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What Else Are You Reading?
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What else are you reading - June 2022
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Ha. I know the year has been going by quick, but I think you might be a month early on that one Rob. ;-)
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Picked up Neal Asher's "Cowl" during a low period in the TBR. It had low ratings, which puzzled me at first. The MC is a teenage prostitute, about which, bleah. Apparently that is just fine in-story so long as you pay the associated taxes. Double bleah, but could be dystopian commentary. In any event I didn't think that was enough by itself to lead to the low ratings.There follows some competent time travel stuff. It's self indulgent as the MC visits major historic events. And then...we get into a crosstime war that makes so little sense I couldn't follow it. So that would be why. At the end even with all the reveals I didn't understand. If anyone has read "Cowl" and knows what is supposed to have happened, feel free!
Following that, I desperately needed something with a plot. Picked up Greg Bear's Forge of God. That's despite it being about a subject I don't particularly like, destruction of Earth. Given the author and subject matter I knew it would be full of hard SF concepts. Welp, true. They even have a Larry Niven stand-in, "Laurence Van Cott."Forge of God has an actual plot, an understandable cast of characters and even a few twists along the way. Not great, but fit what I needed at the time.
There's a sequel that doesn't really match the first book. I would have gone direct to that but it is out at LAPL. Have tagged it for future read. Instead I picked another Bear book, War Dogs, about fighting an ET incursion on Mars. Competent hard SF.
June will be a good month for me. New book from Michael J. Sullivan on the 7th, Farilane. Then I picked Senlin Ascends from Jenny's book list. It is a book I been planning to read for at least 6 years. Then on the 28th Robert Jackson Bennett Locklands, 3rd and final book in the fabulous Founders series . Plus 2nd book in the new series by Anthony Ryan The Martyr gets released on the same day. I have notice lately when a new book is released in a series sometimes the previous books go on sale.
Just started Art History For Dummies. Art is a big hole in my education so I'm trying to fill it, at least a little.Also, I just checked out Rosebud by Paul Cornell from the library. Always excited to start one of his books. In this case, a novella.
I've been on a bit of a Tanith Lee kick, so just started The Dragon Hoard, a short YA novel that might actually have been her first?
Just finished Cyrion, the last of my current spate of Tanith Lee, and am starting The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison.
I’m about to read a couple of Rivers of London graphic novels, Rivers of London: Black Mould and Rivers of London: Detective Stories as a sort of palate cleanser between two history books: Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire and my “official” June read, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad.
I finished the third book in the Tales of the Flat Earth series 
Delusion's Master by Tanith Lee
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and I started reading the third book in what has become one of my all-time favorite Fantasy series
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
I'm about a third of the way through Across the Green Grass Fields which I'm enjoying quite a bit. I'm also working on The Revolution That Wasn't: Gamestop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors.
I got Machinehood a little late from the library so I may dive into that next or I may dive into the treasure trove of books I just got in the mail. Cashed in some giftcards to get:
The Dharma Bums
Collected Poems 1947-1997 (Ginsberg)
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
Ten Days that Shook the World
Stand on Zanzibar
I got Machinehood a little late from the library so I may dive into that next or I may dive into the treasure trove of books I just got in the mail. Cashed in some giftcards to get:
The Dharma Bums
Collected Poems 1947-1997 (Ginsberg)
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories
Ten Days that Shook the World
Stand on Zanzibar
Today I listened to another story in Heroic Hearts & started The Scavenger Door (Finder Chronicles #3)!
Just finished Suzanne Palmer's bot novelette, Bots of the Lost Ark (https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palm...), and now starting Rebecca Roanhorse's Fevered Star. I liked the first book quite a bit because of the worldbuilding so hopefully this one is at least as enjoyable. If not, then I have Ben Aaronovitch's latest Peter Grant book Amongst Our Weapons ready.
I finished the latest Rivers of London novel, Amongst Our Weapons. A decent addition to the series, probably more important for the broader story arc than for the actual case that features in this book. (view spoiler)Next up is The Kaiju Preservation Society. So far, a very easy going sort of read.
Picked up Heroic Hearts through the library. It's listed as by "Jim Butcher." There's actually only one story in this anthology by him. I thought it was all his stories. Anyhoo, no big loss as I didn't pay for it. It's all short stories of people acting, well, heroically. Butcher's story is a side-character Dresden story. Twenty pages. Fun enough, but then the rest of the book. The stories are all fairly decent. They seem to come from established universes which I know nothing about. The authors are mostly popular ones with NY Times or other bestselling credentials. It's mostly shifter and vampire based, some other supernatural. I feel like the authors are all cribbing off Gail Carriger. Or maybe they're all part of the same trend but Carriger is the only one I read in that subgenre.
I mostly read SF and Fantasy has to be exceptional to keep me interested. Tolkien, definitely in there. Butcher, yep. Donaldson, high quality. McCaffrey, yes, from before she decided Pern was SF. These authors? Not so much. I didn't mind finishing out the book but am not motivated to seek out more from these authors.
Before that I had a mini binge of Greg Bear. I just fell into it and actually, five books is plenty. I just kinda kept going in series' since I had a modest hole in my TBR.Began with Forge of God since I had gotten sick of plotless books and this one definitely had a plot: Aliens enter the solar system and destroy Earth. Okay, not my favorite SFnal concept but I can be promised a lot of hard sf ideas. And yes, they're in there. In fact it feels like a takeoff on Brin's "Earth" but actually that book came later. Arguably Brin wanted to do a similar take where the Earth survived.
From that book, nothing compelling in the TBR list so I went on to a different Bear trilogy: War Dogs. This has to do with aliens invading the solar system and other aliens helping us fight them off. Or so it seems. Most of the action takes place on Mars and Bear does a credible job with that. There's also a sideways romance story that I found well done. I recall thinking, "If the sequels handle this halfway decently they'll be worth reading."
Well, they didn't. The romance got thrown away in the second book in a soul-deadening fashion. There's "reveal" after "reveal" that mostly left me nauseated. Book 2 is the flight to Saturn and its moons, and Book 3 is Bears onanistic trip to the way-out solar system and theoretical planets that could be out there. Along the way Bear tries to give humanity a pass for its warlike past. Nah, we really are that violent all on our own.
So War Dogs, very much an unrecommend despite a good first book. Then the second book in the Forge of God series came in, Anvil of Stars. Started off meh but got better. This one is heavily on the physics side, almost as much as a Reynolds Revelation Space book. There's some interesting character studies including how even the best of us can be led astray. Also what kind of vicious personality it takes to succeed in war. Even in a just war it takes a certain selfishness to get the job done.
All in all I found it unhopeful even if well written. Niven manages to be both technologically sophisticated and inspiring even within dystopian landscapes. For me he's the standard. Bear did not reach it. Not a terrible book but only adequate instead of great.
I finished a classic Sci-Fi novel from the Pulp Era:
Wasp by Eric Frank Russell
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Finished Redshift Rendezvous by John E. Stith. It's a theory-heavy book where hyperspace-traveling ships experience light moving much more slowly than normal. On the lower decks it's possibly to accelerate to near the speed of light. Time delay in vision and red/blue shift are common plot occurrences. The book gets into a murder mystery fairly early, followed by hijackers and then a Big Deep Mystery. All standard tropes. In one sense I felt like I was in a real version of the bit where, after a classic book opening, you add the phrase "and then the murders began."
There's silly justifications along the way. To survive on the ship you have to wear a lifebelt that magically lets your body exist at normal speed. Why not just extend that field to the whole ship? "Too expensive." Er, okay. Well, if Star Trek can get away with silly warp or sub light drives, why not. (I'm still mad that Photon Torpedoes turned out NOT to be made of light.)
One major plot point would be left undeveloped except that the MC decides to take an arbitrary action because plot. Eh, why not.
The book stays true to its premise throughout and the final action uses the slowed-light concept. Some blatant tropes along the way but interesting enough.
Around the time of the past ten or so books I read two nonfiction ones.First up, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis. This was recommended during a Twitter discussion of the expression of masculinity as we get older. There's interesting parts to the book, but this really isn't in it.
The book is presented as a Jungian framework. I love Carl Jung and have read a good chunk of his collected works along with the more popular books. The author may be trained by a Jungian institute, but I saw precious little Jung in this book.
The author seems to be greatly overinterpreting his own personal journey, in which he made a career change to a Jungian analyst at about the age of 40. Among his "great insights" is that goals change as you get older. Er, really? Neeeever would have guessed. And then he calls the change the "Middle Passage" which I find to be just atrociously inappropriate.
Glossing over the many anecdotes that populate self-help books, he does have one worthwhile reminder. That's to be fully present in your life. You may not be able to have the health and long life that you would want. Enjoy the now.
I'm working through the Demon Cycle series but find myself liking it less as I go. Characters are behaving completely different than introduced in an amazingly quick time. I also find it hard that terrible things happen to characters who then become friends/allies with people who do the exact same thing all the time. I'll finish it, but not with the excitement I had after book one.
Then, Nature Wants Us to Be Fat by Richard Johnson. Yet another in a long line of interesting but not compelling books delving into metabolism. Dr. Fung killed it with The Obesity Code and as a result I'll read others to see what they have to say. I'm glad that other doctors continue to chip away at the issue, but none have had a fraction of Dr. Fung's effect. In this book the author gets into the fructose effect. It seems that fructose signals our cells to store fat. It's worse in liquid form, so all that high fructose corn syrup is a major reason for the obesity epidemic.
Also, as a joy, even eating regular sugar can trigger our own bodies to make fructose! Well, it all led to survival in the past as we stored fat to get through lean times. We just don't need it now.
It's all interesting in an academic sense, but the author doesn't have any real suggestions for overweight people. It's all prospective for future medications. He suggests a diet, which I already know won't work for me. Dr. Fung got that dead right for people in my situation (diabetic, overweight) and right now, other doctors are just footnotes.
The reasons behind obesity are by no means fully understood so I'm glad that others keep chipping away at it. But this book was not compelling in useful advice.
I'm just starting Moon Over Soho, after thoroughly enjoying Midnight Riot. I was initially put off by the book blurb for MR, but once I got into it, it was great fun. Can't wait to try the other Rivers of London books.
House of HallowAbsolutely devoured this book. It was so good! It's been a very very very very long time since a book gripped me and I couldn't stop reading it. A little creepy, but not too scary.
Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "I'm almost done with Ninth House & I'm digging it!"I really liked this one. A second one is scheduled for Jan 2023, Hell Bent.
I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but I'm hunting for a book. I can't remember the author or title, and I failed to write it down!!!I read a review of a book this past week. It is either a RECENT release, or not YET released. It does NOT appear to be a TOR or BAEN title, as I've checked both their sites.
The main characters are 1) a telepath, deemed to be highly dangerous by his people. 2) a soldier, with some sort of capability to control the telepath. They are to be BONDED permanently, which will make the telepath subservient to the other man. They fake the bonding because guy2 is convinced the bonding is evil and doesn't want to do it. They then have to escape when something goes wrong.
Anyone recognize this?
Gillian wrote: "I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but I'm hunting for a book. I can't remember the author or title, and I failed to write it down!!!"You may be able to find it in your browser history. Also, there is a group called "What's the Name of That Book" here in Goodreads that might help, if noone else here can https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Also this thread should be locked. Cuz it's July.
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The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
Ninth House (other topics)Hell Bent (other topics)
Ninth House (other topics)
House of Hollow (other topics)
Midnight Riot (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Eric Frank Russell (other topics)E.R. Eddison (other topics)
Ursula K. Le Guin (other topics)
Tanith Lee (other topics)
Tanith Lee (other topics)
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Halfway through 2022. How will you be kicking off the second half?We're 5/12ths through 2022. How will you be kicking off the last 7/12ths?