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

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by orlok

I'm doing so little travelling these days, which is when I listen to audiobooks, that it would take forever for me to listen to it (and anyway I'm in the middle of "Behind Her Eyes" by Sarah Pinborough, and I hate breaking off in the middle of an audiobook and then coming back later - lose too much of the story thread). So ebook it will have to be .

That's what I'm doing with it. When I finish Queen Lucia on my Kindle I'll listen to the audiobook so I'll be fully prepped for the MobileRead Book Club discussion.

[MickeyC]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Started (and read half of) The Hunt for Vulcan: And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe yesterday. Its a fantastic blend of science, history and a love song to the scientific method.

Just finished this and what an interesting read. Unlike most books on Einstein, this focuses mostly on General rather than Special Relativity. Thanks to astrangerhere I now much better understand General R.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

That's what I'm doing with it. When I finish Queen Lucia on my Kindle I'll listen to the audiobook so I'll be fully prepped for the MobileRead Book Club discussion.

Good idea. I'm getting quite near the end of my current audio listen, as after saying I have been doing very little travelling, I have over the last few days been collecting my daughter from Nottingham where she is appearing in a play, so have got in some listening time. So that said, I may try the audio version to see how it compares.

[ATDrake]

Finished Everfair by Nisi Shawl, which was on the New Books shelf at the library. This was a fairly interesting alternate history with added steampunk and some magical mysticism, centred around the foundation of a fictional African country in response to the depredations of Belgian colonialism in the late 19th century Congo (King Leopold's infamous rubber plantations), through to conflicts related with WWI. There's a refreshingly unusual use of technology mingled with herblore and other local materials (most notably, advanced prosthetics for all the victims of Leopold's hand-chopping policies), and exploration of the various elements which keep a reasonably modern country going in the face of opposition.

The story is told in shifting viewpoints by individuals each trying to make the country succeed, or at least find their own place in it, from spies to missionaries to inventors to royalty, over the course of a few decades, and sometimes feels a little disjointed as it skips from thread to thread of each POV's occasionally somewhat fragmentary piece of the plot. But the subplots do intertwine, as the characters' lives and interactions affect the development of the story and their decisions in response to some of the political intrigue happening around them.

Recommended if you like alternate history steampunk with a political slant, especially less Eurocentric takes on it. ISFDB tells me this was a finalist for the Tiptree Award and might be up for the Nebula and while I'm not sure I'd count it among the best sfnal books I've read in the past few years, it does seem to be worthy of being in the finalist category.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by bfisher

"love song to the scientific method" is one of the best summations I've ever seen for a book

Originally Posted by MickeyC

Just finished this and what an interesting read. Unlike most books on Einstein, this focuses mostly on General rather than Special Relativity. Thanks to astrangerhere I now much better understand General R.

That's another one I read this year. There were a lot of fascinating behind the scenes looks into the lives of various scientists in that one.

[ATDrake]

Finished Death's End by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu (no relation), 3rd in his Remembrance of Earth's Past aka Three-Body trilogy. This was somewhat slow to get into at first, since the setup is pretty dense and I'd forgotten a large portion of what had actually happened in the previous volumes, but got back up to speed soon enough.

Like the previous in the series, this one went on rather unexpected tangents that were surprising in the best way, with a satisfying exploration and further extrapolation of things that were set up in the prior installments as well as in this one. I'm not sure whether it's an artifact of the translation or not (I suspect not, as hard sf tends to be somewhat skimpy in this area), but even though we spent a lot of time with certain characters, they didn't feel all that well-developed on a character level, rather than being more of a series of traits and reactions needed to play out the story.

But that's a minor quibble, and the richness of the ideas and execution more than made up for it, even if some of the future civilization glimpses were perhaps not conveyed all that plausibly. That said, there seemed a good depiction of the various factions and schisms and shifts in political authority and social development taking place over time. I especially liked the use of false document technique with the excerpts from future books describing what had happen in the past, and the faux-fairy tales.

Highly recommended, as an interesting look into possible human reaction to any number of spoilery things which challenge the notions of the survival of humanity not simply in a physical sense of the species, but also in the spiritual sense of what makes us human, from a viewpoint somewhat different from most western sf to date. Apparently the popularity of this has influenced Tor in putting out an anthology of translated Chinese science fiction stories (and Clarkesworld has already been publishing translated stories from various languages for some time now), which I'll have to take a look at.

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Not yet decided what I'll read next. Will decide something in the night.

As I needed a change of subject after reading so many crime fictions, I took up The Rise and Decline of the American "Empire" by Geir Lundestad, waiting its turn in my TBR since long. As a contemporary political discussion, it was good to read.

The author argues that after 1945 the US has definitely been the most dominant power the world has seen and that it has successfully met the challenges from, first, the Soviet Union and, then, Japan, and the European Union. Now, however, the United States is in decline: its vast military power is being challenged by asymmetrical wars, its economic growth is slow and its debt is rising rapidly, the political system is proving unable to meet these challenges in a satisfactory way. While the US is still likely to remain the world's leading power for the foreseeable future, it is being challenged by China, particularly economically, and also by several other regional Great Powers.

Now I'll go back to fiction again, so I've decided to take The Dead Stay Dumb by James Hadley Chase published in 1939.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

March 14th: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson. The sixth book set in his Mistborn universe, and third in the 'modern' subseries.

And excellent it was. I want to read the original trilogy now! And I'm looking forward to the fourth in this subseries.


Next up: The Cecelia and Kate Novels by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Syevermer

[Ravensknight]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

...Next up: The Cecelia and Kate Novels by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Syevermer

Loved those books! They propelled me on to read Stevermer's A College of Magics duology.


The One Kingdom (The Swan's War #1)
Sean Russell
5 Star

As slow and as inexorable as the River upon which most of the story takes place. Just as good as when I read it back in '09.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

The One Kingdom (The Swan's War #1)
Sean Russell
5 Star

As slow and as inexorable as the River upon which most of the story takes place. Just as good as when I read it back in '09.

I have very fond memories of this series, too.

[Ravensknight]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I have very fond memories of this series, too.

Sadly, none of Russell's other books ever lived up to my enjoyment of this trilogy. Not sure why, as they're all pretty much the same in tone, character, setting, etc...

[ATDrake]

Finished a couple of novels bought during recent sales. Quantum Night by fellow MR member author Robert J. Sawyer is his latest, an sf standalone with some interesting ideas about the potential quantum mechanical roots of consciousness, conscience, psychopathy, and what might affect them all in the very near future (2020, with some interesting predictions about how Canadian politics and Canada/US relations might develop, albeit in a way that makes me think once again that I should be looking up suburban guerilla warfare tactics, just in case, since there was that one particular development which seems to be becoming a trend in media I've been experiencing over the past years).

Sawyer is one of my favourite authors (although I lost track of his recent books a few years ago and haven't caught up yet) and I like most of his stuff to begin with and have enjoyed most of the things of his that I've read, but I admit his books are pretty variable in how well I think they set up and play out their ideas. This was one of the better ones, IMHO, which doesn't really pull punches when it comes to the reveals of what the discoveries, scientific and personal, could and do mean to the persons affected by them and the ramifications for broader society.

Recommended, especially if you like Sawyer's typical mix of hard science, soft sociological implications, and undercurrent of mystery to it all. He included a rather lengthy annotated list of sources and recommended reading for the stuff he based the concepts upon, which was rather nice to see.

And speaking of authors I haven't caught up with in years, I then read Kingfisher by Patricia A. McKillip which turns out to be her latest, a traditional quest set in a modern fairy tale kingdom. The worldbuilding in this was fun, with a great mix of modern and mundane. A fair amount of this occurs in kitchens (with the magical equivalent of molecular gastronomy! ), and the matter-of-fact mingling of godly legends and mythical artifacts and warrior knights and cars and cellphones in an updated version of a fantasy kingdom was rather pleasant and novel to read.

The intertwining quests of the lead characters, each in search of something different but finding their paths intertwining, as is typical, were a little hard to follow at first, since there would be rather long stretches exclusively covering the actions of one particular individual or small group, and then switching to pick up the thread of another group far away which seemed disconnected. Not so much a case of too much back-and-forth as too little, as I tended to get caught up in what the focus group was doing for several chapters and then it would take me a while after the switch to remember where and why the narrative had left off with the previous. But once things started to converge with relevant mentions here and there of stuff that connected other stuff, it got easier to keep track.

Recommended as an entertaining and relatively unusual modernized take on classic fantasy, in contrast to the more common trend for just plain urban fantasy with magic in our present-day world.

[Lusitanic]

- Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

- Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance

- The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Last night I finished The Jersey Devil by Hunter Shea, a fun creature horror. It's immediate back story is set up well. However, I would have liked a bit more historical back story.

I enjoyed that one, but I agree. More history would have been good.

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

And speaking of authors I haven't caught up with in years, I then read Kingfisher by Patricia A. McKillip which turns out to be her latest, a traditional quest set in a modern fairy tale kingdom. The worldbuilding in this was fun, with a great mix of modern and mundane. A fair amount of this occurs in kitchens (with the magical equivalent of molecular gastronomy! ), and the matter-of-fact mingling of godly legends and mythical artifacts and warrior knights and cars and cellphones in an updated version of a fantasy kingdom was rather pleasant and novel to read.

I've been meaning to read McKillip for a long time. I think I'd rather start with something older though.