August Reading Thread

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THE INCREDIBLE HULK ,FUTURE IMPERFECT .2017, With Peter David.

Comic book.
 
Randy M. said:
After reading a few stories in Golden Age Whodunits (ed. Otto Penzler), including a reread of long time favorite, "Haircut" by Ring Lardner, I've decided to take up The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager; Sager's becoming a favorite thriller writer for me. He's (Sager is a pseudonym) adept at plotting, arranging events just so and then filling in with the touches that make setting and characters believable. About 100 pages in and I'm hooked.
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During some quiet times at work, I've also been reading The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy (published in 1908) on Project Gutenberg. Though arranged in chapters like a novel, it's really a collection, in which 2 or 3 chapters make up a single story.

I've never seen a print edition, but having read one in an Ellery Queen anthology, I became curious about the book. My curiosity was further piqued by finding it included in Queen's Quorum as one of the 106 most important books of mystery/crime fiction. (The original list was of 106 books, I believe, and later editions increased that number; Queen came up with the list with input from other critics/historians of the genre in the early 1950s.)

A nameless old man sits in the corner of an A. B. C. shop over milk and pastries, and draws young reporter Polly Burton into conversation. As he takes a piece of string and compulsively ties and unties knots, he summarizes a case the police haven't been able to solve and through his observations and knowledge of human behavior offers the solution. I wouldn't call these the hardest to solve mysteries I've read, but they are enjoyable; the old man in the corner became the first, and probably the quintessential armchair detective.
 
I finally finished The Gates Of Europe: A History Of Ukraine. It was heavy going in places because Ukraine has such a complicated history, with fault-lines that cross cultural, religious, geographic and linguistic grounds. The reasons that Ukraine had spent longer trying to be a nation more than actually being one are well explained here and I finally feel that I have a little more understanding of the roots of today’s issues.

Now moving on to something lighter and re-reading Dune Messiah.
 
Finished reading Something Wicked This Way Comes today, and... well, I'll be honest, this one was a miss for me. I enjoyed the story well enough, but I really didn't care for the prose style. I'm sure the lengthy polysyndetons packed with strange descriptions were fun for Bradbury to write, but I was getting exhausted by them before the book was halfway through.

Up next is One Last Gasp, which claims to be a supernatural horror novel set during the real-life Battle of the Bulge. I'm already seeing one half of the title's meaning (the Battle of the Bulge was the last major offensive conducted by the Nazi war machine during WWII and, to my understanding, was essentially "one last gasp" for their war effort), but having not read the book, I already suspect there's some kind of double meaning to that title that'll become clear at some point in the novel.
 
I finished Heinlein's Between Planets last night. It was a YA book about war. Utterly superficial and unbelievable about the impact of war on young soldiers, but it felt truthful (hopefully not an example of 'truthiness') on how people end up in a shooting war, and their hope-filled naiveté before the first shot is fired.

No solutions to the problem in this book: it is more of an invitation to get with the programme and enjoy it.
 
CJ Cherryh's Heavy Time and Hellburner, which are very atmospheric and gave some nice background on the Company Wars. Started the not-an-Expanse-sequel The Mercy of Gods, which has held my interest so far through some slow-burn scene setting. Finished off Megan O'Keefe's very intense and imaginative Devoured Worlds trilogy. Re-reading Barrayar by Bujold.
 
History
Frances Yates "The Rosicrucian Enlightenment" (1972) and "The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age" (1979)
The years 1610 -1615 saw the publication of the two Rosicrucian manifestos revealing to the world the existence of a secret brotherhood that had an understanding of previously hidden spiritual and scientific knowledge. These created tremendous excitement at the time, exacerbated by the publication almost immediately afterwards of the seemingly linked weird and wonderful alchemical drawings of Michael Maier and Robert Fludd. All manner of people published pamphlets publicly applying for membership, without, it seems, success. As it turned out, those caught up in the optimism were heading for major disappointment - the texts had aligned themselves with the losing side in the religion-centred Thirty Years War that began @1620 and is said to have killed between four and a half million and eight million soldiers/ordinary people in Central Europe before some kind of peace was established.

In the first volume (above) Yates traces the background to these texts and their probable influences. I found this very readable. The second volume is mainly brief sketches of influential figures in the development of occult thinking (mainly Christian Cabala) in Europe that are likely to have influenced Elizabethan culture, up to and including Shakespeare. I found this second volume promised much, but was disappointing compared to the first - I suspect the author may have been putting some riffs together to tie up loose ends (she died two years after publication).
 
RLCaves said:
CJ Cherryh's Heavy Time and Hellburner, which are very atmospheric and gave some nice background on the Company Wars. ...
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I have both of these as audiobooks but after an unsuccessful attempt to get onto Heavy Time I've always been wary of Hellburner. But I've read somewhere that you need to know what happens there in order to understand Cherryh's subsequent Company Wars novels. Would you agree with that? (No spoilers please!)
 
Orcadian said:
I have both of these as audiobooks but after an unsuccessful attempt to get onto Heavy Time I've always been wary of Hellburner. But I've read somewhere that you need to know what happens there in order to understand Cherryh's subsequent Company Wars novels. Would you agree with that? (No spoilers please!)
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Eh... Heavy Time is grim and hard going, and Hellburner only really makes sense after Heavy Time. No, you emphatically *don't* need to read either of these to get into the Company Wars. The joy of Cherryh is you can pretty much jump in anywhere (Hellburner one of the few exceptions). In particular, I'd recommend starting with Downbelow Station - the prologue gives you all the background you need, and it all turns around the events of the novel. Next: Merchanter's Luck for something more action-adventure; Cyteen for political and psychological intrigue; 40, 000 in Gehenna for something heavier on scientific and anthropological speculation. I see the Devil to the Belt duology (HT/Hellburner) as more joining some dots for completionists, or for those who particularly like corporate dystopia space mining!
 
Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited by Emmet Scott

Emmet Scott provides an overview of Henri Pirenne's controversial hypothesis that the rise of Islam and it's blockade of Mediterranean trade lead to the extinction of classical civilization; and also considers the arguments put forward by Pirenne's many detractors. Scott then reviews the current archaeological and textual evidence in both Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and proceeds to pick holes in erroneous arguments or add additional evidence to other arguments. The evidence Scott presents covers a wide area, from what is now the British Isles, Spain, North Africa, France, Italy, Germany, as well as the heart of the old Roman Empire, Byzantium and the Middle East. His thesis is well argued and presented. This book was pleasant to read and easy to understand. This book contains a great deal of information, and ideas/hypotheses, which are all very interesting and provide quite a lot of thought-food.

In the end, Scott summarises the evidence that shows classical civilization was experiencing a revival (something he attributed to early Christianity, which was fairly different from what Christianity eventually became from the Middle-Ages onward) at the beginning of the 7th century, with expanding populations and towns. Archeological excavations have shown that Middle Eastern town and cities were thoroughly destroyed by the Arab Conquest (which was probably aided by the Persians, who were not so much conquered as converted) and never rebuilt. At this time, Europe's classical culture vanished fairly quickly. This is attributed to the Arab/Muslim blockade of the Mediterranean sea through piracy and slave-raiding, and the Muslim's religious directive of total war. Continuous raiding resulted in coastal dwellers abandoning their undefended lowland farms and estates and retreating to fortified hilltop stronghold, which eventually became medieval castles. The capture of Egypt by the Arabs also meant no papyrus was traded to Europe. This had a profound impact on literacy - there simply was no alternative inexpensive and abundant material to write on, or make books out of - so literacy plummeted and disintegrating/moldering papyrus works could not be replaced (except in some monasteries, which preserved some of the classical literature). Who knew papyrus was that important? Scott also takes a look at what made the Arabs/Islamic conquest so different from all the other wars, and the ultimate impact this had on the European people.​
 
I'm starting Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewel, I'm still looking at the blurbs etc before the story begins.

It's the first a new series called Marvel Crime, allegedly there's going to be a few writers doing different books on the theme of the criminal side of the Marvel Universe instead of the usual supervillains.

The protagonist of this particular story is an ex superhero who is now a private detective.
 
Update:- DNF, deleted the ebook, I loathe that writing style, or tense or whatever it's called.
Example:-

*Jessica turns onto her side and blinks into the darkness*
 
Danny McG said:
Update:- DNF, deleted the ebook, I loathe that writing style, or tense or whatever it's called.
Example:-

*Jessica turns onto her side and blinks into the darkness*
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Are you talking about Jessica Jones, who had a series of comics written about her? I didn't know any actual books, as opposed to trade paperbacks, were being published.
 
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