Our reads in October

Anothermonth,another pile of books. Happy reading!

Dusty's TBR for October
SF/F reads

James Gunn - Transgalactic ✔
N K Jemisin -The Stone Sky ✔
Elizabeth Moon - Cold Welcome ✔
Jack Vance - Vandals of the Void ✔
Karen Chance - Shadow's Bane

from other genres
John Dickson Carr - Four False Weapons ✔
Anne Fine - The Devil Walks ✔
Iris Johansen - Sight Unseen ✔
Dick Francis - Enquiry ✔
Rex Stout - Too Many Cooks ✔
Quintin Jardine - A Brush with Death

Some people like reading weird fiction/horror in October in honour of Halloween. Anyone doing something of the sort this year? I did have Zelazny's Night in the Lonesome October lined up originally,but as ever I couldnt resist when I had a Zelazny book to hand,so I read it in August! lol.
I have a lot of books to get through this month (and the Vernor Vinge alone is almost 800 pages!). The only book - and its just YA - that is vaguely creepy is Anne Fine's The Devil Walks. But at least its a token read for Halloween.

I don't have anything like that planned this year, but I did recently have cause to recommend Mitchell's Slade House for the purpose. It's a series of linked horror stories, all set in October, with nine years between one and the next. Also, the paranormal aspects have some quasi-sfnal justifications in a narrative universe that is shared with The Bone Clocks.

>2 dustydigger: I just finished The Stone Sky the other day. I really enjoy Jemisin, but this was a heavy read for me.

Next up is The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson.

>5 seitherin: Ah, after doing those two books back to back, you might want to pick up something cheerful and fluffy as a recovery read

>6 Euryale: Oh, my. Good thing I have several mysteries in my reading cue. There's nothing quite like a good murder to clean the reading palate. :D

Starting the month with Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. Actually about a quarter of the way through, and enjoying it so far.

Current e-book is The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. About 1/3 of the way through and finding it quite good but tough going in the early stages due to a lot of character viewpoints and disparate narrative threads to follow.

Print book is Ray Bradbury's The Toynbee Convector collection of short stories. So far, they are all very short at between 7 to 10 pages each. Some good ones in here.

And... tonight will begin my annual re-read of A Night in the Lonesome October. One chapter per night culminating on Halloween.

>9 ScoLgo:

I loved The Dervish House. Starting all over the place with parallel narratives that don't come together until the end is SOP for McDonald, and this is one book where he does it very satisfyingly.

I am half way through The Synapse Sequence. It's good so far. I zipped through the first 200 pages. I plan on reading A Night in the Lonesome October in honor of Halloween. I have never read it, but it gets a lot of good reviews, so I bought a copy. One can never have too much Zelazny and I don't know how I never read this one. I might squeeze in a Stephen King book too.

I have The Freeze-Frame Revolution and Made to Kill from the library. The latter is the first book in the LA Trilogy, of which I have read two novellas and Book #2. They are quick, fun reads. I bought the ebook version of Atomsk after reading someone's recommendation from the September thread.

I have been reading Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton. I think I picked the wrong book, because none of the stories that I have read so far have anything to do with ghosts. Regardless, they are well written and have some interesting characters in them. I have found a lot of the old literature to be much better written then most modern books. Perhaps it is because only the best of the old literature is still available.

>10 paradoxosalpha: Thanks for that. I have read two McDonald titles prior... Brasyl (my first) was exactly as you describe; three distinct narratives - in different centuries no less! - that ended up dovetailing beautifully at the end. Sacrifice of Fools was the other. I found that one a relatively straight-forward type of story. Still complex but not nearly as scattered, as I recall. I have no doubt that The Dervish House will pull together as well. In fact, it feels as though it is starting to do so now...

>11 daxxh: Which version of The Night in the Lonesome October do you have? The HC is illustrated, which adds some fun. The story itself is very much tongue-in-cheek but is also a well-written first-person(?) narrative that reveals more & more as the 'days' go by. Classic Zelazny in that regard. Hope you enjoy it!

Mitchell is famous for transferring themes, characters and places from one novel to another. Love finding references to Cloud Atlas. Not sure if I liked Bone Clocks - the concept was really interesting and the writing excellent, but I ultimately didn't care for it all that much. Have not read Slade House mainly because I am not at all into horror stories

>9 ScoLgo: Huge Bradbury fan; loved that collection.

Our sci fi RL book group is reading Alchemists Daughter, which I am liking so far.

>11 daxxh: Huh, never really thought about that, but yeah as time goes by the wheat and chaff do separate. I love Edith Wharton tho never read that collection.

>11 daxxh:, >15 cindydavid4:, >2 dustydigger:, >9 ScoLgo:, >12 ScoLgo: I'm contemplating reading my first Ken MacLeod book, Learning the World, but I just wanted to chime in and say that I, as an October birthday person am also a great lover of A Night in the Lonesome October. I'm also very fond of Edith Wharton. The last thing of hers I read was her great novella, The Old Maid. For Halloween i'm reading her ghost story, Pomegranate Seed. Is that one in your collection?

>9 ScoLgo: What >10 paradoxosalpha: said. Great book.

My re-read of The Last Starship from Earth surprised me. I had no idea I'd read such an erudite work. Maybe I skipped parts the first time? I suspect I might have done that as a teenager more than I remember.

I'll take a brief break before I dive back into the maelstrom of 1960s SF.

>18 SFF1928-1973: That is encouraging. I know exactly where my copy is so I hope to get around to my reread fairly soon. It was over forty years ago that I read it for the first time. It is one of those books that I leant to a friend and never saw it again but hunted down a copy a couple of years ago.

Now that I think of it, that friend died just a few months ago. Perhaps I shall read it in his honour. (That is a total non sequitur.)

Adding Exit Strategy by Martha Wells to my reading rotation.

>14 cindydavid4: Yeah, I'm really enjoying the Bradbury. Did any of the stories stand out for you? 'Banshee', 'The Laurel & Hardy Love Affair', and 'One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!', and the title story all hit me the right way. 'West of October' is also weirdly interesting. I'm glad I bought a nice hardcover of this as I can see thumbing through it again in future.

>16 lansingsexton: I have read a handful of Ken MacLeod books to date and have yet to find a dud. Haven't read the one you mention yet though so will be interested in hearing what you think of it.

>20 seitherin: Heh. Same here... I have books 3 and 4 on hold at the library. Loved the first one. Thought the 2nd one didn't quite live up to the promise of All Systems Red, but still really enjoyed the murderbot character - going from shy and mentally damaged to brutally efficient and decisive within half a heartbeat. The sarcasm is fun too...

It's also interesting that there is no mention of the murderbot's gender. Clearly there is some human tissue in the construct but there is no indication of it being from male or female origin - could be both, couldn't it? Or neither if grown in a vat or something...?

Scalzi does a similar thing with Lock In and Head On. Two other books I read and enjoyed this year. Even though I knew ahead of time what Scalzi was doing there, (darn those Tor e-mail newsletters that are chock full of spoilers!), I still caught myself constantly thinking of Chris as male. I also find that I personally view the murderbot as female. Don't know if that comes from the 'voice' of each author or from my own bias as a reader - projecting my awareness of the writer's gender onto their protagonists? It's an interesting thought experiment these two authors are running.

>21 ScoLgo: I agree with you about my perceptions of the characters in the Wells and Scalzi stories as being female and male respectively.

>21 ScoLgo: Sound of Thunder, And There will Come Soft Rain, The Witch (oh wait, is that Clark?) The Martians, The Lemmings (maybe another title)......thats just the ones I remember off hand!

Finished Exit Strategy by Martha Wells. Enjoyed it. I'll miss Murderbot.

>5 seitherin: I see you recently read The Stone Sky I too am finding it heavy going. Not an easy or straightforward read,and Jemisin can dispassionately describe in a cool detached way things that are actually quite horrific,like the briar patch. Still have 140 pages to go,and have to return the book to the library on Monday,so I have a rather bleak weekend ahead.lol.
Jemisin kept our interest over the trilogy by different styles and main character change of focus,and it is all very clever and unusual,but all a bit too dark and dreary for my tastes. But I can see why she garners attention.A strongly individual voice,confident in telling a complex tale in an equally complex way,with excellent and original world building being a striking feature,I can see why she managed the unique feat of winning the Hugo 3 years running with a trilogy.

I have read most of The Fifth Season and I am ready to give it up. I meant to quit earlier but I am laid up at the moment and other books of interest for me are on a waiting list. The book isn't really SF enough and more fantasy magic. There are a lot of "sexual metaphors" of "penetrating" going on {..powers penetrating deep into the rock, large phallic shaped objects figure prominently, ....facet sided hole receptacles for the aforementioned objects "penetrating deeply" again} but the actual sex scenes are not descriptive or erotic.

The characters & story are well developed however and that probably has an appeal.

I really liked The Fifth Season; you're right that it's technically fantasy, but what I liked is that I felt it rigorously extrapolated a fantasy premise in an sf manner. Like, if people could control geology with their minds on an unstable world, this is what would happen. I did find myself very underwhelmed by the third book, though, which got a bit lost in all the magical mumbo-jumbo, and felt repetitive of the second in some ways. The first is the best, I reckon, though I liked the second, too. (I ranked Jemisin 5th on my Hugo ballot this year, and 3rd the year before.)

Finished Moonfall and started The Shadow Speaker.

>28 ChrisRiesbeck: How did you like Moonfall?

Whew,finished The Stone Sky.It took some reading,and I cant really say that i actually liked it,but I have to give top marks to Jemison for daring to even attempt such an ambitious project.I would probaby understand a lot moreof it if I did a reread,but since I couldnt take to any of the characters,except possibly Essun,thats very unlikely.
In any case,it gave my brain a good workout,like any such ambitious concept,however odd a mix of fantasy and other genres it may be,should.
That makes 60/67 Hugos,49/54 Nebulas read

Quite a bit. I'm usually OK with his novels, as middle of the road. I did not like one collection of short stories at all. Moonfall I found very gripping. I put a short review up on LT.

Just started Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. So far, so good; mix of well-established cyberpunk tropes and what were then emergent steampunk ones. Not reading like a 1995 novel much at all, with perhaps the exception of the word 'Zaibatsu', which has rather fallen out of use of late.

>31 ChrisRiesbeck: Moonfall is the only McDevitt I've read, but I found it good fun. A big disaster movie in space.

Finished up Koko Uncaged (C) this evening and the law of diminishing returns one saw with Koko the Mighty continues; you can only jump so many sharks before it gets old. I still think that the first book Koko takes a Holiday was great though.

Next up is Revenger and, if I'm lucky, The Consuming Fire.

Added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay to my reading rotation.

Adding The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff to my reading rotation.

I'm just starting The Fifth Season, having seen Jemisin win the last three Hugos for this series.

I'm about 100 pages into The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal and enjoying it very much.

Finished The Shadow Speaker, about to start Babylon's Ashes

Just started Five-twelfths of Heaven.

>37 Jim53:, has my attention too for the same reason, but I haven't picked it up yet.

Now reading James Gunn's Transgalactic,amiable little space adventure tale and Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky I loved A Fire Upon the Deep,and so was eager to read this book,but I cant get up any enthusiasm for it. There are shorter sections from the point of view of spider like aliens which are great fun,but most of it is set on a spaceship among most unlikable characters. One for the boys,I think,all about futuristic AI and computer science stuff,so not my sort of thing. Also very very long and a dense read,and I still have several hundred pages to read....(sigh).
But it does have a very interesting villain,very smooth,subtle and a real nasty piece of work!.
Certainly an ambitious galaxy wide scenario but not to my taste.
Did want to finish it this month,but Mr Dusty is not well and most of my time is taken up with looking after him,and with other family issues, reading time is rather sparse:0(
We'll see.

As penance for my sins I'm reading Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. I may be some time.

I'm now embarked on The Sky Road.

Going back and forth between Iron Sunrise by Stross and The October Country by Bradbury (group read for the Science Fiction Book Club on Facebook). I've read the Bradbury collection, many years ago, and had forgotten how wonderfully weird it was.

>45 ThomasWatson: :) October Country is my most favorite of Bradbury's works. Have you ever read From The Dust Returned, which expands further into the story of the Elliott family? I understand that some of this material was originally published in magazines like Weird Tales, and I really loved having them collected together like this.

Finished The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff. Meh.

Reading Irontown Blues, John Varley's latest Eight worlds novel.

>46 Darth-Heather: I agree about loving From the dust returned. Have you read the little stand-alone edition of The Homecoming illustrated by Dave McKean? His style is perfect for the story.

>49 Sakerfalcon: ooo! I will have to seek this out! Dave McKean is a genius.

I couldn't get the link to go to the right edition, but I'm sure you'll be able to track it down!

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction is, of course, not Science Fiction, but still seems relevant to this group's interests. About a quarter of the way through so far; it's interesting but I'm still too early in it to fully pass judgment.

>52 Unreachableshelf: "Astounding...is, of course, not Science Fiction".

Whatever makes you say that? I suspect you'll find plenty of us have works on the history of science fiction and some will even have volumes of criticism and analysis...

Finished The Stone Sky by N K Jemisin - a satisfying end to an ambitious trilogy. Now starting The Vorrh for my SF&F book group read.

>54 SChant: I finished it last week and I agree. I've seen a lot of criticism directed at it for being slow, uneventful and focused mostly on reveals of the plot in the previous two books, but I also thought it was a very logical, solid and satisfying end to the story.

>46 Darth-Heather: I haven't read that one yet, though having been reminded (thank you kindly) I've added it to my ever growing spreadsheet. I'm not prone to systematically working through an author's bibliography which is why, for all that Bradbury has had an enormous influence on me as a reader and a writer, there are books by the master I've yet to read. Working on that, though. ;-)

>53 RobertDay: It isn't Science Fiction because it isn't fiction. As I said, the fact that it's history of Science Fiction/group biography makes it of interest to group.

I'm finishing up There Before the Chaos by K.B. Wagers and it's outstanding. One of my favorite new writers and a great series. This is the first book in a new trilogy. So good!

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay. Mostly a meh issue for me.

Finished Revenger (C-) yesterday evening and was not that impressed. This is keeping in mind that going in I knew that I was going to be reading a YA space pirate yarn with "spring punk" overtones. The bottom line is that I never really connected with the main characters and if you don't have that you don't have much of anything.

To be fair to Reynolds there have been three or four other broadly "space opera" books that I've read this year that I've also had trouble connecting with so maybe I'm just not in the emotional mindset for this sort of fiction right now.

Currently reading The Empress of Earth.

Finished the sixth book of the 1980s-era Pelbar Cycle, The Song of the Axe. Fun that they went to future Canada in this one; and the title even spells "Axe" with an "e". Correctly, I would say. ;)

Hoping Mr. gets better soon.

I've just finished Jo Waltons hugely enjoyable An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000. The book covers many other SF / Fantasy awards as well and besides Walton's remarks their are extensive commentaries by Rich Horton and Gardner Dozois.

I found the book especially useful in compiling a long list of outstanding short SF that I haven't read.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in the fields history.

divinenanny: Thanks for your help recovering the October thread. I'm now able to access it , but for some mysterious reason my Talk section now consists of random threads dating from 2009 and 2014. Any suggestions on how I might restore order to my current groups comments?

>65 lansingsexton:
Yup. When you are on the talk page/group page, just above the list of topics you see "unread/messages" and next to that "last message". You probably clicked on the "unread/messages" one, which changes the sorting. Click on the "last message" one and it should go back to normal.

>66 divinenanny: Thanks again!

Finished The Empress of Earth. Bit of a disappointing ending to the trilogy. I understand the author has since heavily rewritten it. Now reading 1610: Sundial in a Grave, which is proving to be a bit of an ache carrying on my commute - it's the hardback edition. Enjoying it so far though.

Finished Mars by Ben Bova and thought it was much better than I had expected. Started on Kraken by China Mieville....

After giving up on The Vorrh - the author seemed too much in love with words to bother with plot or characterisation, and the language itself wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention - I've started Noumenon by Marina J Lostetter. So far quite intriguing.

>68 iansales: Yes, I thought so too, but I didn't want you to pre-judge it. I was underwhelmed, especially after the first two were so good. I must look out for the rewrite.

Finished Stephenson's The Diamond Age and well impressed (first of his I've gotten around to reading), though the last quarter felt a little rushed and I can understand why he feels the need to write at greater length. Now started John Varley's The Golden Globe.

Life has made both reading and writing time scarce this past week, so I'm still reading Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. About halfway through and liking it a lot.

Two recent acquisitions of note: Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson and Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L.Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, both of which are apparently too new to show up in the touchstone system yet. Feeling a bit self-indulgent these days, so I'll be reading these seriously out of turn.

>72 ThomasWatson: I'm eyeing the Astounding book myself. How does it look?

>73 lansingsexton: It definitely looks worth reading, if you have an interest in the history of the genre. Interesting timing in the release, for my purposes at least. I'm a student of history (makes up a significant percentage of my nonfiction reading), and recently realized that my knowledge of the history of science fiction is sketchy at best. I was looking for sources and recommendations and came across this one. Robert Silverberg gives it high marks. I'll be back when I've read it with more.

Between a class and other stuff, I haven't read much SF lately. However, when I went to my local library booksale yesterday, they had a bunch of Star Trek books. The rest of the selection on the SF table was heavily fantasy or stuff I already had. In the end I bought several Star Trek books (I miss the previous TV series) and one other SF - Neptune's Brood by Stross (the far future premise intrigued me). However the Stross book turned out to be #2 in a series, so holding off on that. With my class just ending, I decided to start reading a Next Gen novel I bought called Dyson Sphere. Seems the rating is iffy both here and on Amazon, but I love the idea of Dyson spheres and thought a sequel to the Scotty episode could be fun. I'll know soon enough. It starts out decently.

p.s. maybe I should be embarrassed to read a SF franchise novel, but this will be my second Star Trek book and I enjoyed the first one. Maybe not deeply thought provoking, but I will enjoy revisiting the characters and hope for an interesting story.

>75 GwenH: Dyson Sphere is a weird book. I don't think it's very good, but I'm fond of it anyway. I think the writers bring a hard sf sensibility to Star Trek, which doesn't exactly work. But there are tons of neat concepts.

>76 Stevil2001: I'm a hard science sort of person, so it might work for me in spite of other possible issues. Thanks for the heads up.

I've started the third book in Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series Pegasus in Space. I somehow missed these books when they were first published and since there won't be any more books by Anne I am happy to have a series to read.

October is almost over and I haven't read A Night in the Lonesome October yet. I can't seem to find my copy. I reread Something Wicked This Way Comes instead and have The October Country on the TBR next pile. I finished The Synapse Sequence which was good and The Freeze-Frame Revolution, which was excellent. I think Peter Watts is becoming a favorite author. I am halfway through Made to Kill and picked up Star's End at random from the library. Anyone read that one?

>16 lansingsexton: Edith Wharton's Tales of Men and Ghosts doesn't have Pomegranate Seed in it. I enjoyed her stories and will have to find that one.

I finally finished Dragon ship, which was not up to the usual standard of Liaden novels. It seemed to be full of filler, very unfocused and easy to put down and not pick up again for long periods.

Now I've started The heart of valor, book 3 in Tanya Huff's mil-SF series. This is shaping up to be another exciting instalment.

Finished Babylon's Ashes. Started a random grab from the bookshelf, Heaven Chronicles, which, though written in 1978 - 1980, appears to be set in the same universe: Belters have colonized the huge asteroid belt of another star system, but an unwise war has destroyed the infrastructure, and the economy is headed for doom. Does anyone know if Vinge's stories were an explicit inspiration for the Expanse?

Finished The Consuming Fire (A-) this evening and found it to be a much more satisfactory entertainment now that Scalzi has expanded the scope of this enterprise to at least a trilogy.

Finished James E Gunn Transgalactic and Jack Vance's first full length book(though he had published short stories)Vandals of the Void,another enjoyable entry in the Winston''juvenile'' series.The usual plucky young hero risking all in desperately dangerous adventures. Most of the books are still fun exciting reads/
These 2 books bring my October reading total to a measly books.Smallest number of books I've read since I started recording my reads on shelfari way back in 2010!
Mr Dusty is finally recovering so here's hoping I get back on track next month.


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This happens...this year I find myself on the way to setting close to a personal land speed records for books read...next year watch me read way fewer than a 100. Reading shorter books helps!

Having wrapped up Twilight of the Serpent, I'm on to The Centauri Device. This early M. John Harrison novel isn't exactly lauded, but so far (most of the way through the first chapter) I'm enjoying its noir perversity.

Have just read Adam Roberts's The Lake Boy and was somewhat surprised to discover I'm in it and I get killed off.

>86 iansales:

LOL.

>87 paradoxosalpha: Turns out I'm not killed, I'm abducted by aliens. I turn up later in the novella.

>88 iansales:, I encountered my last name in a Graham Greene novel, and it was a similar story: seems like she gets killed off, but turns up later.

>88 iansales: Happens all the time in Sheffield ;-)

I've wrapped up my read of The Sky Road and posted a review. I've now finished the Fall Revolution, and I'm glad there's still lots of Ken MacLeod left for me to read. At some point I hope to pick up a copy of Descent.

Although I'm already reading The Centauri Device, I think I'll double up on SF and start in on Morrow's Shambling Towards Hiroshima also.