I'm currently re-reading "Starship Troopers." I had forgotten that the first chapter makes a great stand-alone short story.
While flu-infested this weekend, I read Shadows by Robin McKinley (similarities to Sunshine, but YA), and then The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón—which was excellent and relevant, but it's set in Franco-era Spain, so... violent.
'The Castle of Otranto' by Horace Walpole.
'The Castle of Otranto' by Horace Walpole.
Limeylongears, is The Castle of Otranto worth reading? It's been on my radar for a while, it being (allegedly) one of the first gothic novels, but books from that era can be kind of hit-or-miss for me.
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'The Castle of Otranto' by Horace Walpole.Limeylongears, is The Castle of Otranto worth reading? It's been on my radar for a while, it being (allegedly) one of the first gothic novels, but books from that era can be kind of hit-or-miss for me.
It's very 'of its time', so to speak; the language is extremely overwrought, the female characters are all incredibly delicate Ladies who spend all their time crying or fainting or resigning themselves to horrible fates with saintly patience, the male characters are either lustful monsters or sturdy honourable peasants (but not really) with Mysterious Birthmarks; there are lots of mouldering crypts and windswept cliffs and dark forests, etc... It's very cheesy indeed, but good fun. Gothic novels tend to be pretty formulaic; my favourite's 'Vathek', just because it's so OTT and demented. I should probably re-read 'The Monk', too...
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I'm getting around to reading Verne's The Lighthouse at the end of the world. It's good so far, with lots of facts and speculation about the future of lighthouses in Tierra del Fuego. But I got the manuscript translation, the one that's not edited by Michel Verne, so there are some consistency errors. I wish I could get a good English translation of the Michel version but it ain't available for free from my local library and I'm too lazy and impecunious to try elsewhere.
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Also, of probable interest to the readers of this thread, the academic publisher of the manuscript Lighthouse also published Francis Stevens' The Nightmare and other short stories! And a bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, and Clark Ashton Smith reprints! It's the Bison Frontiers of Imagination Series by University of Nebraska Press.
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To complement my medieval murder mystery, I started reading Engels' The Peasant War in Germany.
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I just started reading Andy Weir's The Martian. I'm interested to see how it compares to the movie, my standing recommendation being that the book is always better.
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Turns out being in flu-recovery mode for me means sitting around reading for hours. Read The Counterfeit Madam and The Fourth Crow by Pat McIntosh (1490s murder-mysteries set in Glasgow). Best read with internet access to decode the Scots dialect terms and investigate the fascinating details of material culture, like pattens and box-beds. I also started but abandoned The Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Now rolling on The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.
Decided after APoK I was going to stick with writers named "Margaret" and make my first foray into Atwood and I made that decision before I saw an advert for a televised version of The Handmaid's Tale.
Saw an article about how the tv show had rocketed The Handmaid's Tale up the best seller's list and, motivated by the same snobbishness that made me turn up my nose at Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers as a teenager, I put Atwood back on the shelf and started a book that Mr. Comrade had bought for his Ex-Hipster Girlfriend's birthday but then she dumped him before he could deliver it. He tried, over and over, after the dumping, to deliver the book, but eventually she rage-texted him to leave her alone and she didn't want his f$!~ing book, so he gave it to me.
A couple of weeks later, we were at the art gallery/hipster bar and she came in and, not seeing the two commie redbeards, sat next to us. I was already kinda messed up, we locked eyes, Mr. Comrade looked away, I smiled and, after exchanging meaningless pleasantries and then, wracking my brain for thirty seconds for something to say, blurted out, "I've got your book!"
She froze, so I added, "But I haven't started reading it yet."
"That's nice," she said, and fled.
Mr. Comrade cuffed me. "'I've got your book'?!? You're the worst wingman in history!"
"Why did I say that?"
"Yeah, now she knows that you know everything!"
"Huh," I said, pondering that, and then ordered another drink.
Next morning, she sent Mr. Comrade a text apologizing for being so awkward the night before, so I chalk it up as a victory.
Oh, the book is Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.
The Devil in the white city
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Oh, the book is Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.
Hold placed! Also now waiting on The Kingdom of Gods, because I forgot the rule of ordering sequels when you get the book before, at the latest.
Btw, Comrade, there was a convo of "dubious historical merit" with a Communist taxi driver in The Shadow of the Wind about the state of Stalin's health, which made a pleasant comedic break from people being beaten in the street by Franco's police while neighbors look on in guilty fear from their doorways.
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I finished The Lighthouse at the End of the World, by Jules Verne. Lots of pirates, some derring-do, and loving descriptions of ships (lots and lots of this!). I'd recommend it to people who enjoy Patrick O'Brien and other age-of-sail type books. It isn't a very "sci-fi" Jules Verne here but in a realistic vein.
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'My Lord Barbarian', a masterful effort by Le Maitre Offutt, with more boobies and swordfights than you could possibly dream of.
And 'The schoole of the noble and worthy science of defence being the first of any english-mans inuention, which professed the said science: described, that any man may quickly come to the true knowledge of their weapons.' by Ioseph Svvetnam.
I also downloaded his 'Arraignment of Lewd Women', too, for completeness' sake, but it's a load of ranty old balls.
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I got my littlest niece Lumberjanes for Xmas. She read the first book, finished it, and just picked up the 2nd book and kept on reading. Like finishing a book was like turning a page. I was so proud!
Of my gift giving skills. :-P
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So most significantly I have just wrapped up the 5th and final volume of the complete short fiction of Clark Ashton Smith. So, with the exception of some posthumous "collaborations" and poetry, I can say I have pretty much read everything the author wrote.
Overall I would say I enjoyed the experience, and would probably credit him as a superior author to H.P. Lovecraft, amongst there circle of writers. Mostly because CAS just has way way more range in the style and types of character he can write, and just generally is better at creating realistic characters. IMHO, The Averoigne stories (set in a fictionalized medieval province of France) and the Martian stories are my favorite, followed by the contemporary horror stories and Hyperborean tales. The Zothique tales tend to sometimes a little purple in prose and a little meandering for my taste, and CAS's attempts at space opera style science fiction tend to be forgettable and completely unoriginal, and just not often written well (The Martian stories falling more in science fiction horror, and thus playing to CAS's strengths).
Next up is Frank Belknap Long, of Hounds of Tindalos fame. Sadly annotated anthologies compiling his fiction seem to be lacking, or at least anthologies I can get via kindle. So I had to settle for one of the "megapack" compilations, which are barebone and usually have only superficial editing. Slow going so far...this seems to be a multiple volume effort, perhaps arranged in chronological order, and unsurprisingly perhaps some of his earlier work wasn't exactly the best written.
"The Difference Engine" by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson?
Enjoyable on the whole, but we will see if it is worthy of membership in the "SF Masterworks" series it is part of.
I quite liked it, but then I quite liked all of Gibson's books.
The Devil in the white city
This Christmas, my mother read about that Icelandic custom of giving book gifts on Christmas Eve and then spending the night in bed with books and chocolate. For some reason I don't understand and kind of disturbs me a bit, she gave me that book.
I understand the psycho was from New Hampshire.
I liked the world-building, which was very good.
Yes, that's what I liked the most. Most Marxist world-building I've ever seen in sci fi books. Also, I liked the "League of Extraordinary Gentleman"-ness of it. For example, it was years after I read it that I realized Sylvia is from a Benjamin Disraeli novel.
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This Christmas, my mother read about that Icelandic custom of giving book gifts on Christmas Eve and then spending the night in bed with books and chocolate.
OK, this is immdediately being incorporated into my Christmas regimen. How could you know about this and not mention it before, DA? :)
I recently finished reading Gaiman's new Norse Mythology book. Not bad.
Any Shadow stuff? No spoilers please.
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Just finished Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, which was EXCELLENT. Dystopian space opera, with surreal future warfare shown from both the command level and the boots-on-the-ground level, that has great character development, humanization of the lives touched (whether friend or foe), multiple queer characters, queerness presented as no big deal, and actual gender balance (!!!). And special bonus dark humor.
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A biography of Pol Pot, by Philip Short, but I also bought 'Atlas Shrugged' today, for 50p. I intend to use the latter as the basis of my latest Olympia Press commission, 'Atlas Shagged', which will be exactly the same as the original except shorter and with much more betterer sexering in it.
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I recently finished reading Gaiman's new Norse Mythology book. Not bad.Any Shadow stuff? No spoilers please.
From what I understand, it's "the Norse myths with no modern additions as told by Neil Gaiman", so most likely not. (Fair bet that Mr Wednesday shows up, though.)
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So most significantly I have just wrapped up the 5th and final volume of the complete short fiction of Clark Ashton Smith. So, with the exception of some posthumous "collaborations" and poetry, I can say I have pretty much read everything the author wrote.
Overall I would say I enjoyed the experience, and would probably credit him as a superior author to H.P. Lovecraft, amongst there circle of writers. Mostly because CAS just has way way more range in the style and types of character he can write, and just generally is better at creating realistic characters. IMHO, The Averoigne stories (set in a fictionalized medieval province of France) and the Martian stories are my favorite, followed by the contemporary horror stories and Hyperborean tales. The Zothique tales tend to sometimes a little purple in prose and a little meandering for my taste, and CAS's attempts at space opera style science fiction tend to be forgettable and completely unoriginal, and just not often written well (The Martian stories falling more in science fiction horror, and thus playing to CAS's strengths).
Next up is Frank Belknap Long, of Hounds of Tindalos fame. Sadly annotated anthologies compiling his fiction seem to be lacking, or at least anthologies I can get via kindle. So I had to settle for one of the "megapack" compilations, which are barebone and usually have only superficial editing. Slow going so far...this seems to be a multiple volume effort, perhaps arranged in chronological order, and unsurprisingly perhaps some of his earlier work wasn't exactly the best written.
Does CAS write cosmological horror like Lovecraft did? Why are you drawing a comparison between the two of them? (I don't know much about him - this is a genuine question)
Finished Small Favor (Dresden Files #10, Jim Butcher) and started on The Cloud Roads (Books Of Raksura #1, Martha Wells). I'm over 60% into this one and find it so bad that I keep going back and forth on deciding if I even want to finish it or not. I generally dislike stopping halfway through a story, but seeing as how this is a 5 book series and I dislike the first one to this degree, there seems little chance of me ever finishing the story anyway. We'll see.
Either way, I enjoyed the read and it went by quickly. I'm getting really curious to see where the story goes, as mysteries pile up and up constantly, and I assume that Butcher knows where he's going with this.
Major spoiler for the book:
Oh, and had you told me, right after finishing book 4, that Harry would use his favor from the Summer Court to get a doughnut, I likely wouldn't have believed you. Well played on that one, Butcher. Well played.
I have a question, too - there's a short story collection called Side Jobs where many of the stories happen between Small Favor and Turn Coat. Should I read those stories before Turn Coat, or will they just spoil it?
I'm pretty sure I read Side Jobs, but I think I read it way after Turn Coat. I think it was pretty much just background filler stuff, no major spoilers, but I might be mis-remembering. It's been a while, and I might be getting it mixed up with the novella featuring Thomas.
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Does CAS write cosmological horror like Lovecraft did? Why are you drawing a comparison between the two of them? (I don't know much about him - this is a genuine question)
They were pen pals (along with Robert E. Howard) and collaborated on the shared world of the Cthulu Mythos.
Finished up that damned legal history rather soon after realizing that most of the technical details didn't actually matter unless you were a lawyer trying to navigate a slave state's courts. To be fair, the author tells you as much several times. It's just he forgets in mid-chapter and gets lost in very small distinctions that don't make much interpretative difference.
Needed a break after that, so I hopped over to William Lee Miller's Arguing About Slavery for no particular reason. I think it's the only modern treatment of the Gag Rule. After the first few chapters he also left Congress at a run and has only briefly been back. I suspect it's going to be less about the Gag and more about the general slavery controversy. But it's actually a good, quick read and that's a damned welcome development after a string of dry stuff.
Still probably going to read fiction after it. Maybe. There was a sale and I picked up Hounded by Kevin Hearne, which sounds like it might be awful in the best way.
In addition to Engels and Oyeyemi, I started reading a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle stories about a character I'm pretty unfamiliar with...Brigadier Etienne Gerard.
Not sure how the politics of a Victorian Brit writing about a Napoleonic soldier will turn out, but looking forward to it.
Vive le Galt!
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I quit The Fifth Servant. It's very well written, and the period details (16th century Prague) are excellent, but the plot is just too noir for me at the moment. I don't do well with even imaginary torture and I skimmed ahead and saw some of the Inquisition scenes coming up and decided I didn't need this in my life right now. I'll try to pick it up again when I'm in a better mood.
I've started reading Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, by Antonio Damasio. I suspect the science is a bit out of date but I'm enjoying it so far. It's kind of a slow read for me since I haven't taken a biology course since my first year of college, but it meshes with some of the articles I read about how Pixar developed the movie "Inside Out", about the emotional building-blocks of personality.
Just finished Andy Weir's The Martian. It turns out, the movie was surprisingly faithful to the plot of the book.
Next up is some non-fiction, Jerry Brotton's A History of the World in 12 Maps.
'Figures of Earth' by James Branch Cabell. Jimmy has a pop at me in it, the impudent swine, though not at the same length as he did in Jurgen.
Does CAS write cosmological horror like Lovecraft did? Why are you drawing a comparison between the two of them? (I don't know much about him - this is a genuine question)They were pen pals (along with Robert E. Howard) and collaborated on the shared world of the Cthulu Mythos.
Indeed. In fact some of his creations have showed up in the Bestiary sections of Strange Aeons.
A lot of his stuff draws upon similar themes as Lovecraft, but he does have a very different voice. For instance, he doesn't seem to have Lovecraft's hang ups about sex, and for the most part his writing often tackles themes different from Lovecraft and plays with different genres. The racism is a bit toned down to compared to some of his contemporaries The Averoigne stories for instance are more in the line of Gothic horror, while the Zothique cycle was undoubtedly a direct inspiration for Jack Vance's Dying Earth.
He's working checking out if your interested in the origins of modern fantasy.
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About halfway through Arguing About Slavery, which is near the end of a multichapter biography of John Quincy Adams. Who is awesome. There's also some really interesting conversations he had with Calhoun when both were in the Cabinet. Non-spoiler: Calhoun was a slavery fanatic prepared to burn republican government to the ground to preserve owning people even as a relatively young man.
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Parable Of The Sower – Not 1984 – Is The Dystopia For Our Age – Nnedi Okorafor
By yet another female Nigerian (this one -American, rather than -Britishiznoid) writer.
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Grad Student Discovers A Lost Novel Written By Walt Whitman
Over on Twitter, Saladin Ahmed had a great couple of comments about that--or, more precisely, about the picture of Whitman that was used to illustrate the Vulture story about it. He wrote:
"that picture reminds me I once wrote 20K words of an almost certainly never to be finished novel featuring Whitman as a cranky old wizard"
"the story also featured monster hunter Emma Goldman and evil mecha-Henry Ford. Maybe someday I'll pick it back up…"
That makes it sound like something DA would love.