Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

The library system in Sydney is not quite so well-organised. Libraries here are run by the local councils, and you can't use your library card in the library of any other council. There are multiple libraries in each council area, and they will loan between the libraries, although I'm not sure if they will loan to a library in another council. Also, if you don't use the library card for 6 months or a year (I'm not sure which), the library will cancel the card and you have to sign up again, although it's free so it's not a huge problem, just a bit annoying.

Peony wrote: "Oooh, i might preview that.

So, like, if we put comics here, do we include serialized webcomics? Because then, I’m reading “The Knight Only Lives Once.” I’d rank it below most books I’ve read, bu..."

You can put a serialised web comic here if you like, but you might have difficulty finding a Goodreads record to link it to. Generally single issues of comics and magazines are not *supposed* to be given Goodreads records - although plenty are. At least, those were the guidelines when I applied to be a librarian here many years ago. Graphic novels, however, are certainly counted as books, and should have a Goodreads record.

I have started reading Europa Universalis IV: What If? The Anthology of Alternate History. This is an anthology of alternate history stories with a difference. The stories are inspired by game reports sent in by players of the Europa Universalis IV computer game. This is a strategy game, similar to the Civilization series, in which players take control of a European nation and advance it from Renaissance times to the Napoleonic era.

I finished Slaves of Mercury. It was everything you would expect from a pulp SF story (first published in 1932) - heroic Earthmen, evil aliens, spaceships, ray guns, and recovery from dire straits. And, of course, several scientific errors 😆

Peony wrote: "Does anybody want to maybe buddy read the wheel of time? 👀 its the main book i want to finish, but ofc my attention span isn’t committing to the task."

Not for me - I got three books in and gave up, it just wasn't able to keep my interest.

I have finished Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. This is a collection of 20 essays looking at both the history of the game and its impact on society, both generally and on specific communities, Not every essay maintained my interest, but they all seem well-written and well-researched.

This will fill the Non-Fiction slot in my Bingo.

Andrea wrote: "I don't like "reading" a song, not if I don't know the music that goes with it."

I quite enjoyed reading the songs and imagining what the lyrical flow of the words would be, and what type of music is best suited to each.

Robin wrote: "Much as I love LOTR and I do, it always feels like he just took a rough compass bearing and set sail without a map, like he was on just as much of an adventure as the Hobbits."

I get the impression, from reading Christopher's commentary in the Book of Lost Tales and other sources, that the Professor continued to revise Lord of the Rings well after it was published, some of which went into the Appendices, some into various letters he wrote, and some just remained on scraps of paper waiting for his son to curate.

Peony wrote: "Today I'm really feeling the difference between LOTR's 1,200 pages and The Hobbit's 300 pages🥲"

If you want to get your book count up, you can always count Lord of the Rings as three books 😁They were originally published that way - although not because Tolkien was still writing the latter two.

I finished Batman Archives, Vol. 1, which fills the alternate form slot and also completes row 4.

I have finished Batman Archives, Vol. 1. It was interesting to read the first 24 Batman stories, running in Detective Comics from the first appearance in May 1939 (issue 27), and this collection concludes with April 1941 (issue 50). This version of the Batman is different in many ways from the modern version, but the core elements are there from the beginning.

This graphic novel will also fill the alternate form slot in the Bingo.

Finishing The House on the Borderland fills the before 1940 slot, and that completes both column B and row 3.

I have now completed columns B and N, and rows 1 and 3. 5 books to complete the card, and 5 months to go.

I have finished The House on the Borderland. It fits firmly in the genre of weird fiction that was common among many writers of the early years of the 20th century. I didn't enjoy it as much as I liked Boats of the Glen Carrig, but it has clearly been more influential than the earlier novel.

It also fills the written before 1940 Bingo slot.

I have nearly completed The House on the Borderland - about 30 pages left. It has gone in an unexpected direction. Plus a few more short stories from The Science Fiction Anthology. Pythias by Frederik Pohl was very good, Show Business by Boyd Ellanby, not so much. Next in that collection is Slaves of Mercury by Nat Schachner, which is long enough to be a novella.

Peony, if you're interested in a couple of excellent novels that have a more "historical" look at the relationship between faery and mankind, I can recommend Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword, both by Poul Anderson.

Michelle wrote: "I read the Elric saga probably 40-45 years ago. I remember telling someone that I wasn't happy with that series, and oh my gosh, did I get a reaming 😂 Basically I was told that I didn't have good taste."

Moorcock is one of my favourite authors, and I read everything of his I could find in the 70s. Although certainly his most famous character, Elric was never my favourite of his characters - I enjoyed the Hawkmoon saga a lot more.

Peony wrote: "Looked up “Elric Saga,” I found the top review to be bashing Tolkein. Tolkein…dry??"

Although often surprising to many of Tolkien's fans, there are a number of people who share the sentiment that his writing is dry - I'm not one of them. Moorcock, however, was known to not be a fan of the Professor's work.

NekroRider wrote: "I have been wanting to read House on the Borderland for a while, myself. How are you liking it?"

It's interesting. Even a hundred years ago (or closer to 120 in this case) English was a slightly different language, so I find the writing a little stilted in places - Hodgson uses so many commas. I wonder if Lovecraft had read any Hodgson? There are some similarities in concept and I think that Hodgson is a better writer, although Lovecraft is perhaps the more imaginative of the two. It is available as a free download from Project Gutenberg.

I have started reading Batman Archives, Vol. 1. This is a compilation of the first two years (1939-1941) of Batman stories.

I have started reading The House on the Borderland This is the second in Hodgson's Abyss trilogy, although they are a trilogy by theme rather than by sharing a story. Written in 1907, this will fill the pre-1940 slot in my Bingo.

Robin wrote: "I tell you what I think a good book is. It’s a book that touches somebody, anybody, that makes them think and feel and laugh and hope. A book that takes them out of themselves for a little while. It doesn’t matter if it’s acclaimed literature, a best seller, or a book that only ten people ever read and five people liked. If it does what a book should do, then it’s a good book."

That, Robin, is an excellent answer.

Even popularity can be a surprising metric. I recall attending a poetry reading that a friend of mine was giving in a local pub, back in the mid-80s. The audience was, as you would expect, reasonably literate. We got talking to a couple of girls - as you do, well, as you did in those days - and we got to the topic of favourite authors. Even from a brief discussion, I had gleaned enough to know better than to mention the SF/F authors that I read a lot of, so I mentioned Stephen King - they had never heard of him. King was quite possibly the biggest author in the world in those days, so I was stunned.

What makes a good book is a different question from favourite books and both are subjective. I don't consider Stephanie Meyers' Twilight series to be good books but they were, and maybe still are (I don't work in a bookstore anymore) very popular, and not just among the YA audience they were written for. And Fifty Shades of Grey, which was - let's be polite and say inspired by Twilight - was a very badly written book, but the bookstore could not keep copies in stock it sold so many for the first year after its release.

My favourite series is Lord of the Rings, and I used to read it once a year for at least the first 20 years after I first read it. Some of my other favourites are not so critically acclaimed. I really enjoy the Lensmen series by EE 'Doc' Smith, but I recognise that they're not great books, which hasn't stopped me from reading them half-a-dozen times since I first read them in the 70s.

What makes a book a favourite is hard to quantify - it could be the mood you were in when you first read it, or a particular passage just struck a chord within you, or it gets associated with something good, but completely unrelated, that happened at that time in your life.