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

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by bbusybookworm

Well, not being in the mood to start a new author, I've started to reread Ann McCaffrey's Talent Series.

I've just finished all three of the earlier Pegasus Books, and am currently slowly working my way through the third book in the series Damia's Children.

Rereading these reminds me how I got hooked on reading her work, as I started to really get into her work with this series, only later getting into Pern, Planet Pirates, etc.Would hearty recommend it to everyone.

I didn't read all that many of the Pern series - I liked them, but not enough to read them all, and they were pretty self-contained anyway.

One of hers I really liked though was The Ship Who Sang. It was at least 20-25 years ago that I read it, but I remember enjoying it.

Cheers,
Marc

[nekokami]

I liked the Talent short stories, though not the novels quite as much. I have to admit I quit reading the Pern books after one in which it's tossed out at the start of a chapter that two major characters have had children, but no more details are provided. It just started to feel like Ms. McCaffrey was going through the motions to satisfy the publisher and fans, rather than writing something she actually cared about.

[Mindy]

I quite enjoyed the Crystal Singer ones, there was something a bit different about them that has stuck with me even though I read them over 10 years ago.
Similar, though not to the same extent with the Talent books, and a bit less so again with Pern (although they're the sort of thing I'd seriously think about re-reading as ebooks).

[pshrynk]

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Not in e-book, yet, but I'll have to put up with last millenium technology for this.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

One of hers I really liked though was The Ship Who Sang. It was at least 20-25 years ago that I read it, but I remember enjoying it.

Yes, The Ship who Sang is one of her better ones, as is The ship who searched, set in the same universe. I have to say that I don't enjoy the other ones such as The ship who Won, The City who fought, etc anywhere as much.

Originally Posted by nekokami

I liked the Talent short stories, though not the novels quite as much. I have to admit I quit reading the Pern books after one in which it's tossed out at the start of a chapter that two major characters have had children, but no more details are provided. It just started to feel like Ms. McCaffrey was going through the motions to satisfy the publisher and fans, rather than writing something she actually cared about.

Agreed, The Pern series at time's does remind me of the old pulps, just going through the motions. However there are some gems, in some of the story arcs.

The Harperhall Trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums), is one of the best arcs in the series, in combination with The White Dragon, as it does run in parallel to the arc. Also The Masterharper of pern, to get the backstory.

Haven't read or bought any of the ones that came out after All The Weyrs Of Pern, as while I did enjoy it, I wasn't that intrested in what happened after.

Originally Posted by Mindy

I quite enjoyed the Crystal Singer ones, there was something a bit different about them that has stuck with me even though I read them over 10 years ago.
Similar, though not to the same extent with the Talent books, and a bit less so again with Pern (although they're the sort of thing I'd seriously think about re-reading as ebooks).

I did enjoy the Crystal singer series, but I tend to mainly reread the first two, as I don't enjoy the third one as much.

I have to admit that I've never gotten that much into her Arcona series. I just couldn't care enough about all the characters to want to find out what happens.

Still, Nimisha's Ship is one of my Favourites and as it a standalone book, its a nice reread.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Not in e-book, yet, but I'll have to put up with last millenium technology for this.

I'm intrested, but am trying to hold off as long as possible to get the e-book. But if I run into a really good discounted price, my resistance will probably crumble

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Londoner

Yeah I agree with what everybody's saying, it's a mammoth of a series. I've read them back to back up to this one (with a brief break between 10 and 11 for the rather excellent Lies of Locke Lamorra) and it's been a bit of a labour of love.
To be honest, you'll struggle if you take too many breaks because there are so many characters ( although it only follows about a dozen closely) that you inevitably get names confused. Especially considering the way most of them are in almost every book!

He did impress me there. First, he was able to give each character a unique enough voice that you seldom found yourself confused about who was talking. Second, he was able to juggle multiple plot lines and keep them all straight.

It's worth sticking with right the way through, but I now have a hell of wait for the final conclusion. Halfway through 11 now as I type this, and struggling to figure out how the massive conclusion to 11 books of build up is going to be achieved with just number 12.

I don't know exactly what the wrap up will be, but it was obvious in the last couple of books he was pushing to get there. He was carefully moving the pieces around to set them up for the end game. Note where various of the major characters began, and where they ended up.
______
Dennis

[astra]

Finished Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny.
Just OK. Probably if I read it when I was 16-18 I would be more excited, however, at 34, just OK at the best.

I am starting The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Let's see whether it lives up to the hype around it.

[mazzeltjes]

Originally Posted by astra

Finished Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny.
Just OK. Probably if I read it when I was 16-18 I would be more excited, however, at 34, just OK at the best.

I am starting The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Let's see whether it lives up to the hype around it.

Never finished the name of the rose
it was so esoteric that it gave me a major headache

now reading
USA trilogy by John dos Passos
in dead tree format

[Londoner]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't know exactly what the wrap up will be, but it was obvious in the last couple of books he was pushing to get there. He was carefully moving the pieces around to set them up for the end game. Note where various of the major characters began, and where they ended up.
______
Dennis

True, although bearing in mind it just took Mat the whole of book eleven to move a little way across the map, it's going to take some fast moving scenes for everyone to even get to Tarmon Gaidon in just one book, let alone to fight it!

[ludlow]

I'm reading the bundled series about odd thomas, by koontz, on the last book, it is great. i've only read one other koontz book, husband/wife?? really good.

[astra]

Originally Posted by ludlow

I'm reading the bundled series about odd thomas, by koontz, on the last book, it is great. i've only read one other koontz book, husband/wife?? really good.

You can try these two as well:

False Memory

Intensity

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I liked the Talent short stories, though not the novels quite as much. I have to admit I quit reading the Pern books after one in which it's tossed out at the start of a chapter that two major characters have had children, but no more details are provided. It just started to feel like Ms. McCaffrey was going through the motions to satisfy the publisher and fans, rather than writing something she actually cared about.

I read most of the Pern books, but eventually grew tired of them. I think your analysis of Anne going through the motions to please fans and publisher when she was losing interest is apt.

I was amused at the number of folks who thought Pern was fantasy. It has a feudal society, medieval technology, fire breathing dragons... If you come in in the middle of the series, you miss the setup that Pern is a lost colony, man arrived by starship, and the fire breathing dragons are products of genetic engineering on the indigenous fire lizards, and it appeared that's precisely what many readers did.

Pern also spawned a large fan community, and a good deal of fan fiction set in the Pern universe. Anne permitted this, with an interesting twist: folks were welcome to write fan fiction set in the Pern universe, but they had to copyright it in Anne's name as well as their own. I once had to explain to a Pern fan that it was self-defense on Anne's part. There is no way she could read all of the Pern fanfic, but if she used something in a book a fan had used in fan fiction, she could be accused of plagiarism. In fact, she had come up with idea independently, and had never seen the fan fic, but how does she prove it? Requiring copyright in her name as well as the author's neatly sidesteped the issue.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I was amused at the number of folks who thought Pern was fantasy. It has a feudal society, medieval technology, fire breathing dragons... If you come in in the middle of the series, you miss the setup that Pern is a lost colony, man arrived by starship, and the fire breathing dragons are products of genetic engineering on the indigenous fire lizards, and it appeared that's precisely what many readers did.

She does mention the Pern colony origin in a preface to Dragonflight, but I think it's not until the sixth book (The White Dragon) that we actually get any information about this prior colony, and not until Dragondawn (8th? 9th?) that we get information about genetic engineering. In The Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, the reviewers write that she tends to leave scientific explanations of her world to others, and that was true at the time (mid-seventies). I personally didn't feel that her scientific explanations, even when provided, were very strong, and certainly didn't think they were the strongest part of her work.

I agree with bbusybookworm that the Harper Hall books, including The Masterharper of Pern, were the best of the lot. Her interest in and knowledge of music really strengthened those books, without getting in the way of some excellent characterization. While I will occasionally re-read some of her other books, those are the ones I return to over and over.

Asking fans to copyright books in her name as well as their own is a good way of avoiding the "fanfiction plagiarism" problem from the direction you mention, as well as requiring fans to acknowledge her contribution to the fanfiction.

I wonder if/how that was implemented for PernMUSH?

[MickeyC]

Just finished 'An Act of War' by Dale Brown. Good read with a great ending. Now diving into 'The Black Hole War'