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

[mewmartigan]

Just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Not my favorite of his works but still very enjoyable. I can see how reading it in the 90s would have been even better.

Not sure what to read next. I hate/love this part.....

[Rumpelteazer]

I've just finished Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, the first in the Vampire Academy series. My sister has been wanting me to read this series for years. It was a fun and quick read. I'll put the series on my active list, but I already know there is a chance that I will drop it from the list after a couple of books.

[gmw]

I just finished The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey. I really enjoyed this, which surprised me. It's not a genre I would normally pick up, but I came to it on a recommendation and knew almost nothing about it before I started reading. By the time I realised what it was, I was enjoying the ride and kept enjoying it through to the excellent conclusion.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by gmw

I just finished The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey. I really enjoyed this, which surprised me. It's not a genre I would normally pick up, but I came to it on a recommendation and knew almost nothing about it before I started reading. By the time I realised what it was, I was enjoying the ride and kept enjoying it through to the excellent conclusion.

I really enjoyed it too. Have you considered the next in the series (not directly related to the first, but set in the same world, and actually a prequel of sorts), The Boy on the Bridge?

[orlok]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ah, good old Modesty Blaise. One thing you can be sure of -- you'll get exactly what you expect and want when you read one of these. NOT great fiction, but certainly great fun. A personal 5-star read, within my own terms of reference. And, although I can certainly tell you all sorts of failings of this series, it fills a need quite nicely, thank you.

Have you ever managed to find digital versions of the books Charlie? I can't locate any, and I'm keen to try the series, but I know when I buy DTB versions, I rarely get round to reading them, as I much prefer reading on my Kindle.

[Dngrsone]

Finished Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts, now reading Never Use Futura by Douglas Thomas. This is a book about fonts, and despite that, I have not gotten terribly bored yet.

Darn it, Orlok, as if I didn't have enough to read, I am now adding two M. R. Carey books to my TBR.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by orlok

I really enjoyed it too. Have you considered the next in the series (not directly related to the first, but set in the same world, and actually a prequel of sorts), The Boy on the Bridge?

It's on my reader but not yet started*. I'm currently reading The Great Halifax Explosion for the book club.

* Kate Atkinson's Life after Life, that I see you discussed a bit earlier, is on my reader too, and also the first of her books Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I need give up work if I'm going to keep up with everything I've been adding lately.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by orlok

Have you ever managed to find digital versions of the books Charlie? I can't locate any, and I'm keen to try the series, but I know when I buy DTB versions, I rarely get round to reading them, as I much prefer reading on my Kindle.

I was able to find some OCR'd PDFs at OpenLibrary. Not all, but several. They're pretty poor. I've been going through and editing them as I read them, but it's a lot of work. Even with a good set of Regex.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Next will be Lightning by Den Koontz. Library book.

I'm afraid this book has become dated. I may have enjoyed it, if read, in 1988 but now it seems stale. A long build-up to the final scene that offers no real twist. It's basically bad people chasing good. There was not the scary suspense I've come to associate with Koontz. Rated C- [2 stars].

Next undecided.

[MickeyC]

Just flew through Origin by Dan Brown. A real thriller although I got the feeling it hasn’t ended and the next Brown book will pick up where this one left off. Give it four and a half stars.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

AStill (re-)reading All Creatures Great and Small.

Which was fun, but not enough to make me want to re-read the rest of the books.

I've been on holiday, and got through quite a few books.

On Ordeal by Diane Duane - another three short stories in her Young Wizards universe. Vey good.

The Angry Tide by Winston Graham - more excellent late 18th century Cornish adventures of the Poldark family.

Man-Kzin Wars V by Larry Nivel et al. - more tales from the wars. Interesting.

Shanji by James C Glass - a Baen freebie I got ages OK. OK, but the plot was poor.

The Fourth Crow by Pat McIntosh - an excellent mediaeval Scottish mystery.
The King's Corrodian by Pat McIntosh - another in the series, but with a little bit too much logical experimentation IMO.

Artemis by Andy Weir. Good sf fun on the Moon, with quite a few plot holes, and with a female protagonist who didn't ring true to me. But whether that's Andy Weir's fault or mine, is hard for me to say.

Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates Splendid detective mystery novel set in early 20th Century Australia. The rest of the series are on my wish list.


Now starting on Seeing a Large Cat, the 9th in the Amelia Peabody series.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And excellent it was too.

Still (re-)reading All Creatures Great and Small.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Which was fun, but not enough to make me want to re-read the rest of the books.

That was my take on it when I read it a couple of years ago. Made me nostalgic for the TV series, but not enough to want to read more of them.

Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates Splendid detective mystery novel set in early 20th Century Australia. The rest of the series are on my wish list.

This is Cocaine Blues in North America, and you're right, a splendid detective series. Highly recommended. (And there's an excellent Australian Broadcast Company (ABC) series based on the novels that I can also recommend. )

[CRussel]

Having finished The Secrets of Station X, by Michael Smith, an excellent look at the code-breakers of Bletchley Park that was quite an eye-opener in many ways (who knew there were so many different variants of the Enigma machine?), a book nominated for the New Leaf Book Club War theme, I thought it would be fun and interesting to read about codes from the other side of the equation, creating them. So I'm currently reading Between Silk and Cyanide, by Leo Marks who spent the WWII years creating and deciphering codes for the SOE. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through it, and I'm enjoying it immensely. Yet another example of how the book club's focus on Themes, rather than Genres, is leading to wonderful discoveries.

[PurpleStar]

I just finished Monster Hunter Legion by Larry Correia. A lot of long chapters, but fun fun fun!!!!!!! I gave it 5 stars on goodreads.

I need something light after that so I'm gonna read Rancher's Dream by B.J. Daniels. One of my purchases from this month. Yes, I'm going from monster hunting to western romance. lol

[fantasyfan]

I have just finished leading and listening to The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol One edited by Robert Silverberg.

The Nebula awards for outstanding science fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) were first awarded in 1966. This book is the first of a set of volumes meant to select the twenty-five best short stories and novelettes written before that date as selected by the SFWA membership. In the introduction the editor Robert Silverberg elaborates the voting procedures. He admits that in some cases he used his own judgement to include some stories over others. Further, there must be some doubt about whether the use of a vote by the SFWA really did provide a reliable guide to quality writing during the period from 1929 to 1964. Certainly there is at least one astonishing omissions and some unusual selections.

There are some genuine gems in this volume. “A Martian Odyssey,” “Nightfall,” “Mimsy Were the Borogroves,” “Mars Is Heaven,” Surface Tension,” “The Cold Equations, ”“Fondly Fahrenheit”, and “Flowers for Algernon” are all quite brilliant stories. Note, though, that “Mars In Heaven” is in its original form with a different conclusion than when it appeared in The Martian Chronicles.“Surface Tension” and “Flowers for Algernon” were both expanded later by their respective writers.

Cordwainer Smith is represented by “Scanners Live in Vain”. While it is an interesting tale one wonders why the writers chose it over the even finer “The Game of Rat and Dragon” which appeared in T. E. Dikty”s The Best Science Fiction and Novels: 1956.

Perhaps the two most questionable selections were “First Contact”: by Murray Leinster and “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Ray.

Leinster’s story is simply adequate pulp and is marred by a very lame ending. “Helen O’Loy”—ostensibly a robot story—is actually a dreadful stereotyped infantilised portrait of what is evidently supposed to be a perfect woman.

That these two stories could be awarded a retroactive Nebula prize is beyond absurdity when one sees that one of the most significant science fiction writers of the period is not even represented. I refer to William Tenn (pseudonym of Philip Klass {1910-1920}) not to be confused with Philip J. Klass {1919-2005} an electrical engineer and UFO debunker). A quotation from the “Encyclopedia of Science Fiction will make clear his standing.

“From the first, Tenn was one of the genre’s very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction, sharper and more mature than Fredric Brown and less self-indulgent in satirical take on the modern world than Robert Sheckley. . . .Despite his cheerful surface and the occasional zany Humour of his stories, Tenn, like most real satirists, was fundamentally a pessimist, a writer who persisted in describing the bars of the prison; when the comic disguise was whipped off, as happened with some frequency, the result was salutary. . . .

“The sf community gratned Tenn no awards until—three
decades after he had effectively retired—he was given the 1999 science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Author emeritus award.”

Bearing the limitations of the selection and the material chosen, this is a reasonable anthology which has some quite excellent stories among some quite forgettable works.