What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[Birdjaguar]

Sea of Tranquility. Another great quick read. The author, Emily Mandel, also wrote the book Station Eleven which was such a great TV series. I was quite surprised to see Red Deer Canada take a bow even if it was a small role compared to Vancouver. Cool quote from the book:
Not a spoiler.

 

[Synobun]

May 2022


Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (4/5)

Spoiler :

I was never exposed to mythology as a child, so my first experience with it was as an adult. It did not interest me. So, reading a mythological retelling was a gamble.

This was surprisingly enjoyable. The prose was well written and everything generally moved ahead at a good clip. The reason I don't give five stars is because I don't like how the story arcs ended. They all express futility. Perhaps that is the point, but it's not exactly something I love.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling (4/5)

Spoiler :

It's pretty decent, though I found the twist somewhat disappointing, and the ending doubly so. A little too Stockholm Syndrome-y.

A Broken Darkness by Premee Mohamed (1/5)

Spoiler :

I was skeptical after the first book but decided to give the sequel a chance. This is much worse: it's extremely messy, the inciting incident makes no sense, and frankly, Nick is somehow even worse than he was in the first book. The structure, pacing, prose, everything, is just off.

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang (4/5)

Spoiler :

This is a very good book and I enjoyed reading it. The only reason it's not a five-star rating is because Rin is a passive character for the majority of the book, and I find that agitating after a while. It makes sense in the context of the narrative, but it eventually got to the point where I was pulling my hair out because she was yet again just letting things happen to her. Also, this is a story with no happy endings, ever, and I'd personally like to see something good happen at least once.

Still, I'm looking forward to the third book and when it becomes available at my library.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (1/5)

Spoiler :

This is an admittedly harsh rating. The writing is actually quite good. The problems I faced, ultimately, were disjointed POV/narrative and the unfortunate fact that I didn't find these disparate stories intriguing. The first part was okay, but the second lost me completely, and the third was similar. I also faced an issue here where I just read a book with a similar tone, so I feel burnt out on this kind of struggle narrative.

All this is to say is that I do think this would be of interest to people who aren't spent on this kind of story, and also it might be appealing to someone who simply likes different characters than I do. I really do think the actual prose is solid; this wasn't a style problem for me. Just substance.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Chaos Come Again

copyright 1996

by

Wilhelmina Baird

which is part Sci-Fiction and part Fantasy.

The plot is about a female medic traipsing the multiverse to track down
her sociopathic husband who has absconded with their tragic child.

It is set in a time when humans have merged with a symbiotic
organism that has tele... this and tele... that powers.

It is all action, humorous and I quite enjoyed it.

Albeit bits of it were a little overdone.

 

[Josu]

Ended Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski
Starting Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski

 

[Hygro]

Finally finished Sadly, Porn by Edward Teach, MD a week back. It's madness. He hides 1,100 pages in a 475 page book. Tells you not to read it. Binding was poor, typos in a few places. Almost all of the text is in footnotes. Seemingly unfocused and hard to follow at times. One of the best written, most fun, most powerful books I've read in a long time.

 

[River_Ghost]

The Knowledge: How to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a cataclysm, by Lewis Dartnell.
and
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Today I finished reading:

The Widowmaker

copyright 1996

by

Mike Resnick

which is both Sci-Fiction and a Western.

The plot is about a clone created from the Galaxy's deadliest bounty hunter.

It was most enjoyable, but:

Warning: if you read this, you may never think about Father Christmas quite the same.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'm CG/NE.
NE is usually paperbacks from the charity shop that will return there when finished.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm CG/NE.

Are you taking any medications for that condition?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Just checked The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller out of the library.

 

[Grendeldef]

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie.

In Finnish as I excitedly thought I found a Christie novel which I haven't read. Few pages in and it seemed somewhat familiar and then it hit me - I actually have it, an English paperback bought by my father in the 50s. One should read one's books more often is the general lesson to be learned, if any, here.

This is partly due to my new hobby checking few larger recycling centres dealing with books & furniture on semi-regular bases and buying interesting old stuff usually 2€ per book. I'll soon have full set of Tarzans printed in 30s & 40s amongst other things. My main issue with expanding personal library is that it takes a lot more time to read than buy a book.

 

[Takhisis]

Tevye the Milkman, by Sholem Aleichem.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Today I finished reading a second hand book:

Great British Wit

edited by

Rosemarie Jarski

copyright 2005.

It is basically a compendium of a number of British (or near British) people's witty quotations.

One of my favourites is Winston Churchill on Sex.

It is an extraordinary way of bringing babies into the world. I don't know how God thought of it.

But most of the readers here might find its contents a bit dated.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Just checked The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller out of the library.

Excellent book. Wonderful characters and creative world building. Satisfying. The setting is an alternative world similar to our 19th c. with some alternative human capabilities.

 

[Takhisis]

Have you read The British Character, Edward?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Probably I read a lot of Punch 45 years ago.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'll soon have full set of Tarzans printed in 30s & 40s amongst other things. My main issue with expanding personal library is that it takes a lot more time to read than buy a book.

My own set of Tarzan books is newer than that. But I did manage to get them all (and have read most of them).

There was just one small problem with the set I had... Tarzan is one of the barbarian adventure series my grandparents approved of, and when my grandmother happened on a book at the farmers' market that had a similar style of artwork on the front cover, she bought it for me - not paying attention to the title but assuming it was another Tarzan book.

Turns out she'd bought me Nomads of Gor.

Tevye the Milkman, by Sholem Aleichem.

One could almost make a musical of that.

I'm still working on my stack of Highlander novels, but have also started reading Uranus, by Ben Bova.

JFCOASB, I have no idea how that series went downhill so badly. The first ones were good science-centric space opera, and the 4-novel Asteroid Wars arc is classic space opera with one of the best characters Bova ever created (Lars Fuchs). Venus is the stuff of nightmares as a ship's crew tries to survive the descent/ascent through Venus' atmosphere as little hungry extremophiles eat away at the ship. Mercury is Bova's homage to The Count of Monte Cristo and I love the Jupiter/Leviathans of Jupiter novels (shame there wasn't a third one; it seemed obvious that there should be a way for humans to figure out how to communicate with the Leviathans).

The Saturn/Titan novels aren't bad; there's still enough science in them, plus there are still a couple of characters around from the Asteroid Wars arc.

And then they got boring. The ones involving meeting the aliens are a snoozefest, and now I'm reading a book in which part of the plot involves an astronomer who goes all the way out to a habitat orbiting Uranus to find out if there's life there... and the major part of the plot is that the guy who bankrolled the habitat is actually a drug lord who somehow manufactures and sells his stuff from the habitat, but not to anyone who lives there. WTH?

 

[Josu]

Ended Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
Starting Time of Contemp by Andrzej Sapkowski

 

[tjs282]

I'm still working on my stack of Highlander novels, but have also started reading Uranus, by Ben Bova.

JFCOASB, I have no idea how that series went downhill so badly.

I was gifted this one a couple of Christmases ago. Wasn't impressed with it either, but hadn't read any of the other GT novels, so was maybe less disappointed than you.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was gifted this one a couple of Christmases ago. Wasn't impressed with it either, but hadn't read any of the other GT novels, so was maybe less disappointed than you.

Some of the early novels are fantastic. I loved the first Mars one; it's practically a blueprint for how to get the nations of Earth to cooperate on sending a manned mission to Mars.

I'm starting to think that some of Bova's later novels may have been ghostwritten, at least partially. That does happen with older authors sometimes (ie. Marion Zimmer Bradley, when part of one of her novels was written by Mercedes Lackey; I'm familiar enough with MZB's style that I could tell exactly which parts and which characters were written by each author). I know Bova has never been able to write a good romance subplot, but at least they didn't used to be so godawful boring. It's bad when you put a book down and half an hour later you can't recall what it was about or what parts were especially interesting.

This is the first in-solar system novel in ages that doesn't include the character of Kris Cardenas (the woman who perfected nanotech to the point where she figured out how to inject nanomachines into a human body for various medical therapies, with the potential of allowing the recipient to live for many decades beyond a normal human lifespan).

I get that Bova's themes include science vs. religious fanaticism and human expansion into the solar system was partly to chase the $$$$$$ from mining the asteroids and partly because the climate disaster on Earth made life there untenable for anyone not wealthy enough to escape. But there's been a lot less science in the later novels, and that's disappointing.