June 2011 Reading Thread

[Cuchulain]

Finished Reynolds' Absolution Gap. The novel is great in terms of setting, characters, concepts, prose, etc., but it suffers from the same problem as Redemption Ark: the plot moves at a glacial pace. Still, I enjoyed reading it. I also really like the ending (which apparently turned out to be a disappointment for most readers), probably because it made more sense to me since I read the short story "Galactic North" first.

Haven't decided what to read next yet. Probably something shorter after those two 600+ page novels.

[Mjolnir]

I finished Karen Russell's Swamplandia! a couple of days ago. Though the two share close to nothing in terms of their subject matter at a glance, reading this relatively close to Obreht's The Tiger's Wife highlighted some qualities the books do have in common, foremost their combination of "literariness" with extreme readability. They're explicitly thinky books, these, and there's no attempt to disguise that. But they're also couched in very readable terms with stories that move quickly and engagingly, and never feel as though this is being done just because that dirty plot thing is the only way you plebes can absorb my literary messages. They're "literary" stories, whatever that means, but they're literary stories that never feel like they're condescending to be stories, which is part of what litfic -- rightly or wrongly, in each individual case -- sometimes gets accused of amongst we genre fans; the stories here are vital parts of the overall literary package, as they always are in the best litfic. If anything, I found The Tiger's Wife even more effortlessly readable. It flowed lightly over the brain -- or no, not lightly, but easily -- which is odd, since Swamplandia! is about a family growing up in a gator-wrestling amusement park and then getting lost in various forms of brightly-coloured glittery Hell, whilst Obreht's book is about a country ripped asunder by a war that kills thousands. I think part of the reason for this might be because, for me, Swamplandia! was an unexpectedly depressing book, though

the ending is not an out-and-out downer or anything of that kind.

Reason I found it so heavy, despite meaning every word of that babble above about it being very engaging, is that I took one of the story's central prongs to be concerned with the death of myth. Not myth on the macro cultural level, but the death of personal myth, in this case the myths of the Bigtree family and to some degree of the swamp around them. The book's protagonists have grown up within a constructed web of family legends sewn by their father, the Chief, and throughout the book these legends -- the larger-than-life figures and accomplishments -- are consistently exposed as very ragged round the edges in the harsh light of day.

The ending twists this somewhat, seeming [to me] to advocate not so much a rejection of myth as a reevaluation, an incorporation of the original legends into a demanding real world that will keep hurting the characters until they learn to adapt to it, learn to mediate their weirdness.

Good book, especially if you like mildly surrealist thoughtromp.

I've recently started C J Cherryh's Cyteen, and though I'm enjoying it progress is slow. Cherryh, unlike many other high-quality sf authors of my experience, has learned to just stop worrying and love the infodump. Or no, that's not true; it's more a case of reverse-infodumpage. We're very much dropped directly into the world and made to swim along, but the shere amount of detail and Cherryh's perfect willingness to just lay it all out means there are still dense explanatory passages; we just don't automatically know what the hell's going on in them. There's no "as you know, Bob", but there is a lot of expository narration and dialogue, and people talking about things in what feels like a very disjointed fashion -- and is probably a better simulation of how people speak than a lot of more orderly dialogue, really. I think I may take my time with it, but I'm beginning to find my feet in the corner of the author's Alliance/Union universe being explored here and starting to really enjoy it. Still dunno what's going on, but baby steps, I suppose.

[Bahimiron]

Finished The Wordy Shipmates and Help! A Bear is Eating Me! and would give them both two stars for different reasons. HABiEM is short, yet somehow manages to be about thirty pages too long. Whereas Shipmates isn't very well organized and Sarah Vowell, whose previous books I found engaging and charming, seems to set up a thesis (the Mass Bay settlers were proponents of education) but then just gives a biography of a few decades in John Winthrop's life. There's plenty of good stuff in there, but I ended up with my mind wandering pretty frequently.

I'm diving into Michelle Paver's Dark Matter now. A horror novel with a Lovecraftian setup involving a 1930s expedition to the south pole. It's got one of the problems many books that use the conceit of journal entries share. That being that few people write a journal like they'd write a book and as such the believability suffers. I'm also starting up Purgatory Chasm the first book from new amateur sleuth mystery writer Steve Ulfelder. Framingham, MA is a pretty mean place to set a novel.

[SkynJay]

Finished Leviathan Wakes.

Gotta necro the old thread on it.

Finally got a copy of Wise Man's Fear from the library. So exciting. Nothing like a book you had to wait for.

[Grack21]

Finished A Betrayal In Winter. Totally awesome.

I think it's funny how much some people complain about books not having sex/people saying fuck, yet these books are so popular here.

[SkynJay]

Finished A Betrayal In Winter. Totally awesome.

I think it's funny how much some people complain about books not having sex/people saying fuck, yet these books are so popular here.

Who complains?

I have said it before, that series is the best one this forum showed me.

If someone complains about the lack of cussing, just hit them please.

[Grack21]

Who complains?

I have said it before, that series is the best one this forum showed me.

If someone complains about the lack of cussing, just hit them please.

Oh it's come up a few times in other topics. Some people think certain books are odd because they have graphic violence but skip over the f word and the sex9Sanderson comes up a lot). I don't always agree but I see there point. There is a small few who think anything without graphic sex/people saying fuck is automatically worthless. I call them the Why Didn't Frodo Say Fuck group.

[Myshkin]

Oh it's come up a few times in other topics. Some people think certain books are odd because they have graphic violence but skip over the f word and the sex9Sanderson comes up a lot). I don't always agree but I see there point. There is a small few who think anything without graphic sex/people saying fuck is automatically worthless. I call them the Why Didn't Frodo Say Fuck group.

Tell them that Lolita had zero profanity and no gratuitous sex scenes.

[Clevtrev3]

Oh it's come up a few times in other topics. Some people think certain books are odd because they have graphic violence but skip over the f word and the sex9Sanderson comes up a lot). I don't always agree but I see there point. There is a small few who think anything without graphic sex/people saying fuck is automatically worthless. I call them the Why Didn't Frodo Say Fuck group.

Yeah, I've seen Sanderson criticized for it quite a bit, though off the top of my head I can't think of another author people say that about.

To stay on topic, I just finished reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's a humorous story about Armageddon and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[Datepalm]

Yeah, I've seen Sanderson criticized for it quite a bit, though off the top of my head I can't think of another author people say that about.

Honestly, who actually says this? I'll criticize Way of Kings from here to lunchtime, but the lack of swearing is hardly the problem.

Started a re-read of To Say of Nothing of the Dog, becuase its been an annoying week and its a comfort read, and Foucaults Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, becuase it seemed interesting.

[Happy Ent]

Finished Bakker’s noir crime novel Disciple of the Dog.

Competent entry to the genre. Remarkably funny for Bakker. I’d read another one. The underlying conceit of an “unforgetting” neurological disorder in the narrator is a good gimmick for a detective novel.

Very annoying Bakkerisms. Repeated phrases like “He was one of those men who continually [...]”. Misuse of “literally”.

I counted only one appearance of “hoary”. 4 farts.

[Mjolnir]

Only problem I had with swearing in The Way of Kings is that, while Sanderson understandably objects to using the stronger sorts of English profanity, he insists on making up his own. "Storm it!" may be a nice little additional brick in the world building, but I find it sounds somewhat silly. The characters do in fact cuss in WoK, more than in Sanderson's previous books I think, though I don't understand why it should be an issue save that it makes some sense for the war camp setting of much of the plot.

I do find the value judgments of what constitutes unsuitable material in some secondary world fantasies a little bit puzzling and I might potentially include Sanderson here. Dozens of soldiers may be laid waste, their blood soaking the broken ground and their viscera flowing from them like blue, ropy snakes [to be fair I don't think Sanderson personally does viscera but you get the idea]. But two people engaging in consensual naked intimacy? That's icky.

So, about 120 pages in, I think I'm temporarily bouncing off Cyteen. I'm enjoying it in theory and often in practice as well, but there are a lot of characters presented in traumatic situations early on and only one or two of them are really jumping out at me as distinct personalities. Also some world building details have me a bit confused -- religion, for instance, as the characters use religious terminology more than most 21st century folk but I'm not sure what the worship situation is on Cyteen; this isn't an objection, just adding to the confusion a bit.

Spoilers for Cyteen and its sequel, Regenesis:

Ari's just died, and on the one hand things are getting tense and on the other I can't help feeling like I'll leave it there a little while. Problem is, Ari was the only character who was really clicking for me -- save for Grant, perhaps, but as he's defined mostly by trauma and azi helplessness said clicking and individuality wasn't always that satisfying. Ari Emory's a horrible horrible human being who rapes minors and I didn't understand her, but she was very much an individual, and I valued that in such a complex cast moving through a complex world.

It also might not help that, all by accident, back when I hadn't read any Cherryh, I stumbled across some spoilers from Regenesis. So I now know who killed Ari. Well, not specifically, since most of the names I ran across didn't mean anything to me then, but I know it wasn't Jordan and I know the identity of the real culprit ends up being somewhat lame. This shouldn't matter, as I understand the murderer's identity isn't really the point of the plot, but it does suck out some of the urgency.

I'll definitely be getting back to it at some point, though.

[williamjm]

I finished Poul Anderson's The High Crusade. The idea of 14th Century English Knights high-jacking an invading alien spacecraft and going on an interstellar crusade is a fantastic premise for a story. Anderson does a decent job of making it seem almost plausible that medieval warriors could overrun a technologically-advanced but not particularly militaristic alien society, and the image of nuclear warheads being launched by trebuchets is a memorable combination of old and new technology.

Beyond the basic premise there isn't that much depth to the story and the characterisation is a bit bland. The faux-medieval writing style of the narration is quite apt for the setting, but it doesn't really make for a particularly compelling read.

It was an entertaining read, but other than the basic premise it's a fairly unexceptional novel and I wouldn't rank it as highly as Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions".

Next I think I'll read Chris Wooding's Black Lung Captain.

[nickg]

Reading The Book of Lost Things. Haven't read it in several years, but it is absolutely one of my all time favorites. I was actually a little worried about re reading it, but I'm having a slow day at work, and don't think I have looked up from this book in 4 hours. Love it

[Contrarius]

I finished Hexed by Kevin Hearne yesterday. It was a lot of fun, IMHO a big step up from the first book of the series.

I just started Already Dead, by Charlie Huston. The narration in the first coupla minutes of the audio version is GREAT. I'm crossing my fingers that the whole book is this good.

[SkynJay]

Reading The Book of Lost Things. Haven't read it in several years, but it is absolutely one of my all time favorites. I was actually a little worried about re reading it, but I'm having a slow day at work, and don't think I have looked up from this book in 4 hours. Love it

One more book that was on my to-read list and I then forgot about. Re writing it in now.

[Seli]

Finished Red Seas under Red Skies by Scott Lynch.

For some reason the switch between perspective styles and the use of the omniscient narrator irritated me a lot in the first view chapters. But in the end an enjoyable read.

[PeterWilliam]

About midway through Abraham's The Dragon's Path. I really liked the first three books to the Long Price quartet, but the finale read like a train wreck for me. Finding his latest amazing. The characters are sooooo human, they could be anyone/everyone you know. A great start so far.

[mashiara]

I finished Exit Music by Ian Rankin and I found it incredibly boring to read, to be honest. I just couldn't get interested in the plot or the protagonists. Maybe if I had read some of the previous books and I was familiar with Inspector Rebus I would have been more interested in it, but as it was, reading it became a chore.

I also read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Now this was a little book that completely caught my attention even though there was very little action to be seen, just one convalescing policeman bored out of his mind who turns to solving one historical mystery based just on research. I loved reading it, I'll have to see what other books of hers seem good.

I quickly reread The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and I think I enjoyed it as much as the first time, even though I vaguely remembered the plot twist and the ending.

I'm thinking of starting The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz next.

[Eponine]

Halfway through Snow Crash audiobook. It's alright, good enough to get us through Kansas without too much torment. But the way that YT talks is kind of annoying, like the way adults incorrectly imagine teenagers to be. More interested in the technology parts than the story, doesn't feel as outdated than a lot of similar accounts bc alternate history rather than potential future.