March 2021 Reading Thread

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I may well be remembering this wrong, but each of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books seemed to contain a 20-page sequence where someone got lost and just wandered about.
 
Danny McG said:
Now back to an old favourite, Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
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Ooh, will the microscopic culture survive the next cataclysm caused by the incursion of The Fingertip? Will they mount a daring expedition to see if the fabled Left Nostril is also inhabited?
 
HareBrain said:
Ooh, will the microscopic culture survive the next cataclysm caused by the incursion of The Fingertip? Will they mount a daring expedition to see if the fabled Left Nostril is also inhabited?
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You had me checking, I really thought I'd messed up the spelling then!
 
I finished the wonderful Tom Sawyer, and I'm now starting a slow read through Twain's book of his time spent out west as a young man: Roughing It. I say slow, as I'm also reading the Riverworld series still, and also still making my way through 1986 Asimov's Science Fiction magazines, month by month.
 
Paul_C said:
Finished Lagoon last night, which I liked a lot.

Next up is the third of Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, Full Fathom Five.
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. . . which was another very enjoyable tale.

Tonight I'm going to start the first story in James Murdo's Wanderer series, Siouca Remembers. I read the third one, Fractured Carapace without being aware that there were two before it, so while I still recall the third tale I thought I'd go back and read books one and two, maybe alternating with Max Gladstone's fourth book in the Craft Sequence, Last First Snow.
 
Finished A Blink On The Screen, a collection of Terry Pratchett shorties from over the years. I had been using it as my backup while reading other stuff. Not just the stories, but his intros, make it interesting.
Finishing The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal. It's the third in her Lady Astronaut series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two. Here she gets quite bogged down in minutia of dealing with a mystery. At any point I enjoyed her prose and ideas, but overall such a slog to get through.
Also reading a practically complete omnibus of Robert Sheckley short stories , The Masque of Mañana. I bought it as I remembered him from years ago. Now he reads a little formulaic, but still interesting. But then he pretty much invented the formula, so - - -. Also used it as backup.
 
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Reading Joseph O'Neill's 1936 Gollancz-published near-future "Yellow Peril" world war novel Day of Wrath. It's not very good but I have an extraneous reason for sticking with it. Germany from the west and Japan from the east have destroyed Russia & now the Germans are wiping out European countries. The "Japs" meanwhile destroy Australia. The weapons seem to be gas bombs dropping from high altitudes with devastating fires following -- I'd have to check as to whether there were incendiaries used or the fires just broke out. The book seems to have been written in a hurry.

DAY OF WRATH | Joseph O'Neill | First edition (lwcurrey.com)

I'm reading it in a photocopy I made of an interlibrary loan copy.
 
Finished Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor. This is the fourth book in the Bobiverse. I did not read book 3. I didn't know about it when I got this one. Or, more precisely, I didn't pay enough attention, so what I say here should be taken with a bit of a skeptical eye. Clearly there was background for book 3 that I didn't have and might have made a difference.

I did not think that this book rose to the level of the first two in terms of shear entertainment value. The first two were carefree, interesting, and had a serious amount of in-group humor. If you were not a S.F. fan a lot of this would blow by you. But at least for me, it was a lot of fun. This fourth book was both a lot longer (615 pages) and considerably more pretentious. It tackles BIG philosophical and spiritual questions, like "Should the Star Trek Prime Directive be the Prime Directive for the Bobs. Do the Bobs, especially the later ones, have a soul? Is a completely libertarian order a workable way to organize a society?" etc. These kinds of questions always interest me, and they did. But it took a long time, maybe 200 pages, before I felt that the book found its stride. And since I wasn't expecting this kind of story, it probably didn't seem as wonderful as it might have. So, while I would say book 1, We Are Many is very nearly a must read, this one not so much. Solid, not wonderful.

I also read Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb" this is a book which I thought included her extremely powerful poem at Joe Biden's inaugural. And it does, and it gives me chills. BUT that is all it included. Wait for her next book which is going to include, and which I thought I had ordered, several other of her works.
 
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We shall sing a song into the deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart.

The last nuclear sub with the world's last missile cruises under the ocean, crewed by an order of monks. They are waiting many years for the chance to launch this missile.

But one of the monks has a secret
 
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