August 2017 reading

Just started rereading Titan by John Varley which I loved many years ago - hope it bears up.

Still working on Too Like the Lightning.

Dusty's TBR for August

SF/F reads
Alan Dean Foster - Cachalot ✔
Hal Clement - Needle ✔
Terry Goodkind - Wizard's First Rule ✔
Jack McDevitt - A Talent for War ✔
Emma Bull - War for the Oaks ✔
Vonda N MacIntyre - The Moon and the Sun ✔
Poul Anderson - Guardians of Time ✔
Octavia E Butler - Parable of the Talents ✔

From others genres
Carter Dickson - Lord of the Sorcerers ✔
Quintin Jardine - Game Over ✔
Arthur Upfield - Wings Above the Diama ✔ntina
Kevin O'Hearne - Shattered Ϭ

Starting August with a reread of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin.

I am currently reading The Obelisk Gate by Jemisin. I think I left too much time in between reading the The Fifth Season and this one because I'm having some trouble figuring out what is going on with Essun. But I'm enjoying it.

>4 ThomasWatson: Great book for a re-read, Thomas. I recently read Le Guin's The Wind's Twelve Quarters. One of the stories in that collection, (The Day Before the Revolution), is a prequel to The Dispossessed.

Just started rereading Gwyneth Jones's White Queen as I foolishly agreed to write a piece on her treatment of aliens for a book. I plan to read the trilogy over the next week or so.

>6 ScoLgo: I'll have to dig out my copy of The Wind's Twelve Quarters and reread that tale. Thanks for the reminder!

I'm starting Logan's Run. A local library SF book group is having a screening of the film tonight and a discussion of the book and film next Wednesday. I've seen the movie a few times, but I realize I've never read the book, so this sounded like fun.

I'm about halfway through American War.

>7 iansales: Never heard of Gwyneth Jones but from the titles of her books she must be a big Jimi Hendrix fan.

>11 DugsBooks: She's probably the best living sf writer in the UK that's still being published.

Well, I've finished Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and on behalf of all the science-fiction writers on the shortlist I'm irritated that this won the Clarke Award. It's not a bad book, but it's LitFic not SF&F, and I've read more gripping stories of American slavery, for example Toni Morrison's Beloved or Octavia Butler's Kindred, that fall more easily into the SF&F genre. The conceit that the Underground Railroad is a physical railroad with steam trains running through tunnels is pointless. The book would have been just as valid without it, and it only gets a couple of pages anyway. I guess the author didn't want to spend time on the actual journey, but he could easily have omitted that or just given the same amount of coverage to the actual people who risked life and limb to help runaway slaves.

Hooray! With relief I finished Terry Goodkind's rather peculiar Wizard's First Rule. Started off your typical standard fantasy, a young man,the Seeker sets off with the Mother Confessor and a wizard to locate a magic box and protect it from an evil wizard who needs it to rule the world. Cue a long dangerous journey and many adventures. So far so normal. Then after 500 pages of this it turns into sado-masochism,long descriptions of torture and cruelty - even from the heroes! Ick.Not at all my cup of tea. 800 pages of this book was ample time for me to decide NOT to read anymore Goodkind. :0(
It was with relief and great pleasure I turned to the excellent War for the Oaks,the 1988 Locus Best First Novel award winner.It was written by Emma Bull at a time when the modern urban fantasy sub genre was starting out. That was the time when Charles De Lint and Mercedes Lackey were producing works linking the faerie world with ours,especially in connection with music.Good stuff.
I wonder why, when I find standard high fantasy a somewhat boring turn off, I should like UF so much? I just really like the whole premise,the ''what if the worlds of fantasy were really true,and came to interact with our own? Would we love them,hate them,maybe be eaten or destroyed by them?''.I tend to lean to the tough side,nasty vamps, weres,demons,tricksy fae et al being faced by kick butt humans,not the paranormal romance side.
Now on to Foundation and Earth and Jack McDevitt's A Talent for War

>14 dustydigger: War for the oaks is a favourite of mine. Glad you enjoyed it!

I'm reading Four roads cross, part of the Craft series which blends fantasy, SF and general weird stuff to excellent effect.

>14 dustydigger: If you haven't already tried it, dusty, then I think you'd be interested in what I'm reading right now, Graham Joyce's Some kind of fairy tale. It deals with the UF theme as you describe it (although it's a bit more personal, more focussed than an average UF story); a girl who disappeared twenty years ago suddenly turns up, claiming to have literally been "away with the fairies". How does that play with the people who she left behind and suddenly come back into the lives of? How are they going to feel - especially the boyfriend who, twenty years ago, the police tried to fit up for her murder? And what does the modern, rational world (expressed in the shape of the boyfriend, now an aging and not-too-successful muso, and a clinical psychiatrist she is referred to) make of the story? I'm finding this a compulsive page-turner.

>12 iansales: "Band of Gypsys" was the first album I bought when I got my stereo years ago - been through several vinyl copies and a couple of CD's.

Did miss Jones have any chapters entitled "Message of Love"? one of my favorite cuts on the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xTpQem36uA

...wandering a little off topic.

I'm reading New Writings in SF-4, edited by John Carnell. I'm hoping there's been improvement since Volume One. This starts with an impressive story by David Stringer...which the internet tells me was an early pseudonym of Keith Roberts.

Just finished Graham Joyce's 'Some kind of fairy tale', which kept me turning pages fairly compulsively. Now taking a short break from sf and fantastic literature generally, but only at one remove; going to catch up with Iain (no 'M') Banks' The Crow Road.

>13 SChant: Seriously? I read the book, thought it deserved the acolades (tho see your points too) but no way is this sci fi! Who else was in the running for that award?

Reading Lock In; its my first Scalzi, reading for a book group. LIking it so far, think I'll try more of his work.

>14 dustydigger: really interested in War of the Oaks; sounds a bit like the beginning of the Darkwarth series by Hambly. Will have to check it out.

>20 cindydavid4: The other shortlisted books were Central Station, After Atlas, A Closed and Common Orbit, Ninefox Gambit and Occupy Me.

>20 cindydavid4: As listed above @ >22 iansales:, the Clarke awards shortlist. I'm not saying The Underground Railroad wasn't a decent LitFic, only that it's not SF&F in my book.

I'm trying to get into The Hydrogen Sonata at the moment. I really like the Culture universe, but even with the knowledge of former books I struggle every single time with the first 100-200 pages because I've no idea what's going on.

>24 DeusXMachina: I love the Culture novels but The Hydrogen Sonata is the weakest. It does form a coherent story but it takes its time getting there.

>23O I totally agree. its really a great book but not sci fi. And Octavia Butlers book Kindred, with a similar theme, fits just find. Not familiar with the other books on that list, but Im sure one of them would be more deserving of the award.

Not happy to hear that, because I really loved the premise and hoped it'd tie back into former parts of the series. A pity, especially as it's the last Culture novel we'll ever get to see, but I'll not give up so easily :)

Ok so I loved Lock In and now want to read more John Scalzi. Any suggestions where to go next?

>28 cindydavid4: How about Old Man's War? That was my introduction to his work, and it made a very good first impression.

Finished The Borribles and The Borribles go for broke. Started Return to the Stars (Hamilton. Not van Daniken -- I like my fiction more plausible than vD)

>28 cindydavid4: If you like Star Trek and are open to some... let's say unusual approaches to storytelling structure, try Redshirts.

I'm trying to read The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi becuase it's a classic and LibraryThing keeps recommending, but I'm having trouble getting into it. Just finished Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan which is a cracking good read and maybe even more enjoyable than his break-out book, Altered Carbon.

Finished Children of time by Adrian Tchaikovsky :the opposing movement of spiders and humans' civilizations is interesting and the charachters well done. I'll be looking for other books by Tchaikovsky.

I've been meaning to read Lock In - glad to hear it's good!

Started Slipping by Lauren Beukes (can't find a touchstone for it) - both fiction and some NF. Finding the stories enjoyable but disturbing - much like her long fiction.

I am more than halfway through The Last Good Man by Linda Nagata and I am finding it hard to put it down and do other things in my life. This is the first book by Nagata that I have read but I don't think it will be the last.

Finished Logan's Run and it was one of the rare times that I think I liked the movie better than the book. The book wasn't terrible but it read like an action movie story board and lacked any character insights or deeper philosophical thought that I was hoping the book would have. It was an interesting exercise though to watch the movie and read the book and discuss both. Many differences.

Off now to read a mystery by an author that was at a recent panel discussion I went to. "What Came Before" by Gay Dagani. I'll be back.

>33 h-mb: There's nothing else by Adrian that's like Children of Time, other than perhaps a few stories. He's best known for the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series, but he also has a matchlock fantasy series too.

>46 andyl: Thanks for the info! It has a very interesting UK sf section,and I will certainlyadd the site as an extra place to compare book prices. :0)
btw,we dont see all that much of you on WWEnd these days. I have thoroughly enjoyed so many of your excellent reviews there! Its certainly not a chatty site,but I do love all those lists which have made by TBR rival the Himalayas! lol. Your TBR there is very interesting,and is even bigger than mine! Mount Olympus on Mars rather than my puny Himalayas. Though I have to admit I normally add just the first book in a series,so it would be much longer if I put on all my TBR!

>49 SChant: Thank you so much :D Keep in mind that my TBR are books I actually own ;) My attic is quite filled with books!

I have been absent from WWEnd basically because life caught up :D I had my daughter two years ago and am now pregnant with my second child, a boy. Reading is slow these days, reviewing even slower ;) I have been 'working' on A Deepness in the Sky for four months now ;). I am also working on my own version of LT... Basically a MySQL database with a PHP front-end that has all the features that I miss here :D. It has info about my collection, but also about awards, must-read lists etc. A combo of LT + WWEnd + ISFDB exactly tweaked to my quirks ;). If that is ever finished I am going to make a big effort to update WWEnd, at least with my collection + what I've read.

>48 RobertDay: What is it about this man and spiders and other crawling critters? Really!
Perhaps I'll try The Tiger and the Wolf - another kind of beasts...

>47 dustydigger: I just started Roma Mater. I've got several of his books and might do as you did ;-)

>48 RobertDay: What is it about this man and spiders and other crawling critters? Really!
I'll try The Tiger and the Wolf - another kind of beasts...

>45 iansales: Love Abebooks, I get most of my content from them.

>51 SFF1928-1973: He has a degree in bugology (I forget the technical term right now). But he loves his bugs, that is for sure!

>54 SF_fan_mae: According to Wikipedia, it was zoology. But he works as a lawyer.

>51 SFF1928-1973:

The Tiger And the Wolf is a kinda-neolithic fantasy with shape-shifting. It includes peoples with other animal totems too.

Finished Jack McDevitt's A Talent for War and am struggling with Octavia E Butler's Parable of the Talents. I put off continuing straight on from Parable of the Sower which was quite harrowing with its pretty tough dystopic setting. After three months break I have pushed myself to read this sequel,and its even darker than the first one. Rape, slavery and torture are the norm,with child molestation and murder for variety.I was not enamoured of the protagonist in the first outing,and I find her very very irritating. Plus I find the Earthseed philosophy/religion barely credible,and her as a saviour/prophet type frankly risible. I have gritted my teeth to drag myself through 200 pages of cruelty and viciousness without any leavening of hope or humour,and am just plodding on.250 pages,(at barely 10 a day read), will see the back of this. Are ALL of Butler's books about slavery and cruelty?Will be taking a break from anymore of her books for the rest of the year.
In my old age I need something light and fluffy,popcorn reads,so I will intersperse Kevin Hearne's Shattered with the Earthseed misery.Also Hal Clement's Needle. An alien blob of matter has invaded a young schoolboy and together they are searching for another blob ,an alien criminal also infesting a human. It is hiding in one of the boys friends and neighbours,but which one? Good fun but not meant to be serious or portentous!

>57 cindydavid4: Dusty, what did you make of the McDevitt?

I've enjoyed most of his books, albeit at a superficial level; I keep visualising them as 1980s tv mini-series - I swear that in one, my mental image of the heroine sprang, fully-formed, into my mind's eye complete with a bubble perm and shoulder pads! I generally find his books to be entertaining but not anything I'd class as great literature or purveyors of original concepts.

But 'A Talent for War' took me completely by surprise. Given the level of superficiality I generally associate with McDevitt, the whole political 'feet of clay' theme was a bit unexpected. But even more so, the setting drew me in and engaged my Sense of Wonder with its scale and scope, of a massive interstellar human domain where Earth is but a distant backwater, known but completely unimportant; and therefore, giving me a visceral sense of the passage of time between Now and Then and making me feel that this really was set in a very distant future that few other (supposedly) far future novels have achieved.

That I've not read anything by McDevitt since that conveys the same cosmic sensibility to me just goes to show that anyone can hit on the right elements for the right reader once in their career. The trick, of course, is to be able to produce that on demand, again and again. Bad or merely pedestrian writers never achieve this. A capable writer - such as McDevitt - can do it once. A good writer can do it multiple times. It takes a great writer to do it every time.

Didn't enjoy The Boy on the Bridge as much as The Girl With All the Gifts - a few too many implausibilities for me to be comfortable with - but it was still pretty good.

Just starting Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald, a continuation of the power struggles, political intrigue, and Mafia-style feuds that were so gripping in his Luna: New Moon.

>57 cindydavid4: Life is too short to read bad books. Just sayin :)

I'm starting The Age of the Pussyfoot by Frederik Pohl. His satires are always fun.

I just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. I do like the "war in heaven" sort of story that involves unseen conflict on another plane within "normal" society. (E.g. Zelazny's Amber, Sense8, The Devil Is Dead, Charles Williams' War in Heaven, Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, etc.) And Mitchell does an especially good job with it. I wasn't a big fan of his paranormal neologisms, like "psychosoteric," but I really enjoyed the book on the whole. Other thoughts in my review.

Just re-read The Passage, in between some non-fiction stuff. While I can see how the series isn't everybody's cup of tea, for some reason it's one of my all-time favorites. The author was able to get me to care about the characters, and the characters are really what the story revolves around - it's a multi-generational family epic, only with vampires. Currently deciding whether or not to re-read The Twelve or dig into the TBR pile.

Reading more mysteries than SF+F these days, including a monthly Agatha Christie re-read for a discussion group on another site. Right now I'm slogging through the short stories in Live Without a Net. I've liked a few of them, but may have left this one on the TBR shelf too long, the alternatives to the web mostly focus on other ways to do calculations and biological "upgrades" and missed completely the direction the web actually went in - social networking, kitten videos and trolls.

>57 cindydavid4: Many of Butler's books do have themes of power and the abuse of power; also large-scale breakdown. I shared your reactions (lack of credibility; irritating protagonist; etc) to Parable of the Sower, and though I own the next, have never read it. But I did like many of her other books: the Patternmaster series, esp. Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind; and Kindred. And the Xenogenesis books were weird, but interesting.

Finished up Alif the Unseen (B+) this morning, with it's polished prose, commentary on contemporary issues and fantastic elements it's just the sort of novel that the term "slipstream" was created for. I tend to agree that the happy ending seems a little unlikely but we could all use a happy ending these days!

>62 pgmcc: It took me a bit to get into Bone Clocks but ultimately liked it (not as much as Cloud Atlas, that is my measure stick for all of his other books. None come even close)

Now reading Dark Matter Love time slip books, this is interesting so far.

>67 rshart3:

I'm now in the middle of Slade House, which is very much a Bone Clocks annex, and still very enjoyable. I can see from glancing at the Cloud Atlas Wikipedia page that it has a level of sophisticated literary construction that's just to die for.

>68 divinenanny: Oh yes indeed! You'll get confused at first wondering why one story stops midstream and another totaly different one begins, but keep reading, the result really is a masterpiece (I do not recommend the movie - despite a all star cast and some interesting gender bending performances, it really felt like they were trying way too much, and in the end didn't work for me. Others loved it tho so ymmv)

Cloud Atlas

Seeing as I couldn't get to sleep last night I wound up finishing The Delirium Brief (A), in which Bob Howard returns to center stage in the affairs of the "Laundry" and where Charlie Stross's grand design seems to be reaching terminal velocity; Code Nightmare Green here we come!

>57 cindydavid4: >65 dustydigger: You guys are scaring me. So far, I have loved everything I read by Octavia Butler, and I've been keeping the parable books as emergency backup, for when I am in urgent need to read something that is guaranteed good...

>60 Shrike58: Hear! Hear!

>64 ScoLgo: Lol! So cynical about the web! Its always interesting reading about computers etc in older novels,their ideas about their uses etc. For instance,it always looks odd when in 50s and 60s books they set up a small basic task on computer,and wait for hours for the results! lol.
One of the things I found endearing in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep was the development of a sort of Usenet setup,where the newsgroups chatted across the whole universe,and it is known as ''The Net of a Million Lies''...... plus ca change...... Only that million lies today should probably be interpreted as ''Million Lies Per Second''!

>71 dustydigger: I just recently read the Parable duology and thought it was quite good. I liked these two books only slightly less than the Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis) omnibus and quite a bit more than the Seed to Harvest series, (although Clay's Ark was an equally harrowing read and, brutality-wise, explores many of the same themes as the Parable books).

All the Butler titles that I have read don't quite compare to Kindred, in my opinion. That one was a 5-star read for me.

In fairness to @dustydigger's (and @rshart3's) take, Butler does not flinch away from the most brutal and base human conflicts imaginable. I have been reading and enjoying Dusty's prolific postings since the Shelfari days and have a pretty good idea that post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction - especially where it's not very 'fun' - is simply not her favorite stuff.

>60 Shrike58: >72 SF_fan_mae: I also have come to the realization that Dusty will persevere through a book she is not enjoying, leaving no page unturned, simply because it is on a list somewhere, (even if written by KSR or Neal Stephenson! ;).

>74 dustydigger: correct ScoLgo! I really dont enjoy dystopia. Also I tend to go along with Jane Austen in her famous remark near the end of Mansfield Park,when she said ';
''Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can,impatient to restore everybody,not greatly in fault themselves,to tolerable comfort,and to have done with all the rest.''
Am I getting shallow in my old age? Maybe. But I do like a nice happy ending. With dystopia(except in YA where young kids can solve all the problems of their society with a flick of the wrist in less than 300 pages) I SOOO dont end up with that! lol.
And yep,I read every word of the award winners,no skimming..
Even KSR and Stephenson.....sigh........

>57 cindydavid4:, >58 paradoxosalpha: Unfortunately, A Talent for War was the very first McDevitt I ever read and it set up totally unrealistic expectations for his other books, which are good enough but don't resonate like that one did. It's the only one of his books I have kept for on my own shelves.

Dusty, I think Needle is a lot of fun. Totally a book of the times of my childhood, it is engaging both with the characters and the mystery. The sequel is not as good but still worth reading.

You might like The Jane Austen Project, a time travel adventure that is pretty well done.

>60 Shrike58:
"Life is too short to read bad books. Just sayin :) "

Librarian & readers advisory expert Nancy Pearl lays down the law:

“Rule of Fifty”
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit. Since that number gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older, our big reward is that when we turn 100, we can judge a book by its cover!

I finished A Deepness in the Sky after four months. Not that it was bad, I quite enjoyed it, but I am just so scatter-brained (pregnancy does that) I couldn't focus or stay awake. I need to stay with thinner books for now... In honour of Brian Aldiss I started Hothouse next.

Finished Vonda MacIntyre's The Moon and the Sun,Louis XIVs glittering Versailles - with sea monsters. Historical fiction is one of my least enjoyable genres so I may be a little unfair to the book.Yet another quirky Nebula winner,you never know what you are going to get! lol
It was an OK read,but I found all the intrigue of the glittering court etc a bit too detailed,but McIntyre has an engaging style,strong storytelling skills and she always gives credible motivations to her characters.I always enjoyed her Star Trek stuff,about the only books in that arena I have read.and I loved her Dreamsnake
Good job there was a a dramatis personae at the beginning,all those princes and their complicated names and titles meant constantly returning to it for about the first couple of hundred pages. The heroine was totally unrealistic of course for the time.A scientist,brilliant artist,excellent composer,mathematician all rolled in one,though she has been confined to a convent school for years so I dont know how she developed all these skills in that repressive environment.Then her being completely innocent and uncomprehending of the often sordid society around her seemed more than a tad naive.But it was still an absorbing read. That makes 42/53 Nebula winners read. I should be reading Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio next,then Catherine Asaro's Quantum Rose.Unfortunately none of the libraries around here have either of them,so I will put them off for a while. Both of them are MASSIVE anyway.The books are getting bigger year by year!. Only Parable of the Talents and Bujold's Paladin of Souls left on my list of Nebulas planned for this year.:0)
As for the Hugos,I've read 53/66 winners,and still have The Three Body Problem,Jemisin's Fifth Season and of course,the dreaded Blue Mars on my TBR for this year.. Hopefully I will finally complete all the Nebulas and Hugos in the next 18 months. Its been a bit of a marathon,but fun.
I only have one more book for another marathon of a challenge,the Defining Books of 5 decades over on WWEnd. I have onlyVernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky left to complete the challenge. Its taken the best part of 2 years but was great fun working year by year from 1950-1999.

>79 paradoxosalpha: What are your favorites among the 95 you've read so far? Any general comments?

>79 paradoxosalpha: Oh boy,you dont ask anything easy,do you? I look forward to discussing this in detail - but probably next month. I still have about 6 books to finish for this months challenge,I have a massive amount of family history details to send out to my new found US family ''twigs'',normal life with a large unruly family etc,etc,etc,...but I'll definitely get back to you on it soon. WHY we prefer certain books and genres is a topic that always piques my interest.
.......sigh........Wish I had time to reopen Dusty's Infinite Worlds Bar and Grill. Perfect topic for that thread!. 2017 has been a menace for my interests,real life obstacles,tragedies,health issues have been all too frequent. If I can all the family history stuff sorted,get the health back on track etc maybe I can reopen in January. Meanwhile,its rather fun to go back and reread our old posts. I see lots of things I would like to revisit or add too......this year,next year,sometime?.......

>77 SChant:
I love your Rule of 50, I'll have to remember that. Can't really apply it to short story anthologies though - the final story/afterword in Live Without a Net was my favorite part. I have found a few completely unreadable books that I wasn't able to give anywhere near 50 pages. I think I baled after 5 of a mystery set at a Renaissance Festival because it was so obvious that the author had never set foot in one, let alone worked one.

>58 paradoxosalpha: Hmm......Glad this book hit the spot for you,Robert,sorry to say it wasnt really outstanding for me. Did like the sense of wonder,the insistence,(like HHGTG) that space is big,really big,and the ending was quite poignant,but none of the characters seemed even vaguely real,fleshed out. I have been reading this series out of order,as and when I saw books on the library shelves,and just completed Seekerrecently so I read of the recovery of the Capella before it even went missing! lol.
One interesting thing about the series was only necessary bits of history etc were highlighted as necessary to the plot.In normal life we dont pontificate over screeds of historical info as a rule,and McDevitt went along with that.Reading out of order has made a mess for me of the outlines of his universe's history,and its rather nice that life is pretty much the same for humans never mind the tech etc.You put it in the 90s,I probably thought of the 70s! lol. Certainly not 11000 years in the future.
Reading other books in the series,narrated by Chase I got very frustrated with the lack of solidity of Alex and eagerly wanted to read this book to understand him better but was very letdown there. Interchange the names of Alex and Chase and it barely affect the story for me! That was a big disappointment. Plus the relationship between the two was covered in one very short paragraph. Very odd that. The major reason for reading the book so eagerly was a bust. Ah well,it was a pleasant enough read for me,but not so impressive as it was for you.Sorry!

>71 dustydigger: Oops,sorry Z! I finished Parable of the Talents a couple of days ago,with relief. Too much similarity with Sower,even more slavery,rape,molestation,violence,etc. Too much.Heavy handed,no shading of the sketchy characters,no leavening of humour,and that totally unbelievable Earthseed religion/philosophy. OK,its of its time,an angry indictment of racism, violence against the weak,against women,etc etc etc.Typical Nebula fare. important maybe,but not my cup of tea.
The ending is particularly annoying. After hundreds of pages depicting a couple of years of horrific violence,we hop ahead half a century in a short epilogue. I know Butler intended to continue the tale in a third book,but died before doing it,so who knows how it would have continued? Sorry ,but I'm glad I avoided a third book!lol.
That makes 43/53 Nebulas read.

Almost finished Alan Dean Foster's Cachalot,typical light charming ADF story,this one set on a world all ocean,where small human colonies are being mysteriously destroyed.Enjoyable fluff a pleasant counterpoint to the miseries of Butler.
Also in progress,an ancient 1930s detective story by Arthur W Upfield about Boney,a mixed race policeman investigating a strange plane crash in the Outback. Wings Above the Diamantina all reads like period detail now,and tends to our eyes to be very patronising to the aboriginals,but its absorbing.Amazing how anyone survived,the number of cigarettes everyone smokes,the thick black tea,and of course the mind boggling amount of alcohol imbibed. Very clear eyed unsentimental descriptions of an alcoholic doctor obviously badly affected by PTSD from WWI.Add magnificent descriptions of the australian bush,and a nice little mystery and you have an excellent little crime novel. Good old Boney!

I finished The Myriad by R. M. Meluch : a good ride and fun!

Just started Sisters of the Revolution, a feminist SF anthology with stories from some of my favourite writers - Nalo Hopkinson, Joanna Russ, Pat Murphy, and many more.

I just finished Arkwright by Allen Steele. I was mightily disappointed by it and I see from other reviews here on LT that I am not the only one. Has anyone else in the group read it and, if so, what did you think?

I'll admit with some embarrassment that I just finished reading Genetic Bomb and posted my review.

>89 ThomasWatson: That had me puzzled, until I saw the cover. And read the blurb...

Haha, I was worried if I would be able to find your review, but that was no problem, since it is the only one on LT. Also checked GR, I have to say that the reviews are amusing.

Finished rereading LeGuin's novel The Dispossessed today. I remember being impressed by this book when I read it in the mid-1970s. It must have been her elegant prose that turned me on, because at the ripe old age of 18 years there's simply no way I understood half of what she was exploring. (A bit of a late bloomer, in some ways.) The ideas explored and the characters drawn as the story moved forward provided me with a first rate example of what's meant by the phrase "thought provoking." One of LeGuin's best, and one I'll probably read again, one day.

Still working my way through a reread of Gwyneth Jones's Aleutian trilogy - White Queen, North Wind and Phoenix Café. Am now on the third book, and they're turning out to be better than I remembered them. I also read Margaret St Clair's The Dancers of Noyo and I have no idea what it was about. I suspect the author didn't either.

Probably an author I need to get back; I read the first book back in the day and never got back to them.

Finished All Flesh is Grass. Not one of Simak's best, but kept me guessing long enough to finish the book. If there's a weakness to Simak's writing, it's that his main character tends to philosophize at length rather than letting the action tell the story.

Next up I'm reading Subspace Explorers by E.E. "Doc" Smith. I don't have high expectations, but the Chris Foss cover illustration is nice.

About to start Dawn by Octavia Butler. I've somehow never gotten around to reading any of her work, though I've intended to. This year's reading seems to be mostly about rereading and catching up on books I meant to read, years ago.

>95 I saw a discussion about Survivor, some time ago, and was curious. I recalled that she'd been very honored, as a writer, and then discovered a pristine copy of Survivor at my favorite bookstore (locked up in a glass cabinet, in its own little protective sleeve, and priced at $75). I bought it, and ordered the omnibus Seed to Harvest containing all the others from Amazon. I recently started reading it, and am now officially a fan.

The thing is, Ms. Butler can write, and it's a genuine pleasure to read. She did not like Survivor, and it has not been in print since the original came out, some years ago. After looking on Amazon, I'd say that my $75 for a copy in near perfect condition was a bargain.

Remarkable woman. I hope you enjoy Dawn.

Delving into my TBR pile with Samuel R. Delaney's Driftglass.

>96 The bit I've read so far has impressed me. There's a clarity - not sure what else to call it - to her prose style that I find attractive.