September 2009 Reading

A new month, a new reading thread.

Read Batman Lobo (the link, because it won't touchstone http://www.librarything.com/work/696176/book/50421967) today. This book highlights the pressing need to be able to give books a zero-star rating. I wrote a rather scathing review of it too, in the hopes that I warn at least one person away from reading this trash.

Currently reading Implied Spaces (which I'm about to give up on) and Steampunk (which I'm enjoying).

Just started The Accord by Keith Brooke - I liked the short story which was in We Think, Therefore We Are so will see how the whole novel is going.

rojse,

Some days I just wish DC forget that they ever created Lobo... I am still to find even one story with him which I like.

I'm about half way through A Canticle for Leibowitz. It's a good read so far. Post-apocalyptic science fiction is my favorite sub-genre. I haven't found an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it book that I haven't liked. Even the zombie stuff like World War Z and I am Legend.

The City and the City is in the mail. While I'm waiting for that book, I'm reading a fascinating non-fiction book called The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University, where a student at Brown University attends fundamentalist Christian Liberty University for a semester.

I've just started Hylozoic which is Rudy Rucker's latest.

I just completed reading The Black Cloud yesterday. It was an engrossing story, fun to read, and yet very geeky at times. Highly recommended. I semi-randomly chose Counting Heads from my TBR bookshelves, and I like the first couple pages so far...

I'm about to start The War Against the Rull after I go through some non-fiction.

I just started Dragon's Egg based on a recommendation from a LT user.

I'm about 100 pages into Nights of Villjamur.

#2 What's making you want to give up on Implied Spaces? I bought it just last week and was looking forward to reading it!

#2 I just finished Steampunk and was sadly disappointed. I'm sure there is a much better choice of Steampunk literature out there. Have just started The Ragged Astronauts.

#11: I'm about a third of the way through and I'm finding it very average; the main character is not grabbing me in the least. If I was coming off some non-fiction I'd probably like it better, coming off Shadow Pavilion and Nova Swing Williams doesn't compare as well.

I too have Implied Spaces, but will hold good thoughts until I try it.

I am going to be starting The Android's Dream by John Scalzi soon. It is a RL book group read for me this month.

#3

Lobo sounds like an interesting enough character - Superman without the morality - but they didn't do anything interesting with him at all in "Batman Lobo".

I would not mind looking at a graphic novel which attempts to examine why Lobo becomes so amoral, but I suspect this might be somewhat too high-brow for the potential reading audience of such a comic-book character.

I liked Implied Spaces well enough. It was a fast, pleasant read, but didn't really have much to recommend it beyond that. It was quite a bit better than his very inferior This is Not a Game.

I just finished Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes and was glad to have read it. That's not exactly the same thing as having thoroughly enjoyed it, as it's the sort of book that you respect more than you enjoy. Much of this was probably due to the fact that the protagonist was immured in a sand pit for most of the book.

Abe is sometimes called a surrealist, but, to my mind, you could just as easily call him an existential science fiction author. The Ark Sakura and The Box Man (as well as the still unread Kangaroo Notebook) are probably more overtly genre works, as well as being more accessible.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie version which I just got from the library.

12: It's a mixed bag so far, but I expect that in a collection. I will say that I like the older stuff republished better then some of the more recent material, which has more of a gothic/horror vibe. What stories did you particularly dislike and who do you think should have been represented?

I will say that I was a bit bemused with the essayist who called Hayao Miyazaki's film "Spirited Away" steampunk.

I'm reading Whitechapel Gods at the moment, checked out from my local library. It's a fun gritty steampunk novel. When I finish this, I'll start into Escapement, another steampunk (or clockpunk) novel.

#18 Escapement by Jay Lake you mention, looks interesting. The ratings seem to be spread across the board for this one so let us know what you think. I see that there is also another book entitled The Escapement by K.J.Parker which is a book in the 'Engineer Trilogy' and gets generally good ratings.

I read one of KJ Parker's books, it had a medieval fantasy setting, and was mostly DIY siege engines. Almost lost the will to live.

I think it was the start of the Fencer Trilogy . Cool idea, court cases are professional sword duels, but didn't maintain it.

I'm about halfway through The Hollow Earth, by Rudy Rucker. I picked it up because it was labeled as a steampunk novel and becase Edgar Alan Poe is a main character. There's not much steam technology so far, but the adventures are quite odd as these characters make their way to the hollow earth inside the world. It's a very odd story, interesting, and blunt, but I don't care much about the characters really, so I don't know what I think about it overall.

The Stainless Steel Rat. Dated, but quite a fun read. 3.5/5.

I'm currently trudging through Drood by Dan Simmons and trying to decide whether to give up or keep going. Things are finally starting to happen, but that's after 425 pages of not much happening. I'm losing my will to keep reading. I suspect it would be a much better book if several hundred pages were trimmed.

I am reading The Android's Dream by John Scalzi. It is for a RL book group. Interesting start. :)

#23: Having had similar feelings of Drood, I recommend you keep going. Where the story ends is probably not what you're thinking, and on the whole I'm glad I read it.

Also if Drood was several hundred pages shorter it would be less successful at recreating the voice of Wilkie Collins whose well-known works were also pretty long.

Just finished up Steampunk (B+), and have posted a review.

Finally finished The Temporal Void, with numerous stops along the way. As in The Dreaming Void, I enjoyed the "Edeard" side more than the space opera side, but it appears to be heading away from the human level that made it interesting and into mighty forces clashing at each other. Also finished Black Juice. I hadn't realized I had a story left to go in it. Some of the best short stories I've read in a long time. Just starting In the Garden of Iden.

I'm still working through the various "Best of the Year" anthologies. (...the Dozois, the Horton, the Strahan, the Hartwell....)

I finished The Android's Dream by John Scalzi. It was a quick, fun read with interesting twists. I enjoyed it.

I've just started Moxyland by Lauren Beukes.

Going through a bunch of SF books at once. My favorite is probably Dark Integers and Other Stories by Greg Egan...Egan really knows how to ratchet the "Sense-of-wonder" knob up to 11. Also one of the older Dozois "Best of the Year" anthologies, 23rd I think.

For novels, I'm reading The Sunless Countries by Schroeder and the SF-flecked light novel The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Just finished Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams, and am just starting Resplendent. Cant get enough of this author!

Aren't vacuum diagrams what Our Man in Havana peddled as blueprints to the latest weapon?

I'm currently plodding my way through Orson Scott Card's Women of Genesis: Rebekah. After that I'll be tackling Monkey Sonatas.

#2,
I really enjoyed Implied Spaceswhen I read it a few weeks ago.

Just finishing Cyberabad Days and in the middle of Steal Across the Sky enjoying both greatly.

Just read Adam Roberts' Yellow blue tibia. Cracking stuff,though for most of the novel it's uncertain whether it wants to be sf or just a Soviet absurdist piece in the style of Goncharov's Oblomov, Zinoviev's The yawning heights, Gogol's short stories (especially 'The Nose', immortalised in the other Shostakovich opera), or even (turning to sf) Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs found in a bathtub or the Strugatsky's Tale of the Troika.

Except that YBT is rather darker than all these, and yes, Roberts does plump for sf at the end... It is also laugh out loud funny in places.

#37

Oh yes, the interrogation scene was superb in Yellow Blue Tibia.

Anyway I'm now got the new Iain Banks novel Transition in front of me. There is no M. in Iain's name on this one so it should be a mainstream work however reviews indicate that it is really SF.

For those interested in the current progress of the "Group Reads Sci-Fi Group" (http://www.librarything.com/groups/groupreadsscifi), I've put up the current voting poll at http://www.vizu.com/poll-vote.html?n=180984.

For those who have not yet had the pleasure of participating in this Group Read, all the participants get to nominate several books they would like to read, then everyone gets to second a book they did not nominate, and then this is culled to a shortlist based on the books most often nominated.

This time, the shortlist for the next group read is:

Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston
The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
Anathem by Neal Stephenson

As always, everyone is welcome to join in and vote.

I was well into the first 60-some pages of The Bright Spot by Dennis Danvers when my block lost power! Thank Fortune I had a good flashlight handy.

#19 Escapement was enjoyable. Better than Mainspring. The three plotlines kept things more interesting, but they took much longer to combine than I was expecting. There wasn't the same sense of wonder shown to this clockpunk world he created though, which was somewhat disappointing. I was hoping for more swashbuckling airship action. A fun read nonetheless.

Just finished The Course of Empire by Flint and Kentworth. Interesting but not as much action as the blurbs implied.

Ah, I read Implied Spaces some weeks ago, as an ebook. It drags a bit in the middle but then speeds up again. Well worth it for me.

Just finished Yiddish Policemen's Union by Chabon and enjoyed the book, read fitfully in short bursts. Very tough at first to get through the "Yiddish" prose and alternate reality setting. I was not sure I would finish it because I had other stuff to do but glad I did complete it. I read it because I saw it was a Hugo or other award winner I think, nice book but I like the more fantastical realities instead of twisted I guess.

::edited for punctuation:: ::::ruler slapping wrist sound in background::::

Just started China Mieville's The City and the City.

After a few years I'm finally getting to the second book in Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet (A Cure for Cancer). It promises to be a headache, but I swear I'm sticking with it!

I've finished and reviewed The Scourge of God and Bitter Angels, and am just about done with Metatropolis. The rest of the month is probably going to be devoted to finishing off some of my non-fiction instead. :)

DugsBooks - it's always interesting to see how other folks classify things. I decided that even though YPU was an alternative history I wasn't going to call it SF. But it isn't really any less so than something like KOP which I did tag that way.

Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce - writing a scathing review for a one-and-a-half star book nearly makes up for reading the one-and-a-half star book.

Oh, and Akira: NeoTokyo 2019. I don't see the need to adapt novels from movies, but if I ever had to do such a thing, I would do it exactly like this - take panels from the movie, stitch them together, add text, and turn it into a graphic novel. Lovely. 4/5.

After Babel-17 two months ago, I'm currently re-reading Nova by Samuel R. Delany. While I've read both before, that was a long time ago and in German translation, only now do I fully realise just *how* brilliant Delany is. Beside and above the richly imagined future world (with an incredible level of detail, especially considering it's such a comperatively slim novel), the colourful characters (coming across as appropriately strange and bizarre, seeing as it is set several centuries in the future, but still recognisably human) what stands out is his prose style, quite unlike anyone else's, extremely vivid and evocative; reading Delany is like watching language explode in slow-motion.

Finished Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg, about which I shall blog shortly. For the time-being, the short review is: nicely invented world, plot not so good; a solid piece of work better suited to those who want immersion more than anything else.

About to start Broken Symmetries, a collection of short stories by Steve Redwood, which I have to review for Interzone.

I just finished reading the six-volume Akira which I will put up reviews for over the next few days, when I am not feeling so lazy. Brilliant series, and I think all of the books deserve a 5/5.

I just started the steampunk anthology Extraordinary Engines.

Currently reading Illium by Dan Simmons and recently finished The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist both of which I hope to review externally in the next few weeks.

> #39 I recommend The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester for anyone who is insterersted in delving into some foundation/classic science fiction (although you'll have to remember to read it in the context of the time it was written. The version with the forward by Neil Gaiman explains this fairly well)

Just finishing up The Sky People by S. M. Stirling. Liked it enough that I'll probably go for the followup Court of the Crimson Kings sometime. For a fun light read it was enjoyable as an update of a kind of Pellucidar/Carson of Venus homage without so much of the "scientific romance".

so much to read ...

#54 I read Stars My Destination recently (I should post a review up sometime) and it actually stands up quite well today, in contrast to other novels written around that time.

StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1 - very exciting new anthology! Hmmm . . . no touchstone . . . ok, I downloaded mine free at http://www.starshipsofa.com/anthology/

(I am not an author or agent, just a fan :) )

#56 Yes still a great book, I wrote a review of it last year on my blog. If you care to, have a look and see if our thoughts are comprable.

http://resurrection-cola.com/?p=37

I finished Saturn's Children yesterday evening and found it to be quite good (B+/A-) (see review); call it typical Stross. As for whether it deserved a Hugo nomination, well, while "deserves" has nothing to do with it, I certainly liked it better than Accelerando.

#58

Most of our thoughts are fairly similar. However, I didn't think that Stars treated women dismissively at at all. Jizabelle, Foyle's early companion, was quite a competent criminal woman, and equal to Foyle in many regards, and Presteign's daughter was, well, as good a villian as I have seen in any other novel.

#60 hmm, for me the strength of the female characters was undermined when most of them had to be married/paired off.

I finished Metratropolis edited by John Scalzi also featuring Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, and Karl Schroeder. As with all anthologies, the stories can be hit and miss. Scalzi and Buckell were top-notch as always. I admit that Lake is a good writer, but I can't seem to get into him. Bear's story was too preachy and too light on plot. While I liked Schroeder's writing and his characters, the central concept of his story made my head hurt. If you like the individual authors, you'll like their stories.

My next book is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

I've just finished Nova War by Gary Gibson. A very solid second book in his Shoal sequence.

Not sure what I will read next - maybe Mothership or The Mammoth Book Of Future Cops.

Just finished The City and the City by China Mieville. Good, thought-provoking book. He writes with a very interesting style - even makes up some words.

Just finished Mark of the Demon (A), which is a fine dark urban fantasy. Next up will be The Weird of the White Wolf.

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

With the T.V. show starting , I put everthing on hold to read this book to get a preview of it.

If you knew what your future was in 22 years , could you change it? Could you use it? That's the basic theme of this book.
The book starts out fast an furious and goes down hill from there. The characters are predictable and the plot forced to a point where I couldn't suspend my disbelief and go along with the story.
The highlight of the book is when half the world starts to complain about a "flashforward" gap when the scientific world wants to try and reproduce the experiment.

I'm always on the lookout for new (to me ) sci fi writers. so on the plus side I'm going to try some of Sawyer's other books. He has won a Hugo and Nebula awards along with John W Campbell Memorial Award.

55

Crimson Kings is a lot better, actually.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings is the one that really caught my eye. When I picked The Sky People up at the used bookshop they had a good selection of Stirlings novels - someone perhaps had sold off their collection - I wasn't that familiar with Stirling so just bought the one. When I dropped by the shop two days after, the bulk of the books were gone. But I snagged Crimson Kings from the library and it is next to be read. Some folks give it a really enthusiastic review. The characters in Sky People were a bit forced at times, so I had a mixed reaction, but I loved the world of Venus that had been imagined.

#38 - I bought this book today, and noticed that it DOES have an M. Reading the precis inside the cover, and it sounds like a non-scifi (and as Matter was his last release, it does seem to be the non-scifi's turn).
A quick check of references to this work lead me to this thread. Have you read it yet? Is it scifi or not? Googling explains somewhat - it is a scifi-type storyline, but with a definite leaning towards his usual non-scifi, fantastical plots.

I've recently read Metal Gear Solid (http://www.librarything.com/work/209961) and to save everyone the suspense, it is complete trash. Go play the video game instead, that's done a lot better. 1/5.

#69 Transition has been published as by Iain Banks in the UK and Iain M Banks in the US. Apparently, it is sf, but not so much his publisher felt it can't be published as mainstream here. I think he's better known as a sf writer in the US, so it made sense to publish it there with the "M".

Yeah pretty much what Ian has said. Although it is SF it isn't his usual space opera but a many-worlds body-hopping thing.

Talking of space Opera, I'm reading an anthology entitled Space Opera. I have to say that I disagree with Aldiss's concept of space opera. and I'm afraid the book is quite a drag. Best so far is a short story by Ray Bradbury.

I was disappointed by that too, although I liked the Brackett, van Vogt and Harness. There's a companion volume, Space Odysseys. The two Galactic Empire anthologies, also edited by Aldiss, are better.

In september I have read Galactic Empires, Volume Two by Brian Aldiss (Ed.). Based on my expectations after reading volume one, it was a let down.

Then The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons. Great book that I have reviewed on LT.

Now I am a hundred pages into Slipt by Alan Dean Foster and surprised at how much I am enjoying it.

I've just started The Galaxy Primes by E. E. 'Doc' Smith. I picked it out at random from a very large selection of old sci-fi books in a s-h bookshop.

As the book was written in 1965 I prepared myself for the likelihood that women may not be portrayed as I would wish them to be. First sentences of the book? 'Her hair was green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts...' Ho hum.

I'm into Halting State by Charles Stross.

Just started The Door Into Summer. I'm on a classic sci-fi kick for some reason.

The Windup Girl is a very good debut novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. The book is set in a future world radically altered by genetic and biological engineering, which has resulted in extremely powerful agricultural corporations. The plot follows four people in Bangkok as they become involved in a struggle for control of Thailand.

I'm current reading The Ask And The Answer a YA book which is the sequel to The Knife Of Never Letting Go. I feel that The Ask And The Answer is better paced for adult readers and much darker than the previous novel.

Both of those books are on my wants list. I have The Knife of Never Letting Go, although I've not read it yet.

> 80 I didn't realize that was out yet! I read The Knife of Never Letting Go recently and enjoyed it, although the ending just about killed me without the sequel to hand. I'll have to see if my library can supply it!

Started reading Babel-17 by Samuel Delany last night.

Picked up Hospital Station in Edinburgh, yesterday. Cracking read so far.

Finished Valley of Day-Glo by Nick DiChario. It's not especially funny for a satire, but it was certainly an interesting read.