December Reading Thread

[hitmouse]

At the moment I am having difficulty putting down Real Tigers (2016) by Mick Herron. This is the 3rd in the Slow Horses series of thrillers. I talked about the first one earlier this month. An arch villain emerges: an unscrupulous opportunistic floppy- haired old Etonian shagger Tory politician, who is a none too subtle caricature of a well-known floppy-haired old Etonian Tory politician. Herron is a clever writer and I think he is going to have fun with this. Recommended.

 

[Steve Harrison]

Finished Simon Scarrow's excellent WWII Berlin police thriller, Dead of Night, bringing my total for the year to 19 books (too many 1000 pagers again this year!).

...and started Everywhere An Oink Oink, David Mamet's account of his Hollywood screenwriting years. It's a hoot so far.

 

[williamjm]

Pham Nuwen is such an intriguing idea, but by the time I finished Deepness I got the weird feeling he was bored with the character for whatever reason. Other authors might have delved into looking at Pham Nuwen's medieval childhood with legends about technology and space travel.

Or taking a wider look at how the Qeng Ho could possibly maintain cultural cohesion with such vast distances and times between enterprises (for example, at any given moment why aren't thousands of popular figures within the Qeng Ho companies like Pham also trying to convert humanity into centralized empires? Etc. etc.)

Or following up with the interstellar human-arachnid civilizations, Pham turning warlord against the Emergents, etc.

Or following a new set of characters dealing with the aftermath of Countermeasure in the fast zones.

I don't have my hopes up, but there's so much potential.

It is a pity that Vinge isn't more prolific, I think he's published 8 novels and a bunch of short stories in about 5 decades of writing.

 

[vanye]

It is a pity that Vinge isn't more prolific, I think he's published 8 novels and a bunch of short stories in about 5 decades of writing.

Quality has a quantity of its own!