Our reads in February 2024

Another month,another tottering TBR. Share your reading plans with us.

Dusty's TBR for February
SF/F reads
Poul Anderson - Three Hearts and Three Lions ✔
C J Cherryh - Brothers of Earth
Clifford D Simak - They Walked Like Men✔
Jack Vance - Book of Dreams ✔

and probably a lot of Kindle Unlimited fluff,to soothe my mind

from other genres
Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium✔
Mary Norton - The Borrowers ✔

Hi! I haven’t posted here before. I am currently reading How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu.

>2 dustydigger: I saw it’s your birthday- happy birthday!

In Progress
Cryptonomicon*
McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

On Deck
Veniss Underground
The War Amongst the Angels
Revival

Ordered/Slated for Borrowing
Titanium Noir
The Other Wind

*This one title might chew up the whole of February ...

>1 dustydigger: Happy birthday!
>3 dianeham: Welcome!

My plan for February:

Genre:
Dune
Dune Messiah
Ubik (community book club read)

Non-genre:
Slow Horses
Demon Copperhead (family book club read)

I should finish Slow Horses today. Read most of it on the plane yesterday. I’m enjoying it.

Then Ubik which my book club discusses next week (or the week after?).

>6 Neil_Luvs_Books:
I had difficulty with Slow Horses. It struck me as an attempt to copy Le Carré's work, even to the point of creating a head office location to parallel the circus. Needless to say, it fell far short of Le Carré's books and left me disappointed. Had I not seen the hype comparing it to Le Carré's work I may not have judged it so harshly, but it does not deserve the hype or the comparison and I cannot contemplate reading anymore books in the series. I love Gary Oldman's acting, but I have a hurdle to get over before I can watch the TV adaption of Slow Horses that he is in. I have to focus on the TV adaptation as something totally different from the books.

I found Dune to be excellent. Around the same time I read Dune I also read The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. This juxtaposition left me wondering if Herbert had read The Leopard. There were strong parallels between the two in terms of themes. I loved both books. I am not inclined to read any more of the Dune books.

Ubik is a book I read a long time ago. All I can remember about it is that I enjoyed it. With Dick's books I find the concepts in the stories interesting.

>3 dianeham: Welcome Diane,and thanks for birthday wishes :0)

>5 paradoxosalpha: I have made several attempts at Cryptonomicon,I rarely get through more than 50 pages and thats it. Mind you,I do have a huge very heavy dead tree copy,awful type font,tiny print,and size and weight of a brick.
I just saw the ebook discounted to £2.99,so I've bought it.
Oh dear,on checking how far I got last time,it was page 38 out of 919.
Not a Stephenson fan really. Snow Crash took ages to read,the characters and the cyberpunk vibes did nothing for me.The Diamond Age was so boring I have no memory of any of it. Anathem got abandoned 40 pages in after a 8 page description of a machine!!!!! Seveneves I did finish,it was just a fairly middle of the road space opera,enjoyable enough but not earth shattering. Sometime this year I will assay the codebreaking gang's deeds yet again....someday.......
For now I am reading The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule and rereading for maybe the 6th time Mary Norton's The Borrowers Lovely stuff.

>8 dustydigger: not a big fan of Stephenson either. Although my only basis for that is Snowcrash.
I am grouping him with John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow in that they somehow seem more about some over geared zeitgeist fanfic service product than genuine literature that I enjoy. Dropping so many pop culture references that the text doesn’t stand on its own.
And I am being very uncharitable here, but I’ve just accepted that those authors aren’t for me.

>1 dustydigger: Happy birthday to you! I hope this is a good month for you.

>3 dianeham: Welcome!

I'm still reading Furious Heaven which is a huge book in print. It's really good. For light relief I'm also reading Terminal uprising, the middle of this trilogy where space janitors are the heroes.

Cryptonomicon is my first Stephenson (despite a gift of The Diamond Age from my Other Reader and endless recommendations of Snow Crash from many friends). I'm about 130 pages in and enjoying it. It feels like slightly tamed Thomas Pynchon so far.

>11 paradoxosalpha:
Cryptonomicon was my first Stephenson as well. It was highly recommended by two friends. I enjoyed the first two thirds or possibly three quarters of it. That was the first time I liked a book but was disappointed with the ending. It did not stop me reading more Stephenson. My next book was Snow Crash which I loved despite also being disappointed with the ending. I quickly learned that most of Stephenson's work contains good ideas that make the book worth reading but very few of them have decent endings. The book with the best ending was REAMDE. My last Stephenson, and the one that put me off reading any more of his books, was Seveneves. That did not appeal to me at all. Up to that point I was buying is books as they were published, but I was so disappointed by the whole of Seveneves I gave up on him.

>12 pgmcc:, good ending for Anathem, I thought. Loved that one.

>13 Cecrow:
I loved Anathem but just thought his ending got a bit too complicated. It is one of my favourite Stephenson’s. I loved the idea of a secular monastery.

>12 pgmcc: In fairness to Stephenson, the ending of Cryptonomicon is improved somewhat by reading the prequel trilogy - but I don't recommend it to dustydigger because those books comprise 2,600+ pages spread over three very large volumes. Even e-reading won't help much if one is not enjoying the story.

>15 ScoLgo:
What I did not like about the end of Cryptonomicon was how a great story with different threads to it basically descended into a treasure hunt. I felt let down.

I'm reading one of Nnedi Okorafor's first novels, The Shadow Speaker.

>11 paradoxosalpha: I hope you continue to enjoy Cryptonomicon. My enjoyment of it may have something to do with the somewhat passing reference to IBM computers, but I know several others who also enjoyed it. Like >12 pgmcc:, it was my first Stephenson novel and then I read Snow Crash, which I thought was fun.

Other Stephenson novels I've read:
Diamond Age was not my favorite, but it does have a lot of interesting ideas.
Anathem - I read it, but just barely made myself finish it.
Seveneves - can't get past the first chapter.
Terminal Shock - another one that was all right, some good concepts.
Quicksilver - I've tried three times, just can't get through it. I believe >15 ScoLgo: has given some advice on reading that would put it in a better context, so maybe I'll get back to it someday.

Talking about Neal Stephenson, I still have Fall, or Dodge In Hell right here, paused before Part 2 for a few weeks now. I'm not sure whether I'll finish it or not. I thought Reamde was his least interesting book by far, but the premise of this one seemed a lot more interesting.
Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, I found absolutely fantastic, though it's been almost 20 years and I'm not sure I'd still have the time and patience to get into them now.

I just finished The Culture: The Drawings, which to me isn't worth the paper it was printed on. Had the "thoughts" been included as originally planned, I may have been of a different opinion.

No science fiction on deck right now, but with The Secrets of Station X I find myself in Cryptonomicon-adjacent territory.

Next is probably some non-genre work, but I may give "Fall" another go or one of the Scalzi's I picked up in the recent Humble Bundle.

February plans:

* Future Home of the Living God for Book Club
* Deep Roots, needs to go back to the library soon
* A City on Mars (related nonfiction)

Also checked out a bunch of volumes of Flying Witch when I saw the library had them, it's a good cozy rainy day read for me and I've been meaning to catch up.

>16 pgmcc: I actually liked the ending of Cryptonomicon because of the way a whole lot of threads were brought together.

And about a week after I finished it, I was watching a show called Abandoned Engineering on one of the digital channels and it showed the offshore fort in the middle of the approaches to Manilla harbour that the novel references a lot.

>19 igorken: "Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle, I found absolutely fantastic, though it's been almost 20 years and I'm not sure I'd still have the time and patience to get into them now."

I have all four books in hardback sitting on the shelf awaiting a re-read. Altogether, they take up 8 inches/~20.5cm of prime shelf space. It is a lot of pages to embark upon!

>20 melannen: I was a bit disappointed in the Erdrich book. I hope it works better for you than it did me. Deep Roots OTOH, I thought was brilliant. I assume you already read Winter Tide?

>7 pgmcc: Ubik is mid-tier Dick for me. I re-read it a year ago, and while the ideas were fun, only one character sort of comes to life at the very end, unlike those inhabiting Martian Time-Slip or A Scanner Darkly.

>7 pgmcc:, >23 ChrisRiesbeck:

I like Ubik a lot. Oddly, I think the relative shallowness of character came out of the fact that he originally composed it as a movie treatment.

>7 pgmcc: I finished Slow Horses today and quite enjoyed it. I have only read a couple of John le Carré: Smiley’s People and Single and Single. I thought Single and Single was brilliant. Smiley’s People was a slog for me. But every film based on a le Carré novel I have very much enjoyed. I’ve seen a few of those!

Starting Ubik tomorrow. It has never been on my TBR list; only reading it as a good book club member. But I have read Dick’s The Man in the High Castle which I found interesting but not brilliant, so I am curious to read Ubik given that, again, I have enjoyed many films based on a Dick story.

Happy birthday Dusty.

This month's line-up, all in hand, includes Assassin of Reality, Menewood (already reading), Goliath, Mammoths at the Gates, and System Collapse.

Finally getting to The circumference of the world by Lavie Tidhar, discussed by my book group the other month. Interesting ideas, plus tiny nods to various real people (someone at a London pub meet argued with Fred Pohl, e.g.).

I am sorry to learn of the death of Christopher Priest.

Likewise. I first met Chris Priest in about 1977 when I was running the then Newcastle Polytechnic SF Society and we invited him to come to Newcastle to give a talk. I went to the station to meet him off the train, in the company of local Gannetfan Rob Jackson, who had met Priest before. But it was me who spotted him first, recognising him from a Jim Barker cartoon that had appeared in a fanzine a few weeks earlier.

Bearing that in mind, I was surprised, when he was GoH at Novacon in 2021, that I didn't recognise him at first.

I still have a lot of his books on the TBR pile; I would describe his work as "clever". Time to move them up the stack.

I rather liked Inverted World, but for some reason I’ve never read any other of his books.

My obituary here:

https://robertday154.wordpress.com/2024/02/03/christopher-priest-1943-2024/

>31 RobertDay:
Nice obituary.

I did not really meet him; just exchanged a few comments at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow.

Three things I remember about his speech and his contributions at other sessions are:

1. He had been invited along to observe the filming of The Prestige. He said they had made several changes from his book but he was happy with the changes. I enjoyed both the book and the film. They were different enough to be enjoyed separately on their own merits.

2. Speaking of The Prestige he described a writer's job as being that of an illusionist. He gave a lovely talk about how writers are trying to tell a story but hold back the full story until time for the big reveal and hence use elements of misdirection to keep the reader wondering.

3. In his speech he vented about the comic book person producing books using a name the same as his own, as you mentioned in your obituary. He was very agitated about that.

I have enjoyed the Christopher Priest books I have read and, like yourself, have several more sitting on my shelf awaiting attention. He became an author whose books I bought on publication. I had been keeping up with the reading but then lagged behind. When I realised I had a number of unread books I decided to defer my acquisition of his later books until I have read the ones I have.

>29 RobertDay: Robert are you familiar with the Outlaw Bookseller channel on You Tube? He rated Priest very highly,talked about him all the time,felt he never got enough recognition from the general SF readers. .He made 2 in depth interviews with Christopher on his channel.Steve will be devastated :0(
Steve also champions Keith Roberts,says he is very underated.
I really enjoy Steve's channel,he has read extremely widely in the genre,and can be opinionated,but I love seeing the old book covers from earlier times.
For myself,I have only read Priest's Inverted World,and it didnt really grab me.The premise skirted the very edge of credibility for me I'm afraid,I struggled to suspend my disbelief,and that interfered with immersing myself in the tale.

I have no more Priest books to read; I've read them all. Some of them are among the best books I've read.

A huge loss.

>32 pgmcc: That's nicely written. Sad news. I only read a few of his books (I expect to read more at some point). Clever is a good word to descrive them.

>33 dustydigger: No, I'm not familiar with that channel, Dusty, but I suspect I ought to be. In terms of literary-ness, I suspect Chris Priest would be the SF writer that the mainstream would have applauded, except that Ballard got there first and there's only toom for one such writer in the literary "mainstream" canon.

Inverted World is rather more sf-nal than a lot of Priest's other work. If you felt that novel's premise to be a bit stretched, I can appreciate that: you might well find a lot of his later output to be more to your taste, as it is less fantastical. Still, so many books, so little time....

Keith Roberts is also under-rated in a similar way.

Adam Roberts has posted an obit on his own Facebook feed (https://www.facebook.com/adam.roberts.52) and someone commenting said "You both never wrote the same novel twice."

I finished Atom Bomb Baby a sci-fi early reviewer novel. It grew on me, although it seemed rushed at the beginning. I would read a sequel.

I thought The Prestige was excellent. (I find it frustrating that the touchstone defaults to the movie; I read the book long before the film was made.) It's a little odd that I haven't gotten around to reading any other work by Priest.

His last novel Airside looks like it would make an good follow-up to my recent read of Medusa's Web.

I finished reading Ubik. It was ok. Some really interesting ideas but the writing style is a product of its time, I think. The style reminded me of AE van Vogt. And I am not sure I would label it necessarily as SciFi. More like a Stephen King novel which can sometimes straddle genres. I think that’s what PKD does with Ubik; it straddles genres between SciFi, horror, and fantasy. It was an interesting read, I enjoyed the experience, but I have no desire to read it again.

>39 paradoxosalpha:

I haven't read Airside yet but I do own it. I've read most of Chris Priest's other work - and some is excellent indeed. I think it is worth mentioning that many of his stories are set in The Dream Archipelago a fictonal chain of innumerable equatorial islands on an alternate world - which I am probably not fit to detail. In fact the Archipelago itself seems to defy attempts to map it, to detail its entirety. The stories are not a connected series, although there are themes and echoes through many of the stories.

This will be the year of Anthologies and Collections. I have acquired quite a number of them over the past 3 to 4 years but have not made time to actually read many of them so... In January, I read Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 and am now a little over halfway through Kiernan's Tales of Pain and Wonder, which is a very, very good collection of inter-related stories from earlier in her career.

In novels, I am also e-reading The Heads of Cerberus which, while a bit dated, remains an entertaining bit of alternate reality.

Next up will be Number9Dream. Mitchell's Ghostwritten was a highlight read of 2023 so I am really looking forward to his 2nd novel.

>39 paradoxosalpha: Same here. The Prestige is the only book of his I've read to date. I thought it was excellent but have somehow not managed to read anything else from Priest's catalog. Airside does look very interesting...

Starting my reread of Frank Herbert’s Dune. I haven’t read it since I was in grade school in the 1970s.

>1 dustydigger: First post here. Hi all! I just emigrated from GR, same as I left X for Mastodon. You can probably figure out why.

I just finished the Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi, and I enjoyed it more than anything I have read in years. In fact, I just loved it and want to find more stuff like this. Recos?

What I loved about it -- some very big ideas, super snarky narration, hilarious spaceship names (did he get this from Banks or the other way around?), characters I could actually root for and against. As well as some hilarious and chilling views of realpolitik close up.

What should I read next by Scalzi? Any others I should be hunting down?

Happy to make your acquaintances!

>45 roguelike: Welcome aboard! If that's your first Scalzi and you want more, I'd suggest Old Man's War. Redshirts is his Hugo winner. And his most recent - Starter Villain was a winner for me.

>45 roguelike:
Welcome aboard.

Your question about ship names and which came first, Banks or Scalzi: Iain Banks’ SF was first published in 1980s. Scalzi’s Oldman’s War came out in 2005.

Finally completed book 5 of the Demon Princes series,The Book Of Dreams.
I found it a bit of a slog at times. I usually enjoy all the descriptions of the planets Kirth Gerson visits in his decades long hunt for the 5 intergalactic pirates who murdered his family as they destroyed his home planet.Bit by bit he learned who they were and brought about their deaths.
The first three books,published 1964 - 1967 were very pulpy,(which I dont mind,pulp is fun!) the villains were very cardboard,and the books are very plot driven.
Then there was a long gap before the last two were published in 1979 and 1981. Much more philosophy,lots of planets involved - too much in book 5 I think,and as usual the ending feels rather flat. earlier in the series of course we can shrug it off,knowing more episodes will come,but it is a bit downbeat when its the final book. Maybe Vance just wanted to let the audience choose the aftermath for themselves? Could be,but following Gerson over 5 books needs a stronger resolution IMO.
I enjoyed The Palace of Love and The Face more than The Book of Dreams,but all in all it was a fun series.
And the description of the return of the supervillain who wants to rule the universe to the class reunion,where he gets revenge on all the rich greedy selfish people who tormented and bullied him is classic,and worth the price of admission! :0)

Lucius Shepard's The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaulle was a Hugo,Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated novella in 1985
The mountain-sized sleeping Dragon Griaulle overshadows a nearby town with its overpowering presence. Desperate to overthrow its malignant influence without alerting the dragon to their intent, the town hires a painter who promises to cover the dragon's beautiful scales in a poisonous paint which will kill it once and for all.
Griaulle is huge,literally mountain size. Even its eye is 70 feet long.,and it inexorably grows,no longer able to fly with vegetation covering most of it,but it mentally dominates the town below.The story is beautifully written and intriguing. I will look out for more stories by this author.

It was lovely to revisit some dear old friends - Pod,Homily,and Arrietty,tiny people who live under the kitchen floor boards in an ancient manor house, by scavenging what they need to survive from the house above them. I hope some of you have read Mary Norton's charming children's classic The Borrowers. At least here in UK the same imaginative kids who examine the back of their wardrobes to see if they can get to Narnia also yearn to meet some Borrowers.
Wonderfully written ,exciting,suspenseful and just utterly delightful,no matter how many times I read it I see something new or admirable,even sad at times. A masterpiece.
OK,its not SF but I always become super enthusiastic whenever I reread it,and have to share! :0)
...........................
Pity that they made such a godawful mess in the film version!

This week I am reading Poul Anderson Three Hearts and Three Lions,and Clifford D Simak They Walked Like Men

>50 dustydigger: I loved The Borrowers. I reread that series many times, but not for many years. My personal favorite children's book, however, that I do still reread occasionally, is Shadow Castle. It was a scholastic book, printed in green ink, and has a very nice dragon in it!

>45 roguelike: Welcome! I recommend K. B. Wagers' Indranan War trilogy which begins with Behind the throne. It's got the snark and humour but also twisty politics and strong characters.

Very sad news about Christopher Priest. I love The islanders and the other Dream Archipelago-set books I've read.

Still reading Furious heaven. It's a good thing I'm enjoying it because this is a loooong read.

>50 dustydigger:

I've never read Norton's book but enjoyed multiple screenings of the Studio Ghibli adaptation, Arietty. I suspect it's more "inspired by" than adapted but only guessing.

>45 roguelike: Welcome! Have you read the Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor? If you like Scalzi's brand of SF, this series might also appeal to you.

>50 dustydigger:, >52 vwinsloe: I was thinking of The Borrowers recently, as I read T. H. White's Mistress Masham's Repose, which is about Lilliputians in (then-)modern Britain, and I think taps into a similar vibe.

>50 dustydigger: Haven't read The Borrowers in ages, but I liked it. After reading the Chathrand Voyage series by Redick, it sure felt like he was a fan too.

>48 dustydigger:

Vance's issues with writing endings are well-documented. It's one of his major flaws.

(My fave among the Demon Princes books is definitely The Face, which may be his funniest book.)

>50 dustydigger: I too loved the Borrowers. Another book featuring tiny people, with a somewhat different flavor but equally wonderful, is Mistress Masham's Repose. (Oops -- just saw Stevil2001's post)

While I'm in repetitive mode, I'm another Vance lover.

Knocked off System Collapse, the latest "Murderbot" story; eight iterations in, I'm still having fun with this series.

>55 ScoLgo: Thanks! I am adding it to my list. Unfortunately not available digitally, but that just means I'll visit my local library. Not a bad thing!

I'm reading Natasha Pulley's The Kingdoms. I got it as a SantaThing gift, and I quite deliberately didn't read much about it before starting, but thus far it seems to be fantasy or perhaps sf. Only about 40 pages in, but I am currently interested.

>61 roguelike: That's a bummer they are no longer available in digital format. When I read them, I was able to borrow direct from Amazon via Prime Reading, (formerly known as KOLL, or Kindle Owner's Lending Library). Either way, I thought the series was a fun read.

I have been slowly and randomly working my way through the Vorkosigan series as I find editions I can stand looking at, and have read Borders of Infinity and Falling Free this month.

Returning to the Stephenson conversation above, I read Anathem a few years ago and enjoyed it, but substantially less so after Erasmus leaves the concent. And I didn't feel strongly about the ending. Seems to me people either love Stephenson or struggle to care about him one way or another.

Finished The Heads of Cerberus and posted a short review.

I will be finishing Tales of Pain and Wonder this week.

Have made a start on both Number9Dream and Vurt, (Thanks be to RobertDay and vwinsloe for bringing Vurt to my attention. I'm currently about 1/5 of the way in and really enjoying the story and writing style).

I'm just now reaching the midpoint of Cryptonomicon. With nearly thirty associated reader recommendations in LT, I'm surprised not to see any Thomas Pynchon there, since so far the two books I'm most reminded of are Gravity's Rainbow and Bleeding Edge.

>64 Watry: What!? You don't love the crappy Baen house "style" of cover art!

>67 Shrike58:
A gallery of offenders.

>67 Shrike58: It's so bad, and what's worse is that the NESFA Press editions aren't that much better! It's sad that the Knife series, which is by far the worst of her major works, IMO, have the best covers.

>69 Watry: The NESFA books have very attractive typesetting and visual design, it's just that some of the actual images aren't great.

I've been collecting the NESFAs, and then whatever hardcovers I can find when there is no NESFA edition. What have you been going for?

>70 Stevil2001: For the Vorkosigans? Easton Press. More expensive than I'd like, of course I only have Mirror Dance left and then I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do.

>66 paradoxosalpha:

Pynchon and William T Vollman were my immediate comparators, for certain: for style, preoccupations with detailed subcultures and their habitual behavior, and humour. The parallels were much more evident to me in Anathem than in Snow Crash, as well.

Finished Or what you will and, since so many others here are doing a re-read of it, started A Wizard of Earthsea.

>72 elenchus:

I haven't read Vollman and he hasn't been on my radar. Thanks for the tip.

>66 paradoxosalpha: The only Pynchon that I've read is The Crying of Lot 49 when I was in high school back in the mid-1970s; I should at least try Gravity's Rainbow and/or Mason & Dixon at some point.

>68 paradoxosalpha: Ah, I'd forgotten that website existed; thanks for the reminder, I think.

>75 Shrike58:

I love The Crying of Lot 49, but it's early and doesn't show Pynchon at the peak of his powers. His other California books (Vineland and Inherent Vice) are also great. On the doorstop front, I'm a huge fan of the more "historical" books Mason & Dixon and Against the Day.

>74 paradoxosalpha:

It's been awhile since I read You Bright And Risen Angels, long enough I mis-spelled his surname. Touchstoning here to make amends: William T Vollmann.

Completed Clifford D Simak They Walked Like Men a story of alien invasion . A bit of an oddity,not top rank,but even in lesser Simak there is always so much good stuff. Typical sympathetic hero,tough but sensitive.Lovely descriptions of nature of course,the love for the natural world shines through. A warmth and care for his well written characters,but a sad despairing for the race as a whole.The first half of the book is sharp and engrossing,tense and mysterious,but once we have learned about the aliens,the book tails off badly IMO,and the plot becomes silly,or is it meant to be satiric,its difficult to tell. Too much philisophical musings,an unlikely set of aliens, dull ending.
Still despite all the faults it is Simak,so its a charming pleasant read on a windswept rainy winters day when cosy indoors.

>75 Shrike58: I read Gravity's Rainbow, V, and The Crying of Lot 49 right out of college 50 years ago (!) at the end of the Nixon Era, and thoroughly enjoyed them. I wonder what I would think now, in an even more surrealistic era.

After a break reading a history of Italy, now starting to catch up on the Christopher Priest books I've not yet read, with The Extremes.

I finally finished Furious heaven! I'm really enjoying this space opera trilogy which is based on Alexander the Great. Unfortunately I know almost nothing about his life and conquests, so I am missing a whole layer of the books - but I can say that even without that knowledge they are excellent reads. The characters are well developed, the balance of action and politics is satisfying, and the worldbuilding is brilliant (there is a lot of food detail which I enjoyed!). Highly recommended, although maybe wait until book 3 is released because I for one am unlikely to have time for a reread of FH beforehand!

>82 Sakerfalcon:

I'm glad to hear such praise for The Sun Chronicles. A used copy of Unconquerable Sun was an impulse buy for me a few months ago. I think it's queued up after The Children of the Sky. Your advice about waiting for Lady Chaos is noted.

Finished A Wizard of Earthsea and started Ambulance Ship.

Finished The Extremes; an interesting exploration of virtual reality that's a bit at variance to the way the tech eventually worked out for us - first published in 1998, Priest uses injectable infusions of programmed nanochips to achieve his VR effects (making them much more immersive than mere digital technologies). He explores the implications of 'nested' VR simulations, throwing our expectations of what constitutes 'reality' into doubt. It may well take a second reading for me to process this one completely.

At the same time, being set in a near future that is now more than twenty years in our past, the novel also offers a slightly nostalgic look (well, for me at least) at the Britain of the past. I found his setting, a fictional south coast seaside town, but seen from the perspective of the local inhabitants, rather reminiscent of the Midlands town where I grew up.

I'm taking a break from genre (though not a massive one - I'm reading a book on German Wunderwaffen which looks as though it will stray into adjacent sf-nal territory) before tackling my next Priest, his novelisation of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. This came out in 1999 - the year after The Extremes - and is also about VR gaming tech bioware and its corporate politics. As I recollect the film, it also looks at issues arising from simulations run within simulations. It makes me wonder whether Priest worked on the two projects at the same time. The thematic similarities hardly seem like coincidence.

Last night I finished my reread of Dune. This is the 3rd time I have read it. The first time was in junior high school back in the late 1970s. The second time was about 10 years later in the late 1980s. So this reread is a couple of decades later. I am rereading the entire series again but Dune is the only one that I have ever read more than once. What triggered this reread is, of course, the new Dune movie coming out next month by Denis Villeneuve. I wanted to check to see if the book itself is really worth of all the hype and if my enjoyment of it had changed in the intervening decades since my last reread.

So, after finishing it last night I agree with others that Dune is a masterpiece of science fiction. It seems to have lasted the test of time to this point. I was transfixed in many parts, shed a few tears in others, and was generally caught up in the political intrigue.

A couple of things I was surprised about that I don’t think I understood the first two times I read Dune:

1. The unsure nature of Paul’s prescience. I had remembered that he knew exactly what was going to happen after entering the desert and increasing his intake of spice. But this time I understood that he was only catching glimpses which is what propelled him to ingest the poison Water of Life. And even after that, it was still not completely clear (e.g., Fenring was concealed from him).

2. The death of his first son Leto, I hadn’t clued into as being a possible instigation for his abandonment of trying to avoid the coming jihad. Did his son’s death tip Paul over into Jihad? I am still not sure. I am hoping my reread of Dune Messiah clarifies this.

Now on to Dune Messiah.

>86 Neil_Luvs_Books: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I need to do a re-read of Dune Messiah, too.

>86 Neil_Luvs_Books:
I only got around to reading Dune for the first time in October 2018. I enjoyed it a lot and was enthralled with the politics. I had read The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa in July of 2018. It is set in Sicily at the time of the Garibaldi revolution that ultimately united the various parts of Italy into one country. I was struck by how many themes and issues were shared by the two books. I concluded that Herbert must have read The Leopard.

By the way, I strongly recommend The Leopard. It teaches a lot about leadership and is a great story into the bargain.

>88 pgmcc: The Leopard is on my TBR - I've got a beautiful Limited Editions Club copy gathering dust.

I could certainly do with a Dune re-read, but probably not this year.

Wrapped up Menewood: Another book I respect more than I love. I'm sorry, but while I realize that a lot of people love their brick-like fantasy novels out of a desire for immersion, I tend to find 350-450 pages to be the optimal length for me; this is particularly since so many of Griffith's characters just feel like placeholders.

Next up; probably something short like Mammoths at the Gates!

>91 Shrike58: I am in complete agreement with you on brick-like fantasy novels! But how did Menewood compare with Hild?

>91 Shrike58: & >92 vwinsloe:
With regards to "brick-like fantasy novels":
When the fifth book in The Game of Thrones series was released I was in a local bookshop when an old friend of the shop owner arrived looking for something to read. The owner suggested several books to the visitor and ended his suggestions with, "...and of course, you could try the new GRRM Game of Thrones book, A Dance With Dragons." and drew his friend's attention to a large stack of the "brick-like fantasy novels" that was the display for the new book.

His friend looked at the stack of books and replied, "That looks more like a lifestyle choice rather than a book to read."

>93 pgmcc: That's a great comment - and has a lot of truth to it. Epic fantasy reading IS a lifestyle.

>92 vwinsloe: It certainly does move the story along, Hild taking her personal tragedies in this installment as an opportunity to strike out to seek her true fate.

>95 Shrike58: Sounds good then. I will read it soon. Thanks.

>96 vwinsloe: The more you're looking for an immersive read, the better you'll like it.

>97 Shrike58: It will be for a special occasion. Thanks.

I just finished my reread of Dune Messiah. The first and last time I read it was in junior high school in the late 1970s. I didn’t get it really back then expecting a continuation of the heroes journey started by Herbert in Dune. Instead, Herbert uses Dune Messiah to break down the nature of the hero and messiah and as a result produced a tragic political thriller. I am in a much better position to appreciate what Herbert did with Dune Messiah now as an adult rather than when I was a teenager. I still didn’t enjoy Dune Messiah as much as Dune but I still appreciated what Herbert did with it. So Dune I gave ***** but Dune Messiah I rated ****. If I could figure how to give 1/2 stars on LT I would have rated it ***+1/2.

Now on to Children of Dune. Another one I have not read since junior high.

>99 Neil_Luvs_Books:
You can give a half-star by clicking on the last star of your rating. If you give a book five stars and then click the fourth star, the rating will become 3.5 stars.

>99 Neil_Luvs_Books: I read them all in quick succession in high school in the mid to late nineties. I really liked Dune, and also enjoyed Dune Messiah more than a bit. The other ones I only remember vaguely, but those I did not like.

I don't know if you're using a differet platform or interface, but for half stars I click the highest full star again. So to rate a book 3.5, I click the fourth star so it shows 4 stars, then click that fourth star again and it becomes 3.5.

>100 pgmcc: & >101 igorken: And all this time I have been struggling to click the space in between the two stars to get a half star. LOL.

>102 vwinsloe:
It is only easy when you know how. :-)

>103 pgmcc: Everything's getting half a star now!!

>104 vwinsloe:
LOL

I use a single half star to indicate that I have read and rated the book and hated it.

>105 pgmcc:, I think that's the only way to indicate that.

I just write a damning review.

>107 paradoxosalpha: That certainly works, but who wants to invest the time for books that are just. not. good?

If it's really "hate," it feels good to get it out. It's a sort of Nietzschean yea-saying: I reclaim the experience of reading an awful book by composing an entertaining retrospective.

>109 paradoxosalpha: I do the same. I think it's important to warn others. But if people don't read the review before reading the book, and then hate it, then at least my negative review can help give them reassurance, if the book was otherwise popular, that they are not alone in their detestation.

>110 RobertDay:

Yes, sometimes I rationalize it as a public service, but I do selfishly enjoy composing a deserved pan once in a while.

>109 paradoxosalpha: You're probably right about the cathartic value. I rarely feel that strongly about a book but should write a bad review if I do.

It's rare for me too, but I do court it by reading in an exploratory way. Once in a great while, I even read something I expect to be bad, such as Conan the Free Lance.

>113 paradoxosalpha: Great review. Lol.

Finished Ambulance Ship and started The Tombs of Atuan.

>113 paradoxosalpha: I was hoping for a tale of Conan's adventures in the Hyborean gig economy - but that would have been Conan the Freelance....

>107 paradoxosalpha:
I write the damning review as well, but the half-star draws attention to the review.

These days, I generally don't keep slogging along with books that aren't hacking it for me, unless I believe that I have a point that no one else has mentioned.

>118 Shrike58:
Hear! Hear!
A sound approach to use of available reading time.

Finished eXistenZ fairly quickly: a typical tie-in novel which leaves little room for artistic flourishes and echoes the action of the film pretty much one-to-one. Competently done by Priest and with occasional flashes of brilliance that don't otherwise intrude into the narrative. Still interested in the parallels with The Extremes, though.

I've now expanded my original, two-line 2009 review; I'd forgotten I'd written that, but the speed at which I went through the novel suggests that I might have actually read it then and then forgotten that I'd read it - probably the fate of many tie-in novels. Probably one for completists, I'd say.

Now started Tiamat's Wrath.

Finished Mammoths at the Gates, which is now my second favorite iteration in "The Singing Hills Cycle," if only because it really advances the character development of Cleric Chih.

Next up: Goliath.

I read a short story by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in Chicks in Tank Tops today at the library, and then came home to Sharon's post that Steve had unexpectedly died. Such a shock.

Just finished The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. Is it fantasy or historical fiction? I guess it's something of a blend. There is no magic or fantastical beasts in this story. The setting is a thinly disguised version of Spain in the era of the reconquest. The main characters are representatives of Muslim, Jewish & Christian factions (shown as worshipers of the sun, moon & stars), but religion plays a secondary role. The characters are excellent, the world-building richly realized, the plot has sufficient action to drive the story. Recommended.

Finished The Tombs of Atuan and started The Technician.

>124 ChrisRiesbeck: Now *there's* cognitive dissonance. You must like to alternate genres & styles, as I do.

I am reading Elsa Bloodstone: Bequest, a pretty cheesy Marvel Comics tie-in novel.

>123 ChrisG1: One of my all-time favorites (despite the way he plays with us in the ending).

I've just finished A Trail Through Time, from Jodi Taylor's Chronicles of St. Mary's. A slightly different tone from the previous entries; a four-star read.

Finally read the latest Murderbot episode, System collapse. Fun.

>122 ronincats: Oh no, that's very sad news. They made such a great team writing the Liaden books.

I finished Cryptonomicon (review posted)!

Now it's on to The Other Wind, thanks to a recent delivery from the library fairy. I think I have to read it fast before >124 ChrisRiesbeck: catches up with me. We might be sharing a public library for this purpose!

>131 paradoxosalpha: Nice review.

My review was posted on March 30, 2019. About a week later, I was watching a show on one of the digital tv channels called Abandoned Engineering, and suddenly they were showing us around the abandoned offshore fort in the entry to Manilla harbour that features in the novel!

I just finished Children of Dune and posted my review. Bottom line: I much better appreciated this book as an adult than I did when I read it in high school in the late 1970s. But such a challenging read when so many protagonists from the original Dune have changed their aims and loyalties. And the way that protagonists work against each other because they don’t know what each other is thinking. This is no simple good guy vs bad guy kind of story. It is much more complicated than that. And I found that the nature of prescience and the past voices made many of the first-person narrators unreliable. In high school I didn’t have the same appreciation of the unreliable narrator that I do now. And with this read I found it interesting that I had a better understanding of the melange prescience to be unreliable. Which, as I wrote in my review, makes the book a little more realistic for me: each of us is the unreliable narrator of our own life.

Four decades ago I would have rated this book 2/5 stars. This time, 4/5 stars.

Next up: God Emperor of Dune.

I think Dune will be my next series reread, but it might not be until 2025.

>134 paradoxosalpha: Reading all of those Dune novels is certainly a commitment I am finding! But it is so interesting to return to them as an adult compared to when I was a teenager.

>130 Sakerfalcon: >122 ronincats: I was sorry to hear about Steve Miller, too. I've enjoyed many of the Liaden books. Definitely popcorn books, but good popcorn.

Wrapped up Goliath. Not a fun book, and I didn't care for the mosaic-like narrative approach, but the prose is excellent. There is also no doubt that if the powers that be could run away from this planet, they would treat most people as "externalities" to be written out of the equation. That Onyebuchi has a new novel forthcoming also pushed me to get on with the job at hand.

Will be finishing up the month with Assassin of Reality.

>125 rshart3: For sure, I like to jump around. Like others, I'm doing the Earthsea cycle, having only read the original trilogy long ago. But I can't binge a book series in one continuous go any more than I can a TV series, so I'm interspersing non-fantasies.

Finished Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn. I've never been one to read books that are the "further adventures" of popular movies or TV shows, but I saw a favorable review of this & decided to give it a try. I found it fairly enjoyable - it is kind of fun to revisit those familiar characters & tropes of Star Wars. This is the first of a trilogy & I expect I'll continue on.

Finished Tiamat's Wrath very early this morning; this instalment definitely kept me reading on to see what happened next! Some sad surprises and one revolving door, but still on target. (Though I did raise an eyebrow where Chrisjen Avarsarala's grand-daughter commented on the old woman's likely reaction to her Laconian state funeral and then had to explain - for the benefit of some readers, I suspect - the significance of "you could power a planet by hooking a turbine to her right now"...)

About to start Chris Priest's The Separation in my memorial catch-up read.

I finished reading The Other Wind, and thus completed my five-month reading project of Earthsea. My review is posted to LT. Now I'm starting Veniss Underground.

Just started Loki's Ring by Stina Leicht. I enjoyed Persephone Station a couple of years ago, and so far this one promises well too.

>141 paradoxosalpha: Thanks for those reviews of the six books of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. I enjoyed reading your take on them. I hope to reread this series in the next couple of years. Like you, I read the original trilogy when I was in grade school and many times since. But the subsequent three volumes I have only read once as they were published when I was older.

>143 Neil_Luvs_Books:
I am glad you enjoyed my reviews. The reading project was really worth my time. I have read other Le Guin books too: The Word for World Is Forest and The Lathe of Heaven. But I have yet to read either of what I understand to be her most significant sf works: The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness.

>144 paradoxosalpha: Those two are special. The other Hainish books and short stories are also well worth reading, IMO. I think my favorite is City of Illusions, not so much for the plot or the characters but rather for the premise Le Guin was exploring in that book.

>144 paradoxosalpha: The Dispossessed is drier and more polemical than most of hers; it's important but I've never warmed up to it. The Left Hand of Darkness is unique and wonderful. And don't forget her books of essays and short stories! She was an incredibly clear writer and thinker.

Knocked off Assassin of Reality, which basically read like a rehash of the first book in the trilogy, only not as good; the first book feeling like a perfectly acceptable free-standing novel.

Finished Some desperate Glory and wow! Thanks for the recommendation, I really enjoyed it. A lot more than Emily Teshs historical fantasy books, even though those are also fine.
Perhaps I am just more into Science Fiction at the moment.

>144 paradoxosalpha: >145 ScoLgo: >146 rshart3: Le Guin’s Hainish series is one that I have not yet completed. I have read City of Illusions, The Dispossessed, and The Left Hand of Darkness enjoying each of them. I must eventually get to the other Hainish titles.

Finished another Winston juvenile classic.Lester Del Rey's Rockets to Nowhere. These tales really reflect their times. Atomic power fuels all vehicles and rocketships,but at the same time there is a great fear of radiation,no wonder written less than a decade after Hiroshima.
Scientists are regarded with awe,but paranoia about spies and infiltration by the enemy (never outright identified as USSR,but its obvious.}are dominantin this tale. A young man notices that lots of scientists and engineers are disappearing,supposedly dying in rocket accidents etc. He sets out to discover what has happened and who is behind it.del Rey's stolid writing mutes the tension and paranoia somewhat,but it ends up a bit dull. that makes 29/37 of the series read.
I also read Poul Anderson Three Hearts and Three Lions,his extremely influential pre Tolkien fantasy about a chevalier from the Arthurian cycle/Carolingan knights of a Charlemagne ,but a little distorted in an alternative world.
Michael Moorcock was heavily influenced by this book,as was the Dungeons and Dragons world.
I am not a fantasy fan really,but I could see it was well written with some philosophy and themes,with an amnesiac Everyman engineer hero,but it was somewhat spoiled for me by the godawful dialect some of the central characters use,a sort of mangled scots mixed with would be mediaeval style speech.It just grated on me and repeatedly pulled me out of the story. interesting book all in all,but it didnt live up to the hype I saw by famous writers and critics. I am still firmly on the SF side.

I've started The blighted stars by Megan O'Keefe. I really enjoyed her previous trilogy and hope this one is as strong.