Steven Sorrels
Actual Human Earth Person
Chewing through the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (again). Say what you will about a lot of his other writing, but DT is fantastic.
August 2016: What have you been reading?
- Thread starter Brian G Turner
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hitmouse
Well-Known Member
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- Jul 3, 2011
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- 4,065
Back from 2 weeks in deepest Galicia, without wifi, phone, TV, and having not seen another Brit over the entire fortnight. Good opportunity to glut on reading whilst the kids swam in the river.
On The Road Jack Kerouac. I havent read this since about 1988, when I was an undergraduate. The Beats were quite fashionable then. No doubt it was largely an image thing, but it might have been a bit of a reaction to Thatcher and the screaming late 1980s, as well as being the sort of lit that one should have read if one wanted to hold one's own in serious discussions over a beer and a spliff. There was a bookshop specialising in Beat stuff near the top of Park Street in Bristol, and a bloke regularly used to set up on the steps of the university refrectory on a Saturday morning to sell samizdat pamphlets of Ginsberg, Thoreau etc. Quite interesting to revisit this after nearly 30 years. I enjoyed the book but got a bit irritated with it by the end. Worth rereading, and historically and stylistically interisting, but not particularly profound to me, now.
That was followed by Autobiography of a Supertramp by WH Davies, with an introduction by George Bernard Shaw. Davies was a working class lad from South Wales who ran away to sea and became a beggar and hoboe in the USA toward the end of the 19th century. Clearly very bright but entirely self-educated. This is a linear narrative without any conscious attempt at style or self censorship. Really extraordinary story. I found his casual racism and description of a lynching in the Deep South quite upsetting: he had no pretensions and just accepted that what the local white folks were telling him was correct.
A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge. Great fun.
Star Island and Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen. I haven't picked up Hiaasen for a few years, and these are his 2 most recent Florida crime novels. Really funny and quite satisfying escapism. Interesting to see how shows like Dexter have picked up on the Florida Gothic vibe.
Atomic Lobster by Tim Dorsey. Another old vice, an author I have not read for 10 years or more. This series runs in a similar vein to Carl Hiaasen, equally funny but much more warped. One of the best antiheroes in crime fiction.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami. Very interesting. Not read any of this writer's other (more famous) books but I will do so.
Rumo Walter Moers. I started to read this to my youngest son. A superb comic fantasy. Completely neglected. I have read it myself several times and it is the favourite book of my eldest son.
The house we stayed in had a really eclectic collection of books on Spain, including As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. A favourite which I happily re-read.It describes a trip in his late teens, when his only experience of the wider world was working on a London building site, when he took a boat from England to Vigo, in Galicia, before the Spanish Civil War, and then walked across central Spain, and down to Andalucia. Stunning, luminous prose, which describes a deperately poor, remote, and now lost world. Travel writing this good provides descriptions every bit as vivid and alien as the best SF or fantasy.
On The Road Jack Kerouac. I havent read this since about 1988, when I was an undergraduate. The Beats were quite fashionable then. No doubt it was largely an image thing, but it might have been a bit of a reaction to Thatcher and the screaming late 1980s, as well as being the sort of lit that one should have read if one wanted to hold one's own in serious discussions over a beer and a spliff. There was a bookshop specialising in Beat stuff near the top of Park Street in Bristol, and a bloke regularly used to set up on the steps of the university refrectory on a Saturday morning to sell samizdat pamphlets of Ginsberg, Thoreau etc. Quite interesting to revisit this after nearly 30 years. I enjoyed the book but got a bit irritated with it by the end. Worth rereading, and historically and stylistically interisting, but not particularly profound to me, now.
That was followed by Autobiography of a Supertramp by WH Davies, with an introduction by George Bernard Shaw. Davies was a working class lad from South Wales who ran away to sea and became a beggar and hoboe in the USA toward the end of the 19th century. Clearly very bright but entirely self-educated. This is a linear narrative without any conscious attempt at style or self censorship. Really extraordinary story. I found his casual racism and description of a lynching in the Deep South quite upsetting: he had no pretensions and just accepted that what the local white folks were telling him was correct.
A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge. Great fun.
Star Island and Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen. I haven't picked up Hiaasen for a few years, and these are his 2 most recent Florida crime novels. Really funny and quite satisfying escapism. Interesting to see how shows like Dexter have picked up on the Florida Gothic vibe.
Atomic Lobster by Tim Dorsey. Another old vice, an author I have not read for 10 years or more. This series runs in a similar vein to Carl Hiaasen, equally funny but much more warped. One of the best antiheroes in crime fiction.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami. Very interesting. Not read any of this writer's other (more famous) books but I will do so.
Rumo Walter Moers. I started to read this to my youngest son. A superb comic fantasy. Completely neglected. I have read it myself several times and it is the favourite book of my eldest son.
The house we stayed in had a really eclectic collection of books on Spain, including As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. A favourite which I happily re-read.It describes a trip in his late teens, when his only experience of the wider world was working on a London building site, when he took a boat from England to Vigo, in Galicia, before the Spanish Civil War, and then walked across central Spain, and down to Andalucia. Stunning, luminous prose, which describes a deperately poor, remote, and now lost world. Travel writing this good provides descriptions every bit as vivid and alien as the best SF or fantasy.
S Blake-Smy
Well-Known Member
Just purchased 'Roadside picnic'. Stalker is one of my favorite films, so I'm looking forward to seeing the differences.
Bugg
A Lerxst in Wonderland
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2011
- Messages
- 1,846
I've read the first eight of the series and enjoyed them, some more than others
I've just this morning started the first of John Connolly's 'Charlie Parker' books, Every Dead Thing. It's been on my radar for ages and I finally picked up the collections of books 1 - 4 and books 5 - 8 on Kindle in the current sale for the grand total of £2.98
literary_batman
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2016
- Messages
- 2
I've read quite a few fantasy novels so I branched out a bit to powerful dramatic novels from non-western cultures to add an extra edge to my own writing. Finished with Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and currently working through A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
ratsy
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2008
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- 4,643
So I finished Liberator by Nick Bailey and Darren Bullock this weekend. I was highly impressed with the story, and it was a truly action-packed military SF.
I also finished the audiobook of The Ocean at the End of the Lane written and read by Gaiman. It was a really sweet book, made for middle grade I would say, but I still enjoyed the awesome storytelling of Gaiman.
On the audio side, I have moved on to Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. I've never read the books so thought I would listen to the first one.
And I'm reading Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson which has taken amazon by storm and is currently ranked #35 overall on Amazon.com
I can see why. It's a really fun, coming-of-age SF, fight the bugs, invasion story. I'm already half way through and suspect I will be buying the sequel in short order.
I also finished the audiobook of The Ocean at the End of the Lane written and read by Gaiman. It was a really sweet book, made for middle grade I would say, but I still enjoyed the awesome storytelling of Gaiman.
On the audio side, I have moved on to Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. I've never read the books so thought I would listen to the first one.
And I'm reading Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson which has taken amazon by storm and is currently ranked #35 overall on Amazon.com
I can see why. It's a really fun, coming-of-age SF, fight the bugs, invasion story. I'm already half way through and suspect I will be buying the sequel in short order.
J-Sun
⚡
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
- Messages
- 5,323
That sounds like an especially good one!
Your son's lucky to have such a great mom who gets him such cool things.
1984 by George Orwell - Not an easy read but just brilliant and a book everyone should read (alongside Brave New World). So much has already been said about this book that I hesitated to say any more but I have added a few words of my own here!
I actually finished this a few days ago and am now about 250 pages into the 750 pages of Weber's Like a Mighty Army which is promising to continue Weber's recovery from what I consider where several drab and boring volumes in this series and back to exciting, colourful ones. However I will be pausing in my reading of this for a short while...
I actually finished this a few days ago and am now about 250 pages into the 750 pages of Weber's Like a Mighty Army which is promising to continue Weber's recovery from what I consider where several drab and boring volumes in this series and back to exciting, colourful ones. However I will be pausing in my reading of this for a short while...
Not sf - I'm reading Gull by Glenn Patterson, about the DeLorean factory in Belfast. I've also read Black Hare Hall by Eve Chase and enjoyed it and The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende. I also have some stuff to get to on my kindle.
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2011
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- 5,302
Inish Carraig by @Jo Zebedee thanks to her 'contest' where everyone wins.
love that weber series. have to say that sicne my first book from him was OUT OF DARK i always have a chill with him becasue i trully didn't liked that book. Also didn't like his multiverse series. now finished with Fear God and Dread Nought by christopher nuttall i'm reading Grunge from monster hunter international.
I just finished The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle, a recent high-tech mystery thriller based on a little science and history and a lot of conspiracy theories. The story is fast paced with quite a few twists and turns - I couldn't put it down.
On the down side, the main characters were cliche action heroes with too great deal of an ability to get themselves out of impossible situations to be believeable. The main character once refers to Indiana Jones, which is an apt comparison because the reader can substitute Indiana Jones for him throughout the book and have the same story. Character development was uneven - I found myself caring more for some of the minor characters who were killed off because they had more relatable backgrounds and motivations.
It was still a fun story, and I'm going to move on to the second book in the trilogy, The Atlantis Plague.
On the down side, the main characters were cliche action heroes with too great deal of an ability to get themselves out of impossible situations to be believeable. The main character once refers to Indiana Jones, which is an apt comparison because the reader can substitute Indiana Jones for him throughout the book and have the same story.
Character development was uneven - I found myself caring more for some of the minor characters who were killed off because they had more relatable backgrounds and motivations. It was still a fun story, and I'm going to move on to the second book in the trilogy, The Atlantis Plague.
TheWhompusKitty
CotU & KoD
Just finished the last book in Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy: The Magician's Land. A satisfying end to a wonderful trilogy that includes an homage to the Narnia series, morality without the Christian overtones. Nods to Harry Potter as well. I don't love his characters the way I do Rowling's, perhaps because they remind me of weaknesses in myself, and the day-to-day battles we face that aren't cut-and-dried. Overall Magicians is more complex than the children's/YA books I just mentioned. Nuanced, with more shades of grey. Perhaps that is what makes it more adult, and why my feelings about it are so much more complicated. Recommended.
Prior to that I relished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. YA Urban Fantasy, set in a dystopian future that doesn't seem too far from our present, although if we have to allow moneyed interests to take over the world any more than they already have, I hope we also get an immersive virtual world to hide in as well. A start-to-finish satisfying read that elevates 80s culture to a full-blown digital religion. Recommended.
Prior to that I relished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. YA Urban Fantasy, set in a dystopian future that doesn't seem too far from our present, although if we have to allow moneyed interests to take over the world any more than they already have, I hope we also get an immersive virtual world to hide in as well. A start-to-finish satisfying read that elevates 80s culture to a full-blown digital religion. Recommended.
I'm totally engrossed in the biography Chopin by Adam Zamoyski, British historian and descendent of a prominent Polish aristocratic family. Having read a couple of Chopin's biographies before I'm convinced this is the definitive biography of that beloved genius since the one written by Franz Liszt published.
Victoria Silverwolf
Vegetarian Werewolf
I have started National Velvet (1935) by Enid Bagnold, the classic tale of a girl and her horse. I know so little about it, it was a bit of a surprise to me to find out that Velvet is the name of the girl, not the horse. Also, her physical description does not at all match that of the supernaturally beautiful preteen Elizabeth Taylor. The novel, like many "children's classics," is not really intended for kids, and is written in a rather eccentric style. In addition to that, this ignorant American finds it extremely British, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility.
hitmouse
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2011
- Messages
- 4,065
A great book. My 14 year old had his mind blown by it and is now reading the sequel about relativity.
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