September's Stemalogical Study of Stupendously Serpentine and Sonorous Prose

[GOLLUM]

Hmmm...September already and I've not read a single thing in the previous month.

Time to get my reading skates on, speaking of which feel free to get posting about what you are reading for this month.....

 

[CyBeR]

Where the hell do you keep pulling these titles out of?

I'm still on Memories of ice. It's not skimping on the answers for a lot of stuff and that makes it awesome for me. I love a book that finds a mystery, solves it, and moves the feck on.

Also, read Diary of a whimpy kid a couple of nights ago. Found it in my kid cousin's.....I can't bring myself to call it a bookshelf honestly. Got it, read it in an hour or so, was mildly entertained. Amusing thing about it is how many parents obviously miss the whole point that this book is trying to make for children, and are coming down on it for the main character who's quite an idiot.

 

[GOLLUM]

Where the hell do you keep pulling these titles out of?

Er.. well I could say something inappropriate but I shan't...

Basically the titles come from my imagination and love of words Being a technical writer means words are my bread and butter. I'm also a crosssword enthusiast, so I have plenty of lists of fairly obscure words etc.. that I can call on that begin with specific letters.

If you think my thread titles are a little unusual you should consult Pyan. IMO he's the real master of alliteration when it comes to thinking up titles of this nature..

Nice to see you are enjoying Memories of Ice. It's still my favourite of all the Malazan novels to date!

 

[Grunkins]

I finished Iain M Banks' Matter last night. It was a fun book that took a little while to get going and had Strong finish (as the pages were dwindling I kept wondering how on earth he was going to wrap it up in so little time). It wasn't a great book, but any Culture novel is better than most other SF.

Sticking with the theme I'm going to jump right into his Surface Detail.

 

[dask]

September 1st was yesterday which is the day I officially start my Halloween reading and I've decided to begin with CREEPS BY NIGHT, a 1931 horror anthology edited by Dashiell Hammett. No time seems better spent than when entangled in a satisfying read, and nothing quite satisfies like a genuinely disturbing story. "A Rose For Emily" by William Faulkner is as satisfying and disturbing as they come. CREEPS is off to a great start and the next tale which I haven't finished yet, John Collier's "Green Thoughts", is carrying the torch with no intention of dropping it.

 

[Extollager]

Mostly reading outside the sf and modern fantasy genres at the moment, with Malory's Morte Darthur and Hugo's Les Misérables, a selection of the campus-community reading group that I host. Did reread a couple of very short HPL pieces including "What the Moon Wings," with the even-Homer-nodded phrase "sleeping flowers with heedless feet." A silly idea of starting a blog or personal page with that title crossed my lazy mind for a second.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Somehow ended up reading Lee Child's "thriller" The Visitor.

After reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, Child' story read as a shallow man-fantasy. It starts with Jack Reacher reciting the court cases that define his civil rights, then allows them to be brushed away so he can be used as a pawn by the FBI.

It was an interesting enough read, if somewhat unbelievable, and then when Reacher describes how he was attracted to one of the FBI agents because she looked like "a fourteen year old girl" I just thought "rapey". Should have been edited out.

I figured out who the killer was right pretty quickly, but didn't appreciate the pointless red herrings, especially the padre at the end.

Good pace, but will try to avoid reading more.

 

[gully_foyle]

Railsea by China Mieville. Easy read, bit of a morph of Iron Council and The Scar. The man does love his trains.

 

[dask]

I've checked several online dictionaries including the OED and did a google search and can't find the word "stemalogical". Anyone know what it means?

 

[biodroid]

Somehow ended up reading Lee Child's "thriller" The Visitor.

After reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, Child' story read as a shallow man-fantasy. It starts with Jack Reacher reciting the court cases that define his civil rights, then allows them to be brushed away so he can be used as a pawn by the FBI.

It was an interesting enough read, if somewhat unbelievable, and then when Reacher describes how he was attracted to one of the FBI agents because she looked like "a fourteen year old girl" I just thought "rapey". Should have been edited out.

I figured out who the killer was right pretty quickly, but didn't appreciate the pointless red herrings, especially the padre at the end.

Good pace, but will try to avoid reading more.

I agree with you about the Jack Reacher series. I always thought, Jack is an ex-Military Policeman who is supposedly more skilled than the soldiers they have to handle and arrest. Why don't they just let the MP's do the soldiers work then in the battle field? I also can't keep thinking that Jack's character is one of the superhero type. He is always in a sticky situation with some rednecks and and beats them all without a scratch. I thought SFF wass far fetched but this is way up there.

I couldn't be bothered with the Dragon Tatto books, after watching the american movie of the book, I thought it wasn't anything special.

 

[Sapha]

I've checked several online dictionaries including the OED and did a google search and can't find the word "stemalogical". Anyone know what it means?

No idea. Sounds like a biohazard. Should we don hazmat suits in this thread?

The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison. As the grandfather of the heroic fantasy novel this book was a 'must read' for me. Finding it a bit of a slog, but appreciate the genre the novel gave birth to.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng -- So far is proving to be a beautifully crafted tapestry of words; emotive, thought-provoking themes, multi-layered characters. The author shows himself to be a deft hand at creating a sense of place by describing the scenery, time of day, weather, characters and events without leading into the verbose.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. Though classified as young adult fiction my interest in the Steampunk movement steered me towards this read. Enjoying the journey thus far.

 

[Fried Egg]

Hoping to finish "The Rediscovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith soon and read a few more Sherlock Holmes stories before "King of Thorns" by Mark Lawrence arrives.

 

[Vince W]

I've been working my way through the Honor Harrington books. I'm up to Torch of Freedom and hope to be up to date by the end of October.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I just finished reading Shadow of Night (Viking, 2012; 584 pages) by Deborah Harkness. It's the second volume in a projected trilogy (the first book was A Discovery of Witches). I enjoyed the second book as much as the first one. The first book took place in the modern world, albeit one in which there are witches and vampires and daemons along with the mortals, while the second one takes place primarily in the London of Elizabeth I and the Prague of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. The author is history professor as USC, so as far as I could tell the history was fairly well researched and woven into the fictional world she has created.

 

[hitmouse]

Halfway through Wales by Jan Morris. Pretty good. Will check out Hav by the same author sometime soon.
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Brilliant. Very funny and very pointed. Bill Bryson for grownups.
Naples 44 by Norman Lewis. One of the best books on WWII I have read. Really unexpected.
Garments of Caean by Barrington Bayley is lined up next, then Patrick Leigh Fermor...

 

[CyBeR]

Catch a falling star by John Brunner is serving me quite a delicious dish of "You have got to be kidding me", "ANOTHER way of producing meat?", "Really?!", with a side dish of "And I though Christopher Priest was weird".

 

[littlemissattitude]

Just finished reading World Prehistory: A Brief Introduction, by Brian M. Fagan. It's a few years old, and I was mostly reading it as research for a writing project. But, really, not a bad way to get a quick overview of the subject. There were a few places where it was obvious to anyone familiar with later work in the field that it is a few years out of date, but there was still a lot of good information, especially about particular sites, which is the information I was looking for.

@hitmouse: I read Travels With Charley years ago, and liked it a lot.

 

[Connavar]

Learning The World by a new fav of mine in Ken Macleod. Its not as easy to get into at first understandable since my first book of his in The Star Fraction was my preferred type of SF in political SF,cyberpunk elements.

 

[Fried Egg]

Haven't yet got my copy of "King of Thorns" by Mark Lawrence so am reading "Gloriana" by Michael Moorcock instead...

 

[Juliana]

Just finished the three Mistborn books which I found very enjoyable, though the ending wasn't quite what I expected. Although afterwards when I looked up Sanderson's bio it definitely fits in with his background/missionary past. Nothing wrong with a good allegory, however - loved the Narnia series as a child (and after as a teen, adult...).

Dipping into the 11th Dresden Files book now - I want to catch up before the next one comes out in November.

For a while now, I've been dipping into a great book which I thoroughly recommend to anyone who likes random historical trivia - not SFF but very interesting. Its At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. He looks at the history/ evolution behind all the different areas in the house - sounds a bit odd but is full of very cool facts. Not a sit-down-and-read-in-one-sitting thing, though - I keep mine in the car and read a few pages when I'm waiting for the kids on the school run.