Miévillians discussion
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With all our sub-genres we might just get away with reading the books we wanted to. But the next problem would be to find the time...
Yep, I think religi-dystopia. But, "stop at 30" ... my oh my, what were you thinking?? Now, 300 maybe is a good stopping point :)
Traveller wrote: "And Derek, if Fahrenheit 451 doesn't come in, since we both want to do it, why don't we in any case? ;) "Sure — but you and I are already on for Oryx & Crake, too!
Allen wrote: "Yep, I think religi-dystopia. But, "stop at 30" ... my oh my, what were you thinking?? Now, 300 maybe is a good stopping point :)"Ha, I kept thinking: "I wonder where GR's cut-off point is with polls, in case I post the poll after all that work and I get that dreaded message: "There has been a problem saving your comment" #.#
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Traveller wrote: "And Derek, if Fahrenheit 451 doesn't come in, since we both want to do it, why don't we in any case? ;) "
Sure — but you and I are already on for Oryx & Crake, too!"
Oh, my golly... yes I do remember that I've been wanting to read that one for the longest time as well. In actual fact, I think I started it up twice, but wasn't grabbed in, so a group discussion might be a good whip to get me through the first bit. :P
Hey Derek (and others) ... Speaking of VanderMeer, this made my mouth water: http://io9.com/finally-a-novel-about-...
Have you read City of Saints and Madmen ? Very cool. I have Finch and Steampunk sitting on my shelves winking at me.
I wouldn't mind having a discussion of http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23... as part of our short fiction project, mind you.So shout if you're interested.
Allen wrote: "Hey Derek (and others) ... Speaking of VanderMeer, this made my mouth water: http://io9.com/finally-a-novel-about-..."I'd seen the promos, and it does look good. I've only tried to read one VanderMeer short story, and it was too long...
But I'm still interested in doing VanderMeer either as short fiction or long.
I haven't read City of Saints and Madmen but it's on my to-read list ... the description of it is just fantastic. Is it a short story collection? If it is, I didn't grasp that, but would be willing to try some.
Allen wrote: "I haven't read City of Saints and Madmen but it's on my to-read list ... the description of it is just fantastic. Is it a short story collection? If it is, I didn't grasp that, but would be willing..."Well, yes, short stories and quite long-ish ones that approach the size of novellas almost. One of the stories in the book was a bit boring, and now I'm wondering which one it was that Derek is referring to.
I've been thinking about Vandermeer. His stories do tend to lean towards the literary side, so lovers of action wouldn't like it that much. But what I appreciate about him is that his work seems to exude its own unique flavor, an atmosphere and 'feel' quite unique to Vandermeer.
Traveller wrote: "One of the stories in the book was a bit boring, and now I'm wondering which one it was that Derek is referring to. "No, it was something on either tor.com or Clarkesworld. The central character was named Jeff VanderMeer, stranded in some place on the Aral Sea iirc (which would make it fantasy, as there are no places on the Aral Sea).
Ah, here it is: Errata
and it was Lake Baikal. With a penguin.
How about we do the stories in City of Saints and Madmen one by one in the (and sorry if that sounds dictatorial, it's meant to spare you, not be dictatorial) order that I liked them, or think may be of interest?Then if you feel it's getting boring for you, you could always skip out at that point. There's actually 3 stories that I liked for different reasons, and one of them I'd very much like to discuss with this group.
What we could also do-we could alternate CM's short stories with Vandermeer's short stories. Then whoever has read the CM stories can 'lead' them in, or introduce them to us, and then I'll do the Vandermeer story again the next time, and so on. Or how does that sound?
Btw, thanks for the link, Derek!
I like the alternation of Miéville and VanderMeer
I like the alternating theme, too. I've read quite a few of CM's from Looking for Jake. My favorite is "Reports of Certain Events in London" about streets that (sort of) fits in with TC&TC. There's also a nice dystopian, "Tis the Season," one about Jack Half-a-Prayer, "Details" about hidden worlds around us, "The Tain," which is close to a novella that I think Derek is familiar and is just way cool, and ... "Entry Taken from a Medial Encyclopedia" that features a linguistics-Embassytown bent. It was written a good eight years before the novel, so there's a good bet in my mind it was inspiration for Embassytown.That's my take. Traveler, if any of those fit in with VanderMeer, I would trust your judgment on reading order. If anyone wants to know more, check out the wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_.... But fair warning, plot synopses are fairly spoiler-laden.
I had forgotten "Go Between," which is a nice psychological/inner-psyche thriller ... and had forgotten that "Entry Take..." is very short, like six pages short. Still worth the read though.
The wife and I are having a discussion about books with gimmicks, like the JJ Abrams mystery with postcards and notes in the margins called "S" ... But I thought there was another one, something someone here was discussing that was a bit more twisted, had a lot of different texts on one page, with some text at different angles, etc. Anybody remember?
Turns out it was in my to read list already. If I knew the emoticon for sheepish grin, I would use it.
Heheheh--I know the feeling, Allen- I hope you're not as bad as I am in buying books you already had... :P(This tends to happen to me when I see bargains at used bookstores)
Hey guys, it will be nice if we did our TV chatter here, since there's nothing going on in here anyway.Last person posting in the other thread, being Allen, said: My daughter's 10 ... She's watched a few old Who episodes with me, and likes Rose but Matt Smith's her favorite. Especially dinosaurs on a spaceship! Could be that we've corrupted her with old Land of the Lost episodes, not to mention Wonder Woman :)
And I think she's going to gravitate to sci-fi cause she's started reading Bruce Coville books now.
Haven't heard of Da Vinci's Demons. Will look it up. And the wife and I went through a Tudors binge too. And Sherlock. And Downton Abbey. Just some great TV being produced - and I'm tempted to say the best stuff is either British made or independent of the networks. Primarily because they put money into the characters, in my opinion.
and
Funny thing though. I never got to watch Doctor Who as a kid. It only aired on PBS and in the mountains we could pull in signals for the three major networks. So, I'm having to catch up on the back stories for the Daleks and Cybermen - thanks to Hulu and Netflix. Not that I mind. Like living a wished-for childhood :)
Okay, I have now started watching Vikings too. I never tried it before because i thought the violence would be too much for me, and it is true that it is very violent, but i guess it kinda fit in with what really happened back then; these really were very violent people.... I'm not sure if they were quite this violent, but it is certainly possible, i suppose.
Just a note to the people with kids: Da Vinci's Demons and Vikings are NOT for kids. Da Vinci is not only violent, but it also plays out in a very, er... sophisticated society in which pretty much everything went...
Good to know Traveller. Have not heard of Vikings. And what network/service, etc. are these on. We're primarily Netflix/Hulu/Amazon users ... but wish we could get the full BBC America without having to pay for cable.
I'm not even sure, Allen, because I tend to either rent or buy movies/TV after the fact, since I don't have enough structure or discipline in my viewing habits to be able to watch one episode a week of a show at a designated time. Vikings is/was on Amazon Prime and Hulu.I've watched the first 3 episodes so far and I'm quite impressed with the attention to detail. I think they're trying to portray Viking life as realistically as possible within the frame of a storyline.
I'm curious, in Sweden we tend to get everything a year or three late. We are now on our third season (I think) of Vikings. How far behind are we?
I don't think you are behind at all, Ruth. ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_...I can't help wondering what Norwegians think of the series....
Oh, and I see now that the story is indeed based on the sagas about the main character of the series.
I haven't heard much talk about the series, but then I'm not on Twitter. I suspect, though, that it must have received good reviews from Scandinavians because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten this far along.
.....aaaand let me post this here as well, in case all my posts about it has yet passed someone by: Here http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2015/07/... is a chance to get your grubby paws on China's very latest collection which is coming out as we speak. :)))
OMG, another year has flown by!I thought this would be quite fitting for Mievillians:
MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!
Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas.
suddenly confronted with this book which I don't remember hearing about, the census- taker, a novella by his majesty.anybody read it yet?
It came out recently. I read it. Intriguing but feels incomplete.
I can imagine anything under 500 pages feels incomplete to his majesty too. Maybe he was just ticking 'novella' off his bucket list.
This Census-Taker came out in January, but I couldn't muster the enthusiasm after lackluster reviews. Plus it was outrageously priced (I've bought three of his full-length e-novels for around $5 each, but they wanted $18 for this!), so I was waiting for my library to produce it. This has reminded me to check, and they've got the e-book, now.Also, The Last Days of New Paris has come out since, and looks more interesting.
'The Last Days of New Paris' is definitely fascinating. So weird and so straightforward at the same time.
Thanks for the heads-up, guys! Will be looking out for these. I knew they were in the pipeline, but not that they had already been published.
E-book. I only do dtbs when I can't find an e-book.
Oh, good. I'll look for an e-book this weekend.
well folks I am reading it and waiting for something I can relate to.Odd and creepy and IG it wasn't my beloved CM I wouldn't have got past p 2.and then of course swept up in the incomprehensible
Hi everybody, one of our members, Hussamo, has made a nice map of New Crobuzon. He talks about it and links to it here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Traveller wrote: "Hi everybody, one of our members, Hussamo, has made a nice map of New Crobuzon. He talks about it and links to it here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...-..."
Cool! :D
Indeed... now I'll have to reread the books with that map by my side... 😉
Hi Everyone, Very happy to be a member of this group. The Bas-Lag trilogy is very dear to my heart, I myself want to re-read Perdido Street Station with this new map :)
If you catch any errors please comment as this map is currently in beta version. Someone already caught an error with the Skyrail passing over the river. I fixed it and advancing to version 0.5.1v.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Thank you all.
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
This Census-Taker (other topics)This Census-Taker (other topics)
This Census-Taker (other topics)
The Last Days of New Paris (other topics)
House of Leaves (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jeff VanderMeer (other topics)Jeff VanderMeer (other topics)
Michael Moorcock (other topics)
I just read Fahrenheit 451 last year, after many years of boxing and moving it, and was truly surprised how much it moved me. I am not sure I will read it again so soon but I would love to join the discussion.
It has been probably 35-40 years since I read A Canticle for Leibowitz. A religious sub-genre sounds right to me. Am I remembering correctly?