rereading The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry and The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer
-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
What'cha Reading?
- Thread starter Falselogic
- Start date
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Lighter reading recently as most of my free time was spent playing P3 Reload.
Read the DnDoggos book (unique story that's not on the website) and really liked it. Definitely aimed toward younger readers and people who don't know D&D as well but well-done. I also like that there are good party interactions where the DM explains things politely when the players aren't sure what they should be doing and there's a cute scene where all the snacks interrupt play. I got it from the library but will be getting a copy, I think it's something I'll want to lend to friends who want to get their kids into D&D.
Also finished From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, the third in the collections of short stories. Like the first two, it's just fun, some stories are good and some aren't. This collection did feel much more spread out than the first (which focused too much on the cantina) and the second (which spent too much time on Hoth) and I think there's more variety in the style of stories although it's been quite a while since I read the first two. A great thing to keep by my bedside then read a story or two before bed.
Read the DnDoggos book (unique story that's not on the website) and really liked it. Definitely aimed toward younger readers and people who don't know D&D as well but well-done. I also like that there are good party interactions where the DM explains things politely when the players aren't sure what they should be doing and there's a cute scene where all the snacks interrupt play. I got it from the library but will be getting a copy, I think it's something I'll want to lend to friends who want to get their kids into D&D.
Also finished From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, the third in the collections of short stories. Like the first two, it's just fun, some stories are good and some aren't. This collection did feel much more spread out than the first (which focused too much on the cantina) and the second (which spent too much time on Hoth) and I think there's more variety in the style of stories although it's been quite a while since I read the first two. A great thing to keep by my bedside then read a story or two before bed.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Picked up Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells, a collection of early Vanity Fair essays from the 1910s-1930s. It came up when I talked about reading A Moveable Feast last year that I'm not as obsessed with the jazz age as many others are, but I do love magazine-style writing a lot for some reason. The very first essay in the collection is PG Wodehouse essay satirizing people who exercise every morning:
This is fun. I suppose if you have a subscription you could read through the articles without getting the collection but I don't and it's fun to have them curated like this. Glad my library had this!
This is fun. I suppose if you have a subscription you could read through the articles without getting the collection but I don't and it's fun to have them curated like this. Glad my library had this!
My library doesn't have Kelly Link's new novel in yet, so I read her previous book of short stories White Cat, Black Dog in the meantime. I absolutely loved this book and wished it was twice as long. Apparently the stories are all based on Brothers Grimm-type fairy tales, but I didn't know most of them and it didn't make me enjoy the book any less. The dreamlike atmosphere and crisp writing were their own rewards for me. I just went and put holds on a bunch of her other books too, can't wait to dig into them.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Just started Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata for my classics book club. It's supposed to have absolutely stunning writing so I'm excited.
But I'm annoyed that I read the Introduction and without any sort of warning the introduction just started analyzing the events of the final scene of the book in detail. I don't care much about spoilers so I'm fine, but that was quite a surprise and I know a lot of people who would be pretty annoyed!
But I'm annoyed that I read the Introduction and without any sort of warning the introduction just started analyzing the events of the final scene of the book in detail. I don't care much about spoilers so I'm fine, but that was quite a surprise and I know a lot of people who would be pretty annoyed!
Damn, this took me nearly three months. It was labyrinthine and surreal, and pretty hard to follow. It leaves almost everything quite open-ended, and I had trouble keeping a lot of the minor characters straight. But it was beautifully written, especially for a translation, and I get the distinct feeling that there's nothing quite like it out there. I'll be spending some time reading interviews, analyses, and wiki diving about it, for sure. I'd recommend for fans of magical realism or with an interest in depictions of handicaps and the people who have them.
Next, I think I need something a bit lighter and quicker, and I'm not sure if this qualifies but I think I'll try A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.
I think that will be exactly what you’re looking for—I found it light, quick, and lovely.
I should really grab the second book in the Wayfarers series, I did enjoy ALWtaSAP quite a lot.
RIght now, though, I'm reading Hyperion for the first time ever. I went into this book with basically no expectations of any kind, and so far it's been pleasantly surprising! As is tradition for science fiction novels, it starts out with around 10 pages of indecipherable proper noun soup, but then it quickly becomes something pretty different. I'm getting both classic mystery AND anthology sci-fi vibes from what I've read so far, although I'm only a little ways in and I still haven't finished the first of the main characters' back stories. I get the feeling this is going to be a really long book (reading on a Kindle can often disguise that fact in a way physical books cannot), but I think I'm going to enjoy it.
One thing I am not entirely enjoying is the language used to describe some of the groups of people that the POV characters run into. Now this is a science fiction book from the 80s, so I can't say I'm completely surprised, but there's definitely a bluntness and some very poor word choices when one of the characters runs into a group of people with very limited expressivity and unusual customs. I grew up in the 80s, so I know that people were way less sensitive about this stuff in general back then, but it can be a little rough stumbling across this stuff in a book you are otherwise enjoying. I also think that science fiction as a genre is more prone to these kind of blunders because of the big swings people take when devising settings and races whole cloth. A lot of sci-fi reads as someone thinking "wouldn't it be crazy if everyone acted in this strange way" and then trying to flesh that out for 400 pages. And sometimes it works! But historical revisionism can really take the shine off some of those attempts as time goes by.
Anyway, good book so far, just have to keep in mind that it was written 35 years ago and try not to judge it too harshly on certain aspects.
RIght now, though, I'm reading Hyperion for the first time ever. I went into this book with basically no expectations of any kind, and so far it's been pleasantly surprising! As is tradition for science fiction novels, it starts out with around 10 pages of indecipherable proper noun soup, but then it quickly becomes something pretty different. I'm getting both classic mystery AND anthology sci-fi vibes from what I've read so far, although I'm only a little ways in and I still haven't finished the first of the main characters' back stories. I get the feeling this is going to be a really long book (reading on a Kindle can often disguise that fact in a way physical books cannot), but I think I'm going to enjoy it.
One thing I am not entirely enjoying is the language used to describe some of the groups of people that the POV characters run into. Now this is a science fiction book from the 80s, so I can't say I'm completely surprised, but there's definitely a bluntness and some very poor word choices when one of the characters runs into a group of people with very limited expressivity and unusual customs. I grew up in the 80s, so I know that people were way less sensitive about this stuff in general back then, but it can be a little rough stumbling across this stuff in a book you are otherwise enjoying. I also think that science fiction as a genre is more prone to these kind of blunders because of the big swings people take when devising settings and races whole cloth. A lot of sci-fi reads as someone thinking "wouldn't it be crazy if everyone acted in this strange way" and then trying to flesh that out for 400 pages. And sometimes it works! But historical revisionism can really take the shine off some of those attempts as time goes by.
Anyway, good book so far, just have to keep in mind that it was written 35 years ago and try not to judge it too harshly on certain aspects.
Finished the YA sci-fi/horror book Living Hell, which was about a multi-generational colony ship that hits a weird space... thingy that makes it come to life. Not in a "Rogue AI turns on its masters" sense, it turns all the machines on the ship to meat and now the colonists are in a Fantastic Voyage situation trying to survive the ships cleaning and maintenance systems that have now become an immune system.
Despite that absolutely bonkers-ass premise, it sticks with being incredibly hard Hard SF, to such an extent that there are times where the narrator has to catch himself because explaining how the ships water recollection system reacts to their electrical systems or whatever has absolutely no bearing on the situation vis-a-vis a golf cart-turned-lymphocyte eating some people.
Outside of the ending being pretty abrupt and a few unanswered questions (They made quite a big deal about how few personal items there are on the ship out of necessity, so why was there a katana on board?), it was a pretty fun zippy read. Characters are a bit thin, but on the other hand, there's a lot of them and most wind up getting eaten by space goo monsters pretty quickly once things get underway.
Despite that absolutely bonkers-ass premise, it sticks with being incredibly hard Hard SF, to such an extent that there are times where the narrator has to catch himself because explaining how the ships water recollection system reacts to their electrical systems or whatever has absolutely no bearing on the situation vis-a-vis a golf cart-turned-lymphocyte eating some people.
Outside of the ending being pretty abrupt and a few unanswered questions (They made quite a big deal about how few personal items there are on the ship out of necessity, so why was there a katana on board?), it was a pretty fun zippy read. Characters are a bit thin, but on the other hand, there's a lot of them and most wind up getting eaten by space goo monsters pretty quickly once things get underway.
What's the tone of it? The title makes it sound gritty and serious but i wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of wackiness as well
Way more gritty than wacky, but also largely with a kind of clinical detachment that I wasn’t sure whether it came from the narrator being a pretty bland cipher, or because that was the authors style.
And then a sequel series as well.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Are the sequel books good? Back than, I read reviews that weren't too favourable, so I never read them.
I think I actually enjoyed them more although all the scenes in my head I remember are pretty cringe in retrospect.
It's been years since I've read all the Hyperion books. I remember there being some interesting ideas in the sequel books, particularly the way they play off of some of the plot points and themes from the first two books. HOWEVER, there (a) are some retcons that I didn't love, and (b) is one relationship that, at the risk of avoiding spoilers, is problematic and hasn't aged well.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This was lovely and highly recommended. Also learned that this is a classic/standard in Japanese literature the opening sentence is supposedly something that most Japanese can recite from memory. It's very cool to read something that's such a common thread for most people in another country. Also from the start the book is reliant on the translator, the first sentence doesn't actually have a subject in Japanese. I think this would be good book to have as a goal to read in Japanese someday. I ended up walking my book club group through a pivotal scene in the book that in English plays on the use of "girl" versus "woman" but in Japanese is more about ね and よ.
Anyway, moving onto The Extinction of Irena Rey which I've heard wildly differing things about and am quite curious to start.
I've got a hold on this one at the library, but there's a bit of a waiting list. Curious about it myself.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I've been sick and so have had the time to finish this one, really wanted to know what was happening so I'm glad I was able to go through it without having to wait too long. It's a hard book to describe, I looked up more reviews after I'd finished and one described the characters as "chaotic" and I think that's the perfect word for the book, in a good way. The characters, the footnotes, the book commenting on the translation of a book, what's real or not, it's bizarre. I recommend it but definitely understand why it's so hard to summarize. I'll also note it went much quicker than I expected, the style of the book/narrator changes as it goes and it starts out dense and slow but becomes much quicker and there are several pages that have very little text on them.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
I started reading Caliban by Roger Allen. It's set in Asimovs universe, the part after the Elijah Bailey novels, where people from Earth started to settle on new planets, leaving the Spacers, the first wave of settlers who are too reliant on robots, behind.
Focus on "started". On the one hand, the writing style is kinda lame. It's a detective story, where you start with the death of the victim, and then the hardboiled detective comes, his female quasi-rival appears, a lame twist happens, it's kinda blah. The other problem was, that it felt inconsistent with what Asimov established. It was supposed to be on one of the 50 Spacer planets, but feels a bit like a shithole (when the Spacer planets, due to using robots a lot, are supposed to be kinda utopian). These two reasons lead me to reread The Naked Sun, the second Elijah Bailey story.
I was wrong about my second point. At least this book only shows us one of the Spacer worlds, and makes it very clear that it is an anomaly. Also, I remembered the first Bailey book being kinda irritating, because Bailey, the main character, is an asshole to his wive. You know, typical 60s (or 50s?) detective, I guess. No shown emotions, treats his wive without any warms and basically like an obnoxious child (which is also the way she is portrayed, Asimov isn't the best at writing women - classic sci-fi, I guess). She doesn't appear in The Naked Sun, so I hoped he was less obnoxious, but unfortunately not.
He is an arrogant, egoistical ass, who treats everyone around him shitty, at least when they give him the least bit of resistance. He's a bully. I guess that's part of being a great detective in a novel at the time, but god, I can't stand this guy. Like, he wants to talk to someone and it's around 6 in the morning. No, he can't wait, he has to talk to that person this moment, because he wants it. The other person is someone he has never talked to before, on a different planet, and maybe it would be a good idea to at least try to not antagonise someone immediately.
Thankfully, most of the book is dialogue that basically explains how this strange planet works, and the characters lose most personality. The whole book, the murder mystery, it's all just a vehicle to explore this "utopia". Talking about reaching the stars, about how humans developed and the "evolutionary" dead-ends. Part of what I love about Asimov is, that I feel like his love for sci-fi ideas, for Space and exploration, shines through. It feels like sci-fi. Caliban, the book I started to read, feels like a detective novel in a sci-fi setting. The Naked Sun feels like a sci-fi novel that just happens to have a detective story as a vehicle. I guess the line here is very soft, but for Asimov, I always feel like the exploration of ideas is first and foremost.
Focus on "started". On the one hand, the writing style is kinda lame. It's a detective story, where you start with the death of the victim, and then the hardboiled detective comes, his female quasi-rival appears, a lame twist happens, it's kinda blah. The other problem was, that it felt inconsistent with what Asimov established. It was supposed to be on one of the 50 Spacer planets, but feels a bit like a shithole (when the Spacer planets, due to using robots a lot, are supposed to be kinda utopian). These two reasons lead me to reread The Naked Sun, the second Elijah Bailey story.
I was wrong about my second point. At least this book only shows us one of the Spacer worlds, and makes it very clear that it is an anomaly. Also, I remembered the first Bailey book being kinda irritating, because Bailey, the main character, is an asshole to his wive. You know, typical 60s (or 50s?) detective, I guess. No shown emotions, treats his wive without any warms and basically like an obnoxious child (which is also the way she is portrayed, Asimov isn't the best at writing women - classic sci-fi, I guess). She doesn't appear in The Naked Sun, so I hoped he was less obnoxious, but unfortunately not.
He is an arrogant, egoistical ass, who treats everyone around him shitty, at least when they give him the least bit of resistance. He's a bully. I guess that's part of being a great detective in a novel at the time, but god, I can't stand this guy. Like, he wants to talk to someone and it's around 6 in the morning. No, he can't wait, he has to talk to that person this moment, because he wants it. The other person is someone he has never talked to before, on a different planet, and maybe it would be a good idea to at least try to not antagonise someone immediately.
Thankfully, most of the book is dialogue that basically explains how this strange planet works, and the characters lose most personality. The whole book, the murder mystery, it's all just a vehicle to explore this "utopia". Talking about reaching the stars, about how humans developed and the "evolutionary" dead-ends. Part of what I love about Asimov is, that I feel like his love for sci-fi ideas, for Space and exploration, shines through. It feels like sci-fi. Caliban, the book I started to read, feels like a detective novel in a sci-fi setting. The Naked Sun feels like a sci-fi novel that just happens to have a detective story as a vehicle. I guess the line here is very soft, but for Asimov, I always feel like the exploration of ideas is first and foremost.