December Reading Thread

[Randy M.]

Just finished Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen, first published in 1949 and reissued this year in the American Mystery Classics series edited by Otto Penzler.

Ellery joins the investigation to help his father, Inspector Queen, after the Cat has strangled four people, all with a cord of silk, and none of the victims have any traceable connection to each other.

Ellery Queen (cousins Fredric Dannay and Manifred B. Lee) was as close to the American Agatha Christie as there was in the 1920s into the 1950s. There is some very good writing here, but as with so many detective novels of the period, there is little in the way of characterization of the detective -- Ellery is largely (like Hercule Poirot and Philo Vance and Dr. Fell and ...) a collection of quirks. And yet the book gives the impression of a greater maturity than the early Queens. If you like old mysteries that don't require much from the reader other than following the plot, it's a good, often tense read.

 

[Elentarri]

The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights by Various Authors [Anthology]
Mixed bag, but most of the stories are pretty decent.

 

[Dave Vicks]

THE FLASH.Comic book. DC COMICS.
2012.

 

[dask]

Next:

 

[Extollager]

I started today “The Study of Words: Lectures Addressed (Originally) to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training School, Winchester by Richard Chevenix Trench, B. D., Vicar of Itchenstoke [sic], Hants; Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Oxford; and Professor of Divinity, King’s College, Oxford.”

I really like it so far. It reminds me of the philological-philosophical thought of Owen Barfield, e.g. his Poetic Diction, and who mentions this book by Trench in an interview.

But "Itchenstoke"! Perhaps someone here knows that small village. What a name. I found myself writing the opening of a pseudo-Wodehouse story:

Bertie Wooster, his face a study in dismay, put the letter down by the small mass of duns from local merchants. “Hang it, Jeeves, Bunty Sidebottom wants me to stay with him for a spot of poultry hunting at his pater’s place in Hampshire, dreadful hole called Itchenstoke, main attraction a bog famous for Anglo-Saxon skeletons and infested with blood-lusting midges. How can I put him off?”

 

[alexvss]

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886). A fun fact: the official Brazilian translation is “The medic and the monster”, and that gave me some Frankenstein vibes before going into this. Well, that is correct… more or less.

 

[hitmouse]

I started today “The Study of Words: Lectures Addressed (Originally) to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training School, Winchester by Richard Chevenix Trench, B. D., Vicar of Itchenstoke [sic], Hants; Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Oxford; and Professor of Divinity, King’s College, Oxford.”

I really like it so far. It reminds me of the philological-philosophical thought of Owen Barfield, e.g. his Poetic Diction, and who mentions this book by Trench in an interview.

But "Itchenstoke"! Perhaps someone here knows that small village. What a name. I found myself writing the opening of a pseudo-Wodehouse story:

Bertie Wooster, his face a study in dismay, put the letter down by the small mass of duns from local merchants. “Hang it, Jeeves, Bunty Sidebottom wants me to stay with him for a spot of poultry hunting at his pater’s place in Hampshire, dreadful hole called Itchenstoke, main attraction a bog famous for Anglo-Saxon skeletons and infested with blood-lusting midges. How can I put him off?”
View attachment 127714

It is a small village between Winchester and Alresford, on the river Itchen, which winds down to Southampton, where I grew up. Itchenstoke is unremarkable, but the country around there is lovely for long walks. Winchester and Alresford are very nice.

 

[Elentarri]

Next:
View attachment 127713

The cover looks interesting! Please let us know what you think of it when you're done.
*tootles off to look up the book* Book number 18...

 

[The Judge]

But "Itchenstoke"! Perhaps someone here knows that small village. What a name.

I don't know when Trench was writing, but it's now usually spelled Itchen Stoke, ie two words, deriving, as hitmouse indicates, from the Itchen, which is one of our famous chalk streams which flows through Winchester (another local place is Itchen Abbas). The Stoke part is likely a derivation of stoc, meaning a small, secondary, settlement.

It's somewhere we've driven past many times on our way to Alresford, but I keep meaning to stop and have a look at its splendid Victorian church, which is now in the ownership of the Churches Conservation Trust:

 

[williamjm]

I read Morgan Stang's Murder on Hunter's Eve, the third in a series of comic murder mysteries in which a monster hunter gets involved in solving murders, along with her partner, a police detective. One difference to the first two books in the series is that while they were set in very confined locations (an inn and an overnight train) this one is set across a city as the protagonists try to investigate a series of linked murders. Meanwhile the city is also obsessed by other killings and chaos caused by a werewolf. There is a lot going on in this book, including a lot more being revealed about the world in which it is set. At times I did think parts of the main mystery did seem a bit too obvious (particularly a homage to a classic work of literature), but then it did bring in some plot developments which surprised me. Overall, I thought it was another entertaining book in the series. The only negative I have is that this is self-published and while I think that writing is good the editing is sometimes lacking, particularly the proof-reading.

I then read Martha Wells' City of Bones. I have read her more recent work but this is the first thing I've read from early in her career, I think this is the second novel she published (although the edition apparently has been revised more recently). The setting, a post-apocalyptic world in which a small group of cities keep some of civilisation alive while most of the rest of the world is a toxic wasteland where only the descendants of ancient magical experiments can live safely. The protagonist is one of those wilderness dwellers who has to live on the margins of the city of the title, making his living hunting for relics of the pre-apocalyptic civilisation. I thought it was a good single-volume fantasy story, while there could have been scope for more set in the world I think it does work well as a stand-alone. Khat does have some things in common with Wells' more recent protagonists, since he have a different perspective on most things to the other characters he meets and given the choice would probably prefer not to be left alone. It's an interesting world, with a complex civilisation having developed in very difficult circumstances and interesting mysteries of what caused the ancient apocalypse and what the significance might be of the relics Khat is searching for.

 

[Dave Vicks]

DANSE MACABRE .Stephen King. 1981,2010,2024.
Non fiction

 

[hitmouse]

Count Zero (1986) William Gibson. Continuing my re-read of the Sprawl trilogy. I had forgotten almost everything about this noirish cyberpunk thriller. Three parallel narratives whose relationship starts to become clear about 2/3 of the way through. Engaging, but not as good as Neuromancer.

Gibson is terrific at opening lines:
They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair.

 

[mosaix]

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

 

[Elentarri]

~Garou by Leonie Swann
I love the cover on this book.

Garou continues the story of the sheep of Glennkill (aka Three Bags Full in English) who have gone on their promised trip to Europe. The sheep are currently spending the winter in a pasture near a remote French castle, where the novel is set. I am apparently easily amused. Run-of-the-mill thrillers/mystery novels don't do much for me. But give me a (sort of) psychological mystery thriller with a fuzzy plot, an anthropomorphic flock of sheep as the protagonists (with a few goats), toss in the possibility of a werewolf, and I'm all here for it. For me, the murder and werewolf mystery took a back seat to the amateur sleuthing antics of the sheep, which were hilarious.

 

[Elentarri]

~Swan King by Christopher McIntosh

Ludwig II of Bavaria is best remembered for his patronage of Richard Wagner (composer of the Ring Cycle) and for the fantasy-palaces (e.g. Neuschwanstein Castle) he created. Ludwig II had a dislike for politics, diplomacy and military matters (aka running the State); and had excessive spending habits, especially in support of Wagner, German opera and his architectural ambitions. Ludwig II almost non-existent reign was a completely missed opportunity for Bavaria to influence the unification of was to become the German state. This book is a broad, bare-bones, opinionated and bland overview of Ludwig's life, including speculation on his sexuality; his supposed madness; and a fleeting chapter on the mystery of his death (either suicide, murder or accidental) after being deposed by his uncle and government. I read the supposedly updated 2012 edition, but between the typographical errors and the archaic views of the author, I wonder if any "updating" was done at all.​

 

[Chris von shannow]

Fred Hugh’s Price series is actually pretty good

 

[Hugh]

Tom Clark "Jack Kerouac, a biography"
Not at all bad as Kerouac biographies go. Only 220 pages, but focuses almost exclusively on Kerouac alone, on his experience of his life as documented by himself and the letters of friends. Hence, much of the dramas involving his friends such as the killings of David Kammerer and Joan Vollmer, are barely touched on. I doubt if Clark ever met Kerouac, but he had good connections to the general beat scene through Ginsberg and others, and the book has the seal of approval, in the form of a seven page thoughtful introduction, from Carolyn Cassady, who knew Kerouac better than most.
All rather sad.

Tom Clark "The Great Naropa Poetry Wars"
"The Master"
Two slim volumes detailing a notorious late 1970s incident at a Buddhist retreat when a Tibetan Buddhist teacher ordered his "guards" to forcibly (a plate glass door was smashed and broken bottles were brandished) bring a well-known poet and his girlfriend back to a retreat 'party' that they'd left early, and then had them stripped naked despite their continued struggle. This was then justified as an example of the 'crazy wisdom' teaching of an enlightened tantric master. Unsurprisingly others disagreed. The affair generated some momentum at the time as said teacher was Allen Ginsberg's guru.

 

[Danny McG]

The annihilation score by Charles Stross.
I thought I'd read all his Laundry Files series but I realised yesterday that I'd never had this one .

 

[Elentarri]

The annihilation score by Charles Stross.
I thought I'd read all his Laundry Files series but I realised yesterday that I'd never had this one .

I've read 2 Laundry Files and a "short" story in the same universe. I like the concept, but not the stories told. I did like Stross' version of unicorns in the short story.

 

[Dave Vicks]

THE RETURN OF THE PHAROH.2021.
BY Nicholas Meyer.

Sherlock Holmes story.