What are you reading?

[stePH]

Otherland is pretty awesome, but I don't like it quite as well.  Mostly because the big reveal just didn't work for me at all.  Shan't say anything else for fear of spoilers.  The characters are pretty fun and some of the set pieces are just awesome. 

It's been a few years since I read it, but what I remember is that what you come to suspect is the cause of the problems at the story's beginning (e.g., what's happening to the kids) turns out to be a red herring and have nothing to do with those issues at all. And if memory serves, the issues aren't really explained after you're told what isn't the cause of them. I would have to read it again (which I do plan to).

[stePH]

O, and my Bible reading currently has me in 2 Samuel. What puzzles me is that Samuel (a prophet of IHVH) is a somewhat minor character who dies somewhere in the middle of 1 Samuel. More appropriate titling would call 1 Samuel "Saul" and 2 Samuel "David" (or, call them 1 David and 2 David.)

[jrderego]

13 Great Stories of Science Fiction (edited by Groff Conklin). It's a collection of golden age stuff published in 1960 featuring stories from 1951-1958 or so. Bradbury, Clarke, Wyndam, Budrys, Sturgeon... There are some great shorts in this.

[Zorag]

Recently finished The Power of Body Language by Joe Navarro.  I thoroughly enjoy everything Joe has written.  I discovered him by his poker tells book, but he writes about more than poker. 

[kibitzer]

The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker. This is the "official" sequel to Dracula, allegedly based on notes by Bram himself.

Hmm. We'll see.

[Sandikal]

The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker. This is the "official" sequel to Dracula, allegedly based on notes by Bram himself.

Hmm. We'll see.

That was the worst book I read in 2009.  It may have been the worst book I ever read.  The only reason I stuck with it to the end was because I wanted to see if it could possibly get worse.  It did.  

[Devoted135]

I read mostly in bed at night. The kids are asleep. The day has been put to rest. Nothing more to do until tomorrow. A book just fits in bed better than a laptop. When a really good electronic book reader comes along, maybe I'll change my mind. Maybe that can be Apple's next product line.

Ok, I'll raise my hand to not having read all 79 pages of this thread so it's possible this has been mentioned before, but I found this quote on page one, and couldn't help but marvel at it! Talk about prescience!

Anywho, I've currently got about 300 pages left in Shogun, and then I'll probably read a couple shorter books before tackling A Storm of Swords  (the third in George RR Martin's series). I'll definitely be perusing this thread for recommendations in the future! 

[Darwinist]

Not sure what's up next. I have an Arthur C Clarke story collection on my shelf that I really ought to read.

Is it the jumbo volume?  I have that beast, I love to pop it open here and there.  Love ACC's short fiction 

[kibitzer]

That was the worst book I read in 2009.  It may have been the worst book I ever read.  The only reason I stuck with it to the end was because I wanted to see if it could possibly get worse.  It did.  

Yar. I'm not hating it so far but it's kinda sensationalising (is that a word??) the original. I think they're trying to keep up with Stoker's use of contemporary technology -- e.g. blood transfusions in the original -- but it's kinda coming off as... implausible. There's a LOT of flitting back and forth between London and Paris in one day. Also, trying to tie in The Ripper seems very old and well-worn. I've seen stacks of stories do the Ripper thing better. From Hell comes to mind.

[AliceNred]

Right now I and youngest, who has just turned 13, are reading A Wrinkle in Time. We home school, probably not for the reasons you are thinking. Anyway, this is the book that I trying to teach to analyze, you know, get into the marrow of a story.

Over this coming year I plan reading with him those books I feel in love with I was young. They are as follows and in no particular order of fondness:

A Wrinkle in Time
Tailchaser Song by Tad Williams
Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

We'll mix in:
Starship Troppers
Hitchhikers Guide
Something de Lint
and whatever else my husband loved as a boy.

[stePH]

Finished 2 Samuel of the Hebrew Bible, and figured it's a good enough stopping point to jump ahead to the Christian canon... but first, a re-read of Hogfather.

[BlueLu]

About to send my Xmas book list to my fam. Anything I should leave off? 

Kracken by China Meiville
Luka and the Fire of Life by Salmon Rushdie
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
White Cat by Holly Black
Ship Breaker by Paola Bacigalupi
Black Hole Sun by David MacInnis Gill

[kibitzer]

Finished "Dracula -- The Un-Dead" by Dacre Stoker. Really, really not recommended. Retains none of the gothic horror of the original. Includes a whole lot of fast action and overt sexuality that isn't in the spirit of "Dracula."

[Sandikal]

Finished "Dracula -- The Un-Dead" by Dacre Stoker. Really, really not recommended. Retains none of the gothic horror of the original. Includes a whole lot of fast action and overt sexuality that isn't in the spirit of "Dracula."

I think what bugged me most about that book was the way Stoker tried to fit in everything he could think of about the era.  For example, he has a scene where Jonathan takes off in his automobile, speeding down the road at ten miles per hour.  That almost made me throw the book at the wall, but I didn't.  If I had, I would have missed the departure of the Titanic.  I think boarding the Titanic was the perfect end to the story.

[Scattercat]

Finished "The Scar" by China Mieville.  Actually liked it better than "Perdido Street Station."  It felt more focused and thematically coherent, and it was a lot easier to follow the plot without the dozens of side characters.  The Possible Sword was pretty sweet, conceptually, and Armada is just a wonderfully evocative image (especially with the avanc down below.)  Plus, it didn't end with quite so much of a giant crotch-kick for the main characters, which I appreciate.  That ending to "Perdido Street Station" was just... ouch.  Man.  And totally unnecessary!

Anyway, definitely recommendable.  Right now I'm rereading Nightwatch, Daywatch, and Twilight Watch so I can read Last Watch, which we've owned for years and I haven't ever gotten around to reading.

[DKT]

You know, the ending of Perdido Street Station is one of those that will stick with me pretty much the rest of my life, I think. It was brutal, but it was also so spot-on perfect for that book. That said - I imagine when I reread these books, I'll probably reread "The Scar" first. Everything about it is so so so cool from all the stuff you listed (The Possible Sword, Armada, the Avanc) to the Brucolac, the Lovers, Uther Doul, and the Scar itself. Yeesh.

I think I'll reread The Scar first. (Although, I duno. I really could go for rereading both of them...)

[Scattercat]

Eh, I don't see why he had to add insult to injury.  Once their lives are ruined and they flee in unwilling exile from the city, why does he have to ruin the only healthy, positive romantic relationship in the whole book?  Everyone else is constantly using each other and generally being dicks, but that's not all there is to life.  I like to see a little balance, and the ending just ripped the only good thing away from the main characters for no reason at all.

[DKT]

No, you're right that that's not all to life. However, one of the main themes of the story was betrayal. Everyone in the book betrayed someone else. And so when the end happened, and we found out it was all based upon a betrayal, which led to another betrayal, which caused me to feel slightly betrayed by the characters (and oddly fulfilled)...for me, it was a pretty perfect fit.

That said, I've heard several people refuse to read more Mieville based on the ending of PSS, so YMMV. But I liked that it wasn't a nice book. 

[Scattercat]

Wait, I'm not talking about any betrayals.  That was all fine.  I'm talking about the part where he had the bug-lady's brain get wiped and thus condemned Isaac to a lifetime of caring for a brain-dead shell, which is worse, to me, than just killing her off completely because the wound stays raw and unhealed, plus you have to dedicate so much time and effort to keeping them healthy that you don't have anything left to forge new connections or really live your life.  I've been there when this sort of thing happens and it is really, really, REALLY bad, and I don't feel like Isaac and bug-lady-whose-name-I-forget earned that kind of hideous and unending punishment.  It's just tragedy porn, like "Oh, you like these characters?  WELL FUCK THEM!  HAHAHAHAAA!"

[DKT]

Bug lady's name was Lin.

Yeah, I dunno. It's been a while, but that all just felt like the effects of different betrayals that had happened earlier in the book. And I liked that just because the Quest is over and the day is saved, doesn't mean the story will have a happy ending (which, maybe, is a running theme through Mieville's book - with the possible exception of Un Lun Dun, and maybe also King Rat, which I still need to read).

I hear what you're saying, though, and Isaac could've responded/reacted differently. But I thought it was a pretty strong ending.

[Scattercat]

I'm generally okay with unhappy endings.  I just felt like this one went out of its way to be unhappy.  It would be like if Fortinbras came in at the end of Hamlet and tripped on one of the corpses and fell and impaled himself on the poisoned blade.  That one step beyond "tragic" and into "Now you're just being mean."

[eytanz]

I'm generally okay with unhappy endings.  I just felt like this one went out of its way to be unhappy. 

Have you read Iron Council yet? It may be worth reading for the sole purpose of making the ending of PSS look pretty uplifting in comparison.

[DKT]

Ha. See, Iron Council I definitely need to read again, because of the three Bas Lag books, it's the most blurred in reflection. For some reason I was remembering the end of Iron Council to be kind of optimistic?

Heh. Like I said, hazy memory on that one

[eytanz]

Actually, I'm reading Carnacki the Ghost Hunter by William Hope Hodegson, as inspired by that Podcastle episode.

You have to let us know how that is.  I have it on my Nook wishlist based on the story from Podcastle.

I just finished it, actually. Wow, it was really good. I mean, if you're into Lovecraft-style writing - a bit archaic to modern eyes, but still lush and evocative - then you'll enjoy the Carnacki stuff. Fascinatingly enough, the stories do include several in which there are no ghosts at all. The electric pentacle is exactly as cool as it sounds. I still want Carnacki to be my character.

I just finished it myself. I really enjoyed it, but by the end I found the "is it real or is it a fake?" bit a bit annoying - Carnacki keeps makes a point of how he is both skeptical and open-minded, which is pretty cool, but the way he narrates the story is, "I started suspicous that there's a human explanation but the events grew more and more suspicious and creepy and I had more and more reasons to suspect the supernatural" for the first part, and then it's either "but then I discovered it was all mundane after all", or "and then I defeated the evil spirit" or "and it turned out that a lot of what happened was a mundane red herring but the supernatural was defnitely involved". The thing is, it sort of felt like the buildup and the reveal were disconnected, or like a proto-form of a choose your own adventure story - I had the feeling that at each story there's a point where Hodgson could have written three endings, labelled them "supernatural", "mundane", and "both", and had the reader roll a die to see which one to read.

[eytanz]

Ha. See, Iron Council I definitely need to read again, because of the three Bas Lag books, it's the most blurred in reflection. For some reason I was remembering the end of Iron Council to be kind of optimistic?

Only in the sense that "everything anyone did in this novel ended up turning against what they were trying to achieve, but they happen to leave behind a physical remnant that - very ironically - will be source of hope for future generations, ignorant of the actual events, as they live with the consequences" is optimistic. (the blacked out section contains no specific mention of events or characters in the novel but can be still viewed as a spoiler)

If an underlying theme of Perdido Street Station is betrayal of others and its consequences, then the equivalent theme in Iron Council is the futility of ideals, and the inevitability of self-betrayal.