So, What Are You Reading?

I'm currently diving into Hermann Broch's Der Tod des Vergil. And "diving" is a valid word: it's like an oceanic abyss of language, memory, and history ... an abyssal kosmos that is also the last thoughts of one of humanity's profoundest poets, who is at the same time a dying old man as uncertain, unsatisfied, and unjustified as any other man facing down his life. And Broch's prose is almost unbearably tender and lovely, the way German is on the occasions it can be made to transcend its native numpishness: the effect is something like seeing a wildflower sprout through a crack in a stone hillside. (For more of the same, see most of Paul Celan's verse.)

edited 30th Jun '16 6:20:43 AM by Jhimmibhob

Currently reading Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie, finally getting back to The First Law books, although it's been so long since I read The Blade Itself I've had to spend a fair while on the wiki reminding myself about characters and plot.

Put on hold for the moment is London: The Novel by Edward Rutherford. I'm up to about 1100 AD and thought I'd have a break. I'm not enjoying it quite as much as Sarum, not to say it's a bad book, just that I enjoyed the truly ancient history of Sarum (start about 8000BC) whereas London only really starts with the Romans.

Currently reading Dune and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Dune was started early last month on a long plane ride, and soon after I started the Harry Potter series on the side because when I'm reading a long, dense book I tend to like taking breaks where I read something a bit simpler.

Current four: Chelsea Whistle by Michelle Tea, a series of essays about growing up in Chelsea Massachusetts, which strikes some chimes with me since Chelsea reminds me of my own home town of Lowell.

Saturday Night by Susan Orlean, a somewhat dated but still interesting (to me anyway, hey, I'm old) study of how Americans spend their Saturday nights.

The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey about a zombie apocalypse revolving around the question of why a few of the zombies, all of them children, have retained a level of sentience.

The Annihilation Score. Another in Charles Stross' Laundry series, this one told from the viewpoint of Mo, Bob Howard's wife, wielder of a demonic violin.

edited 3rd Jul '16 6:28:04 PM by tricksterson

Just finished an early Star Trek novel - The Klingon Gambit. I read it shortly after it first came out and didn't remember much of it (I was pretty young). After unpacking from a recent move I wondered if it had been worth carrying with me through so many homes for so long. Nope, not really. Now I see why it has such a sparse entry on Memory Beta. The prose is acceptable but uninspired, the characterizations are off, the Klingons are cartoonish and not a credible threat (and their weapons are actually called "ray guns" instead of "disrupters"), there are some big plot contrivances, and the basic plot is a steal from Forbidden Planet (or should I say "Shore Leave") by way of "The Naked Time" anyway, so hardly surprising to a fan of the series.

Now reading The Cardinal of the Kremlin in my continuing tour of early Tom Clancy.

edited 5th Jul '16 9:08:17 AM by Bense

Isn't that The Cardinal of the Kremlin?

Yep, sorry for the slip. It probably ties with Red Storm Rising for "Clancy novel least likely to ever be made into a movie" because it centers around the Soviets developing an SDI-style missile-defense system, and while that was plenty relevant in '88, it's more than a little dated now.

Re-reading "1635 - Music and Murder", by David Carrico. It's one of the side-stories for the Ring of Fire series, but it's still very good and has great characters and plotting to go with them.

Just starting California by Edan Lepuki which has an interesting take on the end of civilization. No zombie plague, big asteroid or alien invasion, everything is just slowly crumbling away. Also still reading The Annihilation Score.

edited 11th Jul '16 2:15:03 PM by tricksterson

The Cardinal of the Kremlin was quite nice, even if it is dated. Lots of Cold War spy stuff.

Now reading a collection of essays on The Lord of the Rings by genre authors. Yeah, I read non-fiction too sometimes.

Besides the two above am also reading The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, an interesting mix of space opera and hard science and Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone which is about a necromancer in a Magitek universe investigating the murder of a god.

Good choices. Quantum Thief was some quality post-cyberpunk, though occasionally confusing. Three Parts Dead was a fun, easy read.

Just finished The Odessa File not quite as good as Day of the Jackal. In particular, I wonder if Forsyth's editor made him cut things short. That seems the best explanation for why the protagonist spent weeks building up a false ID as a former SS man and then abandoned it after using it on exactly two people. Miller, the protagonist, is also something of a non-entity as far as characters go, and is somewhat unsympathetic in his tactics. Sure, he's fighting Nazis, so he has to be better than them, but it's his own stupid insistence in continuing to use his distinctive car when he's going undercover that nearly gets him killed. An Mickelson, Odessa's major assassin, also appears rather inept, shooting the first man to come to a window without verifying his target when he knows the target is with a high-value member of Odessa (and the two look nothing alike), and then using a car bomb and failing to follow his target to confirm it went off properly.

1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. Naval yarn in the Ring of Fire series. Not really my thing - I'm more of a main-line Eastern European focused Ro F book disposition, but it's still a decent enough book all the same.

While I like focusing on the main theater of the stories I also like seeing what's going on away from the center too.

Currently still reading Three Parts Dead also reading Tarot Tales, a collection of stories supposedly revolving around the tarot but not all of them do, How to Escape From A Leper Colony, a collection of stories by Tiphanie Yanique, centered on the Caribbean Islands, especially the U. S. Virgin Islands and Trinidad and Seeders by A. J. Colucci and I swear if I never read another techno thriller based on an isolated part of the frozen north with the spawn of science run amok it will be too soon. The story itself is pretty decent though with some interesting characters.

edited 23rd Jul '16 3:22:53 PM by tricksterson

There's meant to be some more main-line books coming out next year. Dealing with the fallout after a certain Pontifex Maximus gets shuffled off his mortal coil.

And I'm picking up the one about the great Doctor Gribbleflotz that's out in August. Should be an entertaining read if nothing else.

Still reading Tarot Tales which, like most anthologies is a mix of good and bad. Also Reading The Skewed Throne by Joshua Palmatier, Half the World, second in a Young Adult trilogy by Joe Abercrombie and Violent Century, a superhero Diesel Punk novel by Lavie Tidhar.

Dead Before Dying by Deon Meyer, South African crime novel the series Cape Town is based on.

The series suck as an adaptation. Big time. Sloppy, tacked on B-plots, ridiculously unfitting Big Bad (who is typecast - I mean, where did Arnold Vosloo NOT play a bad guy?! And it's not even Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize, he's blatantly evil in the first episode and what happens later just makes him more of a monster) and some short, obvious explanations for the main plot have been omitted (they're in the book, though).

And it doesn't help the bloody book is a knockoff of Sudden Impact.

Misery by Stephen King. Wow is all I can say. It's a rollercoaster of a book, so well-written, and I must say in some parts, the tension is palpable. Haven't finished it yet, but so far it's excellent.

Now I must rinse.

edited 2nd Aug '16 2:53:54 AM by TheOnlySaneTeen

For Whom The Bell Tolls. I'm enjoying it, and close to finish reading it.

I thought Misery was rather good, but I think King has a tendency to sometimes let things run off the rails at the end of his books, and Misery went a little too over-the-top by the end. Still worth a read though.

I am presently reading That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis. It very much has a feeling like reading the "Scouring of the Shire" chapters of Lord of the Rings, only the protagonists are not as capable as the hobbits were at the end of their adventure. Lewis and Tolkien obviously were both very worried about the disappearing English countryside. Lewis even says "watch for more on this from my friend Prof. Tolkien" in the prologue (it was written in 1943, 10 years before Rings was published).

edited 4th Aug '16 10:28:08 AM by Bense

Finished Half the World and now started Rapture of the Nerds, Post-Cyberpunk by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross but it reads more like Douglas Adams.

Finished For Whom The Bell Tolls

Jesus, I'm not made for reading. I couldn't read all of the final chapter, 37 pages with my mind going places. I'm glad I found that Hemingway quote of the Seven movie, though.

edited 6th Aug '16 10:10:39 PM by Tomodachi

Rabbit run, by John Updike. I always enjoy a story with a good Jerk Ass Woobie, and Rabbit seems to fit the build from what the back is telling. Haven't started yet.

I finished reading Hamlet. In spanish, now I need to read it in english, but even then, I got sorta... puzzled. I kinda like it.