Finished Tales from Alternate Earths III , by Alan Smale, et al. (The author of the preface, who may be the editor, although one isn’t specifically listed, is Minoti Vaishnav.) Several of the stories are about worlds in which Rome never fell. My favorite was one of these, “Steel Serpents”, by Ricardo Victoria.
Now I’m reading Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South, by Rick Bragg.
Interesting–I really enjoyed this one, but I do remember that the characters and pacing weren’t exactly the strong points. The images and the ideas were enough to carry this one for me.
Finished The Future Is Yours. It was about a technology that would show events one year in the future…well, no it wasn’t. It was about the two guys who invented it and the start-up of their company and their legal issues and the conflicts in their personal lives, etc. It was all right, but I really wish it had focused more on the potential of knowing the future.
Started this morning on The Fisherman, by John Langan. Supposedly it’s a horror novel, though you would never know it from the cover. I haven’t read this author before, but at just a few pages in, I’m relaxing into his hands. High hopes.
@Catamount - well-written review, thanks!
Finished reading Rediscovery and the Anchor Bible entries on Jonah and Esther. I’m now finishing up Larry Niven’s Scatterbrain. On the side I started re-reading Moby Dick the way I’ve wanted to for a long time – in the footnoted Penguin edition.
On audio I’m reading Clive Cussler and Jack de Brul’s The Sabateur, the most recent addition to the Isaac Bell series.
Weird thing about Scatterbrain – in the introduction he writes about giving credit where it’s due, and the way publishers have screwed over one author of a book by printing the name of a less famous author in smaller print than that of the more famous author. The first example he cites is Dream Park, which Niven co-authored with Steven Barnes. Niven’s name on the cover of the Ace edition was in bigger letters than Barnes’ “Dammit, if my name is on it I did my 80 percent! And so did my collaborator!” Niven writes…
Similarly, on the cover of the British paperback edition of N-Space Biven’s name was in embossed reflective silver and co-author Jerry Pournele’s name is in smaller letters that aren’t embossed or silver.
When the paperback of The Legacy of Heorot got published (which Niven wrote in collaboration with both Pournelle and Barnes), all three names were in typeface the same size.
So the publishers learned their lesson, right? well, no. Scatterbrain is a collection and has stories or excerpts written by Niven alone and in collaboration with Barnes and with POurnelle and with Brenda Cooper. But Niven’s name is the only one on the cover. This is true for the hardcover, paperback, and electronic versions.
If you’re going to make a point of proper cover credits in a book, it looks weird when the cover doesn’t actually give full credit. I’m not blaming Niven – it’s clear in the stories he relates that it was the publisher, not Niven, who was responsible. But it should have bothered someone . Nor is this a unique case. E.E. “Doc” Smith co-authored his first novel, The Skylark of Space, with Lee Hawkins Garby, but she was rarely given credit, especially on the cover. The first cover of Skylark to have her name on it appears, from the isfdb, to be from 2007 (although she appear to have gotten inside credit earlier. But my paperback edition doesn’t list her.)
Finished Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South , by Rick Bragg. It’s a collection of essays, mainly from Southern Living magazine. I enjoyed it, especially the very funny “The Outcast”, about his failures as a fisherman.
Now I’m reading The Seedling Stars, by James Blish. It’s an extended version of his classic short story, “Surface Tension”.
The ideas were fascinating. I think I could have made it all the way through if it had a different narrator. Like Jason or Diane.
Based on a discussion in the Death Pool thread, I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. A fun and excellent read. I only wish I knew about Paulsen’s books when my kids were growing up.
I read Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. I’m grateful that I read reviews of the book going in, because even knowing that it’s been billed as incredibly disturbing, I still felt shocked by the gruesomeness of the book. The torture of young women is a prominent plot point in the book, and the author seems to relish in going into great detail in describing the torture scenes. She kept me turning the pages, and – I don’t know. I think it was a good book overall, a bit predictable but certainly also has you on the edge of your seat. But I wouldn’t say that I’m glad I read it. I didn’t particularly enjoy diving into the detailed, explicit world of torture.
I just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See.
It’s a big,ambitious and risky novel, interweaving 3 stories from different eras, told from the viewpoints of 5 main characters. One of the stories takes place around the 15th century Siege of Constantinople, another around an eco-terrorism incident at a library in modern day Idaho, and the last takes place during a plague outbreak on a generation spaceship in the year 2147.
All these stories are tied together by the common thread of a recovered Ancient Greek manuscript, a comic fable. Doerr makes it work.
It’s an intricately woven and beautifully written book, the best piece of contemporary literature I’ve read in a long time, and I’m very glad I decided to buy it - although once I read the description, I couldn’t resist.
It’s the kind of book you either love or hate. I loved it.
Oh, and @catamount, it’s been a long time since I read Spin and I remember liking the concept but thinking it was a little bit slow-paced. I liked the other two books in the series much better, they are way more imaginative and adventurous.
Finished The Seedling Stars , by James Blish, which isn’t, as I had thought, an extended version of his classic short story, “Surface Tension”. He wrote several short stories in a series called Pantropy, which are collected here. “Surface Tension” is the most famous–and the best, in my opinion, although the others are pretty good, too.
Next up: Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire.
Finished V2, by Robert Harris. In late November 1944, a young female English intelligence officer is part of a team tasked with tracking the V2 rockets currently raining down on London back to their launch site. At the same time, a young German rocket engineer working with the V2s at their launch site on the Dutch coast grows increasingly frustrated as he is forced to toe the party line ever more closely. Wernher von Braun is a main character. Not bad, better than his previous novel, The Second Sleep, but still not up to the quality of his earlier works. That seems to be a common problem among writers.
Next up is The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D., by James Reston Jr. “Last” in the title I believe means “previous,” as the book came out in 1998 to remind everyone that the turn of the coming millennium was not the first one to herald doom in many people’s minds.
I really enjoyed Robert Harris’s Fatherland, one of the best alt-history novels ever. His Selling Hitler, nonfiction about the greed and foolishness surrounding the 1983 Hitler diaries hoax, was also very good. Conclave, a novel about the near-future election of a new Pope, was OK but not great. Don’t think I’ve read any of his other books, although a friend who read his Cicero/Ancient Rome novels liked them.
Just finished The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the Enron scandal, which was very, very detailed and a bit tedious at times, but I certainly know about and understand what happened a lot more clearly now.
Next up: Nothing Ventured by Jeffrey Archer, about an idealistic young London cop investigating art-related crimes.
OH! I’ve read that one! Wasn’t too bad, in my opinion. Very readable for non-history geeks.
Finished War Doctor and The Ashes of London which I posted at the start of the thread a few weeks ago. Both outstanding to read.
Yes, his Cicero/Ancient Rome novels are probably my favorites of his. Also Pompeii, which goes along with his Ancient Rome series.
Just finished a fantastic locked room thriller by Ruth Ware called One By One. Started it about seven hours ago.
I always get a kick from those type of mysteries. Whether it’s in writing or on screen. A lot of people like police procedural and I enjoy it now and again too but the locked room theme is what grips me the most. Where a set of characters in a remote location are in danger. And law enforcement isn’t going to arrive any time soon so they are on their own. These are the books I will happily sit down and read in one go.
Finished Middlegame , by Seanan McGuire. Very good–she uses language so well–but overlong and the protagonists were the two least interesting characters.
Now I’m reading The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens–and Ourselves, by Arik Kershenbaum.
I finished The Fisherman over the weekend and rated it five stars at Goodreads. I was really impressed with the way John Langan writes. He got me connected to his characters in that seemingly effortless way that Stephen King has. From the title and cover art, this doesn’t look at all like a horror novel…I’m glad somebody gave me a heads up!
Started this morning on the much anticipated new YA series, The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne, by the magnificent Jonathan Stroud. It wouldn’t be possible for me to like it as much as I do the Lockwood books, but I’m delighted anyway. @DZedNConfused, you had this one already, right?
The one thing I read by her felt like a Victorian children’s morality tale, except that the moral (child abuse is bad and engenders more violence down the line!) wasn’t a 19th-century moral. The subtlety was about the same level, though. Well written, but good goddamn was it ever didactic.
Anthony Horowitz’s recent Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk has a terrific locked-room puzzle, although it’s not the focus of the book.