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What Are You Reading? Second Quarter, 2023


Fragile Bird
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Finished Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: The Stone of Farewell, last night, and started To Green Angel Tower Part 1 this morning.

Gods but I hope it's a pacier book than Stone of Farewell. It took me four months to get through that damn book. 

Still not sure why he didn't just officially declare it a quartet instead of a trilogy, given that the publisher has a note *explaining* to readers that they had to divide the book into two parts. If you're going to do that, call it a quartet! 

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12 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Finished Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: The Stone of Farewell, last night, and started To Green Angel Tower Part 1 this morning.

Gods but I hope it's a pacier book than Stone of Farewell. It took me four months to get through that damn book. 

Still not sure why he didn't just officially declare it a quartet instead of a trilogy, given that the publisher has a note *explaining* to readers that they had to divide the book into two parts. If you're going to do that, call it a quartet! 

I think it was published in hardback as a single volume, apparently it's one of the longest novels ever published.

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On 4/17/2023 at 4:12 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

The Children Of Gods And Fighting Men by Shauna Lawless is historical fiction set in Viking Ireland with some incidental and mostly peripheral fantasy aspects. If you recognize the reference in the title then this book is for you.  

I really enjoyed it, but I didn't get the reference in the title (my complete ignorance of Irish history was sadly cruelly exposed when I read the afterword and then wikipedia).  Elaborate please?

Anyway, I'm starting the Final Architecture series now that the trilogy is nearly complete.  I should read the books right?

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Slower than intended, but I finally finished You Only Live Twice, the last real long form Bond story from Fleming. Which means... @Fragile Bird, it's finally time for me to start the book you went out of your way to get me. Also, you really did screw up not buying more copies with that specific cover art. Just looked up one that I paid $20-$30 on Amazon and it's now $96 for the one copy left.

Edited by Tywin et al.
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1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I really enjoyed it, but I didn't get the reference in the title (my complete ignorance of Irish history was sadly cruelly exposed when I read the afterword and then wikipedia).  Elaborate please?

Gods And Fighting Men by Lady Gregory is a widely read compilation of Irish mythology gathered from a much older oral tradition and some medieval written sources.  I would guess that most people reading this new series would have read Lady Gregory’s volume.  It covers the heroic folklore of the Tuatha De Danann and the Fianna, IIRC.  And it’s well worth a read.

So the title of this novel is an allusion to the descendants of those Tuatha De Danann.

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Three more recent reads:

The Body Falls by Andrea Carter, #5 in her Inishowen series of cosy mystery novels set in the rugged and isolated northwest of Ireland.  Another enjoyable read and I’ll continue to pick these up now and again to intersperse heavier or grittier fare.

Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City by KJ Parker is a fantasy but like a historical fiction set in an alternate world; no magic or dragons or anything beyond the mundane.  I enjoyed this one despite not enjoying The Folding Knife several years ago.  Once again we have a first person POV recounting their great genius In outmaneuvering everyone around them.  An extremely contrived series of setbacks arrives in waves but fortunately the protagonist has some unique personal experience or knowledge that will conveniently sidestep disaster each time.  Perhaps the siege setting made it more fun this time, and the wry humor of the narrator definitely helped, but there’s still a lot of suspension of disbelief required.  I’d recommend this but I wouldn’t return for more of the same too quickly.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman is another literary fiction from the author of A Man Called Ove.  Once again it’s a sweet story (or mawkish and schmaltzy if you’re congenitally cynical, like me) about relationships, with the author’s favorite trope that anyone under the age of 40 has been enslaved by technology and materialism to be soulless and empty, but they can be liberated through connection to unappreciated older people who are still real and earthy and authentic.  In this novel, the plot centers on a father-son relationship as co-workers in the police department as they investigate a bizarre crime that really just needs some more compassion and understanding.  I know I sound like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds but I get contact diabetes from novels like this.  My father would love it, FWIW.

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I finished Octavia Butler's Kindred and felt it ended very suddenly. It was as though it just... stopped, even though all threads were tied up correctly. I much prefer her Parable of the Sower.

M. R. Carey's Infinity Gate was excellent. There were too rather alarming coincidences that almost threw me off, but they were sort-of explained towards the end. Over all, recommended.

Currently reading North 40, a graphic novel by Aaron Williams and Fiona Staples.

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Finished listening to Royal Assassin. Gods what a frustrating book!! But like in a good way? Hobb is a master at making one feel emotions, even negative ones. This is the middle book of the first trilogy, and it ends in a very middle book kind of way--the larger threat still looms, our heroes do get some victories, but overall you really want things to be resolved in the next book. Unfortunately I've read the next book so I know what sort of resolution is coming...and yet I'm ready to be hurt again.

Now I'm listening to Dune Messiah. I probably should have stopped after Dune, as I recall the series becoming pretty weird and unenjoyable in later installments, but the library had the audiobook so here I am again. I've only read the later books once and it was in high school so perhaps an adult perspective will be better.

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3 hours ago, IlyaP said:

@Werthead we're seeing over here in Kangaroostan that ICE's new Malazan novel, Forge of the High Mage, was officially published by Transworld in the UK earlier this month? Has anyone else over in UKania seen this book on shelves?

I need to pick it up. I'll be honest, my reading has been utterly atrocious for at least six months, so I need to get back into the vibe again.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I need to pick it up. I'll be honest, my reading has been utterly atrocious for at least six months, so I need to get back into the vibe again.

So it's real, eh? I'm perplexed as to why it's out in the UK (and North America?) now but from what I learned today at Galaxy Books, Australia won't receive copies until early August

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Recently I have been collecting books that are considered classics or important works that I have never read, with the aim of filling these gaps in my reading experience.

So this past weekend I pulled The Blue Star off of Librivox.  Fletcher Pratt has been held up to me as a key luminary in the science fiction world, but for whatever reason, I had never read any of his work.  The Blue Star is purportedly the apex of his science fiction writing, so it seemed like a good choice, plus a quick glance at the Librivox page indicated that it was read by Mark Nelson, a reader I particularly enjoy.

However, this book is not at all to my taste, despite the fact that Pratt clearly is a master of his craft as an author.  His prose and technique is fine, but his story is something else.  The story begins and ends with a completely irrelevant and unnecessary framing device.  The protagonist has no agency whatsoever, and is generally driven from one scene to another by outside forces or his juvenile lusts.

The story contains SO MUCH gauche love-making and allusions to petting by a timid and wierdly circumspect protagonist, much of it seemingly from the viewpoint of a 14-year-old boy.  His love interest is equally bereft of agency, and her virtue is constantly under threat by yet more horny but ineffective men.  The MacGuffin is dependent upon the protagonist's chastity, so any tension is a sickly miasma of thwarted teenage lust, often driven by lack of clear communication between the protagonist and his love interest.  Bleagh.

The worldbuilding is well done, but the world itself is a sort of magic-oriented French Revolution grim dark land full of partially-explained conspiracies and long explanations of competing ideas and religions that no reader can possibly care about.  I particularly objected to the extended discussions of the Vegan Free Love religious people, who appear, lecture the other characters and then move them to some other situation or place, leave, and re-appear in the story to thrust the plot along its lumpen way once again, like a bunch of pseudo-Benjamin Franklins without the charisma.

So Pratt is clearly a good writer, but his subject and story in this particular book are really dreary.  Also, three or four of the chapters in the audiobook were read by a woman with a southern accent for no good reason that I could see, and this didn't do anything to enhance my enjoyment.  Maybe I will read Fletcher Pratt again someday, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so based on this first experience.  I can't believe I soldiered all the way through that one.

 

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The Gate to Xoran is a hard-charging story by H.G. Wells, but not that that H.G. Wells.  Basil Eugene Wells wrote from WWII to the 80s, and for marketing purposes, a lot of his stuff is printed under the H.G. Wells name, or else H.K. Wells.

It features all of the Golden Age tropes, including clearly being written for the 14-year-old boy Zorral mentions above and featuring the phrase, "...the unleashed fury of one hundred horsepower..." just to let you know when it is set.

Snake-headed aliens from a planet orbiting Rigel have sent a representative to Earth to establish a gate that will fold space and allow their armies to march onto the Earth, subduing it to their will via a machine that operates using vibrations.  There are fist fights, gun play, and a damsel in distress.

Ten out of ten pulp Sci Fi.

 

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Well, I’m still making my way through T. Kingfisher books that were available at the library, reading the Paladin series now. I’ve liked the first book, Paladin’s Grace. So different from the other two I’ve read so far. I accidentally started on the third book, Paladin’s Hope, and was disappointed, so I hope when I get back to it I’ll feel warmer towards it. This world has humans and non-humans in it, and people belong to different religious sects that have their own gods. Many of the gods have warriors called Paladins, who guard and protect and in the case of this sect, righteously kill people. I’ve not yet heard the explanation why, but at the start of the book the sect’s god dies, driving it’s priests, administrators and Paladins into insane grief that causes almost all of them to kill themselves or die in a red tide of madness when they try murdering everyone around them, or starve to death or just curl up and die. Three years later there are only 7 Paladins left, taken in by another sect. There’s a creature that kills people and takes over bodies by putting a porcelain head on decapitated bodies, running them until they rot. There’s a poisoning mystery and false accusations plot. All in a very different style than Baking and Nettle, although as in Nettle and Bone the main characters are older.

I found Book 3 annoying because the main characters in the opening chapters go on and on lusting after each other. Six or seven or eight chapters. The pair are male characters we meet starting in first book, but their sex has nothing to do with my annoyance, six or seven chapters of a straight couple graphically lusting over each other would be just as annoying. All I could think of was “this book has likely been taken off library shelves across Florida, Texas and a dozen other US states”. I guess that really guarantees I’ll finish it.

At the same time I listened to Jasper Fforde’s Lost in a Good Book, the second book in the Thursday Next series. Book 1 has a waiting list and 2 was available so I just jumped into it (I’ve listened to/read it before). Book 1, The Eyre Affair, was his first book, there are 7 so far in the series. If you haven’t read any of them yet I highly recommend trying The Eyre Affair.

Thursday lives in an alternate earth where the Crimean War is still going on, the Nazis invaded England successfully and there was a war of liberation, there’s no UK, Russia has a Czar and the Whig party still exists in the House of Commons. This is a world where time travel exists, genetic engineering is far advanced (there are dodos, mammoths and Neanderthals) ducks are extinct, there are no airplanes but they have travel tunnels that drop through the center of the earth and get you to Australia in less than hour. Literature is fantastically important and so many people want to change their names to that of famous authors they have to be numbered (“John Milton 432”).

Thursday is a literary detective who makes sure people are not changing plots or forging books written by famous authors. Characters in books are self-aware and can jump between books. Her uncle Mycroft jumps into Sherlock Holmes and introduces himself as Sherlock’s brother. In The Eyre Affair the villain steals the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript and starts changing the plot. Then he steals Jane Eyre and kidnaps Jane. Rochester, btw, saves her life at one point, and eventually Thursday, seeing how much he suffers in the book, changes the ending to, guess what, the ending we have in this world. But there are also other plots running through the book and the sequels, I’m skipping them for simplicity. Oh, her dad, Colonel Next (her mom is Wednesday) is a renegade time-jumper, and Mycroft is a brilliant inventor. The books are an utter pleasure to read, and it’s wonderful to imagine living in that parallel world and interacting with books, up to being able to read yourself into one. I saw on Wikipedia that Fforde got 87 rejections for the book before a firm finally took the risk of publishing him, thank heavens!

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 I just finished Glass House by Charles Stross. It was quite enjoyable and had a lot of references I did catch but quite a few I had to look up. One that I did catch and gave me a jolt is one I don't think even Stross was aware of. A good part of the plot concerns a computer virus called Curious Yellow. Apparently it is named after a real computer virus. For those of us past a certain age I have to say that it brought up an even older reference, namely a Swedish movie called I Am Curious(Yellow). When I was a young lad it played in Toronto and was the cause of a lot of censorship as it was quite explicit in its depiction of sexual activity.

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1 hour ago, maarsen said:

 I just finished Glass House by Charles Stross. It was quite enjoyable and had a lot of references I did catch but quite a few I had to look up. One that I did catch and gave me a jolt is one I don't think even Stross was aware of. A good part of the plot concerns a computer virus called Curious Yellow. Apparently it is named after a real computer virus. For those of us past a certain age I have to say that it brought up an even older reference, namely a Swedish movie called I Am Curious(Yellow). When I was a young lad it played in Toronto and was the cause of a lot of censorship as it was quite explicit in its depiction of sexual activity.

Google doth call...

ETA: Looks like a serious-minded film with things to say about generational change. What a disappointment!

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On 4/26/2023 at 7:39 PM, Fragile Bird said:

 

At the same time I listened to Jasper Fforde’s Lost in a Good Book, the second book in the Thursday Next series. Book 1 has a waiting list and 2 was available so I just jumped into it (I’ve listened to/read it before). Book 1, The Eyre Affair, was his first book, there are 7 so far in the series. If you haven’t read any of them yet I highly recommend trying The Eyre Affair.

Thursday lives in an alternate earth where the Crimean War is still going on, the Nazis invaded England successfully and there was a war of liberation, there’s no UK, Russia has a Czar and the Whig party still exists in the House of Commons. This is a world where time travel exists, genetic engineering is far advanced (there are dodos, mammoths and Neanderthals) ducks are extinct, there are no airplanes but they have travel tunnels that drop through the center of the earth and get you to Australia in less than hour. Literature is fantastically important and so many people want to change their names to that of famous authors they have to be numbered (“John Milton 432”).

Thursday is a literary detective who makes sure people are not changing plots or forging books written by famous authors. Characters in books are self-aware and can jump between books. Her uncle Mycroft jumps into Sherlock Holmes and introduces himself as Sherlock’s brother. In The Eyre Affair the villain steals the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript and starts changing the plot. Then he steals Jane Eyre and kidnaps Jane. Rochester, btw, saves her life at one point, and eventually Thursday, seeing how much he suffers in the book, changes the ending to, guess what, the ending we have in this world. But there are also other plots running through the book and the sequels, I’m skipping them for simplicity. Oh, her dad, Colonel Next (her mom is Wednesday) is a renegade time-jumper, and Mycroft is a brilliant inventor. The books are an utter pleasure to read, and it’s wonderful to imagine living in that parallel world and interacting with books, up to being able to read yourself into one. I saw on Wikipedia that Fforde got 87 rejections for the book before a firm finally took the risk of publishing him, thank heavens!

Love Fforde. Just finished a re-read of The Big Over Easy and I'm desperate for a new audio listen, but instead of grabbing The Eyre Affair as it was available, I kept browsing and when I went back it was on wait list. I did recently listen to book seven on a lark...

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Plowing through Colin Woodard's The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down at the moment, as I needed a break from Tad Williams' wristbreaker of a MST novel. There's much here to enjoy, in terms of the details and information Woodard provides. Utterly fascinating stuff.

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