April 2017: What Are You Reading?

[ratsy]

Stephen King's It was dreadful (or the hundred pages I read of it). I'm very fond of some people here who really like it, but, egads, the waffle! Epic length, but no sign of epic breadth or depth. Why do we need the detailed backstories of people who then disappear just after and are clearly never going to appear again?

HB, I have read the first 70 pages and am kind of at the same place. It is quite out there, and I like to think the whole book can't be written like that. I've read a lot of King and this one is sure laid out differently. And not in a good way! Hopefully I keep to it later this summer. I think its a backyard in the sun book. (rather than a running down the street in the rain kind of book) oh look, does this float?

 

[Extollager]

Next up in the "Doomsday Classics" series:

After London (1885) by Richard Jefferies, an English naturalist. The beginning of the book deals with the way in which plant life has taken over the works of humanity after something which is not quite clear has happened to civilization. As one might expect, the description is vivid and detailed.

As I recall, the most impressive part, for me, was the hero's canoe (?) voyage above drowned London. Whew.

 

[Extollager]

HB, I have read the first 70 pages and am kind of at the same place. It is quite out there, and I like to think the whole book can't be written like that. I've read a lot of King and this one is sure laid out differently. And not in a good way! Hopefully I keep to it later this summer. I think its a backyard in the sun book. (rather than a running down the street in the rain kind of book) oh look, does this float?

I read It when it was published and wrote a negative review for a college paper. If you want my opinion -- I don't think it's worth your time to stick with it.

 

[Randy M.]

I wish King would title a book That:
"I loved That!"
"Really? You loved it?"
"No. IT stunk, but That's great!"
Who's on first. I don't know. Third base.

Anyway, I have IT on the TBR for this summer. It -- or IT -- has a great reputation among King fans as one of (if not the) last of his early phase books when he was primarily a writer of horror and not the guy seeking literary acclaim. And a two-movie version is on the way, the first coming out this summer. Which is the long-winded way of saying I hope I disagree with you guys.

Meanwhile, still working away at Gaiman's American Gods, which I'm slowly becoming more invested in, with occasional excursions into Sarah Monette's Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, a story collection.


Randy M.

 

[Vaz]

The Farseer Trilogy - Hobb is head and shoulders above anyone when it comes to characters, and her prose is simple but gorgeous.

Into Thin Air - True story of John Krakauers' account of surviving a deadly ascent of everest when he was a journalist covering a climb. Haunting, harrowing and hard hitting.

 

[Extollager]

Someone commented on fiction by John Franklin Bardin in an issue of Bob Jennings' Fadeaway. It sounded interesting, so I got a copy of The JFB Omnibus on interlibrary loan and have started what Julian Symons says is JFB's masterpiece, Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly. Apparently JFB's specialty was psychological crime novels. His best work seems to have been from the 1940s. We'll see if it seems worth reading. I don't have any reason to stick with it if it doesn't seem to be.

 

[Stable]

I got The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks out of the library. I really enjoyed this one, lots of trying to eff the ineffable as well as the usual hi-tech shenanigans and irreverent super-AIs.

 

[Danny McG]

I read It when it was published and wrote a negative review for a college paper. If you want my opinion -- I don't think it's worth your time to stick with it.

Gotta admit I'm surprised at negative comments on It.
One of my 'potboilers on the shelf' that I re read every few years.
It does take a bit of getting into with the jumping back and forth in timelines and conflicting POV but I eventually found it engrossing.
SK used a similar technique in Dreamcatcher and that enthralled me.

 

[Randy M.]

Someone commented on fiction by John Franklin Bardin in an issue of Bob Jennings' Fadeaway. It sounded interesting, so I got a copy of The JFB Omnibus on interlibrary loan and have started what Julian Symons says is JFB's masterpiece, Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly. Apparently JFB's specialty was psychological crime novels. His best work seems to have been from the 1940s. We'll see if it seems worth reading. I don't have any reason to stick with it if it doesn't seem to be.

Also sitting on Mount TBR and picked up because Symons' mentioned Bardin in Bloody Murder, a fascinating overview of the mystery genre up to the late '70s. Another one I had in my hand recently but set aside for American Gods. I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Randy M.

 

[Vince W]

I got The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks out of the library. I really enjoyed this one, lots of trying to eff the ineffable as well as the usual hi-tech shenanigans and irreverent super-AIs.

And as an (albeit unexpected) ending to the Culture series it's rather neatly done as well.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Neither Here/Nor There, by Cat Rambo. Two collections of Rambo's short fiction combined in one volume, formatted like one of those old Ace Doubles. The first is other world fantasies (several seem to be related to stories in a previous collection of hers Eyes Like Coal and Sky and Moonlight) and the other alternate world fantasies.

So far excellent, though a bit glum.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Who Goes there? John W Campbell

 

[HareBrain]

1966: The Year the Decade Exploded by Jon Savage. A mammoth work about music and society, almost as good as his England's Dreaming despite its looser focus.

 

[Fedos]

I just finished The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F Hamilton for the first time. I've read much more fantasy as opposed to science fiction over the years but I must say I was very much impressed with Hamilton's vision of a future Earth confederacy of planets being threatened by a hostile though utterly unique antagonist, at least this is what I could discern from what I've read of the genre. I'd certainly recommend the book to anyone looking to tackle an immensely and thoroughly realized space opera. Now I'm on to its sequel The Neutronium Alchemist.

 

[Bick]

Currently reading Dickens' Oliver Twist, but I'm also just about to start Webers' Field of Dishonour. HH is a series I've read a bit and always enjoyed, so I thought I'd read on. While typing this I was wondering if I can come up with a connexion between Oliver Twist and Webers' book, but I have to admit it eludes me. Well, they were both written early in their respective authors careers? Not a strong link perhaps!

 

[Stewart Hotston]

Purity by Franzen, which is AMAZING. The sequel to nine fox gambit which I got a proof copy of...which I'm enjoying and Viperwine which is just weird.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I've finished the next run of 25 comics (I can see the backlog is really shrinking now), and the random numbers have chosen Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb as my next book. (Yup, not only am I trying to catch up on the impossible book pile, but I'm that far behind on Hobbs books)

 

[Extollager]

Also sitting on Mount TBR and picked up because Symons' mentioned Bardin in Bloody Murder, a fascinating overview of the mystery genre up to the late '70s. Another one I had in my hand recently but set aside for American Gods. I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Randy M.

I read all but the last 30 pages or so. But I just didn't care enough, having put the book down the previous day and started it again this evening, to bother with the thing. So fooey is my verdict on Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly.

 

[2DaveWixon]

Re-reading Hunger Games, for a friend who wants to write, but doesn't read...trying to set a good example.

In my heart though, I really want to pick up Vonnegut again...got a craving for Slaughterhouse-Five...

Someone who wants to write but doesn't read????
That's...that's alien!

 

[2DaveWixon]

For some reason I don't understand, with the beginning of April I suddenly got a hunger to re-read Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy stories... So eager have I been, in fact, that I just started reading whichever one was closest on my shelves, without worrying about chronological order.
There is some sanity left, however: I know from my memories that some of the later Lovejoy stories won't give me the same rush as the early ones; perhaps the hunger will be sated before I get there...
I'm on Firefly Gadroon just now.