June 2010 Reading

Finished The Elephant and The Kangaroo, then Small Steps, now starting Mirror in the Sky -- because White dedicated The Elephant and The Kangaroo to David Garnett. Not the same guy but seemed as good a reason as any.

50 pages to go in Touching the Void; about 100 pages in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I have read the first three pages of The Cornish Trilogy and think this will be my next read.

About halfway through The One Kingdom and am really beginning to regret challenging myself to read and blog about one fantasy novel a month this year...

#3 Ian, I always tell my colleagues, "Life is just a series of opportunities to fail!"
They always seem to appreciate the support.. :-)

After a string of blah reads I came upon The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw, which I am enjoying immensely. There are several excellent reviews of it on LT.

Finished Bitter Seeds, which was a good read and promises to be an excellent series (trilogy?), although I kind of wish I'd waited, because the ending doesn't do a great job of ending.

Now I'm working my way through Black Powder War on my way to my ER copy of Tongues of Serpents.

> #6, I believe it is a trilogy, yes. I enjoyed Bitter Seeds as well, though I didn't love it. Somehow Gretel didn't feel very powerful even though she often demonstrates her ability.

I read Stealing Light by Gary Gibson. It was a decent space opera debut, but felt a little uneven. I'm not sure yet if I'll pick up the sequels.

> 7

I can see that, although part of me suspects that it's because of where the book ended, and because we never see Gretel's motivations - I don't know what her end goal is, or even who she's loyal to, so I can't possibly tell how much of what happens is because of her scheming.

I suspect that in the end, at the wrap of the tail, we may be left piecing things together going 'oh, wow' at little bits and pieces (at least I hope so!), but right now, it just doesn't have the oomph it should.

I am reading The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove for a RL book group.

Enjoying it so far, like the ancient Egyptian details and the writing flows well.

I reviewed the second book in the trilogy, The Age of Zeus, for Interzone.

Finished Mirror in the Sky, moving on to The Graveyard Game.

I have The Age of Zeus but haven't read it yet.

I finished The Age of Ra. I liked it but felt a little underwhelmed. A lot of pages for very little story in the end.

Just finished Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth. Reviewed it. Liked it.

> #8

Your post explains my feelings pretty well. I definitely plan to pick up the second book if only to find out what happens. Whether I read further will depend on how strong it is.

3: Maybe the solution is to find better fantasy to read? I have certainly read my share of junk in the genre though.

I'm just starting The Prophecy of Zephyrus, which I got as a member giveaway with the expectation of a review. After that, who knows. Probably wrapping up some odds and ends of Asimov and Clarke I have sitting on my desk.

Review of The One Kingdom on my blog here.

Finished The Graveyard Game now on to The Graveyard Book

I just finished Charles Stross's space opera, Saturn's Children. I enjoyed it, though I couldn't quite untangle the motivations of the various conspiring parties.

Just finished The windup girl (wow!), just started The city and the city.

Finished The Graveyard Book, now reading Conklin's The Graveyard Reader, which so far is holding up very well for an early horror collection.

I've just finished Baxter's Stone Spring a mesolithic alt-history set in Doggerland (or Northland as it is called in the book).

I just started The City and the City. I've heard mixed reports on this, despite it winning the Arthur C Clarke Award and being shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula...

Finished The Graveyard Reader. Since I have nothing left with graveyard in the title, I'm starting Aldair in Albion, having just discovered in an interview with Barrett that, despite the DAW cover, the main characters are pigs with sheep slaves.

I just finished Ex-Kop by Warren Hammond. I didn't like quite as much as Kop, but it was a very decent sequel. It also sets up stuff for more books so I'll definitely have to keep an eye on this author.

Albion reminded me of something. If Hispaniola is the name of the land mass occupied by both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, what is the official name of the land mass that contains England, Wales, and Scotland? Is it Albion, or Britain, or Britannica, or what?

25> Oops, misread. That should be Great Britain, I believe.

Yes, Great Britain is the island; the United Kingdom is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (but not the Isle of Man or Channel Islands); the British Isles is Great Britain and Ireland, and all the other little bits of land floating off the coast.

After having to travel more that usual recently, I managed to complete The city and the city and am starting Adam Robert's Yellow blue tibia.

What did you think to The City and the City? I'm about 3/4 of the way through it at the moment. And I have Yellow Blue Tibia on the TBR pile.

>30 iansales: I will be careful what I say as I felt that having read reviews of it diluted some of its orginality and impact. I will also own up that I have not read any Mieville before but all his previous novels are on my to-buy list. While the switchbacks in the police investigation are matched by subtle revelations about the cities, I felt I wanted one more revelation at the end.

#31

As I read it when it was first published in hardcover I hadn't read any of the reviews and so that dilution didn't happen for me. I agree the ending is somewhat weaker than I would have liked but I think that may have been a deliberate choice on Mieville's part. I haven't reread it yet but when I do (and I don't have any current plans to do so) it will be interesting to see how it holds up.

The chaos chronicles having come across the author at an ebook site.

It's ok, but could be better.

Picked up Ben Bova's Able One at the library and thought it was a decent beach book. There were several jump backs in the story, but other than that all the action was in one day. Set in present day, no more sci-fi than you would find in any thriller, and no character development. As I said, a good beach book, where you can easily put it down and pick it back up. And yes, that's not necessarily a compliment.

What's up with sci-fi authors wanting to write thrillers? I'm thinking of Greg Bear with Quantico and Orson Scott Card with Empire. Bova's was the best of the bunch and as a thriller, it was only OK.

I am reading The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee, not in the Warchild series, but I am hopeful that it will be as good.

I'm just about to start Zendegi by Greg Egan.

>30 iansales:: On Yellow Blue Tibia: I enjoyed it, though I was unsure whether I was reading sf or a Soviet-era absurdist tale. If the latter, then it was a very good imitation of that unique genre.

Finished Aldair in Albion which continued a winning streak I've had with some older books. Starting When Gravity Fails.

My review of The City and the City is here.

It is a tough novel to review Ian because you must "spoil" it to speak about the story in any meaningful way. I'm glad I read it before I knew much about it. It is certainly one of the more original stories to come along in recent times. Good review.

That was the hardest part - writing about the story without giving out any real spoilers. I think most people known enough about the two cities, and they're mentioned in the back-cover blurb, that describing that aspect of it doesn't constitute a spoiler.

Earlier this month, I read The Forbidden Tower by Marion Zimmer Bradley and it was my least favorite of the Darkover books so far.

I also listened to The Time Traders by Andre Norton (I'm working through all of the Norton books on Librivox) and it was a fun book.

I also read my first C. J. Cherryh book this month, Forty Thousand in Gehenna, and I have no idea what took me so long, but now that I've read one book by her, I want more!

Now I'm reading Local Custom by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller- I love the Liaden series and this is satisfying my space opera craving.

Currently reading Child of the River, Paul Mcauley, the first book of the Confluence trilogy. Then it will be, of course, the second book, Ancients of Days, and the third, Shrine of Stars. I prefer to read trilogies in one go. All too often, if you leave it too long between the books you've forgotten what's happened in the earlier ones. Not to mention that when read as a single book, those infamously weak middle novels usually don't seem quite so weak...

I've done a few trilogies in one go, but found I was getting tired of an author's particular tics after a book or two, and not really enjoying the conclusion, except for the relief of being done with it. But I do try to not start a trilogy until I own all the parts.

I agree that some trilogies you need a rest between the books. Especially if each book is humungously fat, like a fantasy novel or a Peter F Hamilton space opera. But I read all three of Richard Cowper's White Bird of Kinship trilogy - A Dream of Kinship, The Road to Corlay and A Tapestry of Time - one after the other, and they were individually thin enough for it to feel like one longish single novel. The individual books of McAuley's Confluence trilogy are not especially large, either, averaging out around 300 pages each.

So I finally finished Desolation Road last weekend only took 7 weeks I think, a personal worst for a book under 400 pages. Due to many reasons I have only been able to read on my lunch breaks for the last couple months which may have diminishing effect on my enjoying this book. The style doesn’t seem to lend itself well to the way I have read this book because when I look at all the parts I really like them but the story just didn’t come together for me. It never really pulled me in to read just a few more pages before getting back to work or family. At any rate I will keep it on the shelf for my boys to read in a few years and then maybe reread it somewhere down the line when I can sit down and take it in bigger chunks.

Now on to Ilium by Dan Simmons, first book I have read by him even though I have 4 of them on the TBR pile.

Riverworld and Other Stories the creativity is there but frequently the writing can't back it up. Also wanders into postmodernism which I really don't care for.

After a run of non-fiction I knocked off The Android's Dream (B+); a shaggy dog adventure which doesn't take itself too seriously. Just started Counting Heads.

I'm now reading Lucy.

Almost done with Snow Crash.

Finished The Graveyard Book and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, about 100 pages into Watership Down.

Read Song of Scarabaeus, a first novel by Sara Creasy. Very light texture--all the pieces are there but they aren't hooked together that well. Cybertech, evil corporate empire, colonies that can't renew their crops without corporation's tech, kidnappings and nasty people, planetary visit full of peril--too bad, because there are some interesting ideas about seeding planets and terraforming them.

Back on the Baroque Cycle - into the second part (King of the Vagabonds) of book 1 (Quicksilver).

The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer.

Just a few minutes ago I finished The Dervish House by Ian McDonald, which I found to be a very good read. I think it's my favorite so far of McDonald's works.

I am starting Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre. Book 3 in the Sirantha Jax series. A light and fluffy space opera.

Finished When Gravity Fails, zipped through My Brother was an Only Child, starting The Scarecrow and His Servant

Finished Flinx Transcendent, working my way through Deep Navigation.

started Altered Carbon. Very interesting!

I just started the Harlan Ellison collection, Strange Wine.

Finished Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre. It was OK, though seemed to lose purpose in the middle.

I read the first 2 books a while ago and now the characters and on-going issues seem like vague relatives you have heard about, but don't really know.

Just finished Adam Robert's Yellow blue tibia, which was very funny, am now reading Jay Lake's Escapement.

Just started Old Man's War after taking an entire month to read Catch-22. I want my month back.

Started on Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions with this morning's coffee. I read and enjoyed a lot of his books in my teens and twenties. He was so prolific tho, that he has a ton of stuff I never read. Like this one. The beginning was fun, if old-fashioned. I'm in the mood for some light fantasy.

>63 brightcopy: I liked Catch-22, but then I like absurdist fiction every once in a while. I thought it was better than Slaughterhouse-Five.

I'm working my way through Galileo's Dream and not finding it particularly good though I generally like historical fiction and obviously SciFi. I hope it improves toward the end.

I'm also aware of the comment that a civilian is someone who thinks that Catch-22 is fiction, so no one needs to remind me of it. ;-)

65> I think it's one of those types of books I might have enjoyed if I'd read it in my teens or early twenties.

>66 brightcopy: I'm trying to remember when I read it, I'm guessing I was probably in my mid-twenties. Maybe I'll re-read it and see if I still like it. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) my To Read section is about 6 or 8 foot long on the bookshelf.

brightcopy & pjfarm

I find Catch-22 is one of those books that people either love or hate. I love it and, although I read it in my late teens (and am in my 50s now), I still find I get absorbed in it if I come across it when tidying my shelves.

Unfortunately I didn't fina any of Heller's other works to be as rewarding.

#65 I had never thought of comparing Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. (I also loved that later.) While they both address the issue of war and its horrors, they take totally different approaches to the extent that I would find it hard to compare one with the other.

However, if I were on a long train or plane journey and had the choice of bringing one of those two books with me, it would be Catch-22. Slaughterhouse-Five is a GFYS book (i.e. Good For Your Soul book - takes a bit of effort but you are a better person for having read it.).

>65 pjfarm:: pjfarm,

But surely the corollary cannot be that if you do not think Catch-22 is fiction, then you must be military.

Now, if you said that someone who thinks Catch-22 is fiction has never been close to any arm of government, then I'd agree. All government service has similar - shall we say 'peculiarities'? - whether they be uniformed or non-uniformed services. Believe me. I know.

I spent my entire working life in the private sector and I've seen more than my share of absurd management and decision making. I'm amazed we accomplish anything in this country. I think Scott Adams does a fairly representative job of illustrating life in a large or medium sized corporation. Much of Republican political philosophy seems equally absurd. I don't think the military, or the government, has a monopoly on absurd behavior.

I quite enjoyed Catch-22 when I was sixteen. As one matures into middle adulthood, one either becomes absurd oneself, and thus doesn't recognize the absurdity, or one recognizes the absurdity and concludes real people don't really act that way. The absurdity of the workplace is much more subtle, less apparent, but every bit as damaging as Major Major Major, or Dreedle having the next person to speak, shot, or willy-nilly sending people to Alaska for no reason. Although I did think Yossarian made the smart choice when he refused to follow the soldier who saw everything twice all the way to the end.

Most sensible, mature adults outgrow Catch-22.

>69 RobertDay: I think the quote I referenced in 65 (and certainly misstated though I got the spirit of it right) was originally from Joe Haldeman if I remember correctly. I understand he served in the military in Vietnam as a combat engineer.

I never spent any time in the military, it was never anything I was interested in doing. I just threw the quote in to entertain other sci-fi fans. Don't read anything into my personal opinions based on that quote.

pj,

Never intended reading anything into anyone's personal opinions. Just testing out the logic of the saying, that's all.

I find it worrying that whoever you talk to, if they work in an office of any size, they're convinced that someone in the organisation is passing stories to Scott Adams..

#70 geneg Most sensible, mature adults outgrow Catch-22.

If that is the case, then I'm glad that at the age of 53 I have not managed to become a "sensible, mature adult"; well, at least, not one of the "most".

P.S. Can you cite the study that produced the finding you quoted? I'd also be interested in the research methodology.

I spent my entire working life in the private sector and I've seen more than my share of absurd management and decision making. I'm amazed we accomplish anything in this country.

I don't think the "absurd management and decision making" is confined to any industry, sector or country. My career has spanned private sector (professional services; manufacturing; distribution; retailing), public sector (semi-state organisations; government departments; third level education establishments) and organisations in different countries. All organisations have their fair share of "absurd management and decision making".

I agree with your comments about Scott Adams. An earlier writer who hit many nails on the head is Northcote Parkinson of Parkinson's Law fame.

One might also be interested in looking up Systemantics by John Gall.

I think it is through humour that these writers (Heller included) manage to highlight the absurdity of situations.

I'm 64 and my plan is never ever to become a sensible, mature adult. Ugh!