What are you reading? ( February 2009 )

So here it is..... Fill it up!!!

Reading The science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two B: Edited by Ben Bova. I found this for 1 dollar at a used book store. Most of the stories :

The Martian Way Asimov
Earthman, Come Home James Blish
Rogue Moon Algis Budrys
The Spectre General Theodore Cogswell
The Machine Stops E. M. Forster
The Midas Plague Frederik Pohl
The Witches of Karres James H. Schmitz
E for Effort T.L. sherred
In Hiding Wilmar H. Shiras
The Big Front Yard clifford D. Simak
The Moon Moth Jack Vance

were written in the 1950's latest about 1966. They really fit with the discussions in last months what ru reading of antiquated? SF stories.

One story Rogue Moon 1960, really surprised me in that it described "teleporting" someone by actually replicating them to the quantum spin level on a "magnetic tape" computer {with tubes!} and then assemble them at a "receiver" on the moon.

It makes me wonder if this is near the first description of a now standard SF device. Maybe "original SF concepts" would be a good topic for a discussion thread. Many stories kind of "steam punkish"

"Hawks watched the clock mounted in the transmitter's face......the multi-channel tape began to whine through the recording head, its reels blurred and roaring. A brown disk began to grow around the takeup spindle with fascinating speed."

Such detail certainly allays all fears that suspension of disbelief :::edit::: will be a problem! ;-)

Began The Amber Spyglass by Pullman.

I'm reading Remake by Connie Willis.

I just finished Unfallen Dead by Mark Del Franco. More fantasy than SF, but I enjoyed it very much. Now reading HF, but will do a SF soon.

Just finished Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts. I posted the description before I started but what I didn't expect was the form the novel took. For the most part it was filled with absurdist humour (presumably aiming for that Russian style of novel) and there were some real laugh out loud moments. Despite that you have to keep your wits about you as you read especially at the end which is less comic than the majority of the book.

Coming up I will probably read Eclipse Two edited by Jonathan Strahan and I also have Mind Over Ship by David Marusek (I really enjoyed his Counting Heads) on my to-read pile.

I finished Ice Guard by Steve Lyons, a Warhammer 40K book I had to review. And now I'm reading something completely different - The End of the Affair, Graham Greene.

Ian, I love Graham Greene.

It looks like February reading is pretty much set.

For the SF Group read - A Fire upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge

For the Literature Group Read it hasn't been settled yet, but the leader seems to be The Leopard - Lampedusa. I'm pulling for Heart of Darkness - Conrad

For the Authors Group Read (?) as much Willa Cather as I can cram in between the others, beginning with O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark and as many short stories as I can find time for.

I'm still pursuing the Mingo with Natty Bumppo through the Glimmerglass.

When I've read all five Leatherstocking Tales, I'll start a program on Heinlein.

Currently reading:

The Last Innocent White Man in America, by John Leonard, still. If I don't finish it by the 16th I'll have to return it regardless, so I'm trying to crack on with it.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. When I requested this from the library I placed a block request on all the different editions we held, and ended up receiving a first edition hardback copy of it (UK). Feels a bit weird to be reading that when everyone else is reading the edition with Leo and Kate slapped (see what I did there?) on the cover.

Fidelity, by Thomas Perry. First book by this author I've read, felt like I needed to slot a nice crime/thriller in between the other, more weighty books.

An Evil Guest, by Gene Wolfe. I have to read something SF otherwise I'll get bollocked, won't I? :) In any case, the last book I finished was Karl Schroeder's Queen of Candesce, which, after the scope of Sun of Suns, felt... small. It was as if it was just marking time until the end where it could set things up for the next book.

Oh, and just today I read The Alcoholic, by Jonathan Ames. A semi-autobiographical(?) graphic novel about, er, an alcoholic. Heavy stuff, but jolly well told. I also have I Yam What I Yam waiting for me now, the first volume of the collected E. C. Segar Popeye strips from Fantagraphics. It's a lovely package, an oversized hardcover, and I can't wait to get started on it.

>7 iansales:: From Warhammer 40K to Graham Greene? Wow, that's a change. If Jane Austen can include zombies, maybe The End of the Affair can also include some Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, and Tyranids.

I started on The Amber Spyglass. Good stuff. After I finish Pullman's trilogy, I'll read The Heart of the Matter, also by Greene. Following that, either Warhammer 40K (perhaps a Gaunt's Ghosts book) or Nazi Literature in the Americas by Bolano.

Read Day of the Triffids a couple months ago. This had to have been a MAJOR building block in post-apocalyptic survival horror ideas and zombie fiction and films today.

For graphic novel, comic book, and sci-fi fans, I read Zot, which uses science fiction as a storytelling tool rather than a what-if scenario.

Wattsian

>2 DugsBooks:: Dugs, kudos for finding Rogue Moon! Of course, you do realise that we can build that sort of matter transmitter now (though you can't send living beings through it).

Prototyping stages are now quite common in industrial design and also facial reconstructive surgery - devices which can translate a 3-D scan of a solid object or even the output from a 3-D computer modelling application into a duplicate solid object by using an ultraviolet laser to build up the object in a tank of U-V setting resin.

What no-one seems to have realised is that if you separate the prototyping stage itself from the location of the scanned object and then send the data file with the 3-D data in it from one to the other, you effectively have a matter transmitter, as described in Rogue Moon. True, everything comes out the colour of the resin, and the created object doesn't have the same characteristics as the original, but an object at point A now also exists at point B where it didn't previously, and hey, it's a start...

I'm about six chapters into Miéville's The City & the City. The plot thickens.

don't lie..you're reading fefifoefum. And its sequel.*

eek. i forgot to mention that i recently finished the ministry of fear - lesser Greene - but a great, great title! I think this was written back when he was differentiating between "entertainments" and "literature" in his writings.

*just jealous because i'm having to wait 4-5 months to get the Mieville.

#10 - You gave me a good chuckle this morning. You remark about someone going from Warhammer 40k to Greene and then turn around and admit to weighing between Warhammer 40k and Bolano. I must admit, however, to loving people here reading so, ah, 'widely'. :)

Okay, I am seriously reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman this month. I'm not sure if it's Science Fiction, but I see it's won some SF awards.

80-odd pages in it's looking pretty good.

HoldenCarver: I keep meaning to get hold of a copy of The Alcoholic you have just renewed my enthusiasm, thank you!

I am currently reading Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery because I adored his 1st book Spaceman blues: A love Song. I haven’t read anything quite like so if anyone can recommend any similar authors…

I've just barely started Farthing.

#13
I am jealous, super jealous, super-duper jealous.

I'm trying to read twelve books a month for 2009, so here's what I have in the hopper for February:

1. Marooned on Eden by Robert L. Forward and Margaret Dodson Forward.
2. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.
3. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
4. The BFG by Roald Dahl.
5. George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl.
6. Longitude by Dava Sobel.
7. The Asimov Chronicles edited by Martin H. Greenberg.
8. The End of the Empire by Alexis A. Gilliland.
9. Hart's Hope by Orson Scott Card.
10. The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card.
11. Treason by Orson Scott Card.
12. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card.

I'm also slowly moving through The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I have no idea when I'll be done grinding throught hat one.

#14

The sequel will probably be 'The LT Conspiracies'.

What do you think?

#11

Don't you mean Day of the Tribbles? The natives of the planet Iota Geminorum IV. Small bundles of fur with no visible external features that only eat and reproduce, and are born pregnant. You're right it is true horror!

#2

Chrichton used much the same mechanism for transporting people through time in Timeline as was used in Rogue Moon. You're right ... it was something adopted in many other books and TV/movies.

All of the Hall of Fame stories were good.

#13

I'm jealous. I'm a big fan of China Mieville.

I'm currently reading Drood by Dan Simmons and really enjoying it.

Next up is Liberation:Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery or The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway.

Dropped Spaceman Blues for Old Man's War - Great swap for my taste.

Also reading Pop. 1280 - I'd love to have a drink w/ that sumbitch.

Next in the cue I think: Sheckley's Mindswap.

>14 bobmcconnaughey:, 19 I'd be jealous too:-) I need to finish this so I can have my life back! Of course, some reviewer is going to spill the beans sooner or later, so don't read the reviews (well, except Dukedom's; he was very careful not to include spoilers).

Finished The End of the Affair. Good stuff. Started Ken MacLeod's The Night Sessions.

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

Great stuff, subtle humour, plot twists, Everyman characters. I am finding it a real page turner.

I have given up on Hunters of Dune. There are so many things wrong with this book, including Kevin J Anderson being a writer's version of a prostitute, but the main one, as I see it, is that none of the characters or organisations in the book act in a manner remotely resembling what their actions would have been in the original Dune series. Never mind it's lack of originality or any of its' other numerous problems, for what is a glorified and expensive version of a sharecropped book from the Dune series, I should be able to at least expect the characters that act in a manner consistent with the original series.

In defense of KJA and Brian Herbert, though, I must say that if you have trouble sleeping, this book is a far better alternative than pills or whatever other method you might wish to try.

Finished the Miéville. A fun read, exhilarating even. Back to some mainstream stuff now.

#30
Well at least I have something to look forward too!!!!
I can't wait!!!!

Started reading A Fire upon the Deep for the current SF group read. So far it's a good read. It sets itself up for a lot of good discussion if it is successful in what I hope Vinge is shooting for.

I've had to set Natty Bumppo aside for now. I don't read more than one book at a time. If I'm reading, I prefer to concentrate on one book to completion before starting the next one. Reading more than one at a time takes the same amount of time without the impetus of picking up where one leaves off.

The above is not entirely true, I have vol. 4 of George Orwell's collected correspondence, essays, and columns in the bathroom. This is a planned long-term read.

Hi, I'm new to the group!

I'm reading Man Plus by Frederik Pohl. It's not bad, but I'm holding out for the end before I make my mind up. It's one of those types of books!

Tell us what you think at the end - it's one of my favourite Pohl books.

That's wierd. This morning, almost at random I plucked 'Man Plus' off the shelves for the first time in years and dipped into it. It was written thirty-plus years ago about - well, now-ish, really - but the science and the technology and even the society has held up pretty well.

Yes, I've liked Fred Pohl for a long, long time too.

Just started Spaceman Blues and The Sirens of Titan. I've also got Wolfbane by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, which I'm looking forward to after their collaborative book The Space Merchants. I've also got Conrad's Heart of Darkness and a book of short Sherlock Holmes stories. I almost never read one book at a time. I read somewhat according to mood, so I'll usually have something humorous, something dark, etc.

Wow, there is a lot of new names posting which is very welcome news.

I would love to know what NightSmoke (or others) think of the Slattery book. It isn't a book I have read or even own.

Just finished Misspent Youth by Peter F Hamilton and now I'm moving on to Thirteen by Richard K Morgan.

Maelstrom by Peter Watts.
I loved the first one in the series.

The Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.

I am starting Duplicate Effort by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, it is book 7 in the Retrieval Artist series. Very cool mystery type SF series dealing with the legal difficulties of interactions between aliens and humans.

Finished The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod and wrote about it here. Now rereading Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke, which I also plan to write about.

Incidentally, how many "what are you reading" threads are we running here?

Just finished reading Man Plus by Frederick Pohl on the bus into work. I really liked it, the last chapter was really unexpected and made a great ending (reminds me a little of the sirens of Titan). I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just highly recommend it!

Not sure what I'll be reading next... off to the bookshop at lunch!

#37 Andyl: Bit late responding but I like talking about my favourite books! I do find Slattery's books fantastic but I guess the style could be hard to take. I am not good at describing it so the 1st chapter is up at:
http://www.bfslattery.com/spacemantext.html

The plot evolved well, I loved all different characters and it had a real sense of love of life. The only minor problem for me was a slight wobble in the plot pacing near the beginning.

I have to say Liberation is more toned down in style.

Having seen it referred to several times here on LT, I'm reading Old Man's War by John Scalzi and really enjoying it.

I just started A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, having a hard time wrapping my mind around the "aliens", but I am only on chapter 6.

Hang in there. I had the same problem, but it all comes clear as you progress. the first time I ran across Wickwrackrum I said to myself that if this thing was going to be like this throughout, it would be a long read, but then, when I learned the etymology of the names it wasn't a problem for me anymore. Just hang in there.

The thing that intrigues me the most is the idea of the non-uniformity of space, that things possible in one region of space is impossible in other regions.

Since Valentine's Day is right around the corner, I thought I'd read Lord Valentine's Castle (I'm creating my own hallmark moment coz my wife says Valentine's Day is for pussies (?!)). Gee, I never thought there could be so much juggling in a work of Science Fiction (or is it Fantasy? Hmmm... aw, screw it). ;)

Maybe your wife was trying to send you an important message?

I tried to read Splinter by Adam Roberts last night.
Read 10 pages.
Skipped ahead.
Read a paragraph.
Skipped ahead.
Read a paragraph.
Skipped ahead.
Read last line.
Posted on PBS.

49

Yeah, I thought so too. Especially since it's also our anniversary...

Last Valentine's I installed mirrors over the bed as her present. For some reason, things haven't been quite the same since.

50: That's not reading.

moving swiftly on.........Hello; I've just joined also having found this 'place' by accident..as one does.....I'm trying to get back into reading again, having been someone who read constantly I seem to have lost my way a bit; over the years I've found that chatting about books, films music etc is a huge part of the pleasure of it..I have a habit of going to Waterstones and buying their 2 for 3 offers and then not getting round to reading them bit like taping a programme; kind of feel that if it's on the shelf I've absorbed it in some way! New Years Resolution..to damn well start reading again starting from...tomorrow ish.....school report when I was 14..'Maureen procrastinates quite a lot..nothing changes....'

Hi moehat.
You might want to check out the challenge groups. The sheer number of posts can be daunting, but the people there are very friendly and always ready to chat about any book or topic. You found science fiction fans and there are other groups on most genres of books.

It is quite a dauntingly huge forum, isn't it?! I was drawn to the sci fi bit because I had a chum who is no longer with us who used to write for Dr Who so I'm kind of in that zone at the moment! I have a general interest in pretty much everything, really..jack of all trades etc.....

52:
Life's too short to spend time on a book that doesn't say anything interesting to the reader.

I've since started Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland. Don't want to put it down at all.

To each their own.

#43

There is a sequel by Pohl called Mars Plus. As a warning, don't bother with it. It's slow, tedious, and the end does not really make up for it.

I think CMThomas is on the right track. Lord Valentine's was a great read. I've read it twice and am sure I will read it a third time

Gandalara, I read Take Back Plenty last year on the recommendation of someone in this group (sorry, don't remember who). Let me know what you think of it when you get done.

I agree that Lord Valentine's Castle and its two sequels are classics in their own right. Although I haven't read them recently, I read them numerous times in the past.

Getting ready to start A Fire Upon the Deep for the group read.

#56, #59 Take Back Plenty is one of my favourite sf novels - see here.

#55

Don't be afraid to look for some of the SF novels that are packaged as young adult some of them are very good. The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter and The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness are both really good and reasonably quick reads (despite the latter being 400 odd pages).

Also, pretty much anything by Ann Halam (AKA Gwyneth Jones).

Finished my reread of Rendezvous with Rama - see here. Currently reading Flavors of My Genius, a novella by Robert Reed from PS Publishing. Then I think I'll read Ballard's Crash.

I Finished Duplicate Effort by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I enjoyed it very much.

Now I have to wait for the next one, which makes me sad.

Not to beat one title into the ground, but I have found Lord Valentine's Castle to be quite a bit more entertaining than I anticipated. It is a bit slow but perhaps it is more accurate to say it is has a dreamy pace, quite appropriate to a story in which dreams figure so prominently. While dated (and while I admit to having a bit of a soft spot for Silverberg), the book does an adequate job of transporting one into a "state of Majipoor". I wouldn't call the writing brilliant by any means, but definitely magical (in a lyrical, not Tolkienesque sense).

I've started Enclave by Kit Reed.

I've now started The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl having heard lots of people recommending it. So far so good.

Milly, enjoy the Space Merchants, it is a classic.

I'm reading Ha'penny.

Just finished up Fugitives of Chaos (B+); while enjoyable, it does have some of the flaws of the middle book in a series. Maybe I can get around to reading the last book in the trilogy sometime while this one is still fresh in my mind.

The Man Who Folded Himself - remember an LT poster recommending this book somewhere on this forum, and found it at the local library. The characters were made of cardboard, merely vessels to allow the author to put together a bunch of ideas about time travel, but the ideas are so varied that I quite enjoyed it. It also featured quite a neat resolution to the problem of paradoxes that actually seemed credible.

And the variety of things that David Gerrold manages to do with time travel would shame quite a few other time travel stories. 4/5.

#65 cmthomas, I remember when I read Lord Valentine's Castle I nearly lost the will to live. I finished it, but it was tooooo slooooow for me.

I am supposed to read Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn for a RL book group. Its due Tuesday and I just found the book in the house yesterday. I am now reading another book for a RL group, so I don't know if I will finish the Shinn book in time.

I read Lord Valentine's Castle the first time while in the hospital as a teenager and having been diagnosed with cancer. So I guess the exact opposite for me about it.

Heck; that's got me thinking about books that I have read during my life that represent particularly good or bad times......

I finished my other book, and am now starting Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn

Found a copy of Valis at the library sale for a quarter. Up to chapter 2. I have put everything else on hold.
So far, kooky, in a good way, like most of his books.

#76

Valis made whatever else I have read of Dick so far look the picture of sanity.

Valis made me want to read all of Dick's "Exegesis" (if one could survive the nuttiness) - selections available in In Pursuit of Valis. Wacky and wonderful.

Finally starting A Fire upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge for the group read.

just finished Peter Dickinson & Robin McKinley's collection of water themed short stories water: tales of elemental spirits. All are fantasy, all very well written. However some were far more predictable than others. Probably the two best were the last two: Dickinson's "Kraken" about what the creature from the deep REALLY wants and "Pool in the Desert" set in present day England and mythic Damar. The young protagonist, Hetta, abused psychologically by her father, finds solace and salvation in dreams of a desert realm. One has to not mind having fantasy creatures (mermen/women) feature prominently in order to enjoy these stories, but the best are very moving. I'd imagine the book was conceived as as YA collection.

Now on to rereading a fire upon the deep.

i thouight Valis (not to mention the rest of PKD's oeuvre) weighed heavily upon Jeff Noon's Vurt and Noon's other hallucinatory stories. I've always felt a bit bemused and detached from both PKD and Noon and felt like i was under appreciating them both.

Am reading Eclipse 2 edited by Jonathan Strahan (don't believe that Diana Wynne Jones reference from amazon.uk, she doesn't even have a story in this volume). I am amazed at the great stories that Jonathan gets from writers. Does he have a lien on their first born children?

Read Richard K. Morgan's The Steel Remains. Love his writing, but I am getting a bit annoyed with his really unlikable characters.

Then a lot of non-fiction from Outliers and How We Decide to The Social Life of Money in the English Past.

I finished Ha'penny this morning and just started Off the Main Sequence.

I finished Valis, I have a headache.
The problem is whenever I finish a Phillip K. Dick book I think about them to much.
Now back to A Fire upon the Deep.

For those posting about VALIS (which I haven't read yet, but just bought a copy of), there are several pages of PKD's Exegesis available on his official website, philipkdick.com.

I finished Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn. It was very good.

Now onto a mystery book.

#85, thanks for the tip.
Heading there right now.

Finished Name to a Face by Robert Goddard. Not very good. Now reading Spirit: or The Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones.

Just finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi and the sequel The Ghost Brigades. Looking forward to reading the third, The Last Colony, in which John Perry returns.

Only about 200 pages into Hyperion and already my belief in the possibilities of SF are renewed. After stumbling over a number of literary disappointments this year, Hyperion has restored my faith that SF can convey a depth of character, breadth of plot, richness of setting and sublimity of theme that only SF can communicate in this unique way.

Reading The Quiet War by Paul McAuley, along with several other books.

Just finished reading The Companions by Sheri S. Tepper Book started out good but descended into a somewhat confusing mess towards the end. It seemed like the author was rushed to finish it.

Moving on to Wetware, dustcover description sounded interesting, especially after reading Next

A lot of Tepper's books I've read seem like that to me.

#92

That is the doggie book isn't it? That was one I thought was less of a confused mess at the end than a lot of her books.

Finished The Flaxen Femme Fatale (B+), another in the Zach Johnson series of future detective farces.

Reading the dead author James A. Michnener Caribbean. OK storyteller, I am trying to get a geographic feel for the islands I hope his historical facts are straight so I won't be embarrassed in a drunken trivia fight.

Bought a great big Douglas Adams sized 42" HD tele . My eyes hurt, My thumb hurts & my hand is a claw shaped like the remote. I am trying not to watch {too late!} Battlestar Galactica because I am a year behind since I did not have cable! Guess I will watch some old Sci Fi on blueray as the economy tanks.

Fun to watch cnbc and see my IRA shrink from a size that would pay for a decent funeral to the size that will pay for a cigar box to bury a hamster. by next winter I will be burning books to fuel a steam generator to power the tele no doubt. I am glad the government finally "capitulated" with the rest of my tax money to the bankers and stock brokers and now are going to save the nation by hiring everyone as flag wavers on road projects. I was turned down for that job when I applied for it many years ago I hope they don't hold that against me!

I'm finishing up the Small Change trilogy with Half a Crown.

Have finished Spirit: or the Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones, and am worknig on a blog post about the book. Will post link here when I've finished it.

Now reading Riding the Torch/Tin Soldier, a Tor double by Norman Spinrad and Joan D Vinge. I can all ready tell you the Vinge is that sort of over-written overwrought space opera which a number of US authors seemed to churn out during the 1970s.

I'm about 3/4 of the way through Consider Phlebas and it's been a good read so far. For some reason I remained completely clueless to Iain Banks, M. and sans-M. varieties, until I read The Wasp Factory for a Horror Lit class last semester. I think Wasp Factory just might turn out to be a bit higher on the read-o-meter, but I'm looking forward to having a decent series to immerse myself in. Does anybody have any opinions on the staying power of the Culture series?

I like the Culture series a lot. They are typically standalone books and contain little to no continuity between one volume and the next so can be tackled in almost any order.

Finished Riding the Torch/Tin Soldier, a Tor double by Norman Spinrad & Joan D Vinge. Not very impressed. Both were short stories tricked out to novelette length with gaudy writing.

Now reading Moon Shot by Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton. I read somewhere that this is one of the best books on the Apollo Programme but... Oh dear. When the first chapter contains the line, "Time seemed to stretch endlessly", while describing Armstrong and Aldrin's descent in the Apollo 11 LM, then I know it's going to be non-fiction deliberately written to read like a bad novel...

Culture books are rather variable, some are quite good, some are very ordinary.

I wouldn't say any were "ordinary", except perhaps when compared to other Culture novels. They're all superior space opera.

Ian -
would you say The Algebraist was up to snuff for Banks? It's the only book of his i haven't finished.

No, I didn't think The Algebraist was all that good. Pantomime villain, bad aliens (and Banks doesn't do aliens very well), and an interesting plot thrown away halfway through for a chase sequence. Not his best by a long shot.

The Algebraist is a curate's egg. There is some really good bits in it (the comic sections in particular) but it doesn't really cohere as a whole as well as it should.

As soon as I finish the horrible mystery I am on, I shall venture to Northworld from David Drake. A facebook group wants reviews and I find it is in my collection but has not been read.

Earlier this month, I finished Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, which I thought was wonderful. Now working my way through Scar Night by Alan Campbell, which is okay so far. Then I have to start on Beloved for my book club's March reading.

Having re-read a John Barnes' Finity & couple of the (original) Dune books, I'm taking a sciience fiction sabbatical and buffed up my on my Masters of Rome-ania and am completing the 2nd of Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy.

So,like some others, I, too, am moving between the sublime and not-so-ridiculous (which is which I'll leave to you to decide).

Well, I *thought* I was taking a sabbatical this month and reading Twain's The Prince and The Pauper, but in the back was Those Extraordinary Twins, a storyline removed from Puddnhead Wilson. I came to this scene, where a mother and daughter at breakfast in a boarding house are discussing the singing of the bickering Siamese Twins who moved in the night before.

"Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear 'Greenland's Icy Mountains'
sung sweeter--now did you?"

"If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I
don't deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with 'Old Bob Ridley'
for, I can't make out. Why, they don't go together, at all. They are not
of the same nature. 'Bob Ridley' is a common rackety slam-bang secular
song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is. I am
no judge of music, and I don't claim it, but in my opinion nobody can
make those two songs go together right."

And I thought for sure I was back to reading R A Lafferty...

wow i feel totally out of my league here...His Dark Materials is sci-fi? it thought it was fantasy...

well, my dad is really into scifi and has recently been getting me into it...he would probably be better on here than i would....I barely know who any of these authors are. i've only read larry niven and orson scott card (i think.)

anyway I just read A World Out of Time...it was great. now i'm back on fantasy and manga. i need to look at my dad's scifi collection and read some more books.

#112

I would also note that many of the books mentioned on these pages aren't SF, we also mention fantasy and some even mention mainstream literary books.

Don't worry too much about not having read much yet - we all have to start somewhere and a fair number of the mentioned SF books are pretty new. You might also like to join the Group Reads - Sci-Fi group - which pretty much does what it says on the tin, every couple of months we read a SF book (with open nomination and voting) and discuss it.

And speaking of fantasy... I finished my group read book, A Fire Upon The Deep, and decided to try something a little lighter - both reading and weight... The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. So far it is very... patronising.

mjrcatgirl, don't worry about what is SF and what is not. SF is anything you want it to be.

I second the suggestion to join the SF group reads group if you you haven't already.

i think i will join. thanks for the suggestion! :)