October 2021 Reading Discussion

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The last two postings are a reminder of the differences held between people who are valued participants here at Chrons. I take this reminder to be a positive thing. Point noted!

My current reading includes the 12th Aubrey-Maturin novel, The Letter of Marque, by Patrick O'Brian and stories in Jacqueline Simpson's collection of folktales from Iceland, some of which are about as creepy as they get. My impression is that the Icelanders and the Japanese are particularly good at eerie folktales.
 
I have started The Cocktail Waitress (2012) by James M. Cain, author of hardboiled classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice. He died in 1977, and this "lost" novel was discovered/recreated by the folks at Hard Case Crime publishers, working from more than one complete manuscript. (The afterword explains all this.) The author chose to narrate in first person from a woman's point of view, which is interesting. So far, it's the story of how her drunk and abusive husband died in a car wreck, leaving her with a three-year-old son to support, and how her sister-in-law blames her for the death of her brother, and how she wants to gain custody of the child for herself. The narrator tells the reader that she's trying to explain why she's not a femme fatale. I expect lust and murder to follow.
 
thaddeus6th said:
Vertigo, I didn't know much at all about Musashi, and nothing of Kojiro, before reading it (though I did like Musashi a lot).

I know a little more of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi et al. who form the core of Taiko, of which Hideyoshi is the star. Hard to be precise given my limited knowledge but I think Nobunaga gets a mostly fair treatment as he's depicted as impulsive but highly intelligent, and (unlike Kessen III) his unreasonable abuse of Mitsuhide is depicted quite straightforwardly. There might be some Musashi-esque hero worship of Hideyoshi, although some of his drawbacks (womanising) are briefly explored. Katsuie is mostly depicted in a negative light, which is perhaps unsurprising.

Hideyoshi's status alongside Nobunaga and Ieyasu perhaps flavours things, although a Japanese reading a historical novel of Alexander the Great or Hannibal Barca might assume much the same.

The book is abridge in the English translation but still over 900 pages, so hard to know if this would be different if things were cut.
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Thanks for that it sounds interesting, I may add it to my wish list!
 
No worries. Just a note: it took me a weirdly long time to get hold of this book. Last I checked it was fairly consistently in stock but perhaps a decade elapsed between me seeing it and actually being able to buy it. Even when I ordered it, there was a delay of months.
 
thaddeus6th said:
No worries. Just a note: it took me a weirdly long time to get hold of this book. Last I checked it was fairly consistently in stock but perhaps a decade elapsed between me seeing it and actually being able to buy it. Even when I ordered it, there was a delay of months.
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Amazon have it in ebook £10.89, hardback £23 and paperback, used only, for a trivial £172. Ebook is my usual choice so that shouldn't be a problem! 900 page books could be, though I did manage the equally long Musashi!
 
Finished Dune reread. I first read this in the late 1970s as an adolescent, and thought it was brilliant. This is probably the 4th read, but the first for about 20 years.

Um. I enjoyed the reread, but my view of the book has changed.

Decent political intrigue, multi-character saga, with the interesting ecological and messianic aspects. All the portentious mystical stuff did not interest me as much as previously.
The book is perfectly well-written for a pot-boiler but the style, from a modern perspective, seems a bit clicheed in places. Lots of serious people saying serious things in serious tones of voice with italics for extra serious stuff, plus a bucket load of psychedelic mind-expansion.
It is easy to see why this was important and why it became a cult thing and a commercial hit, and why I was so impressed when I was younger. I am not sure that there is anything particularly profound going on here. Also not much humour. Whilst I wouldn’t go quite as far as JG Ballard’s scathing 1968 dismissal he does make some good points.
 
“Star Science Fiction No. 6” edited by Frederik Pohl (1959)

An anthology of eight stories first published in this anthology. It's the last of Pohl’s Star Series and doesn’t live up to its predecessors. Initially a ground-breaking series with a stellar cast of writers, the very first SF series to feature stories that had not been previously published anywhere else, this last-in-series selection is that bit more ordinary.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
I have started The Cocktail Waitress (2012) by James M. Cain, author of hardboiled classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice. He died in 1977, and this "lost" novel was discovered/recreated by the folks at Hard Case Crime publishers, working from more than one complete manuscript. (The afterword explains all this.) The author chose to narrate in first person from a woman's point of view, which is interesting. So far, it's the story of how her drunk and abusive husband died in a car wreck, leaving her with a three-year-old son to support, and how her sister-in-law blames her for the death of her brother, and how she wants to gain custody of the child for herself. The narrator tells the reader that she's trying to explain why she's not a femme fatale. I expect lust and murder to follow.
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A year or two after that was published, I walked into a Starbucks and saw a young woman reading it. Probably just me and my unexamined and essentially stupid cultural expectations, but I was borderline elated to see a young person reading an actual printed book! And a book by a long gone writer, at that. Wow.
 
Hugh said:
“Star Science Fiction No. 6” edited by Frederik Pohl (1959)

An anthology of eight stories first published in this anthology. It's the last of Pohl’s Star Series and doesn’t live up to its predecessors. Initially a ground-breaking series with a stellar cast of writers, the very first SF series to feature stories that had not been previously published anywhere else, this last-in-series selection is that bit more ordinary.
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You know I don't think I've read any Pohl yet... he's one of those names mentioned by Asimov in his memoirs that always got me curious.
 
AE35Unit said:
You know I don't think I've read any Pohl yet... he's one of those names mentioned by Asimov in his memoirs that always got me curious.
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If you enjoy memoirs, Frederik Pohl's "The Way the Future Was" (1978) is a lot of fun, and very informative on the early years of SF and the personalities involved.
 
I gave up on Liu Cixon's The Three Body Problem. I had to force myself to read it because it's one of those books that everyone has read. After reading more than half of it. I gave up. It was just too obtuse. Some people seemed to have some idea what was going on but they weren't sharing as if by making other people struggle to understand the basis of the the Three Body Problem, which they said was important but wouldn't explain further. Life's too short to read books that are frustrating and that you expect in the end will make you want to throw it against a wall somewhere.

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I've started Master Mind by Andrew Mayne. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the above. Looks to be thumping good crime mystery.
 
AE35Unit said:
Well yea I like that stuff, but I want to read his SF too
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Gateway and Man Plus (for novels) and The Best of Frederik Pohl (for stories) are my favorites. (Also The Space Merchants, but that's only half-Pohl, being written with C. M. Kornbluth.)
 
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