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What else are you reading?
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Jim
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Feb 14, 2018 02:50AM
What other books or genres are you reading in between SF reads? Post a link to your review, too.
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Obviously I can't spend all my time reading SF. I like to mix up genres. I recently found a fairly new fantasy series Christopher Husberg that starts with Duskfall. I gave it & the next book, Dark Immolation, 4 star reviews. Unfortunately, there are at least 2 more to come & the third isn't even in the publisher's hands yet. My reviews are here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Mystery-thrillers are another genre I enjoy. I became friends with Lance Charnes here on GR shortly after he joined. Since then, he's published 4 novels that are fantastic. I've read Doha 12 twice, most recently with another group. South is a near future novel that was a little too possible & dark, but fantastic. Lately I've been reading his Dewitt Agency Files The Collection & I should finish Stealing Ghosts today at lunch.
My reading strays even further into plays occasionally. The L.A. Theater Works are excellent players. I recently listened to Abundance by Beth Henley which is about the life of two mail order brides in the American wild west. It was good, but pretty rough. I gave it a 4 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I, too, read in a wide variety of genres. One of my favorite recent reads was a poetry collection for nature lovers and photography buffs: National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry: More than 200 Poems With Photographs That Float, Zoom, and Bloom!.I also gave five stars to a graphic history of three adventurers: Around the World.
Both of those books are marketed primarily to children, but I believe that they're really for all ages.
And then on a completely different note, for a BotM in a different group, I very much enjoyed The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray. Any fans of that story are invited to look at my review for a link to the informative discussion.
I am trying to read fairly broadly around non-fiction, in particular to do with environmentalism, science in general, politics (esp. that relating to US, Europe and Russia). I am also trying to broaden my fiction reading (esp. of non-English language authors).I just finished reading A Little Life, and just started the non-fiction The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
Stealing Ghosts by Lance Charnes was another excellent, twisty tale of thievery in the art world. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
My biggest disappointment is I've read all his books now.
I have started reading The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron. And after having seen most of the movies, I am reading the first book about James Bond, Casino Royale.
Rosemarie wrote: "I have started reading The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron...."I highly recommend reading The Confessions of Nat Turner the original story as transcribed by Thomas Gray who sat with Turner while he awaited execution. I highly recommend reading it first. You can find it for free here:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/15/
I reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Styron's story is badly skewed. If you're interested, I reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Thanks, Jim. I will look into the original transcription too.
Mod
Very interesting! I never knew that the version I read was censored/bowdlerized. I'll have to go look for the unexpurgated version. (Which I should read along with The EXPURGATED version of "Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds". The one without the gannet.)
I've been reading books by Swedish author Frederik Backman. I read A Man Called Ove last year and thought it was pretty good. Later I read And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. I was blown away. This is perhaps the most touching, emotional novella I've read. I recommend it.
Then I read The Deal of a Lifetime, a magical realism novella, just so-so.
Then Britt-Marie Was Here. Quite good and somewhat similar to A Man Called Ove.
Now I am reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. So far I'm really enjoying it.
Next, on the wait list at the library, Bear Town
I just read A Man Called Ove recently. Didn't expect to like it, but really did. Not my usual thing at all.I just finished Assassin's Apprentice, first of a trilogy. Great ideas & world, but I don't care much for Hobb's execution. I read one other trilogy of Hobb's & felt the same way. Too much time in the MC's head, a lot of tell, not enough doing.
I found American Military History: From Colonials to Counterinsurgents, one of The Great Courses, for only $35 & am listening to it now. Clark is giving just thumbnail sketches of the various wars, but his take is very good & interesting.
Jim wrote: "I just read A Man Called Ove recently. Didn't expect to like it, but really did. Not my usual thing at all."Same here. I read it because it was recommended to me. Not the sort of thing I would choose for myself, but it's good. So I decided to read something else by Backman. Hit the jackpot with And Every Morning...
You got me curious. He's translated a lot and I saw my library has a translated copie En elke ochtend wordt de weg naar huis steeds langer. I will try to pick it up there next time.
I just finished The Late Show which introduces a new cop to Michael Connelly's police procedurals & the Harry Bosch universe. It was pretty good, but a bit disappointing since she is just Harry with boobs. Great ending, though. I gave it a 3 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Spell Blind by David B. Coe was a really good urban fantasy & mystery thriller. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm currently geeking out on Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories. I bothered Jared at Centipede Press & NESFA for years to collect them all & publish them in chronological order. Jared came through a couple of years ago & I bought the books, but haven't gotten around to reading them. I'm doing it now.I started with Night Winds, but only read 3 stories before needing to jump to Bloodstone. I'm reading that now. Great stuff. KEW was an excellent author.
A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans is a surprisingly good first novel & first of a trilogy. The trilogy is all published, a huge plus. On the face, it looks like a pretty typical fantasy, but it has some surprising nuances. I gave it a 4 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just for something completely different, I'm going to be reading Bendigo Shafter next. The thing is, I'm a huge fan of Michael Perry and in his latest (which is also one of his best), Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy, Perry mentions that the MC in Louis L'Amour's novel carries a copy of Michel de Montaigne's book in his saddlebag....
Cheryl wrote: "Just for something completely different, I'm going to be reading Bendigo Shafter next. The thing is, I'm a huge fan of Michael Perry and in his latest (which is also ..."That's one of my favorite L'amour books & I'm also a fan of Perry's writing. Loved Metzger's Dog & went on to read every one of his my library has.
If you ever get a chance, check out Education of a Wandering Man & you'll see where Bendigo got his reading list.
Mod
I might enjoy that book on Montaigne, too. He was an interesting fellow. I think of him as the first blogger, though he was a little early for the internet.
Last year, I enjoyed How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer. Sadly, while I was reading it I got my second-ever case of kidney stones. At the same time reading about Montaigne struggling with, and dying from them wasn't much fun.
I should perhaps read a Louis L'Amour someday just to get out of my comfort zone. Maybe also a Harlequin romance!
Jim, Thomas Perry is a different dude.
Last month I finished (non-SF books): 
Queenpin by Megan Abbott - 4 stars 
Money Shot by Christa Faust - 3 stars 
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman - 4 stars This month I hope to finish:
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin And I'm also picking away at (but probably won't finish this month):
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 edited by Rich Horton
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Jim wrote: "Rosemarie wrote: "I have started reading The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron...."I highly recommend reading The Confessions of Nat Turner th..."
You were right, Jim. The Styron novel wasn't very good. I haven't had a chance to read the other book yet.
Rosemarie wrote: "You were right, Jim. The Styron novel wasn't very good. I haven't had a chance to read the other book yet. "Glad you thought so. One of my GR friends just wrote a comment on my review of the original trying to justify Turner's actions. Nope, not buying it - it was terrorism plain & simple. If he had killed 100 times as many people as he led his group to freedom, I would have applauded. Killing kids & babies in cradles though... SMH, I just don't get how anyone could think that is justified.
Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner is one of the Kane novels. Fantastic S&S. Imagine an amoral, immortal Conan who is great with both sword & sorcery. He's found some alien tech that butts heads with sorcery as the swords swing between men & monsters. I gave it 5 stars in my review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just finished a Finnish book The Year of the Hare. It was a fun adventure across Finland. Currently reading an excellent German classic Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family and A Gentleman in Moscow.
Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner is the first book in the Kane chronology, at least the first 3 short stories are & then Bloodstone should be read with the rest of the stories following. I did that & was blown away again by KEW's writing. It was especially interesting to read "The Treasure of Lynortis", the first Kane story KEW wrote back when he was 16 & never published. He later rewrote it extensively into "Lynortis Reprise". A truly wonderful comparison.
The entire collection was fantastic with excellent illustrations, too. I gave it a 5 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Mod
I do like the illustrations! I almost bought a velvet painting of Kane at a garage sale. There was for a while a small industry of Mexican artists doing non-licensed reproductions of popular paintings on velvet. The one I saw was Kane with the polar bears on light blue velvet, originally by Frank Frazetta.
But I only know of the character Kane because of the parody character "Bran Mac Muffin" in the Cerebus comics.
Velvet painting! I always liked those, but never had the room to hang one nor would my wife, an art major, allow it. I don't know why they get so much hate. Frazetta's "Silver Warrior" was the cover
, Moorcock's Eternal Champion, though. I've always liked Frazetta's portrayal of Conan better than Kane. The latter looks too narrow across the shoulders to me."Bran Mac Muffin" wasn't a parody of Bran Mac Morn, REH's character? Or was Kane just in the parody? I've never read those. Sounds fun. KEW did a pastiche of REH's character,
. It's every bit as good as the original & very true to it.
Mod
Probably because most of them are cheap reproductions of other people's work, or kitsch designed for decorating your house rather than saying something grand, or whatever art is "supposed" to do. But I'm not ashamed to have 2 velvet paintings, nor am I ashamed to read SF and comics!
I'm sure you are right that "Silver Warrior" painting was used by Moorcock, not KEW, and Bran Mac Morn was also based on the Conan character. I posted without fact-checking. My ignorance of Conan/Kane/Elric, etc., is showing. I have read a bit of Elric, but none of Conan or Kane.
Cerebus starts as a parody of sword-and-sorcery in general. There are characters based on Red Sonja, Elric (Elrod of Melvinbone), Prince Valiant, and many others. After volume 1, though, it goes in a more serious direction, while keeping some of the comedic elements. The first four volumes are pretty strong. Most readers agree that it goes off the rails at some point after that, though there is little agreement on when that happens. I've committed myself to the whole 6000 pages and I swear I'll finish someday!
I'm far better versed on Kane & Conan than I am on Elric, although I've read most of the books including others that make up the Eternal Warrior such as Corum & Hawkmoon. Conan was one of my first 'gotta-reads' because my father left two of them laying around & the Frazetta covers were just too cool. That was in the 60s & I don't recall seeing any of the Kane books for almost another decade when KEW started getting them published.Moorcock's books were out, but I could never get them all or read them in order & his universe was so large that I was a bit overwhelmed by the time I could get them. I first read one of the Runestaff (Hawkmoon) books in 1972. I remember it because my mother remarried & we had to take a long train trip, so my step-father bought me a bunch of books to shut me up & that was one. Amazingly, he did a great job picking out the books for me. Except for the Mack Bolan book, I went on to read most others by the authors he picked.
I finished Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson, a nearly forgotten Depression-Era classic noir. Short page count but a powerful story with sparse prose that has been compared to Hemingway's (by no less than Raymond Chandler) and crackling dialogue. It was my first 5-star read of the year (last year I gave only two 5-star ratings). Now I'm reading The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett.
In an essay at the end of this edition of Death Angel's Shadow KEW discusses how much of an influence REH was on him & how much they thought alike. Interesting. Good book, although I didn't care as much for the last 6 stories. A big surprise is how much this book is now worth - $5000 is the low price of 3 copies available! I think this one will come down, but there is one other book in this set over $700 while the other 3 are about $45. Crazy prices on KEW books!
My 4 star review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I finished A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and rated it 5 stars. She managed to pack an unbelievable amount of story, world-building, and character development into 183 pages. It was my first Le Guin but won't be my last. I picked up her short story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters mostly so I could read the two early Earthsea stories and I plan to pick away at the rest of it over the next few weeks.
Randy wrote: "I finished A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and rated it 5 stars. She managed to pack an unbelievable amount of story, world-building, and character developmen..."Le Guin, who died recently, is one of my very favorite authors. I've read two dozen of her books and still going. She was a master at describing a completely fictional yet wholly believable society.
Randy wrote: "I finished A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and rated it 5 stars...."That was one of my favorites by her, although I haven't read it in decades. The second book wasn't great, but I really liked the third. She hadn't written the other 2 when I was reading them, though. The Lathe of Heaven is my all time favorite by her. Never cared for the rest of her books or stories that much. I've tried quite a few over the years, but they just don't work for me.
Jim, I agree. The first and third Wizard of Earthsea books are the best. There is a fourth book called Tehanu, which I didn't care for that much.
Mod
I think I liked the second one best. But it has been 30+ years! I loved the PBS film of lathe of heaven (also 30+ years ago), but have never actually read it.
Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is an all time favorite of mine. The Farthest Shore, the third book, was my favorite of the Earthsea trilogy.
Rosemarie wrote: "Jim, I agree. The first and third Wizard of Earthsea books are the best. There is a fourth book called Tehanu, which I didn't care for that much."I thought there was a 4th & 5th book now added to that trilogy or am I confusing it with the "Wrinkle in Time" trilogy? Well, it doesn't matter, since I won't read any of them. I've had too many disappointments with series that are suddenly added to decades later. The author has changed too much & that tends to ruin what I liked so much in the original. Dorsai, World of Tiers, & Amber are all prime examples.
Ed wrote: "...I loved the PBS film of lathe of heaven (also 30+ years ago), but have never actually read it."That was a great flick, especially considering the budget. I'm pretty sure I watched it before reading the book. It's unfortunate that when they released it on VHS their license for the Beatles tune had run out so it now has a terrible cover band playing it. I reread the book & watched it a few years ago. There was a second movie made in 2002, but LeGuin & others didn't like it, so I've avoided it. I reviewed the book & go into the movies with links here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jim wrote: "Randy wrote: "I finished A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and rated it 5 stars...."That was one of my favorites by her, although I haven't read it in decades..."
I got a volume that collects the first 4 books in the series, which is up to 5 novels and a short story collection. I also bought The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Le Guin's first short story collection which contains the first two Earthsea stories (predating Wizard of Earthsea by a few years) along with some other classics like "The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas."
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck was another 5 star read earlier this week. It's especially timely now with all the talk of the economic divide & the 1%. I'd like to beat my English teachers who managed to turn me off this author with The Red Pony. His writing is fantastic, yet I wouldn't try another book by him for over 2 decades because of early trauma. Anyway, here's my review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jim wrote: "In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck was another 5 star read earlier this week. It's especially timely now with all the talk of the economic divide & the 1%. I'd like to be..."I read The Red Pony in school too. It left no impression whatsoever other than the title and the author.
Fortunately I've read other works by John Steinbeck - everything I could get my hands on, actually. Steinbeck deserves his Pulitzer and Nobel. He is a favorite author of mine. I read The Red Pony again about five years ago. The stories are not bad, but not Steinbeck's best, IMHO.
The Long Valley is a collection of 15 stories, the last four of which are the stories that comprise The Red Pony.
Here's a link to the In Dubious Battle trailer starring James Franco, Nat Wolff, Selena Gomez, Robert Duvall et al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM4hQ...
I started reading the works of John Steinbeck about a year ago and agree with you. He does deserve all the awards he has won. Right now I am reading Travels with Charley, which is a lot of fun.
I was forced to read "The Red Pony" 3 times in school - no other exposure to Steinbeck. Luckily, my youngest boy was assigned Of Mice and Men & he badgered me into reading it. I started it during lunch & took a long one to finish it then & there. It was fantastic. So then I went on to read other books of his. I've really liked them all. I consider it criminal negligence on my teachers' parts, although I don't think I would have enjoyed most of them then as much as I'm enjoying them now. "In Dubious Battle" reminded me a lot of The Jungle but without Upton Sinclair's fanaticism.
I'm slowly getting through Steinbeck's works. I haven't gotten to "Travels With Charlie" yet, but I'll move it up the list. Thanks!
I finished The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden - 3 stars - a "rural fantasy" set in the pre-Russian countryside based on peasant folklore of the time.
Mod
Urban fantasy in a not-very urban town. Perhaps the first fantasy novella with a Brexit theme. If it is problematic to try to exclude human foreigners from jolly old England, then is it really any different to put up a magic wall against "dark" creatures?
I recently finished: 
The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett
4 stars
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
4 stars
I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane
3 stars
Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean
4 stars
The Evolution of Science Fiction
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