I’ve just finished Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to say why I liked it.
I also recently read Infovore’s http://www.amazon.com/Threshold-Alastair-Stone-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B00D55MG2C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1457375056&sr=8-2&keywords=the+threshold.
Here you go:
I’ve read other Annotated editions done by Michael Patrick Hearn. His Christmas Carol and The Wizard of Oz are excellent.
Just finished reading Vol. 1 of Galactic Empires from 1976, edited by Brian Aldiss. I’d read about it recently, then a day later came across a copy, and had to pick it up. I remember seeing it on the shelves when the paperback came out in 1979. The publication got some ery good reviews.
It’s a quick and fun read, but I have to gripe about it. The book ostensibly gives several views of Galactic Empires, sort of like snapshots taken from the lifetime of such an improbable institution. Most of the stories are from the early 1950s.
But the stories aren’t as advertised. Most aren’t about Galactic Empires at all. Some are simply aspects of Galactic Confederations, which isn’t the same thing. I’ve read a number of older, interesting SF stories, but they aren’t what I was promised.
I had a similar feeling when I read the stories in the anthology The Fall of Cthulhu. The premise was that Lovecraft’s immortal, seemingly undefeatable Elder God was to be somehow thwarted in the stories in that volume. Only almost none of them did show that. They were mostly Lovecraft pastiches, but not about how his Superbeing got circumvented – which was supposed to be the point.
I’m not sure if I’ll track down a copy of Vol. II of Galactic Empires now.
On to Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal, about a space station that is home to several 1950s-style pregnant Unwed Mothers. Hence the title. Pepper Mill liked it.
Thanks! I’ll look into it.
Yes. The Apollo 11 astronauts took a small fragment of original Flyer wing fabric with them to the Moon; it’s now on display in the Flyer gallery at the NASM.
A photographer on the Outer Banks also took a picture of the Wright Memorial in Kitty Hawk with the Moon overhead at the exact moment of Armstrong’s “one small step.”
Any Heinlein “–All You Zombies–” references?
Don’t know. Just started it. But I doubt it. This book has a very light tone.
I’ve given up on Pnin. I gave it 50 pages but it just wasn’t doing anything for me. I just found it dreadfully boring. Nothing of any real incident happened in the first 50 pages, and given that the entire book is only 160 pages, that’s quite an indictment. It just seems to be the story of an elderly nerd bumbling through his boring life. I’d never have guessed the first book I gave up on this year would be a Nabokov, but there you go.
I’ve finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and really enjoyed it. It’s a thoroughly madcap adventure story about a high-stakes treasure hunt through a virtual world. It’s very readable and action packed, well characterised, and very well imagined. It reminded me a little of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I don’t think it’s as good as Snow Crash, but it’s still very good, and if you liked Snow Crash you’ll probably enjoy it. I’d give it four stars out of five.
Next up, a classic ghost story, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. I can’t wait!
If you haven’t read her Jackson Brodie novels, get thee to a book store.
I recently finished reading Matt Ruff’s most recent novel, Lovecraft Country. I was very dispapointed in The Mirage, his last one, but this was a great return to form. Set in the 1950s, an episodically follows the family of Atticus Finch, a black Korean War veteran, as he discovers his connection to a vaguely Lovecraftian cult. No horrible entities from beyond spacetime, really, but a somewhat chilling investigation of racism, a very passable horror story, and overall good fun. I’m recommending this one.
I also finished James Holland’s The War in the West: Germany Ascendant. I have fixed feelings about this. It’s most very-well written, engaging, and combines the ground level view with interesting accounts and evaluations of strategy and politics. I’m not sure about its currentness in all aspects, though: Holland’s very down on the Italians, which I think is more an artifact of British sources than necessarily measured consideration (especially with regard to the Italian Navy); and he’s really not good at the technical naval stuff (the operational is fine). And there’s the occasional writing issue that I don’t think needed to have slipped somebody’s attention. Just from memory, in describing the Bismarck chase, he writes something like “Of course, the Royal Navy sent Hood and Prince of Wales to sink her,” without having mentioned either ship before. This happens a couple of times, where the sense (of course, the Royal Navy sent SOMETHING), but the writing doesn’t say that. A minor point, perhaps.
Right now, I’m reading Barry Eichengreen’s Hall of Mirrors, a study comparing the Great Depression and the Great Recession and the historical lessons rightly and wrongly drawn. Promising, if a bit dense.
I’m also reading Bill W. Czolgosz’sAdventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim, which promises to wear thin quickly, I’m afraid. Well. You can’t always get lucky with the zombie mashups.
Oh good! It’s waiting for me at the library.
I enjoyed it too, although I hadn’t expected the break at the end of the first episode.
Finally finished my old copy of Monday Begins on Saturday by the Strugatsky Brothers, which was absurd fun, and am now starting on Fold by Peter Clines, which should be a faster read! Teleportation is discovered, but maybe there’s a catch?
Finished Arcadia, by Ian Pears. It was awesome. Highly recommended! Perhaps the best take on time travel storytelling I’ve ever read.
Arcadia was one of my favourite books last year!
Apparently he created an app for it too, although I’ve not used it. There’s an interesting article here…
So, do you think that the future society was the creation of the other ‘Inkling’ who was writing about his perfect future society, as Arcadia was based on the fantasy book? I assume it was but I don’t think he comes out and says so directly.
An… interesting name for that character!
Heh good question. I was asking myself the same.
[spoiler] I assumed it was. Though I think this was a plot-line that maybe got dropped.
There was no road-map as to how the dystopian future was created out of the other “Inkling”'s story.
Indeed, if I’m following the plot-lines correctly, the dystopian future never actually existed at all - it wiped itself out, by sending a bomb back into the past and creating a nuclear war! It was, in effect, replaced. [/spoiler]
As for the app - I never even knew it existed. Now, I’ll have to look it up.
I added Arcadia to my list of books to read over the weekend, and now I’m going to bump it up the priority list a bit. I’m also going to have to remember to come back and look at those spoiler boxes later!
Chefguy, I have read Case Histories. I’ll have to revisit Jackson Brodie. I was not terribly impressed with the BBC production, sadly.
Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen. I’m really annoyed at myself for reading these books out of sequence.
My bad, sorry-- Atticus, yes, but not Finch. Still, the reference is clear. I’m not quite sure what to make of it, truth be told.
I’m reading book 6 of Taylor Anderson’s Destroyermen series. It’s one of the best sci-fi epics I’ve ever read. Both of my kids are working thru the series as well.
Short summary: Strange electrical storm transports a WWII destroyer and crew to an alternate universe/earth. Charts are still accurate, but evolution has run a radically different course on their “new” Earth. There are 10 books (so far).
Have lately read Pied Piper by Nevil Shute (came upon it while staying with relatives who have a house chock-full of books of all kinds). Started it with mild curiosity, but no great hopes – my experience of Shute has been: a few books which I rate as good, but rather more which I’ve found unreadable: simplistic, and cringe-makingly cloying. PP is set at the time of the fall of France in 1940: recounts the experiences of a group of people from Allied nations (mostly children, led by an elderly British guy) trying to make their way through the chaos of France collapsing under German invasion, in the hope of getting out and reaching Britain.
Getting the picture that this was what the book was about, I was expecting it to strike me as revoltingly mawkish, and that I’d abandon it and put it aside in disgust after a very few chapters. Was pleasantly surprised to find it moving and gripping, but written in a cool and restrained tone: I experienced it as a great read. Just occasionally, old Nevil managed to produce something which wasn’t crap.