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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Hi folks,here we go again for 2015,with the easiest challenge of them all just 12 books of any sort. But do share at least a brief comment or post your review here plus an occasional comment on other people;s reads.Happy reading  | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Finished Larry Niven's sequel to the famous The Mote in God's Eye, The Gripping Hand (aka The Moat Around Murchison's Eye).Published in 1993 , 19 years after the first book I cant say I really took to it. Lots of conniving Moties determined to escape from the single wormhole blockaded for 25 years by the humans' Empire to prevent them overunning the galaxy as they overbreed to an insane extent,repeatedly destroying their own culture as the struggle for resources leads to widespread destruction of their world.The humans however have discovered a biological way to end this crazed imperative to breed. But with so many factions among the very tricky and manipulative Moties,who can be trusted?
I found this book a bit flat and sometimes a bit confusing with all the different shifting alliances etc,and the characters were a bit thin too.But the sly,brilliant devious Moties were as interesting and original as ever.On its own a reasonable sort of read,but as a sequel to the first book, a bit of a letdown.I had hoped for more. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 370
Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | Hi DD,
I decided to join this challenge so I would have a place for the books I read for my SF book club. Last year, I worked each one into a challenge, but I ended up constantly juggling my selections because the book club only chooses its books 2 months in advance. And I didn't want to sign up for too many challenges this year because I'm doing a Tolkien challenge, where I'll be reading the Silmarillion and the other posthumous works. I'm going to research a lot of resources to help me understand those more complex works, so I don't expect I'll be reading enough books this year to do as many challenges as I did last year just to find places for my book club books. (Wow! Two run-on sentences in a row)
The book for January is The Martian by Andy Weir. It started out a little slow with so much engineering detail, but it's gotten very exciting. I'm about 2/3rds through.
I'm glad you hosted this again this year! And don't forget to put the link to this forum in your challenge. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 107
Location: scotland | I have just joined this challenge and really like the feel of posting comments on what we have read. As a Christmas gift I was given a trilogy by an author I had not heard of before. This being Walking Chaos by Patrick Ness. It has won awards but again these are not awards I have heard of. To me this fits perfectly as a pick n mix books as I probably would not be reading it if I hadn't been gifted it.
My current read of Doctor Sleep is good I am now nearing the end with some 100 pages left.Lots of links to The Shining are slowly being told. All very exciting. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Thanks for joining Steve and Paul.I hope to hear good things about our reads. The Martian by Andy Weir sounds excellent,I have heard good things about it. Maybe next year(cos this year is already jam-packed!) lol
Patrick Ness got rave reviews for the Walking Chaos series of which Knife is the first. He also got awards for A Monster Calls,but that sounds really too dark and downbeat for my tastes. Good to see Thomcat has renewed the YA Challenge for this year,but its getting a bit difficult to find 12 new to me authors. am doing a YA challenge on Shelfari,but it doesnt have to be completely new authors I find the YA books are usually good clean fun,and quick reads. But Ness is quite a complex author aimed at the older range of hs audence,so adults find him fascinating too | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Ellen Kushner - Thomas the Rhymer. The ancient traditional ballad Thomas the Rhymer has long been a favourite poem of mine.Thomas is a reckless young minstrel who meets the Queen of Elfland and dares to kiss her. He is thereby under her power,and is taken off to Elfland for seven years,and is given the gift - or curse?- of speaking only the truth and foretelling the future as his reward for seven years of servitude.John Keats was influenced by this poem to write La Belle Dame Sans Merci,Walter Scott made a poem about it,Rudyard Kipling too.and Ellen Kushner made a fine novel from it, a worthy winner of the Mythopoeic Award and the World Fantasy Award.Totally faithful to the original rather sparse tale,she tells the story of Thomas as a rather reckless young minstrel with a roving eye,good looks and great pride in his singing and harping skills. Where the poem barely mentions his time in Elfland,Kushner elaborates it ,weaving enchanting tales of the wildness,beauty and peril of the fae world,and then fetches Thomas home to cope with the hardships of a tongue that can speak only the truth.This book is a beautiful,haunting,heartbreaking tale of Thomas's life and death,elegantly written,poignant and vivid.I cant say fairer than what Neil Gaiman said; ' An elegant and beautiful book that manages to create firmly real,breathing people and to evoke the magic of Faerie. Tender,wise,tough and imaginative - its a magical tour de force shot through with strange melodies. I loved it'' Me too Neil,me too. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Martian Chronicles. This was a reread for a 1950s SF challenge,when we were asked would this book still be read in a hundred years. I definitely think it will be.There is a complexity of viewpoints and themes enough that the book will always strike a chord somewhere. Fear of a nuclear war destroying earth may be in abeyance at the moment,but that insistence in trampling over and simply destroying other cultures than its own is as rampant as eve sort of r,as is the destruction of the environment by crass commercialism and greed. The book is more a dream than an actual depiction of colonizing Mars,and its elegiac style,poetic rhythm and intense emotionalism making any outdated concepts seem unimportant. We dont stop to pick holes in dodgy science or even sneer at some sentimentality (would everyone go back home in the case of a nuclear war? sounds unlikely!) because we are moving on to the next little vignette which gives us a rush of nostalgia,awe at the martian landscape etc. The whole work is suffused with delicious irony from beginning to end,and this neutralises any sugariness enough. That irony will be what preserves this book for the future I believe. . A true classic | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Frederik Pohl - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. wasn't very keen on this book, partly because of the multiple points of view, not something I am a fan of at the best of time, and as I disliked most of the characters, and wished Rob Broadhead was as prominent this time as in Gateway. I was always waiting impatiently for his next appearance. The early part of the book, about the teenager Wan and the whole situation on the Heechee artifact was rather confusing, it took time to understand the situation. The hard science went completely over my head, I am no physicist, and I just had to go with the flow with all the difficult science. I wouldnt know a Mach Principle from a Mack truck. We did learn more about the Heechee and their aims and some idea of their location, but in such an oblique offhand way that it was a bit disappointing. Still, the book was a reasonable read and I was happy that Rob got rich again, but I am wary about what will happen next about his wife who disappeared into a black hole, as I dislike love triangles, and I like Essy his second wife lol. But I will certainly look out for the next adventure | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Synopsis - Foxglove Summer is the fifth instalment in Ben Aaronovitchs Peter Grant series, about a junior London copper who finds himself apprentice to the only wizard still active on the force.
Peter is sent on a routine check on an old mage to make sure he has no involvement in the disappearance of two 11 year old girls in rural Herefordshire. The mage seems clear,so Peter offers to help the local police in the search for the missing girls . It soon is obviious that weird magical things are afoot and as usual Peter cant resist getting involved
Following Peter with his odd mix of traditional police procedure and his arcane magic is always fun.One minute Peter may be taking mundane witness statements,the next moment he is avoiding a vicious unicorn.or dating the goddess of a river.All engaging fun,and since he is a mixed race London lad,he is a bit of an oddity in the small oldfashioned town. Its always interesting seeing people's reactions to a minority policeman who is involved with magic!
The book is engaging enough,but we had been left at the end of the previous book with serious and shocking developments about a fellow trainee magic user who after appalling injuries seems to have deserted to the darkside. This riveting story arc is sidelined here,which is a severe disappointment. Hope we get back to London in the next book.Light fun,but lets get back to the darkside! | |
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Veteran
Posts: 107
Location: scotland | 200 pages into The Knife of Never Letting Go very pacy story, not much depth to it so far. I am intrigued to see where it heads as another 2 books follow this. Very bad grammar which will annoy many readers. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I just joined the Pick and Mix challenge. I got kind of confused and added the books I've written reviews for and then realized that we don't need to write reviews, but should discuss the books here. Is that right? Well, anyhow I'm hearing an audiobook version of Heinlein's Double Star. I expect to finish it tomorrow. I picked it because it is on the WWE list that I am closest to finishing.
I like Heinlein. I've read several of his books and a couple are favorites and I disliked none. Double Star is a little different. It's in a science fiction setting, with folks traveling to Mars and to the Moon, but it really isn't a science fiction book. It's more of a lighthearted intrigue. with a little reworking could have been set in a contemporary non-science fiction setting. I'm enjoying it.
Whenever an author writes things that happen in the future, he risks being dated because who can predict where technology goes? I found it amusing that Heinlein makes big use of Farley files, so named for a member of the Eisenhower administration from way back in the mid-twentieth century. Of course, that's when Double Star was written, and who can remember Farley?
Another thing I thought was a little corny but perhaps very futuristic in the mid 50s: A spaceman's toast: he lifts his glass and says "Hot jets." | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Okay; so now I removed all the books I had put in this challenge, had written reviews of, but hadn't mention here in the forum, and my only listed challenge book is the one I mentioned above. That's how it's supposed to work, right? | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Hi Spectru,sorry that you have been confused! lol. I just wanted to make this challenge free and easy.,so no one would feel forced to make formal reviews to put on the WWEnd database,but would at least come here on our forum page and talk about what they were reading,even just a brief comment. But I wasnt banning reviews,look at my challenge details and you can see I have some reviews written. And I do try to make a post for my books read. I felt a bit sad though when no one else reciprocated! So thank you. I have been having computer difficulties lately and have been lax with my own posts,but I am hoping to get back on for. in March. Feel free to put back any books you like!
I was intending to ask if anyone wanted to increase the number of books required into that four level reading level format,but since the thread seemed deserted I havent yet done it. I was hoping for imput on how many books to put for each level.What I did last year was only add particular favourite reads since there were only spaces for 12 books,and I read 70! I would be glad to hear what levels we could have.
I feel that just ticking off a number of books read is a bit boring,thats why I hoped people would pop in here with a comment or two to make it more interesting.but as usual people are hiding in their caves! So thank you for peeping out. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Double Star was a little bit of a disappointment for me. I enjoyed the amusing banter of the egocentric protagonist,but I had hoped to see more of the aliens. I wanted a closer look at their creche,but that was a very minor part of the story. Probably The Great Lorenzo is Heinlein's most developed character,we learn a lot more about him than of most RAH characters,thoug hperhaps not very accurate,he is a probably an unreliable narrator.
I am a bit of a sucker for that hoary old plot,the double who replaces someone else. A venerable plot device,popular from Shakespeare onwards. ,through Twain;s Prince and the Pauper,and Anthony Hope's Prisoner of Zenda,and a million others1. They are always fun.Wasnt so keen that he had to be in th political arena though. But all in all,an amusing,exciting and entertaining read. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Sheesh! I am SSOOOO behind withadding my books and comments.So ,quick summary. I have read several YA books,with mixed results.
Veronica Roth - Divergent. it was a fairly entertaining read,more than I expected. No wonder teenage girls resonated with this highschool drama,teenage angst, etc transposed to a world where everyone has to choose at sixteen a ''Faction'' for life. ,since the author was barely out of highschool herself,around 21 when she was writing it. Also explains all the very dodgy premises of this very simplistic and improbable dystopic novel,which stretched suspension of disbelief to the limits. But it did have a very appealing heroine.a great role model for teens. The book was smoothly written and very fast pace and helped to gloss over the improbabillities. I wont be reading more though. Once the tight focus of the first book is dissipated in an on-the-run scenario I doubt I could stand all the gaping holes in the story.The end scenes reminded me of a Dr Who episode,everyone running down endless corridors having narrow escapes,and someone stays behind,sacrificing themselves for the sake of the rest But I do see why teens loved it so much.And I certainly liked the heroine a lot more than the famous Katniss!
Pittacus Lore - The Revenge of Seven. I have enjoyed the rest of the series but this one seemed to drag at times. Also the print is a bit annoying. There are several narrators,and for some reason the author insists on a different typeface for each. Some are dark and heavy,one of them is so small and light I can barely read it.,especially by artificial light. I never remember anyway which type is which,so I have to puzzle out from the first lines of each chapter who is talking! lol. It did pick up at the end,with a cliffhanger,but I think the author should finish the series soon. Not likely though. Apart from the main series - this was the 5th - there is a spinoff series,eleven and counting. Obviously a major cash cow for the author :0)
Also I have read several UF books,including Nalini Singh's latest in the Guild Hunter series,one of my fave series in that genre,and,read for my Women of Genre Fiction challenge I read
Karen Lord - The Best of All Possible Worlds. - Synopsis- This a stunning science fiction epic that is also a beautifully wrought, deeply moving love story. A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life but come to discover that in order to preserve their culture, they may have to change it forever. Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing raceand end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely teamone cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsivejust may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all. This fascinating and thoughtful science fiction novel breaks out of the typical conflict-centered narrative paradigm to examine adaptation, social change, and human relationships. Ive not read anything quite like it, which it makes that rare beast: a true original.Kate Elliot
Hmm,I feel perhaps the blurb is overstating it a bit,though it is a very enjoyable book,. Its a sort of road trip book,as a team of scientists map out some older communities of Sadiri heritage to see if a new society of Sadiri,which was left with a huge surplus of males,and will need to integrate locally ,combined with. a slow building romance between a dignified Sadiri elder and a volatie free spirited young local woman. It has been widely noticed that there are distinct echoes of Star Trek Vulcans here,a sort of rerun of Spock's parents romance,and it is delightful seeing the staid courtship,but sometimes getting the balance between science fiction and romance is a bit clumsy or uneven An engaging read though with fun glints of subtle humour and rapport between the two protagonists,and nicely written. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Robert Heinlein - Between Planets. - One of Heinlein's fun "juveniles". Don Harvey, warned by his parents on Mars to leave his schooling on Earth before there is war between Earth and its Martian and Venusian colonies, is asked to collect a package from a professor friend before leaving Earth, which leads to his arrest and the mysterious death of the professer. There is a seemingly valueless plastic ring which is returned to him by the ominous security officers, and he takes it off on his travels to Mars, via a space station and Venus. On the spaceflight he aids a stricken Venusian "dragon" and witnesses the destruction of the military space station by the rebels. Landing on Mars he is overtaken by the war, and is surprised that Earth is searching for him and his ring, which eventually proves to hold vital breakthrough technology about weapons and speeding up spaceflight.
Don sees a friend murdered by the Earth troops, and escapes from a prison camp, wading through vile stagnant swamps full of mud lice. He falls in with rebels and becomes a guerilla taking part in dangerous raids. Eventually he meets up with the brilliant Dragonagain. who turns out to be a brilliant scientistand passes on the ring, which gives the edge to the rebels. Oh, and there is a light little romance too, though the not very sharp Don barely recognises it!
I really enjoyed this book full of action and adventure, but with nuggets intriguing enough to keep the interest of adults. I was glad that it was written at a time when all the data we had on Venus was by telescope etc, no Hubbles or passing satellites, and authors could still have fun inventing strange environments and could still have venusian "dragons"!
This was, as is common with Heinlein juveniles, a coming of age story-, but with some more serious shadows. The ebullient practical but rather obtuse young man we meet at first comes through hard times, and that has impact on him, though Heinlein touches only lightly on it for his young readers eager for adventure. On Venus he sees a friend shot dead, and in a prison camp though he escapes when an outage makes the electric fence be useless he gets over in time but sees a fellow prisoner fried as the fence comes on again. When he meets up with rebels their leader is frank about their aims, to make the lives of the small earth force unbearable and expensive in terms of men and equipment. "We will sneak in at night and cut their throats, and sneak out again for breakfast" and we can assume when Don joins them he is involved with this, though its not very explicit - "He learned the ways of the guerilla - to infiltrate without sound, to strike silently and fade back into the dark.... those that learned survived, those that did not, died.... He acquired deep lines around his mouth. lines beyond his years, and a white puckered scar on his left forearm. "On a later occasion, when reunited with allies a man tries to bully him into giving up the ring, and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere a knife is pressed against the man's stomach. At one point he thinks about his parents, but admits to himself that somehow he can not conjure up any emotiions. None of this sort of thing is standard in juvenile fiction, and as|I said, it makes for enjoyable reading for adults. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Finished Double Star by Heinlein. I think the only reason this novel is science fiction is because it was written by Robert A Heinlein and that's what he wrote. It reminds me very much of the movie Dave, in which a small town small businessman, a dead ringer for the president, is drafted to stand in for the president who has had a stroke. Nevertheless, it won the '56 Hugo and is on half a dozen of our WWE SF lists.
Continuing my earlier topic above, another anachronism from the 1950's is the use of a slide rule. Who can imagine using a slide rule today, much less in our space faring future?
The audiobook version of the book is read by Tom Weiner. His voice characterization of the narrator, Lawrence Smith,aka Lorenzo Smythe, aka The Great Lorenzo, sounds much more prissy or foppish in the beginning of the book than at the end. And that seems to fit with Smythe's character, who starts out seeming vain and priggish. As the book progresses he seems to become more talented and competent.
I could hardly classify this as a Great Book, but it is a very enjoyable read.
Edited by spectru 2015-02-25 2:24 PM
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Uber User
Posts: 370
Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | Okay, I'll come out of lurker mode :-) I really liked Double Star. I read it for my personal conquer the Hugo winners challenge. In my SF book club, one of the members pronounced, "If you can take away the science, and still have a novel, it's not science fiction". I really take issue with that because IMHO, you can take away the science from most SF and you end with a, albeit often sparce, novel of some sort. Notice I say most, not all. Even the hardest space operas can be sifted down to horse operas, and eventually to some literary theme. "The Martian", which I read for this challenge is exactly that. Sift it down enough and you have MacGuyver meets Robinson Crusoe. Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.
I started this challenge with "The Martians" which I loved. I thought jokingly that it wasn't science fiction, it was engineering fiction. Some people at my bookclub took issue with there being so little about his emotional state. And although I prefer deep characters and emotions, I didn't miss it at all. The action was great and it kept me on the edge of my seat.
Oh, and I'll reiterate from my first post, that I'm using this challenge for the selections from the bookclub I belong to, since last year, I was constantly reorganizing my challenges to fit the selections. We only choose the books 2 to 3 months in advance.
For February, I read "A Night in the Lonesome October" by Zelazny. It's part Cthulu mythos with a bunch of literary and real and generic historical figures thrown in. The book is told in diary style by Jack the Ripper's dog. The dog, and all the animals in the story, are familiars to the people, helping them prepare for some cataclysmic event that's not really revealed until nearly the very end. The book has a huge cult following and some people read it annually in October. I didn't find it as fun as it sounds. I wasn't really engaged until the last few chapters. I thought it was a little too meandering for the first two thirds or so. But I'll probably read it again in October, and give it a second chance.
As soon as I finish "Return of the King" for my Tolkien challenge, I'll be reading "The Last Policeman" by Ben H Winters for P&M. | |
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Uber User
Posts: 370
Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | I forgot to mention, our bookclub picked "I Am The Messanger" by Markus Zusak for April. It's not in our database, but it was described as Urban Fantasy. Can anyone confirm that? I'm wondering about getting it put into WWE's database but haven't found anything online substantiating it as part of our genre. Also, I just found it in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database...
Edited by spoltz 2015-02-25 3:07 PM
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I Am the Messenger is excellent, by the author of The Book Thief. If you've read The Book thief, you haven't gotten an inkling of I Am the Messenger. I wouldn't classify it as urban fantasy, though I'm not really sure what urban fantasy is. My wife reads what she says are urban fantasies. I think they often include romantic vampires. I Am the Messenger isn't like that. I hadn't thought of it as a fantasy, but i guess it might step outside the hard limits of reality. It does has a clever little twist at the end that I found delightful.
Edited by spectru 2015-02-25 4:35 PM
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | OK we are two months into our challenge,and I would like to thank the eleven of you who are participating.We have already read a respectable 26 books,and thought not a criterion,no less than 20 reviews.! We have serious WWEnders in this group. Feel free to post your reviews here on the thread for the enjoyment of others,same with any comments etc. I am delighted looking at the books we have read to see such an eclectic selection!
I am posting this now as a multi-reading level challenge. Just as well as Weesam,for instance,has already finished 7 books.Keep up the good work everyone.Dont forget to adjust your reading level
And thanks for all the people who kindly check out our posts. Anyone,not just people doing the challenge,can feel free to post or comment at any time. Happy reading,folks
Edited by dustydigger 2015-02-27 1:04 PM
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Has anyone read Harlan Ellison's Again Dangerous Visions?
I got it because it included The Word for World is Forest. Ursula K Le Guin. What a great novella. It must have been the inspiration of the movie Avatar.
But I've become a little disenchanted with Again Dangerous Visions. I read Dangerous Visions years ago and reread it recently. Now I'm struggling through it's sequel. It's quite voluminous, and I think it's dulled my appetite for short stories. Ellison gives a sometimes long winded and sometimes (dare I say it?) self-aggrandizing or name-dropping introduction to each story. I used to be a fan of Ellison, years and years ago, but now I find myself skimming over these introductions to get to the next story. And having grown weary of the stories, some of which haven't proven to be as good as I had hoped, I'm reading a story or two between novels, which means it will take me months to finish this tome. | |
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Extreme Veteran
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Location: Great Lakes, USA | I read Again Dangerous Visions back in the 70s. I remember liking most of the stories and skipping a lot of the intros. (impatient teenager who didn't care to read anyones opinions) I bought Dangerous Visions after I read it because I liked it. I think these story collections were considered "new and groundbreaking" at the time. Perhaps some haven't aged well. I wonder if I'd like them now as much as I did back then. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Dear old Harlan,still an 'enfant terrible'' in his eighties!. I never found a copy of Again Dangerous Visions,but remember Dangerous Visions blowing my mind when I read it back in the 60s. It was something so different from the SF my staid library had in stock,mostly old anthologies from the 50s. I suppose the fact that sex was so prominent captured my teenage attention. That was so rare in SF back then.That aspect probably now makes it all a bit old hat. ,but you have to say Harlan's anthologies were very influential in bringing the New Wave to wider attention.. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I just started Flowers for Algernon. I read it years ago, after seeing the movie with Cliff Robertson. I've always thought of it as a favorite book, but I don't remember it well, just the gist. I had forgotten that it is first person, narrated by Charlie himself, in Progris Riports. | |
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | I read the short story in an anthology in the mid sixties,and ended up crying buckets. I have never dared get up the gumption to read the extended full length novel version. ,nor did I ever watch the film.But the story has stayed with me all these years. Haunting and sad. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 107
Location: scotland | Halfway through Kraken. Really challenging book. So many things happen.
Written in a very strange way, reminds me of some of The Book of The New Sun and a Peter Straub book I struggled wit a few years ago. Many would be baffled reading this. Maybe it is intended like this. | |
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Extreme Veteran
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| Kraken by Mieville? It does have a lot going on! With a great punchline at the end! | |
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | That was my first Mieville. I wasnt familiar with him at all,so going by the blurb I was just expecting a great fun adventure/detective sort of book.Imagine how disconcerted I was when about two thirds through the book,he tossed aside a whole section of the plot,it turned out to be a sort of ''Maguffin'' and I was a bit bewildered to say the least. Since then I have read Embassytown and The City and the City,and this year have Un Lun Dun and Perdido Street Station on my TBR,and know to expect the unexpected,but at the time it was very strange! I still shudder over that mouth on the man's back....aarrgghh! | |
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Extreme Veteran
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| The City and the City is probably one of my all time favorites! Such an incredibly well realized complex world. I loved Embassytown too and wish I had read it vs listened to it as an audiobook as I probably missed many of the more subtle parts of the story while trying to keep the plot in mind as I was driving. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The City & the City is the only China Mieville I've read. It's such a strange and unique concept - It took me a while to grasp it, and it took a while for that grasp to become firm enough to really enjoy the book. I almost think a second reading is needed to fully appreciate the book. | |
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Uber User
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Location: UK | I enjoyed The City & the City, too. It was the book that convinced me I didn't really dislike Mieville, having not really got much out of Perdido Street Station. | |
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Uber User
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Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | I read "The Last Policeman" by Ben H Winters. It's a murder mystery taking place several months before an asteroid slams into the earth. What I really liked about it was the existential angst of everyone. What makes the murder part wild is that it looks like a suicide, and tons of people people are committing suicide. So no one thinks anything of it except for one newly promoted detective. There's also a conspiracy plot smoldering in the background that appears to rev up in the next book (It's a trilogy so far). I don't read many mysteries, so I really enjoyed that part of it. I found it exciting. Overall, I enjoyed it, found it to be a fun but dark romp. Not great, but really good. In my SF book club, some people thought it was boring as far as mysteries go, but my mother-in-law who reads tons SF, fantasy, and mystery absolutely loved it and ordered the next two books. So I'll probably read those at some point.
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Veteran
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I've started Blood Music by Greg Bear. Haven't read anything by him before. If I'd been told this book was written by Michael Crichton, and didn't know any better, I'd've believed it. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I'm completely unfamiliar with Ben H. Winters. WWE lists only two books of that trilogy. | |
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | As for Blood Music,probably the book would have been more exciting if written by Crichton! lol. I find Greg Bear a bit stodgy and dry. Great ideas that sound fantastic,but are dry as dust in the telling. I was very diasppointed with Eon,for example, which had this fascinating endless time tunnel,very intriguing,but the characters were rather lacklustre and the book seemed as endless as the tunnel! Blood Music had even less characterisation,and all in all wasnt the gripping read I had expected,but of course I am not a great enthusiast for hard science. Often there is too much emphasis on trying to make the science,which after on is not real,at least not yet,sound feasible and plausible,and it gets in the way of the story for me.This sort of book is often written on the extrapolation of present day cutting edge technology,and when the tech becomes old hat,or even wrong all this technobabble can ruin the book.Remember,poor old Dusty is a dinosaur technologically anyway,and the story is all! 
I'll never forget the kerfuffle long ago over Larry Niven's Ringworld. ,where people were earnestly picking faults about the technology that kept the immense Ringworld going. To me this was a cracking story about a BDO(Big Dumb Object) awesome in its conception,and here were these people with their physics equations etc nitpicking over the details instead of enjoying the rollercoaster ride! I am a great fan of BDOs,the sense of wonder which was so prevalent in SFs early days must seem too naive to the solemn would be literary authors of today's SF,but fans still read and enjoy those old pulp SF books simply because they are fun.
Oops. Ok,off the soapbox now! | |
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Uber User
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Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | I was unaware of Ben H Winters also. This was a pick of my book club. I voted against it. I don't like picking trilogies/series because that adds more books to my TBR pile exponentially. This book won an Edgar for mystery. The second book, "Countdown City" won the Philip K Dick award for 2013. He's also written "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters", a YA novel, a horror novel, and several adult and children's musicals for the stage. I'll see about getting the third book in the database this weekend. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I too eschew the first book in trilogies or series, unless they are so highly acclaimed that I know it'll be worthwhile. I tend not to read series consecutively - there's always a gap of time filled by other books. For series that simply share the same universe, that's okay, but my reading habits don't enhance series where each book is a chapter in a larger series.
Edited by spectru 2015-03-12 3:58 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Robert A Heinlein - A Door Into Summer
It's always interesting when an author writes about his future, which is now our past. Heinlein didn't get too specific so there aren't too many misses, but there are a few. In the year 2000, a doctor offers his patient a cigarette in a hospital room. The automatic drafting machine is a mechanical device with a keyboard. He got that sort of right. Engineers today, and in 2000, use CADD (computer aided design and drafting) and early plotters, the machines that did the drawing, actually were like robots that used the same kind of drafting pens that manual draftsmen used. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Blood Music by Greg Bear is not bad, not great. I did wake up in the middle of the night from a Blood Music inspired nightmare, but the book itself isn't scary.
This is the first I've read of Greg Bear. I've been aware of Darwin's Radio for quite a while, but I know nothing about it. Does anybody recommend Greg Bear? | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Just started Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. first impression: Vonnegut at his Vonnegutest. Anybody read it? | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Kurt Vonnegut said that Timequake was his last novel (I'm not sure if it was or not) which he wrote after an extended bout of writer's block. I have terminal writer's block, having never successfully completed a piece of fiction, none at all. If I were able to write fiction, I would like to be able to write like John Steinbeck. That, of course, isn't even remotely plausible, so, then, I wish I could write like Kurt Vonnegut. That also isn't remotely plausible, but it's a good wish.
Edited by spectru 2015-03-25 9:49 PM
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Extreme Veteran
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Location: Great Lakes, USA | @spectru - I like Bear. I've read a half dozen or so of his books. I liked Eon, Slant and Darwin's Radio. I also thought his Foundation book was the best of the three. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Okay. So I just downloaded an audiobook of Darwin's Radio. It's short, a little over 5 hours. | |
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Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I just discovered that my audiobook of Darwin's Radio is abridged. Puzzling - In print it is 448 pages, which seems hardly long enough to warrant abridgement. Oh well; I wanted something of novella length to hear this weekend. The narrator is Stefan Rudnicki. His rich baritone graced the narration of Card's Ender series; I still hear him as Colonel Graff.
I also just discovered that we only have 30 minutes to edit a post in this forum. | |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | spectru - 2015-03-28 10:33 AM I just discovered that my audiobook of Darwin's Radio is abridged. Puzzling - In print it is 448 pages, which seems hardly long enough to warrant abridgement. Oh well; I wanted something of novella length to hear this weekend. The narrator is Stefan Rudnicki. His rich baritone graced the narration of Card's Ender series; I still hear him as Colonel Graff. I also just discovered that we only have 30 minutes to edit a post in this forum. I've not run into an abridged audio book yet. Very strange. If it was from Audible.com you can return it and get your credit. Just give 'em a call. On a related note, I've been listening to a lot of audio books lately and thought it might be a good theme for a reading challenge. What do you all think about an Audio Book Reading Challenge? I was thinking 3/6/9/12 audio book levels with optional reviews. No other requirements. For the reviews I think it would be good to get the scoop on the narration as well as the story. A good reader makes a world of difference. It would certainly play well with the other challenges. Thoughts? | |
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Veteran
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I haven't participated in the reading challenges before, until this year. Just finally managed to get it figured out how to participate. An audiobook challenge would be my sixth. I think maybe roughly half the books I read are audiobooks, most of which I download from my public library, so, just like Audible, I can return them.
I have an abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo on my reading list and last year I read an abridged version of Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.
You're right about the narrator. Most professional narrators are quite good. Jim Dale narrating the Harry Potter series is good enough to knock your socks off. Sometimes famous actors are great: Jeremy Irons reading Lolita; Meryl Streep reading The Testament of Mary. I've found that an author reading his own work sometimes isn't as good as one would hope. Neil Gaiman, however, does and excellent job.
On road trips, my spouse and I listen to books on CDs. I check them out from the library and she picks which ones we'll listen to. We arrived at her sister's house after an eight and a half hour drive with an hour left on the book and she wouldn't get out of the car.
Edited by spectru 2015-03-28 8:06 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Written in 1952, The Space Merchants makes Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth seem prescient. Or maybe 1952 wasn't all that different from today. I've read comparisons of The Space Merchants to the TV show Mad Men, which I think is set in the 1960s. I really don't know, never having seen the TV show. The Space Merchants certainly does seem pertinent to our present times, a caricature in preposterous hyperbole, but pertinent. | |
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Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | This was my second time through "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank. It's the May read for my SF/F bookclub. I read it the first time before I had my blog and joining WWE. It's dated in its treatment of women and African-Americans, but is still terrifying in its depiction of the aftermath of nuclear war. I found it more depressing and anxiety-inducing than my first read. It's a rather cold book, reflecting the author's more journalistic approach to writing. I'll have my review of it posted soon. | |
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Location: UK | I am having so much fun doing the 1950s SF challenge.and have had a great month. I enjoyed my reread of Double Star,and also my third reading of Day of the Triffids. I find something of interest at each read. The first time,as a teenager I just enjoyed the story - green comets causing blindness,sentient plants with a deadly sting,5he total destruction of society etc. A few years ago I paid more attention to the different forms of government ,this time I was more interested in what could be salvaged of society.,but was less optomistic about the chances of retaking the world from the triffids than Wyndham was. I know that Brian Aldiss called this a ''cozy catastrophe '',but there was only one scene of living it up,which the protagonists looked upon as a farewell to the old life. I think he was a bit harsh
I have also read a few early 50s novels,Like Edmond Hamilton's City at World's End,a light and easy read. Hamilton is Leigh Brackett's husband,and like her work here there was empathy for the characters,who were not quite as cardboard as in the usual fifties SF. I thought the science about reheating a dying earth with its dark red sun was a bit dodgy and simplistic,but that's typical of such works,didnt bother me.
A Van Vogt's Weapon Shops of Isher was a bit of an oddity,I find his style offbeat and often confusing,but it was still rather good fun with some of his trademark time travel to crack one's brain over
I also read Kate Milford's Greenglass Summer,a junior work nominated for the Mythopoeic award. I was puzzled about why it was supposed to be fantasy,till two thirds of the way through it turned out one of the characters was a ghost!. An OK read,but a bit diffuse,even a little confusing at times.
I hope to get round to some reviews for my reads this month,but real life problems have kept me away from WWEnd lately,it may be a while before I get round to something less sketchy. | |
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Location: New Zealand | I am enjoying this challenge. It lets you do a nice mix of books I can't fit in anywhere else. All the 'just because I want to read it' books, rather than the 'fit a theme' books. And having 40 books to read is a good number. 12 books is never enough as I have so many books I want to read.
Edited by Weesam 2015-03-29 3:19 PM
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | That's why I started this last year,to have plenty of leeway. Some people have limited time for books and 12 on one topic could be a stretch. WWEnd have helped enormously this year by the reading levels. I enjoy looking down the members list,which has diverse and interesting books..
I did think of extending the top level to 50 books,since it IS the whole sweet shop.but probably only you and I would reach that,so I left it at 40! | |
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Uber User
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Location: New Zealand | Ha, yeah, I am aware I am a bit obsessive when it comes to the levels. I have to go for the higher one no matter what. Fortunately I don't need to do things like watch TV or eat or sleep or go out and socialize, so I have plenty of time for reading! | |
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | My kitchen/diner ,where my computer and preferred reading space is, was remodelled 4 years ago,the radiator was moved,and there was no longer any space for the TV stand. My husband uses the livingroom TV for nothing but news and documentaries,so I now watch minimal TV,and dont miss it a bit. I might not go out to socialize,since I have been almost housebound for the last few years with a stroke and arthritis,but I have a big family who live nearby and are popping in and out daily. They are used to me reading so i dont have to fully engage with them,bit I do miss some valuable reading time! When my granddaughter was only 18 months old,she noticed for some reason that I had left my book over on another chair and solemnly brought it over to me. Nana and her book ten feet apart? Inconceivable.
So in spite of all the interruptiona i normally read 12-16 books a month. However,only about 8 of them are SF/F,as i am eclectic in my tastes. Still,since I joined WWEnd for all their lists - I am a listaholic,I no sooner see one than I want to read all the books on it - I am finally making some inroads on the Hugos and Nebulas lists,but not doing so well on fantasy and horror. But I have a long way to catch up with Englebrecht. Serves me right for being away from the genre for decades,or I would try to give him a run for his money! :0. But you and I seem to be on quite similar levels in the stats.Watch out,I'll be treading on your heels soon! 
Edited by dustydigger 2015-03-31 4:00 AM
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Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA | Ha, I just realized the challenge was expanded to multiples of 10 up to 40 :-D Now I can throw a lot more books into this challenge, as I'll probably read at least 40 this year. I'm going to focus on books that don't fit the other challenges first, but will probably end up throwing almost everything in.
I added Zusak's I Am The Messenger and The Book Thief to WWEnd. They appear in the ISFDB, which is kind of our reference, but probably lie better in the category of speculative fiction than actual SF or Fantasy. I read Messenger for my SF bookclub's April pick. I liked it, but I didn't get the main character's motivation. And though the ending seemed to make the everything rational, it still seemed to me that there was something supernatural, perhaps urban fantasy-ish about it all. And despite the main characters' heavy use of alcohol and the main character's obsession with lack of sex, it definitely has a YA feel. I've posted a full review for the book on my blog and the extract here in WWEnd. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | spoltz - 2015-03-31 11:19 AM
I added Zusak's I Am The Messenger and The Book Thief to WWEnd. They appear in the ISFDB, which is kind of our reference, but probably lie better in the category of speculative fiction than actual SF or Fantasy. I read Messenger for my SF bookclub's April pick. I liked it, but I didn't get the main character's motivation. And though the ending seemed to make the everything rational, it still seemed to me that there was something supernatural, perhaps urban fantasy-ish about it all.
I've read both of these Zusak books and found both excellent. I wouldn't have considered either of them to be in the fantasy genre. But then I wouldn't consider Gone Girl to be in the horror genre, and it's here. | |
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Location: UK | Status report end of March.
Participants - 13
Books read - 75
Reviews - 42.
Very good progress. A few people need to adjust their levels,but all in all we are doing great! | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
The only other Greg Bear I've read is Blood Music. It was okay; Darwin's Radio is much better. I heard an abridged audiobook version. It did seem occasionally that people knew things that hadn't been mentioned and occasionally there was a character who seem to just appear out of the blue, but if I hadn't known it was an abridged version, I probably wouldn't have noticed. Stefan Rudnicki did a fine job in narrating except for the voice of Marge Cross. She is describes as talking something like Julia Child - Rudnicki doesn't do a great Julia Child.
I'm tempted to read the sequel.
There were a couple of time near the end when I had a strong sense of de ja vu, but I'm sure I haven;t read this before. I read a lot of SF in the 70s and much of that has drifted into the fog of memory, but this was published in 1999.
Edited by spectru 2015-04-01 6:06 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
This is Ted Chiang's most recent book, and at 150 pages his longest. I think I've read nearly everything else he's published, which is a small body of work. Chiang's stories are special; They're different, original. His writing is carefully and skillfully done. I'm a little surprised he isn't more widely acclaimed.
Edited by spectru 2015-04-01 8:07 PM
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | I have had a great reading week this week. First I completed Leigh Brackett's excellent Long Tomorrow,about a post nuclear war world where,out of fear of rebuilding the technology that brought about the world's ruin,laws have been passed to limit the size of communities,and the total block on scientific development,as the people live like the Amish,and live in total fear and hatred of tech,to the point of stoning any tech advocates to death. But rumours persist that somewhere there is a place where people can learn and build the old world. Two young men,stifled by the straitjacket life of rural farming and thirsting for knowledge go in search of th town. Beautifully written,with sympathetic characters and a fast moving plot,this is certainly worthy of a place in the SF Masterworks series. What I enjoyed most was the even handed approach to the problems of knowledge and what do do with it. Brackett actually has the main young protagonist be totally conflicted within himself as to whether man should follow knowledge wherever it leads,or should stifle or destroy it. Bracket leaves that pretty much open,and I ended the book haunted by the thought that the young hero would never be happy. Haunting and thought provoking,a classic.
Then it was on to Redshirts,John Scalzi's amusing metafiction,full of wry affectionate sly digs at Star Trek. Some crew members on a spaceship where every time there is an away mission someone diescome to realize that they are actually expendable extras in a badly written TV science fiction series,and contrive to go back and change the series narrative. I know many people didnt like this book,but I am a sucker for metafiction.and loved allm the digs ar Star Trek.Learning at the end that Scalzi was a writer on Stargate was just the cherry on the cake. Great fun!
And i also finished Theodore Sturgeons debut novel,The Dreaming Jewels,an rather bizarre book leaning towatds horror,rather like a less poetic harder Ray Bradbury. Bradbury,by the way looked upon Sturgeon as a model or mentorto follow,as did Harlan Ellison and Samuel Delaney. I found this unusual book , set mainly in a carnival fascinating and intense. I never quite knew where the book would go next as the hero who turns out to be non human. Yet another enjoyable read in the 1950s SF challenge. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2015-04-02 3:35 PM
Then it was on to Redshirts,John Scalzi's amusing metafiction,full of wry affectionate sly digs at Star Trek. Some crew members on a spaceship where every time there is an away mission someone diescome to realize that they are actually expendable extras in a badly written TV science fiction series,and contrive to go back and change the series narrative. I know many people didnt like this book,but I am a sucker for metafiction.and loved allm the digs ar Star Trek.Learning at the end that Scalzi was a writer on Stargate was just the cherry on the cake. Great fun!
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Redshirts is on my reading list. I knew about the Star Trek allusion, but nothing else about the book. The only other Scalzi I've read is his Old Man's War, which I thought was pretty good. So now I'm looking forward to Redshirts. I vaguely remember seeing a TV show or a movie that had a similar theme. A Star Trek-like TV show cast (starring Tim Allen, I think) that thought they were actually on a mission battling real bad guys | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | When my wife and I go on a road trip, I check out audiobooks on CDs from the library and then she picks the one we listen to. She likes Neil Gaiman books, read by Neil Gaiman, Toady we listened to Stardust, written by Neil Gaiman, read by Neil Gaiman. It's standard Gaiman fare. It was pleasant, but unremarkable. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
This was the first Lovecraft I've read though I was familiar with his name. At the Mountains of Madness is billed as a horror story, I think because that is what Lovecraft wrote, but I would put it squarely in the science fiction genre.
It dragged, and wasn't particularly horrifying, though it was obvious that Lovecraft tried to make it so. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed.
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Elite Veteran
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Location: UK | Mountains of Madness is rather slow,I admit,and the trek though the tunnels seems interminable! And giant penguins seem a little amusing rather than awesome! lol. I much prefer Lovecraft's shorter fiction. Are you familiar with the Lovecraft Archive at www.hplovecraft.com ? Its a website with all his work free online,and I am steadily working my way through his stories. They are not so much horror stories in the modern gruesome sense as weird fiction. I love to settle down on a winter afternoon in a cozy room with a cup of hot chocolate,and revel over the grandiloquent prose and read about nameless creatures from the depths of space driving men to madness. Love it.I particularly like The Color out of Space.
Not to everyone's taste,but Lovecraft is still massively influential right up to today. | |
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Extreme Veteran
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Location: Great Lakes, USA | I have been delinquent in writing my quick reviews for this challenge. A lot of the books that I've read for this are books published in 2014 didn't fit in the 2014 challenge. (I love having access to current books and not having to wait for them to come out in paperback or wait to buy them used. Thank you, Library!)
The Pretender Book 1 Rebirth - This book is a typical tv spinoff type book. It was a fast read and if you liked the tv show, you will like this book.
The Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak - an excellent collection of Simak's stories. There wasn't a bad one in the lot. I recommend this one.
The Graveyard Game - Book 4 in Kage Baker's Company series. This was best of the series so far. I much prefer the books where Joseph is the main character as opposed to Mendoza. There are a few more details in the conspiracy that Joseph uncovered in Book 2 and he and Lewis are paying the price for having pried too much to find out what happened to Mendoza. I am looking forward to Book 5.
City - I liked this one, although it seems that a lot of people didn't. I have liked everything I've read by Simak. And I'm sure my enjoyment of City had something to do with the two little dogs lying on top of me while I read it.
Alif the Unseen - a coming of age tale about someone who was a little late coming of age. Alif, the main character, is an adult hacker who still lives with his mother. This was a fun story as Alif gets caught and ends up in an adventure with the djinn. I liked the book, but not as much as others. Although I feel that it's worth reading, I wouldn't consider it as the best book of the year.
The End of the Sentence - this novella was one of the few horror pieces that I've read in years. There was a lot of mythology in this book, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I been more familiar with it. It reminded me a bit of Children of the Corn, which I found very creepy as a kid.
The Goblin Emperor - I almost didn't finish this. The constant descriptions of clothing, changing clothing, and proper manners made this very boring for me. It got such good reviews and was nominated for the Nebula and while I was trying to read it, for the Hugo, so I gritted my teeth and plowed through it. The last third of the book was actually pretty good. I guess the author figured the readers had enough instruction in court protocol and dress that she could get on with the story. The Goblin Emperor is a character driven book. Maia is a likable character who matures and learns a lot about his fellow elves and goblins. Had this story not been so dull during the first two thirds of the book, I would say that it deserves its nominations. As it stands, I don't think so. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
I imagine this was well received when it was written 150 years ago. It was cutting edge science fiction, when science fiction wasn't an established genre. I found it a little outlandish and sometimes even silly, but an entertaining read. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
I'm about halfway into this book. It's complex and intense. It's basic concept takes awhile to get accustomed to. I won't explain it here - at this point there are 35 reviews of the book here on WWE. It puts me in mind of The City & The City by China Meiville. Not that its story is similar; it's not at all - but that its concept is so unfamiliar, original, different, that it takes concentration to grasp it. The prose is dense; I sometimes find myself rereading a sentence or a paragraph to get the meaning of it.
Here is a little oddity: Our narrator frequently comments on the length of time a speaker pauses in conversation, 3 seconds, 6 seconds. I just found it curious. Perhaps it is to convey her Commander Data-like personality.
I jumped the gun in posting this here - I am still far from finishing the book. It would make for a good discussion.
Edited by spectru 2015-04-17 10:02 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Now I have finished Ancillary Justice. It is intense and compelling, except for one segment, a bit after halfway through, where it drags. This is my main complaint about an otherwise terrific book. After the main characters get to the palace station and before they meet the Lord of the Radch, the story bogs down in the nuances of the etiquette of the culture. Aside from that one part, the story keeps one reading. Up until that point the chapters alternate between the present story line and a parallel story nineteen years earlier, a story of political intrigue and treachery, that explains how the protagonist finds herself in in her current situation.
The feminine pronouns she and her are used by the protagonist and those speaking in the Radch language, where gender is ambiguous. This is, I suppose, an innovative treatment of gender, but it seemed odd, sometimes when the protagonist would refer to a character as she and someone from a different culture would refer to that same character as he. Regardless of this, I pictured most of the main characters, including the protagonist, as male, and others as female. Frankly I found this quirk of the novel to be just slightly annoying, and I think I would have preferred the conventional treatment of gender.
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Location: UK | I personally am struggling with Ancillary Justice. When I read about a''inventive and intelligent space opera'' and ''a bold new voice'' I had such high hopes,but I am finding it slow,dry and heavy going. I am hoping it will finally get up a head of steam,but meanwhile I read for what seems a long time,then discover I have only covered 10 pages. Mind you,I am on painkillers,am a little dizzy and nauseous from them,so I may be not be at optimum mental level to appreciate the book,but I am unashamedly from the old school of SF,willing to put up with clunky or pedestrian prose for the sake of a good story,full of fast paced action and sympathetic characters.. Philistine I am maybe,and a bit impatient with issue driven books,but still I am with Hamlet,''the tale's the thing''.and so far this tale aint gripping me,and so called fine writing doesnt cut it for me! Oh well,only 300 pages to go,it MUST start heating up soon!
About the gender thing,I am only so far in,so when I keep seeing ''she'' in a generalized phrase,I just assumed it was a feminist sort of thing,you know,when a statement could use the phrase ''he or she'' but finds it clunky,doesnt want to use the term ''they'',and shortens it to either ''he'',the usual older style, or ''she'' in more modern,feminist books? Told you I was only seeing this book through a medicated daze ( my bone graft op on my knee seems to be going south,I have developed a hollow above the knee!). Think I should abandon the book for a while,and try again next month!
Edited by dustydigger 2015-04-19 1:24 AM
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Location: UK | Hi Daxxh,I am so glad you are enjoying Simak so much,I was delighted to get hold of Way Station and Time is the Simplest Thing in one of those SF Gateway omnibuses from Gollancz,so thats 1961 and 1963 wrapped up for the Defining Books challenge. Now if only I could locate Ring Around the Sun and City,my Simak shelf would be sorted! | |
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Location: UK | Because of the knees,I cant be on the computer long,so I have fallen far behind with reviews. Not that i do proper reviews,I am in awe of some of the great in depth reviews I see here on WWEnd.I have no skills whatsoever in that area,(feel as if I am back at school!) the most I can achieve is a sort of ''mood piece'',a quick snapshot of what caught my admittedly lightweight mind as I was reading .Maybe later in the year I can catch up a bit.
I have actually read very very little this month so far for me.what with real life issues,but I did read and enjoy Terry Pratchett's follow up to Going Postal - Making Money. This time Moist Von Lipwig has been coerced by the Patrician into taking over the national Bank. Its a fun book,with typical Pratchett social satire couched in wryly humorous asides,but I didnt find it as riveting as the hilarious Going Postal. However,we saw a lot of one of my favourite Pratchett characters,the Patrician,someone who makes Macchiavelli look as straight as innocent as a lamb. . Pratchett himself said that he saw Alan Rickman as the perfect Lord Vetenari,and I that that is so brilliant,I now see Rickman,so smooth,so debonair,so devious,whenever I read the books. How sad we wont have anymore of Terry's wonderful bonkers characters. Such a sad loss.
I also completed Murray Leinster's rather odd Forgotten Planet,where 40 generations ago a survey spaceship crash landed in a world full of gigantic insects,and they descendants of the survivors have degenerated into scavenging savages. Very peculiar,with a lot of dodgy science - eg they have almost forgotten language entirely,their vocabulary has reduced to only a few hundred''labials'',and they have even forgotten the use of weapons entirely,and dont even have fire. Very odd,but its fun seeing the ''monsters'',just ordinary insects living in the normal way. The young hero rediscovers the use of weapons,and contact is made at the end with the outside universe,but it is a bit of an oddity among Leinster's usual space opera sort of stuff. Still,I found it more engaging than Ancillary Justice. Really will have to clear the head and re-engage with that next month. lol.
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Location: SC, USA | Dusty, I had the same struggles with Ancillary Justice. Too long, too overwritten, not enough to keep me entertained. I thought that the last 100 pages were better than the earlier parts, but I've read reviews that say the opposite. I am glad that I finished it, but the next two will have to pass me by. There was an announcement recently that Leckie has signed a two-book deal. One of them is set in the AJ world; the other is not. I might give her non-AJ setting a try. I'm not sure if I didn't like HER writing or if I didn't like the parameters that she set for herself because she was having to speak through the voice of an AI-character. Read on and feel better, Rhonda | |
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Location: SC, USA |
@spectru--It is funny. I liked the part that you said bogged down. And I saw the AI as a woman (Uma Thurman in a Kill Bill sort of way). I saw Seivarden as male and Awn as female. I was not sure about Awn's lover. I do like the fact that we "see" it differently even though I didn't like the book that much. The more that I'm thinking about it--especially in reference to what you said about the length of pauses--I think Leckie hampered herself by having the AI be the narrator. One of the things that drove me crazy was Brecq's descriptions of her facial features--"I raised my left eyebrow to show concern." I know what Leckie was trying to accomplish, but the repetition of similar sentences was annoying. Rhonda | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Again Dangerous Visions, by Harlan Ellison
Once, I really liked short stories, but now, not so much, I guess. Or maybe it was just these particular short stories. I read Dangerous Visions not too long ago and it was okay. I got Again, Dangerous Visions mostly because it contained Ursula K Le Guin's novella The Word for World is Forest, which is wonderful. But on the whole, Again, Dangerous Visions missed its mark.
It took me a long time to read this book, about four months. It seemed I just couldn't take it on a continuous basis, so would read a story or two between novels. Ellison wrote an introduction for each author's story. I found myself skipping many of these introductions.
There were several good stories, a couple of gems, stories by some famous science fiction writers, and some not so famous. There are a few memorable stories in this collection and many forgettable ones. I've already forgotten them. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Here are some random thoughts, that probably make more sense if you've already read this book:
-- I thought it was very interesting to see the dystopic cultural revolution through the eye's of a present day Chinese author.
--It was never really explained why scientists were committing suicide.
--Why didn't Shi arrest Pan at the first Three-Body game meet-up, for the murder of Shen?
--Why wasnt math prodigy Wei's outside-the-box solution of the three body problem ever tested? It seemed to become immaterial and just fell by the wayside of the story.
--The Three-Body game was full of self inconsistencies, but then, of course, it was just a game.
--Ye had a fever dream about three suns before she knew anything about Trisolaris and before the three-body game.
--The end of the book, the dimensional unfolding of protons by the Trisolarians, was just too bizarre.
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| spectru - 2015-04-26 11:15 AM
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
--It was never really explained why scientists were committing suicide.
--Why didn't Shi arrest Pan at the first Three-Body game meet-up, for the murder of Shen?
--Why wasnt math prodigy Wei's outside-the-box solution of the three body problem ever tested? It seemed to become immaterial and just fell by the wayside of the story.
--The Three-Body game was full of self inconsistencies, but then, of course, it was just a game.
--Ye had a fever dream about three suns before she knew anything about Trisolaris and before the three-body game.
--The end of the book, the dimensional unfolding of protons by the Trisolarians, was just too bizarre.
Interestingly, not one of your questions popped to mind when I read the book, yet I can't really answer one of them since it's too long ago I've read it, and I don't remember the details. Weren't the suicides disguised murders though? A result of manipulations of the game, in favor of the other faction?
I also liked the feel of the game - the inconsistencies added to the flavor imo.
The same goes for the unfolding of protons: I thought is was a brilliant and even more or less plausible idea, given plain out the weirdness of all quantumphysics. But it creates a kind of godlike tool, that'll maybe be a just too powerful thing for the dynamics of the story. I'm curious how it will play out in the 2nd and 3rd books.
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Location: Belgium | Guest - 2015-04-28 11:16 AM spectru - 2015-04-26 11:15 AM The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu --It was never really explained why scientists were committing suicide. --Why didn't Shi arrest Pan at the first Three-Body game meet-up, for the murder of Shen? --Why wasnt math prodigy Wei's outside-the-box solution of the three body problem ever tested? It seemed to become immaterial and just fell by the wayside of the story. --The Three-Body game was full of self inconsistencies, but then, of course, it was just a game. --Ye had a fever dream about three suns before she knew anything about Trisolaris and before the three-body game. --The end of the book, the dimensional unfolding of protons by the Trisolarians, was just too bizarre. Interestingly, not one of your questions popped to mind when I read the book, yet I can't really answer one of them since it's too long ago I've read it, and I don't remember the details. Weren't the suicides disguised murders though? A result of manipulations of the game, in favor of the other faction? I also liked the feel of the game - the inconsistencies added to the flavor imo. The same goes for the unfolding of protons: I thought is was a brilliant and even more or less plausible idea, given plain out the weirdness of all quantumphysics. But it creates a kind of godlike tool, that'll maybe be a just too powerful thing for the dynamics of the story. I'm curious how it will play out in the 2nd and 3rd books. That was me btw, I thought I was logged in.
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Guest - 2015-04-28 5:16 AM
Interestingly, not one of your questions popped to mind when I read the book, yet I can't really answer one of them since it's too long ago I've read it, and I don't remember the details. Weren't the suicides disguised murders though? A result of manipulations of the game, in favor of the other faction?
I also liked the feel of the game - the inconsistencies added to the flavor imo.
The same goes for the unfolding of protons: I thought is was a brilliant and even more or less plausible idea, given plain out the weirdness of all quantumphysics. But it creates a kind of godlike tool, that'll maybe be a just too powerful thing for the dynamics of the story. I'm curious how it will play out in the 2nd and 3rd books.
It wasn't so much the unfolding, per se; it was the weird effects, like becoming a spherical mirror that enwrapped the planet. It just seemed to me that this sort of thing belonged in the game, not on the real planet. A cute effect, sure, but completely unrelated to the plot - The Trisolarians are coming! The Trisolarians are coming!
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Posts: 1031
Location: UK | David Weber - A Beautiful Friendship - This book is a prequel to the Honor Harrington series, as one of her ancestors, a teenage girl, is the first human to make contact with a treecat, an indigenous species on a frontier planet, and is telepathically bonded with one of them. Nicely written, it has a flavour similar to Anne McCaffrey's cozy, warmhearted YA Pern books. A pleasant read, with interesting characters and lots of background info on the treecats we are familiar with from Weber's Honor Harrington adult series. Not spectacular, but a fun enjoyable teen read. I would be quite willing to read more of the series.
C J Cherryh - Peacemaker. I have been a longtime Cherryh fan,but I hope that the Foreigner series has become bogged down in the minutiae of political intrigue . In book 6 the human hero,sole diplomatic link between his race and the indigenous Atevi of the planet went off into space and met yet another race. Pushing that aside,Cherryh has spent nine booksfocusing on the minutiae of court intrigues,civil war and the like,a lot of it written from the point of view of the 8 year old son of the ruler. Finally in this,book 15, the boy has had his birthday party,after six books anticipating it,most of the intrigues and problems have been sorted,and MAYBE next time we can start a new story arc.Nine books waiting for the appearance of an intriguing new species is enough!. Still an absorbing intense read,as usual with Cherryh,but please lets move on!
I also read Chloe Neill's Dark Debt,the latest in her Chicagoland Vampires series,a light and enjoyable addition to the story of Merit and her beloved boss Ethan,a fast paced UF book. Neill has developed this pleasant series,and I was happy to renew my acquaintance with the likeable cast of characters. Also read Patricia Briggs Dead Heat,the fifth outing for Charles and Anna in the Alpha and Omega series.
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Location: UK | Andre Norton - Star Born.Another of those light fastpaced adventures on strange worlds that Andre Norton did so well. Here we have a a culture of furred amphibious telepaths,plus a vicious cruel alien race who would like to exterminate the mermen , and a tiny human colony of rebels who had fled from the domineering Pax empire four generations before,and have lost all their technology but have developed telepathic links with the sea creatures. The mermen are patiently awaiting the slow dying out of their vicious overlords,but now the overlords have rediscovered a horde of ancient technology and weapons which will enable them once and for all to exterminate the mermen. Adding to the complications is a visiting survey ship,which see the humanoid overlords as possible allies,and believe the mermen are only animals.One of the survey team will prove to be vital in helping the human colony and the mermen,but what should be the future of the human colony?
We have the usual Norton engaging young characters coming of age in trying circumstance,,lots of action and adventure,just another light skilful easy read,with a warm and optimistic, bittersweet ending.Yet another enjoyable exploration for me in the 1950s Defining Books challenge. I'm really enjoying that challenge, | |
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Location: UK | End of April update. Great month for the Pick and Mix!
Participants - 13
Books read - 120
Reviews - 70
Thats excellent,35 books and 28 reviews in a month.
Daxxh reached the end of the challenge.Congratulations,but I hope that one ''scoop'' can be extended to a ''carton''! Thank you Spectru for all your interesting posts this month.
And of course Weesam is forging ahead. Should I extend the ''sweet shop'' to 50 books or you are going to be finished in a couple of weeks!
Lots of great books on our challenge,you are all making my TBR grow to Himilayan proportions.
Anyone else like to join our challenge,we could do with more people? The criteria are simple,any books on WWEnd's awards or lists. ,what could be easier.
And anyone is welcome to post on any books mentioned here,you dont need to be a challenge participant.
Lets all have a great reading month in May!
Edited by dustydigger 2015-04-30 10:50 PM
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Posts: 613
Location: New Zealand | It's a fun to not have any particular 'criteria' for this challenge. Just books I really want to read. That's probably why I'm nearly at the end.
Up to you if you want to add more to the challenge, obviously if you change it to 50 I''ll have to add 10 more books (not hard!) because I can't resist a challenge, but don't do it just for me. | |
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Location: UK | Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood.George Huxley lives beside Ryhope Wood,a mysterious remnant of the primeval forests that once covered Britain in Neolithic times.His whole life,to the neglect of his family,has been been an obsessive exploration of the forest. Objectively it can only be about three miles across but once within it you can not penetrate it,but can walk apparently in a straight line,and come out where you started.Time is strange there too,a fortnight in the woods may have only been two days outside the wood. Huxley over his life builds up knowledge of the wood,makes minor inroads finding some paths leading further in.He discovers ''mythagos'',the archetypal forms of legend and myth made corporate. In the wood you may find Arthur's knights,ghosts of Saxons,gods and goddesses,back to the most primitive times. Huxley meets and becomes obsessed with an mythago of a beautiful celtic girl.
.After his death his sons too will be entranced by this girl with perilous consequences and will come to re-enact ancient myths. They will finally uncover the way of entering the wood and learn some of its secrets,and bitter rivalry and jealousy will lead to insanity and tragedy
Beautifully written,with intriguing philosophical and spiritual themes,this book,winner of the British Fantasy Award and the British Science Fiction Award is as fresh and original today as when it was published in 1984. Mythic fiction at its best.The book is immersive ,gripping and intense. This Wild Wood is an awful lot darker than the one where Badger lives in Wind of the Willows! | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
This is the first Koontz I've read. It's a murder mystery. The light-hearted young protagonist has psychic/supernatural abilities. He sees dead people, including Elvis. WWE says its a Horror story. I'd classify it more as a Fantasy. I'm assuming it may be typical of Koontz, a murder mystery with supernatural elements.
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
When I read the Foundation trilogy some time ago, I was left with one overiding question: Why did the foundation fear the second foundation so? The foundation people know that both they and the second foundation are part of the Seldon Plan, and therefore are necessary for the success of the Plan, and yet they view the second foundation with great suspicion. Foundation's Edge doesn't answer the question. But it is one of those few sequels that is as good as the original. | |
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| btw, spectru, in your review of you seem to forget the Foundation & Earth sequel... I enjoyed both sequels, and agree with you book 4 is as good as the previous ones. | |
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Location: Belgium | (that was me, thought I was logged in. damned safari.) | |
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Location: UK | Log in is a pain these days.I have WWEnd on my bookmark tool bar,ready signed in,but these days i find I have to check every time to see if I am logged in,and surprise surprise.I never am! 
Edited by dustydigger 2015-05-07 1:35 AM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Guest - 2015-05-07 12:37 AM
btw, spectru, in your review of you seem to forget the Foundation & Earth sequel... I enjoyed both sequels, and agree with you book 4 is as good as the previous ones.
Oh. I thought it was a prequel. I stand corrected. Review fixed. Thanks for the heads up, bleebs.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-07 6:45 AM
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Regular
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Location: Belgium | I felt the 2 prequels, Prelude & Forward The Foundation weren't on the level of the other 5 books at all. Then again, enjoying the 2 sequels to the trilogy seems to be a minority position as well, so what do I know. | |
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Location: UK | Finally finished Ancillary Justice,took me a couple of weeks,since I didnt find it very engaging.
The Radch Empire is ruthless and formidable,occupying a galaxy spanning empire by means of ''corpse soldiers'' a huge collection of dead prisoners stacked in space ships waiting to be animated as formidably armed and ruthlessly efficient soldiers by the ship's AI. A ship's AI can simultaneously inhabit a host of bodies,creating an unbeatable army for the Radch ruler.When the ship ''Justice of Toren'' is heartlessly destroyed by treachery and manipulation, only one body segment survives,. Bereft of all those myriad bodies to control,no longer able to inhabit and direct thousands of bodies,patiently this AI now limited to one weak body is consumed with only one desire,to wreak revenge on the ruler who heartlessly destroyed a ship and thousands of creation for the sake of selfish political machinations. Nineteen years later,now called Breq,the soldier is ready to penetrate the palace and destroy the enemy. But it proves much more convoluted and difficult than expected.
This debut novel was the first ever to win the Hugo,Nebula and Arthur C Clarke in one year.
Most people were intrigued by this exploration of what would be the inner life of a multi bodied AI,and Leckie deliberately provides avenger Breq with a dispassionate,remote,rather robotic like AI voice. It may have been a good way to depict an AIs inner life,but I wasnt enthused,and found it all too dry slow moving. Much has been made of the ambiguity of gender in the book,which I found not fascinating ,but an over elaborate device than detracted from the story for me to some extent. The story picked up a bit in the last 100 pages,but even action scenes seemed clunky and less than exciting.Just not my cup of tea,I'm afraid. | |
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Location: scotland | Just started Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. I am making slowly through SF masterworks list and all the classics that appeal to me. However I realised this is the first science fiction book I have read since september when I read Ringworld. Unfortunatley I am such a slow reader and have so many fantasy and horror books plus the occasional mainstream book that I want to read. A problem for me but oh such anice one. | |
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Location: UK | Paul,repeat after me the mantra,''So many books,so little time.'' I too am reading quite a few of the Masterworks series. They are often a bit difficult,demanding reads,but I am relishing it. I've now read 54 books off the list,with several more to come this year. I did read Tau Zero,but I have to admit I found it,like so much hard SF a bit stodgy and dry to read. At the moment I am reading Blish's A Case of Conscience off the list,and it is a bit slow going with lots of abstruse religion and philosophic speculative ideas involved.. I also have Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan due to read this month. I am happy that someone at the library headquarters seems to be supplying quite a few of the latest edition of this series. About 4 years ago I checked out the stock and they only had 11 books off the list,but this year alone I have read at least half a dozen in a new printing. Yay for that library staff member,poor old SF is normally the Cinderella when it comes to acquiring new stock! | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Cities in Flight, by James Blish. - Book 1: They Shall Have Stars.
I've just finished They Shall Have Stars, the first book in the four book omnibus Cities in Flight by James Blish. A previous work of Blish's impressed me so to make me want to jump into this one. It's hard science fiction, which I like. This first book sets the stage for interstellar travel from Earth.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-13 6:23 PM
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Location: UK | @ Spectru. I have been searching for a copy of the whole series in one volume to read this,and havent yet succeeded. At the moment I am reading his A Case of Conscience and am making VERY heavy weather of it on all fronts - characters,plot,themes and all!. Not at all sure what to make of it. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | @ Dustydigger
I have Cities in Flight as an ePub book, from my public library. I believe there is also a Kindle edition, so it should be available at Amazon.com. A Case of Conscience is Blish's most listed book here on WWE, and I would like to read it, I think. Looking forward to your discussion here. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Now that I'm into the second book, A Life for the Stars, which takes place a few hundred years later, I can see that the first book They Shall Have Stars is prologue. It's also clear how the omnibus Cities in Flight gets its name, when Scranton leaves the earth by means of its spindizzy and flies through the galaxy.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-14 6:22 PM
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Location: UK | @ Spectru - hope you are enjoying the Cities in Flight saga more than I have enjoyed A Case of Conscience.Its famous tale of a Jesuit scientist/priest on a survey of a beautiful new planet,Lithia, whose alien inhabitants live a perfect ethical and moral life with a point by point ethical correspondence with Catholic christianity,except they have no religion whatsover. The priest is on the horns of a doctrinal dilemma.Is he to believe that creatures can live to perfection the christian life without God in the equation? That is totally out the question to catholic belief.So he is logically (?) left with the premise that the whole planet is a creation of the Devil as a trap for mankind. But catholic belief categorically states that the Devil has no creativity whatsover,,yet here is a pure world without hatred, crime or violence,with the Lithians living out christianity to the full. Others on the team have there own ideas about what should happen to this world,either to exploit it or learn from its highly intelligent inhabitants. Cue for much anguish and despair on the priest's part about what should happen to this world,as he wants to isolate it forever,others want to open it up.
On leaving the planet as as sort of gift he is given a newborn Lithian .He is brought to earth,where he quickly grows into a rebellious iconoclastic youth with his own TV show, acting as a focus for the disaffected of the earth,who living for the most part in underground shelters in a miserable post Cold War world.There is a final tragic end to the ethical dilemma ,but since all the characters were paper thin, mere mouthpieces for phliosophical and ethical stances,I couldnt really care I'm afraid.
I found the plot full of absurdities,the second section set on earth poorly developed,with some improbable bizarre events. The writing was a bit strange too,jampacked with earnest philosophical debates ,reminding me irresistably of the ponderous prose of George Eliot's Middlemarch. I never could get into that weighty tome. Oh well,at least this book was quite short.There were gleams of what seem to either be weak humour or maybe irony,or satire,all a bit too faint t osucceed I felt. I found the plot barely credible,especially the way the Lithian youth could bend the world to his rebellious ways so easily. The whole ethical dilemma was too esoteric. The pace was uneven,the plot rather messy and weak. The early setting on the planet Lithia was fairly well done,but the earth section was poor. The whole thing was set up as ambiguous,both as to whether the priest was right or not,but since non of the characters were realistic or wel ldrawn,frankly I couldnt care less!
Not at all my cup of tea. Waste of a great First Contact intriguing setting as far as I am concerned. I am such a philistine you know,just not a fan of literary SF!
Edited by dustydigger 2015-05-15 12:57 AM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | @ dustydigger
I've read that religious philosophy was a recurring theme for Bliss, but I haven't read much of his work. A Case of Conscience is on my list to read. I get the feeling that whether one likes or dislikes this book varies much with the individual. A couple of other well known SF books with religious themes that come to mind are Stranger in a Strange Land and A Canticle for Leibowitz. I liked the first and disliked the second.
There is a bit of religious reference in the first book of Cities in Flight, but it's not overbearing, in fact rather subtle. The Believers are having a big revival in New York, but the book doesn't delve into their beliefs except for the effect that the anti-death drug will have on their eternal life doctrine. One of the main characters, Senator Bliss Wagoner, does seem to kind of pick up the mantle of a Christ figure at the end of the book when he chooses to go back to earth to face the music, to give them a scapegoat, but it isn't blatant. In the second book we learn that he had been executed for treason. So far, in the second book (I haven't gotten that far along yet) I haven't noticed any religiosity.
I read and disliked The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. It is supposedly in the SF/F genre, but I would classify it as a religious tract. I haven't read Lewis' Narnia books. They are supposedly deeply steeped in Christianity. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (first book is The Golden Compass) was supposedly a counterpoint to the Narnia series and was denounced by Catholics as being atheistic. It did portray the Church as villainous, but I don't think it was atheistic as much as just showing the dark side of organized religion.
I will have to read A Case of Conscience and make up my own mind.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-15 4:22 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | A Life for the Stars by James Blish
This book, the second in the Cities in Flight series, was written six years after the first book. It talkes place a millennium later. It's different in style and tenor. The protagonist is a teenage boy. It puts me in mind of the books in Robert A Heinlein's juvenile series. | |
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Location: Great Lakes, USA | I have extended this challenge to 20 books. I've been using this challenge for the 2014 books overflow and for books that I get from the library since those don't count for the Clear the Shelves Challenge. Here's what I've read since my last update.
Full Fathom Five - Max Gladstone
This book was ok. I liked the first one (Three Parts Dead) better. It's kind of fun to try to match the places in this world with their exisiting counter parts. I'm not sure that I am correct, but I think this one took place in Hawaii or some Pacific island.
The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell
This book was excellent. The speculative parts of this book were implied or barely mentioned until the middle of the book. But, this book was so well written and the characters so well described, that I loved it. The first and last chapters are told from Holly Sykes' point of view. All other chapters are told from a different character's point of view, but Holly is always there. One character (not a main character), I remember from Cloud Atlas. I need to read more David Mitchell.
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
This book was also excellent. Civilization has been ravaged by a plague. This book spends equal time before the plague and after the plague. Very little takes place during the plague. All the characters have one acquaintance in common, an actor who died just as the plague was starting. It's a very character driven book. It's well worth reading.
The Enchanted - Rene Denfeld
This was a surprisingly good book. I picked it from the new in paperback shelf at the library because it had horses on the cover. I am not sure why this is considered speculative fiction. Perhaps the delusions of a criminally insane person locked up in isolation too long were considered by someone as fantastical. Regardless, this book was excellent. Told from the point of view of a death row inmate, this book illustrates that beauty can be found even in the most awful places. This is also a character driven book and is well worth reading.
The Long Tomorrow - Leigh Brackett
This book is one of the better books written in the 1950s. I suspect this one will stand the test of time (I think it does already.) It lacks the pulp feeling of Galactic Patrol/Lensman books. Where those books are action based, The Long Tomorrow is character based.
Coming Home - Jack McDevitt
There's nothing like starting a series with Book 7. I have read other Jack McDevitt books, but none were in the Alex Benedict series. This was an ok book. But I may have liked it better had I read some of the earlier books and had gotten to know the characters better. It seems like a transitional book (like a Book 2 in a trilogy). I plan on reading books 1-6 at some point, since this one was a "mystery in space" type book and I like those.
Edited by daxxh 2015-05-18 12:41 AM
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Location: UK | @ Daxxh - Would Seeker,also an Alex Benedict book, apply to the Detective Sf challenge? I havent read any of McDevitt's work,have just got his book Seekers as a Nebula winner,but it may apply here as well. Could kill two birds with one stone! | |
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Location: UK | Terry Pratchett - Moving Pictures - Amusing satire on Hollywood, where every cliche is slyly ridiculed. Lots of crazy characters, with big parts for some who are bit players in other books, like Cut-My-Own- Throat Dibbler, erstwhile seller of very dodgy meat products in Ank Morepork, but here, by dark magic transformed into a Sam Goldwyn/Cecil De Mille sort of producer determined to produce some great epic, "Blown Away" (a GWTW clone). We have the development of the movie world at a gallop here, great fun, and even get the wizard professors of Unseen University involved in saving the day when evil creatures from other dimensions are making an effort to break through into Discworld via the silver screen of Holywood. Oh, and my favourite scene is where Death, WHO SPEAKS LIKE THAT AS USUAL, sits invisible in a bar knocking back large glasses of rum one after another, and asks the barman for a packet of nuts! Great entertainment, though a little bit too long for me. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
I had been reluctant to read this book after having read Willis' Blackout/All Clear double novel. I just don't care for her writing style. Doomsday Book, which I believe was written earlier, doesn't suffer as much from this. It is slow paced and fairly long, but it is a good story; and once things finally get going, about two-thirds of the way along, it's well told.
This is the fourth Connie Willis book I've read. She has one more that has garnered some acclaim: To Say Nothing of the Dog. I read Three Men in a Boat in preparation for it. I think maybe if Willis had been writing a century ago, she could have written Three Men in a Boat. I may yet get around to reading To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I'm in no hurry. | |
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Location: UK | Had a good week. Finally finished Andy Weir's fun novel The Martian,sort of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Most of the technical stuff went over my head,but the character Mark Watney's self-deprecating,often irreverent humour helped the tech stuff go down smoothly. Watney would probably win my character of the year award. A fun and gripping homage to the team who brought Apollo 13 back to earth,and the Right Stuff of astronauts. Excellent.
Also great fun was Eric Frank Russell's Wasp.the story of a ''wasp'' an irritant saboteur cum agent provocateur cum assassin,sent to cause disruption on an enemy planet prior to invasion. A classic plot lifted from World War II,which was tense,fast moving and gripping. Apparently some people now are disapproving of it,saying it is a textbook for terrorism,glorifying violence against innocent people. Didnt strike me that way,since I was born in 1948 and such tales of resistance workers during the war were staple fare in my childhood. Got to admit the fast light tone does gloss over some tough action,but that is war. Interesting and exciting.
Also completed EDoc Smith's First Lensman,rather clunky today. Got to love the optimism though,where ethical space farers set up a Galactic space patrol after lots of shenanigans by corrupt politicians.. Bewildering twists of plot,but still the huge scale and spectacle are amusing fun. Star Trek was probably the offspring of this style of writing!
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Location: New Zealand | You got two of my favourite reads from last year there Dustydigger - The Martian and The Wasp. Really enjoyed both those books so much. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2015-05-21 3:56 PM
Had a good week. Finally finished Andy Weir's fun novel The Martian,sort of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Most of the technical stuff went over my head,but the character Mark Watney's self-deprecating,often irreverent humour helped the tech stuff go down smoothly. Watney would probably win my character of the year award. A fun and gripping homage to the team who brought Apollo 13 back to earth,and the Right Stuff of astronauts. Excellent.
I enjoyed The Martian as well. I think you've made a good characterization of it. I likened it to McGyver in space. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Earthman, Come Home by James Blish
This is the third and longest novel in the Cities in Flight Omnibus. I believe it was first published in 1955, making it the first published of these four novels. I also found it, initially at least, the least engaging. The writing seems disjointed. It's often hard to follow the characters' reasoning and thought processes. My impression is that it is comic bookish. It is a series of strange space opera adventures. I don't know, but I'm guessing that it must have been written for publication as a serial in one of the pulp science fiction mags of the day. The character development is thin, with the lead character, John Amalfi, being the only one with whom we can identify at all; and as the novel progresses, we do learn to follow him and root for him. In the end, it is a fun space romp.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-22 9:57 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Rocannon's World by Ursula K Le Guin
This is Ursual K Le Guin's debut science fiction novel. It has a strong element of fantasy, dungeons and dragons kind of stuff, which isn't usually my favorite, but I found this adventure tale to be terrific. Le Guin's first book is as good as many other authors' best. I've read others in Le Guin's Hainish cycle; this one encourages me to read more.
It's a little surprising to me that this novel is only on one WWEnd list: The Defining Science Fiction Books of the 1960s, and that one was added only recently to our list of lists.
Edited by spectru 2015-05-28 4:44 PM
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Location: UK | I read Rocannon's World many decades ago,but remember thoroughly enjoying it,as it was much more light and quick moving genre stuff than her literary,drier and more serious(to me!) later stuff. Did you know that in this book she was the creator of the ''ansible'',the instant communication machine to connect worlds light years apart in real time? Lots of other authors took over her term. I came across it twice the last couple of years. Cool to invent an impossible machine that is taken up by other authors! | |
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Location: scotland | Halfway through Ash which was the last book ever written by the english horror writer James Herbert.
So far many creepy things have occurred, most of them to do with hauntings but some to do with clandestine politics of a sort. All very mysterious. This book offers solutions to the disappearance of Lord Lucan and the identity of Jack the Ripper! | |
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Location: UK | I completed Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan,another of his works excoriating religion and war. Miles better than his Player Piano I read earlier in the year for the 1950s SF challenge. This was full of the most savage irony. Unlikeable characters meant I couldnt feel an emotional attachment to it,but it was well-written,often blackly humorous,and quite poignant at times. I much preferred it to Slaughterhouse Five. Sirens was the final book for my 1950s challenge,which was great fun. I have come across a few clunkers,but for the most part I found the fifties books great fun,and came across some new authors I would read more of (Edmond Hamilton,Leigh Brackett,Ted Sturgeon in particular) I will now be reading for the 60s SF challenge. Got to get a move on. My knee op has been moved up to beginning of October,so I would like to get as many of my challenge books read before that. Last year after my first op I couldnt read for many weeks. The pain killers kept me dozy for weeks,and the almost unbearable pain lasted for the best part of 3 months,so concentration on reading was difficult. Better get cracking as I still have about 25 WWEnd challenge books to read,and another 40 from other genres for a Shelfari challenge....help!....Around 70 books to read in 4 months? Just about feasible if I work at it
Status report for end of May.
participants - 15
books read - 161
books reviewed - 91.
That's two new participants (welcome!),41 books read,and 21 new reviews this month.Excellent | |
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| dustydigger - 2015-06-01 12:30 PM
I completed Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan,another of his works excoriating religion and war. Miles better than his Player Piano I read earlier in the year for the 1950s SF challenge. This was full of the most savage irony. Unlikeable characters meant I couldnt feel an emotional attachment to it,but it was well-written,often blackly humorous,and quite poignant at times. I much preferred it to Slaughterhouse Five.
I read Sirens of Titan about a year ago. I didn't rank it among Vonnegut's best. I hardly remember it now. Slaughterhouse Five, on the other hand, is among Vonnegut's best. Different strokes for different folks. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
What a great little book. About a 'man from Mars' who comes to earth as the vanguard of an invasion, albeit a peaceful one, and fails to complete his mission. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
btw, the guest poster above was me.
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Location: UK | Spectru,did you ever see the film with the same name with David Bowie. Stuck pretty faithfully to the book. Both had sad endings! | |
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Location: New Zealand | I've finished off this challenge with a reading of Frankenstein. I was ambivalent about this one, which is probably why I left it to last. One of the problems is that I know the story so well from movies and TV that I wasn't sure I wanted to read the book, and another is that I don't often enjoy books that are written so long ago. Happily Frankenstein surprised me by being an excellent read, that still contained surprises, and so well written I had no trouble getting into it. In the end I am happy with my final choice for the Pick & Mix. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2015-06-05 1:48 PM
Spectru,did you ever see the film with the same name with David Bowie. Stuck pretty faithfully to the book. Both had sad endings!
I checked out The Man Who Fell to Earth on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074851/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt
In addition to David Bowie in the lead role, there were a couple of name actors in the cast and astronaut Jim Lovell as himself. The description of the movie makes it seem as if they diverged from the book somewhat, but then, don't they always?
Edited by spectru 2015-06-06 7:57 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Weesam - 2015-06-06 5:05 PM
I've finished off this challenge with a reading of Frankenstein. I was ambivalent about this one, which is probably why I left it to last. One of the problems is that I know the story so well from movies and TV that I wasn't sure I wanted to read the book, and another is that I don't often enjoy books that are written so long ago. Happily Frankenstein surprised me by being an excellent read, that still contained surprises, and so well written I had no trouble getting into it. In the end I am happy with my final choice for the Pick & Mix.
I enjoyed Frankenstein. It is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. I thought the writing was better than other things I've read from 200 years ago, i.e. Jane Austen. It's particularly remarkable considering that it was written by a teenager. I haven't seen a movie that was anything like the book. The Boris Karloff movies certainly weren't. I heard that there was film starring Robert DeNiro that was faithful to the book, but I haven't seen it. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
This book is very long; too long. It is a collection of anecdotes and tales linked together by a meandering conversation with much pontification. The predominant theme is incest. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are two of my favorite Heinlein novels, from the same period. I don't put Time Enough for Love in the same class. | |
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Location: New Zealand | I think Time Enough for Love was the book that turned me off Heinlein. Unfortunately it was the first book of his I ever read, and for a long time I didn't read anymore. I do have The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on my list to read for the 60's challenge, so here's hoping it is a better experience. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Weesam - 2015-06-14 5:42 PM
I think Time Enough for Love was the book that turned me off Heinlein. Unfortunately it was the first book of his I ever read, and for a long time I didn't read anymore. I do have The Moon is a Harsh Mistress on my list to read for the 60's challenge, so here's hoping it is a better experience.
Weesam - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress does have plural marriages, but it is a novel in the more conventional format , and a good story of the political rebellion of Luna for independence from Earth.
There are several reviews of The Moon is A Harsh Mistress here on WWEnd, mine included. | |
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Location: UK | I've been thinking of trying to complete the Locus Best SF list, and Time Enough For Love is the book I am least looking forward to.
I have read Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and can't say I have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I think it tends more towards good Heinlein than bad Heinlein, but I don't think I really found it that great a story. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | DrNefario - 2015-06-15 9:32 AM
I've been thinking of trying to complete the Locus Best SF list, and Time Enough For Love is the book I am least looking forward to.
I have read Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and can't say I have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I think it tends more towards good Heinlein than bad Heinlein, but I don't think I really found it that great a story.
The Locus list is inclined me to read Time Enough for Love. It's one of our shortest lists and I have head all but half a dozen. The end is in sight. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The Triumph of Time aka A Clash of Cymbals. Cities in Flight #4 by James Blish.
This is about the end of the universe.
This wraps up the Cities in Flight omnibus
Cities in Flight is on the SF Masterworks and The Classics of Science Fiction lists. I found it just so so. I was prompted to read this having read an outstanding short story by James Blish, written much later than Cities in flight, published in Harlan Ellison's anthology Again Dangerous Visions. I think he must have honed his writing skills in the intervening years. Cities in Flight is a collection of four novels written mostly in the 1950s. I think they weren't written in the order in which they occur in the series. The writing is uneven, and overall I'd rate it mediocre. The second book, A Life for the Stars, written in 1962, the latest publication date, was the best of the bunch.
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Location: scotland | Have started Shadowplay by Tad Williams. This is the second of a four part fantasy series. I really enjoy long series however they take a long time to read and absorb. So far there are very many different stories and tales within the larger story. Hard to keep track of everything so will probably need to re-read in the future. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
This is not an easy read; unique and interesting, but not easy or fun. I read it because it is on one of our lists (Locus Best SF Novels of All-Time) which I am closing in on. I didn't really enjoy it all that much. It was a bit of a chore to read. Aloof and impersonal.
The library book that I have is a double novel, containing also Star Maker by Stapledon. It also is on the same list. I'm not eager to read more Stapledon just yet. Does anyone here have an opinion about it? | |
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Location: New Zealand | I haven't read Last and First Men but I have read Star Maker, and I love it. I thought it was something special. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I decided to go for the whole magilla - the 40 books. so I added some books I read and reviewed since the first of the year but hadn't mentioned in our forum, and a couple I had just overlooked and hadn't added to the list. So here they are, with my rating out of 5 stars:
City by Clifford D Simak - 3.5
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling - 4.5
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H G Wells -3
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton - 4
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - 4
Red mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - 2.5
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban - 3
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - 4
Startide Rising by David Brin - 3
Timeline by Michael Crichton - 3.5
The Triumph of Time by James Blish - 3
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Weesam - 2015-07-03 1:37 AM
I haven't read Last and First Men but I have read Star Maker, and I love it. I thought it was something special.
I found Star Maker to be very similar in style to Last and First Men. There are no characters or plot. It is a general description of the types of intelligent cultures on planets throughout the galaxy by an unnamed narrator who in a disembodied form travels through space and time. Finally, well past the halfway mark, I had to put the book down. I just would rather spend my reading time on something I enjoy more. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | The Iron Heel by Jack London - 1907
Sometimes mentioned with Orwell's 1984, I think it could be compared and contrasted with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The first third of the book is unabashed socialist proselytizing. Political speculative fiction taking place from 1912 to 1932, Jack London's future.
Edited by spectru 2015-07-21 4:33 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Redshirts by John Scalzi
This ridiculous book is something of a Star Trek spoof. Its goofy premise becomes a quick and enjoyable read. A great change of pace from some of the more difficult to read books from the annals of science fiction that I've tackled lately. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin
Just started this one. It is the fourth book I will have read in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. It's one of the earlier ones and it is not on any lists here at WWEnd. Le Guin is a favorite author of mine. The Left Hand of Darkness, also one of the early books in the Hainish Cycle is one of my all-time favorite books. So far, about a third of the way into it, City of Illusions is a quest story set in what seems to be a far future primitive earth, though it may not be earth at all. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | City of Illusions is wonderful. Immediately upon finishing it, I started reading Le Guin's Planet of Exile, the precursor to City of Illusions. | |
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Location: Austin, Tx | Well...I'm sortof joining the Pick 'n Mix. I've found that despite my best planning efforts, I am still reading a few books that don't fit into any of my (many) challenges. I tried adding them to my spreadsheet with no challenge columns filled in, but those lines just sat there throwing off my groove. Now they have a challenge to call home and my spreadsheet remains colorful and complete.
My orphans so far:
* Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb - orphaned because it's the 3rd in a trilogy that I can't put down. I'm about 50% of the way through this one and had my second moment where I wanted to kick FitzChivalry in the ass for not immediately picking up a plot point.
* Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - My husband and I started reading out loud to our 3 month old daughter (to start a family habit early) and this is the book, but it doesn't fit with any of my other challenges. I get the feeling that any book we read like this is going to be an orphan, though perhaps I can convince him (since she doesn't understand what we're saying anyway) to go with something already on my list next. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Planet of Exile by Ursula K Le Guin
I read Planet of Exile immediately after reading City of Illusions. The protagonist in City of Illusions is a descendent of the protagonist in Planet of Exile. There is virtually no other connection between the two books. My notion that the reading order of the books in Ursula K Le Guin's so-called Hainish Cycle doesn't matter, remains intact.
I've met the Pick and Mix Challenge. This is the 41st book on my list of 40.
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
They call this a graphic novel. At 416 pages, it's certainly longer than the comic books I read as a kid. I appreciate that it's literary art, but still, it's a comic book. | |
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Location: UK | Lol! Spectru,adults have to justify reading comics somehow,a fancy name is essential in that regard!. Somehow that ''graphic novel'' did little for me. I assume it had a huge impact back at the time of first publication,but decades later not so much. Anyway,I have fond nostalgic memories of the old superheroes from my youth,the modern trend of denigrating them,showing them as old etc,doesnt go down too well with me!
I did a challenge of reading some famousgraphic works last year and wasnt really enthused..I WAS blown away by Gaiman's Sandman series,but I doubt I will continue to read more graphics after I have completed Bill Willingham's Fables series this year.. Though I do still like a nostalgic reread of the Asterix books!
Edited by dustydigger 2015-08-01 4:59 AM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2015-08-01 5:56 AM
Lol! Spectru,adults have to justify reading comics somehow,a fancy name is essential in that regard!. Somehow that ''graphic novel'' did little for me. I assume it had a huge impact back at the time of first publication,but decades later not so much. Anyway,I have fond nostalgic memories of the old superheroes from my youth,the modern trend of denigrating them,showing them as old etc,doesnt go down too well with me!
I did a challenge of reading some famousgraphic works last year and wasnt really enthused..I WAS blown away by Gaiman's Sandman series,but I doubt I will continue to read more graphics after I have completed Bill Willingham's Fables series this year.. Though I do still like a nostalgic reread of the Asterix books!
I read comic books when I was a kid. 10 cents for a regular one, 25 cents for a fat one. I liked Plasticman, The Flash, Aquaman, and Batman. I remember occasionally getting a classic comic. They were classic literature in comic book form, either the 10 or 25 cent size. Watchmen was my first and only graphic novel. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter, a Virginia gentleman and former confederate officer inexplicably finds himself on Mars. He discovers two species of warlike people there, the green men and the red men. They live in city states and seem to be in a continuous state of war with one another and among themselves. Carter is captured by the green men, proves himself a fierce warrior and becomes a chieftain. They capture a beautiful woman, a princess of the red men, with whom carter falls in love. With many adventures and great battles, and just-in-the-nick-of-time swashbuckling, Carter saves the day helps red men and green men form an alliance, and defeat their enemies, He becomes a hero and marries the princess. The ending is a cliffhanger with Carter suddenly finding himself back on Earth.
The description of Carter learning the language and ways of his captors and gaining the confidence of the tribal chiefs is like something out of Gulliver's Travels. The writing is somewhat similar to what one would expect in the age of Verne and Wells, but the science fiction is much less sciency. The story seems comic-bookish and surely was aimed at a young audience. Burroughs' ability to write dialog is atrocious. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Beloved by Toni Morrison
In the fantasy genre because it has a ghost, Beloved is not like most novels. In its form it is akin James Joyce's Ulysses, but unlike Ulysses, it is lyrical. Much of it is stream of consciousness - just let yourself go with the flow. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Fantastic: without regard for reason or reality; absurd, bizarre, crazy, fanciful, foolish, insane, nonsensical, preposterous, unreal, wild; implausible, inconceivable, incredible, unbelievable, unimaginable, unthinkable; grotesque; bizarro, curious, eccentric, far-out, funny, kinky, kooky, odd, off the wall, outlandish, out-of-the-way, outr, peculiar, quaint, queer, quirky, screwy, strange, wacky, way-out, weird; farcical, laughable, ludicrous, ridiculous; Alice-in-Wonderland, Kafkaesque, nightmarish; dreamlike, surreal. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein
Time for the Stars is good old-fashioned science fiction. It's a space opera that features the themes of relativity and telepathy. In this book, telepathic messages travel instantaneously, unlike radio communication which travels at the speed of light. This phenomenon, simultaneity, is a theme in Ursula K Le Guin's The Disposessed, and ultimately led to the development of the ansible, a device which allows instantaneous communication over great distances. The ansible device is also used in the novels in the Ender universe by Orson Scott Card, and by others. So, in that regard, Time for the Stars is a seminal novel in the annals of science fiction.
A minor theme of the book is how culture and technology change over time. Heinlein, however, did not foresee the changes in attitudes towards gender equality that took place in the time between when this novel was written and the future in which it takes place. | |
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| I decided to join Pick and Mix at the One scoop level. I've got a lot of unread books in my shelves.
Spectru, I strongly suspect that E. R. Burroughs' books are best read when you're young and impressionable. At least, when I first read his Barsoom books when I was around 12-14, they left a strong impression. I reread the series last year and found them quick, fun reads. Of course they are pulp fiction to begin with. But then again I liked the movie (John Carter), too.
Edited by Mervi2012 2015-08-21 12:28 PM
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
This story, told in the point of view of the three main characters, is set a few centuries in our future. The human race is dying out and has even forgotten how to read. Most everything is run by moron robots. Very good and very downbeat.
Tevis wrote The Man Who Fell to Earth, one of my favorite science fiction novels. He also wrote The Hustler and The Color of Money. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Mervi2012 - 2015-08-21 1:26 PM
Spectru, I strongly suspect that E. R. Burroughs' books are best read when you're young and impressionable. At least, when I first read his Barsoom books when I was around 12-14, they left a strong impression. I reread the series last year and found them quick, fun reads. Of course they are pulp fiction to begin with. But then again I liked the movie (John Carter ), too.
I think you are right Mervi2012. I enjoyed A Princess of Mars well enough, but I doubt that I will continue the series. I haven't seen the John Carter movie, but I know it was not particularly successful, as movies go. | |
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Location: scotland | Started Gardens of The Moon by Steven Erikson then I will be on the last Chaos Walking book by Patrick Ness - Monsters of Men. | |
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| spectru - 2015-08-22 7:37 AM
I haven't seen the John Carter movie, but I know it was not particularly successful, as movies go.
I know and I'm unhappy with that. I'm biased, of course, I think that even for people who haven't read the books, it was a fun adventure movie. I've certainly seen much worse movies. The plot was a bit strange, though. My biggest fear beforehand was the potrayal of Dejah but she was done quite well and her actress was good. | |
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| My first book was Daniel Suarez's Influx. It's a scifi thriller where a brilliant scientist invents a way to manipulate gravity. He's kidnapped by a shadowy organization which controls all technology which could change society.
It was pretty good and my first Suarez book. Has anyone else read him? | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I don't know of Suarez, but I did see that Influx won the 2015 Prometheus Award. | |
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| spectru - 2015-09-11 6:10 AM
I don't know of Suarez, but I did see that Influx won the 2015 Prometheus Award.
So it did! I didn't even notice.
My second book in this challenge was Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' the Reindeer Moon. It's fantasy set in Stone Age and seems to be well-researched. It's a girl's coming of age story.
I don't generally like teenagers are protagonists but this had fascinating setting and great characters. | |
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| I continued with another Elizabeth Marshall Thomas book The Animal Wife. It's an independent sequel to the previous book; set among partly the same characters but about 10 years later with a different main character. Sadly, I didn't like it as much as Reindeer Moon. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Mervi2012 - 2015-09-17 2:14 PM
I continued with another Elizabeth Marshall Thomas book The Animal Wife. It's an independent sequel to the previous book; set among partly the same characters but about 10 years later with a different main character. Sadly, I didn't like it as much as Reindeer Moon.
I'm not familiar with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. Her two books you read are her only ones listed on WWEnd. Do you recommend her? Are there other authors to whom she compares? | |
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| I've only read these two books. I recommend the Reindeer Moon to anyone interested in a realistic portrayal of that time period (Stone Age) but it's not typical adventure fantasy. And if you like it, I think you'll probably enough Animal Wife, too.
I found her writing style easy to read. I haven't read Stone Age books in ages so I don't know anyone to compare it with. | |
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| My next read was Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Snipers.
It's a murder mystery with time travel elements. It's split between Vienna 2005 and Vienna 1913. Rusch has an effortless and no-nonsense writing style which I like a lot. This isn't a thriller by any means. It centers on a historian in 2005 who tries to find new evidence for series of murders done in 1913. | |
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| Next up was Seanan McGuire's newest October Daye book: A Rose-Red Chain.
I love the series and this was a good addition. Not one of the best but still highly entertaining. | |
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Location: UK | Hi Mervi,and a belated welcome to the group. Sorry I havent been around for months,major health problems,and I havent been around to discuss reads or post any notes on my reads.Thank you for helping Spectru and a few others keeping the Pick n Mix thread alive!.Not bad,17 participants who have read 244 books,and reviewed an amazing 149 of them. Good work folks.
Sorry people,my major abdominal surgery,while healing well,makes sitting at a computer still a big pain in all senses,so it may be a little while before I get back on form. At least I have had a lot of time for reading during convalescence,so I am nearing the end of my challenges. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Hope you fully recover soon, dustydigger. Even though I finished the challenge, I enjoy the interactivity of this Pick and Mix forum topic. | |
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Location: UK | Thanks,Spectru. Next year perhaps I should make the ''whole sweetshop'' category a whole lot bigger for the avid readers. Of course we would never corral the voracious Weesam,I think she is around the 300 mark already! Sheesh!. But several people could encompass a bigger number than 40. We'll see.
As for interactive,WWEnd unfortunately doesnt do much of that!
Its the same in other sites,the SF fans are the most reluctant to discuss their reads for some unfathomable reason. I cant say anything about it. Early in the year I tried to at least comment on my books and sometimes other people's,but the last 6 months have been horrendous,I could barely get on to add my reads,never mind reviews!So I appreciate those who have made the effort
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I'm in some reading groups on goodreads, including one on science fiction. The activity in those groups waxes and wanes, sometimes dying out altogether. WWEnd isn't the same kind of site. It's all about lists. I rely on WWEnd to find books and authors. The folks who run this place have done a great job of putting it together, and the seem to be improving it all the time, and there's still room for more improvement.
This pick and Mix thread is one of the most active - your setting up of the challenge made it so. But there hasn't been much in the way of real interaction, of discussion, back and forth. Maybe you're right about science fiction readers.
I kind of stopped posting here about books - wasn't generating a lot of reaction, and after all, I've completed the challenge; and I didn't want to be a thread hog. | |
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| dustydigger - 2015-10-08 10:46 AM
Sorry people,my major abdominal surgery,while healing well,makes sitting at a computer still a big pain in all senses,so it may be a little while before I get back on form.
That sounds terrible. I, too, hope that you'll heal soon. Thanks for the challenge! | |
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Location: scotland | Finished the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. Now reading the short stories.
Overall I enjoyed the series. The first book was my favourite. And the last my least. Some very nice idea's happened and there was some good characters, however it is not a very challenging read as it is aimed at young adults, so for me not really that dense(which I like) not really something to get your teeth into.
I would like to discuss more about sci-fi reads. I am new to the genre and have only read between 10 and 20 with half of these from the SF masterwork list. I will read more of these in the future. I would next like to start Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Armada by Ernest Cline
Cline wrote Ready Player One. I'm about halfway through - Armada is like a mash-up of Ready Player One, Ender's Game, and The Last Starfighter. So far, it's an entertaining science fiction novel. I'm enjoying it. | |
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Location: UK | The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
Far into the future in a Dying Earth setting, the torturer Severian continues his travels, carrying with him the ancient executioners sword Terminus Est and a gem of extraterrestrial power, the Claw of the Conciliator. Cast out from his Torturers Guild and exiled, the world of the New Urth is explored through his travels, with the seeming promise of some destiny he is required to fill.
Hmmm...... I thought Shadow of the Torturer was fabulous,with its brilliantly realized world and the fascinating central character,and its scintillating style and originality. There are lots of good things in this second episode of Severian's tale,and it is interesting to see how he becomes a very different seeming person as he reveals more about himself.While seemingly telling a straightforward - if bizarre - tale we are certainly seeing different ,less likeable aspects of his character. Talk about unreliable narrators! The style is as hypnotic as ever,each scene sharply described,yet the whole thing becoming rather hallucinatory. But I found this book too episodic,and I became irritated at times by the disparate events,and there seemed at times to be obfuscation just for obfuscation's sake. I will take a break for a few months before I continue the saga. A little disappointing after I was so eager to read it | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | I haven't read any Gene Wolfe. I have The Fifth Head of Cerberus on my to-read list. don't really know what to expect from Wolfe - I imagine kind of a blend of SF and fantasy.
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Location: scotland | I read Book of The New Sun a few years ago and the third book The Sword of The Lictor was my favourite. Most of it Severian journeyed around and met some bizarre people and so many strange things and places occured. I was really drawn in by all this and it totally absorbed me. The fourth was different and probably the one I liked the least. Overall I think the series is one to be marvelled at though it is not everyone's cup of tea. I will re-read some time as there is so much in this series that I believe I missed first time round. | |
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Location: UK | I recently finished Fred Pohl's Man Plus,which I enjoyed very much,and thought well deserved to be on the SF Masterworks list. So I was a bit disconcerted to say the least when checking the reviews that most people found it dated bland,poor. Ah well,one man's meat,as they say! here is my view;
Just completed Fred Pohl's Man Plus about the trials and dilemmas of a man being adapted to live on Mars. World overpopulation has led to mass starvation in the third world,and the superpowers are on the brink of nuclear war. The US decide to start looking into the possibility that the world may be nearing its end. The ruthless,coldblooded way in which the politicians and scientists approach their task is truly chilling.There are a lot of manipulators in this tale,and the book is intense and harrowing at times,with a neat twist at the end. Fred Pohl at his misanthropic best. Not a lot of likeable characters here,but the book,barely over 200 pages is packed with interest. Of course the science is way off - it is only now that we are seeing the world as pre and post computer proliferation. Here the computers are very few,and room sized. Its a major feat to produce a back pack computer,and it has to be linked to a huge computer in orbit above for the new Martian to use it. But the book is really involved with the thoughts and sufferings of the poor human undergoing all this,so the book is still readable today. Deserves its place on the SF Masterworks list. Up there with Way Station and The Long Tomorrow as my most interesting reads of the year. Excellent. | |
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Location: UK | Just thinking about readers disparagement of old science fiction techology and the like. They find it laughable or annoying. If you only want the latest in technology you had better not read anything more than two years old! lol.Todays cutting edge SF premises will be old hat very soon. I dont mind if the science is outdated. For instance,I get a lot more pleasure exploring the ochre plains of Barsoom riding with John Carter and Tars Tarkas,green and many armed,than the turgid boring political conspiracies etc of Kim Stanley Robinson,which is probably heresy in most people's eyes! It was fun back when characters would nonchalantly pop out ,jump in their own little rocket and jet off across the universe. Once the expense,complexity and sheer immensity of preparing for real space flight became obvious,a whole swathe of delightful old SF subgenres almost completely disappeared .I like reading SF for the adventure,the often serious and still pertinent themes, and working out the angst and preoccupations of the times the books were written. As for the dodgy science,hey,we can always claim that this book depicts an alternate universe where certain things never happened. After all,we have a whole subgenre,Alternate History where Hitler won the war,there was no Reformation,etc etc.
I am now researching my reads for next year,and the vast majority are from the 50s and 60s.I find the oddities fun quaint and charming. ,and I enjoy staying in the past with my SF reads. To each his own. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
I read this, the second novel in the trilogy, six months after having read the first. Now I regret letting so much time elapse between the readings. Ann Leckie really shows her stuff. The complex culture, the intricate etiquette, is on on par with Ursula K Le Guin. We certainly got a taste of this in Justice; In Sword it is exquisitely detailed. This is a novel of political intrigue, as good as any in the genre. Leckie will surely be recognized as a master. | |
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Location: UK | Spectru,I too really enjoyed it,actually perhaps more than the first book,as I often got irritated with the gender obfuscation,which was overdone IMO. Sword was able to fix much more on plot and characters,with a more straightforward story,not fancy literary frills.. Looking forward to Ancillary Mercy.whenever it finally arrives in my library. There were precisely two copies of Justice,one copy of Sword available,so fingers crossed we even get Mercy . lol. The hardback wont even come out here in UK till January 2016,and any library edition even later
uktill January 2016,. | |
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | dustydigger - 2015-10-31 12:09 PM
Spectru,I too really enjoyed it,actually perhaps more than the first book,as I often got irritated with the gender obfuscation,which was overdone IMO. Sword was able to fix much more on plot and characters,with a more straightforward story,not fancy literary frills.. Looking forward to Ancillary Mercy.whenever it finally arrives in my library. There were precisely two copies of Justice,one copy of Sword available,so fingers crossed we even get Mercy . lol. The hardback wont even come out here in UK till January 2016,and any library edition even later
I have Ancillary Mercy on the hold shelf waiting for me at my library but due to my work schedule clashing with the schedule of the library, I won't be able to pick it up until Tuesday evening  (today is Saturday). I'm itching to read it since Leckie did such a great job building the culture of the Radch so intricately in Sword. As far as the "gender obfuscation" in Justice, you should read this answer she gave to a reader question about Radch gender neutrality on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/questions/202347-while-i-understand-the-co...
I think her perspective is thought-provoking but I can also sympathize with your point of view, especially in Justice, where we are introduced to the cultural of the Radch for the first time. Sword was able to ditch a lot of the confusing pronoun games of Justice since it takes place entirely in Radchaai space, unlike Justice. | |
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Location: UK | Thanks so much for the link,Devilinlaw,very interesting. I bet Leckie had a lot of fun frustrating the common gender - and genre - expectations of her readers. I fell into the trap immediately. Toren,chief of the guards,ship AI? Got to be male(hey,I read pre 1960 SF on a regular basis,thats where I formed my expectations lol),so the possible love interest would probably be female. Of course reading the book would give me a headache!
Seriously though I just found that the author spent so much time being evenhanded about gender that characterisation was a bit lacking. I wasnt totally convinced that a society could really be so evenhanded that they would ignore gender differences so entirely. Thats why I preferred Sword,we got more action and worldbuilding.
Got to admit I am not much into issue based fiction. Bring back the Big Dumb Objects and Bug Eyed Monsters . Oh dear, I am surely showing the biases of a grumpy old woman,arent I?
Edited by dustydigger 2015-11-01 5:07 AM
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Location: UK | I liked the pronoun thing. It was one of the two big thought-provoking ideas of the novel, alongside the multiple bodies thing. I do occasionally like my thoughts to be provoked. I guess I just assumed everyone was female until proven otherwise. I wonder if I'd even have noticed anything was weird if everyone had been "he".
But yes, I was very relieved that Sword lived up to the first book. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | <p>Leckie's treatment of gender in these novels is strange. It takes some getting used to. For me, I don't think it added to the reading enjoyment. The novels are good despite the gender issues. Leckie's explanation also leaves a bit to be desired:"...they know gender exists, but it's not really a thing they care much about. They care about it, maybe, as much as we care about hair color." We may not make much of hair color, but we don't refer to everyone as 'Red', either. I noticed that occasionally, when referring to an ancillary, the characters used the neutral pronoun 'it', however the reference may have been to the ship of which the ancillary was a segment. I think if parent instead of mother, child or offspring instead of daughter, sibling instead of sister, and the masculine pronouns, he and him, had been used throughout, the gender ambivalence might not even have been noticed by many readers. References to romance would have, perhaps, been assumed to be homosexual, whereas in using the feminine pronouns, romantic interactions are left ambiguous. There was only one case of disambiguation: In referring to her sibling, Queter called him her brother, but in the Radche language, he was she. </p><p>This gender ambiguity is much less bothersome in the second book than in the first.</p>
Edited by spectru 2015-11-01 10:01 AM
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | I started listening to the audiobook version of Justice and just could not get through the first few chapters. It wasn't the book, it was the delivery. The narrator had this weird inflection when she was talking and I realized that she was using the tonality of an ancillary, flat, emotionless and an oddly rising inflection of voice at the end of every sentence. Artistically, I really appreciated that level of dedication to world creating and character of the audiobook production but it was so difficult to listen to for any extended period of time. The narrator was female so I guess that influenced my visual of the character of Breq from the get go, even when I stopped listening to the book and read it instead. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | devilinlaw - 2015-11-01 3:22 PM I started listening to the audiobook version of Justice and just could not get through the first few chapters. It wasn't the book, it was the delivery. The narrator had this weird inflection when she was talking and I realized that she was using the tonality of an ancillary, flat, emotionless and an oddly rising inflection of voice at the end of every sentence. Artistically, I really appreciated that level of dedication to world creating and character of the audiobook production but it was so difficult to listen to for any extended period of time. The narrator was female so I guess that influenced my visual of the character of Breq from the get go, even when I stopped listening to the book and read it instead. I read the first two Ancillary books, but now I have started the third one, immediately after finishing the second, as it became available for download from my library as an audiobook. The narrator is a woman with a British accent - probably the same one you abandoned. And, with it, I joined the new Audiobook Reading Challenge.
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | spectru - 2015-11-03 1:48 PM
I read the first two Ancillary books, but now I have started the third one, immediately after finishing the second, as it became available for download from my library as an audiobook. The narrator is a woman with a British accent - probably the same one you abandoned. And, with it, I joined the new Audiobook Reading Challenge.
The woman who narrated Justice is named Celeste Ciulla. She didn't have an British accent that I can remember. The narrator I find listed for Mercy is Adjoa Andoh so maybe that's the one you're listening to. As soon as I get off of work today, I'm heading to the library to pick up Mercy! Excited to live in the world for a bit longer before finishing out the series.
I do most of my "reading" via listening to audiobooks so the Audiobook challenge is going to be awesome for me! It's amazing how a good narration can really add or detract from the material. I listened to the book Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier for the Keep Calm and Read SF from Down Under and the 2015 Trick or Treat challenges and it was f really fun for me! I live in the southwest US but the book takes place in 1930's Sydney Australia and was read by Australian voice actors, really helping me feel in the world of the book. And with lines like "in the sweltering January sun," I felt truly immersed in this world so different from my own. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | <p> devilinlaw - 2015-11-03 5:31 PM The woman who narrated Justice is named Celeste Ciulla. She didn't have an British accent that I can remember. The narrator I find listed for Mercy is Adjoa Andoh so maybe that's the one you're listening to. </p><p> </p><p>Adjoa Andoh narrated Sword and Mercy, but not Justice. I think it's unusual to change narrators mid-series. Perhaps you weren't the only one not to care for the audiobook narrator for the first book.</p>
Edited by spectru 2015-11-03 5:30 PM
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | spectru - 2015-11-03 3:26 PM
Adjoa Andoh narrated Sword and Mercy, but not Justice. I think it's unusual to change narrators mid-series. Perhaps you weren't the only one not to care for the audiobook narrator for the first book.
I appreciated the effort put into it and even the work by Ms. Ciulla to create the unique delivery of her lines but it was just difficult to stay focused with her near-monotone. The character voices she used did not have this same lack of emotional quality at all but since the story is told from the POV of a ship's AI, the majority of the narration is in the same vein.
For me, it's similar to when I read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I appreciate artistically that the main character is obsessed with what everyone is wearing but I don't really want to read through pages and pages of descriptions of everyone clothing labels. Or when I tried to read Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore for the first time. I had a hell of a time getting through the first part because the narrative is told in a first-person perspective by a prehistoric man who is dimwitted even by the standards of his own tribe. Artistically it was interesting to read, "A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I's feet and wetting they" (this is the first sentence in the book), but fifty-six pages in this same style was exhausting.
Artistically, I appreciate what these authors/performers are doing. Practically, however, it can be a bit hard to digest. | |
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | Since we were discussing the Imperial Radch trilogy here, I thought I'd share this write up about the books on Slate.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/11/ancillary_mercy_re... | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 3:42 AM Since we were discussing the Imperial Radch trilogy here, I thought I'd share this write up about the books on Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/11/ancillary_mercy_re... That's an interesting commentary, devilinlaw. and it also ties into the controversy at the last Hugo awards conference. I'm about halfway through Ancillary Mercy, the third book in this trilogy. Leckie's excellent world-building, beginning with Ancillary Justice, can be a little difficult to get into at first, because of the AI and ancillaries, and multiple bodies being one person. And of course there is the gender thing. But the bottom line is: this, the whole trilogy, is as good a science fiction novel as I have read in a while.
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch. | |
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| My next Pick-and-Mix read was Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation.
I've read a couple of VanderMeer's books before and really enjoyed them. Even though this is more horror, I enjoyed it, too. It was really creepy at places and I liked the POV character. | |
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Location: UK | I completed Jack McDevitt's Seeker,about antique hunters(tomb robbers?) looking for an ancient space ship and a lost colony. It was OK,quite fun,but I found the long time periods very unrealistic. Searching for plastic artifacts from 9000 years before time of the story,which is still a couple of hundred years ahead of our time?No real serious attempt at worldbuilding over 9000 years in the future,the world is very like today.Enjoyable fluff really,but I just cant see how this was a Nebula winner,and Campbell nominated!
I really was charmed by Jack Finney's romantic take on time travel,Time and Again. Very little time travel,the details of the time transfers are sensibly glossed over.this is an elegy to 1880s New York. One little thing that gives us a bit of a frisson is that the Dakota building is repeatedly mentioned and admired,in a book written 9 years before John Lennon's death.Charming and romantic.I found it better written than Finney's more famous Body Snatchers.
The book is delightfully illustrated ,the old pictures fitting beautifully into the story. Much better that in Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,for example. | |
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| I finally finished Vicki Pettersson's Scent of Shadows. I liked the main character but the setting didn't work for me.
Edited by Mervi2012 2015-11-12 11:37 AM
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Location: UK | @Mervi. I read the first 3 of the Zodiac series,but somehow I stayed lukewarm about them.I wasnt happy with the stark settings,in junkyards etc,and I didnt really warm to the main character. My library only got the first 3 books in the series,and no more,so that was that.Didnt bother me,I much prefer Patricia Briggs,Chloe Neill,Nalini Singh,Jim Butcher,Ben Aaronovitch and the like in the UF area.
I just acquired Rosemary and Rue,the first in the Toby Daye series. Is the series worth reading? | |
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Location: New Zealand | I thought Rosemary and Rue was quite good. A little different from the norm, but that is a good thing in my book. I didn't totally fall in love with them like I did with Ben Aaronovitch's series, but I am still quite happy to keep reading them. | |
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| Toby Daye is one of my favorite fantasy series (UF or otherwise). However, I didn't fall in love with the series until book 3. It clearly improves as it goes and I'm still eagerly waiting the next one.
My library doesn't have any of Pettersson's books and I still have lot of unread books of my own, so I won't continue with the series. It's a bit of a shame because I love superhero stuff and had high hopes for it. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 1:19 PM Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch. devilinlaw - I read your review of Ancillary Mercy. You mentioned that your favorite character was Presger Translator Zeiat. Having heard the audiobook, I didn't know how to spell her name, and she had the most annoying voice.
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | spectru - 2015-11-16 4:55 AM
devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 1:19 PM Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch. devilinlaw - I read your review of Ancillary Mercy. You mentioned that your favorite character was Presger Translator Zeiat. Having heard the audiobook, I didn't know how to spell her name, and she had the most annoying voice.
That is most unfortunate. Perhaps I would have found her less enjoyable had her voice been annoying? I'm not sure, but I loved her absolute...alieness. It was very clear that whatever their appearances may be, the Presger Translators are not human at all. Dlique, in Sword, was more mischievous than Zeiat and I loved how she was very visibly relieved that she was not Dlique but rather Zeiat. I found the whole Presger view and treatment of humans and their translators fascinating. Not only was a it a bit of comedic relief but it has bleak pitilessness right beneath the surface. Zeait ends up helping Breq and company as much out of her own self interest as for any other reason.
Edited by devilinlaw 2015-11-16 11:10 PM
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| My next read was Philip K. Dick's Martian Timeslip. Unfortunately, it wasn't to my tastes. | |
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Location: UK | So far I have read Man in the High Castle,Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,and Galactic Pot Healer,and cant say I was really taken with any of them.His books appear many times on many WWEnd lists,so is it just me? lol. On the SF Masterworks list there are no less than 11 out of the 144 books by this one man. No one else comes near,I dont think.. I have to read A Scanner Darkly for the Defining Books of the 70s list.I will ration PKD to one book a year! lol
Finally completed David Eddings Queen of Sorcery,it took me nearly 3 weeks,I could never read more than a chapter at a time. I am not a fantasy fan. Lord of the Rings is so imprinted on my mind I find most high fantasy to be weak shadows. All these decades and Tolkiens shadow is still towering over the others! Ah well,the Eddings at least completed my 100th book read in SF/F this year.
At the moment I am really becoming fascinated with Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth. Damn,those old writers could undertake weighty themes,and clothe them in rivetting stories - often less than 200 pages long! I was a bit dubious about the 1970s,but all three of the books so far - Finneys Time and Again,this Silverberg book and the fast and furious adventure tale,Laumers Dinosaur Beach are all great reads.I am so enjoying the whole challenge,its great fun. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Mervi2012 and dustydigger
Philip K Dick is weird. I think either you like him or you don't. He is one of my favorites, but I can't tell you why, though I don;t care for his later stuff. Dick was deep into drugs for awhile and was heavily enfluenced by the drug culture - A Scanner Darkly comes directly from this. Martian Time slip I think is one of his more straightforward science fiction novels. Some of his stuff is just outright bizarre. After you've read a good bit of his stuff, you are helped by being more familiar with Dick and that makes it easier to appreciate his weirdness. | |
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Location: Las Vegas, NV | Dick was an interesting guy. After 1974, he suffered from a number of hallucinations and believed that his mind was being invaded by a rational alien presence, and at another point by the spirit of the prophet Elijah.
I'm reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? next month for the Science Fiction Masterworks Reading Challenge (more of a book club, really).
Edited by devilinlaw 2015-11-24 8:22 PM
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Location: New Zealand | Congratulations Dustydigger for finishing your 100 books. I also am not a massive fan of PK Dick. I find some I kinda like, but most I just finish with a "what was that". I have read quite a few of them this year in an attempt to figure out why people like him so much, but I am lost.
At one time in my life, around 30 years ago, I devoured the David Eddings books. I'm not sure if that was because I thought they were good, or because I had a lack of reading material available to me at the time and anything I got was going to be good. I find them less interesting now.
I have really enjoyed the 70's challenge as well. I liked a lot of those old 70's books, and Robert Silverberg is a particular favourite.
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Location: UK | Thanks Weesam,nowhere near you - you must have read 300 books this year! - but pretty good for me. SF/F has certainly dominated my reads this year,accounting for over 100 of my 182 total reads,thanks to the Defining Books challenge mostly. We owe a massive thanks to Jim for his excellent lists. I have also been eyeing the new resource,books arranged by year. I have already added an awful lot of books to the TBR!
My library system has no less than 27 P K Dick novels in stock,hidden away in the vaults of the book depository for posterity. Yet they dont have a single Silverberg. Nearly 20 Heinleins,but not a single C J Cherryh.No Sturgeon,or Sheckley,Budrys or any of those oldtimers. I am so happy I found the Open Library site,which has a huge number of those old authors available for borrowing.Without them I couldnt do the challenge at all,unless I bought at least six books. A pensioner with a big family just hasnt the cash for that.Now I can look forward to some interesting reading,free :0) | |
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Location: New Zealand | It has always been strange to me what library's decide is important to keep and what isn't. Not having any Silverberg seems very odd, and quite sad as a do like a good Silverbob, and far prefer him over Dick or Heinlein. I am in the fortunate position of having plenty of time and disposable income so haven't had to resort to the library often (which is a good thing as our library is currently in pieces, with huge numbers of books stashed away in mostly inaccessible warehouses).
I have really enjoyed getting to know the defining books from Jim's lists. I'm tempted to go pick out my books for the 80's challenge now! It's been interesting reading a lot of older books interspersed with my newer books, almost like seeing the evolution of SF from then to now. | |
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| My next Pick&Mix read was Cherie Priest's Fiddlehead. I've enjoyed the whole series and this was mostly a satisfying conclusion. The political and rotter plotlines were resolved but the characters were different so no resolution from them. | |
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Location: UK | Wow! Just finished Robert Silverberg's fantastic Downwards to the Earth for the 70s Defining Books challenge and I loved it! Great writing,lofty themes,a really great world setting and interesting aliens. Highly recommended. Another Silverberg up next,A Time of Changes. Then a nostalgic guilty pleasure reread,Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. I am also halfway through Joe Hill's first Locke and Key book,Welcome to Lovecraft,very dark and downbeat to say the least. I probably wont continue the series,just read it for my graphic novel/manga thread over on my Shelfari challenge.Only half a dozen books to finish there,then I can concentrate fully on the 70s Defining Books challenge. | |
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | Robert Silverberg is an excellent author. I read A Time of Changes a while back - it was good. Dying Inside is great. The Book of Skulls also is very good. I need to read Downwards to the Earth.
Edited by spectru 2015-11-26 4:02 PM
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Location: New Zealand | Dying Inside, Downwards to the Earth and A Time of Changes are my favourite Silverberg. I highly recommend them also. I first read Dying Inside and Downwards to the Earth 27 years ago and I have never forgotten the affect they had on me. A re-read of them this year confirmed to me that my younger self was right to place these two on my personal shelf of literary awesomeness.
I haven''t gotten to his Majapoor stories yet. Has anyone read them? | |
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Location: UK | Oddly enough, the only Silverberg I've read* was Lord Valentine's Castle, and it kind of put me off reading anything else by him. Hopefully I'll redress the balance a bit with the Definitive challenges. There wasn't anything especially wrong with it, I guess, it just didn't do much for me.
*Actually, I'm not sure that's true. I also have Sailing to Byzantium, which I think I've read.
Edited by DrNefario 2015-11-27 7:48 AM
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| My final Pick&Mix book was Linda Nagata's Memory. I haven't read anything else from her. I liked it. It's a stand-alone SF book. | |
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Location: UK | Well done ,Mervi. You joined very late in the year,so its great to see you finishing the challenge!
Staus of the challenge - 18 participants,329 books read,an amazing 191 reviews written. Not bad in a challenge which doesnt ask for reviews! lol
7 people have completed the challenge - Dusty,Daxxh,Devilinlaw,Mervi,Spectru,Spoltz,and Weesam. And if Tantara removed one book and adjusted her reading level to 20,we could count her too
ScoLgo is half way through his last book,Pizzakarin has two to finish and Paul James has one left,so hopefully we will add to our score.
Many thanks to all who have participated,and also it is gratifying to see we have had almost 5800 views of this thread. Good to know.
Please feel free,Pick n' Mixers, to add on any interesting reads even if you have finished the challenge. And anyone,whether doing the challenge or not, is always free to comment on books or anything about WWEnd. I look upon this as an open house really,everyone welcome.
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Thoroughly enjoyed my reread of Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows.. Jack,magician extraordinaire who can drain magical power from any shadow,is executed by enemies. When he is resurrected ( frequent occurence in his magical world) his burning mission is to get revenge on his enemies,including the woman he had loved,but is now the lover of his chief enemy. Jack is a thief,immoral,ruthless, crue,l selfish and vengeful,but the early chapters about his sufferings to return to the world cleverly make us root for this anti-hero,and we watch as he ruthlessly takes his revenge. He also goes on a mission to the depths of the earth where a huge magical machine has halted the planet's rotation,creating two worlds,one on the lightside where science rules,and life is pretty much like our world,and the dark side,where Jack and a myriad of creatures,vampires and dragons included, live in a dark world suffused in magic. All this in 180 pages. Fantastic story,intriguing world setting,and the stunning anti-hero Jack make this a great read. Highly recommended for those who like fantasy blended in with their SF.
Still attempting to read Silverberg's A Time of Changes but its slow going. Five sessions so far to read 50 pages.Much more enjoyable is Clifford D Simak's A Choice of Gods I read 50 pages straight off the belt when I started it last night! I had never read any Simak,(not one of his books in the library),but this year I got Way Station through the Open Library and loved it. I hope to read much more of him in the future :0) | |
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Veteran
Posts: 112
Location: Las Vegas, NV | I may have to check out Open Library for those books I just can't find through my 2 local library districts. I've never used Open Library before but am very familiar with Hoopla and Overdrive. Is Open Library any good? | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Well frankly,I use it as a place of last resort,as it scans actual copies of old books,brown paper,tiny print,food stains and all! lol.But I'd rather read that than fork out a lot of money! It does have a useful feature of listing particular libraries that have physical copies ,starting with libraries nearest. Once I have recovered from my TKR in the summer I hope to take advantage of this by visiting the libraries.I have library cards for my county,and no less than four city systems! Four or five years ago I did it regularly in the summer,making a sort of excursion of it,enjoying the scenery,strolling round the town,and having fun browsing the town library. You always find something interesting! I just love libraries,any libraries - even a friend's one shelf collection stuck in a corner!
Edited by dustydigger 2015-12-09 4:31 AM
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Veteran
Posts: 107
Location: scotland | Just finished Red Mars which completes this challenge for me. Though I only read 9 books.
Red Mars is a strange-ish sort of book I think. Easily the longest sci-fi I have read and there is two more after. Most scifi I have read is between 200-300 pages. I expected it to be mostly about terraforming but it was more in the way of colonization though I have read more terraforming occurs in the second so looking forward to this. At times the book seemed almost boring with some of the science and geology and landscape descriptions going on. However in all this I found myself zipping through it - strange. | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | Paul,I was very disappointed in Red Mars.I too was hoping for some terraforming,and got very little.Instead it was standard boring conspiracies,political manouverings etc. It annoyed me that we learned right near the beginning that the only really likeable character was going to be killed off,and then we spent large chunks of the book following him,knowing the outcome for him.I found lots of it very hard to swallow. Sadly,since I am working my way through the Hugos and Nebulas,at some point I will have to read Blue Mars and Green Mars....sigh....not my cup of tea at all | |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | May I wish all the Pick N'Mixers a Merry Xmas. Have a great festive season,and I hope I see you all back here for the 2016 edition of the challenge! Hope you all get some good books for Xmas! | |
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2015-11-26 4:10 PM Wow! Just finished Robert Silverberg's fantastic Downwards to the Earth for the 70s Defining Books challenge and I loved it! Great writing,lofty themes,a really great world setting and interesting aliens. Highly recommended. Another Silverberg up next,A Time of Changes. Then a nostalgic guilty pleasure reread,Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. I am also halfway through Joe Hill's first Locke and Key book,Welcome to Lovecraft,very dark and downbeat to say the least. I probably wont continue the series,just read it for my graphic novel/manga thread over on my Shelfari challenge.Only half a dozen books to finish there,then I can concentrate fully on the 70s Defining Books challenge. I read Downward to the Earth. Really liked it. Silverberg has become a favorite author.
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1031
Location: UK | @Spectru -Yes,I liked it a lot.What did you think of A Time of Changes? I was disappointed in A Time of Changes which I read it lately. I found it dry and slowgoing,and had no empathy with the protagonist at all!Obviously popular in the 70s when drugs was a hot topic,but it wasnt my sort of thing. I didnt find the religious side of it convincing at all,and just never connected with the whole thing at all.
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Veteran
Posts: 144
Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA | dustydigger - 2016-01-06 2:20 PM @Spectru -Yes,I liked it a lot.What did you think of A Time of Changes? I was disappointed in A Time of Changes which I read it lately. I found it dry and slowgoing,and had no empathy with the protagonist at all!Obviously popular in the 70s when drugs was a hot topic,but it wasnt my sort of thing. I didnt find the religious side of it convincing at all,and just never connected with the whole thing at all. I read A Time for Changes some time back, and it has grown a bit dim in my memory, but my reaction to it was similar to yours. It did not recommend Silverberg to me, but the few other of his novels that I've read are quite good.
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Pick and Mix 2015