What are you reading? Second quarter 2024

[ljkeane]

19 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I laughed aloud at the thought of the challenge a writer would have to make neutropenic precautions a gripping read.  "Quick, apply the antimycotic medical cream!"

Spoiler

It's along the lines of a few other things which have come out in recent years with the fungus controlling the behavior of it's hosts (The Girl With all the Gifts and The Last of Us spring to mind) but it's not particularly well done.

 

[Wilbur]

4 hours ago, ljkeane said:

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It's along the lines of a few other things which have come out in recent years with the fungus controlling the behavior of it's hosts (The Girl With all the Gifts and The Last of Us spring to mind) but it's not particularly well done.

 

You have a good point.  Those plots actually do work, although once you have read The Men of Greywater Station, it is difficult to suspend disbelief long enough to not guess the ultimate outcome.

[Mazzack]

On 4/18/2024 at 7:39 AM, Jaxom 1974 said:

I stumbled upon the works of Walter Moers while looking for new things to read at the library...so I'm now starting The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear...

 

I'll be curious how it goes. I remember my older brother reading it like 23 years ago and regaling me with some really wild stuff, but I have never actually read it myself. So I would love any updates as to whether the wildness or quality hold up to my dim memories of my brother's retellings.

[House Cambodia]

It's taken the better part of a week, but I've just finished Duncan Hubber's Notes from the Citadel.

https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Citadel-Philosophy-Psychology-Song-ebook/dp/B0CQRG5QWP

The author has a YouTube channel that gets virtually no clicks, and had a podcast presence on her many years ago. I'm very pleasantly impressed by both his erudition and accessibility in presenting deeper insights into ASOIAF.

[ljkeane]

City on Fire was good. I'll definitely give a few more Don Winslow books a try.

Next I'm going to read Ithaca by Claire North. North's books are pretty consistently good and it seems fitting to go from one book roughly based on the Iliad to one roughly based on the end of the Odyssey.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

Been swapping between a lot of books without finishing them in the last month - but finally got some out of the way to start in with the new.

There, There by Tommy Orange is a great set of vignettes across the Native American community in the Bay Area, very heartbreaking and funny and poetic - the characters and the voices are great.

The Elric Saga, Part 1, by Michael Moorcock - collection of the first three Elric novels - when I was in middle school, I tried to get into this (and Lord Foul’s Bane by Donaldson).  Really enjoyed it as a tragic fairytale without a lot of back story - the characterizations are about the depth of a Conan novel.

[Zorral]

How Did Fan Culture Take Over? And Why Is It So Scary?

Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment, online arcana and conspiracy theory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/21/books/review/justin-taylor-reboot.html

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/justin-taylor/reboot-taylor/

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/194803857

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/94361-justin-taylor-s-ip-in-the-end-times.html
 

[Wilbur]

I recently received Bruce Holsinger's A Burnable Book, and again, I think I placed the request based on a recommendation from one of the forum members in a previous iteration of this thread.  Whichever one of you reviewed this one, thank you!

The audiobook read by Simon Vance is excellent, as is every performance Vance does.  The plot is thick with unreliable narrators and twists and turns in a royal court sure to appeal to any fan of ASOIAF, the mysteries unravel slowly and with some good turns from predictability, the cryptography is dealt with in a light and non-Neal Stephenson manner.  The historical characters are well-limned, most especially the protagonist and poet philosopher John Gower and his friend and contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer.

The book's strengths lie in its portrayal of the politics of the late medieval period in London, and its weaknesses also lie there as well.  By this I mean that the story and writing transport the reader to the scene and the concerns of the characters so very effectively, but also, as an American and a republican, I can't bring myself to care all that much about threats to the king.  Still, the risks and dangers to the many non-noble characters are real, and the writer makes us care about them and their concerns.

Strongly recommended!

 

 

[RhaenysBee]

Got back on a reading streak in the past few weeks and enjoyed the following reads and listens: 

The Twist of a Knife - this is, I think, the penultimate installment of the Hawthorn series with the last novel coming out some time this autumn.  A lovely, reliable, funny whodunnit that pretends to be real on a masterful level. I love Anthony Horowitz. 

Tales from the Cafe - I bought this 200 pages book in Italy for €15. Not mad, because I love to buy physical books on holiday, but ouch nonetheless. Especially at this exchange rate. * moan-moan * I loved the first novel of this series, and had the same experience with this one. It’s a slow burn, it’s a slight culture shock just because it’s so different from the western literature I grew up on and read (I guess I should branch out more toward Japanese authors and their works). But then it arrives and it hits hard and before I know it I’m crying even though I was thinking hmm it’s kinda dry, it’s kinda dull just half an hour ago. Beautiful beautiful storytelling. Worth every cent I spent on the copy. 

Poor Things - I bought this one on the  trip too. It was an impulse buy because the selection was huge, I was short on time. I saw it, I recognized the title and Emma Stone’s face, I recalled that it was something unconventional, I committed and paid. I don’t even know when was the last time I was this happy with a purchase. The book is delightfully creative (yes I’m 100% sold on the fiction masquerading as fact genre), unpredictable, endearing but also macabre (and I’m 100% not sold on Victorian gothic) in the best way possible. I wholeheartedly recommend it and I couldn’t have chosen better in that odd 10 minutes I spent in the bookshop. 

Empire - I listened to this because the Ascent of Money is only available in an abridged version on audible, so I thought, let’s try this one. I learned a lot, I enjoyed the style. So I went on a Niall Ferguson bender and listened to… 

The Square and The Tower - this one was a bit convoluted for my brain, and I did get lost on his train of thought more often than not. The basic concept of hierarchies v networks was interesting enough though. Still determined to find a full version of Ascent of Money to listen to. So after all this, Audible recommended to me… 

Centuries of Change and Ian Mortimer instantly became my resident favorite historian. I loved this so much. Learned so much, was so happy with perspective, the structured, methodical approach, the style, the myth debunking. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Which led me to…

Medieval Horizons - which is a slightly different arch and structure but mostly the same perspective, trivia, message, etc. enjoyed this one a lot too. I do thing centuries of change is a better written book if one goes down the rabbit hole, and doubles down on the topic, this one’s worth the listen as well. 

 

Edited April 24 by RhaenysBee

[Wilbur]

Another recommendation from an online source included T.R. Napper's Neon Leviathan.  This sort of cyberpunk collection of short stories is in the vein of William Gibson's Burning Chrome, but instead of The Sprawl and Tokyo from the perspective of the 1980s, most of the collection of Leviathan take place in Southeast Asia and Australia with much more modern sensibilities.

Greg Patmore reads the audiobook, and he does a fine job.  T.R. Napper is an Australian social worker of some variety in Vietnam, so he writes whereof he knows in terms of the scenery and worldbuilding, and his critique of the misuse of power by governments and corporations is very cyberpunk - I doubt very much that China is going to enjoy their portrayal here, for example.

None of the stories is very long, but Napper handles the short story / novella form with expertise.  Anyone who enjoys an action-packed short story that skewers the government or corporations of the near future will enjoy cyberpunk in general, and these stories in particular.  Good stuff.

[Jaxom 1974]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:02 AM, Mazzack said:

I'll be curious how it goes. I remember my older brother reading it like 23 years ago and regaling me with some really wild stuff, but I have never actually read it myself. So I would love any updates as to whether the wildness or quality hold up to my dim memories of my brother's retellings.

My time has been limited lately, so only about 250 pages in. It reads easy. It's a odd blend of Shel Silverstein and Suess and some other stuff I can't put my finger on...but  it's enjoyable so far. 

[williamjm]

I read Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I thought it was an enjoyable book to read, it felt a bit more whimsical than most of Gaiman's work and the tone felt a bit reminiscent of Douglas Adams at times - I think Arthur Dent could probably have related to the way events always seemed to be conspiring against Fat Charlie. Since it is a loose sequel to American Gods it is tempting to compare the two, the events here are definitely smaller in scale and I think that does have some advantages since the story felt a lot more focused and I think the pacing was better. The characters were memorable and most of them did get quite a bit of development through the book, although the romantic pairings between people who had only met each other a handful of times felt a bit rushed.

I'm not reading Emily Tesh's dystopian space opera Some Desperate Glory, which has been good so far.

[House Cambodia]

I have a question for you folks, if I may.

I'm writing a novel, and I've consciously set out to subvert so many tropes that I can't quite figure out what genre box I should tick when I come to looking for an agent. A software programme I'm tinkering with insists on calling it "post-apocalyptic", but I don't see it that way. Is it 'dystopian'? Maybe - let me lay out the scenario and you tell me what you think.

I set out to write 'cli-fi', but set it in the very near future where readers could relate to it. So the story begins in 2040 in a world where technology has ceased and the population crashed. The climate is steadily becoming more and more volatile and deteriorating, but with it being barely 15 years from now, the change isn't substantial.

The backstory focuses on 2030. The world was focused on meeting carbon net-zero and other targets in line with the IPCC deadline of 2030. But as we moved through 2030, scientists were able to confirm the deadline to prevent key trigger-points was passed in 2028, and we're too late. It wasn't the climate directly that caused the collapse of society, but people's reactions to it. Due to increasing volatility of trends we currently see such as widespread disinformation and information bubbles, no one is completely sure what happened, but a domino effect happened over weeks, starting with investors panicking and withdrawing funding, declaring bankruptcy and basically foreclosing banks and crashing the financial markets. This led to immediate widespread job losses, losses of services, and technology used to transfer funds including payments of salaries digitally crashing.

With no staff to manage servers and so on, the internet and phone communications were gone, all trade including the transportation and manufacture of foods and medicines were gone. Security personnel, unpaid, had to prioritise their families. Basically there was a wholesale collapse of the economic order leading to the collapse of the political order, society and culture.

I pick up the story 10 years after the initial panic and confusion. The story is mainly rooted in the extremely rural Scottish Highlands. I've found narrative ways to steer clear of the usual tropes of authoritarian governments, militias, guns and all the stuff expected in a typical dystopian America setting.

So on to genre, I don't see 2030 as an 'apocalyptic' event; the climate is still inexorably deteriorating - the heatwaves, rising seas etc are inevitable as the trigger-points were passed, but it will be gradual.

Is it 'dystopian'? It's certainly not "Mad Max" or "Bladerunner", and there's no government like "The Hunger Games" or "The Handmaid's Tale". It's nothing like as bleak as 'The Road' - people do form small communities and try to grow food peacefully with failing technology and poor climate to contend with.

 

So does "dystopian" fit the description, or is there a subgenre I could use (maybe I invented it)? Can you suggest a book or movie that this scenario reminds you of?

 

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[polishgenius]

I think you're probably better off asking that kind of question here:
 

 

 

But also surely use both and also whatever we use to distinguish the mass of climate/environment-disaster novels on the market these days, and see who bites?

[House Cambodia]

51 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I think you're probably better off asking that kind of question here:
 

 

 

But also surely use both and also whatever we use to distinguish the mass of climate/environment-disaster novels on the market these days, and see who bites?

Okay, thanks. I hadn't come across that thread. Mind you, this one seems more popular, so I'll post on both.

 

I'm not writing with a specific market in mind - I'm not even sure if it better qualifies as Young Adult or not, but at some point I'll need to send off an initial submission and describe it in a paragraph or so. I'm just trying to think ahead.

[Zorral]

https://tech.cornell.edu/news/ari-juels-publishes-new-crypto-thriller-novel/

 

[Underfoot]

20 hours ago, House Cambodia said:

So does "dystopian" fit the description, or is there a subgenre I could use (maybe I invented it)? Can you suggest a book or movie that this scenario reminds you of?

 

Thanks for any feedback.

 

You can set the genre as Underfoot's Waking Nightmares because I dread this exact scenario every single day. 

What was Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower categorized as? I haven't read it (yet, it's sitting on the bookshelf next to me as we speak waiting for me to finish He Who Drowned the World), but it sounds quite similar premise-wise. 

[House Cambodia]

4 minutes ago, Underfoot said:

You can set the genre as Underfoot's Waking Nightmares because I dread this exact scenario every single day. 

What was Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower categorized as? I haven't read it (yet, it's sitting on the bookshelf next to me as we speak waiting for me to finish He Who Drowned the World), but it sounds quite similar premise-wise. 

It's generally classed as 'post-apocalyptic', but it doesn't fit neatly, as with mine. Another term that Margaret Atwood coined for The Handmaid’s Tale is "Speculative fiction" She means it to involve a near-future setting where there is no technology that doesn't exist in today's real world (or did in the past). I follow those 2 criteria.

However, it seems most tick-boxy types require you to say which kind of speculative fiction - sci-fi, dystopian or apocalyptic.