Our reads in November 2019

Another month,another pile of books. Share your reading plans here.

Dusty's reads in November
SF/Fantasy
C J Cherryh - Port Eternity ✔
Charles Stross - Apocalypse Codex ✔
Charles Sheffield - Web Between the Worlds ✔
John Sladek - Tik-Tok✔
Harry Harrison - Wheelworld ✔
Mercedes Lackey - Fire Rose✔
Devon Monk - Magic to the Bone✔

from other genres
Simon Kernick - Scent of Death✔
Mary Higgins Clarke - Deck the Halls ✔
J R R Tolkien - Farmer Giles of Ham ✔
Chris Carter - Gallery of the Dead✔
Bill Watterson - Calvin and Hobbes ✔

>2 dustydigger:
I really enjoyed Altered Carbon and then spotting the differences between the book and the Netflix adaptation.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is a favourite.

This is the second mention of Tik-Tok I have seen in the past 24 hours on LT. I will have to track down a copy.

Currently reading The Dragon Republic and also have Cibola Burn and The Shadowed Sun in hand.

Not currently reading any SF but I'm still reading the fantasy The Tiger's Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

Currently reading The Survival of Molly Southbourne, God Save Texas and Caine's Mutiny. Velocity Weapon and maybe The Pride of Chanur if I can get it to download on the Kindle (it doesn't seem to want to) are on deck.

>3 pgmcc: I had the same thoughts on Tik-Tok. The libraries here don't have a copy, so I bought a used one. It should be here next week.

>6 daxxh: You have taken more positive action to date than I. Your post has prompted me to see if it is available here and I have found it on Kindle. It is now in my reading queue.

You guys keep touchstoning Tik-Tok of Oz instead of Tik-Tok, which (as an Oz fan) is very confusing to me!

>6 daxxh: How is Charles Gannon's fiction? As an academic who studies (among other things) science fiction about warfare, I enjoyed his book Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, but I've never read any of his fiction.

>8 Stevil2001: I thought Gannon's Fire with Fire was very cliched and pedestrian.

Polished off Tolkien's slight but charming Farmer Giles of Ham,quite short,but with numerous very delightful illustrations in a mediaeval style by Pauline Baynes,(renowned for her Narnia series illustrations).
Now starting Port Eternity and Tik-Tok

>8 Stevil2001:. I like the Caine Riordan series. The first book was ok. Lots of stereotypical characters. Plot was decent though and there was an unanswered question that made me read the second book. It was better than the first. This one was more Military SciFi. I thought the third was the best so far. I haven't read much of Caine's Mutiny, but I like what I have read. I would recommend them to someone who likes Space Opera or Military SciFi.

I could not get the correct touchstone for Tik-Tok to appear. That isn't the first time that has happened to me. I have heard John Sladek´s Roderik books are better than Tik-Tok so I may read those too.

Finished The Road to Mars, halfway through Necessity.

I'm in the Liaden Universe, reading Trade secret.

>8 Stevil2001: Thank you for highlighting the erroneous touchstone. I have fixed the one in post #3.

I never knew there was a Tik-Tok of Oz. One lives and learns.

>14 pgmcc: The Oz books are my "first fandom." I collected them all in middle school and worked up my own maps because I found the ones included in the books insufficient!

>15 Stevil2001: I can see how an erroneous touchstone might disturb your sensitivities when it affects a long standing passion. :-)

I'm in alternate Paris in the French Steampunk mystery Confessions d'un automate mangeur d'opium by Fabrice Colin ("Confessions of an opium-eating automaton"). Not very far in but enjoying it so far.

Reading Planetfall, which I picked up on ebook for 99p after other books in the series had been repeatedly recommended to me. Quite enjoying it. It at least feels a bit more modern than the Clarke-nominated Semiosis.

>13 Sakerfalcon: I really relished the Liaden series and Jethri is a great protagonist!

I am just about to start Warhoon 28, the 650+ page (!) hardbacked (!!) fanzine edited by Richard Bergeron, which contains the entire fannish output of Walt Willis, who edited the iconic Irish fanzines 'Slant' and 'Hyphen' in the 1950s and 60s. These collected writings form a sort of Irish fan version of 'On the Road'; key players were future authors such as James White and Bob Shaw. (This, of course, was part of my haul from the Worldcon back in August.)

>20 RobertDay:

Interesting contributors. I got to meet Bob Shaw at my first every Science Fiction convention in Trinity University in Dublin. I have to check wheter it was 1992 or 1993. He had some great stories, and his competing with Iain Banks for the lion's share of a bottle of Three Stills Whiskey when they were on a panel was very amusing.

I cannot remember if James White was at that one but he did turn up to several of the Octocons I attended.

Unfortunately they left us.

>21 pgmcc: I knew Bob from my student days in Newcastle upon Tyne, when he was a regular attendee (not frequent, but regular) at the North East Science Fiction Group, an umbrella body that the Gannets, Tyneside's fan grouping, set up to get arts money out of officialdom, and use it to put on formal talks by authors. Indeed, my first ever contact with fandom was at one such meeting with Bob Shaw, where he talked about his fanzine column 'The Glass Bushel'.

I also met Jim White at various Novacons later in the 1980s.

Just finished Reincarnation Blues and can't decide if i liked it. Its a cross between Christopher Moore and Vonnegut and others in the same wavelenght. I liked the stories of this character trying to acheive perfection in the afterlife, and like the authors sense of humor. But there were some parts that were quite disturbing, and just when I think he ends the book in a manner that makes sense, he pastes on an ending that would work in the usual religious inspirational titles. The more I think about it, I must like it, because i havent been able to get the two main characters out of my head . Anyway, your thoughts

Also read the last of the Bear and Nightingale series the winter of the witch Not as good as the other two but does a decent job bringing everything full circle. Eager to see what she writes next!

Finally just picked up the new book by the author of Night Circus, The starless sea Looking forward to this! But right now I am in about three books and would like to finish those before I get into it.

Recently finished Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton. Has anyone else read this one yet? Have an opinion?

Already 3/4th of the way through Old Man's War by John Scalzi, which looks like it'll be a two-sittings read. Can't point my finger to anything tremendously new or extraordinary (reading it for the first time 14 years after the original release probably doesn't help), but the package certainly works.

>24 Karlstar: I liked Salvation, although it isn't my favorite Peter F. Hamilton book/series (yet.) Interesting worldbuilding, and a few cool characters. Some are a little tropey (which is par for the course with Hamilton.)

C J Cherryh's Port Eternity was written in an experimental style at the urging of her editor,Donald Wollheim,so its not wholly in her later style,but is quite interesting,even if an odd mix of space ships and arthurian legend.The first outing for her ''azis''(though not named as such in this book, which was followed by more azis in 1983 in 40,000 in Gehenna).
Port Eternity is very intense and claustrophobic,and the battle with aliens near the end of the book was a tad confused and hard to follow,which of course is exactly what it was like for the narrator in the tale. Rather strange ending too,in a sort of Camelot. Sad and intense but absorbing.
I am now looking for Voyager in Night,another of her ''experimental'' works,with interest and anticipation.Over 40 books into Cherryh's oeuvre and still finding surprises and things of interest.:0).
I am reading Tik-Tok,not to be read in a public place because of snorting and sniggering guiltily at Tik-Tok's trail of mayhem.Also enjoying Mercedes Lackey's Fire Rose,a Beauty and the Beast variation.
I have finally completed my 80 books for my Pick N' Mix challenge over on WWEnd. Now I am happily engaged in sorting out next year's reads! :0)

I'm currently reading Isis by Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, a pioneering piece of 19th-century decadence translated to English and published this year by sf author Brian Stableford. I'm a bit past the midpoint, and enjoying it quite a bit. It makes a strangely effective pairing with Gigi (1958), which we screened at our place last week.

I'm about a quarter of the way through Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. I'm enjoying the interaction of the three main characters, two humans and one AI, plus the two cats that accompany them on their travels through space. There is maybe a little too much discussion of philosophy and politics for my liking but I am assuming it will be important to the plot.

Waking Gods was fun. The plot killed off several million people but it was still a fun read.

I am in the middle of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and I must admit, the book is breaking my brain..

finished Mercedes Lackey The Fire Rose,an amiable variant o Beauty and the Beast,plus an early Charles Sheffield novel,Web Between the Worldsabout building a Skyhook/Beanstalk/,Space Elevator. It came out very soon after Clarke's book on a similar theme.The Fountains of Paradise,but the books are very different. Clarke's is a romantic elaborate tale,Sheffield's a very hard SF dry technical thing,(too much so for my tastes) with a slight murder mystery attached.But still an OK read.
Couple of days will finish Tik-Tok then I must concentrate on a Laundry file read and Altered Carbon,but the Xmas activities are already looming,reading may be pushed aside later in the month,so I need to buckle down now!

Just finished Provenance. Better than I had expected, although I seem to remember someone mentioning it as an example of a sf novel that showed violence wasn't necessary to make a good sf novel. Except the end of the book is all about an invasion of a space station.

I am part-way through Chris Priest's The Prestige and enjoying it greatly. It has considerable differences from the film but both are very interesting perspectives on the practice of stage magic. A few years ago, I had some contact with that community so this all rings very true to me.

Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000–2016

>24 Karlstar: I haven't read Salvation but am a fan of Hamilton. What did you think of the book?

>31 davisfamily: That sounds painful!

>37 chlorine: I'll second that. (And I've read the book, so I'll shut up now to avoid spoilers).

Went on and dusted The Ghost Brigades & The Last Colony as they also were in TBR Mount. Fun.

Now in Metropolis by Thea von Harbou.

>31 davisfamily:, >37 chlorine:, >38 bnielsen: But there's some wonderful imagery in it; the One State is a very different place to Airstrip One.

''I started by murdering a blind child,and I ended up building death factories in Latin America,and you almost made me Vice President,how about that?''
In betweenTik-Tok the totally amoral robot(his Asimov circuits didnt work) murdered many people,framed people for the crimes,and committed a torrent of horrendous crimes of every sort including fraud, insurance scams,arson,blowing up a plane then sending heartless letters to the grieving survivors etc etc etc. Sladek likes his satire heavy handed,with a scattergun effect, but its indubitably hilarious. Not to be read in public because you could choke while trying to hide your chuckles.
I wonder if Bret Easton Ellis got some pointers for depicting Patrick Bateman from Sladek?
I would dearly love to quote a section of the book where they discuss the sitting president, but I would probably get red flagged and ejected from the site,so I better shut up.
But however bad Tik-Tok is,the humans around him are even worse,so we sometimes have a sneaking sympathy for him.Brilliant
The book came out in 1983,and Sladek sadly died in 2000.What would he have had to say about today's shenanigans? :0)
Now reading Harry Harrison's Wheelworld

>34 RobertDay: I loved The Prestige. I read the book a few years after first watching the film and found that I liked the novel better - though I still really enjoy the movie, (having re-watched it several times both before and after reading the book).

I read the book first, and I too enjoyed both. I liked the structure of the book, with the frame story and journals, but I understood why they simplified it for the movie.

In either medium, it has a really profound moral upshot that it delivers with a lot of flair.

Finished Necessity, about to start Dreamfall.

Currently reading Chercher la Femme, the latest novel by L Timmel Duchamp. Big fan of her work. Her Marq'ssan Cycle is one of the best near-future first contact series I've read.

>35 cindydavid4:
I'm about 2/3 of the way through Words are My Matter right now -- it's my nightstand book. I usually work my way through a book of essays, one or two at a time, just before sleeping. As always Le Guin has interesting things to say; and she's managed to avoid most of the repetition that often occurs in collections of writings from an extended period. Plus she's given me ideas about a couple of things to read -- like that Western-sounding, anthropologically themed novel, Crazy Weather.

Finished Trade secret which became a really good read after Jethri left the Elthoria and struck out into the wider galaxy. I'll start Dragon in exile soon but picked up Semiosis to read for a break from Liaden.

Wheelworld was just a fun old fashioned SF adventure read,about an engineer exiled to a peasant planet which produces food for Earth's Empire.But the ships to take the grain havent turned up,and the world is harsh and difficult so hot that humans can only survive where it is winter,in the shadows. Our hero has to move all the people 27000 km to safety and face the hatred of the ruling classes,ignorantsuperstitious and hidebound. Much difficulty and mayhem ensue,all great fun,though not top rate.Just a fun read when the rains are thundering down outsideday after day.
I always enjoy engineer heroes,all the way from Captain Nemo and his fantastic vessel up to Andy Weir's ''Martian'' cobbling things together to survive. :0)

Next up,James White The Genocidal Healer and Charlie Stross's Apocalypse Codex

>48 dustydigger: I read 'Wheelworld' and its two sequels not long after they came out - so, early 1980s then. The thing is, I haven't picked them up since, yet in the intervening 35 - 40 years, one scene has stuck with me as real, honest-to-goodness old-fashioned "Gosh, wow!" science fiction. But as it's how Harry got his hero out of the cliffhanger he was left in at the end of the first novel, I'm not going to tell you what it is!

>48 dustydigger: >49 RobertDay: I think I read them not long after they were published. Don't remember much about them, tbh. And I won't be able to reread them because I purged my bookshelves of all the Harry Harrison books after a reread of The Stainless Steel Rat about ten years ago.

>50 iansales: LOL. I tried rereading some of the Stainless Steel Rat novels a while ago, so I recognize that :-)

>50 iansales: Oddly, I've never read any of the Stainless Steel Rat novels. Not high on my list of priorities, either (and probably less so now).

I just started Stations of the Tide. I've read just one short story by Swanwick before, and I wasn't blown away by it, but I had too many pointers to this book to resist it. (I did get the feeling from the story that I might enjoy Swanwick more in a longer form.)

Reading Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit - interesting if a bit disjointed....

>49 RobertDay: I read Wheelworld as a sort of standalone,didnt fancy the 1st and 3rd books set on earth,fighting against the government.This one was pretty pure action adventure
Actually,I only read it because it was published in 1981. I am doing a challenge to read 100 books ,one for each year 1920-2019.
I now only have 1998-2001,2005,2008 to go! :0). Its been a bit of a slog,especially since concurrently I was doing my Pick N Mix challenge on WWEnd,just finished those 80/80 reads last week.
here's hoping my group dont repeat the Century of Books challenge next year,its a bit much! lol

>53 paradoxosalpha: I loved Stations of the Tide when I first read it shortly after it was published. I wasn't so impressed when I read it several years ago, although it's still a very good book. Swanwick is one of the genre's better writers but I find some of his stuff a bit, well, uninteresting.

>55 dustydigger: Ah, I'd forgotten that 'Wheelworld' was the second novel in the sequence. In which case, this won't be a spoiler...

The 'gosh! wow!" moment I referred to in >49 RobertDay: was the bit where the hero is cooped up with a lot of the workers from the farm in detention, and he spots that one guy's piece of personal jewellery is actually a computer terminal - but no-one else has realised it, including the owner. The Hero manipulates this guy's medallion and a holographic keyboard is suddenly displayed, which the Hero then uses to engineer their breakout from detention.

That one scene has stuck with me for years. I suspect that a lot of people now have a similar relationship with their phones...

Finally getting round to reading the 1984 feminist SF novel Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. Don't know why I didn't read it when it first came out as it's exactly the sort of thing I was interested in!

>58 SChant: I find that to be a powerful and imaginative trilogy. Hope you appreciate it.

I finished How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, space opera with a touch of fantasy, liked the characters.

Read, and enjoyed a lot, Tim Pratt's third Axiom space opera, The Forbidden Stars. Does not break new ground, does tend towards the infodump, and several places felt as though some newb at the de-Gascoigned Angry Robot had insisted that they be moved from where they belonged.

All in all, though, the three made for a good ride.

Added Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence to my reading rotation.

>60 richardderus: "de-Gascoigned"? He's left Angry Robot?

>62 iansales:

Last year: https://www.angryrobotbooks.com/2018/11/big-news-from-our-head-robot/

Pratt has good taste in influences; the second book in that trilogy is on my TBR list for December.

Also, I've finally finished up The Shadowed Sun (A); I think my main issue with Jemisin is that she tries to write fictions as complicated as life so there is no way you can just breeze right through them! You might ask why that is a problem? It's because I personally tend to privilege non-fiction over fiction. There are a sufficient number of important novels on my personal TBR list that I'm going to have to reverse the equation for a few years, at least through Discon III.

>31 davisfamily: That is where I had the advantage on you with We; my brain was broken before I read it.

>32 dustydigger: Following your earlier mention of Tik-Tok I got it on Kindle and have made a start on it. I am enjoying the classic SF feel to it.

>34 RobertDay: I enjoyed The Prestige very much when I read it. I read it after attending WorldCon in Glasgow in 2005; Christopher Priest was at the Con and he had talked about his involvement with the film producers and how he was enjoying what they were doing with his story.

I too noticed the differences between the two manifestations of the story. Priest was happy that he had written the novel and that the film was not going to be exactly like it. He appeared very content with that. I presume he was content to the extent that his bank balance had benefitted from the exercise. :-)

Fished Charlie Stross The Apocalypse Codex. The first 3 in the series could be taken as light heartedif slightly bonkers satire on beaurocracy and government,but this bookwas the beginning of the darkening of the tone.And things are a nightmare by book 8!
I was rereading it to get ready for the Labyrinth Index - if it ever comes to the library,no sign of it yet :0(
I enjoyed the homage to Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin in the form of Persephone Hazard and Johnny McTavish. Dear old Peter O'Donnell. I adored those books in the 60s,Modesty Blaise,Sabretooth,I,Lucifer and A Taste for Death. How can it be 50 years since I first devoured them,and then reread them over the decades? Such fun.
And as I recollect,O'Donnell was pretty good at writing gothic romances as Madeleine Brent too!.Great that Charlie did a homage to O'Donnell,just another fun layer to the Laundry Files. .

>70 bnielsen: I'll second your enjoyment of Blaise and Garvin. Alas Joseph Losey made a mess of the movie :-)

ETA:
Ah, the movie is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BpC0NatYqU
About 1:34.34 there's a room where the wallpaper seems to have inspired the British micro:bit ?
https://www.librarything.com/work/23917566/book/175553272

>62 iansales:, >63 divinenanny: It was a shock to me when it happened. Rod Duncan was a little shell-shocked at the change and mentioned it on Facebook, so I was prewarned.

>64 Shrike58: I liked each book better than the last.

>70 bnielsen: LOL! see what you mean about the wallpaper,almost the same :0)
I could never watch the film,too cringemaking. But I rarely like ''the film of the book'' in any case.My family are always annoyed with me when we watched a film together,when I moan about personality transplants,total disregard of the book's plot etc etc etc..
For example,I avoided Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings for 6 years,and when I did watch it I couldnt stand Ian McKellen's Gandalf. After rereading the book numerous times over 30 years, Gandalf and several other characters were so fixed in my mind I found the film jarring to say the least. I have not been able to go back to the book because I dont want McKellen's face to appear in my mind.lol.

>68 pgmcc: I'm thinking that it may have been the Glasgow worldcon where I got my copy; I'm now reading The Magic, Priest's own (self-published) account of the making of the film from the author's p.o.v. and he is quite scathing on the quality of the first edition hardback, which I didn't think was **that** bad. Still, he also says that he's seen fine condition first editions for sale on eBay for $2,000, so we can't be too sniffy about it.

The process of making a film from a book can be pretty protracted, and whilst it's a nice earner, it was hardly 'tureens of caviar' time in the Priest household - at least, that's the impression he gives. Priest was generally impressed with the film, though he is quite critical of some individual scenes, mainly for how they work rather than any thought that they misrepresent his book. I have some quibbles over one particular criticism which I shall unpick further when I review the book. (If you haven't already seen it, my review of 'The Prestige' is already up on LT , cross-posted to my reviews blog.)

Incidentally, in 'The Magic', he speaks of having penned two tie-in film novelizations. I know he did eXistenZ, but I don't know as I've ever seen the other one.

Later: well, it turns out that he wrote the tie-in to Short Circuit under the pen-name of 'Colin Wedgelock'. Well, you learn something new every day.

>68 pgmcc: >73 RobertDay: Chris told me that when he attended the premiere for The Prestige, while all the cast and guests were milling about before the film started he approached Michael Caine. They chatted for a bit then Caine asked Chris who he was. "I'm the writer," Chris said. "Fuck off, " said Caine," I don't talk to writers."

>71 richardderus: He is disliked by many people in the industry, including people who have worked for him. I've only met him a couple of times.

>73 RobertDay:

Really, a first ed. of The Prestige goes for that in fine cond? Hmm maybe I ought to see what mine looks like - like you I didn't think the quality was that bad, I've certainly seen worse.

>76 andyl: Just looking on AbeBooks right now, they list signed copies ranging from £225 to around £1200. (That high price is for a US dealer, where the book will be even rarer.) Vendors claim that there was only a print run of 200 for the UK 1st edition, so even unsigned ones may command a fair price - one is being currently offered at £95.

>75 iansales: It's my understanding that he's as abrasive as 000-fine sandpaper, but demanding of The Best with it. Funny how often those things seem to go together.

I'm currently reading Ninefox Gambit. It's well written and interesting, though I am having a really hard time wrapping my head around how anything works in this universe! Only about a third of the way through so I hope it becomes clearer.

>78 richardderus: That's not what I've heard. And Angry Robot's list has never been especially impressive.

>79 jermehr: Did not like that book at all. Don't bother trying to figure out how things work - it's basically fantasy with spaceships. And pretty fascist too.

The regime depicted is fascistic but it gets what's coming to it in the end...I tended to take the trilogy as a commentary on the crazier aspects of Korean history.

People either love or hate this work.

I have finished The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delaney. I'm not sure that I understood it very well but it was interesting & fairly short.

>80 iansales: You're closer to the sources, so I'll take your judgment.

>83 leslie.98: I had the same reaction to that book. I kept re-reading sections of it hoping for clarity that never arrived...

I'm glad that it wasn't just me, >85 ScoLgo:!

I have been working my way through the Locus Best SF Novels of all time list.All I have left to do are 6 books,and Dhalgren is one of them. At leastEinstein Intersection was short. The Dhalgren book is 700 pages!.This book will be the last read of the list I am sure. I cant imagine what my mental state will be after Delany's ''masterpiece'' (!!??)
btw, the other books on the list still to read are;
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker
Olaf Stapledon - Last and First Men
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside
George R Stewart - Earth Abides
P K Dick - Ubik

you can see why it may take quite a while to finish the list! :0)

>87 dustydigger:, at least you're an appropriate age for Dhalgren. I wasn't even in high school yet, and I think it scarred me, lol.

Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker is on my Kindle waiting for me to read it (along with lots of other books). Right now I am reading Station Eleven...

>87 dustydigger: >88 Cecrow: I read Dhalgren when I was a freshman in high school. Let's just say I learned a lot from that book. I hid it behind other books on my bookcase, because my parents would have banned me from reading if they ever decided to read that one.

If you're talking about books as a "scarring" experience I read The Painted Bird when I was in junior high; now there was an exercise in darkness! Even more interesting is that it's my Mom who had picked it up.

Finished Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence. Slow until the end. Enjoyed it.

I didn't get into Ninefox Gambit, but when Raven Stratagem became a Hugo finalist, I picked it up anyway, and ended up liking it more. I don't know if that's because it was better, or because I finally figured out some of what was going on.

Yoon Ha Lee's short story The Battle of Candle Arc is a good introduction to the principles of "calendrical warfare" that Ninefox itself never spells out. It's up for free on Clarkesworld: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lee_10_12/

>87 dustydigger: Dhalgren is one of my favourite novels. I've read it about three or four times. Delany's Empire Star, which is short enough to be a novella, is also very good.

>94 iansales: Empire Star was good fun,and gave the brain a workout,but in a lighter enjoyable way. I read that in 2016,it was in a volume with The Ballad of Beta-2,( a sad warning of the dangers of generation ships)
At the time I was reading Heinlein's Door into Summer about time travel too,so my mind did a lot of bouncing around! lol
Just remembered also reading at that time Delany's debut work,The Jewels of Aptor,a surprisingly normal non-mindbending piece of work, though well written.
Certainly I have enjoyed all the Delany I have read so far,so you never know,I may actually enjoy,Dhalgren,onders never cease.

>93 Stevil2001:

Yep I found Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun to be more enjoyable reads than Ninefox Gambit.

I've followed part of an USA presidential campaign, with zombies, in Mira Grant's Feed.

I have finished Station Eleven. I gave it a solid 3* but felt it didn't live up to all the hype I had heard. The setting was unoriginal but the characters were well done and though I am not generally a fan of books that skip backward and forward in time, this device worked well here.

>95 dustydigger: I think you mean The Ballad of Beta-2 :-) I originally read it too in that edition, and now have a another copy of it - Sphere SF from 1977 - bought here in Uppsala at the new secondhand sf bookshop, Fantastikbokhandeln.

>99 iansales: https://www.librarything.com/venue/114032/Fantastikbokhandeln

This month was Nonfiction November for me. I am back to science fiction with Velocity Weapon.

I just bought a bunch of books at the library sale. Simak, Norton, Dickson and Sheffield. I will have a lot to read over the holidays while I am on vacation.

All this talk of Samuel Delaney makes me want to reread his stuff. I wonder if I will like Dhalgren as much now as I did the first two times I read it. Nova is one of my favorite books. And, I also really liked Triton. Too many books...

Started a re-read of A Wizard of Earthsea for my SF&F book group. It's still enjoyable, but of course I'm going the have to re-read the other books because Tehanu is my absolute favourite. I don't much care for The Other Wind so will give that a miss.

>102 SChant: The Earthsea Trilogy has been sitting in my TBR pile for a long time, and I keep skipping over it because I don't own Tehanu. Thanks for your post- I am going to make a concerted effort to obtain Tehanu and read all 4 books next year.

Finished The Dragon Republic (A+) this morning, as Ms. Kuang continues her brutal catalogue of modern Chinese history re-imagined as an epic fantasy.

Just completed Calvin and Hobbes which I have never read before! Loved it,particularly the amazing array of expressions on Hobbes face! lol.
Why post it here? Well of course Calvin has a secret identity as Spaceman Spiff,Lots of space opera battles and ugly monsters on the planet Zorg ;0)

Almost completed Devon Monk's Magic to the Bone,then its James White's Double Contact and Charlie Stross Rhesus Chart,and that will complete my whole TBR for 2019.
Actively picking next year's reads but keep changing my focus,either sticking to award winners,or the Fifties or just read a lot of pulpy fun books most of the time.
Ah well,a nice mix of the three groups should be fun. But I am calling a moratorium on huge tomes in 2020. I need a break!

>105 dustydigger: Aren't Calvin and Hobbes delightful! The Mud Monsters who're the bigger, stupider boys in gym class...what fun to relive the miseries of childhood as an adult!

I've been slacking by reading a French time-travel novel, Vintage 1954. It's fun. Added a Rosewater re-read to prepare for reading volume three, Rosewater Redemption.

>101 daxxh: I've always wanted to reread Triton. Will have to get the ebook edition. I bounced out of his Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand several times after purchasing it way back in the 1980s, but finally managed to read it all the way through several years ago and really liked it. A shame the sequel will never appear.

>103 vwinsloe: I bought the new Earthsea omnibus late last year and read it all the way through. I'd read most of the books before. They're excellent books, but that hardback was *heavy*.

I've been reading an old Danish sf novel "Manden bag Flammerne" from 1943 depicting Copenhagen in 1973. Fun stuff, but widely off target (although it is hard to remember exactly how 1973 was). It seems like there was a German version of this "Der Mann hinter den Flammen". Author: Otto Schrayh.

>107 iansales: I've got an old (2005) Science Fiction Book Club edition of the trilogy, and it's fairly light. Good to hear that you enjoyed it as well; looks like I will finally get to it soon.

Added On My Way to Paradise by David Farland aka Dave Wolverton to my rotation.

Depending on your social scene if you can remember 1973 you really weren't there! Otherwise you might prefer 1973 to remain forgotten. I tend to remember the year for the Yom Kippur War, the Oil Crisis and the death of "Swede" Savage at the Indy 500.

On a lighter note I finished Cibola Burn (B+) on the way home from work. Not the best of the first four novels in the series but I liked it well enough that I'll continue plugging on.

Finished Dreamfall, started Whatdunits

I am a member of a fantastic library 75 minutes from home by bus. It gets new stock,plus it holds a very good selection of older books. It made a conscious brave decision way back in 2010 when the govt introduced ''austerity'' that libraies are a vitally important cultural resource that should be preserved,and while other library have slashed new stock to the bone,closed branches,cut hours and stocks,it has held firm to its policy of maintaing the library as a cultural treasure
But getting there in the winter is difficult. sometimes the bus doesnt come,and I stand 40 minutes or more freezing at the bus stop waiting for the next one to come.The whole round trip,travel plus the library, takes me about 3 hours,it is such a delight visiting an old fashioned proper public library.
So I handed in all my books today,and wont return now till probably March. I'll miss it badly,but will spend time on Open Library etc, reading old pulpy stuff,and waiting for Spring. We'll see if Santa brings some book tokens to buy a few pleasant reads too! lol .
I wonder if the terrible damage inflicted on libraries will ever be healed. Not much hope,I'm afraid. :0(

Finished The Stone Gods. Not impressed. The prose was good but it read like Winterson had read Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and thought she could go one better - by turning it into a shaggy god story. And some of the ideas were well past their sell-by date. I don't have a problem with non-genre authors writing genre. It often produces some really interesting genre fiction. But not always...

Couldn't be bothered to finish On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton. I read enough to realize it would not get any better and it was nothing I had any interest in.

Added Can & Can'tankerous by Harlan Ellison to my rotation instead.

>114 dustydigger: I too am not a winter user of my library, though it's a very very great deal closer to me than it is to you.

...and speaking of free reads...

I follow Joachim Boaz's blog. I saw his generation-ship story review, galumphed over to the Internet Archive, and read Spacebred Generations by Clifford D. Simak. Um. Well. My review says it all.

Having just finished Stations of the Tide, it strikes me that there's a sort of "Thanksgiving story" in there somewhere, with the quasi-presence of the exterminated indigenes, called "haunts."

>118 paradoxosalpha: I always think of the novel as Southern Gothic sf.

A quarter of the way into The Sudden Appearance of Hope and it's refreshing to read a novel set in Dubai that seems to have got the city right.

I'm about a third of the way into Warhoon 28; Willis is just getting to the end of his trip to the 1953 Chicon (don't hold me to that) and he has just travelled from Chicago to LA in the company of Forrey Ackermann. The name-dropping is breath-taking; he meets Ray Bradbury, who he feels "looks like a boxer", and there was this new young kid at the convention called Harlan Ellison... And Willis writes of an up-market restaurant as being the sort of place where, if it was in England, you would be unable to get in unless you were "a member of the aristocracy or spoke like John Brunner".

>114 dustydigger: I have a terrible dilemma. I was trained as a librarian back in the 1970s (in Newcastle), but I now find I am regularly being asked by my village library to come and do for nothing what I trained in to make my career. The library is only five minutes away; it's the sort of place where I might have started a career as a deputy librarian or even a first appointment as a Branch Librarian in the 1970s or 80s. And the local council unloaded it onto the community and expects it to be run by volunteers, in the sort of way libraries were in the nineteenth century, an entertainment for the middle classes that back then, they paid for but which now they are expected to volunteer to run free of charge. No sense of the library as a place for learning, self-education and personal development open to all, which is why they were provided by the state in the first place, in the sort of gesture of high-minded egalitarianism politicians of all colours used to believe in.

Elsewhere, I have lamented the passing of Clive James and Jonathan Miller, and contrasted their fairly populist erudition, which they wore lightly, with the likes of the intellectual nonentities that infest our public spaces these days. The barbarians are no longer at the gate; they are now inside the castle, squatting in the best chairs and telling us that we should be grateful that they have come to give us our freedom.

>121 RobertDay: Warhoon28 sounds interesting,Robert,but huge! Back in 1953 the SF community was still small enough to be close knit,though some of the writers were already getting to be oldtimers! lol.
Its a bit of a cheek really expecting you to run the library for nothing.I'm a bit anxious that all these ''community run'' libraries could start off with a flurry of enthusiasm,then when it dies away,most of the volunteers,especially in the winter,will vanish into thin air.And what about new stock? Doesnt look good at all.My library in Seaham,15 miles down the coast from Sunderland where the main City Library is now in a broom cupboard as I call it. (well,what else,the whole thing is only 178 sq.metres!),has survived quite well I suppose,mainly I think because it is right next door to the local Job Centre.Job applicants need to go online and print off applications etc.Back in 2009 we got a fine new building,14 computers and lots of extra books,just before the costcutting began,thank goodness.Its a county library,and they have vast storage under the Clayport Library in Durham. sunderland seem to have quietly disposed of their old stock. Even when questioned under the freedom of information act they were still a bit evasive.
I studied in Newcastle too,but earlier in 1969..My old teachers must be turning in their graves at the mess today

I'm just starting The Female Man. I've heard there are some parts that haven't aged well, but it seemed like something that I ought to be familiar with, and the ebook was on sale cheap a while back.

>114 dustydigger: A good library is indeed a treasure. In my city I have one branch library that is a 15 minute walk and another branch that I can access by bike in the summer in about 15 minutes as well. Also the main library is about a 20 minute bus ride from my house. So I feel privileged to have such great library access. Right now my city is contemplating budget cutbacks in all areas which includes libraries and I'm just hoping my two close branches will be alright. Since the closest had major upgrades less than 2 years ago and the other was newly built 3 years ago they should be okay. Our main library has been facing a controversy because they instituted security scanning due to some violent altercations some of which involved library staff. Some people think that the security should be done away with because they feel it discourages usage of the library. I am not one of those people; the library is much more pleasant to visit now because the bad elements are staying away. It is a sad fact of life that drug addiction affects disproportionately more poor people who live in the core area and they lose their sense of how to behave properly when they are under the influence or looking for a score. Certainly library workers should not have to deal with those problems.

Reminds me of the reputation that Martin Luther King Library in DC had back in the day; particularly as a pick-up joint for guys who were "cruisers." You tended to avoid the public rest rooms!