What are we reading in the Lonesome October 2020?

So glad I snaffled Night in the Lonesome October back in the end of September,I already have 3 people behind me waiting for it! So instead of doing the daily chapter read like ScoLgo and lots of others do,I will have to gobble it up as soon as possible.I recently reread RZs debut novel,This Immortal,and now what fun it is that his final work is still spectacular entertainment!
Still up there as one of my top ten authors.

SF/F reads
Lois McMaster Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's Alliance ✔
Jim Butcher - Peace Talks ✔
Jim Butcher - Battle Ground ✔
Diana Rowland - White Trash Zombie Apocalyse
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker ✔
Lynsay Sands - A Quick Bite ✔
Roger Zelazny - Night in the Lonesome October✔
C J Cherryh - Emergence✔
C J Cherryh - Resurgence ✔
Harlan Ellison - Repent,Harlequin! said the Ticktockman ✔
E E Doc Smith - Skylark of Space ✔

other genre reads
A A Milne - Winnie the Pooh ✔
John Ruskin - King of the Golden River ✔
A E Maxwell - Gatsby's Vineyard ✔

I've lined up the following books for this month: The Warship, The Kingdom of Copper & The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday. The fourth choice will probably be The Seep.

About two chapters into Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson...

I'm midway through Mieville's Last Days of New Paris, setting out on a research/re-read of Stranger in a Strange Land, and still gearing up for my re-read of Book of the New Sun.

My most recent acquisitions are a couple of Samuel Delany's Neveryona books, and I'm tempted to start in on that series too.

>1 dustydigger: Happy to hear you are enjoying A Night in the Lonesome October! I read it all in one gulp when I first bought the book and only began the daily chapter thing on subsequent re-visits. It's a fun one!

>5 paradoxosalpha: In case you might be inclined to get a copy, Lexicon Urthus is an excellent companion to the New Sun tetralogy. It is literally a dictionary for the language Wolfe uses throughout the story. I found it illuminating on my re-read a couple of years ago, (I also picked up Gate of Horn, Book of Silk for the next time I read the Long Sun and Short Sun books).

Currently reading:
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle (re-read)
- A Night in the Lonesome October (re-read)
- The House on the Borderland
- The Sky Road
- Tales the Crows Taught Me: 17 Supernatural Tales to Make Your Skin Crawl
- The Glass Hotel (non-genre; latest work from the author of Station Eleven)

>4 johnnyapollo: I just finished Malazan, and Deadhouse Gates is one of my favorites. It gets very...intense. Much better than Gardens of the Moon.

Finished Skein Island and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Now on book 6, Lord of Chaos, of my Wheel of Time reread

>5 paradoxosalpha: If you're interested in further info on the artworks in The last Days of New Paris.

>9 SChant: Thanks for that; bookmarked for when I finally dive into The Last Days of New Paris.

I didn't have as much time to spend with the book as I would have liked but I did the forced march through The Kingdom of Copper and it's a worthy follow up to the first book in Ms. Chakraborty's trilogy.

I just finished up The Traveller's Stone (The Haven Series, #1) by S.J. Howland. I liked it!! Its that mix of teenage angst, science fiction, fantasy and adventure. Since it was a download, I thought "ah.... the hook to get me to buy the rest of the series." Alas... it was only partly true. SHE JUST STARTED!! Oh well... I've already subscribed to her so that when the next book comes out, I will be ready and willing.
For now... I've moved onto Rogue Star: Frozen Earth by Jasper T. Scott. Luckily I've looked ahead and THERE IS a second book. Just started and thus far I'm enjoying it.

I enjoyed Raiders of Gor more than I expected but I won't post at length about it here as the series is only peripherally SF. I did leave a short review on the main page for the morbidly curious.

My next SF reading will be The Black Mountains by Fred Saberhagen, which again might be SF or might not, being a sequel to The Broken Lands.

>13 SFF1928-1973: I read at least the first 3 Gor books when I was young and uncritical. When they started getting into highly misogynistic territory, I dropped them like a hot potato. I forget where I read to - it was either #4 or #5.

I hope to start reading routinely again this month (I've been engaged in a major catalogue clean-up); it depends on how work goes. We have an unexpected data return to deliver early next month (along with one delayed from the summer and a usual one at this time of the year) which needs some intensive manual processing. I'll see what it looks like when I run the reports next week. My first task is to catch up on my LTER backlog.

I'm about halfway through New York 2140, and I continue to be amazed by Kim Stanley Robinson's versatility. This book is really quite droll, and the characters are unique and unforgettable. Not what I expected from him at all.

Finished my rereading of Emergenceto refresh my mind on the Foreigner saga,so its straight on to Resurgence
Had a good time rereading A Night in the Lonesome October.Mentions of the Elder Gods were a temptation to shoehorn some H P Lovecraft tales into my ridiculously large TBR . Perhaps on the 31st I can pop over to Innsmouth or Dunwich........
Now I am off to join Harry Dresden,who's having a tough time being Queen Mab's Knight in Peace Talks

>2 dustydigger: I've both Butcher books in my TBR pile. I intend to cheat and move them up as soon as I finish one of my rotation reads.

After a spell away from genre, I picked up Brian Stableford's Journey to the Centre, the first in a 1982 trilogy about a Big Dumb Object that may not be so dumb. The main protagonist is a slightly hard-boiled, sardonic loner who is a dead ringer for the main protagonist of his earlier 'Hooded Swan' novels. About seven chapters in and the reader has to make regular detours to avoid the expository lumps; then again, this was sold to Ace back in the day as a trilogy and as there looks like an arbitrary page-count limit (200, give or take a page), I suppose this goes with the territory. Nowadays, this would be sold as a single 600 - 800 page doorstopper, which would give the author a bit more scope to show rather than telling.

Unexpected pleasure of finding that I had a signed copy!

>18 RobertDay: I read the recently. Really ought to track down the sequels, although the preferred versions seem to be ebooks....

>15 vwinsloe: I appreciate his works more and more (though I can perfectly understand those who don't). If it interests you, he's given a lot of interviews recently about his latest, The ministry for the future. The one in Clarkesworld is perhaps not super insightful, but interesting enough and it's a quick read: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/robinson_interview_2020/

I am reading Hothouse by Brian Aldiss as part of my question to read old Hugo winners. Bit tough orienting myself so far.

Finished one of my other rotation books and slipped Peace Talks by Jim Butcher into its place. Turning out to be a comfort read.

>20 igorken: Thank you!

>9 SChant: https://medium.com/@Nicky_Martin/graphic-annotations-of-china-mi%C3%A9villes-the...

Fun, thanks! But even with a robust connection, that image-heavy page loads with daunting slowness. I was a very educated reader of the Mieville book, and could picture most of the referenced artwork without help. More importantly, I think, I was already informed about the political dimensions of Surrealism, which is so often considered as a merely aesthetic movement in popular treatments. I finished reading the book over the weekend, but I haven't yet posted my review.

>24 paradoxosalpha: I'd be interested to see that review. I thought it was a fascinating book, but my SF&F reading group were somewhat mind-blown (so much so that I'm banned from suggesting any more Mieville)!

>25 SChant:

My review is up, although it's rather slight, I'm afraid.

Polished off Journey to the Centre fairly quickly. Now about to start on a portfolio of sf cover art by the UK artist Andy Bigwood, whose work has mainly appeared on a number of UK small press publications; this marries some examples from his work tied to extracts from the works illustrated. Then I shall take a break from serious stuff with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, which appealed to me when I read a review. I was hugely amused by Tom Holt's early work (for it is he!) but gave up on him as a comic writer because I felt his novels were getting a bit samey, and I was actually only finding every other one of his books actually funny. Perhaps a break, a change of genre away from overt comedy, and a change of authorial identity will be what I needed.

>27 RobertDay: You are not the only one to have found Tom Holt's books were in a good-bad-good-bad-... cycle.

>27 RobertDay: I always preferred his K J Parker stuff.

Finished Peace Talks by Jim Butcher. Comfort read. Added Battle Ground to my rotation (which isn't really rotating at the moment.)

Finished up The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday this morning and, while it seemed as though there was a threat of a shaggy-dog story breaking out, the author does a good job of placing a mystery to be solved at the heart of his post-apocalyptic fairy tale.

I'm struggling somewhat with The Black Mountains, which belongs mostly to the fantasy genre. There is some technology in evidence but when you have to summon a djinn to make it work it doesn't really count. The closest comparison I can think of is to Michael Moorcock's High History of the Runestaff; and maybe I appreciated such things more when I was a young teenager.

>32 SFF1928-1973: Ordnance Survey maps are often difficult to get through. Interesting that this map contains djinni, though.

>32 SFF1928-1973:

You mean The Black Mountains, right? Your touchstone goes elsewhere.

Reading Sorceror to the Crown, which is fun, alrthough the language is a little bit off which, as a fan of Heyer's fiction, is somewhat distracting.

Whew. Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker(1938) was not the easiest or happiest reads as the agnostic philosopher author grapples with the puzzle of the problem of evil and pain being allowed by a compassionate Creator.Awesome yet bleak.
Much lighter was my reread of LMBs Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. Light frivolous nonsense by comparison,but it was enjoyable relaxing in a cozy room with wind and rain outside,while revisiting Barrayar. But no Miles,unfortunately.Though I did love getting more insight into Simon Illyan.And the falling of the ImpSec HQ was hilarious and went some way to repaying lots of past pain and angst suffered by beloved charactersin that ugly building over the series! lol.Priceless.......
Now on to Jim Butcher's Peace Talks

I had started The Warship the other day but made the mistake of trying to read a little bit before I went to sleep last night...bad move...as I was up until 2:00 in the morning. When I was disappointed in some of the straight-up SF adventures I was reading in the past few months Asher is one of the authors I was measuring those writers against. The only problem is that this book will be totally impenetrable to the new reader; if anyone here is interested in reading Asher I'd suggest his "Transformation" trilogy, as that was something of a relaunch for him and, for me, represents his best writing to date.

Next up in terms of novels will be Gods of Jade and Shadow.

After finishing the rather stark Star Maker and struggling with Silverberg's Dying Inside I have been trying to relax from the annoying covid 19 orders from the UK govt (total lockdown in our area,no visitors allowed in,we cant visit friends or family,they are setting up extra field hospitals etc etc etc) by reading some light short stories .
As ever with Harlan Ellison's,his Hugo and Nebula short story award winner Repent,Harlequin! said the Ticktockman makes you want to smile and cry at the same time.
My next short story is Michael Swanwick's And the Dog said Bow-wow .Then on to Kristine Kathryn Rusch The Retrieval Artist

>37 Shrike58: Interesting. I'm a few stories into the London Centric: Tales of Future London anthology (which happens to be my first ER book) and that opens with "Skin" from Neal Asher. This was my first time reading Asher, and I too had to slow down initially to get a grip on the scene and the universe, before buckling in and hanging on for the ride.

>39 igorken: I have received this on ER too. Your post makes me eager to get to it.

About midway through Lord of Chaos and continually astonished these books became bestsellers. The writing is terrible and everything is repeated so many times to pad them out. Polished off Sorcerer to the Crown over the weekend, which was fun although the Regency pastiche prose stumbled on occasion. Now reading The Long Good-bye, which is genre, just not this genre...

Re-reading the Peregrine series. after getting them for my Thingaversary (and birthday for that matter - between my birthday gift card and the latest Gateway sale I picked up around 25 books). About half-way through Peregrine: Secundus now. I don't think I'd ever got around to reading this one in paper copy, although I recall the ending of the first. These, and the Vergil Magus series, and possibly Ursus of Ultima Thule seem to be set in the Dark Ages history of The Triune Monarchy of the Dr Ezsterhazy stories.

Very picaresque and somewhat whimsical in tone, I see parallels with Lord Dunsany (but not as much forsoothery).

Very much enjoyed the new Naomi Novik out the end of last month, A Deadly Education. Gideon the Ninth meets Harry Potter, Lovecraft meets Hogwarts. Also really liked The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. I'm doing my annual day-by-day read of A Night in the Lonesome October. Finally, I've been reading a new-to-me space opera series that is perfect pandemic reading--nothing too challenging or too boring. The characters tend to be Mary Sue-ish but the setting is interesting and the action innovative. I've blown through all 12 books out so far of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper as well as a fantasy trilogy and the singleton fantasy that Amazon kept pushing at me that got me started on this author, The Wizard's Butler. Not great literature but like the potato chips where you can't read just one.

>43 ronincats: Have never tried reading potato chips :-)

>44 iansales: It's called Spudomancy. If you don't like the future the first one foretells, you just read another.

I've just finished a couple of books.

Resurgence by Cherryh - which is definitely a moving pieces around the board sort of novel in the series.
Ministry for the Future by KSR. Which I am still digesting but I am generally positive in my opinion although there is quite a bit of info-dumping in it.

>46 andyl: No infodumps, no KSR. "Tell, don't show" is his motto :)

I enjoyed KSR's angry rejoinder to those who object to the expository elements of his style: "go read Moby Dick, Dostoevsky, Garcia Marquez, Jameson, Bakhtin, Joyce, Sterne--learn a little bit about what fiction can do, and then come back to me when you're done. That would be never, and I could go about my work in peace" (The Lucky Strike, 87).

For myself, I don't look for novels to be textual versions of cinema. I'm grateful for them to tell me things in engaging ways.

>1 dustydigger: Heh, we just read that for a book group, had a blast with it! Will be fun reading comments here

There's a good joke in New York 2140 where the narrator makes fun of how many infodumps there are, both in that book and in Aurora. I think the narrator says that if you don't like 'em, just skip 'em!

>50 Stevil2001: very cleverly done, I thought!

>49 cindydavid4: Yeah Cindy,it was great fun. I love the various Things locked up in closets and mirrors etc,especially the Thing trying to seduce Snuff by posing as various lady dogs. lol
Zelazny did a great job of somehow enlisting our sympathies on the side of Jack the Ripper of all people! EEK
I thought the ending was a bit too abrupt,but the thought of Jack and Jill running DOWN the hill,with Snuff and the cat running after was a fun ending. :0)
A fitting ending to RZs career.

>7 drmamm: Glad to hear that - some bits of Gardens drug on for me...

>14 Maddz: I think I got up to book 7 or 8 before they really started to wear thin but same here....

Well, I enjoyed Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, mainly for the central character and the world-building. It's only fantasy insofar as it takes place outside of our own history and the ruling race are called 'blueskins' (but not to their faces); the society feels broadly Roman, but the technology is medieval (though without gunpowder) and the politics roughly 17th/18th century in terms of sophistication.

Having a little break from genre with a book on Yugoslav war memorials (!) (well, if you want to know, it's called Spomeniks and the cover boasts a particularly weird example that looks like nothing so much as a giant concrete TIE fighter). Next sf up - Paul McAulay's Pasquale's Angel.

>55 RobertDay: I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City within the last year, and my impression was that the city was a Constantinople analogue.

(But don't ask me which Emperor - I'm not that well read on Byzantine history.)

>45 anglemark: I use the same phrase -- potato chip books. I'm an unapologetic reader of them. Life can't subsist on just War & Peace, Ulysses, etc.

>34 paradoxosalpha: The map is not the territory.

I'm back to "Proper SF" with Ground Zero Man by Bob Shaw. It's a futuristic novel set in the year...er...1978!

>55 RobertDay: I'm interested in the topic of the spomeniks; partly from the art aspect, partly due to being Croatian on my mother's side. I understand why the violence of the 1990s in Yugoslavia happened but I still remain disgusted by it all. Some of that type of memorial I've seen in its natural environment...admittedly from afar in a tour bus. Oh well, off to the virtual convention (...in this case Capclave 2020).

>60 SFF1928-1973: Ground Zero Man references my home town of Belper, in Derbyshire. I asked Bob about that once, and he said that when he looked on the map, it appeared to be in the right place for where he had his characters at the time.

Later, Bob revised the novel slightly as The Peace Machine. (Toucstone correctly refers you back to GZM.) The original Corgi paperback showed some poor soul with the worse case of earache on record!

Felt worn out from all the endless relentless fighting in Jim Butcher's Battle Ground. I was apprehensive that some beloved character was going to die,I guessed right who it wasand cried buckets,but at the same time felt a little offended at the way Harry just sort of said I am very sad,but I know from the past I'll get over it. Not too happy about some of the things that will be coming up in Chicago soon. Got to admit,like Harry himself I yearn at times for the good old days down in the basement with Bob,Mouse and Mister,with smaller ,solveable problems for a young wizard.
To stop myself moping over the good old days (unbelievable that Storm Front was published 20 years ago!) I visited Pooh,Christopher Robin,Piglet and all the gang in the 100 Acre Wood,and am now diving into some light fluff,White Trash Zombie Apocalypse :0)

Started The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man by Dave Hutchinson. Various reviews have described it as good, old-fashioned pulp, and that's just what I need at the moment. Looking forward to getting into it.

I'm about halfway through Persepolis Rising; having found the middle three books of The Expanse less satisfying than the first trilogy, this one feels like a return to form.

>64 SChant: I read it several months ago and I wouldn't have described it as anything like pulp sf.

Finished Gods of Jade and Shadow this morning and found myself highly impressed; definitely one of the best novels I've read this year. My only regret is that I see my TBR pile getting higher in the future.

I'm reading Anyone by Charles Soule who is fast becoming a favourite new author. This book is about a technology that can transfer one person's mind into another person's body anywhere in the world (or even on a space station). Soule's The Oracle Year was a favourite sf pick last year.

>63 dustydigger: I just finished Battle Ground as well. A little too on point for the times. Also not happy with the death or the incarceration.

>65 Stevil2001:, been thinking about trying that series, that's an interesting observation.

>70 Cecrow: I like it on the whole! I think the first three books were strong, and the middle three books had good moments but were less satisfying. Based on how the seventh book is thus far, it seems like that might be because they were moving everything into position for the end.

They have good worldbuilding, they read easy, the characters are fun, and because they read easy, I don't think they entirely get their due for their depth. I mean, they're not, say, Too Like the Lightning, but I think they have something to say about building and maintaining communities, at the personal level, and at the societal level, and at the species level.

I finally finished the Ingathering omnibus by Zenna Henderson, which I have been reading slowly over the last year or so. The People stories are gentle SF about a seemingly human race who crash-landed in SW USA when they had to leave their home planet. They possess various psi powers which they hide from humans for fear of persecution, although their motives are genuinely good and outwardly they seem like wholesome American pioneer stock. Many of the stories concern lost members of the People reuniting with their own kind, often seen through the eyes of humans. The People are who we could be, if we put aside fear and pride and treated others as we'd like to be treated ourselves. This was a hopeful read during difficult times.

>72 Sakerfalcon: I put one of Zenna Henderson's books in the list of "My 100 Books" that I drew up at the beginning of the year. Very human stories about very human aliens.

I've made a start on Paul McAulay's Pasquale's Angel, an alternate reality where Leonardo da Vinci was honoured by the city-state of Florence for bringing them the Industrial Revolution some 250 years early.

Keep on taking breaks from Lord of Chaos as its glacial pace is mind-numbing. Now reading The Day of Timestop, which I first read many years ago. It's the usual 1960s sf nonsense and everyday sexism. Farmer, I had thought was better than that. Apparently not.

>74 iansales:, I've heard enough negativity about Farmer that I've never sampled him, not even his Riverworld.

>74 iansales: >75 Cecrow: When I was a teenager writers like Farmer, Spinrad and Ellison were important antidotes to the tedium of Asimov and the increasingly deranged rants of Robert Heinlein. But as is always the case if I knew then what I know now .....

>72 Sakerfalcon: i read a lot of Zenna Henderson when I was in my 20s. I still remember details about those stories even now (and I'm closer to 70 than to 60).

>42 Maddz: Thanks for using the word “picaresque“ I have somehow never been exposed to it before & had to look it up. Maybe I thought people had misspelled “ picturesque” and just glossed over it? ;-)

>1 dustydigger: A wonderful book, by a favorite author of mine too.

The Day of Timestop was complete rubbish. Now reading The Dollmaker.

Cannot get touchstones to work. New Talk not entirely an improvement...

ETA: touchstones now working.

Finished Hugo nominated novella The Retrieval Artist Also completed Doc Smith's Skylark of Space,originally serialized in 1928 and claimed as the first space opera. Seminal in the history of SF,but pretty poor as literature really. But I often raised a smile at the charmingly quirky tech solutions. Much nearer Jules Verne's type of thing than modern stuff,and rather long,but still a fun read.
Now halfway through White Trash Zombie Apocalyse,then its just a browse through some HPL and M R James short stories for Halloween week while working out my November reads

>80 iansales:

The Dollmaker by Nina Allan? Worked OK for me, although I had to wait about 15-20 seconds.

>82 andyl: Yes, Nina Allan.

Edited my comment just now and touchstones worked. But they're definitely more temperamental than they were before.

Just finished McAulay's Pasquale's Angel, which I found myself surprised at how quickly I polished that off. Now made a start on Ken Macleod's The Execution Channel.

Just finished Salvation Lost, #2 in the latest Peter F Hamilton series. It's...good. A decent read. Not his best but definitely not a waste of my time. He explores a lot of interesting areas with regard to non-binary humans and as usual (in between page-long descriptions of clothing) brings out more cool gadgets and apocalyptic weapons than James Bond's Q. The 3rd and final installment gets released next month, so I will switch to non-fiction for a palate cleanser until then.

(sorry for the double-post - I originally posted it on the Fantasy board by mistake)

>75 Cecrow: Farmer is the most inconsistent author I'm familiar with. His short fiction is generally better than his novels, which tend to be pulpy nonsense and/or pastiches of better authors. The Lovers seems to me a notable exception, which I found unique and haunting. I'm not a fan of his Riverworld saga which to me seems overrated.

As penance for my sins I'm reading A Time of Changes, the Most Boring Novel Ever Award-nominated book by Robert Silverberg.

I imagine the following exchange between SF writers:
Ursula K. Le Guin: I've just written the most boring novel ever. It's called The Left Hand of Darkness.
Robert Silverberg: Hold my beer.

I hope Silverberg is not planning to write a sequel called A Long Time With No Changes.

Started reading Faraday's Orphans by N. Lee Wood. I read it many years ago when it first came out but can't remember a thing about it except that it was a bit dystopian.

>61 Shrike58:

I understand why the violence of the 1990s in Yugoslavia happened but I still remain disgusted by it all.

I can relate to that. I have found myself having to explain to some people that understanding a conflict or why a conflict happens does not mean you condone it.

Have you read, The City of Brass?

>87 SFF1928-1973: Still, about six years ago in a previous job, I found out that our chief software architect - a chap in his late 20s - was a proper SF fan when I overheard him describing to a colleague the plot of a novel he was deeply impressed by, and realised he was talking about 'A Time of Changes'!

>87 SFF1928-1973: My LT ratings for Silverberg are all over the place. 2stars for Time of Changes,3 stars for Nightwings and 4 stars for Downward to the Earth
I am struggling with Silverberg's Dying Inside at the moment. My least favourite genre is general fiction with middle aged depressed males who have mid life crises and minutely describe their angst and disatisfaction with life. So this book is all of that with the only SF connection being this particular male is telepathic. If he had been a more sympathetic protagonist I may have had some connection to him,but he is not a lovable fellow!Instead I am plodding through the sex and drugs and unlikable tedious interior monologues,muttering ''thank god only 100 pages to go''. Only his writing skills save this for me,and I found the first half of the book much more interesting than the second half.
Dying Inside is on so many of my WWEnd lists,and thats why I am subjecting myself to reading it.I love crossing books off lists! lol
But nominating this for both Hugo and Nebula? ....weird IMO.......

>91 dustydigger: It's funny you should mention Downward to Earth; I happened to read it earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I'm not anti-Silverberg by any means!

>89 pgmcc: Yes I did and I enjoyed it quite a lot. So much so that I tried to recruit Ms. Chakraborty as a guest of honor for a convention I will be chairman of. Sadly, COVID-19 happened.

>93 Shrike58: That is too bad.

Which convention are you chairing? I chaired The Phoenix Convention in Dublin for a few yeas. We referred to it as P-Con.

I was lucky enough to meet Ms. Chakraborty at WorldCon in Dublin last year. She would be a great GoH. Lovely and very interesting person.

I'm not officially focusing on it, but the book I meant to be reading next is in an egalley format it's easier to deal with on my desktop, so I'm taking Borne with me to work to read on my breaks.

I've just started The last emperox.

Having finished my seventh (?) re-read of Stranger in a Strange Land, I've finally embarked in earnest on my long-promised re-read of The Book of the New Sun.

>97 paradoxosalpha: Careful you don't get whiplash :-)

>68 gypsysmom:

I will check that out. I discovered Soule though the Star Wars comics. Great stuff.

Oh-oh!!
Keep an eye out for Jack and Snuff and all the gang from A Night in the Lonesome October this Saturday night Its full moon on Halloween this year,when the Elder Gods battle to come through the door and take over the Earth.and its also a Blue Moon,happens only every 76 years,so double trouble maybe?
On the other hand,the Elders might take a look at the state the world is in,and decide not to bother,its so daunting lol.Fingers crossed At least there wont be many ''civilians'' around poking their noses in at the ceremony this time .They are all under curfew or escaping monstrous wildfires or wading through floods,or a thousand other problems besetting poor old mankind right now.
Good luck Gate Closers.

Finished The Broken Earth trilogy, The Borrowers Afield, and Aunt Maria. Started The Ganymede Takeover -- so far having trouble telling what parts Dick wrote vs Nelson. Hard to believe this began as a possible sequel to The Man in the High Castle.

>100 dustydigger: Just finished the annual reread yesterday, a couple of days early so my sister, who has never read it, could take my book home with her! You make some excellent points! But this IS 2020, so who knows...

>100 dustydigger: >102 ronincats: We experienced a rare clear sky last night here in the Seattle area. Mars glowing large and red in close proximity to the nearly full moon was quite an extraordinary sight. A short while later the vicar nearly caught Snuff in The Good Doctor's barn! Good thing Linda Enderby has an inclination for using 'her' binoculars. Re-reading this book is an annual joy.

Also been reading the Wayward Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch. I've recently finished the first two books and am about to begin The Last Town. This is my next-to-last WWE challenge read for the year, (book #40 on the Pick & Mix). Once My Real Children arrives in the post, I will wrap up the final title for WWE 2020 leaving the remaining ~2 months for random picks from the TBR - which has actually shrunk this year -- more evidence that 2020 is the most off-kilter year I have ever experienced.

Just finished Macleod's The Execution Channel, which kept me reading, though it's not exactly comfort reading by any stretch of the imagination. (Though there is a lovely joke on the Dear Leader at the end of the story.) Next up, I have a book on the life and art of Chesley Bonestell, which I'm looking forward to.

>103 ScoLgo: Yes, Mars and the Moon was a beautiful sight! And it looks like it will be again tonight.

Someday, I will find and read A Night in the Lonesome October. But, my Halloween books this year were Burnt Offerings, If It Bleeds and Mexican Gothic.
Now, I am back to Miles Vorkosigan books with Mirror Dance. I am enjoying this series and can't believe it took me this long to read these books.

Enjoyed John W Campbell's The Ultimate Weapon Love the way the brilliant scientists just think up their wonderful ideas and super weapons in a few hours between lunch and teatime..lol.
Oh,and I found it very endearing when they created an energy beam for their ship with an excellent 4 billion ''horse power'' .Long time since I came across horse power used in this way in an SF book.No idea just what that is in kilowatts,but it sounds a lot! :0)

Started Paulo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife for my SF&F reading group. So far it seems like a reasonable "20 minutes into the future" eco-catastrophe story.

>106 dustydigger: Just under 3 Terawatts. Or about 1/7th of the worlds electrical energy generation.