February Reading Thread

[Bick]

From Sixteen Short Novels:

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894) by Mark Twain

Set in Missouri before the American Civil War. A slave who is only one-sixteenth Black switches her infant son (himself only one-thirty-second Black) with the son of her master. They grow up in the opposite roles society intended. Late in the story, there's a murder. The title character (a shrewd lawyer thought to be a fool because of his eccentricities and witty remarks) uses his oddball hobby of collecting fingerprints to solve the case, and to reveal the switching of the infants.

The character is sort of a 19th century Columbo; like that fictional character, he solves a murder to which the audience already knows the solution. I'm not sure if this is the first example of the inverted detective story or not. The climactic trial scene suggests Perry Mason as well.

Sounds very interesting, and I'd be mulling over which Twain to read next - I think it may be this one now, cheers.

 

[Hugh]

Sounds very interesting, and I'd be mulling over which Twain to read next - I think it may be this one now, cheers.

Fortunately I have the Classics Illustrated edition

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I just finished reading two stories from a series of dark fantasy short fiction, called Into Shadow.

As advertised, these stories were dark and even violent, but not gratuiously so. They were also very well-written. Though each be read in an hour or two, I found them both to be powerful, though in different ways.

"The Six Deaths of the Saint," by Alix E. Harrow

This one was my favorite—though easily the darkest. It deals with a seemingly endless cycle of war and violence. The heroine of the story is a young girl, "rescued" from poverty by an ambitious prince, and trained to use her practically super-human skills as a fighter to be his saint (or devil) and fight in his cause. Yet no victory satisfies him, no advancement in power is enough. He always wants more. It explores the question of how far someone might go, how far they might be complicit even when they begin to realize the truth, in order to win the love and approval of someone who pretends to care for them, but really only finds them useful.

"What the Dead Know," by Nghi Vo

This one was more chilling, because the setting was closer to our own world, and because apart from the supernatural element the terrors the story unfolds were all-too-realistic: prejudice against women, prejudice against foreigners, a woman's death at the hands of her violent lover. The heroine here is a fake medium of Vietnamese descent. Along with her love and partner, Maryse travels a setting similar to the 19th century American Midwest pretending to communicate with the dead, although in truth she has no such power and doesn't believe that such things are possible. Then one day in a small isolated town, a missing woman decides to use Maryse to reveal her tragic fate.

 

[Foxbat]

Most of us have heard of the Picts, the Gaels and the Celts and even a few of us have heard of the likes of the Votadini but there are many other tribes almost completely obscured by the mists of time.

I'm currently working through Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms Of Scotland by Alistair Moffat. It primarily focuses on southern Scotland (my neck of the woods) and is both a fascinating and enlightening read.



P.S. folk have often questioned the pronounciation of Celtic: should it be with a hard C (Kelt) or soft (Selt). It turns out that both are correct. But, what is surprising is that Celt with a soft C is the older of the two.

Why Is 'Celtic' Pronounced Two Ways?

\SELT\ has been heard for many centuries; \KELT\, just a few.

www.merriam-webster.com

 

[Elentarri]

Transformer by Nick Lane - a book about the Krebs Cycle. Not nearly as well or clearly written as Power, Sex, Suicide or The Vital Question.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

From Sixteen Short Novels:

"Ward No. 6" by Anton Chekhov (1892) (no translator credited; possibly Constance Garnett, who translated a large amount of Russian literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries)

Very dark tale of the hideous mental ward of a shoddy hospital. Deals mostly with one of the patients, a paranoid intellectual, and a physician. Almost a horror story.

 

[williamjm]

I finished Lois McMaster Bujold's latest Penric and Desdemona novella, Demon Daughter. I thought it was another good story in the series, with some good character development for Penric and his family and also for the new character Otta, although sometimes I felt she was maybe a bit too perceptive for a six year-old.

I also read Lost Sols, a bonus chapter that Andy Weir recently published to mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Martian, available on his website: galactanet.com/lostsols.pdf

 

[AE35Unit]

Next up, The Dark Side of Earth a collection of stories by Alfred Bester

 

[Dave Vicks]

Various August Derleth stories.
Horror.

 

[Dave Vicks]

THE REBELLIOUS CEO:,by Ralph Nader,
2023.

 

[Chris von shannow]

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher​

 

[Danny McG]

Past Crimes by Jason Pinter (2024)

The blurb:
When death becomes entertainment, every life has a price. And Cassie West is about to find out how much hers is worth . . . Ready Player One meets Black Mirror in this stunning speculative thriller set in a future world in which virtual reality isn't just a game, it's daily life.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

From Sixteen Short Novels:

"Notes From Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864) (No translator credit; probably Constance Garnett again)

The most famous novella in the book, and the only one I'm sure I have read before. The bitter, spiteful, self-loathing narrator introduces himself and his philosophy in the first half. In the second half, he relates his experiences, particularly how he failed to rescue a prostitute from her fate. A deep look into a tortured soul.

 

[Hugh]

I'm a 100 pages into Rider Haggard's autobiography "The Days of My Life", and it's an interesting mix so far of historical events (currently he's in South Africa aged 22 and has just heard news of the British defeat by the Zulus at Isandhlwana, the background to which he's been deeply involved in), rye humour and personal reflection. An excellent read so far.

Here's his Victorian Dad @1873 out walking in the Alps: My brother rode off, we shouting our farewells, my father waving a tall white hat out of which, to the amazement of the travellers, fell two towels and an assortment of cabbage leaves and other greenery. I should explain that the day was hot, and my parent feared sunstroke.

I also hadn't realised that the great warrior Umslopogaas of his novels was based on a real person actually named Umslopogaas, and described almost identically: Umslopogaas, then a man of about sixty, was a Swazi of high birth. He was a tall, thin, fierce-faced fellow with a great hole above the left temple over which the skin pulsated, that he had come by in some battle. He said that he had killed ten men in single combat, of whom the first was a chief called Skive, always making use of a battle axe. He was an interesting old fellow from whom I heard many stories that Fynney used to interpret.

 

[Steve Harrison]

I finished the latest Reacher novel, The Secret, which is the same as all the others, but still a bit better than recent ones (I'm addicted!).

And I've now started Ken Follett's new (Pillars of the Earth) Knightsbridge novel, The Armour of Light, which jumps forward several centuries from the earlier books in the series, beginning in 1792 and covering the Napoleonic era.

 

[Bick]

Blindsight, by Peter Watts was a DNF for me - I just couldn’t get into it. Watts’ preferred method seems to be to have the reader do all the work, rather than explain anything himself. Perhaps in a different mood I’d like it, but it’s not for me right now.

I’m instead moving on to Maelstrom, by Taylor Anderson, the third book in his enjoyable Destroyermen series.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

From Sixteen Short Novels:

"Ward No. 6" by Anton Chekhov (1892) (no translator credited; possibly Constance Garnett, who translated a large amount of Russian literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries)

Very dark tale of the hideous mental ward of a shoddy hospital. Deals mostly with one of the patients, a paranoid intellectual, and a physician. Almost a horror story.

A slight correction: It turns out the translator was Ann Dunnigan. (I still believe the translator for "Notes From Underground" was Constance Garnett.)

Anyway . . .

From Sixteen Short Novels:

"The Fall" by Albert Camus (1956) (translated by Justin O'Brien)

Consists of long monologues delivered over several days by a former lawyer, now a self-declared "judge-penitent," to a fellow Frenchman he meets in a tavern in Amsterdam. Covers a lot of ground, but to a great extent it deals with judgment (both of self and others.) Plenty of food for thought.

 

[Elentarri]

Finished Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, translated by Christine Donougher

I doubt I could say anything about this book that hasn't been said before. It's heart-wrenching in places, happy in others, with many educational digressions (Hugo really loves his history lessons, which I mostly found interesting). The repeated, almost coincidental, interactions with the same handful of characters did make me raise my eyebrows on several occasions, but Hugo did make it worth it in the end. I'm rather sad at Javert's story. This is a character whose personal growth I found particularly interesting. This is an emotional story. I also found this translation to be particularly good i.e. it wasn't clunky, or archaic.

PS: I'm vaguely disappointed that the odious wretch Thénardier wasn't eaten by a crocodile in the sewers of Paris. Why else include such a glorious description of the Paris sewer system without including a crocodile that escaped from the zoo and ate the person who deserved it the most?​

NOTE : For a discussion on the various translations/editions see the site: What’s the best translation of Les Miserables?

 

[Montero]

@Bick Read that in my teens from my late father's bookshelves and remember liking it. Must find where I put that book as I probably kept it.

The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher​

Loved that and getting rather tired of waiting for him to write more books in the series.

Just read a novella, The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe by Kij Johnson. A professor at an all women's college in an alternate world called the dream world, which can be accessed by people from our world only in their dreams, goes on a quest to retrieve a brilliant student who elopes with a "dreamer" from our world. I rather like the doughty Professor Boe, who used to be a great traveller in her youth, and now sets off on one last journey with a little black cat riding on her pack. Has some dark fantasy/horror elements in the problems she encounters. The world building is very interesting. You gradually learn more about Prof Boe's past as the quest continues.

 

[Elentarri]

Loved that and getting rather tired of waiting for him to write more books in the series.

The second novel was published last year (The Olympian Affair) and there is a short story that fits just before the second novel (Warriorborn). But I agree, the Harry Dresden series is getting boring and I wish he would write the rest of the Cinder Spires.