September Reading Thread

[Dave Vicks]

MICKEY ROURKE:WRESTLING WITH DEMONS,by Sandro Monetti.2010.

 

[Elentarri]

Storm Thief by Chris Wooding. [YA, sort-of-steampunkish, fantasy]

The whole novel takes place on the great island city or Orokos - an isolated dystopian city, forgotten by the world, powered by ancient technology called the Chaos Engine, which unleashes "probability storms" that change everything they touch. A city currently ruled by the militant and dictatorial Protectorate. Wooding has the ability to describe people and places very eloquently. The characters were also pretty interesting, especially the golem Vago. I absolutely loved the concept of ancient technology that the current population has forgotten how to use or what the purpose was. I was a bit disappointed that Wooding didn't elaborate on the Revenants. Teenage me would probably have loved this book. Adult me, likes it a lot, but I felt there was something missing. I can't quite put my finger on it. None-the-less, this is still an entertaining and enjoyable reading experience.​

 

[Stephen Palmer]

That looks good. On my list!

Terrific so far. Very well written.

 

[Dave Vicks]

BBC Radio Plays, Agatha Christie, & a Sara Paretsky.Mystery's.

 

[Elentarri]

Magic & Myth by Kathryn Trattner
This is a beautiful and poetically written collection of five stories that merge the supernatural with everyday occurances, in a delightfully weird and unique manner. Some of the stories have a fairytale vibe, while others are a bit darker. I loved the stories with the anthropomorphic personifications of season and "things". It's an interesting way of interacting. Blackberry Baby and The Black Cat are probably my favourite stories in this collection. The five stories included are:
Tornado - A short vignette. Spring, Winter and Tornado come for dinner
Blackberry Baby - a witch at work
The Deer Woman - murder has consequences
Fire Watch - a charming romance
The Black Cat - a collection of dark vignette's featuring a girl and her very unusual cat.

 

[Berlyn]

I just finished reading The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, which is the first book in The First Law series. I dunno what I can say. This book was just bloody awesome from start to finish. Every single character is interesting. I want to know more about the world. Glokta might be one of the best villains in any fantasy book I have read. I am jumping straight into the sequel tonight.

I gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars. I don't give out perfect 5s very often, but this book absolutely deserved one.

 

[Danny McG]

Thanks for posting this. Love Mick Herron's 'Slough House' novels & novellas.

This one had passed me by completely. Got a birthday coming up, so this will be just right.

It's billed as a stand alone but we meet Jackson Lamb under a field name "Miles" in 1994 Berlin.
And there's a couple of other Slough House references - Mick Herron is doing a Stephen King by sneaking these into his yarns

 

[Dave Vicks]

On deck for next month WHAT LIFE SHOULD MEAN TO YOU. By Alfred Adler.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Having finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), which was not quite science fiction, not quite a mystery, and not quite a technothriller, I am about to start his novel Spook Country (2007), which I believe is not quite a sequel.

 

[Dave Vicks]

NIKOLA TESLA, Autobiography, 1919.

 

[Hugh]

Philip Jose Farmer "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg"
A re-read. The first read, in my early twenties, was at a time when I thought Farmer was a genius. This time round I found it very dull. I'd also long forgotten that Verne's "Around the World in 80 days" was actually part of a struggle for supremacy between two alien races, the Eridaneans and the Capelleans.

 

[Elentarri]

The Wanderer's by Meg Howrey (Literary Fiction? )
Astronauts/cosmonaut Helen Kane, Yoshi Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must spend seventeen months in a realistic simulation to prepare for the first planned flight to, exploration of, and return from, Mars. This novel is a multi-character exploration of how these three astronauts deal with the isolation from everyone and how they deal with each other after spending months stuck together in cramped quarters. Sergei is hilarious! The novel also includes how a handful of these astronaut's family members deal with an absent parent or wife. The author states that this novel was inspired by the long-duration isolation study (Mars500) meant to mimic a 520-day mission to Mars. The ending was left a bit to vague and unfinished - I would really have loved to see the astronauts interact with their families at the end. Howrey has written a novel with rich, complex characters (and some strange ones) and provided some insight into what it's like to prepare for a mission to Mars. This isn't my usual reading fare, but surprising I enjoyed it quite a lot.

NOTE: This is NOT a science fiction novel. If you are expecting spaceships and the exploration of Mars look elsewhere.

 

[Elentarri]

Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga - an anthology by various authors.

This is a collection of 23 (mostly) horror stories featuring Baba Yaga - the witch of Slavic mythology. Each of the stories is different, some are better than others, but at the end of the anthology, I felt that most of the stories were too similar and finishing the book became a slog. I also felt, that at the end of the day, most of the stories did not capture the unique essence of Baba Yaga. All of the stories had a character called "Baby Yaga", some of them mentioned the house on chicken feet and/or the mortar & pestle and/or the house surrounded by a bone fence. But, you could have taken the Baba Yaga character out of the stories and replaced it with any generic witch or bogey man and they would have worked just as well. Unmemorable.​