December Reading Thread

Finally getting a little bit of a break from rushing around like a headless chicken for you know what stuff... am looking forward to reading Fearless by Allen Stroud, which I picked up at NovaCon last month.
 
Finally getting a little bit of a break from rushing around like a headless chicken
Way back in the 1960s I was cycling down a country lane with some friends.

Suddenly a chicken dashed out of the hedge, it's head got through the spokes of my bikes back wheel and a split second later it was decapitated when it was flipped around to my forks.

Me and schoolboy chums pulled up and I was staring in dismay at the blood all over my bike, then a gasp of horror and we were furiously pedalling away as a totally headless chicken chased us down the lane.

We went round a corner and maybe another 100 yards before stopping again.... nobody would go back to look in case "zombie chicken" was waiting for us.

(Ages 8 and 9 ish)
 
The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets - Lloyd Biggle Jr.

At the same time that Le Guin’s League of Worlds was maturing into the Ekumen, many space years before Banks’ Culture, on the theme of inducting a planet and its inhabitants into a more mature, benevolent confederation, here is Gurnil and the Interplanetary Relations Bureau

Dunno about you, but I am fond of science fiction with an unlikely hero and an arresting title.

Biggle wrote this in 1968 and I first read it on travels in Nicaragua in 2000, when the portrayal of its female character was already dreadfully dated. Move past those three pages and Biggle will give you a satisfying read via an intriguing SF imagination and packing a lot into a short novel. You just have to feel a certain admiration for a people with no interest whatsoever in politics but a deep love of the arts (the people of Kurr, I mean, not Biggle, although maybe him, too?)

Biggle.png
 
Way back in the 1960s I was cycling down a country lane with some friends.

Suddenly a chicken dashed out of the hedge, it's head got through the spokes of my bikes back wheel and a split second later it was decapitated when it was flipped around to my forks.

Me and schoolboy chums pulled up and I was staring in dismay at the blood all over my bike, then a gasp of horror and we were furiously pedalling away as a totally headless chicken chased us down the lane.

We went round a corner and maybe another 100 yards before stopping again.... nobody would go back to look in case "zombie chicken" was waiting for us.

(Ages 8 and 9 ish)
Why did it cross the road?
 
Taking a break about half-way through Tim Powers's Declare, not from any fault of the book (which is brilliant) but from a sudden desire to have another go at Wuthering Heights, despite finding nothing but negative opinions about it recently and dropping it instantly when I tried it a few weeks ago. For some reason I got straight into it this time, and about a hundred pages in am hooked.

Declare is a great stuff ive never been disappointed by anything ive ever read by Tim Power. :)
 
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Reading Greg Bear’s The Forge Of God.
 
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The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk
This is a historical fiction - magical realism novel about family, and a son's journey from England to Constantinople in an attempt to find out what happened to his father. The use of clockwork automata was interesting and the descriptions of the 18th century settings (especially Constantinople and the London workshop) vivid, but the whole espionage and rescue sections of the novel were just naive and not well thought out. The novel started off with a strong plot that slowed down, and got lost in the second half. Mildly entertaining with good bits, but not riveting.
 
I am about to start Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction (2014) edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi. My copy is an "Advance Uncorrected Proof" that I bought at a library book sale.
I've had that as an ebook for a couple of years now, but I've never got around to reading it, it's saved in my "Some Day" file.
I'd be quite interested in any comments/reviews you do about it :)
 
~The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures by Sarah Clegg [nonfiction / folklore/history]

Oxford-trained historian Sarah Clegg examines the (usually dark) folklore that influenced, and still influences, Christmas traditions throughout (mostly) Northern and Central Europe. Clegg has a conversable and congenial writing style, giving the impression of sitting across the couch from the author, having a quiet chat about the topic. This is particularly conspicuous in the audiobook.

Starting with Årsgång (a form of Swedish divination practiced at Christmas or New Year), Clegg then proceeds with the the unruly mayhem of the Venetian Carnival; the ancient Roman's Saturnalia, festival of Kalends, and the Lords of Misrule; various monsters (e.g. Iceland's Grýla, Jólakötturinn the Yule Cat who will eat anyone that doesn’t have new clothes for Christmas [‍♂️presumabley people taste better without clothes?], Perchta, etc); subverted religious feasts (e.g. the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the Feast of Fools), and local traditions (e.g. mummers' plays, guisers, wassailing, Mari Lwyds, Krampus runs, St Lucy's Day, St Nickolas & Kneckt Ruprect, various "Christmas witches" and Stonehenge Winter Solstice etc).

One "amusing" aspect of the book are the stuffy churchmen writing about their disapproval of the local Winter festivals and customs, and thereby helpfully preserving records of them - sometimes inaccurately, and not detailed enough for the author.​

While not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, this breezy little book is interesting, informative without being dry, and the prose is a joy to read.
 
I have just finished The Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir. This is my first book by him.
Once you realise the story is more sci/fan than sci/fi ,although it is a modern tale of space and danger to the Earth, you can begin to enjoy the tale.
It's a totally preposterous story, but it has a light touch. There is real physics as well as hokey physics.
It is easy to read and very entertaining. There are plenty of little (funny) gems in the writing and it keeps you hooked.
I really enjoyed it.
 
Juice by Tim Winston. A post apocalyptic story.

So far it's very reminiscent of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and a child making their way across a landscape of ash, it's even got the same lack of punctuation (speech marks etc)
 
The New York Times published a review list of "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2024"
By Amal El-Mohtar. She Is a Hugo Award-winning writer the co-author, with Max Gladstone, of “This Is How You Lose the Time War" and the NYT's regular Book Review science fiction and fantasy columnist. Generally I find that her taste and mine often disagree, she being an advocate for whatever the current equivalent is to the New Wave but the column is consistently interesting.
Unfortunately I can't link the article, so I'll just list the titles.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekaran
In Universes by Emet North
The Melancholy of Untold History by Minsoo Kang
The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
Exordia by Seth J. Dickinson
The Mercy of Gods by James S A Corey
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

 
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Juice by Tim Winston. A post apocalyptic story.

So far it's very reminiscent of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a man and a child making their way across a landscape of ash, it's even got the same lack of punctuation (speech marks etc)
DNF - crap - deleted
 
Finished reading Amongst Our Weapons in The Rivers of London series by Aaronovitch. Here there is a lot of delving into magical history as a infernal(?) angelic(?) being appears to be confronted by the investigators of the Folly, the Brit cops who take on the eerie, often magical threats to order. I should emphasize that most of these books are not just magical romps but are police procedurals with likable cops.
Also read Winter's Gift and The Masquerades of Spring in the series.
Aaronovitch seems to be temporarily played outwith his usual characters. First, as described in the Nov. reading thread , he puts a story in Germany. Then he puts Winter's--- in Minnesota with the investigator being the FBI's equivalent of the paranormal cops of the Folly. Readable. but not as much fun as his London demesne.
However, Masquerades is a hoot. It is placed in 1930s Harlem, narrated by a sometime magician trainee ,Augustus Terrycloth-Young who found London a little too confining for his social(?) tastes where jazz, elaborate drag balls and a new boyfriend in NYC suit him perfectly. Thomas Nightingale, the Folly's chief investigator/practitioner, shows up to draft him into a mystery, and it's off to the races. I missed Peter Grant and the characters and background the author has established in current day London, but this one develops its own characters and is about as much fun.
 

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