March Reading Thread

[Chris von shannow]

Trying Gods of war by William Frisbee

 

[Vince W]

Reading More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon.

 

[PADDY]

I have three novels carrying over from February, two of which I'll certainly be finishing in the next few days, both of them historical murder mysteries (another John Shakespeare set in Elizabethan England, this time with the plots surrounding Mary Queen of Scots, and another Sister Fidelma set in 665, this time in her home country of Ireland). I've also still got Age of Ashes by Daniel Abraham hanging over me, and I'm determined to finish it or dump it this month.

In addition, I've got two non-fiction books on the go. Exploring Avebury: The Essential Guide by Steve Marshall, a incredibly detailed book about Avebury and its surroundings with wonderful photos and illustrations, and Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain by Steve Tibble, about the Knights Templar, of course, interesting but somewhat repetitive.

So what are you reading this month?

Non fiction: 'The Demon in the Machine,' Paul Davies, 'can life be explained

I have three novels carrying over from February, two of which I'll certainly be finishing in the next few days, both of them historical murder mysteries (another John Shakespeare set in Elizabethan England, this time with the plots surrounding Mary Queen of Scots, and another Sister Fidelma set in 665, this time in her home country of Ireland). I've also still got Age of Ashes by Daniel Abraham hanging over me, and I'm determined to finish it or dump it this month.

In addition, I've got two non-fiction books on the go. Exploring Avebury: The Essential Guide by Steve Marshall, a incredibly detailed book about Avebury and its surroundings with wonderful photos and illustrations, and Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain by Steve Tibble, about the Knights Templar, of course, interesting but somewhat repetitive.

So what are you reading this month?

Non- Fiction: 'The Demon in the Machine,' Paul Davies.'We need something beyond physics and chemistry to explain life. ' A domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect . . . the concept of information: a power to unify a number of key disciplines, and illuminate the question of whether we are alone in the universe.' Fascinating and something to dip in and out of for inspiration.
Longtime fan of physicist Davies that started with 'God and the New Physics.'
Unfortunately, he is disliked by Richard Dawkins of whom I am also a fan, for his occasional diversions into spirituality and religion.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm reading The Last Hero. A novella by Terry Pratchett.

 

[Dave Vicks]

CONECTIONS IN DEATH,JD Robb.2019.
Mystery,Science Fiction.
Audio book.

 

[pogopossum]

Ordered some additional Gregory Benford while I was still enjoying his Shadows of Eternity, commented on above in this thread.

Again, I was impressed by the quality of Benford's writing from the start of the book. Additional pleasures are that Benford knew either first or second hand seemingly every important scientist in the development of the atom bomb and that their personalities are presented with both attention to how each approached the physics and technical problems and to their personalities in dealing with their colleagues. He also, as a professor of physics himself, a great fluency with the science and has the writing skills to make somewhat technical facts clear.
More than half of the book is a fictionalized version of what happened. Science Fiction comes in where a technical question about development are solved differently, leading to a quicker development and use of the first bomb.
I regret that either Benford's politics or his need to chart great conclusions killed the ending for me. He charts an immediate outcome of the earlier bomb use to a far different (and to me) unrealistic outcome. Not in the ending of the war but the subsequent political fallout. I wish that he were a better historian as well as a fluent writer and presenter of physics.
Still, my objections are to less than the last 1/8 of the book. Enjoyable and generally illuminating.

I am a sucker for a book that starts off with the excavation of a Mycenean tomb. Particularly when, because it is by Benford, I know that it will not just focus on 3,500 years ago.
Well it doesn't. I did regret that perhaps the most interesting historical speculation is sort of a throw in towards the very end of the book. He presages it but just trots it out in the last ten pages.
There are physics. There are explosions of violence, not to mention academic politics. I did not really like the characterization of national politics in the book which seemed to extrapolate in unrealistic ways. The bad guy is not just self-serving but POLITICAL!!! I am sure that if we charted our relative politics on a graph, Gregory's and mine would be at opposite ends. So my bias may come in, not just his. But hey, what we bring to a book often shapes reactions.
The interplay between our hero(s) and the bad guy is certainly unrealistic. It's more bad Len Deighton. than quality adventure. Although the physics is adroitly explained ( I was a history major - not scientifically oriented) the rationalizations for the end piece were unrealistic in the extreme. I did predict a techie end to a final confrontation some 100 pages before it happened.
So. Sort of a potboiler. Okay, but somewhere around the middle on a ten point scale.

I keep hoping to enjoy Benford the way I used to. Just started The Sunborn.

 

[The Big Peat]

Finished Saunders' Imaro. Great charm at times but what a slog.

 

[AndrewT]

Reading Robin Hobb's second book Royal Assassin. I had been meaning to get around to these for some time. The pace is very slow but she is an excellent writer and not in any way dull. They are just not action-oriented.

 

[AndrewT]

Well... two days of March, and most of February. A scifi trilogy that has been sitting on my shelf unread for almost thirty years. A trilogy in three paperbacks, inside a nice thick card slipcase with Chris Foss covers that form a triptych.

Yes, I'm talking about Foundation by Asimov. No idea why it's taken me so long to read the things, but there you are. I thought they were excellent - very enjoyable. I think if I'd read them as a kid or teenager (though I didn't have them then) I would have read them several times since (they're that type of book).

I also have Foundation's Edge - which is almost as long as the original trilogy combined - but it was written thirty years later so I'm in two minds about reading it.

I read Foundation's Edge when it first came out in 1984. I was 19 and had just finished the trilogy. I remember thinking it was one of the best books I had ever read and my favorite of the series. I'm not sure if I would feel the same now. But I thought it was one of the Hugos that was the most deserved, unlike the more recent additions to the list, lol.

 

[AndrewT]

Love it when I see the Shannara series mentioned. It's got a special place in my heart for being my introduction to fantasy.

You're not alone in comparing The Sword of Shannara to Lord of the Rings. The general consensus is it's very derivative. A literal laugh-out-loud moment for me was when I realized there's an insane leader being puppeted by a silver-tongued advisor.

However, Terry really starts to find his own voice with Elfstones, and it's my personal favorite of the series. I always recommend it to anyone curious about the series. Hope you enjoy it.

I have read the first three. Yes it is true the first book was a sort of second-rate copycat but then he gets quite original in the sequels. Overall he is very enjoyable. It's just that I have so much to read I never have gotten around to going past the first three.

 

[AndrewT]

And Terry Brooks is 80 and still churning them out, whereas GRRM is five years younger and has taken ten years to not finish a series...

GRRM wants his done right. He doesnt want to be a Robert Jordan, He will finish! Think positive.

 

[Pyan]

GRRM wants his done right. He doesnt want to be a Robert Jordan, He will finish! Think positive.

Started in 2010...

The Winds of Winter publishing date guesses?

 

[Chris von shannow]

Trying Gods of war by William Frisbee

Bloody awful don’t bother

 

[AE35Unit]

Ordered some additional Gregory Benford while I was still enjoying his Shadows of Eternity, commented on above in this thread.

I am a sucker for a book that starts off with the excavation of a Mycenean tomb. Particularly when, because it is by Benford, I know that it will not just focus on 3,500 years ago.
Well it doesn't. I did regret that perhaps the most interesting historical speculation is sort of a throw in towards the very end of the book. He presages it but just trots it out in the last ten pages.

I also have Artifact on my book shelf to read some time, but I like his Galactic Centre books , especially Great Sky River. (Technically the first two books in the series are are rather dull and can be skipped, starting with Great Sky River instead)
He also did a great collaboration with David Brin in Heart of the Comet

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I have started a collection of Western stories by Dorothy M. Johnson. The four tales included are "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "A Man Called Horse," "The Hanging Tree," and "Lost Sister." (The title of the collection, as far as I can tell, is just the combined titles of the stories.) The first three were made into movies, and the last one won the Spur Award (equivalent to the Nebula for Western writers.) Many sources say that when the Western Writers of America (who give out the Spur Award) named the best five Western stories of the 20th century, four of them were by Johnson. (I'm guessing the four in this book, but I don't have proof of that. I also can't find out who wrote the fifth one.) I am starting with "The Hanging Tree," although it's the third in the book, because we have the DVD of the Gary Cooper movie adapted from it at home. It's also, by far, the longest story in the book, a full novella.

 

[Steve Harrison]

I just finished Ken Follett's The Armour of Light, which is a very enjoyable, old-fashioned saga in the Kingsbridge (Pillars of the Earth) novel series.

Now reading The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Bettany Hughes.

 

[Elentarri]

Now reading The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Bettany Hughes.

I've got this on my TBR list. I would love to know what you think of it when you are done.

 

[Vince W]

I’ve been trying to read the first Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor by Lee Child. It’s a hard DNF for me. Badly written and dull. I just don’t get their popularity.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

have started a collection of Western stories by Dorothy M. Johnson. The four tales included are "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "A Man Called Horse," "The Hanging Tree," and "Lost Sister." (The title of the collection, as far as I can tell, is just the combined titles of the stories.) The first three were made into movies,

"The Hanging Tree" set off some bells, so I looked it up online, and reading the description for the movie I realized that I had seen it when it first came out, along with my family, almost certainly at a drive-in theater. Parts of the movie that the article described I could picture very vividly in my mind, as though they had a particularly strong emotional effect on me at the time. Since I was not yet ten, I was hardly a qualified movie critic, so I can't say whether it was a good movie or not—still less, considering the year (1959) and how loosely Hollywood would often base a script off a book of the same name, to what extent it resembles the actual story in the collection you are reading—but I can at least vouch for the effect the movie had on me. In fact, after reading the article, I dreamed of it all night and into the next day, although since I've been sick and feverish all this last week that factors in as well.

So have you read that one yet, Victoria? What did you think?

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Hanging Tree" set off some bells, so I looked it up online, and reading the description for the movie I realized that I had seen it when it first came out, along with my family, almost certainly at a drive-in theater. Parts of the movie that the article described I could picture very vividly in my mind, as though they had a particularly strong emotional effect on me at the time. Since I was not yet ten, I was hardly a qualified movie critic, so I can't say whether it was a good movie or not—still less, considering the year (1959) and how loosely Hollywood would often base a script off a book of the same name, to what extent it resembles the actual story in the collection you are reading—but I can at least vouch for the effect the movie had on me. In fact, after reading the article, I dreamed of it all night and into the next day, although since I've been sick and feverish all this last week that factors in as well.

So have you read that one yet, Victoria? What did you think?

I am most of the way through it. The things that are most notable about it are the author's completely unromantic view of the Old West; the spare, laconic language; psychological insight into the characters (one suffers what we would now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after witnessing her father shot by a bandit and barely surviving crawling through the desert for days, struck blind by the sunlight), the complex narrative structure, which mixes flashbacks and flashforwards with the main plot; and the casual appearance of death, whether by gunshot, accident, disease, or suicide, throughout.

Strong stuff!