I'm surprised no one else started a thread for the month yet ;)
I'm finishing an old anthology, Tiger by the Tail by Alan Nourse
Fairly well written but the endings have been dissapointing.

I'm reading Light by M. John Harrison. I'm not very far in yet and I'm a tad confused - loads of characters and unusual settings.

Nevertheless, I like his writing and the book seems very promising. I hope to get around to reading Hyperion afterwards.

I have to read a fake Dune book. Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson for a RL book group.

An entire reading group of masochists? That's unusual.

No they are just mostly incompetent. Not really readers, and more interested in media stuff, though we don't allow those books, thank god. I missed the last meeting where we picked books, so this stinker was chosen.

A book group composed of non-readers? Interesting concept...

It was started 13 years ago by someone who liked the media stuff and to go to cons and schmooze with the authors. Of course he didn't want to actually read anything. So the group would read the book and talk about it and then he could pretend to have read it and discuss it with the author.

He has stopped coming but there was a group of non-reading media people who came with him. There are others there who are not like that, but we still have to keep a firm hand on the non-readers.

By non-readers I mean this one book may be the only book they read for the month, and they don't always finish it.

My 6 month old already loves being read to. Maybe he can help them :)

#7

What, one of those book groups people attend so they can say to everyone "I'm attending a book group" and feel pretentious and intelligent about it?

The effect is somewhat spoiled by their choice of books.

Message edited by its author, Jul 2, 2009, 11:33pm.

# 9, No. There is nothing pretentious about them. Many are non-readers who want to talk about the latest SF TV or Movie and gossip about them.

#10

I misunderstood - that sounds a lot better.

I've just finished reading Making money by Terry Pratchett, which I loved. Having brought the Discworld up to a roughly 17th-century level of development, the use of things like electricity, economics, industry and computing takes on a very science-fictional slant (because for that society, they are science fiction!). If you think of 'Frankenstein' (especially in its film incarnations), you'll appreciate that the introduction of a character (more properly, group of characters) called 'Igor' gives all sorts of comic and plot development opportunities, especially as the Igors are the brains behind most mad scientists in the Discworld.

I'm now reading Starfire by Paul Preuss and I'm most disappointed by it. The first chapter of this was published in Interzone years ago as a stand-alone short story. It's a near-future space story about an astronaut who makes the first ever successful emergency re-entry without a ship, and it excited me so much that when the full novel appeared, I bought it. It then sat in my 'to read' pile for longer than it ought, and only now has it come to the top. Oh dear.

If you like novels of political manouevering, this is great. Roughly half the book is taken up with this after the main character's initial thrilling bit. This is great if you like that sort of thing, or if you know the political system involved. As it's not the one I'm familiar with, I just kept muttering darkly about capitalism and Washington and wishing the story would get a move on. Then there's big chunks of NASA procedurals in it. I don't need to know what makes the big spaceship go very fast from its instruction manual. And the characters - well, the characterisation is very good. Shame they're all such boring people. The novel is being sold as a space disaster story; I'm nearly two-thirds of the way through and the disaster hasn't happened yet (unless you count my buying the book in the first place).

I'm reading Coraline The Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell, and so far it's a very enjoyable adaptation of the original book.

I'm reading Blindsight.

Still working on Regenesis vy C. J. Cherryh.

I've been having some strange cravings recently and started reading some Robert A. Heinlein, an author I never really could stand even back when I read him first as a teenager. Not sure I like him any better now, but I've found a strange enjoyment in reading Double Star a few weeks ago, and am currently making my way through Revolt in 2100 & Methuselah's Children. I might even feel adventurous (or should that be reckless?) and tackle one of his later novels after that.

I just finished The Carpet Makers.

picked up The City & The City by China Mieville yesterday and I'm really liking it. The beginning sucks you right in. I stayed up way too late last night cause I didn't want to stop reading.

#17 What did you think?

I'm reading Perdido Street Station and finding it baffling, bizarre, and wonderful. It's my first Mieville. I have The City & The City on my shelf as well, RBeffa!

I'm reading Fragment by Warren Fahy and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Both are interesting, though half the people I though were going to be main characters in Fragment died around page 50.

>19

The Carpet Makers is literary and interesting, but it's structured more like vignettes that come together to form the big picture than like a standard novel, and vignettes just don't do much for me personally. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to others but once is enough for me.

Just finished: Zoe's Tale: Scalzi’s worst-an insipid rehash of The Last Colony told from the point of view of yet another unbelievable female teen; Perdido Street Station: been avoiding it for a while now, but I was pleasantly surprised-baroque as hell but just as inventive, tragic as all get out-with all the grit, grime and trauma battering the reader over a 700 pg stretch... I will admit I felt drained after; Pandemonium: wonderfully original take on demons–well balanced plot, well developed characters, and great fanboy nod'n'winks make this one of my favorites of the year (or last year, published in ’08)

Next in line: Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsests: sex gains you entry to a mystical land… (your line here), and David Marusek’s Counting Heads

Message edited by its author, Jul 11, 2009, 4:25pm.

Today is the day I have to start Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson for my RL book group read. I hope it will be fast and painless - ha ha.

#24

It will be fast - Herbert and Anderson are not well-known for their probing social and moral insights.

> 23

I just read a mention of Palimpsest the other day - I'd be very interested in knowing how it is. I had a hard time meshing the premise with all the apparent praise, but maybe it really does just pull it off...

So I read Hunters of Dune and strangely enough didn't hate it. The last Fake Dune book of theirs I read was way back in the House series. I tried twice to get through House Harkonnen and couldn't. The writing was just so awful.

They seem to have improved a bit in the intervening years. I am now moving on to Sandworms of Dune while I have the momentum and remember the plot.

The new "Group Reads Sci-Fi" poll is up and running:

http://www.vizu.com/poll-vote.html?n=173....

As always, there are quite a diverse set of books, and everyone is free to choose from the following books:

The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand - Samuel Delany
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Alchemy of Stone - Ekaterina Sedia

As always, everyone is free to join the vote, which will decide the book we will read next for the SF group read. There is also a group read currently running for Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain for those that are interested in contributing, and there are a variety of previous books we have already discussed, if anyone feels like adding their thoughts to what has already been said.

Great idea, rojse, publicizing the group read in this thread. It might catch some more readers.

Rojse, the link to the poll doesn't seem to be working.

I just got the Ender's Shadow Boxed Set, and started Ender's Shadow

Last week, I devoured through Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead. I loved those. Especially Xenocide.

Message edited by its author, Jul 14, 2009, 12:02pm.

Lola, looks like the link was truncated - it should be this.

Thanks!

re #20 "baffling, bizarre, and wonderful"

I think to a certain extent that description applies to "The City and the City" also. My reading this week got sidetracked but I'm finishing the book off tonight I hope. This book really knocked me out of my comfort zone. It is my first China Mieville read also. And I'm glad I read it.

> 34 Good to know! I might dig into it next, then - I felt like I needed a bit of a Mieville break and am re-reading World War Z.

I bought the copy as a gift for a friend... he was kind enough to tell me I could read it before I mailed it to him. This probably means I need my own copy, huh?

My condolences, FicusFan

>#34
I'm not sure The City and the City is one of those "need to own it" books. I liked how the book hooked me right off, but it is a tough read in parts, esp the beginning where this weirdness of things gets thrown at you and I had numerous wtf moments along with the characters. (These characters, esp officer Corwi literally have more WTF moments than can be imagined!) The off balancing does slowly come together although you never feel like you really know what is going on (nor do the characters). There is a certain "affect" to the writing style that I don't know if it is a Mieville thing or not, but the dialogue flow could really be better at times.

In sum, the book rates as a better than average read, I''m really glad I read it and I will want to read more of Mieville. One can't really talk about this book without serious plot spoilers.

> 36 Kaleissin, Thank you.

I have slowed down in Sandworms. I have lost the momentum, and the book isn't grabbing me. They have so many of the characters from the original 3 books returning as Gholas, but they aren't doing anything with them.

> 37 I meant that I was reading the friend's gifted copy of World War Z actually.

I think you're right about Mieville's 'affect', and although I enjoyed Perdido Street Station well enough, I don't know that I'd ever love it enough to want it on my shelf. He doesn't seem like a 'rereadable' author to me, and those are the books I actually own.

>23, cmthomas - comiserations from a fellow sufferer; I have Scalzi's Old Man's War trilogy and it is on my keeper shelf, but was equally disappointed in Zoe's Tale.

This month, I'm reading Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, nearly half-way through. It is different in style and content than most SF in my collection, but I'm enjoying it very much and have very little to nit-pick. Could have done without Delaney explaining that Dyethshome really meant Death's Home. Part of the charm of his kind of writing is to NOT be bashed over the head with clever names and other metaphors. IF I wanted to read Terry Pratchett - well then, I'd read Terry Pratchett. And I could stand to have a shorter version of the NY cocktail party with aliens in chapter three, (but at least I have hopes the information delivered will develop into something important in the last half of the book).

But those are nit-picks, because I enjoy Delany's writing style, which is definitely a cut above.

Carnophile was kind enough to recommend Steel Beach to me in another thread.

Wow. 5/5.

Message edited by its author, Jul 16, 2009, 11:18pm.

I'm a little over 100 pages into Neuromancer. Unfortunately, so far, it reminds me of why I stopped reading SF back in the seventies: too much cant, ugly, grimy, unpleasant sounding people, businesses, and locales. The world is just too alien for my sensibilities and I'm not sure I would finish this book except I'm curious why this book gets all the positive buzz it gets. I'll finish it, but unless very basic things about it change, and I don't expect they will, it won't be pretty. It reminds me too much of that Siverburg book (I don't remember the name) in which everyone was constantly buzzed on some psychoactive drug and kept themselves plugged into virtual reality goggles. It was a slightly more mature take on the 250 page bathroom joke I read by him back in the sixties. I just don't like cyper-punk, I guess.

If it gets better I'll let you know.

> 41 That looks interesting! I'll add it to my wishlist.

> 42 Those were about my thoughts on Neuromancer - although I don't think it's the cyberpunk that's the problem for me, but in fact some serious dislikes of some particular choices he makes in his writing. I'll save the expounding in case we end up doing that one for our group read!

Message edited by its author, Jul 17, 2009, 10:30am.

I did not like Neuromancer when it first came out and never finished the book as I recall. Normally it would have gone straight to the giveaway but I held onto it for some reason. I pulled it out in case it is selected for the group read. I'm willing to give it another shot along with many of the old "classics" that I am reading or re-reading with very mixed results. Actually I'm in the mood for some John Varley. I picked up Mammoth recently at the library book sale. I might make that my next read as a novel but I need to catch up with a few Asimov's mags first.

Eyas is another oldie I want to read. I thought is was excellent 25 years ago but fear a current read!

I have all the three books in the Neuromancer trilogy, which I should get onto reading soon, for the group read.

I've also got The Kite Runner to read for a real-life group read.

Read Slave Ship, Fred Pohl's first solo novel, while on a plane trip back from California. (I read it decades ago, but just got a replacement copy from The Other Change of Hobbit for the one I lost in a flood

The first half was great -- full of speculation and detail and my favorite satirical gimmick: popping pills that give you anthrax and other diseases to get the delirium high. Then it fell apart into pulp silliness to finish.

I've just finished a re-read of a 1950s anthology, Best SF three, edited by Edmund Crispin.

Now here's a thing. This was part of a series of sf anthologies issued by Faber & Faber in the 1960s, and they treated them as samplers for the genre - to the extent that the anthologies each went through a number of impressions. 'Best sf three' was first published in 1958; my copy is the third impresssion, published in 1962! Can you imagine that happening now?

The stories were interesting. There were some lacklustre ones, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Kelley Edwards' 'Counterspy' in particular was all about tracking down a spy in a nuclear power plant. But the technology seems outdated now, and there was no examination of what made the spy a spy in the first place - he was just a bad man in a black hat, and when he was apprehended, the story ended. Murray Leinster's contribution was 'The Wabbler', about a smart missile (a smart underwater mine, actually). This was odd; in the time the story was published, the assumption was that a future technologically advanced device with self-volition would of necessity have a degree of artificial intelligence and a sense of purpose and destiny, even if that destiny was to explode. Now we achieve this with far fewer moving parts and a cruise missile has no more sense of its destiny than my toaster.

I was feeling a bit dubious about this re-read by this point, but then I hit paydirt - 'Food to all flesh' by Zenna Henderson and 'He walked around the horses' by H. Beam Piper. This latter enthused me with its early 19th-century European setting and its very keen grasp of the history and politics of the time (not to mention the big joke at the end).

And then I came to Tom Godwin's 'The Cold Equations'.

This is a classic story, one which I knew well and which every sf fan should know and - well, 'love' isn't quite the right word. Anyone who hasn't read it should go and find a copy NOW and come back later. But I hadn't read it in ten years or more, and in that time I've suffered no little personal loss in my life. So I was not only admiring the way it was written, the economical prose which told the story and sketched out the whole society without any info-dumping, but as the story drew to its close and the stowaway girl was facing death, much to my surprise I found myself close to tears - and this from a fifty-year old pulp sf story! Truly a classic.

Other stories - 'The gift of gab' by Jack Vance, 'Four in one' by Damon Knight and 'The game of rat and dragon' by Cordwainer Smith - stood up equally well and had not aged exceptionally badly. Overall, then, a palpable hit!

'Four in One'. That has stuck in my mind for the last forty years or so. A captivating story.

Just about to finish Harry Harrison's To the Stars (Homeworld/Wheelworld/Starworld ) trilogy. A lot better than the Deathworld stories, but there is so much casual slaughter in the books - I didn't realise that I had become so sensitised to death when it seems to be there just to get the hero out of a tight spot.

Message edited by its author, Jul 19, 2009, 11:54am.

>#47 as a semi-fan of old pulps and anthologies I love discovering the goodies among the dreck. Thanks for the tips.

Due in part to Aerrin99's enthusiasm I picked up World War Z at the library yesterday and started it, despite being mid-read in other books. Glad I did.

> 49 Ha! Glad to know my enthusiasm pays off! I hope you enjoy it. I know the format doesn't work for some people, but it's one of the book's real strengths to me.

I'm re-reading Delany's Triton after 20 years, and being blown away.

The Group Reads poll is currently on a runoff vote to decide what we are all reading next for the group read, and the vote is tied between Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand and Neuromancer.

The runoff poll is here for those interested: http://www.vizu.com/poll-vote.html?n=174...

As always, everyone is welcome to join the "group reads sci-fi" group. We are currently discussing Beggars in Spain, and have previously discussed a wide variety of books.

http://www.librarything.com/groups/group...

Message edited by its author, Jul 20, 2009, 1:48am.

I am a late bloomer to the Sword of Truth Series. I just finished Wizard's First Rule and I have never been so captivated by a book of this length. I know this book has probably been drilled to death on these boards, but I just wanted to put it out there that I finally entered this world by Goodkind. Looking for other suggestions of books to try. I have book 2 in the series on order, but love to move from series to series to not get bored.

Just finished my first Tepper in quite a while, The Companions. It was a very good science fiction story for most of the book--it got a little manic at the end. Good alien interplay--reminded me a lot of Brin in that respect.

Actually, surprising as it is I just got done reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the first time.

I finished World War Z a couple days ago and still can't believe how much I enjoyed it. This is by no means a great book, but it is a good one. I have pretty much always avoided books about vampires and zombies - just not my thing. But after seeing positive mentions of World War Z off and on I figured I had nothing to lose when I saw it on the library shelf.

So now I'm going retro and just started Harry Harrison's Captive Universe. Aztec sci-fi first published in 1969. This could be a stinker ...

> 56 Yay! So glad you enjoyed it. I found that I actually, surprisingly, liked it /better/ on the second re-read. Word on the street has it that it's being made into a movie in the nearish future - I'm dubious but hopeful.

Not particularly sci fi-ish, but I'm now working my way through del Toro's The Strain - it's quite enjoyable so far!

(I'm new here...)

Just finished reading H. M. Hoover's Orvis...sort of a classic type of sci-fi, very good. Although it's a children's book (kind of...), it has deep meaning and I love it! Greatly recommended.

Welcome CatnipRenna.

I am finally finished Sandworms of Dune by those who are not Frank Herbert. It took me 12 days because I didn't pick it up all the time. I toyed with quiting, but it was like a mountain I just had to climb. It was a long one, another 500+, and it was part 2 of the ending book.

It was just too long and rather pointless for most of the book. Like the previous book I thought their writing had improved, and I didn't hate it as I expected. It did bore me a lot however. They resurrected a lot of the earlier characters, and then kept on the cook's tour of the universe, popping in here and there to have adventures. Yawn. It did pick up after page 300. I didn't hate how they ended it, and actually thought they did a pretty good job, once they actually did something.

Not sure what I am going to read next.

Now reading A Deepness in the Sky. Pretty good so far but don't really see why it's considered to be part of the same series as A Fire Upon the Deep.

I've read a few books in July, but I've only just cracked open my first science fiction book of the month. It's Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Having read the first 15-20 pages, I think I'll love it.

> 60: As well as the same universe, the two novels share a main character, Pham Nuwen.

Neuromancer has picked up. It gets going really well over the last hundred and fifty pages, so I'm glad I stuck with it. Got about fifty more pages to go. The story seems to have jelled enough to be comprehensible. I'm comfortable with who is who and what's what. I actually feel, for the first time in this book, that I know what's going on.

I might have to read it again in the not too distant future to see if, now that I'm more or less comfortable in this world (some of Gibson's word images still don't make sense to me, but, what they hey, you can't have everything) I would understand it better. I think part of the problem is we get dumped into this world at the outset and, in the spirit of show don't tell, we are left to fend for ourselves. It took me a bit more than half the book to figure it all out. I like a bit more explanation of the peculiarities of an imaginary world, especially when it is someone else's imaginary world, than I got for the first half of the book. I think a reread at some point may be beneficial.

I'm ending the month by starting Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, the latest SF group read.

I was reminded of The Stars my Destination as I began reading, not for any similarity I can discern other than both books begin with a rather brutish main character. I'm assuming the books will rapidly and radically diverge.

I am also reminded of another SF group read, The Shadow of the Torturer for it's glimpses of what appear to be sadism. I'm finding this weird, since I've gone for decades of reading SF without encountering this kind of stuff and now two out of seven group read books.

Some of it doesn't quite make sense yet, like the face masks and "lozenges", but it's nice change of pace from feeling an author is too simplistic.

#62: I guess I just hadn't read far enough to figure that out. :)

Just finished it. Pure concentrated awesome.

Finished Open Your Eyes, a surreal space opera novella by Paul Jessup from Apex Publications. Pretty good. Currently reading The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan. I'll tackle the Delany after that.

Earlier this week I finished Zoe's Tale (B). Between moving and vacation I'm behind; it's easier for me to pick and put down non-fiction. For this coming month I have a small stack of Michael Moorcock novels that a friend lent me to read.

Read Jumanji and Zathura- both are children's picture books, same theme (children find a board game that changes reality). The illustrations are nice, and the plot is about what you would expect from a children's picture book. Worth a look, particularly since it will take less than hour to get through both.

>#68 When my children were very young, the two children's picture books that we enjoyed the most were The Escape of Marvin the Ape and The Adventures of Taxi Dog. I could not even begin to count the number of times we read them together. The illustrations are beautiful and the stories are simple, yet inventive and enjoyable. Taxi Dog had two sequels and I can't remember if Marvin did. The Taxi Dog books had a very small black cat hidden on each page which gave us added enjoyment in searching each picture carefully to find it.