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

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by Strether

I finished it yesterday and while I enjoyed it, I don't think Cajeiri is old enough yet to carry the weight of half of the novel. YMMV.

Jim

He did quite a bit of maturing during Deciever... that's what, the eleventh book?

[ATDrake]

Finished Maigret et l'inspecteur Malgracieux by Georges Simenon, a collection of four short stories (actually, long stories that were probably at least novelette length) starring Inspector Maigret, which I've been reading on and off since I got it on sale last month (still just $1.99 CAD, which is dirt cheap for francophone books). These were written in the 1940s and apparently linked by having been written while Simenon, a frequent world traveler, was visiting Quebec and New Brunswick in Canada, which is probably a reasonable grouping for arranging the works of an author so apparently prolific.

The story plots were pretty standard: the uncouth but diligent colleague who gets a chance to shine, the earnest choirboy whose eyewitness testimony doesn't quite add up, etc. But the retro atmosphere was reasonably engaging*, and it was interesting to see the difference in style from more modern detective tales, with the limited available forensics and other evidence (just time of death and path of the bullet stuff) possibly resulting in a greater emphasis on taking statements and noticing discrepancies and connections and ruminating on deductions.

Even though he's a popular and long-established character worldwide, these were my first Maigrets, but likely won't be my last (if only because I also invested in the three other Simenon short story collections also on sale for $1.99, but the cases were actually done decently enough, if not outstandingly clever or even particularly twisty). In a nice touch, there were introductory prologues to each tale mentioning which episodes the assorted stories had been adapted to for international TV and film.

* One story pretty much amounted to a leisurely walking tour of Parisian eateries, which the narrative even lampshaded. And it was also interesting to see how much the “modern” world had changed in the past 70-odd years, what with still having telephone switchboards and guillotine executions and whatnot, even if the types of crimes and the motives for them generally hadn't.

[Strether]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

He did quite a bit of maturing during Deciever... that's what, the eleventh book?

Oh, the author has shown him as steadily maturing, deliberately so in this novel. Not enough to save that part of the book, I didn't think.

Jim

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Next up, I'll take Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for a change of taste.

Finished Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala . Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of a beautiful British woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, she is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, an Indian prince involved in criminal plots. A profound and powerful novel, winner of the Booker Prize.

Still I have not prepared a mood to read some serious stuff on archaeology kept pending in my TBR, so I am taking another cozy mystery for now, Liberty Square by Katherine V. Forrest.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Starting Convergence, the latest in CJ Cherryh's wonderful Foreigner series. My only problem with this series is that she only has one a year!

Another excellent book in one of my favourite series. But the ending was, shall we say, abrupt! And definitely left me wanting the next book already. Which we know has been already turned in to the publisher, but for which we'll likely have to wait another year.

Next up? Not sure. Probably the Eric Ambler that was the runner-up this month for the Book Club.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Mira's Last Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. The fourth in her series of "Penric" Novellas.

Which was, of course, excellent. I'm looking forward to the next.

Then a tried Messenger of Zhuvastou by Andrew J Offutt, a recent freebie. It just wasn't good enough, I'm afraid. Abandoned

Now for Demoniac Dance by Jaq D Hawkins. Another freebie, but the second part of a trilogy omnibus, and I enjoyed the first part. Will I want to read the third as well? Let's see....

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now for Demoniac Dance by Jaq D Hawkins. Another freebie, but the second part of a trilogy omnibus, and I enjoyed the first part. Will I want to read the third as well? Let's see....

The third one follows on neatly so if you enjoy DD, you'll probably want to. It also wraps up the series in a way that has stayed with me, though I think DD was the best of the three.

I'd really like to see this author write more in that world.

[fantasyfan]

The Elephant Man and Other Reminisces (1923) by Sir Frederick Treves is most famous for the title essay and this is indeed a memorable piece. It was Treves himself who found the terribly disfigured John Merrick living in the most deplorable conditions and being displayed as "The Elephant Man" by an unscrupulous showman.

In the event Treves rescued Merrick and was responsible for the generally happy life that the latter had for the final five years of his life. Many interesting books have since been written about this unfortunate man but the account by Treves remains a moving and powerful work.

But this is only the first of twelve chapters, each devoted to a different reminiscence from the Doctor' s career. Taken as a whole, they present a wide spectrum of Victorian and Edwardian life.

It is a pity that a good ebook version of the book isn't available. There is a copy on Amazon Kindle but this is little more than a page-by-page scan and not very convenient to read. However, it is possible to get a reasonable PB for a low price.

[ATDrake]

Finished Feedback by Mira Grant, pseudonym of Seanan McGuire, latest in her Newsflesh bloggers vs zombies series, which was due back at the library. This is a remix of the first book in the original trilogy, from the POV of a different blogging team who is instead following the campaign of one of the competing presidential candidates.

While POV remix stories aren't all that rare (a decent chunk of literary fiction does it, usually with public domain stuff), authors revisiting their own work in this way seem to be uncommon. In recent years, I can really only think of Stephenie Meyer's announcement that she was doing the first book of Twilight from the love interest's POV (IIRC this got shelved since she was understandably upset about some chapters from the unfinished manuscript getting leaked), and her imitator E. L. James doing the same with Fifty Shades of Grey. (Interestingly enough, both, like Newsflesh, were originally trilogies.) And of course, Anne McCaffrey did it a couple of times throughout her Pern series, probably mostly because of timeline overlap in the stories she was telling.

Anyway, this was an interesting look at how the major occurrences appear from an outside perspective, as well as adding some new material about the background of the world and just how far-reaching certain deeply-laid plots are. Some of it does feel repetitive with regards to the rest of the universe, not because of repeat material (there actually wasn't all that much overlap, and there was some welcome insight provided into political opponents), but because of what seems to be the basic series theme of people stumbling across a nefarious plot they shouldn't have and then having to go on the run while trying desperately to stay alive.

Overall, I liked this and enjoyed seeing more of the world and how it worked (even if societally-speaking, a lot of it felt like the mid-2000s grafted onto what was supposed to be the 2040s, with extra zombiephobia), and the new characters were fun, if maybe a little generic in personality.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Next, is The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin.

Abandoned. The author's writing style was not to my liking. I also don't care for multiple POVs.

Then I started Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

This too I abandoned. As in The Fifth Season I didn't enjoy the rococo writing plus it was too strange for me to comprehend.

Now, I'm reading Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. A library book.

[ATDrake]

Now that all the older books are back at the library (and I checked out a slew of new ones to finish, ahahaha), back to the achronological adventures of Ben Pastor's Martin Bora, Conscientious Crime-Solving WWII Wehrmacht Officer With An Increasingly Disturbed Conscience and have finished Tin Sky, which is 4th/9th depending on how you count them. This one timeskips a few years back to Ukraine as of 1943 and turns out be only the 2nd part of his traumatic Eastern Front experiences, since apparently there was some stuff that happened in Stalingrad a few years prior which either hasn't been written up yet, or exists in the short stories (which are, of course, only available in the original Italian translation publications).

Accordingly, it was pretty nice to see a Bora in the middle of his eventual transformation, which was really what I signed up for when I bought the 1st novel to try. The Bora of #2 and #3 which are set further down the timeline, while still quite interesting, did give that sense of having nearly completed his moral trajectory, having reached the point of habitually stealthily acting in secret for humanitarian purposes when he was able to get away with it, and it was only a few more steps and he'd probably be attempting to assassinate Hitler, as you do.

This Bora is less experienced and more mixed in motivations and actions; more doubtful on a personal level, and yet more professionally certain of his role in the occupying army and questions less the more-or-less wartime appropriateness of his more distasteful duties, but at the same time harbouring increasing questions about the necessity of them. Thus we get to see him do stuff like fanboy over an enemy general he admires militarily and feels a personal connection to while ruthlessly blackmailing another one he's in charge of interrogating, engage in petty position-jockeying slapfights with the local SS branch (more because of factional in-fighting in the occupying forces than any real level of moral disgust), commit and cover-up crimes in the course of investigating other covered-up crimes (all in a good cause, mostly), stubbornly attempt to stealth-submit evidence of war atrocities to higher-up external authorities despite repeated gentle warnings this might not be a life-enhancing action in the current political climate, and shamelessly abuse his power over the local peasantry*.

I quite liked this one. Several books down the original-composition line, the author's writing feels a little smoother and better at portraying balanced characters (certain things from the earlier novels which tended to be portrayed as the other parties simply being needlessly selfish because reasons feel more fleshed-out, with Bora's own rather selfish tendency to noble sacrificial martyrdom pointed out as not helping the situation in retrospect), and there's a little more variety introduced in the narrative style with the addition of entries from Bora's personal diary. And the casework, while another of the slow ones, was made interesting by having to dig up clues and connections from the past, in the relative absence of current physical evidence.

* Not gonna lie, I'd be pretty tempted to

Spoiler:

confiscate and destroy the entire local accordion supply

, too, I don't care what kind of bad karma it might earn me.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Abandoned. The author's writing style was not to my liking. I also don't care for multiple POVs.

Then I started Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

This too I abandoned. As in The Fifth Season I didn't enjoy the rococo writing plus it was too strange for me to comprehend.

Now, I'm reading Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. A library book.

How long until Steelheart is going to be abandoned?

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Still I have not prepared a mood to read some serious stuff on archaeology kept pending in my TBR, so I am taking another cozy mystery for now, Liberty Square by Katherine V. Forrest.

Which was good. I'll buy more of this series in future.

Now taking up The Sialkot Saga by Ashwin Sanghi.

[Rev. Bob]

I'm about halfway through So Not a Hero, by S.J. Delos. I like the story and worldbuilding, and I already have the sequel, but the (lack of) editing is getting on my nerves.

For instance, there's a scene where the narrator gets hit by an energy blast, removes the damaged shirt at the end of the fight, goes upstairs, gets offered a loaner shirt, and removes the damaged shirt again to change into the new one - without having put it back on in between. (Which would be a neat trick, as it came off in pieces.) There are a few other continuity and/or worldbuilding glitches, but most of the issues I'm seeing are more of the "dropped comma" or "bad hyphenation" variety.

As I said, though, I'm enjoying the story itself. It's nice to see a superhero novel that deals with the more practical issues of having superpowers, the kind of things that never seem to come up in graphic novels. (An early chapter notes some of the problems super-tough people run into with having sex.) The book also does a decent job of dishing out the setting details and terminology gradually, with minimal expository lumpiness.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Abandoned. The author's writing style was not to my liking. I also don't care for multiple POVs.

Then I started Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

This too I abandoned. As in The Fifth Season I didn't enjoy the rococo writing plus it was too strange for me to comprehend.

Now, I'm reading Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. A library book.

The Fifth Season : thanks for the heads up. I was thinking of springing for it. Not anymore.