What books are we reading at the moment ?

[ian]

I read the first 50 pages last night I didn't suffer any kind of CCM reaction. I confess it's quite nicely written – I generally can't handle the sweaty, overwrought prose. I will ask Jess to rate it at the end. I hope she doesn't have to kill David Mitchell. I quite liked Peep Show.

[T42]

I like this review of The Bone Clocks - does a good job of picking out both what's good about it and its flaws - but be warned, it contains lots of SPOILERS...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/08/soul-cycle

It is flawed, I'll admit that, but I still loved it. The big question is whether or not all this dazzling storytelling amounts to anything worth saying. Maybe, maybe not, but the corollary question is: does it really matter if it doesn't?

Read that a while back.  A right touch of the Dennis Wheatleys at times, but tremendously enjoyable - which is what fiction is about for me.

Wife bought me an early PKD, Martian Timeslip, a while back.  Despite his being practically deified among SF authors I couldn't read it; it's just too stale.

[L CC]

Do you work for Audible, citoyen? It's their deal of the day @ £3.49 (and in My Library now)

[citoyen]

Do you work for Audible, citoyen? It's their deal of the day @ £3.49 (and in My Library now)

No, but maybe I should - making money out of liking stuff is a good wheeze.

[mark]

Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam.

As the title says, it's the story of the war in Vietnam from the (North) Vietnamese perspective.

[Mr Larrington]

No One Here Gets Out Alive ~ Jerry Hopkins & Danny Sugerman.  Biography of Mr Mojo Risin'.

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You want the life of Jim Morrison? I'll give it to you in fifteen seconds: I'm drunk, I'm nobody, I'm drunk, I'm famous, I'm drunk, I'm fucking dead.

[Mr Larrington]

The Race Against The Stasi ~ Herbie Sykes.  The tale of East German cyclist Dieter Wiedemann, the Peace Race and various beastly totalitarianism fans.  Only just started but it comes highly recommended.

[Kim]

I finally got round to reading Stanisław Lem's The Star Diaries, which I purchased years ago entirely on the basis of a newsgroup sig.

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The whole plan really did hinge upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.

[T42]

I finally got round to reading Stanisław Lem's The Star Diaries, which I purchased years ago entirely on the basis of a newsgroup sig.

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The whole plan really did hinge upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.

That's Lem for you. Haven't read that one. Or if I have, not for years, like maybe 40.  I liked The Invincible most, I think.

[Mr Larrington]

Oddly enough, I knew what that was going to be before clickying the Spoiler wossname.

[Mr Larrington]

The Race Against The Stasi ~ Herbie Sykes.  The tale of East German cyclist Dieter Wiedemann, the Peace Race and various beastly totalitarianism fans.  Only just started but it comes highly recommended.

I have finished this.  According to $STASI_STOOGE Wiedemann not only wanted to represent the DDR at the Olympic Games but also to be a Master Lathe Operator   It's easy to laugh at this sort of thing with the benefit of fifty+ years of West German fascist propaganda hindsight, to say nothing of the articles from the Ossi press (BRITONS would have chased the editor up a tree and set fire to it, I feel) and makes you wonder how they got away with it for so long.

Now on "Helter Skelter" by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry.  No surprise that it's about the Manson Family; Bugliosi was the Deputy DA who prosecuted the Tate & LaBianca murders.  Any fundamental flaws it may have are so far masked by its superficial flaws, notably that it looks like a piss-poor photocopy picked up in a Saigon market rather than something for which I paid eight quid in Waterstones

[Kim]

Oddly enough, I knew what that was going to be before clickying the Spoiler wossname.

 

[tiermat]

This week's read is "Annihilation" by Jeff Vandermeer, the first in the Southern Reach trilogy.

Quite good so far.

Now onto "Authority", the second in the trilogy.

Still have NFI what is happening.

Now onto "Acceptance".

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Is it aliens?
Is it weird shit?
Is it irate marmosets?

I dunno....

Finished it, Acceptance was the most difficult to read, as it was really stilited for the first half of the book.  It then picked up and whizzed through to the end.  It is maybe a bit too long, and ...

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...you end up not really knowing what has happened, why Area X is there, nor WHERE Area X. You only have the character's suspicions about what has happened.

[citoyen]

The Woman In White - Wilkie Collins

Didn't know what to read next so my wife suggested this. Took a bit of convincing but I'm loving it. A rollicking good read, replete with a cast of Damsels In Distress and Evil Italian Counts. It's as wordy as you'd expect of a mid-19th century novel but Old Man Collins has a pretty good turn of phrase.

And unlike most Famous Classics Wot I Never Read, I've so far gone through life without hearing how this one ends so no spoilers, please!

[Mr Larrington]

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The archdeacon, in the Taj Mahal House of Balti, with the sonic screwdriver

[Ruthie]

Divergent.

It was recommended to me as a good read.  I'm afraid I found it pretty mediocre, even for teen fiction.  I don't intend to read the rest of the series.   Just silly, and superficial.

Next:  either Bring Up The Bodies, Mad Addam, or Life After Life.

[andrewc]

I'm currently re-reading Blindsight by Peter Watts, as a warm up for the sequel Echopraxia.

This is not your typical humans meet aliens first contact story...... the "humans" are not quite baseline and the aliens are very alien indeed. 

[Mr Larrington]

After a false start last summer I am now tackling Carl Hiaasen in earnest.  And larrffing.  A lots.

[ian]

Divergent.

It was recommended to me as a good read.  I'm afraid I found it pretty mediocre, even for teen fiction.  I don't intend to read the rest of the series.   Just silly, and superficial.

Next:  either Bring Up The Bodies, Mad Addam, or Life After Life.

What exactly is the deal with teen young adult fiction? No this isn't stand up, I'm genuinely a bit confused, because it's everywhere. What did young adults read before young adult fiction was invented? How did they survive before we manufactured a genre that didn't solely feature them? Was I irrevocably damaged by reading adult literature? No, not that kind of adult literature, the other, the one with words.

I saw a couple of Hunger Games movies on a plane and they were a bit meh. Less young adult, more simple mind. Look at that plot  st r  e    t      c         h.

[tiermat]

Redeployment by Phil Klay.

It is shit, badly written, assumes you have a knowledge of what US military acronyms mean and doesn't follow any order.

Avoid.

[Mr Larrington]

Redeployment by Phil Klay.

It is shit, badly written, assumes you have a knowledge of what US military acronyms mean and doesn't follow any order.

Avoid.

See also Dale Brown ect. ect.

[Quint]

What exactly is the deal with teen young adult fiction? No this isn't stand up, I'm genuinely a bit confused, because it's everywhere. What did young adults read before young adult fiction was invented? How did they survive before we manufactured a genre that didn't solely feature them? Was I irrevocably damaged by reading adult literature? No, not that kind of adult literature, the other, the one with words.

I saw a couple of Hunger Games movies on a plane and they were a bit meh. Less young adult, more simple mind. Look at that plot  st r  e    t      c         h.

       What is now Adult fiction of course, I remember reading She (Rider Haggard) and Riddle of the sands (Erskine Childers) along with various rubbish (Zane Grey) at quite a tender age and thoroughly enjoying them, the writing (esp in the likes of the first two) coupled with a young imagination meant that with a few strokes of the pen the reader was "there".

        There are some very good modern writers that can do this however there is also a lot of dross, was it always so ?

                                                                                               

[Dibdib]

It is, I think, about time I had another crack at reading the combined A Feast For Crows/A Dance With Dragons (books four and five of A Song of Ice and Fire).



I haz a spreadsheet. Reading a book shouldn't need a spreadsheet. 

Nearly two months later and I've finally finished it. Hard work with all the swapping, but not too much agro on a Kindle - trying to do it with two heavy paperbacks would have been a pain.

Next up, some more Pratchett I think. Then back to the Tolkien.

[red marley]

What exactly is the deal with teen young adult fiction? No this isn't stand up, I'm genuinely a bit confused, because it's everywhere. What did young adults read before young adult fiction was invented? How did they survive before we manufactured a genre that didn't solely feature them?

As an young teenager in the early 1980s I very much enjoyed the 'young adult' fiction of Bernard Ashley (Terry on the Fence and Break in the Sun were two favourites) and Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie books. Not that new.

[ian]

Oh I do get that, it's just the rather cynical marketing (after all, what were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer), and a perception that YA is slapped on anything made to appeal to the valuable teen audience. There's also a faint whiff of American prudishness, where teens of course should be protected from the horrors of foul language and the throbbingly educational and much re-re-read sex scene on p172, the dread 'age-appropriate' material that's the bane of any US librarian. As a voracious reader in my teens, I emptied the library of practically anything and everything. In all honesty, I'm glad I read James Herbert and Stephen King rather than have to wade through Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. And I also got to digest Joyce, Hardy, and pretty much all the classics. Which is why I'm qualified to use big words inappropriately on the internet.