all the Venus books back in my ERB days, but never read any of them, and, as mentioned yesterday, didn't read very many of the Tarzan books. (The only ones I'm pretty sure of are the first one or two and the one in which Tarzan goes to Pellucidar -- I did read all of the Pellucidar books when I was a kid.) I seem to have missed the worst of ERB's evocations of eugenics, etc. It would be interesting to see an accurate list of prominent Americans and British people who publicly approved of the sterilization of "unfit" demographics, etc. What a century that was for really horrible promotion of schemes for utopian futures. I wonder who the anti-utopians were, especially in science fiction; there must have been some other than C. S. Lewis.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

So, since there is a prequel, and it's just a short story, I've decided to read that

Which I did in a couple of hours last night. "Precious Little Things" is more of a preface to Made Things than a prequel, since it involves none of the same characters and expands a bit on the background mentioned in the longer story, and if I had read it before the other, I think I would have been left shouting, "Yes, but what happens next." But since I read Made Things (which is either a short novel or a long novella, I'm not sure which) first, I was perfectly satisfied with the way this one ended. And though slight and a bit hurried, I found "Precious Little Things" to be a more poignant and emotional story.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I'm currently reading The Call of the Dead, by John le Carre.

Isn't that Call for the Dead? I read it a long time ago. Like A Murder of Quality, it's more of a whodunit than the more sophisticated espionage fiction he would later create.

 

[dask]

Just starting this:

 

[Parson]

I just finished 23 Years on Fire by Joel Shepherd. This is the fourth book in the Cassandra Krenov Series. This series and this book are clearly far future SF. Cassandra (Sandy to her friends) is a "synthetic" human. She is neither robot, nor android, but something else. She has abilities both physical and mental pretty far in advance of unaugmented humans. And even augmented humans are not in her league. The series has to this point mainly about how Sandy sets herself free first of the literal ties that compel her to fight and then to free herself of preconceptions as she intergrates into the human society on the other side of the war of the League that created her.

23 Years on Fire is a transitional novel. Sandy is fairly well situated in human society now, but she finds that other synthetics are being created in ways that do not leave them the option of blazing their own path. This book is full of revelations about how the technology came to be and how that's effecting the synthetics. As the other books in this series. There are a couple of major scenes where there is a battle that only someone like Sandy could survive.

On the whole I often found myself struggling to understand the descriptions of the tech in use, particularly the electronics. To me it felt a bit like a Neuromancer kind of story, but that's far too limiting an analogy to push too far.

There are 2 more books in the series (or at least so-far) and I will likely read them. But have no desire to dive right into the next book.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

 

[Rodders]

I finished The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe audiobook read by Martin Freeman.

Martin wasn’t as enjoyable as Stephen Fry, who in turn wasn’t as great as Simon Jones as “The Book”. Still, it was hugely enjoyable and my respect for Douglas Adam’s just gets even higher. Hilarious and quite thought provoking.

Now on to Life The Universe And Everything, also read by Martin Freeman.

 

[Bick]

Starting The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman, now. Starts brightly and I have high expectations.

 

[hitmouse]

This is from Wikipedia:

Burroughs strongly supported eugenics and scientific racism. His views held that English nobles made up a particular heritable elite among Anglo-Saxons. Tarzan was meant to reflect this, with him being born to English nobles and then adopted by talking apes (the Mangani). They express eugenicist views themselves, but Tarzan is permitted to live despite being deemed "unfit" in comparison, and grows up to surpass not only them but black Africans, whom Burroughs clearly presents as inherently inferior, even not wholly human. In one Tarzan story, he finds an ancient civilization where eugenics has been practiced for over 2,000 years, with the result that it is free of all crime. Criminal behavior is held to be entirely hereditary, with the solution having been to kill not only criminals but also their families. Lost on Venus, a later novel, presents a similar utopia where forced sterilization is practiced and the "unfit" are killed. Burroughs explicitly supported such ideas in his unpublished nonfiction essay I See A New Race. Additionally, his Pirate Blood, which is not speculative fiction and remained unpublished after his death, portrayed the characters as victims of their hereditary criminal traits (one a descendant of the corsair Jean Lafitte, another from the Jukes family).[40] These views have been compared with Nazi eugenics (though noting that they were popular and common at the time), with his Lost on Venus being released the same year the Nazis took power (in 1933).

....I bought all the Venus books back in my ERB days, but never read any of them, and, as mentioned yesterday, didn't read very many of the Tarzan books. (The only ones I'm pretty sure of are the first one or two and the one in which Tarzan goes to Pellucidar -- I did read all of the Pellucidar books when I was a kid.) I seem to have missed the worst of ERB's evocations of eugenics, etc. It would be interesting to see an accurate list of prominent Americans and British people who publicly approved of the sterilization of "unfit" demographics, etc. What a century that was for really horrible promotion of schemes for utopian futures. I wonder who the anti-utopians were, especially in science fiction; there must have been some other than C. S. Lewis.

I hadn't realised ERB was so overt. Interestingly, in the Tarzan novels he shows almost equal disdain for people of Swedish extraction. There is a particularly unpleasant episode in the first or 2nd book where French troops massacre everyone in a native village (women and children included) as a punishment, which the book considers justified.
Having said that, I still really enjoy the Barsoom novels. I have not looked at the Venus stories for decades, but the first one made a vivid impression on me aged about 10.

 

[Extollager]

Swords of Mars, the 8th book, is well regarded, I believe; I might try that one for a late rereading.