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What are you reading Chapter 4
- Thread starter slobake
- Start date
Stephen King, Night Shift. Takes me back to summer vacations on Scraggy Neck, Cape Cod, as a kid/early teen. All I did was swim, ride my bicycle, and read. Looking back, those were heavenly days.
That's how I feel when I read sci-fi. My childhood involved lots of bike-riding, forest exploration (in lieu of swimming, which I also did, but mostly in summer at pools...) and plenty of reading. I'd love to be able to read as much as I did back then. It was pretty common for me to read 3+ books a week! I need to get back to some sci-fi, actually.
I've mostly been reading more medieval stuff and various translations of "Beowulf" and "Sir Gawain And The Green Knight". Both are some of my favorite stories, but the versions I've read lately have been simply average. Nothing bad about them, though I have favorite translations of both already, and the new (to me) translations haven't changed that. Still, I enjoy the stories and always find the slight differences in translation fascinating. I think I'll read the Hieatt translation of "Beowulf" tomorrow, then maybe finish up a sci-fi series I inadvertently started in the middle of the trilogy. Hope to get a bunch more reading in these last few months of 2024 as my goal was two books a week. I'm currently at 77 books! (Many are various translations of some of my favorites, some of which are mentioned earlier in this post.)
The Richard Rhodes quartet of nuclear weapon history:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons
I grew up during the height of the Cold War when LIFE magazine published a poll revealing that most Americans thought they'd never live to die of old age, that certainly they'd go up in a nuclear conflagration with the USSR. Next door neighbor had a fallout shelter in the back yard. 'Duck and Cover' drills in 1st Grade. Lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. All before I'm 10 years old., 60 years later, it's still a continuous existential anxiety, a sudden, unexpected siren and a 30-minute countdown.
And all these years later, I've lived my whole life under this threat even as I write this. Men are in silos, riding ballistic submarines, sleeping next to their bomber's flight line, and who knows what else.
Rhodes' excellent books were a way for me to understand why.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons
I grew up during the height of the Cold War when LIFE magazine published a poll revealing that most Americans thought they'd never live to die of old age, that certainly they'd go up in a nuclear conflagration with the USSR. Next door neighbor had a fallout shelter in the back yard. 'Duck and Cover' drills in 1st Grade. Lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. All before I'm 10 years old., 60 years later, it's still a continuous existential anxiety, a sudden, unexpected siren and a 30-minute countdown.
And all these years later, I've lived my whole life under this threat even as I write this. Men are in silos, riding ballistic submarines, sleeping next to their bomber's flight line, and who knows what else.
Rhodes' excellent books were a way for me to understand why.
Couple I'm going through at the moment - Fifth Sun, by Camilla Townsend, which is a history of the Aztecs, very interesting but I have to go slow because a) lots of very unfamiliar names and b) it's printed in a difficult font, even with my readers on.
And my favorite sci-fi/fantasy author that no one ever seems to talk about, C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror, that I picked up at a library sale a little while ago. One of the things she does very well is to have an underlying concept of the milieu's mechanics that she never overtly explains but that shapes everything about the story. In her sci-fi, for example, she never actually talks about how space travel works, but certain features of it regularly play a role. In this one, the characters who have wandered into the magic land often ask what is going on, and they never get clear answers, so they're constantly making decisions based on guesswork. About halfway through the book, you get enough hints to realize that the magic in play has enchanted people not to be able to talk, or even not to be able to think, about certain things. It makes for a fascinating and rather surreal adventure story.
And my favorite sci-fi/fantasy author that no one ever seems to talk about, C.J. Cherryh, The Goblin Mirror, that I picked up at a library sale a little while ago. One of the things she does very well is to have an underlying concept of the milieu's mechanics that she never overtly explains but that shapes everything about the story. In her sci-fi, for example, she never actually talks about how space travel works, but certain features of it regularly play a role. In this one, the characters who have wandered into the magic land often ask what is going on, and they never get clear answers, so they're constantly making decisions based on guesswork. About halfway through the book, you get enough hints to realize that the magic in play has enchanted people not to be able to talk, or even not to be able to think, about certain things. It makes for a fascinating and rather surreal adventure story.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
I wanted to read something spooky for October, so I thought I'd give this a try. It's the longest work of Lovecraft's fiction to be published (posthumously), long enough to be considered a novel.
(I'm not reading this edition, I'm reading from an anthology)
I wanted to read something spooky for October, so I thought I'd give this a try. It's the longest work of Lovecraft's fiction to be published (posthumously), long enough to be considered a novel.
(I'm not reading this edition, I'm reading from an anthology)
I've read a few musician auto/biographies over the past year. Geddy and Duff's books were great, Slash and Maynard's were pretty good, but I recently started Flea's and… eh? It's not quite grabbing me just yet. I also started a book about Oasis that has, thus far, been entertaining. I managed to snag tickets to see them at the Rose Bowl next year and am really excited for that.
I've seen Cherryh pop up on a few lists of books that should interest me. Any story that is a good intro to her style? They way you describe her space travel theory sounds similar to Timothy Zahn's lack-of-description in his Quadrail series, though he eventually explains a good deal of the workings of the "space trains". It's a fun series, but you've got to go with the idea of a mystery on a "space train" being the main literary vehicle (both literally and figuratively!). I'm a big fan of Zahn's overall, and this series is so far my favorite of his original works. I'll always have a special place in my heart for his original Star Wars Thrawn series, though.
Just finished Hieatt's translation of Beowulf. I've got a weird feeling about it, in that I quite liked it more than I expected to, but it also wasn't spectacular at the same time? There are plenty of versions of Beowulf I prefer - namely, Heaney's verse translation. Hieatt's take is a prose translation, and done well enough, but I feel any prose translation loses a bit of the epic feel. I'm thinking that maybe Hieatt's translation is just perfectly adequate. It has a good flow, just enough of an epic feel with appropriately obscure but not too obscure language, and was eminently readable for a large audience. It's weird to find something that is so very average feeling, and yet, also so incredibly good. It's a nice mix, and I'll have to re-read it next time I really want a prose translation. We'll see how I find it the second time through.
Well, personal taste; I have a bit of a love/hate with Cherryh's series. When she's disciplined, gets to the point, and moves the story forward, she's amazing. She has some series where, for my taste, she drags it out and racks up long page counts without really going anywhere.
For her straight sci-fi, the main milieu is the Alliance-Union universe, which is basically premised on a civil war between colonies originating from Earth. It's fairly gritty-realist sci-fi. For an intro to Cherryh, I'd start with one of the "one-shots" in that world - Merchanter's Luck or Downbelow Station.
Some of my favorite stuff of hers (and the better series) linked to the Alliance/Union universe, but loosely. The Pride of Chanur is from the perspective of a race of spacefaring lion-people aliens who stumble on a human refugee from the Company Wars. The Faded Sun stories (starts with Kesrith) are in the same universe but long after. The Morgaine series (starts with Gate of Ivrel) has some hints it links to that world, but it's got a plot device that detaches it completely from any clear timeline. It's probably my absolute favorite of hers. Each of these has a little more space opera/fantasy quality to it compared to something like Merchanter's Luck.
For instance, Morgaine is the last survivor of a team whose mission is to close interdimensional gates. Gates allow you to jump through time and space, but you can't go backwards in time or it triggers a catastrophic warping of the cosmos. This has already happened once and they can't let it happen again, so she has to keep going and going, closing them all, but she doesn't know how many there are and she'll never be able to return to her own time. Meanwhile the worlds she jumps to have collapsed and mutated and reverted to generally medieval technology. Meanwhile she has a kit of high-tech tools and weapons, so the effect is like she's a sorceress in a fantasy adventure, even as you can see that it's sci-fi - Cherryh pulls this off very adroitly. And she's a compelling character; ultimately a heroine saving the universe, but in order to save the universe she has to be utterly ruthless, and since she's the only person left who knows how to seal a gate, she can't sacrifice herself.
The ones I just couldn't get into, that just drag out like I was saying, are the Foreigner series that she's been cranking out more recently, and Cyteen.
A while Ago I started listening (on my commute) to George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones)
It was fun in parts , boring in others.
Seeking more more "grimdark" fantasy and stumbled across Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy and the sequel Age of Madness.
I enjoyed these much more than slogging through Game of Thrones' parade of less interesting characters.
The dialog is more witty, and the characters more likeable (even the evil ones),
and the overall tone is more enjoyably ironic. If you are into Dark fantasy, I can't recommend enough
You can dig up the audio books on you tube and the narrator Steven Pacey is fantastic
It was fun in parts , boring in others.
Seeking more more "grimdark" fantasy and stumbled across Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy and the sequel Age of Madness.
I enjoyed these much more than slogging through Game of Thrones' parade of less interesting characters.
The dialog is more witty, and the characters more likeable (even the evil ones),
and the overall tone is more enjoyably ironic. If you are into Dark fantasy, I can't recommend enough
You can dig up the audio books on you tube and the narrator Steven Pacey is fantastic
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After seeing last Movie inspired from and completely dig it, I've purchased initial book "the Count of Monte Cristo" from Alexandre Dumas.
Epic story, different from the movie which was "freely inspired from" , but a real pleasure to read.
Epic story, different from the movie which was "freely inspired from" , but a real pleasure to read.
I read that series some years ago. Really liked them, good recommendation!
I think I'm going to start Heimskringla - The Lives Of The Norse Kings. For whatever reason, I just can't seem to get interested in sci-fi at the moment and am still on a huge medieval/Viking/Middle Ages bender. Oh well.
Jazzdogg
Less barking, more wagging!
"Right Thing, Right Now" by Ryan Holiday.
I bought a copy for each of my grandchildren so they'll better understand Grampa's beliefs and values.
I bought a copy for each of my grandchildren so they'll better understand Grampa's beliefs and values.
A collection of short stories by George MacDonald. Compiled from mid/late 19th Century fantasy magazines. Some of them are great. Some are a little dopey.
And now, yet another ~4 years on, I'm back (ha-ha, see what I did there?) to reading From Bacteria To Bach And Back. Lather, rinse, repeat. But still enjoyable and provocative.
I finished the Lovecraft book and wanted to keep up the spooky season reading, so I got this one from the Libby app.
I know next to nothing about it except that it's a space revenge western set on Mars. It is also classified as horror for reasons not evident in the book description. I guess I'll find out why soon enough.
I know next to nothing about it except that it's a space revenge western set on Mars. It is also classified as horror for reasons not evident in the book description. I guess I'll find out why soon enough.
I'll need to peruse the space revenge western horror section in my library.
