Third Quarter 2020 Reading is a Joy

[Peadar]

2 hours ago, ljkeane said:

 

  Hide contents

I particularly liked that the significant pre apocalypse tech Koli found was basically a fancy ipod.

 

Is it not a sequel to 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City? I thought it was.

Yeah, it is, sort of. But it would work perfectly well as a standalone in my opinion. Still, no need to avoid the first one when both are good

 

[Wilbur]

As a palate cleanser, after reading Crime and Punishment and Pride and Prejudice with my daughter for her summer reading assignments, I re-read The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

As a more mature reader this time around, it was very different experiencing the story this reading.  So much of urban science fiction, realistic fantasy, etc. is prefigured in the book, and for the first time the viewpoint of the characters made sense to me.  Chesterton was a terrific stylist, and his characters are outstanding, and his criticism of organized religion, politics and the concentration of wealth really makes a greater impression.

Also, and this is sort of a spoiler, but the humor of all the Days realizing that they are all undercover policemen, and that they have all been investigating each other and thus wasting their time, is right on point.  It was as if Chesterton could foresee the Patriot Act a century earlier, and indicate all the ways in which overreaching authorities make bad/funny decisions.

Great stuff, especially the element of the absurd.

[Luzifer's right hand]

So finished Network Effect the first full length murderbot novel. I think things were getting a little bit stale but this novel worked for me and we learn more about the world the murderbot lives in.

[Peadar]

I have started Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest, The Doors of Eden.

[mushroomshirt]

On 8/17/2020 at 10:25 AM, hauberk said:

Finished Mississippi Roll.   Quite satisfied with it - it did not feature enough of my favorites, but still a great opportunity to revisit a marvelous shared world.  On immediately to Low Chicago.  It's got a nice twist that, I don't believe has been done with WIld Cards previously.  

I have not read any wild cards, but thinking about it.  Any thoughts?  Suggestions on where to start?  (At the beginning?)

[Ormond]

Just finished Gregory Benford's Across the Sea of Suns, second in his "Galactic Center Saga" series of science fiction novels.

Though not written in first person, the book goes back and forth between two viewpoint characters: Nigel, who is on a starship investigating planets around other stars and Warren, who is back on Earth dealing with alien invasion and a nuclear war the aliens are able to trigger among Earth's nations. I liked Nigel as a character better than Warren -- he has aspects of the lovable curmudgeon that make him an interesting combination between frustrating and admirable. The "evil aliens" here are highly evolved machines, though during this novel you actually never see one of them, just the devices they monitor organic life forms with. 

The copyright on this book is 1984. There are aspects of it dealing with gender and race that irked me and I wonder if Benford would have written some of this the same way today -- among other things, he seems to promote too much of a "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" difference between the genders that I find unsupportable. It's not a book I'll ever want to read again, but the story it creates is interesting enough that I will probably go on to the next book in the series some day to find out what happens next. 

P.S. I just read the Wikipedia article on this novel (I only normally read such things after I myself have read a book) and it points out that Benford rewrote the ending of this book for later editions. I read the original version which ends with only a vague hope humans may overcome their machine adversaries. Evidently in the rewritten edition Nigel and other survivors of a battle his starship engages in board a disabled alien craft and find information which tells them where to go next to fight the machines. 

[hauberk]

1 hour ago, mushroomshirt said:

I have not read any wild cards, but thinking about it.  Any thoughts?  Suggestions on where to start?  (At the beginning?)

I'd start at the beginning.  While stories are mostly stand-alone, there is definitely a continuity and mythology that builds on the collective.  The books are currently being re-released - I believe that the first 8 are out currently, as well as the newer releases.  At least a few of the ones that have not yet been re-released are pretty scarce.

[ljkeane]

I've just started Kazuo Ishiguru's Never Let Me Go. I've had it on my kindle for a while but I've put off reading it because it strikes me as likely to be extremely depressing. So far reading it hasn't changed my opinion.

[Astromech]

I finished David Laskin's The Long Way Home, following the experiences of several immigrants fighting for the USA in WW1. Interesting reading of their return to Europe after having emigrated to the US at the turn of the 20th C. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Finished The Silk Roads: A New History Of The World by Peter Frankopan, a non-fiction which retells world history with a focus on the region from the Levant to western China.  It makes the case that this was the cross-roads of trade, wealth, knowledge and religion for most of human history and should therefore be viewed as central point from which to consider history unfolding, as opposed to the more western centric lens that most of us would have learned: Mesopotamia & Egypt -> Greece -> Rome -> Dark Ages -> Renaissance & Exploration -> Reformation & Enlightenment -> Democracy & Modernism.  It’s very interesting up to circa 1800, even if it is a slightly repetitive cycle of mounted steppe tribes make a sweeping invasion and seize the taxing rights on the silk roads, whose wealth allows a flourishing of construction in selected cities and accumulation of precious metals and minerals, which funds scholarship and art, which lasts for 2-3 centuries before another steppe tribe rides in to start the cycle over.  I think it’s too generous to the various horsey conquerors because it never considers what culture might have arisen from all that trade wealth of it were not subject to periodic invasions and kleptocracies. 

It is especially though to see how major catalysts to western history would be viewed quite differently in this region.  But beyond 1800 the book really bloats as it amasses vast details from a greater supply of primary sources, without there being any great consequence.  It over-stretches to claim the Persia was the lynchpin of the tussle between European empires for the entire 19th century (it was barely an afterthought), and then laughably claims that the persistent sectarian wars of the 20th century make this region the centre of the world for the past century too.  The unfortunate reality is that the Middle East has steadily lost wealth (and therefore investment in art and scholarship), status, influence and relevance since northwestern Europe developed long range maritime trade.  And even the very fortunate oil wealth for the region did not offset that cultural decline as they tried to preserve the outdated culture from their golden age.

The first two thirds of the book were an enjoyable read, but it was a slog for the final third.  And overall I’m left questioning the author’s objectivity. 

Also finished Every Man A Menace by Patrick Hoffman, an unusual contemporary crime novel based on drug dealing.  The opening feels slightly similar to the opening of American Gods (but without the gods) as a prison convict is released and finds a job that leaves him caught between two sides that he doesn’t understand sufficiently.  LSD and sleep deprivation lend it a trippy feel for a while too.  This was an enjoyable read but it uses an unconventional narrative structure, somewhat akin to Pulp Fiction.  Each different story and POV retains all of its suspense even when you realize that they must converge. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

19 hours ago, Ormond said:

Just finished Gregory Benford's Across the Sea of Suns, second in his "Galactic Center Saga" series of science fiction novels.

Though not written in first person, the book goes back and forth between two viewpoint characters: Nigel, who is on a starship investigating planets around other stars and Warren, who is back on Earth dealing with alien invasion and a nuclear war the aliens are able to trigger among Earth's nations. I liked Nigel as a character better than Warren -- he has aspects of the lovable curmudgeon that make him an interesting combination between frustrating and admirable. The "evil aliens" here are highly evolved machines, though during this novel you actually never see one of them, just the devices they monitor organic life forms with. 

The copyright on this book is 1984. There are aspects of it dealing with gender and race that irked me and I wonder if Benford would have written some of this the same way today -- among other things, he seems to promote too much of a "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" difference between the genders that I find unsupportable. It's not a book I'll ever want to read again, but the story it creates is interesting enough that I will probably go on to the next book in the series some day to find out what happens next. 

P.S. I just read the Wikipedia article on this novel (I only normally read such things after I myself have read a book) and it points out that Benford rewrote the ending of this book for later editions. I read the original version which ends with only a vague hope humans may overcome their machine adversaries. Evidently in the rewritten edition Nigel and other survivors of a battle his starship engages in board a disabled alien craft and find information which tells them where to go next to fight the machines. 

I read the books as a pre-teen and think I remember people starting to switch genders just for fun in one of the later books. I might be mistaken though as I used to get books in a pretty random way at that point.

[ljkeane]

So, yeah, Never Let Me Go is pretty grim.

Next up I'm going to read Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Doors of Eden.

[Ormond]

4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I read the books as a pre-teen and think I remember people starting to switch genders just for fun in one of the later books. I might be mistaken though as I used to get books in a pretty random way at that point.

That wasn't in the "later books" -- that begins in Across the Sea of Suns and I thought it showed a poor understanding of what the experience of transgender persons really is. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

15 minutes ago, Ormond said:

That wasn't in the "later books" -- that begins in Across the Sea of Suns and I thought it showed a poor understanding of what the experience of transgender persons really is. 

Ah seems like I did not remember correctly. As I wrote I remember it more like a just for fun thing than anything meaningful. Certainly not a respectful or insightful approach.

I was completly uninterested in such things at that age though and just accepted it as a SFish thing. I think I had read a Culture book that mentioned switching genders as a thing you just do before that. I'm quite sure I had not heard or read anything about transgender persons at that point being a kid from rural Austria.

[Caligula_K3]

16 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Finished The Silk Roads: A New History Of The World by Peter Frankopan, a non-fiction which retells world history with a focus on the region from the Levant to western China.  It makes the case that this was the cross-roads of trade, wealth, knowledge and religion for most of human history and should therefore be viewed as central point from which to consider history unfolding, as opposed to the more western centric lens that most of us would have learned: Mesopotamia & Egypt -> Greece -> Rome -> Dark Ages -> Renaissance & Exploration -> Reformation & Enlightenment -> Democracy & Modernism.  It’s very interesting up to circa 1800, even if it is a slightly repetitive cycle of mounted steppe tribes make a sweeping invasion and seize the taxing rights on the silk roads, whose wealth allows a flourishing of construction in selected cities and accumulation of precious metals and minerals, which funds scholarship and art, which lasts for 2-3 centuries before another steppe tribe rides in to start the cycle over.  I think it’s too generous to the various horsey conquerors because it never considers what culture might have arisen from all that trade wealth of it were not subject to periodic invasions and kleptocracies. 

It is especially though to see how major catalysts to western history would be viewed quite differently in this region.  But beyond 1800 the book really bloats as it amasses vast details from a greater supply of primary sources, without there being any great consequence.  It over-stretches to claim the Persia was the lynchpin of the tussle between European empires for the entire 19th century (it was barely an afterthought), and then laughably claims that the persistent sectarian wars of the 20th century make this region the centre of the world for the past century too.  The unfortunate reality is that the Middle East has steadily lost wealth (and therefore investment in art and scholarship), status, influence and relevance since northwestern Europe developed long range maritime trade.  And even the very fortunate oil wealth for the region did not offset that cultural decline as they tried to preserve the outdated culture from their golden age.

The first two thirds of the book were an enjoyable read, but it was a slog for the final third.  And overall I’m left questioning the author’s objectivity. 

 

I still haven't read this book, but I do have it and I always use the opening sentence as an example to my students about how not to begin a history paper:

"Since the beginning of time, the centre of Asia was where empires were made."

shudder

[mushroomshirt]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:00 AM, hauberk said:

I'd start at the beginning.  While stories are mostly stand-alone, there is definitely a continuity and mythology that builds on the collective.  The books are currently being re-released - I believe that the first 8 are out currently, as well as the newer releases.  At least a few of the ones that have not yet been re-released are pretty scarce.

Thanks for the advice.  Just bought the kindle edition of book 1.

[Starkess]

My boyfriend challenged me to read 7 books in a week, and I just barely managed it. They were all YA books which helped (though was unintentional--2 trilogies I had already picked out prior to the challenge and 1 that I had been meaning to re-read for a while.

The first trilogy, Delirium, was a YA dystopia set in a near-future alternate USA where love is considered a disease and everyone is "cured" of it at 18. A rather silly premise, but the author (Lauren Oliver I think?) made a pretty fun yarn out of it. The ending was a bit of a let-down. It's one thing to have an open-ended ending and another to just...not really have an ending at all. The love triangle was potentially interesting but not handled well in the long run.

The other was finishing up The 5th Wave trilogy. This was fun, with a lot of twists and turns, some of which worked better than others. The ending here was well-done, a definitive ending but not so neatly tied up--certainly one is left to wonder about what the characters and the world does after the last page is over.

Lastly, I re-read the Emily series by L.M. Montgomery. I absolutely love these books and have read them so many times that reading them is just sort of reminding myself of the details, but they're wonderful and Emily Byrd Starr is everything I wanted to be as a budding young writer. Alas, so far I have not climbed the Alpine Path half so well as she!

I also finished listening to Finale, the last book in the Caraval trilogy. It was not good. There were many parts of it that enraged me in their romanticizing of abusive relationships.

Now I am listening to The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I've always meant to read these and so far they are quite interesting. It's been a while since I've read classic sci-fi and it is such a different style and such, but still enjoyable.

[Isis]

On 8/12/2020 at 6:26 PM, Jo498 said:

This also ties into some of my recent reads. I am now at my 4th Inspector Morse novel (not in the proper order, I read first, last, second and now one from the middle, depending on what I could get quickly and cheaply). I got into this by watching the TV prequel series "Endeavour" and a few episodes from the 80s-90s British TV series "Inspector Morse". The TV series rather changed Morse's character and made him far more likable. The Morse of the books is more or less an alcoholic, quite an asshole to his colleagues and subordinates, both shy and lecherous around women (nowadays the books should probably come with a mild warning that the perspective a bit too often is that of a dirty old man) and fairly crazy in some other respects. Sure, he is also a brilliant detective and the books are a bit conceited but very well plotted overall. They kept some spleens and some of the abrasiveness in the TV series but made him much nicer overall and left out the fondness of strip clubs and porn. And the young Morse in the prequel is almost an angel compared to the Morse of the books.

I think they handle this rather well in Endeavour actually. He starts out as this sort of innocent, puppyish young man whom you presume is going to be so wholesome that he's probably going to be sad and lonely and unlucky in love. Then as the seasons go on you see him become a bit of a womaniser (in a cold and calculating way) and then in the later seasons you see him make some really poor choices in his life/work because of his love life. I think this is done very well, because it would be easy to make him an unsympathetic character based on this behaviour. But they manage to provide nuance and depth where you are able to think: 'wow, this guys makes some horrible decisions in his personal life but that doesn't necessarily make him a bad person'. AND I think this does very well to segue from Young Baby Morse into the hard-bitten cynical old (creepy womaniser) Morse of the original series - to blend the two roles very coherently so that you watch the young becoming the old.

On 8/22/2020 at 7:10 PM, ljkeane said:

I've just started Kazuo Ishiguru's Never Let Me Go. I've had it on my kindle for a while but I've put off reading it because it strikes me as likely to be extremely depressing. So far reading it hasn't changed my opinion.

It really is and that is why I chose not to watch the film after reading the book.

[Jo498]

7 hours ago, Isis said:

I think they handle this rather well in Endeavour actually. He starts out as this sort of innocent, puppyish young man whom you presume is going to be so wholesome that he's probably going to be sad and lonely and unlucky in love. Then as the seasons go on you see him become a bit of a womaniser (in a cold and calculating way) and then in the later seasons you see him make some really poor choices in his life/work because of his love life. I think this is done very well, because it would be easy to make him an unsympathetic character based on this behaviour. But they manage to provide nuance and depth where you are able to think: 'wow, this guys makes some horrible decisions in his personal life but that doesn't necessarily make him a bad person'. AND I think this does very well to segue from Young Baby Morse into the hard-bitten cynical old (creepy womaniser) Morse of the original series - to blend the two roles very coherently so that you watch the young becoming the old.

Interesting idea. In the books the big "trauma" that is only hinted at in the early Endeavour is described (although not explained that well) in "The third mile". He was a very promising student at Oxford who fell in love with an even more promising girl but somehow they messed up both their relationship and their academic future and Morse failed his finals (whatever the fancy Oxonian name for the exam was) and eventually ended up in the police force.

I'd also like to stress that that tension between the differen potrayals of Morse I perceived was not meant as a criticism on any of the formats. All of them are very good and recommendable, among the best of their respective genres I have encountered, in fact the TV series (both, although I have only seen a handful of the "classic Morse" but Endeavour up to season 7) are probably relatively better than the books because there are quite a few pretty good crime mystery books but TV series I am not so sure about.

[mushroomshirt]

Started reading the first Wild Card book (Wild Cards I).  I am about halfway through.  Just finished the Turtle chapter.  I think maybe I am having trouble with the format.  Maybe I should have realized this, but I find the short stories very disjointed.  I guess I was expecting more of a common thread that would weave the stories together.  Instead it seems like a collection of separate short stories that don't really go together.

I enjoyed a few of the chapters quite a bit.  The sleeper (Roger Zelazny) and golden boy (Walter Jon Williams) chapters in particular I thought were outstanding.  The rest I could take or leave.  I wanted to like GRRM's turtle chapter and almost did.  In that chapter Dr. Tachyon was almost interesting in a Theon-in-a-Dance-With-Dragons kind of way, but even more pathetic somehow.  I didn't care about Tach the same way I care about Theon (and he is my favorite character in ASOIAF).

One other thing I thought was strange is that the effects of the Wild Card virus were never really clearly explained.  Nor were the terms Ace and Joker (maybe I missed this somewhere but I don't think so).  I think I figured it out through context but that lack of explanation was a bit jarring.  It also seemed like Dr. Tachyon's cure that reverses the virus 30% of the time sort of came out of the blue in some stories.  Sometimes it is important and sometimes it isn't even mentioned.  He has this cure right after the virus strikes, that seems pretty fast to develop.  I understand this is actually in one of my favorite chapters (the sleeper), but it affected the overall cohesiveness of the stories for me.

So far the chapters I liked were all at the beginning of the book (I also liked the Jetboy story a lot - Howard Waldrop).  I've maybe stuck with this book longer than I would have otherwise since I had a pretty good start with it.

Am I off base here?  Should I stick with the book or give up now?  I'm intrigued by the world, but would probably prefer a novel format rather than an anthology.  Are there any more novel-like editions of Wild Cards that I might like better?