What books are we reading at the moment ?

[PeteB99]

Unorthodox Engineers by Colin Kapp. One of the better 60's SF authors. Long out of print, there's now a kindle edition.

[Steph]

I'm a chunk of the way into Tuf Voyaging, a collection of short stories by George RR Martin about a slightly pedantic space captain who flies around the galaxy with his pet cats. He'd probably fit in here.

SLIGHTLY pedantic? Still have a copy somewhere.

[citoyen]

Just finished Catch 22. I first started it as a teenager after a friend raved about it, but never really got into it. Thought I might have better luck as a grown-up but I still found it a bit of a chore. And not as funny as I'd been led to expect, though a few bits did make me chuckle. At least I managed to finish it this time. But kind of wish I'd read some Vonnegut instead. He does it so much better.

Now started on All Quiet On The Orient Express by Magnus Mills. Thought I'd give it a try following recommendations here. So far, it's a much easier read than Catch 22, which is a blessed relief. I read a review somewhere that compared it to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful Of Dust and I think I can already see why. Hope it's as funny as that without being quite so bleak and nasty.

To follow, I've got Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel lined up. Looks interesting. And then if I feel up to it, A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James, which really appeals, though I'm not sure if that's because or in spite of the Booker.

[Dibdib]

I'm a chunk of the way into Tuf Voyaging, a collection of short stories by George RR Martin about a slightly pedantic space captain who flies around the galaxy with his pet cats. He'd probably fit in here.

SLIGHTLY pedantic? Still have a copy somewhere.

Well "slightly" by YACF standards, anyway...

[Nuncio]

At least I managed to finish it this time.

I've had two attempts over the years and have not managed to finish it. I never will now.

I read 'Number 11' by Jonathan Coe over New Year. What a disappointment! I was hoping all the strands were going to come together but it just felt by the end to be a few short stories cobbled together somewhat tenuously.

Now embarking on A Little Life. At 720 pages, I suspect I may be some time. Based on the first 40 pages, I think I'm going to like it. I've got Bleak House lined up after that so that's probably most of my fiction reading this year sorted.

[T42]

The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu.  Unusual. Excellent.

'Twere bloody marvellous, and two sequels to look forward to.

Ian McDonald's Luna: New Moon, my current read, plods in comparison.

[ian]

Just finished Catch 22. I first started it as a teenager after a friend raved about it, but never really got into it. Thought I might have better luck as a grown-up but I still found it a bit of a chore. And not as funny as I'd been led to expect, though a few bits did make me chuckle. At least I managed to finish it this time. But kind of wish I'd read some Vonnegut instead. He does it so much better.

Now started on All Quiet On The Orient Express by Magnus Mills. Thought I'd give it a try following recommendations here. So far, it's a much easier read than Catch 22, which is a blessed relief. I read a review somewhere that compared it to Evelyn Waugh's A Handful Of Dust and I think I can already see why. Hope it's as funny as that without being quite so bleak and nasty.

To follow, I've got Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel lined up. Looks interesting. And then if I feel up to it, A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James, which really appeals, though I'm not sure if that's because or in spite of the Booker.

Catch-22 is another one of those meh books (like the aforementioned To Kill a Mockingbird). A few decent scenes padded out to (thankfully) modest book length. I normally avoid the Bookers, but I did read A Brief History of Seven Killings because it was on the rack in the train station (with notable exception like me, there are evidently some very erudite commuters around here). On the plus side, the characterisation is good in places (but in others it blurs, particularly all the male gangsters, in places you have to switch back and forth to figure out who we are today), the vernacular not too hard to get to grips with, but it goes on and on and I got a bit bored of the periodic I done some coke and I done some killing and oh how I lament (continue for another 20 dense pages). The overall narrative is contrived enough to bodge it together but it's mostly a vehicle for the individual parts and the result seems a bit disjointed (while the beginning in Jamaica is good, it wanders in later sections and to be honest, there's entire sections and characters that would have been better skipped). The violence is often discomfiting and I confess I skimmed a few sections.

Probably a tour de force, god knows I couldn't write anything that complicated or that well, but the kind of book that seemed aimed at 'literature' prizes rather than a good read. Currently available on the East Grinstead line.

I enjoyed Station Eleven more.

[Legs]

Someone sent us wossname's latest in his Shardik series, the ones about the lawyer in Henry VIII's time. Lamentation. It's bloody heavy to hold. Plods, too: our hero just got a pea smeared on his shirt by an infant. Had to keep the trinitrin handy when I was reading that bit.

My sister-in-law gave me Dissolution (which I'm reading and enjoying) and one other (I think Revelation?) in Dead Tree Format for Christmas.  I picked up Dissolution after I ran aground with David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and am enjoying it.  JdZ wasn't terrible and will probably be resumed at a later date (by which time I'll be totally confused with all the Dutch and Japanese characters!).

[citoyen]

Catch-22 is another one of those meh books (like the aforementioned To Kill a Mockingbird). A few decent scenes padded out to (thankfully) modest book length.

I wouldn't call 544 pages modest - unless you're comparing it to Trollope or Dumas.

[ian]

Blimey, was it that long? For some reason I thought it was shorter. It's been many years since I read it. I only remember the meh.

Currently continuing the David Mitchell theme with Black Swan Green. Given my age, I have to give a wry nod to the all the levered references to crispy pancakes, baked alaska, and Raleigh Choppers which makes it the distilled essence of my childhood, a sort of fuming, concentrated nostalgia. No idea where it's going – it's all a bit Adrian Mole at the moment – mind you I only started reading yesterday evening and it made me stay awake too late. Such is the pungency of a 1980s childhood. Ah the trauma of team selection in PE (definitive bottom quartile, but always before Donkey Derbyshire and his perennially effluvial nostrils).

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Henry James - The Turn of the Screw.

Sheesh, this governess is a drama llama.

[citoyen]

I read it on Kindle so page numbers don't mean much, but the current print edition is 544 pages. It felt much longer - I expect it's very small type. According to the internet, it's about 174,000 words, which makes it 35,000 words longer than A Tale Of Two Cities and Moll Flanders, neither of which are by authors known for being concise (ETA: although further research suggests ATOTC is very short by Dickens standards). And it's almost twice as long as 1984, which isn't exactly a pamphlet. Slaughterhouse Five comes in under 50,000 words.

it's all a bit Adrian Mole at the moment

Yes, first half is very Adrian Mole. Second half is... different. In a good way.

[ian]

I'm pretty sure my sci-fi-for-a-bet effort comes in at close to a half million words, so best I don't criticise... Mind you, that was partly the purpose of the bet (though my ramblings about Jess the vampire aren't brief). But if you've read my rubbish here, you'll have noted that I have yet to be blessed with conciseness. I write them to keep my wife occupied during her long commute to the last station on the line. She should have read the small print footnotes I added to our extended marriage vows.

For that matter, A Brief History of Seven Killings isn't Brief and there's far more than Seven Killings.

[T42]

Catch-22 is another one of those meh books (like the aforementioned To Kill a Mockingbird). A few decent scenes padded out to (thankfully) modest book length.

I wouldn't call 544 pages modest - unless you're comparing it to Trollope or Dumas.

I read it in the 60s when Vietnam was just getting under way.  Satirizing Unca Sam's Army after a steady diet of John Wayne & Bob Mitchum was a lot fresher back then.  Old hat now.  I still enjoy M.A.S.H. though.

[Mr Larrington]

Henry James - The Turn of the Screw.

Sheesh, this governess is a drama llama.

Miss von Brandenburg read it not long ago; she was not very complimentary about it.  And she had to keep looking words up in the dictionary, which she claims not to have had to do with anything she's read in English in about twenty years.

[Steph]

She hasn't read any of Mr S Donaldson's work, then. One of the very few times I have actually put a book down and said "This is bollocks, and pretentious bollocks, and it goes on for HOW MANY PAGES?"

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Henry James - The Turn of the Screw.

Sheesh, this governess is a drama llama.

Miss von Brandenburg read it not long ago; she was not very complimentary about it.  And she had to keep looking words up in the dictionary, which she claims not to have had to do with anything she's read in English in about twenty years.

It's not the words so much as the sentence construction. Why use one word when forty-seven will do?

[Mr Larrington]

Mick Wall's Love Becomes A Funeral Pyre, being a biography of The Doors.  Early doors yet ha ha but the author seems to have a bit of a downer on Ray Manzarek and I'm only on page 41.

Jim Morrison was at least seven of the BRITISH Army's eleven officially recognised types of fucking idiot.

[Mr Larrington]

The Sandman ~ "Lars Kepler".  Fourth of the Joona Linna Scandicrimething series.  After the first two chapters I was so convinced that I'd read this before that I actually got out of bed to search for the second copy, but there isn't one.  Must have been sneak preview chapters in the previous volume.

[T42]

Not the Neil Gaiman thing then.

[ian]

Henry James - The Turn of the Screw.

Sheesh, this governess is a drama llama.

Miss von Brandenburg read it not long ago; she was not very complimentary about it.  And she had to keep looking words up in the dictionary, which she claims not to have had to do with anything she's read in English in about twenty years.

It's not the words so much as the sentence construction. Why use one word when forty-seven will do?

Dickens wrote sentences that went on for longer than Queen Victoria. Fielding could tot up a brace of eighty word plus sentences before breakfast. But the king was Mark Twain, who busts out a 236 whammy in Huckleberry Finn, temporarily exhausting the US noun supply. One of the biggest industries in the late Victorian period was comma manufacture.

[Riggers]

As above, I was also going to include Wilkie Collins, for his verbosity, but in delving for evidence to support this, came across this excerpt from A Woman in White, which is beautiful:

“Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.”

So I retract my initial condemnation! Carry on.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I've finished The Turn of the Screw. What a load of bollocks. That governess needs a good shaking and a talking-to.

[tiermat]

I am currently reading "How to Fail at Almost Everything" by Scott Adams, the Dilbert bloke.

It's ok, and will fill the void whilst I wait for my Max Camara books to arrive*

*I should have ordered them earlier, as the first is not due until today, whilst I am away from home, and they appear to be arriving in completely the wrong order, with the first book arriving last!

[ian]

I've finished The Turn of the Screw. What a load of bollocks. That governess needs a good shaking and a talking-to.

I misread that as 'shagging.' That would have been an entirely different book.

In other news, when I returned my copy of A Brief History of Seven Killings to the train station, the rack is now blessed by three volumes of the 50 Shades series (I'm distressed enough to find there's three, I daren't Google for more). I retract my comments on the erudition of East Grinstead line commuters.