January: What Are You Reading?

[Stephen Palmer]

Sylvia Anthony, The Discovery Of Death In Childhood And After.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Having a blitz on Margaret Atwood: so far, The Robber Bride, Good Bones, Wilderness Tips, and now partway through The Bind Assassin.

I got given Stone Mattress for Xmas.

 

[Bick]

I'm now moving on to The Sky is Falling by Lester del Rey. Should be a fun quick read.

Well it was - science fantasy in perhaps the clearest definition of the term one could imagine. It was daft, fun and of a style and genre simply not written these days. Simak did a bit of this sort of thing with books like Goblin Reservation.

I'm now starting The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson. I'm a big fan of Anderson's (who would have guessed from the avatar), but not read his fantasy to date, strange as that may seem.

 

[Extollager]

Poul Anderson kindly sent me a reply to a fan letter I sent him in the mid-1970s recommending that he write more fantasy. (I probably got his address from a fanzine.) The reply was written on a neat blank greeting card the art for which was like a brass rubbing of a knight. Anderson wrote his reply by hand. I don't have it at hand (but I know I haven't lost it), so I can't check, but a funny feature of it was that he marked a "bar" above all instances of one of the vowels. ?? Whatever! I was just delighted to hear from him. In case you're interested, his address was 3 Las Palomas, Orinda, Calif. You can see a recent photo of the place here:

3 Las Palomas, Orinda, California, United States | Instant Street View

 

[Bick]

Lovely story Extollager. I guess your encouragement didn't lead to him writing a whole lot more fantasy, but I imagine he loved getting such fan mail.

 

[The Big Peat]

Finished The Woven Ring by MD Presley. Now that I've finished it and thought about it, my impressions are very positive. The prose wasn't quite my cup of tea, but the storytelling really was, and that stays with me a lot longer. Great gunpowder fantasy (if you'd call it gunpowder fantasy).

 

[Extollager]

Bick, here's the note that Poul Anderson sent me. A specimen of his handwriting. I still wonder if he habitually marked u thus, and why he did so here.

 

[WilliamDavey627]

Starting Morning Star, can't wait.

 

[martin321]

Bick, here's the note that Poul Anderson sent me. A specimen of his handwriting. I still wonder if he habitually marked u thus, and why he did so here.

Danish handwriting used to have a mark above the u, so I guess he just learnt to write that way.

 

[Caliban]

Reading Bag of Bones by SK

Also (on the kindle) The Nameless by Ramsey Campbell.

 

[Extollager]

Martin321, thanks for the suggestion about Poul Anderson's handwriting.

I haven't read a lot of his work, but nowadays rather than the fantasy I like most his novel We Have Fed Our Sea as serialized in Astounding. In book form it's The Enemy Stars.

 

[J-Sun]

I'm now starting The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson. I'm a big fan of Anderson's (who would have guessed from the avatar), but not read his fantasy to date, strange as that may seem.

Doesn't seem strange at all to me. I've probably read 30 or more Anderson SF books (I should find out - that's just a wild guess) but have The Broken Sword and, I think, Three Hearts and Three Lions, at least, somewhere in the Pile. One day!

Danish handwriting used to have a mark above the u, so I guess he just learnt to write that way.

Martin with the knowledge! Thanks for that - that would have bugged me.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

About to start The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories (2013), a collection which assembles all her stories which have won the Hugo, the Nebula, or both, from 1982 to 2007.

 

[Mister_Oy]

About halfway through the final Pratchet / Baxter thing.. Long Cosmos. Liking it - but I should have re-read the others first.

 

[nixie]

Brent Weeks Blood Mirror

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Just picked up Chris Beckett's Daughter of Eden in the library today. I have been so looking forwards to it!

 

[ratsy]

Finished Usurper and I had thought it was the last in the series, but apparently there is a fourth one.

Still on The Killing Floor Audio, and listened to two hour of The Nest by Terry Goodkind. Not for me. Stopped it and started the audio book of Ringworld in an effort to read the masters of SF. It's my first Niven book.

Right now I'm reading through Explorations: First Contact from the start (38% through and of course loving it) as well as finishing Trajectory 2, and also tried Earth Lost by Arenson, and devoured 25% of that the other day.

I'm beginning to realised I can read a lot of books at the same time...well not technically the same time, but you get my drift

 

[pambaddeley]

Read a history book, The Hittites, by O R Gurney.

 

[Extollager]

Just finished a second reading of Dickens's Tale of Two Cities and have started Grevel Lindop's The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas de Quincey.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Trying out the new(ish) Peter F. Hamilton book, The Abyss Beyond Dreams but been a long time since I read any Commonwealth books so struggling to remember what happened in them, and a bit worried about Hamilton's work since The Great North Road (which was dire IMHO).

O haven'tread The Great North Road yes but I have read the Abyss Beyond Dreams - let me know your thoughts when you finish. Personally I thought it was very good and I think Hamilton gets into his stride in this book - a lot happens.

The exception might be when I finally get round to picking up The Reality Dysfunction again as I got about halfway before getting bored, and I'm not sure I can bear to start again

The Reality Dysfunction isn't one of my favorite Hamilton's but I remember the overall series being worthwhile - if inferior to the Commonwealth Saga.

I have recently finished A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge - this was a fantastic book, there are literally dozens of fresh ideas that could fill as many novels and yet somehow it all seems to come together and work. Reading this just seemed effortless and I found it very difficult to put down.