August 2008 Reads, Near-reads, and Aborted Reads

[Sophelia]

[quote name='RedEyedGhost' post='1464860' date='Aug 1 2008, 08.55']I've been reading about this fracking heat wave in Denver. We broke a the consecutive days with a high above 90 today @ 19 straight days. The old record of 18 days had stood for 134 years! The next four days are projected above 90, but - yay! - Tuesday is only supposed to be 88. I'm so glad I'm not in TN anymore :P[/quote]

It was odd to read this in the August book thread, as I just arrived in Denver yesterday and today it has been raining all day and not exactly hot.

So far this month I have read a detective story called [b]The interpretation of murder[/b] by Rubenfeld for aeroplane reading. This was lent to me by a friend at work - it's been going round the office because we're all psychologists and it features Freud and Jung (in New York in the 1900s). It was so-so. A bit of a muddle in places but the author did manage to convey some atmosphere and authentic details were mixed with fictional ones in a slightly odd way.

Anyway, back to fantasy of my own choice, I am now reading Crowley's [b]Little, big[/b] though too early to give an opinion on it - I waver from thinking it eccentric and original and huge in scope, to thinking it a bit twee and traditional in its fairy-tale style. I will give more impressions when I finish it.

P.S. Astonished reading this thread to see there are people who read Jeffrey Archer, seriously. :o

[RedEyedGhost]

[quote name='Sophelia' post='1471224' date='Aug 6 2008, 23.50']It was odd to read this in the August book thread, as I just arrived in Denver yesterday and today it has been raining all day and not exactly hot.[/quote]

It was what I was reading right before I posted :P That streak ended yesterday at 24 days, shattering the old record of 18 days 134 years ago (but global warming is all b.s., right...). Lucky weekend for the convention, because last weekend was brutal. The scattered showers suck, btw, you might have got rain all day, but I was 15 miles south of downtown, and barely got sprinkled on.

[Myshkin]

Just finished [i]An Autumn War[/i] by Daniel Abraham, and I loved it. Even better than the first two.

[Gigei]

[quote name='The Pita Enigma' post='1465625' date='Aug 1 2008, 15.27']Still stuck on Amber (about 20 pages from the end of book 6), and still can't see why, when at a recent MTG Prerelease, when I stated that Martin pwned Zelazny, people got pissed and told me I don't know what I'm talking about.[/quote]

You might notice, if you google Zelazny, that while he won several awards, he never won any for the Amber books. Obviously this is because the Amber books aren't his best work.

Also, I don't think people would particularly like anyone putting Zelazny in favor of GRRM given this:

[url="http://www.georgerrmartin.com/musings-roger.html"]http://www.georgerrmartin.com/musings-roger.html[/url]

*rolls eyes*

[Ormond]

Over this summer so far I have read:

[i]Assassin's Apprentice[/i] and [i]Royal Assassin[/i] by Robin Hobb, both of which I really enjoyed. I'm someone who read her [i]Liveship Traders[/i] series first, though, and I think I liked that trilogy slightly better. This may just be because the [i]Assassin[/i] books are told in first person and I've never quite liked that still as much as third person narrative. But Hobb does have a knack of making me wonder what FitzChivalry is going to find out about his world next. :)

[i]Memoranda[/i] and [i]The Beyond[/i] by Jeffrey Ford, which are sequels to his [i]The Physiognomist[/i], which I read a few years ago. Ford is a good writer with interesting concepts, though perhaps sometimes a bit dark for my taste. I thought [i]The Beyond[/i] was the best of the three books up until the ending, which I didn't care for and sort of left me feeling a bit cheated. But for anyone who likes more literary fantasy, I think he's worth reading.

[i]The Others[/i] by Margaret Wander Bonanno. This is an "anthropological science fiction" novel. It is also told in first person. It concerns the relationship between two different humanoid species that share the same planet. The Others of the title believe they are descended from settlers from another planet; they are much more technologically advanced than the People who inhabit the large continent on the opposite side of the planet from the archipelago of islands they live on. I liked Bonanno's characters, but think she overdid the nobleness of the Others as contrasted with the primitive violence and misogyny of the People. And the story is based on the idea that Others have been disguising themselves as People for centuries and observing the growth of the People's culture. Bonanno never seems to understand why that in and of itself might be a really creepy fact for the People to learn about when they finally develop enough to send a ship that "discovers" the Others' islands. The Others have sort of been operating on a Star Trek "prime directive" of not interfering with the development of the People while still observing them, which I find very unrealistic for a group which has been living on this planet for so many thousands of years that they have forgotten exactly where they originally came from. Bonanno writes mostly Star Trek tie in novels, and it seems like she allowed that to affect her own world building too much.

[i]The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket[/i] by John Weir was my next book. It is an AIDS novel written back in the 1989. Weir does an excellent job of writing a fairly humorous novel about a 28 year old gay movie buff who's dying before he's really had a chance to completely grow up, and how that affects some of his family and friends. When I finished the book I wished the author was availabe so I could ask him questions about it. Such as: Just how autobiographical was this book? You were about 28 when you were writing it; did it help you "grow up" in a way your title character never manages? Where do you think the surviving characters would be today? I think the questions are a sign that it really is an excellent book -- I think it will stay with me longer than the average "realistic" novel.

After that I read [i]A .38 Special and a Broken Heart[/i], a short book of short-short stories by Jonis Agee. The stories are mostly about poor or very blue collar people in Missouri, usually told from a woman's perspective. Well written though a bit bleak, and nothing in it that will stick with me as long as Weir's characters and story will.

I have just started [i]Centaurus[/i], an anthology of science fiction stories by Australian writers published in 1999. So far I've only read the first story, "Flowering Mandrake" by George Turner, which seemed like more of an interesting exercise in thinking what intelligent life that had evolved from plants instead of animals would be like, rather than a good story. But I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the volume to see if there really is a different "Aussie" sensibility in science fiction. :)

[Deornoth]

I've just finished reading Patricia Briggs' 'Iron Kissed', third in the 'Mercedes Thompson' series. It follows the same lines as the previous two books but avoids becoming repetitive by ramping up the action and the urgency. It's an entertaining read and I'm hoping there will be more to come. My full review is over [url="http://www.graemesfantasybookreview.com"]Here[/url].
I've never read anything by Steven Brust so I thought I'd give his new book, 'Jhegalla', a go next...

[The Pita]

[quote name='Gigei' post='1471364' date='Aug 7 2008, 06.48']You might notice, if you google Zelazny, that while he won several awards, he never won any for the Amber books. Obviously this is because the Amber books aren't his best work.

Also, I don't think people would particularly like anyone putting Zelazny in favor of GRRM given this:

[url="http://www.georgerrmartin.com/musings-roger.html"]http://www.georgerrmartin.com/musings-roger.html[/url]

*rolls eyes*[/quote]
I'm actually talking about people who have only read Amber, and nothing else of his.

[AprilFool]

Just finished Mike Resnick's [u]Stalking the Unicorn[/u]. It was a great story, and I wish I had picked this one up when it first came out. I have already picked up the second book [u]Stalking the Vampire[/u], and I am on an active quest to find the short stories about John Justin Mallory.

[ambyr]

[quote name='Deornoth' post='1471545' date='Aug 7 2008, 11.18']I've never read anything by Steven Brust so I thought I'd give his new book, 'Jhegalla', a go next...[/quote]

This strikes me as a bad idea--I don't think Jhegaala stands on its own all that well. It has plot, but it's much more about shifts in Vlad's emotional state and worldview. If you don't know what he was like before (Phoenix) and after (Athyra), I'm not sure how meaningful watching him develop will be. I'd start with Jhereg, Yendi, or Taltos.

[Ratatoskr]

[quote name='Gabriele' post='1470740' date='Aug 6 2008, 22.38']Well, Carey's prose is lovely, imho, but it's definitely not crisp.[/quote]

Thanks for the heads-up, but it's too late. I already started it. Didn't get very far yet, but I think I'll like it.

[quote name='RedEyedGhost' post='1471031' date='Aug 7 2008, 04.23']The bolded stuff just screams [u]Already Dead[/u] by Charlie Huston. Trust me, just read it.[/quote]

Thanks for the tip! I'll put it in my September order from amazon. Sounds cool!

[Gigei]

Jhereg was awesome when I first read it and it is definitely one of the better fantasy works. For some reason, when I re-read it, it wasn't as great but it's still good stuff.

[OverHill]

Finished the Book of the New Sun by Wolfe. On to the Curse of Chalion by Bujold. Looks very good, and I'm surprised that she is almost never discussed on the board

[Plessiez]

Yesterday I finished [i]Last Argument Of Kings[/i] and - as with the previous books in the trilogy - I was rather underwhelmed. I liked the ending a lot, but I thought the first half of the book had some serious pacing issues, and I continued to find the characters pretty flat. Don't think I'm really the target reader though; big scale epic fantasy battles really aren't my thing at all, and this book had ... a lot of them.

Currently I'm halfway through Ken MacLeod's [i]The Night Sessions[/i]. Enjoying it so far (with some reservations that might be addressed later). Like a lot of MacLeod's earlier work, the backstory for the future history depicted here - in this case a 'Second Enlightenment' leading to the establishment of fairly militant secularist governments in the USA and (the successor states of) the United Kingdom is the end result of widespread disillusionment with a decades-long continuation and escalation of those nations' military presence in the Middle East - strikes me as [i]deeply[/i] implausible, but the novel itself - a near-future police procedural - (sensibily) doesn't really try to dwell on any of the details of that.

[ThRiNiDiR]

My bloggie friend and a fellow Malazan fan - [i]Blindman[/i] - posted his thoughts on [b]Return of the Crimson Guard[/b] on [color="DarkSlateGray"]Realms of Speculative Fiction[/color].

excerpt:
[i][color="DimGray"][font="Book Antiqua"]Ian Cameron Esslemont has decided to write an epic book. Taking us over several continents (or at least island chains) he brings us to the continent of Quon Tali. We visit numerous locations, previously only hinted at – Unta, the dreaded Stormwall, more of otataral mines, Wickan planes and of course Li Heng and lands of Seti. And all of these will leave you unsatisfied.
Unta and Li Heng have no soul, Stomwall it's function and his assailants still remain a mystery, otataral mines seem more like an prison camp for elderly and senile, and lands of Seti and Wickans nothing but a green blots in the distance. True, the main worldbuilding has been done by Esslemont and Erikson years ago, but still one expects something more tangible when it comes to local geography. So don't expect Seven Cities or Darujhistan from MBoF, or even Malaz city from "Night of Knives". Here the places are no more than badly painted scenography in front of which the story unravels.[/font][/color][/i]

As you can see he wasn't too kind to the book...read the [url="http://sf-fantasy-books.blogspot.com/2008/08/ian-cameron-esslemont-return-of-crimson.html"]whole review[/url].

[Ratatoskr]

[quote name='OverHill' post='1472530' date='Aug 8 2008, 12.53']On to the Curse of Chalion by Bujold. Looks very good, and I'm surprised that she is almost never discussed on the board[/quote]

The missus is reading it as we speak and enjoying it. To be honest, this doesn't bode well for the book. ;)

[Werthead]

Finished [i][b]The Briar Knight[/b][/i]. Excellent book. Straight into [b][i]The Charnel Prince[/i][/b].

[dits]

My Amazon order finally arrived. Started The Furies of Calderon immediately. Looks ok so far.

Just a word on The Curse of Chalion by Bujold. I really enjoyed that book. Cazaril was a really sympathetic character and I really invested in his story. I just devoured that book and had a hard time putting it down.

[Sarkophagos]

Hey everyone, this is my first time posting but I've been watching the boards for a while.

[b][u]Reading[/u][/b]

[b]Crooked Tree[/b], Robert C. Wilson - A thriller/horror story that takes place in Michigan and incorporates Native American history and lore. I'm not that far into it, but so far it's good. Suspense is building, but nothing really scary has happened.

[b]Elantris[/b], Brandon Sanderson - I'm about 100 pages in and I'm not digging it. [b]For those of you who have read it, should I keep reading?[/b] I'm just not connecting with the characters.

[b][u]Finished Reading[/u][/b]

[b]The Name of the Wind[/b], Patrick Rothfuss - I really liked this book, and I'm looking forward to the next two installments. I'd recommend it.

[b]Orbiter[/b], Warren Ellis - I've owned this for a while but never read it until last week. I liked it a lot. I'd recommend it.

[b]The Boys from Brazil[/b], Ira Levin - This book was written in the 70's, and it's eh. My brother had it on his bookshelf. It's a quick read, but I can't really recommend it. The plot has to do with a plan to clone Hitler by Dr. Mangele.

[b]The Gunslinger[/b], Stephen King - I actually liked this a lot.

[b]The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword[/b], George R. R. Martin - Well, this doesn't need a description.

[b][u]Next Up[/u][/b]

[b]Daughter of the Blood[/b], Anne Bishop - [b]Any thoughts on this one?[/b]

[b]The Sparrow[/b], Mary Doria Russell - I've been told this is great.

[Starkess]

Welcome to the board! :cheers: I've never actually read any of those, but a couple of them are on my (quite long) reading list. :)

[Bellis]

[quote name='Sarkophagos' post='1472929' date='Aug 8 2008, 10.03'][b]Elantris[/b], Brandon Sanderson - I'm about 100 pages in and I'm not digging it. [b]For those of you who have read it, should I keep reading?[/b] I'm just not connecting with the characters.[/quote]

Welcome!

Personally, I thought it was pretty conventionally plotted, with painful prose/dialogue and too-perfect lead characters. The idea of the leprosy curse thingy was interesting, but the execution was not. i don't drop books, but I did end up skimming through most of it. You might as well skim to the end, it's a standalone and not too long.