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

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Interesting. The first half was better than the second half. And the hints of some big conspiracy are a bit off-putting. But since I have it, I'll read the second one in the series at some point and see if it gets better or worse.

Next up: F&SF Magazine for September 2016.

Did you finish "Artefact"? What did you think of it? As I said before, I like most of Gregory Benford's stuff, but that one didn't work for me at all.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Liked it that much, did you?

I'll probably give it another chapter or two, but then I am stubborn.

TBH, I don't think it's actually bad as far as their respective bodies of work go (mind you, that's for values of badness including the absolutely dire quality of the most recent Valdemar installments, which skews the curve somewhat), and the actual plotline is reasonably okay and it made for a reasonably cromulent though aggressively mediocre YA post-Potter fantasy schoolkids saving the world tale.

But I thought the interesting ideas were executed poorly, and the boring bits were given unnecessary prominence, the prose suffered from both the authors' respective writing tics, and both Lackey and Edghill have considerably better works one could be reading instead, if one hasn't read them all already.

(For Edghill, I recommend her flawed-but-fun-and-incomplete The Twelve Treasures series featuring a crossover between our modern world and a fairly dysfunctional classic high fantasy one, her Bast cozy mysteries featuring a Wiccan witch, and/or her alternate-history fantasy set during the reign of Charles II, I think it was, co-written with Andre Norton. ETA: I think they're all out of print, though, although the library still has some of them in paper.

ETA 2: With that in mind, a Bast short story as an online-read freebie over at the author's blog, if anyone's interested.)

[PurpleStar]

Originally Posted by CRussel

No, sadly it isn't. But certainly, start with Boundary if you wish. And it IS available on a Baen CD: Baen 23: 1635TheEasternFront, so you're welcome to start there. (But as always with Baen CDs, do the right thing-- Treat it as an extended sample. if you like the book, buy it! )

Yeah or at least buy the rest of the series. So I must have got it from the cd then.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

TBH, I don't think it's actually bad as far as their respective bodies of work go (mind you, that's for values of badness including the absolutely dire quality of the most recent Valdemar installments, which skews the curve somewhat), and the actual plotline is reasonably okay and it made for a reasonably cromulent though aggressively mediocre YA post-Potter fantasy schoolkids saving the world tale.

But I thought the interesting ideas were executed poorly, and the boring bits were given unnecessary prominence, the prose suffered from both the authors' respective writing tics, and both Lackey and Edghill have considerably better works one could be reading instead, if one hasn't read them all already.

(For Edghill, I recommend her flawed-but-fun-and-incomplete The Twelve Treasures series featuring a crossover between our modern world and a fairly dysfunctional classic high fantasy one, her Bast cozy mysteries featuring a Wiccan witch, and/or her alternate-history fantasy set during the reign of Charles II, I think it was, co-written with Andre Norton. ETA: I think they're all out of print, though, although the library still has some of them in paper.

ETA 2: With that in mind, a Bast short story as an online-read freebie over at the author's blog, if anyone's interested.)

There is a Bast compilation available: Bell, Book and Murder. It contains all three of the Bast novels. It's sitting on my Kindle, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

[Dngrsone]

Finished Explorer by C. J. Cherryh. Haven't tired of the series yet, which I attribute at least in part to the fact that I am not trying to read these books back-to-back this time.

Meanwhile, I am trying to learn myself some aircraft repair stuff at work (as in, I'm going to try to OJT myself into an A&P license), so I am reading the General Aircraft Maintenance textbook by Jeppeson.

At home, I am looking at possibly The Rosie Effect, The Bourne Supremacy, High Fidelity, or any number of other wonderful-looking books in my TBR...

[MickeyC]

Just finished still Life by Louise Penny and it was a very cozy mystery. Not sure what's next.

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Now is the time for some serious reading, so I'll take up In Search of the Big Bang next, by John Gribbin.

Finished In Search of the Big Bang , by John Gribbin. In this radically revised and updated edition incorporating the latest scientific findings, science writer and cosmologist John Gribbin explores the origins of the Universe and considers its ultimate fate.

Next up, Marihuana by Cornell Woolrich, a short thriller novella, in Pbook format lying in my TBR.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Did you finish "Artefact"? What did you think of it? As I said before, I like most of Gregory Benford's stuff, but that one didn't work for me at all.

It worked OK for me. But the end was the weakest part.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It worked OK for me. But the end was the weakest part.

Yes, that was my view of it, too.

[Dngrsone]

Okay, so I decided to read the latest Superheroes Anonymous book, fresh off the digital press, and after reading the first chapter, decided it would be better to binge-read the whole series.

[BenG]

I finished Crosstalk by Connie Willis. I found it amusing. A long book (500 pages) but a fast read.

Next up is Casey Agonistes, a SF short story collection by Richard McKenna the author of The Sand Pebbles. I've read the title story before and I'm interested in seeing what the others are like.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Interesting. The first half [of Venus Prime] was better than the second half. And the hints of some big conspiracy are a bit off-putting. But since I have it, I'll read the second one in the series at some point and see if it gets better or worse.

I bought and read all six books when they first came out, but I've been slow to replace them with digital copies due to the price. It's a series I remember fondly - the "collaboration" aspect is that Preuss used a Clarke short story as the core of each novel, weaving the series elements around them - and would like to reread someday.

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Okay, so I decided to read the latest Superheroes Anonymous book, fresh off the digital press, and after reading the first chapter, decided it would be better to binge-read the whole series.

I've been looking forward to the third book myself. Quite liked the first two.

Right now, I've started the Oz Reimagined anthology, and the title pretty much sums things up.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by CRussel

There is a Bast compilation available: Bell, Book and Murder. It contains all three of the Bast novels. It's sitting on my Kindle, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

Cool; glad to know that they're still available, thanks! Though they're not my favourites among Edghill's books, I recall them being fairly entertaining and enjoyable reads that were both rather matter-of-fact and wryly humorous about the foibles of the New Age/neopagan communities.

Finished Dregs and Closed for Winter by award-winning Norwegian author Jørn Lier Horst, who, in writing about one Chief Inspector William Wisting in Larvik, is apparently writing what he knows, having himself been a Chief Inspector in Larvik before retiring to become a full-time writer. Actually, it's not so much a thinly-veiled author avatar as it might seem, since apparently one of the the main inspirations for Wisting's character is the author quote-unquote "being fed up with all the drunkards who solve crimes in Norwegian literature". Some of them have been very entertaining drunkards, but he's definitely got a point about how their sort of typical dramatic personally dysfunctional yet professionally brilliant emotionally repressed self-medicating lone wolf cowboy hero acting on hunches against the rest of the department and confronting the culprit with no backup tactics don't tend to get particularly usable results outside of thrillers.

With that in mind, Wisting is a more balanced sort of middle-aged crime solver. He works to strengthen his relationships with his daughter and his girlfriend and depends on their emotional support even as he tries to reciprocate for their own concerns, has to take name-brand pharmaceuticals for his health problems and not just down whatever's in the nearest available bottle, goes on leaves of absences when the stress starts causing nervous breakdowns instead of using his indomitable will to soldier through, relies on the evidence gathered by the investigators and forensic examinations and establishing good communications with witnesses and suspects and listening to feedback from his colleagues to piece together the solutions as a team, holds strong opinions about certain things which he's willing to admit aren't necessarily the best ones to act upon, and is generally more ordinary than exceptional or exceptionalist, aside from being the obligatory sleuthing success. I find I like this for a change of pace, though I should note that Horst is not at all averse to adding thrilling suspect chases and nick-of-time dramatic last-minute saves.

I also like the secondary POV provided by Wisting's daughter Line, who works as a crime journalist, sometimes co-operatively, and other times at cross-purposes with Wisting and the police department's interests, and provides a useful counterpoint to all the policing, showing the impact that the reporting of crime and ensuing public trust in the authority and reliability, or otherwise, of the police has. In this, the books so far are a little similar to also-Norwegian Thomas Enger's Henning Juul books starring a crime reporter sleuth, although somewhat less cynical about the media and the public. Although both series seem to come to the same conclusions as to what's most important to the Norwegian public, as determined in Closed for Winter: money, sex, and power. All that's missing from that tagline is the elephants for it to be a Bujoldian Vorkosiverse quote. (Come to think of it, Wisting would make a pretty good ImpSec analyst.)

These are the 6th and 7th books in the series, which happened to be the first few available in English translations, and reading Dregs felt weirdly familiar, since it was centred on the discovery of mysterious severed feet floating ashore, which is something that's been happening for ages off the coast here, and as it turns out, the author was inspired by our cases, which hopefully seem to be just from missing people who ended up in the water and not escapees from a lurking murder victim underwater corpse-dumping ground. Closed for Winter also has a bit of international inspiration, in terms of addressing the poverty and lack of non-criminal economic opportunities in Eastern Europe, which is handled with rather more sympathy than one would normally expect from an ex-police officer author, just as the subplot about the usefulness of criminal punishment rather than rehabilitation in Dregs and its difficult effects upon prisoners who've served their sentences and are attempting to reintegrate into society is, making for a nicely nuanced take on various issues.

One of things I rather like about these is the lack (thus far) of what seemed to be the obligatory prologue or interlude that a lot of the available Scandicrime novels have, where there's a scene which takes place from the killer's POV, showing just how depraved or clever they think they are and what they're doing so the Gentle Reader can follow along with the developments at home and see how the sleuth is getting cleverly misdirected or whatever. All the action so far takes place only from Wisting and Line's POVs, and all that they know or notice are all the clues that we're given access to, so we have to piece things together with nearly the same limitations that they have (allowing for the fact that we see things from Line's POV that Wisting isn't privy to yet and vice versa), making these fall more on the mystery side of the fence, with cases you can try to solve yourself instead of just kind of suspiciously guessing which one of the cast is the secretly crazed psycho-sexual serial killer in disguise based on clues dropped in their villain monologue. This, too, is a nice change of pace.

Medium-high recommend; I really liked these, but it's only two books in so far (although judging from the awards listings, they just keep getting better). This is a lower-key, slower-paced, more investigative procedurally-oriented series than a lot of the popular Nordic Noir ones, but it's very good indeed, if those elements are the kinds of things which appeal to you, with writing that tends to question default assumptions about crime and criminals and is empathetic about (some) conditions that might influence people to turn to non-violent crime while not allowing justification of murder.

As of #7, there's a useful introductory write-up about the character of Wisting and the setting of Larvik, and his current personal and professional situations at the front of each book, which bring you up to date on the important developments thus far in the series (no spoilers for previous cases). Currently, #6 seems to be offered at a regular 1st-in-series introductory lower price that drops to a pretty good deal if you've got the good coupons at Kobo, and #7 and #9 (which just won the 2016 Petrona Award) are on sale in the UK for just £1.99 each, which is certainly worth it to give a try if it's the sort of thing you think you might like.

[fantasyfan]

I have been reading Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings-- comprising her "envelope poetry.

This is a wonderful amazing book.

Emily Dickinson wrote her poems on various types of paper including the backs of used opened-out envelopes. This book collects all of her works composed on envelopes or postal wrappers—over fifty in all. They are presented in actual size, front and back and the facing page of each envelope provides a transcription.

The book has a foreword by Susan Howe, an Introduction: ‘Studies in Scale” by Jen Bervin and a concluding essay: “Itineraries of Escape: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope-Poems” by Marta Werner. Both are excellent.

One of the many interesting points made in the introductory material is that Emily played with the actual shape of the envelope as she developed her thoughts. Susan Howe says that the poems should be viewed as “visual productions”.

Thus, the volume has a unique visual index; the poems are arranged by address, columns, parallel divisions, multi-directional text, diagonally written text, cancelled/erased text and envelopes with variant readings.

When I first read Dickinson’s poems, I used the complete edition by Johnson. I had no idea that in a great many cases I was reading a poem that had been edited by Johnson who arbitrarily made his own choices of variant readings presented by the poet. When you read the poems in this book you will see how often Dickinson presents a very complex emotional poetic landscape. I will illustrate this with the first envelope poem in the book.

Here is the reading from Johnson of poem 1123

A great Hope fell
You heard no noise
The Ruin was within
Oh cunning wreck that told no tale
And let no Witness in

The mind was built for mighty Freight
For dread occasion planned
How often foundering at Sea
Ostensibly, on Land

A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside

A closing of the simple lid
That opened to the sun
Until the tender Carpenter
Perpetual nail it down –

This is beautiful and it certainly encapsulates something of the experience undergone by the poet. But the envelope MS has the following significant variants—none of which are crossed out:

L2 ; noise > crash
L3 Ruin> havoc/damage
L13 troughs> space/room
L14 lid> Gate

But the most significant of all occurs in the penultimate line:
“tender’ is given the variant “sovereign” but written in the margin up the side of the paper is “unsuspecting carpenters”.

“Carpenter” clearly refers to Christ and “sovereign” certainly has a different connotation than “tender”. But why did she use “unsuspecting” in the margin? Is the implication that Jesus doesn’t actually know what is happening? Why the plural? Is it a slip or are there many “Carpenters” depending on the person and the suffering.

It would seem that Johnson chose the version that had more comfort. The MS, I think, more powerfully conveys anguish--the thin ice of faith over despair.

It is worth mentioning that if one wishes to read more of the original handwritten poems they are available as free downloads in digital format from Amherst College (without transcriptions). This book, however, is worth its relatively low cost and as Susan Howe remarks:

“This edition itself is a work of Art”.

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Next up, Marihuana by Cornell Woolrich, a short thriller novella, in Pbook format lying in my TBR.

Finished Marihuana by Cornell Woolrich. Nice thriller.

Next I'll take up The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, of course a re-read, but worth it.