August 2012 Reading

So what is everyone reading this month? :)

Well, if I could read a calendar properly, I'd say:

Started Chindi by Jack McDevitt.

I am still struggling with finding time to read Gravity's Rainbow. Already had to renew it once and I am not through 100 pages yet. It makes a really thick lump on the floor near my bed.

Also reading non fiction Lone Survivors , which will be finished first I am sure - it is about how the other branches of humans came to their demise. Has a lot of scientific techniques that came into use after I left school and so far they are not explained that well. Think I will look for a used text book that is a little more explanatory about these techniques to have on my reference shelf. {open to suggestions if anyone know off hand of a title that might be available cheap}

Starting The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson.

I'm currently reading Jack Glass by Adam Roberts. Loving it so far but I'm not very far through it as I've only started it tonight before the RPG club started.

Still working on Cthulhu's Heirs.

I'm listening to The Skinner and reading The Cold Commands.

I just finished Ports of Call by Jack Vance. Not one of his best, but still mostly fun. It has Vance's trademark wry, elegant dialogue and tone -- also one of his defects: a weak plot. I think he's being picaresque which isn't a mode I like, and in this case it gets monotonous near the end, and then just tapers off to nothing.

Blindsight by Peter Watts. Halfway through and it's as good as people have said it would be, so far.

Still in Hunting Party by Elizabeth Moon...

Just starting Intrusion by Ken MacLeod.

Just knocked off the paranormal romance Disappearing Nightly (C) for a book group; very high concept and not as clever as it thinks it is.

I'm most of the way through The Hounds of Skaith.

Looking to finish Embassytown it got sidelined by The Lotus Eaters and The Sense of an Ending.

Finished The Long Tomorrow and loved it. Going for something completely different -- How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe.

This afternoon I started Joan Slonczewski's The Highest Frontier. Haven't gotten very far and am not sure if I'm going to like this or not.

It does have a first line that demands attention: "The space lift rose from the Pacific, climbing the cords of anthrax bacteria."

Reading Six Moon Dance.

Finished 2312 by KSR. Interesting ideas, but I definitely see why some people said the book felt smug and indulgent. The thriller plotline doesn't really fit with the rest of the book either.

>#16 RBeffa,

I thought Highest Frontier was decent, but I wasn't blown away or anything. Felt a little too much like "college kids in space!" I can see what the author was trying to do, but it just didn't resonate with me.

Now reading Sporting Chance by Elizabeth Moon...

I'm slowly working my way through The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, but I got distracted by The Once and Future King (WORTH IT). I've been meaning to read Butler for some time, and so I'm glad to finally get around to it, even if this wasn't the title I planned on starting with -- it was all the bookstore had.

I also just reread Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, and I'm toying with the idea of going back to Xenocide, etc.

Finished The Cold Commands and really enjoyed it. I'm sure I like it because it reads like a sf book not a typical fantasy book. Am 2/3 the way through Rule 34 and it's ok, nothing fantastic but it filled the day in nicely today.

Now reading Winning Colors by Elizabeth Moon...

just passed page 200 of Reamde which I'm really enjoying. I imagine there might be some debate on whether it counts as SF or 'techno-thriller' or whatever. the tone reminds me a bit of william gibson's blue ant trilogy (which i really liked)

#23 brianjungwi

I enjoyed Reamde very much. I don't think there is much debate as most people consider it not to be science fiction as all the technology is existant.

I found it a very fast paced book and I, and anyone I know who has read it, found it difficult to put down (which is ironic given it's size and the fact that picking it up should be the difficult thing to do).

Peter

I am also reading Reamde, just getting past page 600. It's one of those "several things going on all at once, and it's going to be cool when it all comes together" books that I enjoy!

)24 I don't know about it being a fast paced book. I liked it, especially the first and last third, but I felt the middle third dragged a lot. Or maybe it's just me. :-)

#26 pjfarm

I'm sure it's just you.

;-)

Reading The Sky So Big and Black by John Barnes and enjoying it.

#24 and 26: I'm enjoying the pace quite a bit, much much more than Anathem.

#29 Anathem was a much slower burn. What I enjoyed most in Anathem was , if it's not a contradiction in terms, the religious secularist approach to knowledge preservation and expansion.

#30 I enjoyed Anathem as well, the first few hundred pages though were a bit rough going for me, they kind of reminded me of Umberto Eco's, a slow but atmospheric build

Finished The Neutral Stars, The Wind Whales of Ishmael and The Cosmic Eye.

Today I'll be starting The Smoke Ring, the sequel to The Integral Trees which I read in May.

#18 I had to bail on The Highest Frontier the other day. I was just not enjoying it. Picked up Hal Clement's Cycle of Fire which I enjoyed right from the start and don't think I've read before. It is kind of like a Heinlein juvenile, only a little smarter. For a 1957 publication it is quite a good book. I think Mission of Gravity is the only Clement novel I've read before and that was quite a long time ago.

I think the only Clement I didn't like was The Nitrogen Fix.

Reading Tim Taylor's The Reality War Book One.

Finished up Deathworld by Harry Harrison (still no idea if I just read the first one or the whole trilogy or its serialized equivalent) and 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut. Still reading Chindi and enjoying it (big raspberry to the McDevitt haters).

Finished listening to The Skinner and loved it so I have now moved on to The Voyage of the Sable Keech which I'm really enjoying.

Read Rule 34 and thought it was ok, better than The Jennifer Morgue which I read a couple of weeks ago, but overall not that fantastic.

Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton.

>38 I am just starting The Apocalypse codex. My feeling is that this series has run its course but maybe this novel will change my mind.

Finished By light alone which was somewhat surreal but back on track after the totally unreal New Model Army.

Just finished The Hounds of Skaith; on to the third and last of the Skaith books now.

Now reading Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon...

Just started Embassytown, liking it so far.

Got given Pratchett & Baxter's The Long Earth for my birthday. About a third of the way in so far. Looks like characters by Pratchett, concept and execution by Baxter, with each contributing to the other's area of expertise from time to time. (I don't subscribe to the 'Baxter can't do characters' school of thought...) I saw Terry Pratchett at the Hay Festival earlier this year, and he commented that the process of jointly writing TLE had gone quite smoothly, though disagreements were not unknown. (Still, Baxter's had a fair amount of experience with collaboration with really Big Name Authors, so he should be getting the hang of it by now.)

I'm going to be interested in seeing how this develops, though there's so much potential in the concept that I wonder quite how many stories can be extracted from it before Pratchett gives up writing, and whether anyone's given any thought as to what happens then...

>40
I've been curious about New Model Army, so thanks for the review, Alan. Now I guess I know I don't have to bother. Salt, though, still looks good.

Yes, Alan, I second RandyStafford's thanks in #45 about New Model Army.

I read Yellow Blue Tibia and while I enjoyed it I was not bowled over and it did not encourage me to rush out and buy New Model Army.

It does sound interesting however, in the context of the use of social media in the Arab Spring, London riots of 2011 and the current Syrian unrest. Of course, one of the points about the current Syrian unrest is the government forces' activities geared at interupting the satellite communications being used by the insurgents. Your point is well made that the freely available civilian networks are not robust enough to support a sustained insurgence as its prime communications method since they can be cut off or otherwise compromised by the authorities.

You've saved me the price of a book.

Finished Chindi by Jack McDevitt. It's amazing the amount of catastrophes he manages to wedge into one novel. Enjoyed the story, though. An interesting take on a RAMA-like BDO.

Also started Frankenstein.

I was a little startled the other day when I saw this cover that Bob Eggleton did for the December 2000 cover of Asimov's SF. Having recently watched Game of Thrones the actress who plays Danerys so looks like Eggleton's interpretation you would think he had painted her in a time warp.

.


A larger image where you can really see the resemblance is here: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/2/2e/IAS_2000_12_Eggleton.jpg

#48

Are yor referring to the one on the left or the one on the right?

well I suppose both now that you mention it, but I was specifically thinking of the girl on the left.

I'm reading Sporting Chance by Elizabeth Moon.

>46 You might be interested in Greg Egan's Zendegi, which covers a near future political revolution in Iran and Walter Jon William's Deep state on an attempt to unseat a military junta in Turkey. Egan's book is particularly good on tech use in street revolutions.

Reading Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. Okay so far, it's so hard to read old sci fi like this and not picture the characters resembling those in a 70's movie.

And being a Neal Stephenson addict, I go running back to the Baroque Cycle from time to time, even though I have no intention of reading through it any time soon, it still massages a part of my brain that doesn't get massaged very often.

Just finished up Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain (A), a snicker-worthy send-up of Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and the like.

Re: brightcopy's comments
I just read McDevitt's Deepsix and enjoyed it immensely. I didn't know there were substantial numbers of McDevitt haters. This is my third book by him (A Talent for War and The Engines of God) and I plan to read more. I love his story The Fort Moxie Branch.

Speaking of great SF stories, I was sad to read that William Tenn had died. He was an original and delightfully mordant voice in science fiction. My favorite is Winthrop was Stubborn. A great story with a great last line.

Now reading Rules of Engagement by Elizabeth Moon...

Symbol of Terra by E. C. Tubb . Had to failover to the e-book versions of these last few Dumarest books due to the expense of the paperbacks.

The Light Ages, Ian MacLeod. More properly fantasy, maybe? I find it wonderful, but if the reviews I've seen are any indication, YMMV.

Finished How to live safely in a science fictional universe, starting The children of the sky

#55 by lansingsexton> I like McDevitt, but I acknowledge some of his flaws. His stories (at least in the Hutch universe - I've yet to read the Talent ones) all follow a pretty similar progression of disaster/solution followed by disaster/solution followed by disaster/solution, etc. I lost track of how many were in Chindi but I think it might be right up there. I find them very entertaining novels, but they usually don't blow me a way with their originality, insight or characters. They're fun. Which is fine by me, since I approach books a bit like I approach food. I like variety. There's a lot of different ways that something can be "good". And something can be "good" but after you finish it you say "probably should wait a while before I have that again."

ETA: Oh, and I think some of the hate for him is because of how he's a perennial award winner. It bothers people when he publishes something that's not his best work and it wins an award against other less popular authors who produced something quite good. I get that. But I think awards in general are pretty stupid, whether they be popularity contests or critics' pet authors.

#57 I always found the Dumarest books hard to find even when they were new or near new. The only two I am missing is The Coming Event and The Return (which I chose not to buy when it was semi-affordable because of the poor reviews it got). They rarely show up in the used shops, the later editions especially, although the internet has made most everything findable, at a price.

61 RBeffa:

I shopped around a great deal through used stores and online. When I was looking for 30/31 the last two DAW volumes I found the prices got annoying. Then 32/33 are limiteds from Small Press, one of which is in the $40 price range, the other runs between between $150 and $300 when it's even available. SF Gateway have made all 33 books available as e-books at $8+ a pop which is a bit steep they really should be $5, but totally worth it price wise for the last 4 books.

# 61 & 62

You may want to check Uncle Hugos, they have a butt-load of stuff and the prices are reasonable.

http://www.unclehugo.com

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in Uncle Hugos.

#63 by LamSon> Dislosure: I have no financial interest in Uncle Hugos.

You just have an interest in them reducing the stock you don't want so maybe it'll unearth some that you do!

# 64
You know that's right.

Finished The Urth of the New Sun. I probably should have read this sooner after the first four New Sun books, but somehow it kept getting pushed down the pile. Finally read it and it was enjoyable, though in a slightly different way.

>#60, brightcopy

I agree with your assessment of McDevitt. He's a decent, entertaining author and good for a quick read as long as you understand that he's not going to write a Dune or a War and Peace.

Per the awards thing, I think he's a lot like Scalzi (and I like Scalzi) in that he gets nominated every year simply for writing something because he's quite popular.

Started Children of Dune a couple of weeks back. I think I can I think I can...

Finished The Slynx. Really? Mice?

Started Walls of the Universe...so far so good...hoping against hope for it not to fall off a cliff any time soon.

Now reading Change of Command by Elizabeth Moon...

Just finished Bury my Heart at W. H. Smith's by Brian Aldiss. A memoir of his career as a bookseller, and of his writing career. Funny, insightful, and tightly written. I enjoyed it greatly (being a bookseller as well). It certainly made me want to pick up further books from the Aldiss back catalogue.

I believe this will receive a republication in the spring, along with The Brightfount Diaries.

>47

Also started Frankenstein.

First attempt on that one?

I finished Cthulhu's Heirs (which was just okay) and started a Gothic novel myself; namely, William Beckford's Vathek. It's very, um... I believe capricious is the word I'm looking for. :D

#72 by brightcopy> #71 by artturnerjr> First attempt on that one?

Yep. Well, as far as I can remember. I can't rule out having read at least part of it in school.

I mainly read it because it was free on Gutenberg so it's something I can easily stick on my phone for those times when I'm caught out without a book. Amazing what you can get read in those 5-10 minute chunks when you're waiting in line, waiting for your take out order, waiting for someone to call you back, etc. Oh, and because it's a classic, of course. :D

ETA: I really wish I could get through William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. I love the theme, and I loved John C. Wright’s Awake in the Night (which an be read for free from here) which has the same setting. And Greg Bear's The Way of All Ghosts (a retelling of the story but shifted to fit in his Eon universe) was quite good. One of these days I'm going to get around to reading James Stoddard's retelling The Night Land, A Story Retold (you can read the first few chapters here).

>72

I can't rule out having read at least part of it in school.

Yeah, it was assigned reading for us in one of the English Novel courses I had as an undergrad. Read it then, didn't care for it; got ahold of Bernie Wrightson's magnificent illustrated version (ISBN 0-88733-193-9), was blown away by it, and it's one of my favorite novels now. :)

I really wish I could get through William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land.

I'm very hesitant to start that one just because of the very mixed reviews I've read of it. For example, here's what H.P. Lovecraft had to say about it:

...a long-extended (583 pp.) tale of the earth’s infinitely remote future—billions of billions of years ahead, after the death of the sun. It is told in a rather clumsy fashion, as the dreams of a man in the seventeenth century, whose mind merges with its own future incarnation; and is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in “Glen Carrig”.

Allowing for all its faults, it is yet one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written. The picture of a night-black, dead planet, with the remains of the human race concentrated in a stupendously vast metal pyramid and besieged by monstrous, hybrid, and altogether unknown forces of the darkness, is something that no reader can ever forget. Shapes and entities of an altogether non-human and inconceivable sort—the prowlers of the black, man-forsaken, and unexplored world outside the pyramid—are suggested and partly described with ineffable potency; while the night-bound landscape with its chasms and slopes and dying volcanism takes on an almost sentient terror beneath the author’s touch.

Midway in the book the central figure ventures outside the pyramid on a quest through death-haunted realms untrod by man for millions of years—and in his slow, minutely described, day-by-day progress over unthinkable leagues of immemorial blackness there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery, and terrified expectancy unrivalled in the whole range of literature. The last quarter of the book drags woefully, but fails to spoil the tremendous power of the whole.

Sounds like it might be worth the effort for someone of my (ahem) unusual sensibilities. :D

When HPL is criticizing your prose... well, that's just not good. X)

#55 and #60 I am just nicely into my first McDevitt novel- Omega. I found it quite dry at the first 100 pages but now the interest is picking up...the first 100 pages were just character introductions. It has been a while since I have read decent hard sci-fi it looks like a pretty good read now. I love post apocalyptic novels and I understand he has a pretty good one in "Eternity Road" so I am trying to find a copy in used bookstores to no avail so far.

> 72 For me, the hardest thing(s) to take about The Night Land had little to do with the prose style -- I may be a voice in the wilderness here, but I actually think the style, tough as it can be to take at first, has a great deal to do with the "potency" (as Lovecraft put it) of the setting and descriptions thereof. I read the book many years ago, and remember pieces of it still, in their admittedly-odd phrasing.

For me the worst faults of the book are the fact that Hodgson fails to make the return trip to the Redoubt as interesting as the journey out (perhaps the protagonists could have been waylaid into a different route?), and the fact that whenever Mirdath's ... behavior is an issue, the hero whales the tar out of her. Even at 18 or 19 my relatively unenlightened self found this extraordinarily creepy -- and not a good creepy, not at all. Perhaps Hodgson had issues with women.

That said, it's still one of my favorite books. I'd like to go through it again.

Finished Embassytown. Not my favourite Mieville; the worldbuilding was good, and I really enjoyed the first half where the action switches between past and present, but after that I found it dragged badly. I skimmed the last quarter of the book, never a good sign. At least it was a library book :)

#75 by Lynxear> I can't remember Omega (another problem with McDevitt that a lot of other series authors share - they start to blend together). If you wind up not liking it, I'd go back and try The Engines of God. And if you do like it, read that anyway. The one in the series I can really remember being disappointed by was Cauldron. That had a LOT of filler at the beginning that could have easily been yanked out. Would have left it at more of a novella, though.

There were parts of Eternity Road I really liked. But I felt the conclusion just didn't live up to the potential that the rest of the book set up.

>47

Also started Frankenstein.

...

But (assuming you have all the parts) you're going to have to wait for a really good thunderstorm to finish him.

I'll get my coat.

Read After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall over the weekend which had a great start, a good buildup and NO end. What passes for an end may be something of an end for one of the protagonists but I don't believe that either. I don't need a book to tell me what happened at the end in plain words but there is open ended and there is unfinished. That one felt unfinished - badly so. The explanation of why things happened may be considered the opinion of one person (or not) and I have no issues with that. But how the survivors survived was never cleared (and it felt as deus ex machina).

Oh well - Kress seems to be having worse and worse endings lately - Steal Across the Sky had a problem with the ending; that one is even worse.

>74

When HPL is criticizing your prose... well, that's just not good. X)

I realize I'm in the minority, but I actually like Lovecraft's prose; it goes back that "unusual sensiblities" thing I was talking about before. :)

>76

Perhaps Hodgson had issues with women.

This doesn't seem to be have been all that uncommon amongst weird fiction writers of that era. We were reading Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan over at our story discussion group at The Weird Tradition (http://www.librarything.com/groups/theweirdtradition) and I think we were all pretty much in agreement that, while it is a genuinely effective piece of horror fiction, it's also one of the most profoundly misogynistic things any of us had ever read. Having said that, this quality doesn't seem to really be present in any of Machen's other fiction that I've read, so maybe he was just arguing a lot with his wife or something when he wrote that one.

>79

But (assuming you have all the parts) you're going to have to wait for a really good thunderstorm to finish him.

*rimshot*

#78 yeah I am now realizing I am reading this book out of order....as for Eternity Road by McDevitt I love reading post apocalyptic books be it by bomb, plague (my bet on how the world might really end or come close to it) or natural disaster (comet, asteroid hit or other).

I haven't read "Swan Song" yet either...but looking forward to that read one day

#77: "Finished Embassytown. Not my favourite Mieville; the worldbuilding was good, and I really enjoyed the first half where the action switches between past and present, but after that I found it dragged badly. I skimmed the last quarter of the book, never a good sign. At least it was a library book :)"

I felt the same thing, that it started well and really dragged from the middle on -- but then an odd thing happened: though I dislike implausible endings, and this one seemed contrived to me, for some reason I found it emotionally satisfying. Maybe I was identifying with the aliens' dilemma more than I realized.

Just read Little Brother by Cory Doctorw. Interesting approach and a good story but with a really disappointing ending. A kind of break with everything the book and the author's introduction seemed to be committing with.

I also read Old Man's War by Johan Scalzi. A very decent entertainment in the Starship troopers style.

And the Lifecycle of software objects by Ted Chiang. Great short story available for free in the web of Subterranean Press.

I finished listening to The Voyage of Sable Keech which I enjoyed, though I don't think it was as good as The Skinner so I'm not sure if I'll go on to Orbus. This is my usually dilemma with series where the quality drops off with each successive book.

I read Yesterday's Hero which I really enjoyed because it was fun, fast paced and I always new what was going on. This is a second book in a series and I thought it was of similar quality/standard to the first book which made me happy.

Now I'm reading Armored and the first few stories have been really good, but I think that I may have to spread this one out and just read a couple of stories at a time so I don't OD and spoil it. There is only so many stories about marines, how stupid the commissioned officers are and how smart the corporal is that you can read in the one go.

Read The House on the Borderland, via Project Gutenberg, triggered by all the discussion on The Night Land. Have poked into the latter but it's definitely slower going.

Finished and reviewed Leigh Brackett's Book of Skaith, as promised.

> 86 I think Hodgson's entire oeuvre, or darned near, is available at Gutenberg now. I've been working as a proofreader for Gutenberg texts the last few weeks, so I've been spending a lot of time there.

Finished The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis. Good sequel to Bitter Seeds, though I'm not sure I like how the final plot twist is going to go with the third book.

Finished A Rising Thunder by David Weber. More talking heads; some action.

Finishing up the Serrano Legacy with Against the Odds by Elizabeth Moon...

Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury

Finished Directive 51 by John Barnes. Will not buy the rest of the trilogy, but may borrow the books from the library.

Just starting Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh.

Finished The Apocalypse Codex yesterday evening; another good paranormal intelligence caper in the world of the "Laundry."

I was out of the genre for a good chunk of the summer with four non-fictions, histories/biographies, one of them a doorstop size book.

Thought I was getting back to sci-fi with my Early Reviewer book, The Void by Brett J. Talley, since it was set in space a couple of centuries from now. I was wrong, it was actually horror. I didn't think it was bad but I'm not a big fan of horror so it wasn't really what I was looking for.

Followed that up with David Weber's newest Harrington novel, A Rising Thunder. I think all the fan criticism got through to Weber and his publisher. The book's nowhere near as good as what he was writing a decade or more ago, but like his last couple of books, at least it's not as painfully bad as most of his stuff was for the last decade.

I finished Children of Dune.

Hmm, I'm not sure what to say about this book. Was it "good"? Yes and no. I found it interesting mainly due to the immersion in the world of Dune. But I sometimes found myself bored by the actual plot and some of the writing. Herbert does love to slather on the pseudo-philosophy a bit thick. And the plot was about as exciting as The Phantom Menace. It comes nowhere near Dune in terms of readability. The last few chapters were definitely a nice payoff for getting through some of the slower parts. I'd mainly suggest reading this book if you're goal is to read the entire series.

3.5 stars

Starting God Emperor of Dune

I had been iPodless for several months until early this month. Since then I have been catching up with my podcast backlog so I have listened to a lot of sf short stories, but I am still only about half-way through The Smoke Ring.

I am 2/3 the way through Omega by Jack McDevitt. It was tough sledding through the first 100 pages as it was mostly character introduction and I am reading this out of order. Basically it is about clouds that are called Omegas that are civilization killers. Earth has found one aimed at a planet with life on it in something of middle age variety with clownish looking people people called "Goompah" by one of their discoverers and attempts are being made to save them without being revealed as well to learn about the clouds which will threaten Earth in 1000 years. Sort of a Startrek Next Generation feel to the story. Comfortable read, interesting ideas probably the best Hard Sci-fi book I have read in ages. I think I have found a new author.

Reading even more Space Opera, this time Tanya Huff's Valor's Choice...

Beginning The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.

Started Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Classic apocalyptic fiction from 1959 I haven't read before.

40 > The Apocalypse codex was as expected: well written, funny, with plenty of technical asides, but ultimately just another series novel. Next up is Chris Beckett's Dark Eden.

read The Engines of Gods and enjoyed it but I'm not sure I'll continue with the series because I'm actually not that curious to see what happens next.

> 40 I'll be interested to hear what you think of Dark Eden. I have it on my Kindle but haven't read it yet.

I've really, really liked some of Beckett's short stories.

finished Omega by Jack McDevitt...as I said before I will read others...I liked his writing a lot

Now will cleanse my mind with a historical fiction I got from Free books titled Yankee Mandarin by James Lande