Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[Wordcrasher]

I just finished "Isaac Asimov's Caliban" by Roger MacBride Allen.
It's the first in a trilogy settled on one of the Spacers' world we knew from the original Asimov's robot novels. The author is great at hard fiction and the style is very similar to Asimov's. A recommended read for Asimov's robots' fan.
I am now in the middle of "Flood" by Andrew Vachss and I'm really liking it.

[beppe]

Reading the posts on this interesting thread has changed a little my attitude toward this thread.
Therefore I am posting what I am actually reading. In any case it will be useful to me as reference.

I have the long ingrained habit of reading several books at the same time.
This is what I have open in my reader.

Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster. Just started it, fascinating.

Spoiler:

A delightful, witty, easily accessible set of talks on the topic of the novel. Relatively short, too.
Forster's book is not really a book at all; rather, it's a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge University on subjects as parboiled as "People," "The Plot," and "The Story." It has an unpretentious verbal immediacy thanks to its spoken origin and is written in the key of Aplogetic Mumble: "Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad." Such gentle provocations litter these pages. How can you not read on? Forster's critical writing is so ridiculously plainspoken, so happily commonsensical, that we often forget to be intimidated by the rhetorical landscapes he so ably leads us through. As he himself points out in the introductory note, "Since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows."

Ulysses by James Joice. It is the third time that I am reading it. I liked Stefano Dedalo very much in the other previous readings, also. But in the first of those I was searching mostly for stimulations, in the second peace of mind and distraction from my own "torments". Now just pleasure of reading.

Spoiler:

Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle).[3] The title alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and establishes a series of parallels between characters and events in Homer's poem and Joyce's novel (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
Ulysses contains approximately 265,000 words from a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses),[4] divided into eighteen episodes. Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.from Wikipedia that has a useful description of the structure of the book.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I started it following the advice of Wife and Friend. It is probably the sweetest book that I ever encountered. I read it on and off since a while. At a certain point it will catch me and then I will have to read it not stop. For the moment I savor it like a bite of chocolate once in a while.

Spoiler:

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel written by Yann Martel. In the story, the protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean. Martel brought the idea of rituals many times throughout the novel as well as storytelling. Rituals give structure to abstract ideas and emotions—in other words, ritual is an alternate form of storytelling. It was rituals and storytelling that kept Pi Patel sane.

Declarations of War by Len Deighton.

Spoiler:

I read it once in a while, when I need something short and catching, just to change my mind. Like they do when they eat a piece of bread between two different wines that they want to taste. Or like a sip of wine between bites. I read it for the first time in 1971 when it came out. I have reread it several times. I found it in ebook form with great pleasure and I still enjoy very much It is a collection of flashes spanning from Hannibal to Vietnam. I strongly recommend it to lover of war books.

I have other books open, of quality. Ulysses intensity does not allow me to spend more concentration time. I will mention them when I will pick them up again.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

BUYER BEWARE!

Just finished reading this edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which Amazon FALSELY CLAIMS on that page is the 17th (the latest) edition. It is not. It is a much earlier, probably public-domain version and does not include quotes from more modern public figures such as Ronald Reagan or JKF, both of which are included in the 17th edition. I left a scathing review under the heading, "FALSE ADVERTISING."

I should have known better. The latest edition for $3.96? Shame on me! See the heading of this post!

Attachment 55585
(Click to enlarge)

I'd suggest that you edit your review to note the exact edition you're reviewing. (Use the Amazon ASIN.) The trouble is, Amazon amalgamate reviews from different editions in an irregular way. Your review could quite easily end up on the Kindle page of an official ebook version when it appears.

When I published my version of Kim I decided to review the other Kindle versions available. It was a larger task than I'd expected! The only way to identify editions was using the Amazon ASIN.

[bjones6416]

I just finished "The Hallowed Hunt," the third book in the Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold. For the first time in one of her books, I had a little trouble getting into the characters. It was almost as if the book was written by someone else in the style of Bujold. I'm not sure I would have even finished it if it had been by an author unknown to me, but I figured she has given me so much reading pleasure with her other works that I owed it to her to give it a chance. Did anybody else here find it vastly different from her other books as far as character development goes?

And please, if you haven't read Bujold, please don't let this keep you from reading any or all of her books. I've hugely enjoyed every other thing she has written, so it may have been that I was in the mood for a different kind of book this week. I'll probably try it again another time and see if my opinion changes.

[kennyc]

Received - Opus - the last 25 years (paper-hardback-used) yesterday. And was able to check out Hitch 22 from the Library as it was on my waiting list.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Soothsayer by Mike Resnick. It sounds fun, and it's been on my TBR pile since December 2005!

I think I actually read it at the time I bought it, but I wasn't certain until I'd finished it!

There are lots of holes in plot and motivations of various characters, but still fun.

Now onto the other two in the trilogy. First, Oracle

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

BUYER BEWARE!

Just finished reading this edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which Amazon FALSELY CLAIMS on that page is the 17th (the latest) edition. It is not. It is a much earlier, probably public-domain version and does not include quotes from more modern public figures such as Ronald Reagan or JKF, both of which are included in the 17th edition. I left a scathing review under the heading, "FALSE ADVERTISING."

I should have known better. The latest edition for $3.96? Shame on me! See the heading of this post!

Attachment 55585
(Click to enlarge)

Originally Posted by nomesque

Tom - that sucks! Ask for a refund. Amazon are - apparently - quite good at issuing them where there's good cause. ...

Thanks, nomesque, I may try that, although another reviewer of that book said Amazon refused to return his money.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'd suggest that you edit your review to note the exact edition you're reviewing. (Use the Amazon ASIN.) The trouble is, Amazon amalgamate reviews from different editions in an irregular way. Your review could quite easily end up on the Kindle page of an official ebook version when it appears.

When I published my version of Kim I decided to review the other Kindle versions available. It was a larger task than I'd expected! The only way to identify editions was using the Amazon ASIN.

Excellent suggestion, pdurrant. I'll try to remedy that before the day's end. You're right about how Amazon amalgamates reviews from different editions, as can be seen on the page I referenced. Many of the people who gave excellent reviews to the book were obviously referring to the print, and not the Kindle, edition.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I'm currently reading White Seed: The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke by MobileRead member Paul Clayton. I'm almost finished now and it's really spellbinding; but one thing surprised the heck out of me, and I can only assume it's a misprint (unless Paul Clayton works for DC comics).

In chapter 34 of my Kindle edition, I discovered the following curiosity:

.....Captain Stafford had Superman signal the charge on his trumpet and they raced into the square.

Superman???

Maybe The Man of Steel rescues the Lost Colony in the final chapter by flying around the Earth faster than light in a counter-clockwise direction and changing history!

Seriously, though; White Seed is a wonderful and imaginative retelling of the true-life mystery, and I highly recommend it.

And no, Superman—except for that one obvious misprint—isn't one of the characters.

I've been contacted by Paul Clayton, the author of that wonderful book, and told that the error has been fixed in all current editions (he had discovered it before I did). You can read his comments at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...95#post1021595.

In the mean time, let me just say that the rather humorous typo in no way diminished my enjoyment of his wonderful novel (after all, in a work of that size, a few errors are bound to appear), and if anyone hasn't yet done so, please check out White Seed: The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke by Paul Clayton. You'll be glad you did.

From Publishers Weekly (from the Amazon page referenced above in the book title):
.....White Seed…hews closely to the record of Sir Walter Raleigh's second doomed attempt to plant the British flag in Virginia… The depiction of the colony's physical and moral disintegration between 1587 and 1590 -- as drunken, cannibalistic soldiers mutiny and brutalize the settlers they were meant to protect, and as colonists confront disease, starvation and madness -- evokes a harrowing sense of human fallibility. Readers…will find this saga, which…soon achieves page-turner velocity, to be both a dandy diversion and an entertaining education.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Received - Opus - the last 25 years (paper-hardback-used) yesterday. And was able to check out Hitch 22 from the Library as it was on my waiting list.

Have fun with this - I keep my copy next to my reading chair - so I can always dip into it if I need to have reality explained to me - in a perspective (Opus) that makes sense - and sees through all the BS.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Have fun with this - I keep my copy next to my reading chair - so I can always dip into it if I need to have reality explained to me - in a perspective (Opus) that makes sense - and sees through all the BS.

Thanks for the recommendation on this! I've been reading it every evening in bed. Great stuff!

Unfortunately of late my reading is pretty much focused on this and art-related tutorial/learning.

[neilmarr]

Quickly, quietly and just for us here in this thread ... if anyone wants to visit the bookstore at our website at BeWrite Books (link below) and pick out a couple of books over the weekend, just email me the titles and your preferred format and I'll be happy to send them straight over with our compliments. Shhhhh ... don't tell anybody else. Hoots. Neil -- ntmarrATbewrite.net (use the @ sign)

[kennyc]

Very generous of you Neil!

[neilmarr]

Not at all, Kenny. I'm showing off. N

[TwilightShadows]

I'm new on this forum, but I thought I'd start chiming in. I am reading all the H.P. Lovecraft I can find. Mostly I've been getting books through Feedbooks.com for this stint. Highly recommended!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TwilightShadows

I'm new on this forum, but I thought I'd start chiming in. I am reading all the H.P. Lovecraft I can find. Mostly I've been getting books through Feedbooks.com for this stint. Highly recommended!

Welcome to MR, TW, and thanks for the recommendation!