September Reading Thread

[Dave Vicks]

THE ART OF LIVING. Thich Nhat Hanh.
2017.
Spiritual ,self help book.

 

[Dave]

I finished off The Waste Lands by Stephen King. After a slow start, this book improved immensely for me, and I'm now ready for the next Dark Tower book, Wizard and Glass. I was a little disappointed that the explanations about this world are not more forthcoming, and that he just throws in more unexplained puzzles instead. I also finished Slough House and then read Bad Actors by Mick Herron. I think Bad Actors is the best in the series, and I do hope there will be more. He says that the book's name has nothing to do with the fact that the series is now also a TV series.

 

[HareBrain]

I also finished Slough House

Funnily enough I've just started Slow Horses. Not sure what to make of it yet. It certainly lives up to the first part of the title, which isn't a problem so far (15% in) though it might become soon. I'm impressed he references Pincher Martin.

 

[Dave Vicks]

OT:I Read Conan goes into the Public Domain in 2028.In the US.

 

[Dave]

I've just started Slow Horses.

I've really liked reading this series. (He does have other standalone books and another series so I'm not completely finished.) They always begin slowly, but race through the middle. He does throw in a lot of literary references (which are way above my head but not other readers.) They are also very topical and become more so as it goes on (or maybe that is because I've got more up to date now.) I'm now considering a subscription to Apple TV just to watch the TV adaptation.

 

[Dave Vicks]

REALITY,SPIRTUALITY,AND MODERN MAN.David R. Hawkins, M.D.
2008.

 

[Dave Vicks]

'SANDKINGS' ,by George RR Martin.
Novelette.

 

[Dave Vicks]

Poems,
'The Raven' by Poe.

'IF' by Kipling.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Currently reading a previously unread, late (and therefore even more incoherent than usual) AE van Vogt: Cosmic Encounter. It is bloody awful.

 

[Dave Vicks]

POEMS
'Because I could not stop for Death'
By Emily Dickinson.

'Desiderata' by Max Erhmann.

 

[Hugh]

Quentin Bell "Virginia Woolf, a biography"
This was the first biography and has the advantage of being written by her nephew who lived much of his life just four miles away. Various people approached Leonard Woolf asking to write the biography but he turned them all down before finally asking Quentin to write it. I'm familiar with the subject matter, having read extensively on Leonard, and thought this perceptive and well written.
Some points of interest for me:
Her mental health: Virginia had severe 'breakdowns' age 13, age 22, age 28, and age 33 (18 months after her marriage to Leonard), all before WWI. When I say severe, they included suicidal ideation, paranoid delusional belief systems, self-starvation, hostility to those caring for her. Serious and very concerning. There were also plenty of minor 'hiccups'. Medical 'treatment'/advice consisted of bed rest, milk, a lack of stimulation, and sleeping draughts at night. Despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of psychoactive medications, she was able to live a fairly full, rewarding and creative life by virtue of monitoring her warning symptoms (primarily a headache) and going back to the basics of rest and lack of stimulation at these times. She was however fortunate that she had a devoted husband,and enough wealth to pay for private nurses (at times four were employed) and consultant fees rather than finding herself committed to an institution. She was 59 (1941) when she drowned herself in the Ouse.
Photos of her: to me she nearly always looks rather anxious and stressed in these, but people regularly commented on her beauty, particularly when young, her presence, and her vivacity. Clearly the photos don't do her justice.

It's been a while since I last tried to read Virginia Woolf, but my previous attempts never lasted more than a few pages. I will try again shortly, having ordered her first book from the library.
On Saturday, I'll be visiting her and Leonard's house in Rodmell near Lewes. I've been meaning to do that for several years.

 

[The Judge]

It's been a while since I last tried to read Virginia Woolf, but my previous attempts never lasted more than a few pages. I will try again shortly, having ordered her first book from the library.

I'm glad it's not only me! I have managed to read two of her books -- To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway -- but more through fixed determination not to let them defeat me than from any enjoyment (though the middle part of TTL wasn't bad). I can't help thinking that if the characters** had to work for a living, there might have been considerably less navel-gazing all round.

** actually, that probably goes for the Bloomsbury Group as a whole...

On Saturday, I'll be visiting her and Leonard's house in Rodmell near Lewes. I've been meaning to do that for several years.

I've been meaning to start a thread where members can talk about places of historic interest they've visited. I'll try and kick my rear end into gear in the next few days, so if it is up, I'd enjoy hearing about your visit to Monk's House as it's not somewhere I've been. (On the Bloomsbury Group theme, I'd really like to go to Sissinghurst, but more for the gardens than the historical element.)

 

[Hugh]

I'm glad it's not only me! I have managed to read two of her books -- To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway -- but more through fixed determination not to let them defeat me than from any enjoyment (though the middle part of TTL wasn't bad).

(On the Bloomsbury Group theme, I'd really like to go to Sissinghurst, but more for the gardens than the historical element.)

To the Lighthouse was definitely one that I gave up on.

We found Sissinghurst disappointing. We visited for the gardens (little interest in Vita). National Trust venue and a popular destination for coach parties en masse looking for tea rooms as much as anything else. End result was a shuffle round what we felt were overhyped flower beds. Much much better and more local to here is Great Dixter (visit several times a year). On the Vita Sackville-West theme, we did visit her ancestral home at Knole a few years ago but I remember very little other than the size of the parkland around it, the vast number of rooms, and the coldness of the house (central heating yet to be installed in much of it).

 

[Elckerlyc]

Currently reading Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail.
I was not a fan. I read (ages ago) Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games, but was not impressed and dismissed Banks from my further readings. But - as I find it increasingly difficult to find interesting (new) SF - I decided to allow him (posthumously) a second chance. I randomly chose Surface Detail and, I must confess, I am enjoying it.

I finished Surface Detail. And fairly quickly, considering it sported 620+ pages. It's not that I find these voluminous volumes a problem in or of itself, provided it is a well-written, engaging story. In this case I have mixed feelings.
Is it well-written? Well, yes and no. (see how I get conflicted?) Yes, it is well-written, but (at least in this book) Banks tends to forget himself and expands in lengthy descriptions and info-dumps that (however well-done) slows the story down and makes it too wordy. It doesn't turn it into a slog to read, but diminishes the enjoyment it could have been. Because, in the end, you keep reading because of his many interesting ideas.
There were IMHO too many main characters, which disrupted the flow of the story a bit too often. For some reason I kept confusing 2 characters (Lededje and Yime) of which the latter easily could have been cut from the story (unless I missed something.) All the characters remained fairly flat (= 2-dimensional) to me.
Will I read Banks again? Possibly, probably. The Culture is an interesting world. Well, civ, actually, in an interesting galaxy.

What's Next?
A bit of a gamble, as it is Fantasy. The First Binding by R.R. Virdi. Book One of the Tales of Tremaine. 800+ pages.
I'll be back.

 

[Danny McG]

I've really liked reading this series. (He does have other standalone books and another series so I'm not completely finished.) They always begin slowly, but race through the middle. He does throw in a lot of literary references (which are way above my head but not other readers.) They are also very topical and become more so as it goes on (or maybe that is because I've got more up to date now.) I'm now considering a subscription to Apple TV just to watch the TV adaptation.

I think I've mentioned before in Chronicles - the Mick Herron book The Secret Hours is actually a Slough House book featuring Jackson Lamb, but it takes a while to realise because he's going under a spy identity

 

[Dave]

Is that in paperback? It is advertised at the end of the last book I read, but that was printed in 2021. Also, Nobody Walks uses "Slow Horses" characters so some of the other standalone books possibly do too.

 

[Orcadian]

Well, Eon (Greg Bear) was entertaining enough for me to finish this 17 hour listen. (Probably closer to 20 hours given the number of times I missed bits and had to backtrack!) Overall I enjoyed it. I particularly liked his complex, convincing characters: female and male, civilian and military, various nationalities. None are glamorous and all felt real, as did their interactions. My main quibble is the author's habit of simply popping up technologies, vehicles and entities as needed to move the story along. The complexity ramps up slowly at first but quickly gathers momentum. In the final one-third, phenomena are appearing so fast that the reader (this one anyway!) has only a tenuous grasp of what is happening. In summary: Bear writes a cracking tale but he lacks Clarke's gift for describing events of enormous scale and import in a way that generates awe. However, I'm about to begin Eternity, the second book in the series. Could take a while.

 

[Parson]

Well I thought I'd have a go at giving a short review of some of the better books I've been reading. And one I think it's best to avoid.

In Our Likeness by Bryan Van Dyke this was a serious DNF. It read like wish fulfillment. I believe the stimulating thought was "What would you do if you could change anything to meet your expectations?" Unfortunately, that makes the book sound better than it actually was. The ability to do this feat of magical science was an AI who by altering the history of something altered it in reality. This was just a bridge too far for me. And as if that weren't enough it had another one of those snarky characters which make me both frustrated and angry.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Howard. This was an interesting book for me. It was not written by someone who I would call a Christian believer, at best he is Christian adjacent. This book should be right in my sweet zone* and it was. It probably did the best of any book I've ever read of drawing together the history of ideas and the role that Christianity has played in them over the last 2000 years. I wouldn't say that it broke any new ground for me, but it did emphasize certain things that don't often get much play in the secular histories I've read. At least as far as I could tell none of this could be considered fabricated, but his choice of important nexuses was somewhat unusual. But they were all very defensible and never were they in any sense tangent to the flow of history. This is a doorstop of a book at 613 pages but given the breath of the discussion I feel it was not overly long and might be faulted for being too cursory.

*I was a history and social studies major in College & I have a MDiv and worked as Pastor for 40 years.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

Lt. Reilly (series: Books 1-5) by Matthew O. Duncan. This is a type of far future S.F. that is not often seen, which to be honest is what drew me to this series. It is not strictly speaking Military SF, but two of the three main characters are in the military. But they are not strictly speaking soldiers. One is an engineer, one is a military police-woman, and the third becomes friend, then lover, and finally wife to the first and friend of the second, but is not military. (The social dynamics are always complicated and interesting but have little in common with any kind of romance literature.) The engineer is enlisted by the police-woman for technical expertise and he shows a real flare for the work and thinking clearly in challenging situations and becomes her deputy. This series orbits around an organized group of military and politicians who are financially profiting by selling out the military and perhaps aiding their enemies. Each book is a case/situation that builds off the previous one and although I would seriously recommend reading them in order the main plot of each book is not affected by not having read the previous ones. I would call this "hardish" SF it does not feel to me to be "fantasy" there is very little of the nuts and bolts of science. Most of the technology is given little explanation but is understood and used by the engineer. I found these stories satisfying and will continue to read in it.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

The Existential Worries of Mags Munroe by Jean Grainger. This is the first story of at least two books in the Mags Munroe series. This is a story about the life of a village guard (police) in a small town in Ireland. I think I liked this better than it deserved. There was not a lot of police action, but there was a lot about the life of a middle-aged woman guard with a husband and a family in Ireland, who has enough on her plate as it is and suddenly finds herself trying to solve a murder where a group of Irish Travelers seem to be implicated in some way. I think one of the things I enjoyed about this book is that it clearly was written by someone who was Irish and loved Ireland and its people immensely. I suppose in some lights it might be considered a "cozy" mystery, but I'd call it good and interesting. I will read the second. I've already got it queued in my Kindle.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

Skyship Thrive by Ginger Booth. This is another fairly unique SF book. I find myself unable to adequately categorize it. The setup is that a colony of earth has been settled out of necessity before it was fully terraformed. In the years since the settlement there has arised a group of elites who pretty much like things the way they are in their domed enclave and a group of "settlers" who make the best of a bad situation out in the countryside. Prior to the story Sass, who was of the original colonists and who had received an experimental injection of nanites and was one of only a couple who survived, has been exiled to a farm for her part in a rebellion. The nanites have kept her looking young (25) although she is 90. The story begins as she is able to purchase a "skyship." A skyship was a starship which no longer has a star drive, but it does fly on what I would call an anti-gravity drive. It's old and broken down but does still work as an airplane and a spaceship which can get to the orbitals above the partially terraformed moon. The colony is small and it's shrinking. The possible science of the colony is very advanced, but most people cannot afford the benefits the science makes possible. Sass wants to find ways to make the colony "thrive" hence she names her skyship Thrive. The story is about the ways she goes about doing this. It is very realistic in that nothing is simple but sometimes there are ways of doing things in a mostly indirect method. I do not know of a subgenre of SF which this story would fit into. The characters are believable, interesting, and seem to be developing. --- I just discovered that this is the first of ten books in this series.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

 

[Hugh]

Alfred Bester "Tiger! Tiger!" aka "The Stars My Destination"
I found myself reading this yet again. I last read it just four years ago. I first read it in early adolescence in 1967/8 - at that time it was the first truly adult SF I'd encountered and it made a deep impression on me, so much so that I still think of it as one of the best/greatest SF ever.
On this read I wondered exactly what it was that made such an effect on me. I thought I'd try to articulate this here, but just in case anyone hasn't read it, I'll move into SPOILER mode..

Spoiler

(1) The underlying refrain that permeates the text that still echoes in me wonderfully. I've always remembered this.
Foyle is my name
Terra is my nation
Deep Space is my dwelling place
Death's my destination

(2) The amazing hotchpotch of creative ideas/concepts and characters. Most important of these is the ability to jaunte, to move from one place to another instantaneously through mental force. For weeks, maybe months, after my first read, I'd often attempt to jaunte when walking along the road. But it's not just jaunteing, there's the whole background of interplanetary war, of a semi-feudal capitalist society with great extremes of wealth and poverty, of deeply scarred individuals.

(3) Then, most importantly, perhaps for my young conventional adolescent mind, there's the sheer intensity of ruthless primal emotion. The main character, Gully Foyle, is driven by an almost visceral desire for vengeance, prepared to kill, torture, do anything, to get his revenge on those who abandoned him, to make them feel what he felt, also, unknowingly, he has taken possession of an explosive that could destroy planets. The other three significant male characters are not much better, devious, ruthless, manipulative on a cosmic scale, would-be omnipotents, with no redeeming qualities. One is even radioactive, his contact with others limited to five minutes at a time. And yet these same vicious men are capable of falling instantaneously in love at first sight, and the women with them. The three women are wonderfully capable of loving and understanding these monsters. Two of them are relatively balanced, but one is as vicious and unthinking as Foyle, slaughtering innocents in her need to get revenge on the human race for her disability.
Despite these horrors, the book remains compulsively gripping.

(4) Lastly there's the understated redemption of a kind, in which Foyle realises the enormity of his crimes and those of others and seeks restorative penance, only to find himself in catapulted into further trauma and in extremis accessing the ability to jaunte through time and space, something thought impossible, ending the book unconscious and revered by a primitive tribe of survivors in the asteroid belt.

All in all a remarkable tour de force.

 

[Elentarri]

Alfred Bester "Tiger! Tiger!" aka "The Stars My Destination"

I loath this book. Didn't even finish it. That stupid dialect just pissed me off to no end.