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

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by YGG-

I'm in the middle of "remembrance of things past" (M. Proust) & I enjoy it thoroughly!

Excellent, yes!

What translation(s) are you reading from? Or is it the original French?


Don

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Excellent, yes!

What translation(s) are you reading from? Or is it the original French?


Don

I read it in the original French, alternating between my CyBook & the beautiful Pléïade p-book edition...

[FlorenceArt]

Ah yes, my mother has the Pléïades edition, I love those

Reminds me I should re-install Proust on my Opus, it got lost when I changed the firmware version back to mobi I think.

Just finished "La place de l'étoile" by Patrick Modiano (not sure of the English translation). It was his first published book I think, and different from the others I read, which are more recent. I liked it although I was a bit puzzled at the beginning. It's funny, crazy and moving.

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Ah yes, my mother has the Pléïades edition, I love those

Reminds me I should re-install Proust on my Opus, it got lost when I changed the firmware version back to mobi I think.

Just finished "La place de l'étoile" by Patrick Modiano (not sure of the English translation). It was his first published book I think, and different from the others I read, which are more recent. I liked it although I was a bit puzzled at the beginning. It's funny, crazy and moving.

I read it too; a bit quirky for my taste... I enjoyed a lot some of his later works (recently "pedigree" : a great reading);

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Ah yes, my mother has the Pléïades edition, I love those
[...]

Are you insinuating something about people owning Pléïades?

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by YGG-

Are you insinuating something about people owning Pléïades?

Yes... they love reading

[WT Sharpe]

Just started reading the next Book Club selection, The Sheepfarmer's Daughter; Book I of Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion series. The first three chapters are highly entertaining.

PS: If anyone wants a new Kindle 2 International, woot.com has them today only for $149.99 + $5.00 shipping.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Just started reading the next Book Club selection, The Sheepfarmer's Daughter; Book I of Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion series. The first three chapters are highly entertaining.

An excellent book, and excellent series ......

[YGG-]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Yes... they love reading

(Nice parry )

[neilmarr]

RISEN -- JAN STRNAD

I'm reluctant ever to review my own house's books here (I could hardly be impartial when I edit most of them), and when it comes to big name best-sellers, a brief par of a post is enough ... leave the fancy stuff to the New York Times and the London Times Literary Supplement. I stopped reviewing classics when I was still at school, half a century ago, because there's so little left to be said.

But when one of our own -- an independent MobileRead author -- hits me between the eyes, I can't resist telling you about it. So here's a few lines about *Risen*, a spectacular piece of work from fellow MR member J. Strnad in the US.


RISEN
Jan Strnad
The Creeping Reality of a Maestro of the Macabre


There must be almost as many ways to define ‘creepy’ as there are demons in a legion.

Is Jan Strnad’s Risen hair-raising? The back of my neck felt like there was an ants’ jamboree in full swing. Does it scare the living daylights out of you? I was too pussy to turn out the lights. Does it make you suspicious about the cake the neighbours just brought round? Tell you the truth; I even secretly poured the tea my wife just made into a plant pot in case it was laced with rat poison. And it seems to me that aspidistra is wilting.

But in describing Risen as ‘creepy’ I’d have something else in mind entirely. Like others of my disreputable breed – the ‘editorial analyst’ – I’d be talking about its simmering style, its perfectly calculated pace, the steady and painstaking establishment of vivid scenes and strong characters, the small-town reality that so naturally suspends any disbelief ... and how, only having carefully and nefariously lulled you into a sense of security, does Jan Strnad hold his breath, rise to his tiptoes, and quietly creep up behind you to plant his unearthly nightmares.

When I’d rubbed away the goose flesh, I realised and could fully appreciate and admire just what expert, ‘creepy’ authoring I’d just experienced.

The little town of Anderson, as real as your own neighbourhood, the characters at the diner, in the street, on the farms, so undeniably flesh-and-blood you wouldn’t be surprised if they popped by to borrow a cup of sugar, are so skilfully made familiar that when Anderson turns into an outpost of hell and its inhabitants into blood-lusting monsters from the pit, it’s all as utterly believable as if Strnad had introduced an outbreak of measles into his storyline rather than a plague of the undead.

This triumph over rationality and scepticism prompted me re-evaluate a decision I’d made forty years ago to turn my back on the ‘horror’ genre with its cardboard spooks, zombies and vampires. My own wee publishing house won’t even consider submissions that skip into the fright fantastic.

Maybe we should think again with scribes like Strnad around. Perhaps we’d do well to remember the 1956 movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the panic that followed the all-too-real CBS radio adaptation of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds read on Halloween night 1938 by Orson Welles. Time to forget Ed Wood’s 1959 Plan Nine From Outer Space and the B-movie-style pulp novels that rode on the back of the YA appetite for fast-food zombies and vampires and that took hold of the slushpile end of the books market.

Much more than King and Rice ever did (reading them is put down to ‘research’), Strnad has reminded me that a story is a story, that fiction is fiction, and that all we read and savour is as real as it is unreal if presented by a creeping master of his craft.

Knowing its genre – the pigeon hole into which every novel is wickedly forced – I opened this book reluctantly. A generous 400+ pages later, I closed it even more reluctantly, and in a cold sweat.

The pages had turned almost supernaturally. There had been no point at which to comfortably stop and draw breath.

This is such a rare gem of a chiller, not because you can wind up believing the horror could happen in your home town, but because there are times when you can’t help feeling it already has!

I’m a ‘convert’. And if you read Jan Strnad’s Risen – which I highly recommend you do (well before midnight) – you’ll know that claim is a lot creepier than it sounds.

Neil Marr. Ed. BeWrite Books

Risen. Jan Strnad
ISBN: 978-1-4523-2048-9 (Smashwords Edition)

www.smashwords.com : $4.95 (all popular ebook formats)
Amazon Kindle version, $4.95:
Coming soon to other online ebook retail outlets.

Jan Strnad's website: http://www.atombrain.com

[maxbookworm]

I'm re-reading "Through A Glass Darkly" by Karleen Koen. I was very excited to see it's available for Kindle on Amazon now, after I spent a lot of last year clicking the "let the publisher know I want to read this on Kindle!" button. Wouldn't it be nice if clicking that button put you on an email notification list for when the book finally becomes available?

Anyway, I will probably purchase her other two books as well. I've read the sequel many years back (remember it not being as good as the original novel), but never the prequel.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer. Looking interesting so far, although the inital setup is a little confusing.

And IMO the story could do with a little more minor editing, as I found some infelicitous sentences. I also found the re-named elves and dwarves a little irritating, but I guess that was done because they're not exactly Elves and Dwarves.

But overall, an excellent and enjoyable tale.

Now for this month's book club choice: Sheepfarmer's Daughter by Elizabeth Moon. Free from the Baen Free Library, the first volume of a trilogy, with the first book of some sequels just published.

I really liked this when I first read it. It'll be interesting to see how it stands up to a re-read.

[FlorenceArt]

Finished "Right-ho, Jeeves", which I've been reading on and off for a while. Although it did have me laughing to tears in some places, it's not my kind of humor. The book was OK as a whole, but I don't think I will read another.

I downloaded Sheepfarmer's Daughter and read a few pages. It looks nice but not extremely well written, as is too often the case with this type of fiction. I've read too many of those in the last year and I don't really feel like another one, I'll keep it for later maybe.

Just started Mary Barton by Elisabeth Gaskell, who I discovered recently thanks to MR.

[bookwormfjl]

I'm reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail by Jarod Diamond. Loved his other book; Guns, Germs, & Steel.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Finished "Right-ho, Jeeves", which I've been reading on and off for a while. Although it did have me laughing to tears in some places, it's not my kind of humor. The book was OK as a whole, but I don't think I will read another.

I downloaded Sheepfarmer's Daughter and read a few pages. It looks nice but not extremely well written, as is too often the case with this type of fiction. I've read too many of those in the last year and I don't really feel like another one, I'll keep it for later maybe.

Just started Mary Barton by Elisabeth Gaskell, who I discovered recently thanks to MR.

If you haven't read it already, Gaskell's Cranford is marvelous. As is the PBS adaptation of it!