May 2022 Reading Thread.

[Toby Frost]

I was immediately put off by the abandoning of all dialogue grammar; no quotes and no paragraph breaks for each voice and few periods.

I hate this kind of thing, which serves no purpose but to make a book harder to read, and would chuck the book down for that alone.

Bad Actors by Mick Herron, the latest in his Slough House series....I'm just hoping it's an improvement over his somewhat dull previous offering

Yes, I've found them somewhat samey. They don't seem to involve very much spying, either: a lot of the plots are just the secret service trying to tidy up its own mess, which feels weird by now.

 

[The Big Peat]

Yes, I've found them somewhat samey. They don't seem to involve very much spying, either: a lot of the plots are just the secret service trying to tidy up its own mess, which feels weird by now.

Now quite happy the kindle deal expired before I brought the others.

Anyway, trying Michelle West's The Hidden City, and what started as sprightly and attractively written has become a slog at a mighty *checks* 11% in.

 

[Toby Frost]

Well, I don't think they're bad, and Herron is definitely a good writer of prose, especially black comedy. But there's a definite sense that nothing much will change in the books, and something does need to in order to keep it fresh. Funny that I don't feel that need when reading, say, an Anne Cleeves mystery novel.

 

[The Big Peat]

Oh yeah, I didn't think you were saying they were bad, but I've got too many books I want to read to hang around series that are merely good and don't really evolve.

 

[tobl]

Yeah, well you've got to try these things out for yourself occasionally!

oh i know, i made an effort since many of the women loved isabel allende and gabriel.... i can read them but liking them... no, not by a mile. as for saramago i can't even read him. and the sentences i can are so f... boring i ccan't handle it. i can't speak for all noble prize winners since i'm not sure i ever read any other than him, but i do hope theire books are better. Then again, i've read some books that i'm still wondering how thw hell those things were published so... and let's not talk about the 50 shades...

 

[Vertigo]

oh i know, i made an effort since many of the women loved isabel allende and gabriel.... i can read them but liking them... no, not by a mile. as for saramago i can't even read him. and the sentences i can are so f... boring i ccan't handle it. i can't speak for all noble prize winners since i'm not sure i ever read any other than him, but i do hope theire books are better. Then again, i've read some books that i'm still wondering how thw hell those things were published so... and let's not talk about the 50 shades...

I actually do like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a few other magical realism authors but that Saramago just spent to long doing nothing and too many pages making a point that was already clear after the first couple of pages.

 

[Hugh]

Roger Zelazny poems.

Are you able to appreciate the poems?

Sadly they were totally lost on me and I felt bad about that, as I know they were very important to him.

 

[Dave Vicks]

Roger Zelazny's poems are difficult. I ve
Learned a lot of new words.

 

[tobl]

I actually do like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a few other magical realism authors but that Saramago just spent to long doing nothing and too many pages making a point that was already clear after the first couple of pages.

i heard is most accessible book is the convent memorial... don't know the title in english sorry. this type of writing just is not for me. the only writers i like are gonzallo torrente ballester and jorge amado. honestly the other writers, well, recent writers, i love some portuguese classics, like i said the other writers, portuguese, spanish, south american... are just to boring or to annoying for me. somewhere between the classics and now they lost the way to write the way i like? can't figure that one out but then again some writers loose that from one book to other so...

 

[Dave Vicks]

Currently Roger Zelazny short stories.

 

[Parson]

Finished Dark Space Universe (book 1) by Jasper T. Scott. This is a space opera of either the far, far, future or (possibly and) an alternate time line. It setting is a wide as the universe at a time when the questions of immortality, faster than light (1000's of light years an hour speed) and the like have all been solved. At the heart of the story is a Super A.I. who claims to be God and responsible for all human life among other things. But humans are humans and some of them don't want to live in Nirvana, but would rather be free to make their own discoveries and mistakes. So a group of them set off to find the end of the Universe (or if there actually is an edge to it.) This is the opening book of a series which tells about their adventures and discoveries.

It seems to me that my synopsis makes the book seem better than it was. I felt that it was always at the edge of being too far out to be believed. I'm not a big fan of such high tech that nothing is explained, and that's what this book has in spades. I finished it, but have close to zero desire to find out what happens next.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I have just started The 60s: The Story of a Decade (2017) edited by Henry Finder, which collects articles, essays, reviews, fiction, poetry, and so forth from the pages of The New Yorker magazine. (Notably absent are that publication's famous cartoons.) There are also volumes for the 40s and 50s.

 

[worldofmutes]

I am reading John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy which has a science fiction element to it. It follows George, a changeling who attends a campus for humans and fancies himself a childhood legend, the hero Enos Enoch. The “Grand Tutor” of the campus is this troll thing, or some sort of machine that eats the flunkèd. Unfortunately, being an old paperback, the cover fell off. I will get back to it, but then I picked up another book.

The other book is Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker. It’s the sequel of a trilogy (the disadvantage of buying books at the bookstore is I can’t seem to get them in order.) It’s interesting, another civil war book from the point of view of Irish firefighters. Pretty original, actually.

 

[Bick]

I found the shift in style from the first book to the second one a bit jarring but after that you've pretty much got the measure of what the books are about and they become pure joy; he gets a great balance of exciting action, intriguing science and likeable characters with a touch of clown to some of them.

I’m now starting the fourth book, Sunborn, as it happens. Good to back with Bandicut and the gang. A nice weird beginning, as our friends meet a pandimensional cone presenting in our dimensional reality as a purple fried egg cracking stuff! There’s a pre-Golden Age sort of strange charm to it all. Wandrei or Schachner would have approved I feel.

 

[Rodders]

Sabbat Martr by Dan Abnett.

Funny how you mis-remember books you've read before. I remember this set of four books as being something of a grind after the roller coaster of Necropolis, but it's actually very good. No sign of series fatigue yet, either.

 

[hitmouse]

Hops and Glory (2009) Pete Brown. Subtitled: One man’s search for the beer that built the British empire.

It looks like an amusing story about the history of India Pale Ale, combined with an adventure in which the author recreates the 19th century brew, and takes it by boat to Calcutta.
Purchased because I saw it in an Oxfam bookshop, I am partial to ale, and I am headed to Calcutta myself in a few weeks.

 

[Spade]

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. 3/5. It's fine. It doesn't take itself seriously at all but I think the pop culture and political references are going to be groaned at in just a few years.

Halfway through The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. I have to say that I HATE the protagonist and I'm really struggling to enjoy the book because of it.

 

[Dave Vicks]

Currently Carl Jung Autobiography. RICHARD Matheson stories. David Mamet,non-fiction.

 

[Bick]

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. 3/5. It's fine. It doesn't take itself seriously at all but I think the pop culture and political references are going to be groaned at in just a few years.

I have this feeling Scalzi could be really good, if only he did take things more seriously. There were too many populist references and jokes in his recent trilogy. He is talented and smart enough to make more of a long-term impact that I suspect will eventuate.

 

[Danny McG]

more of a long-term impact that I suspect will eventuate

Added to my ever growing "fat words" list