June 2017 reading

Starting off June by re-reading John Carter of Mars, eleventh and final volume of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Dusty's TBR for June

David Brin - Heaven's Reach ✔
Jack McDevitt - Starhawk ✔
Jeff VanderMeer - Acceptance
Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace ✔
Nichola Griffiths - Slow River ✔
Edgar Alan Poe - The Raven ✔
James Patrick Kelly - Think Like a Dinosaur ✔

SF short stories (mostly rereads)
Theodore Sturgeon - Microcosmic God ✔
Fredric Brown - Arena ✔
Arthur C Clarke - Nine Billion Names of God ✔
Tom Godwin - Cold Equations ✔
Roger Zelazny - A Rose for Ecclesiastes ✔
Robert A Heinlein - Waldo ✔

from other genres
Lindsey Davis - The Third Nero✔
Dorothy L Sayers - Documents in the Case ✔
Xiaolong Qiu - When Red is Black
Nora Roberts - Blood Magick ✔

A few chapter into Convergence by C.J. Cherryh.

I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Home Fires. The SF elements are combined in apparently casual, but intriguing, ways.

I'm reading City of miracles. Not really SF but not your traditional fantasy either.

Finished Yendi, started Storeys from the Old Hotel.

Still reading Ninefox Gambit and The Guns of Empire.

Starting the month off with Babylon's Ashes.

I ended May/started June with the novella All Systems Red, and I ♥ Murderbot.

I'm also reading All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Last year I attempted to read Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace and gave up 40 pages in. I just dont like war books.Now I will have to tackle it as I am up to 1997 in my Hugo winners challenge,so I must try again....sigh.....
Other books in progress are Jack McDevitt's Starhawk, David Brin's Heaven's Reach and RAHs Waldo

Finished Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. Didn't care for it. Too clever for it's own good.

Finished John Carter of Mars, which isn't the strongest book in the series. Next up I'm reading the second book in a crime trilogy by the late Steig Larsson, but that is a story for another group.

Just starting Seven surrenders already can see will be just as great as the prev book ....

Finally finished off The Night Land. I ended up skimming it as life was too short for all the cod-archaic language and all the stuff about 'Mine Own Belovéd". But the world-building (well, dismantling, really) and the visual descriptions were stunning. It would actually film rather well, I think.

Now starting a re-read of Ken Macleod's The Star Fraction before cracking on with more of his stuff. I read it perhaps six or seven years ago but in small, episodic chunks.

Finished Dust by Hugh Howey, which completed the Silo trilogy. I really like how everything ties up, and how it kept me guessing right to (almost) the end.

I am catching up with magazines since the start of the month.

Recently finished my re-read of Gene Wolfe's 'The Book of the New Sun' tetralogy, which remains a 5-star read for me. (Sorry, couldn't get a touchstone for the 4-book series to function properly.)

Other recent reads:
- The Witches of Lychford - 3.5 stars
- The Lost Child of Lychford - 3 stars

Now reading:
- A Door Into Ocean, which I am enjoying quite a bit. The cover blurb on my paperback compares it to The Left Hand of Darkness and Dune. While I can't argue with those associations, I am reminded more of Joan Vinge's The Snow Queen and Le Guin's The Dispossessed.
- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which is starting off strangely - but strong. I'm ~10% in and already fully engaged.

>18 ScoLgo: I will be interested to see what you think of Harry August. It was one of my favorite books for the year when I read it - it has its weaknesses but somehow they helped me liking it even more I think.

>19 AnnieMod: Liking it quite a bit so far. It seems to be a clever and intelligent story. Now that I've finished A Door Into Ocean, I plan to focus exclusively on this one until finished.

>18 ScoLgo: Sword and Citadel is on my list for this year, and I'm looking forward to it even though, as the narrator keeps saying, it's "no easy road."

>21 ThomasWatson: I really enjoy Wolfe's writing. For me, there is nothing more realistic than an unreliable narrator. After all, everyone perceives an event from their own perspective so are we not all unreliable...? On the one hand, Severian claims to have a didactic memory. On the other hand, he frequently contradicts himself - occasionally he says outright that he had forgotten something. A short while later he might mention his 'perfect memory' again. It's frustrating and brilliant all at the same time. The way Wolfe pieces his story together is deliciously challenging. I know that even with this being a re-read, there are plenty of things that got past me - but there is a lot of food for thought with these books; There are so many little moments where Severian realizes (though often not right away) that other people he meets have a striking similarity of features with himself. Is Severian related to these other characters? Is he - or they - a clone? Wolfe plays freely with the clone concept in The Fifth Head of Cerberus and I would not put it past him to incorporate some of that here. But it's never discussed openly and the hints could be misleading.

Then there is the geography... North seems to be South and, while I had the distinct impression that the story takes place in South America, Wolfe made me doubt that by dropping two small hints into the narrative...

In chapter 8 of The Sword of the Lictor, as he is making his escape from Thrax, Severian observes, "The titan faces that loomed above me now were only those of the long-dead rulers of Urth, haggard by time, their cheeks fallen away in avalanches." In this, he might possibly be describing Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, USA. Or maybe not. There are other carved mountains in Severian's world, Mount Typhon being one. Still, the carvings described here seem more ancient and there being multiple faces of rulers in one place seems to correspond with Mount Rushmore...

The other thing that jumped out at me, in chapter 5 of The Citadel of the Autarch, while Severian is in the hospital tent, he mentions, "But of Ascia itself I had no idea. I did not know if it had great cities or none. I did not know if it was mountainous like the northern and eastern parts of our Commonwealth or as level as our pampas. I did have the impression (though I could not be sure it was correct) that it was a single land mass, and not a chain of islands like our south." Chain of islands to the south? Hmmm... that sounds a lot like Indonesia so now Wolfe has me thinking this whole story might be happening in Asia and that the magnetic poles of the planet have not shifted, (or have shifted back & forth enough that they have landed returned to what we currently call North and South). Or, perhaps the poles have reversed and the chain of islands is the Aleutians - or the archipelago of islands in northern Canada? This would support the Mount Rushmore theory. No way to be sure but it's fun stuff to think about.

I dunno... I love these types of things; where I am challenged as a reader to interpret the tale in my own way. It's especially fun (for me) when an author leads me into thinking one way about something and then finds a way to turn the entire thing on its head. Those moments of surprise are why books like these end up being favorites for me. Sure, there are times where a mindless popcorn read suits just fine, but challenging books that also entertain, (admittedly, that must be a very fine balancing act for an author to pull off), are the ones I like best.

I need to find time to delve into online discussions of this series because there are a wealth of theories out there that are nearly as fun to parse as the books themselves.

Finished the ARC of Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom by Bradley W. Schenck. Fun read. Pulp SF. I really had a good time reading it.

I'm catching up with other genres on my TBR list and for F2F book groups, but I am still reading The Worm Ouroborous which is kind of a combination of genres: early 20th Century pseudo-science fiction (an physical/psychic journey to the planet Venus where this action happens) with imaginative world-building and fantasy-inspired actions and peoples (Gnomes, Demons, and Witches) that appear remarkably human.

The writing is very descriptive though dense, and the imagination needed to create this work is stunning in its details. It's best to take this book in small iterations, for me at least.

I am switching to something a bit more light reading Slave Ship by Frederik Pohl.... The US Navy manpower in short supply... animals being drafted as a result.... He must have been thinking of the TRUMP era LOL

Added The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North into my reading rotation.

Currently reading Blood Enemies, the next book in Susan R Matthews's Under Jursidiction series after an 11 year gap.

I'm not sure if this is considered science fiction but my library classifies it as such. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff is more horror/fantasy to my mind and thus was not really my cup of tea. The idea, black Americans from the 1950s as central characters facing racism and segregation, is pretty interesting though.

>28 gypsysmom: Lovecraft as a metafictional character, and his particular views on cultural and social issues of the day, is also referenced in Richard Lupoff's Lovecraft's Book.

I tried Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace last year,and as the early part seemed to a war book,dark and downbeat,and I had been very lukewarm about the other Forever War books,I abandoned it. Reading it now for my Defining Books of the 90s challenge over on WWEnd I persevered and was a bit surprised and relieved when after about 100 pages it veered off into a tale about group trying to to prevent a Doomsday weapon getting into the hands of a religious fanatic,and a method of turning humankind into pacifists! Fast paced action,but as ever with Haldeman I dont find his plot scenarios very credible. But at least it was a fast moving adventure,and a mere 350 pages. That is very small among most 90s books!That makes 53/65 Hugos read. Unfortunately next up on the Hugo list is KSRs Blue Mars,but I wont start that till probably September.I can barely read 10 pages a day without nodding off in boredom,and its a mammoth 800 pages long. Aarrgghh!
Next up is Nicola Griffith's Slow River and James P Kelly's Think Like a Dinosaur,plus a couple of crime books.

I put Slave Ship aside after reading about 70 pages.... it was just too juvenile, characters with no likeability and one dimensional. All around poor choice for me to read.

>22 ScoLgo: Like the narrator keeps saying, no easy road. I need a dose of that, now and then, to keep the brain from going flat, and Wolfe certainly delivers in that regard.

Just finished Convergence by C.J. Cherryh, 18th installment in the Foreigner series. The plot thickens, but that's par for the course with these books.

Up next, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Already seen the movie, and so I'm very curious about the book.

>32 ThomasWatson:

I enjoyed the Cloud Atlas movie also, but I've got The Bone Clocks queued up for my first read from that author.

>32 ThomasWatson: I really enjoyed both the film and movie of Cloud Atlas, (like you, I saw the film first). The delivery of each is very different but both are effective. Hope you enjoy the book, Thomas.

Just had a fun reread of probably the USAs most famous poem,Poe's The Raven for a challenge where I had to read something with a bird on the cover. What else?
I always thought that the poem teetered on the verge of turning into comedy anyway,what with that very insistent rhythm and over ripe descriptions,but somehow it just scrapes by on the right side, with enough genuine frissons as our typically weird Poe depressive finally goes bananas, to keep us reading - plus that driving rhythm of course .
Of course,once you have seen the Simpsons wonderful Halloween sketch its even harder to keep a straight face! lol. Do check it out on YouTube,its hilarious yet affectionate.Homer ordering the bird of death to get off his door is for me the heights of our Homer.James Earl Jones read the poem.Great fun.And of course it contains what is definitely the most famous quote from US poetry.

>35 dustydigger:, bird on the cover (since you ask 'what else'): The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Solomon Gursky Was Here, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Goldfinch ... but your pick was a good one, even though I can't abide poetry myself.

Just finished After Atlas which was excellent. It would appeal to mystery fans as well as SF readers.

>33 paradoxosalpha:
>34 ScoLgo:

I watched the film Cloud Atlas via Netflix after hearing so many sharply contradictory opinions expressed about it. From those opinions I assumed it was either brilliant, or a frightful mess. Proved to be the former, and the brilliance of it left me speechless at the end, and I've watched it twice since then (bought a copy) and keep finding another level of connections and detail. The "extras" on the blueray version are especially instructive. The author's reaction to what the film makers accomplished (an awestruck "How did they DO that?" at one point) was amusing. Mitchell also came up with a wonderful analogy for the transfer of book to film, saying it was as if he'd built the story from lego blocks, then watched the film makers take apart the blocks and put them together in a different way that somehow remained recognizable. I'm a quarter of the way through the book, and already a fan of the writing style.

>33 paradoxosalpha: I read The Bone Clocks first, then Cloud Atlas. I liked both but I think Bone Clocks is probably a better entry point.

>39 ChrisRiesbeck:
Ah! Thanks for confirming my plan.

I'm about 650 pages into Judas Unchained, the second book in an alien invasion series by Peter F. Hamilton. I think it was drmamm that recommended starting with these two (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained) - I had The Dreaming Void on my shelves for a long time.

The second book is going much faster than the first - there are so many characters that I was regularly having to go back more than 100 pages in the first book to find out who was Justine again? Even with a few months in between reading them, it was pretty easy to follow. Oh - and Hamilton at least put a dramatis personae at the front this time...

I'm looking forward to reading more Hamilton.

I finished Cixin Liu's The three-body problem earlier this month. I had to force myself to stay with it until about the final quarter, when the ideas and the plotlines came together. Not sure if I'll read the rest of the trilogy, though.

>39 ChrisRiesbeck: I've read all of David Mitchell's works (except his latest Slade House which is still TBR) and I found The Bone Clocks less interesting than the rest (it's a more conventional story and felt a bit long in parts), but it's still a good book and if it's what made you discover this fantastic author, I'd call it a success.

Finished up Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (B+) yesterday evening, in which the concept of animals uplifted to sentience by Humanity and who speak to dead actually works quite well. However, even in the future some animals are more equal than others and the uplifted elephants are a pariah elite (for their skills at pharmacology) that certain power brokers are bent on exploiting, or destroying; recommended (despite an ending that was a little too convenient).

Finished Theodore Sturgeon's famous short story ,Microcosmic God.A brilliant scientist/engineer,Kidder has developed an amazing array of useful inventions and cures(including a cure for the common cold!) and while he devotes all his time to science on his private island his venal banker has become immensely rich producing all the useful things Kidder so carelessly invents. But he greedily wants even more,and the scientist Kidder's latest invention could make its owner ruler of the world - and the banker wants that power for himself.Unbeknownst to anyone, Kidder has developed a synthetic life form, which he calls "neoterics." These creatures live at a greatly accelerated rate, and therefore have a very short lifespan and produce many generations over a short period of time. This allows Kidder, by presenting them with a frequently changing environment, to "evolve" them quickly into highly intelligent lifeforms who fear Kidder and worship him like a god. Kidder can control his neoterics' environment, and thus force them into developing technology far beyond that of humans. While earlier inventions had been his own, Kidder created the neoterics with the intention that they would become the source of many newer and greater inventions.
What makes such a strong impression on me in this story is the cold scientific inhumanity of Kidder,much more shocking than the venality of the banker.The story was written in 1941,years before the horrific experiments of Mengele etc were revealed,but we today cant escape the thought of scientists shaking off all ethics to focus on their thirst for knowledge and power.I wont soon forget Kidder poring over his little creatures,devising callous experiments on them,while accepting their worship.
Gene Wolfe said this was the first SF story he ever read,and claims''it all was pretty much downhill from there''.
Next up in my selection of stories from The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vol 1 edited by Robert Silverberg is Fredric Brown's Arena

>45 dustydigger:

Nice quote from Wolfe! We discussed "Microcosmic God" among the Deep Ones a couple of years back.

I think many people think of Tarzan as SciFi though I might think of it more like fictional adventure. I used to own the first seven Tarzan novels in the Grosset & Dunlap hard cover (wish I never sold them) and Tarzan was a surprise by not being your goodie-two-shoes adventure hero. I also owned a biography on Edgar Rice Burroughs and found that he was not very successful in anything until he published his first book Tarzan of the Apes in serial form.

His books are laced with statements of social opinion of the time. Many of his books were written during WWI and he writes brutally about the Germans and their African native soldiers.

He also was under pressure from the Victorian morals of the times and having Tarzan "living-in-sin" with Jane had to be dealt with. He wrote most of his books in serial form in magazines so in the book Tarzan the Untamed. The two have a ranch in central Africa and while Tarzan is away the Germans and African army under them attack the ranch, burn it to the ground and Tarzan returns to find the complete devastation including the unrecognizable woman wearing Jane's jewelry. Of course he is incensed and his mission in the book is revenge for Jane's death and he sets out to track and kill the attackers.

According to the biography, Burroughs attempt to kill off Jane and thereby escape Victorian wrath backfired and he received a great backlash for having killed off a favourite character.... I won't spoil the book other than to say in the great tradition followed later by the Soap Opera "Dallas" in later additions to the serial he finds a way to write Jane back into the story.

So now I picked up a copy of Tarzan and the Castaways..... a fast read and in one day I am 1/2 way through... like meeting an old friend after a long absence... not perfect prose but I like the real Tarzan character... not the sanitized TV and movie figure.

Finished The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North. Meh.

Next up is Crosstalk by Connie Willis.

Reading Tides of Light by Gregory Benford...

About 20% into The Rise and Fall of DODO, Neal Stephenson's new joint venture. (I apologize to his co-author, as I have forgotten her name! :o ) It's pretty good. Typical techno-geek meets history-geek stuff, with a lot of humor.

Started The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2017. Enjoyed the first story about toy dinos muchly.

About two-thirds through Wool for a book group and it's a bit of a slog. I like the fact that engineers are the central characters, but can't really get past the fact that I find the whole premise of the story implausible, so it's not working for me.

I finished Tarzan and the Castaways It is really 3 novellas sandwiched together. An easy read and some nice light humour in the first one which the book is titled for.

I an back in the Napoleonic wars with Ramage and the Drum Beat

Finished A Dreamer's Tales. First time I've read Dunsany. Inventive but rather crude stuff. Hopefully the rest of his oeuvre is more polished.

>26 seitherin: Finished The First Fifteen Lives of Henry August, which I loved! Am now reading The Sudden Appearance of Hope. Im having a bit of trouble accepting the premise, mainly because it all seems so convenient, yet I cannot stop reading. North is an amazing writer and has me spellbound, just like she did with Henry August. Let me know when you start reading it, I'll be interested in what you think about it.

>32 ThomasWatson: Oh, you will be so blown away by the book; the movie adaptation was just awful.

>35 dustydigger: There is also an hilarious reference to it in American Gods (book; not sure if its in the show)

>56 cindydavid4: The movie adaptation was more a side piece than a real adaptation - I actually liked it a lot - after I had read the book.

>56 cindydavid4: I'm going to disagree there (but agree with the author, who apparently thought well of the film). I'm halfway through the book, having seen the film already (twice), and so far find them equally enjoyable. It was one of the best movies I've watched in years, and the book is well on its way to being the best read (so far) of this year. YMMV, as always. I've never read anything by David Mitchell before, but I'm quite sure this won't be the only one.

Well I think I had really high expectations - CA is on my list of top reads of all time, and I expected, given the cast, that it was going to work. Certain sections did, but when they didn't, to me it was an epic fail. Reread the book again afterwards just to remember. Maybe if I hadn't expected so much, it would have been easier to like (I will admit however that the actors playing several roles, bending gender and race, was really interesting and well done)

Re his other books: I loved ghostwritten; not usually a fan of ghost stories but I read this for a book group and was really wowed by it. Ten Thousand Autumns was ok, I liked it because it was about a time and place I knew very little about. And Bone Clocks was really interesting, had some quibbles with it, but liked it quite a bit.

>55 cindydavid4: I liked The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August but The Sudden Appearance of Hope didn't really work for me. It was just so unhappy all of the time. It was just this side of whining. Definitely not something I was in the mood for.

Finished All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Really enjoyed the story.

I found Nicola Griffith's Slow River absorbing and interesting stuff. Never read a book before where the heroine works in a futuristic sewage works! lol. Griffith deftly interweaves three different time frames by a variety of tenses and POV,which took a while to get used to,and there was a lot of lesbian sex(it seemed that almost every character was a lesbian!) which was a little uncomfortable for my tastes,but it was an excellent read with a sympathetic flawed heroine.. That makes 41/53 Nebula winners read.
I am struggling badly with Jeff VanderMeer's Acceptance,where some aspects of the plot are being elucidated,but the total lack of characterisation,however appropriate to the story,makes identification with anybody in the tale difficult.It'll be a struggle to get through it before the end of the month,but I'll try.
Also working my way through the rather stodgy finale of Brin's second Uplift trilogy,Heaven's Reach A bit disappointed with it :0(

>63 dustydigger: Dusty, when I worked for the UK water regulator Ofwat, a copy of Slow River found its way into our Departmental library on the grounds that it was about sewage treatment...

Interestingly, the sewage treatment plant in the novel only looks futuristic to us because our STWs all work by harnessing natural processes and letting them take effect over time - remember that the old term for them used to be 'sewage farms'. Whereas the sort of plant the protagonist of Slow River works in is more like the sort of thing that the French do, where they have developed the technology to treat sewage via industrial processes. The STW for Monaco, for example, is in the basement of an office block.

Ultra-violet treatment processes and reverse osmosis technology has been made available here, but AFAIK no water company has made the leap to adopting these technologies on a large scale, probably because of the amount of up-front investment it would require. At Ofwat, we always said that we would look favourably on new approaches that used high technology (well, higher than currently) and that companies would be able to retain any dividend from the cost savings of new tech, but I suspect that the payback period is too long for most UK companies, who consider five years appallingly long-term. Meanwhile, on the Continent, public infrastructure works generally have payback periods of fifteen to twenty years, and most of the money markets over there consider that to be comfortably medium-term.

I finished reading The Wine of Violence, posted my review, and now I'm back to Jane Gaskell in Atlan.

>61 seitherin: Yeah, I have gotten midway and have put it aside for a while. I think her point about Perfection, and how social media is turning us into lemmings is on target. But while I related to Hope in the beginning and used her predicament to stand for all of the people in the world who are virtually invisible and forgotten, it has stopped being about that , and more about her search for revenge. Plus i still don't by the original premises the way I did in Henry.

>66 cindydavid4: I think it was always about revenge, but the intensity of the need for revenge changed. What precipitated the whole story was a death that made her angry. But I agree with you about social media.

Started Lavie Tidhar's Central Station - so far so good. Also, I've just come to the top of the library's reservations list for The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross - I love his Laundry series.

>67 seitherin: Oh yes, I get that the intensity for revenge changes. And maybe its not the revenge itself, its the constant planning she does, the counting, the checking, which was fine when she was just stealing some jewlery, but Im finding myself rolling my eyes - just get to it already. But i continue to read, partly because i want to see how she ends up (does her forgettability vanish as quickly as it came?) but mainly because I cant seem to stop reading.

>70 cindydavid4: The more I think about the book, the more I think North was going for a more organic approach to the story by writing it the way she did. We get all the humdrum internal noise as well as the external motivators. Still not my cup of tea, but I think I get what she was after.

Finished Crosstalk by Connie Willis. Enjoyed it. Just the right kind of story for the mood I was in.

Began Too like the lightning last night, a strange start and not sure if the style is right for me.
And borrowed Long mars from the library thinking I might try to be completest and finish the series. I didn't really go for the first two. Have never read a Pratchett book but enjoyed Stephen Baxter's other books so not sure if it's the co-writing I've not clicked with.

I'm reading The Ballad of Beta-2 & Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany.

>73 wifilibrarian:

The Long Mars isn't the end though. There is also The Long Utopia and The Long Cosmos.

I am not sure there is much Pratchett co-writing in any of them. Certainly as the series goes on that diminishes to nothing (Long Cosmos was published a year or so after Pratchett's death).

I saw Pratchett interviewed at the Hay Festival when The Long Earth first came out, and whilst he was still able to communicate with an audience reasonably well. (Though having helped my other half deal with her mother's dementia, I was rather upset that what a lot of the audience thought were funny, if grumpy, asides from TP were more likely a manifestation of his illness.)

By that time, he was writing through an amanuensis anyway; but he described the process of joint writing and said that there were very few occasions when one or the other parties threw their artistic toys out of the pram. Most of the writing in that book, at least, represented a genuine joint effort.

When I read it, I felt that the characters and situations were pretty much Pratchett; the working out of the plot and some of the plot mechanisms were more Baxter.

>74 SFF1928-1973: Writers just love showing generation ships are disastrous. Everyone seems to go bonkers sooner or later! lol. Our Chip certainly enjoyed putting his generation ships through the mill!

I am reading Corporation Wars : Dissidence

>76 RobertDay: (Though having helped my other half deal with her mother's dementia, I was rather upset that what a lot of the audience thought were funny, if grumpy, asides from TP were more likely a manifestation of his illness.)

Hee, doubtful; he came to speak at our discworld con a few years back. I think grumpy asides were deeply engrained, which probably explains why I liked his books so much. (He also signed my copy of Good Omen, which I treasure. A year or so later, Neil Gaiman did the same!)

I like Baxter as well (Time Ship was pure genius) and was interested in how this pairing would work. Liked Long Earth but didn't see much of TP except perhaps dialogue and character (as you did) Not interested in reading the other ones.

Added The Fireman by Joe Hill to my reading rotation.

>77 dustydigger: I'm really enjoying The Ballad of Beta-2. I don't know where the story is going but the journey is a lot of fun.

Finished Storeys from the Old Hotel, beginning The Afterlife Diet which isn't SF but since it opens with the narrator having died, does have some fantasy cred. Also working on the free eBook versions of Deathless and Old Man's War that Tor gave out.

>79 cindydavid4: No, I'd seen and spoken to TP at various conventions over the years, and the asides I was upset by were not just grumpy, they were barbed in a way I hadn't previously experienced in him and rather sweary. Probably only someone who had seen the effects of dementia in others on a regular basis would have spotted it.

>83 RobertDay: Ok, I get it. Thats so sad, no its tragic to see someone you know someone you love sinking like that. I've been in your shoes, and know what you refer to. Thanks for the clarification

>75 andyl:, yeah, I just meant I was going to start the next in the series to begin finishing it. What'd you think of them? My library has the rest in the series too, I had to sit there trying to workout which was one was next in the series while trying to avoid reading spoilers from the back covers.

>79 cindydavid4: I guess i should check out time ship.

>80 seitherin: loved the audiobook, creative premise.

I've just read The water knife by Paolo Bacigalupi, which concerns the politics of water in a dry future SW America. It was a gripping read, and I preferred it to The windup girl.

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2017. Enjoyed it overall.

Now finished The Star Fraction. Left-wing cyberpunk.

Been out of town for work & vacation for a couple of weeks. While away, I finished..

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - 3.5 stars
The Urth of the New Sun - 4.5 stars
The Ice Queen - 4 stars
Down and Out in Purgatory - 4 stars

I also started reading...
The Worm Ourboros - I'm finding this to be a bit of a slog. Well-written but ultimately not all that interesting of a story. Still worth reading for the historical significance of being an influence on Tolkien
The Girl With All the Gifts - A bit of a slow start but seems to be building momentum as stuff just hit the fan at the 25% mark.

>60 cindydavid4: I wonder if seeing the film first may have an impact on the takeaway? Like @ThomasWatson, I watched the movie before reading the book and thoroughly enjoyed both. I do recall being completely at sea during the first ~45 minutes of the film, simply wondering WTH was going on...? Once the disparate elements began to coalesce, I was fully engaged and thoroughly enjoying the experience. Reading the book a couple of months later filled in a ton of detail. I was glad the Wachowski siblings did not try to follow the structure of the book. The scatter-shot delivery of the film was much better suited to that medium, while the nested structure of the book was a great way to read the story.

Finished up Ninefox Gambit (A-) this evening, which is about the weirdest military procedural I've ever read. I found it worth the effort but I have a lot more tolerance for the surreal than most folks do! If you bounced off this work "Lightspeed" magazine just did an interview with Lee where he clarified why he made a lot of his artistic choices.

I'm about 60% of the way through KSR's Years of Rice and Salt. I'm liking it a lot, although maybe a bit less than his Mars books. It "chunks" better for convenient reading, so I expect to wrap it up in the next week or two.

>90 ScoLgo: From conversations with others, I think you may be on to something. People who read the book and then saw the film tend not to be as impressed by the movie. Very few people I know who went from movie to book disliked the book. I think if I'd read the book first, I might have had less patience with the film.

I finally finished David Brin's Heaven's Reach Odd sort of ending to the second Uplift trilogy,.Disliked the resolution,no real happiness for anyone!Too ''bitty'',too many POVs in my view.
Now reading Ken McLeod's The Cassini Division,looks like good fun.And have begun Terry Goodkind's Wizards First Rule. Its OK,though I'm not really a fantasy fan.The writing always seems very simplistic,the characters without much depth. Most fantasy to me seems to be written in a sort of style aimed at a YA or juvenile audience! lol.Oh well,its pleasant enough,certainly more engaging than Area X.Am having a few days break from VanderMeer's Acceptance while sorting out my July TBR.

>94 dustydigger: I liked Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, at least the first 13 volumes.... yeah. I stayed with it for a long span, but eventually it got to be a lot of the same - people are always getting accidentally separated and spending the rest of the book trying to rescue each other while having philosophical epiphanies. At this point I recommend just the first four volumes; they cover one story arc, so it's easy to stop there rather than slogging through the rest.

>95 Darth-Heather: I will only be reading this first book in the series. I have been working my way through the NPR 100 top SF/F books,this will be #74/100. Sadly I have read almost all the SF books,and am now left with all the fantasy,or massive tomes.I guess it will take me about 5 years to force myself through some of them.
I feel one of Dusty's lists coming on! lol
Just look at some of the doorstoppers I still have to plough through. 4 or 5 a year will be a punishment ;0)

NPR books still to read

G R R Martin - Game of Thrones
Robert Jordan - Eye of the World
Patrick Rothfuss - Name of the Wind
J R R Tolkien - Silmarillion
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Mists of Avalon
Brandon Sanderson - Mist Born
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon*
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Audrey Niffenegger - Time Traveler's Wife
Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings
R A Salvatore - Homeland
Jacqueline Carey - Kushiel's Dart*
Gregory Maguire - Wicked
Steven Erikson - Gardens of the Moon
Neal Stephenson - Anathem
Jim Butcher - Furies of Calderon
Timothy Zahn - Heir to the Empire*
Michael Moorcock - Elric of Melnibone
Larry Niven - Lucifer's Hammer
China Mielville - Perdido Street Station*
Piers Anthony - A Spell for Chameleon
* =planned for this year.After that 4 books a year,seasonal reads.I hate huge fantasy books,all battles and quests,so not my cup of tea.

>96 dustydigger:, I wouldn't hold forth Goodkind as a stellar example of the best in fantasy - not by a long shot. One of the more popular (at least with his main series) but how often does that mean anything? Except to be sufficient to land him on the NPR, which I find is a decent guide for getting caught up with where the genre is at these days but not a critical take on the actual best genre fiction; it was more like a popularity contest. Be especially wary of the entries with recent publication dates (e.g. Time Traveller's Wife) which happened to be best sellers at the time of the poll and are being quickly forgotten since.

Of your remainder, I expect the best are Game of Thrones (both good and popular) Cryptonomicon (an encyclopedia of wonderful things) and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (if you appreciate Dickens, Austen, etc.), and The Road (McCarthy is quality).

Mists of Avalon has fallen victim to revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley after her death that have coloured all her work. If you're good at just focusing on the work quality, and don't mind Arthurian stuff, it's worthwhile.

Mistborn, The Way of Kings, Kushiel's Dart, Gardens of the Moon will give you a good picture of Martin's challengers in the current marketplace. I love Gardens personally (and the rest of Malazan), but it tends to boggle people's minds.

Lucifer's Hammer, A Spell for Chameleon and Elric should be read together with keeping their 1970s era in mind. Take that as a warning or an invitation, lol.

Eye of the World and especially Homeland are not worth your valuable time. I would have lumped Goodkind here.

Heir to the Empire will only matter to Star Wars fans (it's no longer considered canon, btw), and Silmarillion to LOTR fans. Wicked is a strange beast and is different from the stage production in a million ways; most people like one and dislike the other.

I can't speak to Furies of Calderon although my impression is that Jim Butcher's other series is considered clearly superior and its popularity may have been what lifted this second tier series of his onto the NPR list.

Name of the Wind, Perdido Street and Anathem each interest me, TBR so I hope they're good.

>96 dustydigger: Lucifer's Hammer, eh? So will your Hot Fudge Sundae fall on a Thursdae this year?

You won't get that yet, but you will... (And if that constitutes a spoiler, then I'd reply that that's a big book to only take a one-liner away from. My excuse is that it's forty years since I read it...)

>96 dustydigger: A Spell for Chameleon and Mistborn aren't particularly taxing, and Elric of Melnibone won't take long to read. Cryptonomicon is one I've been putting off myself. Size matters!

As for my own reading, I'm starting another Philip K. Dick classic, The Penultimate Truth.

>97 Cecrow: Be especially wary of the entries with recent publication dates (e.g. Time Traveller's Wife) which happened to be best sellers at the time of the poll and are being quickly forgotten since.

!!! Seriously, that was an excellent book when it came out, and is still one of my favorite time travel stories!!

I have found NPR to be an excellent source of books of all types. Your list includes several of my favs;

G R R Martin - Game of Thrones Huge 1000 page books that I flew through during a summer several years ago. The HBO series does a decent job adapting them but you might want to focus on the first three, which are the best of them. Unfortunately the author has not completed the series so if you want to know how it ends, so you'll need to watch the show

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Mists of Avalon I was disturbed by the revelations made by her daughter after the author's death, but should not stop you from reading this Arthurian tale. Excellent writing (might be dated, haven't read it in a while)

Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell hard to get into, but very well done

Audrey Niffenegger - Time Traveler's Wife Loved this book! Had problems with some of the plot points that just would not have happened even in fantasy, but its worth the read

Gregory Maguire - Wicked Powerful take on Frank Baums original work, well worth reading!

Piers Anthony - A Spell for Chameleon I read this in HS. Read the whole series, laughed at every pun, named one of my cats after the main character. Tried them again a few decades later - uh, no. Really awful now. A better series would be Discworld by Terry Pratchett. The first two are light and fluffy but fun, as you get into the series they really get interesting (and still fun)

One more that isn't on the list but should be is Guy Gabriel Kay's speculative fantasy books . He takes historic event, and in a parralel universe rewrites the story. Start with Sarrantine Mosaic, about the height of the Byzantian Empire.

Happy reading!!

Terry Pratchett is listed twice for Small Gods (deserved) and Going Postal (not one of the best).

I thought Guy Gavriel Kay was on there, but nope. You're right, that's an oversight IMHO too.

The list: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139248590/top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books

Small Gods was the first one I read, and was hooked. Was surprised by Going Postal - it was good but not as good as Lords and Ladies,Interesting Times, Carpe Jungulum, Pyramids, Soul Music.........ok, I'll stop now. Lots to choose from of course.

>103 cindydavid4: Ha ha! Soul Music is a great one!!

>96 dustydigger: holy wow, Dusty! There are quite a few good ones on your list, but a lot of them are huge.

I really enjoyed Anathem and The Way Of Kings. I still have a lot left to go with both authors.

Heir To The Empire is good stuff, regardless of how it fits into the canon now. Zahn is a good writer. It is the first in a trilogy, though, and leaves on a cliffhanger. There is a graphic novel version, if you were looking to fill that category... :)

Wow,that list got a good response! lol. I think the members who lean more towards fantasy like a lot of the books above,whereas the SF fans are rather less fond. Since I lean heavily towards SF,AND dislike huge tomes,you can see why I am not too pleased with it. But they were nearly all books that made some sort of stir,deserved or not,and are often indicative of their times,so I will persevere- just at a very leisurely pace,a few a year.Once I start a list I find it hard to abandon it.
One reason I chose to read from this list was that no less than 93 books were available through libraries etc,meaning only a small financial outlay.Some other lists on WWEnd have a much smaller number available free.

Finished The Girl With All the Gifts. Four stars. As a reader/viewer that does not care much for zombie stories/movies, this one steps beyond the genre - while still managing to hit most of the salient tropes. Overall, it was better than I expected and I'd recommend it to other readers that think they have had enough of zombies.

Also finished The Worm Ouroboros last night. Three stars. It probably deserves a higher rating but I found the bulk of the book to be a slog. Underneath all the purple prose and overly-detailed descriptions is an epic fantasy story peopled with larger-than-life characters and amazing acts of derring-do. Those elements were deserving of a 5-star rating. However, I found myself skimming large swathes of the narrative to get to the sections that moved the plot along. Unfortunately, that is not an indicator for me enjoying a book.

Picking up Planetfall next.