JRGoldman Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 On 7/7/2016 at 0:00 AM, username said: A few people I know were talking up Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (which seems to actually be four books) so I picked up the first two entries up from the library last week. These are really, really great. Like, intimidatingly great. I think I would say that they are the most literary of all genre fiction? There are books that are more influential, and books that are more enjoyable reads, but I don't think there are too many sci fi or fantasy books that display the same amount of sheer craft from the author. Maybe Dhalgren? It's a short list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 I'll say this: I'm reading two books in the Malazan world now, Fall of Light and Orb, Sceptre, Throne, the first by Erikson and the second by Esslemont, who was his partner on digs. It's Esslemont's third book and while the content is fun, Erikson is such a better, more literate, writer it's not even funny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 Erikson writes like a well-read man who studies the craft of writing. Esslemont writes like a gamer whose entire frame of reference is gaming. You don't suppose that... Oh yeah, for fuck's sake read some Shea! Seriously, you're looking at one of the five best prose stylists the field has ever produced*, a writer who seems to fuse the best parts of Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, and Clark Ashton Smith into one. Take Vance's Demon Princes series, make it even darker and crank the mordant humor up several notches and you've got Michael Shea. Start with Nifft the Lean, or if you're familiar with Vance's Dying Earth stuff, start with A Quest for Simbilis. An authorized pastiche and sequel to Eyes of the Overworld. Makes it quite clear that Nifft shares the same world with Vance's Cugel the Clever, it's just that Shea takes you to the really twisted places *There's four, the fifth is Gene Wolfe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 11, 2016 Share Posted July 11, 2016 3 hours ago, JRGoldman said: These are really, really great. Like, intimidatingly great. I think I would say that they are the most literary of all genre fiction? There are books that are more influential, and books that are more enjoyable reads, but I don't think there are too many sci fi or fantasy books that display the same amount of sheer craft from the author. Maybe Dhalgren? It's a short list. The difference being that Dhalgren has a lot of detractors*, I don't recall anyone having anything bad to say about The Book of the New Sun. * One of them right here... For me Dhalgren is like Jeff Beck at his most experimental, I can appreciate the craftsmanship, the sheer genius that's on display, but I derive no pleasure from the work itself. Delaney's career is marred with lots of examples of getting carried away with showing the reader what a clever fellow he is. OKay, I've been reading his stuff since the 1960s, and I'll readily concede that the man is a genius. He's also way past (or should be way past) going out of his way to show the reader what a clever chap he is. We get it. With Wolfe as with Brian Aldiss and J.G. Ballard you have a man who clearly loves the English language and respects it too much to be a show-off it's the difference between Clark Ashton Smith writing the way he did because of his huge vocabulary and poet's sensibility and the fanzine writer trying to imitate Smith by keeping a thesaurus at the ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
username Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 I'm approaching the final third of The Claw of the Conciliator and I am thinking that things have been swell so far. I also must say that I'm glad the library had the first two volumes in the same book as The Shadow of the Torturer didn't so much conclude as just pick a convenient point to stop at. It is odd, I hadn't even heard of these books before a couple weeks back and yet whenever I mention I'm reading them people always go "Oh yeah, those are great!" Someone coulda told me before now, you know... The Lies of Locke Lamora was rather tremendous. I did have someone warn me that the sequels lose the magic that the original had, but I have no idea if that is a widely held opinion or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobholly138 Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 Got a bunch of horror/cult movie reference books coming in. But today Clive Barker's A to Z of Horror got here. So far it is really good. Last book I finished was that Tim Hornbaker history of the NWA book. Good read but holy fuck was it a bit dry and boring in parts. Took me almost a month to read it. When normally I can finish a book that size in a week tops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 1 hour ago, username said: I'm approaching the final third of The Claw of the Conciliator and I am thinking that things have been swell so far. I also must say that I'm glad the library had the first two volumes in the same book as The Shadow of the Torturer didn't so much conclude as just pick a convenient point to stop at. It is odd, I hadn't even heard of these books before a couple weeks back and yet whenever I mention I'm reading them people always go "Oh yeah, those are great!" Someone coulda told me before now, you know... The Lies of Locke Lamora was rather tremendous. I did have someone warn me that the sequels lose the magic that the original had, but I have no idea if that is a widely held opinion or not. You bring up what's actually an interesting phenomena in the business, the author that "everyone" knows is good but has a seemingly limited audience. These folk win lots of awards, are frequently mentioned in "Years' Best" summaries, but their publishers have figured that for whatever reason (usually too literate or too "different") that they will never really grow their audience beyond what it currently is, which I guess we'll call "super-high mid-list". These folks will always get hardcover publication and frequently trade paperback before a mass-market edition shows up and all with very minimal promotion by their publisher (usually a fairly prestigious house). The writers I'm talking about include: Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, James P. Blaylock, & Michael Bishop and the late Jack Vance as the most prominent examples that come to mind; arguably four of our greatest living fantasists and despite the Powers/Blaylock connection, all five are wildly different from each other (and everyone else, for that matter). Powers has probably had the greatest financial success due to On Stranger Tides getting absorbed into the Jack Sparrow mythos. Wolfe remains with the most traditional S/Fantasy publisher (TOR), which is baffling as he could go anywhere he wanted to. They must treat him far better than they do many of their authors. Bishop & Blaylock are both writers' writers who turn out brilliant book after brilliant book and just barely earn out their advances. Vance had a great career,numerous awards and never graced the best-sellers lists. It's frustrating to me to read a post like that from Username and realize what a piss-poor job is seemingly being done to promote his work if someone like Username, who clearly loves the genre has never heard of him. So here's a question for the group: "What are your resources for finding out about new (to you) writers?" Being in the business I do have some unfair advantages in that I get sent unsolicited advance reading copies and proofs or get asked for blurbs and stuff, but most of my resources are available to anyone... "Year's Best" anthologies. Not only do I buy them,I carefully read through the recommended list. When Ellen Datlow and Teri Windling were doing their fantasy and horror series, the recommended list was often far more interesting than the stories actually selected to appear in the book. On the SF side of things, Jonathan Strahan's tastes match up pretty closely with mine, so if he's keen on someone, it's generally worth my time to check 'em out. Gardener Dozois has been doing a "Years' Best" for something like thirty-three years now. While the match isn't quite as tight as the one with Strahan, it's close enough that I'll always pay close attention. Currently there aren't any reviewers that I'm in lock-step with, but I used to be able to count on Algis Budrys back in the day. I could also count on Everett Bleiler for being 100% my opposite. If he wrote something off as "routine commercial hackwork" it usually meant it was a fun book that I would enjoy immensely. If you can fond a reviewer whose tastes are similar to your own it can be a very valuable resource. So outside of a message board devoted to pro wrestling, where do you get your literary recs? ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted July 14, 2016 Share Posted July 14, 2016 Finished "Red Seas Under Red Skies"... I really didn't think Lynch coukd wrap that up in the last 100 pages. Hell I didn't think there was a way for the 2 capers to come together without it seeming ridiculous and yet Lynch did it. Onto "Republic of Thieves"! James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
username Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 On 7/12/2016 at 3:06 AM, OSJ said: So outside of a message board devoted to pro wrestling, where do you get your literary recs? ;-) Why from a message board devoted to video games of course. Sounds backwards but in a bit over the past year they are the ones who sent me towards The Book of the New Sun, The Lies of Lock Lamora, and The Three Body Problem, and a couple years before that Pale Fire and hence Nabokov. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 My favorite reviewer is Ron Charles of "The Washington Post". His opinions are pretty trustworthy. I've been reading him for the last few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 15, 2016 Share Posted July 15, 2016 You prefer Ron Charles over Michael Dirda? Make no mistake, Charles is very good, but Dirda is amazingly well-read and has soft spots for the horror/fantasy genre and the small press, which makes him A-OK in my book. Just surprised to see pretty much anyone named over Dirda. (Michael has probably turned me on to more authors than anyone other than Harlan Ellison and to put that in perspective, I've known Michael about ten years and Harlan about forty. So in a relatively short amount of time he has greatly enriched my reading.) I'm on pins and needles waiting to see if he mentions my new collection... Part of me thinks that he won't because we're friends and that gets into a gray area (unless you disclose the relationship), and part of me thinks he will mention it because a lot of the stories are the kind of thing he likes... We shall see... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Oh, I definitely read and like Michael Dirda as well. But, Charles reviews exclusively new releases, while Dirda is more about delving into forgotten or over-looked selections. I mostly read new books, so that's why I lean more towards Charles. But I will sprinkle in older stuff in. For instance, this year I read "The Lost Stradivarius" and "Harlequin's Millions". I think both of those recommendations came from Dirda. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brody Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 I just finished "Mad Dogs, Midgets, and Screw Jobs" and found it to be a bit dry. Moving on to "Ali vs Inoki". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 16 hours ago, Randy said: Oh, I definitely read and like Michael Dirda as well. But, Charles reviews exclusively new releases, while Dirda is more about delving into forgotten or over-looked selections. I mostly read new books, so that's why I lean more towards Charles. But I will sprinkle in older stuff in. For instance, this year I read "The Lost Stradivarius" and "Harlequin's Millions". I think both of those recommendations came from Dirda. By coincidence, Michael's copy of The Lost Stradivarius came from yours truly... ;-) (Great book and with Tartarus Press doing a reprint, I was okay with selling Michael my first edition.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 35 minutes ago, Brody said: I just finished "Mad Dogs, Midgets, and Screw Jobs" and found it to be a bit dry. Now there's a line that you don't see every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roman Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 I hate dry screw jobs. You're doing nobody a favour with those. Nobody. I'm still going through the 'Dutch classics' forced upon me by the missus. It's a struggle because I'm just not a fan of the language. One of the stories is quite good, though. It slightly reminds me of Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe, which is one of my favourite novels. I should probably read that again after I finish these... And then perhaps I can finally get started on a certain book called The Scribe that a little fairy a friendly unnameable eldritch horror got me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuetsar Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 On 7/12/2016 at 1:06 AM, OSJ said: So outside of a message board devoted to pro wrestling, where do you get your literary recs? ;-) Most of my personal library has been collected through Library books sales,store closeouts or yardsales. I tend to read history more than fiction, so I've accumilated a ton of that. As for fiction, most of the stuff I read I've stumbled upon. Finding Terry Pratchett(a long time ago now) after reading Hitchhikers'. Finding a Carl Hiaasen book at a yard sale, then the rest at a book sale. Currently reading James Swains Tony Valentine series, after similiarly find one at yard sale. My history reading tends to be somewhat hard(robert Caro is awesome, but a quick read he is not), so when I go to fiction is for some brain candy. . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 I get my books through being involved as close as possible with the reading community. I use Goodreads, I read from time to time reviews from the NY and London review of books, I listen to book related podcasts and read books about people reading books. It means I always have a book or several that I am keeping an eye out for. https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/4057774 Here is my current yearly reading challenge update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted July 17, 2016 Share Posted July 17, 2016 It's utterly surreal reading MONEYBALL after reading Nate Silver's book, which spends a chapter on a requiem for the concept, emphasizing how after the rich teams figured out how Beane was over performing it didn't work anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 I started reading Nora Webster by Colm Toibin today. Maybe it's because I was going back-and-forth between that and watching Stranger Things on Netflix, but there's something that feels really eerie about this book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.H. Posted July 19, 2016 Share Posted July 19, 2016 Finished Republic of Thieves and holy crap has Scott Lynch set up a giant shit storm on all fronts for the next Gentleman Bastard book. The wait for the end of September is going to seem like years James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobholly138 Posted July 19, 2016 Share Posted July 19, 2016 Finished Card Sharks by Pete Williams the other day. While it is a history of the baseball card business it is more about how shady Upper Deck was. Started two books yesterday. My Life with SDS and the Weathermen Underground by Mark Rudd & The Incredibly Strange Film Book by Jonathan Ross. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 On 7/17/2016 at 3:28 AM, Liam said: I get my books through being involved as close as possible with the reading community. I use Goodreads, I read from time to time reviews from the NY and London review of books, I listen to book related podcasts and read books about people reading books. It means I always have a book or several that I am keeping an eye out for. https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/4057774 Here is my current yearly reading challenge update. Interesting selection! Let me save you a bit of time and hook you up with a better reading experience... Do not bother with the novel version of "Flowers for Algernon". As a novelette, it's absolutely perfect and will rip your heart out. As a novel, it just feels bloated. Some writers are good enough to pump up a shorter work into a serviceable novel. Daniel Keyes is not one of those writers. Any Michael Dirda book is going to turn you on to something wonderful, that's just the way Michael is. As for myself, I have one stack work-related and one stack just for kicks. Work-related I am plowing through some three-hundred stories by Brian W. Aldiss. I've been tapped to edit a two-volume "Best of" and I want to be absolutely sure that I don't miss anything critical. As it is, two volumes isn't really enough to do the subject justice, the man's been writing over sixty years and started out good and just got better, but we'll do what we can... (I've already found several just kick-ass novelettes and novellas that haven't been collected in book form, likely due to length, since I have around 1000 pages to play with, I ain't worried about length, I want to get a nice balance of short-shorts (something he excels at are stories of 2000-4000 words) and his other sweet spot, which are stories of 15,000-30,000 words. For kicks I'm reading a good bit of John Llewellyn Probert, British horror author who seems to hit it out of the park as often as not. So far in two collections nothing less than very good and much that is excellent. I'm reading his novella-length tribute to Vincent Price right now and it is outstanding! Most of his stuff is available very inexpensively, check him out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted August 1, 2016 Share Posted August 1, 2016 My daughter has started reading Ender's Game for her Summer Reading List for school. Pray for her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Fowler Posted August 1, 2016 Share Posted August 1, 2016 Read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It's pretty good, although no way it can possibly live up to what people want 9 years after the series ended. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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