What books are we reading at the moment ?

[Mr Larrington]

Having rapidly disposed of Stephen King's “Holly” while moggie-minding last week it's time for his half-as-thick-again “Fairy Tale”.

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The former was pleasingly free from supernatural silliness and could, if relocated to Furryboottoon, easily have been written by Stuart MacBride such is its level of nastiness

[Canardly]

The Crystal Cave (again) Mary Stewart.

[SoreTween]

I read Steven Gould's novel Jumper, which was better than I expected, and then binge read the two sequels, Reflex and Impulse, which I think were even better.

Even though all three novels are based upon the basic concept of teleportation, the second and third add in some entirely new twists and perspectives. I don't think they're necessarily great works of literature, but they appear well written to me, and I enjoyed the storylines and originality a great deal. I'm definitely going to read the fourth novel in the series, and then probably be annoyed that there's not a fifth one yet!

If you like pulp science-fiction, fantasy, or even just original concepts, I'd recommend them.

I think I watched the film, or at least some of it, but as I recall it wasn't as good as the books (or as memorable!)

I enjoyed those, in a YA kind of way.  Science fiction done right, in that it takes one macguffin (humans who can teleport) and explores its implications without ever trying to explain how it works.  (I particularly liked the way that the different people have very different ways of establishing their destination.)  Lovely in places, silly in others.  I expect you'll enjoy Exo.

The film, on the other hand, was shite.  One of the books is an attempt to redeem it by means of a coherent back-story, and is best considered not to be part of the series.


ETA: I discovered a TV adaptation of Impulse.  This was a lot less shit than the Jumper film, though only loosely follows the book.  The implications of teleportation takes a back seat to the sexual assault trauma storyline (which is very well done - I assume Gould's influence), and it got cancelled after the second season.

Encouraged by these reviews I've read the (4 book) set.  I did get a bit bored by Exo.  The continuous action of the first is not sustainable without becoming bumwad but really, Exo contains a mahoosive resolution to a couple of story lines crammed into the last 10 pages.  The 95% of pages leading up to it are interesting in their own stead but so unrelated to the ongoing threads.  Then crash bang wallop 5 minutes at the typewriter just short of the end credits and decades of back story / threat neatly resolved.  The only other disappointment was in book 2:

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Millie's rope anchor failing could not have been more predictable.  Nor could it have been more complete bolx.  Rock anchors don't fail at a mere 10 years old if installed properly and if there's one trait about Davy built up and up and up it is his care and attention to detail.  He'd do what 10,000 'murican climbers before him have done, if in doubt drill and resin fix another point 6 fixing points.

Yet book 2 created an obvious (to me) avenue to be explored, maybe it will be in the next.

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Millie acquired or discovered her ability by virtue of being the person, next to Davy, most experienced in jumping.  Not by blood inheritance like Cent, just experience.  I imagined Ms Pope or one of the other baddies capturing any one of them and by some kind of new vagus nerve dastardly device getting 'ported round the globe for a few months, miraculously surviving their trauma trigger moment leading to a good jumper vs bad jumper story arc.
Which the Rice's win.  In book 6 after a crushing defeat at the end of 5.

[L CC]

No1Daughter has been rewatching The Expanse and I discovered I had Leviathan Wakes in my Audible Library. It's good. Now on book 2.

[T42]

Timescape by Gregory Benford, a 1980 novel about communication across time by means of tachyons. It's bloody good but of course full of off-target foresights* about the future.  But funnily enough he does mention that in 1937 the US Dept. of the Interior made a thorough prediction of future trends and completely missed atomic energy, computers, radar, antibiotics and WW2.  Still, despite the "anachronisms", lots of fascinating fictional physics and organic chemistry, the latter of which had better not come true but wouldn't be at all surprising.

* Hell, Fred Hoyle had his protagonists using room-temperature semiconductors in 1964.

[redshift]

The Crystal Cave (again) Mary Stewart.

The only Merlin worth the candle.

[T42]

Quartered Safe Out Here, George Macdonald Fraser's 1993 memoir of his time fighting the Japanese in Burma in 1945. Very absorbing, salted with <splort!> moments.  Highly recommended if you can stomach statements such as "I first smelt Jap..." without getting all latter-day PC.

[redshift]

Quartered Safe Out Here, George Macdonald Fraser's 1993 memoir of his time fighting the Japanese in Burma in 1945. Very absorbing, salted with <splort!> moments.  Highly recommended if you can stomach statements such as "I first smelt Jap..." without getting all latter-day PC.

That's a good book, I haven't read that one in years. As for political correctness, he never struck me as someone afraid of language, and he did write Flashman.  Oh, and the Michael York Musketeers films were him as well.

[Mr Larrington]

A Traveller's Year: 365 Days Of Travel Writing In Diaries, Journals And Letters, compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Rennison.  A thumping great breeze block of a bok which Miss von Brandenburg gave me for Xmas/birthday a Several of years ago and has only just crawled out of the “to read” pile.  Mostly Victorian- and Edwardian-era chumps so far, but then I've only reached January 9th and Ernest Shackleton failing to reach the East South Pole.  Mott The Hoople's Ian Hunter appears in it, thobut.

[Canardly]

The Truth Behind The Irish Famine. Jerry Mulvihill.

Incredible. Should be required reading in British schools.

[sg37409]

Just finished Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart.  Excellent. Less bleak than Shuggie Bain (though still very bleak at times) and more enjoyable all the way through.  I loved it

[fd3]

Based on recommendations on this forum I finished "the unbearable lightness of being in Aberystwyth", "Jumper" and am now reading "leviathan wakes".

[Redlight]

Anyone interested in reading a book that hasn't yet been published?

I'm looking for a handful of people who have a good knowledge of bike racing and would be willing to read the near-final draft of my novel and (gently) let me know if I've made any mistakes in my accounts of racing in the 1960s-70s.

The story isn't about cycle sport as such - it's actually about searching for truth and then being unsure how to respond when it's found - but several of the principal characters were pro cyclists and so there are several chapters that feature detailed accounts of imaginary races, either to progress the plot or illustrate their characters.

I've followed races and read numerous biographies and other books about racing, but I've never raced myself. So, while I've tried to reflect what I think goes on in the peloton and off the bike, my nightmare is that I'm published and a week later somebody pops up to point out a glaring trivial mistake (e.g. "everyone knows that Belgian riders in the 1970s NEVER wore white socks") that undermines the entire book's credibility.

It's a chunky book - 115,000 words (a typical paperback is about 90,000) but I've been told by those who've already read it that it's a page-turner and the descriptions of races are 'more interesting than expected'. It's also been longlisted for a number of 'first novel' awards. I'm afraid all I can offer by way of recompense is my thanks, a credit in the published book and (of course) a free copy! But you will at least know the ending before everyone else 

If you're interested, please DM me or reply here, as you prefer. I can send it as a standard PDF or in a larger type version that works better on Kindles.

Thanks
Rob

[T42]

Just finished Gregory Benford's 2017 novel The Berlin Project.  Very unusual, given that it's about the physics and engineering of the Manhattan Project, that he himself is a physicist who understands all the scientific issues and who knew and studied under some of the people who worked on the Hiroshima bomb, many of whom figure in the book.  In fact, all the principal characters, with one not very significant exception, existed; and the protagonist, involved with the project since before it had a name, not only existed but was his father-in-law.

I'm glad to have read it: it puts several things, and indeed several people, in a very different light.

[fimm]

Nothing.

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Full title "Nothing: from absolute zero to cosmic oblivion - amazing insights into nothingness."
It's a New Scientist book - a collection of articles/essays from the magazine. It's interesting without being heavy going. So far I've read about various kinds of vacuums, the placebo effect (and its evil twin the nocebo effect), and the history of the number 0, among other things.

[Canardly]

Master and commander. Patrick O'Brien

[rafletcher]

Garry Disher's latest "The Way it is Now".  Crime novel set around the Melbourne suburbs. He's relatively newly popular in the UK (perhaps the Jane Harper / Chris Hammer influence) but writes well. Unfortunately (for me) what of his back catalogue is held by our library is predominantly audiobooks.

[ravenbait]

Just started The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley. Starveacre was okay, but I wouldn't agree with the hype. Hoping for something a bit more.

Sam

[hubner]

I've started Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.

[Mr Larrington]

Just started The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley. Starveacre was okay, but I wouldn't agree with the hype. Hoping for something a bit more.

Sam

Miss von Brandenburg and Professor Larrington both endorse it; the latter was on some author panel thing at Foyles alongside Mr Hurley when “The Loney” was first published.

[Legs]

Having rapidly disposed of Stephen King's “Holly” while moggie-minding last week it's time for his half-as-thick-again “Fairy Tale”.

(click to show/hide)

The former was pleasingly free from supernatural silliness and could, if relocated to Furryboottoon, easily have been written by Stuart MacBride such is its level of nastiness

I'm stuck in the middle of Fairy Tale.  I want to finish it so that I can move on to something different, but, faced with the choice of picking it up in the evenings or turning over and falling asleep, I'm finding that sleep is winning hands-down.

[Regulator]

I've just finished re-reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time to Keep Silence.  It's a very thin book but very thought provoking.

I'm also re-reading Jose Saramago's Journey to Portugal.

[Kim]

I'm slowly working my way through An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong.  It's not the sort of book you can read while tired, and the prolific footnotes are a bit of a pain in FBReader.

It's all about the sort of perspective you get from living with a barakta (who, as it happens, asked my why the infrared LEDs on her monitor were flashing in her face earlier^[1]), but with far more dimensions.  Contains naked mole rats or traces of naked mole rats.


_{[1] It's got a thing that detects whether there's someone sat in front of it.  I was astounded that she could see the IR well enough to be annoyed by it.}

[Peter]

Have you ever read about Temple Grandin, Kim?

[Kim]

I'm certainly aware of her (occupational hazard of knowing autistic people whose special interest is autism).  I think there was a documentary at some point...