What are you reading?

[OSJ]

On 1/8/2020 at 3:00 PM, odessasteps said:

https://coolmaterial.com/media/the-pulp-magazine-archive-has-75-years-of-pulp-magazines-you-can-read-for-free/

Figured this would interest a number of people here. 

Yeah, this is quite cool. I'll have to dig around to see if there's any Donald Dale (Mary Dale Buckner) material that I'm missing. Oh, speaking of pulp-related stuff, as many of y'all know, I serve as "Hand of the King" at Centipede Press, things have just taken a turn for the better, I've been named editor of The Weird Fiction Review  and the very first issue  under my editorship is out right now!

[AxB]

Now reading The Affirmation by Christopher Priest* (it's a Gollancz SF Masterwork). It's about a guy who goes off the rails in the aftermath of a bereavement and starts writing his autobiography, but then decides that to tell the truth of his life he needs to change the names and the details. But even at this stage, it's very unreliable narrator. He tells us he's doing things and five pages later it's clear they haven't been done. Then it suddenly shifts, and rather than being an Englishman who's Father passed away, he's from Jethra in Faianland, and he's won a Lottery to travel on a cruise ship to Collago, where he will have athanasia treatments and become immortal.

The introduction said that this is one of the few novels that can make perfect sense if read as a sequel to itself. I'm like a third of the way in, and I have no idea where it could possibly be going. There's every chance I could end up thinking it's a pile of overthought rubbish, or it might be great.

* He wrote The Prestige, which was adapted into the (best) Christopher Nolan movie.

[Execproducer]

Supposed to rain on my off days. My favorite time for reading Gothic Horror.

 

[odessasteps]

Imagining horror stories with monsters replaced by corgis. 

[JLSigman]

A Star Wars fan Tumblr had posted a joke about the novelization of Revenge of the Sith had Obi-Wan recognizing Anakin's upside down ass, so I, being utter fan garbage sometimes, had to go grab a copy from my library. 

HOLY SHIT this is well written. I'm just to the Dooku fight and SO MUCH info has been given that I don't remember seeing mentioned in The Clone Wars. I'll definitely have to get my hands on more of Stover's work. 

[Matt D]

8 minutes ago, JLSigman said:

A Star Wars fan Tumblr had posted a joke about the novelization of Revenge of the Sith had Obi-Wan recognizing Anakin's upside down ass, so I, being utter fan garbage sometimes, had to go grab a copy from my library. 

HOLY SHIT this is well written. I'm just to the Dooku fight and SO MUCH info has been given that I don't remember seeing mentioned in The Clone Wars. I'll definitely have to get my hands on more of Stover's work. 

Not Star Wars, but I remember really liking Heroes Die by him years ago. Give that a look too.

[OSJ]

On 3/6/2020 at 11:34 AM, AxB said:

Now reading The Affirmation by Christopher Priest* (it's a Gollancz SF Masterwork). It's about a guy who goes off the rails in the aftermath of a bereavement and starts writing his autobiography, but then decides that to tell the truth of his life he needs to change the names and the details. But even at this stage, it's very unreliable narrator. He tells us he's doing things and five pages later it's clear they haven't been done. Then it suddenly shifts, and rather than being an Englishman who's Father passed away, he's from Jethra in Faianland, and he's won a Lottery to travel on a cruise ship to Collago, where he will have athanasia treatments and become immortal.

The introduction said that this is one of the few novels that can make perfect sense if read as a sequel to itself. I'm like a third of the way in, and I have no idea where it could possibly be going. There's every chance I could end up thinking it's a pile of overthought rubbish, or it might be great.

* He wrote The Prestige, which was adapted into the (best) Christopher Nolan movie.

How about this: The Affirmation is both better and worse than The Prestige  in every possible way. Is it over-thought to the point of complexity for the sake of complexity? Yeah, probably so... However, it's like much of the work of Rhys Hughes (best example: Worming the Harpy or Milorad Pavic (best example: Landscape Painted with Tea; two editions of which exist, a male and a female variant. One line in each version is different and changes the whole work. As for Rhys Hughes, in his quest to honor the authors that inspired him such as Milorad Pavic, Jean Ray, Gustav Meyrink, Paul Busson, etc. he winds becoming far stranger than any of them. 

[OSJ]

18 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Imagining horror stories with monsters replaced by corgis. 

Now stop it, just stop it...

[AxB]

10 hours ago, OSJ said:

How about this: The Affirmation is both better and worse than The Prestige  in every possible way. Is it over-thought to the point of complexity for the sake of complexity? Yeah, probably so... 

Alan Ayckbourne wrote two plays, that had the same first act. At the end of the first act, someone on the horns of an indecision decides to just toss a coin to decide. And then the 'heads' play is completely different to the 'tails' play, with a completely different script and some characters only appearing in one.

Now, when the play was in London's West End, they would work the coin toss and advertise ahead of time which version they were doing. But before that, when it was in it's first run in his home town (Scarborough, North Yorks), the coin toss was a shoot. The actors had to learn both scripts.

[BurningBeard]

On 3/6/2020 at 6:34 PM, AxB said:

Now reading The Affirmation by Christopher Priest* (it's a Gollancz SF Masterwork). It's about a guy who goes off the rails in the aftermath of a bereavement and starts writing his autobiography, but then decides that to tell the truth of his life he needs to change the names and the details. But even at this stage, it's very unreliable narrator. He tells us he's doing things and five pages later it's clear they haven't been done. Then it suddenly shifts, and rather than being an Englishman who's Father passed away, he's from Jethra in Faianland, and he's won a Lottery to travel on a cruise ship to Collago, where he will have athanasia treatments and become immortal.

The introduction said that this is one of the few novels that can make perfect sense if read as a sequel to itself. I'm like a third of the way in, and I have no idea where it could possibly be going. There's every chance I could end up thinking it's a pile of overthought rubbish, or it might be great.

* He wrote The Prestige, which was adapted into the (best) Christopher Nolan movie.

I think I've read this one... is it the one where the main character is supposed to be redecorating a house and his girlfriend has left him? And he slowly begins to disappear into the Dream Archipelago?

I really should read more of Priest but I find the writing never quite matches the great concepts.

Edited March 9, 2020 by BurningBeard

[AxB]

Yes, that's the one. I'm about halfway through.

[username]

On 3/8/2020 at 11:42 PM, OSJ said:

How about this: The Affirmation is both better and worse than The Prestige  in every possible way. Is it over-thought to the point of complexity for the sake of complexity? Yeah, probably so... However, it's like much of the work of Rhys Hughes (best example: Worming the Harpy or Milorad Pavic (best example: Landscape Painted with Tea; two editions of which exist, a male and a female variant. One line in each version is different and changes the whole work. As for Rhys Hughes, in his quest to honor the authors that inspired him such as Milorad Pavic, Jean Ray, Gustav Meyrink, Paul Busson, etc. he winds becoming far stranger than any of them. 

 

This sounded so familiar that I had to look it up and yep, same guy wrote Dictionary of the Khazars which had the same gimmick. I had a soft spot for overly complicated books/narratives for a bit (I mean, I picked Pale Fire when we briefly had that book club here...) and that book sure did meet that criteria. Anyways I think this means I should add The Affirmation to my "to read" list.

[OSJ]

On 3/9/2020 at 10:45 PM, username said:

 

This sounded so familiar that I had to look it up and yep, same guy wrote Dictionary of the Khazars which had the same gimmick. I had a soft spot for overly complicated books/narratives for a bit (I mean, I picked Pale Fire when we briefly had that book club here...) and that book sure did meet that criteria. Anyways I think this means I should add The Affirmation to my "to read" list.

What's really bizarre is that we're reading Pavic in translation (I think), imagine using that gimmick in a translation!!!! 

Someone else commented that Priest's writing isn't quite up to the concepts that he offers up and I'll have to go along with that.  He's a good but not great writer and the concepts that he floats out there needs a Ted Chiang or Greg Egan  and Priest is no Ted Chiang. Rhys Hughes at one time claimed that all of his work could be read together as one work and that when he was done you could read everything backwards and it would make sense... I haven't heard him spout that nonsense in about ten years, so I'm concluding that he realized what an impossible idea that was.Funny thing is there was a point in his first year or two when it looked like he might actually be able to pull this concept off. Of course, the more he wrote the less likely it seemed that he'd be able to meld these works together. Trouble is that Hughes is a very prolific writer so within the space of a year he'd made it impossible to tie everything together.

[J.T.]

Spending time at home shifting focus between telework, gaming, and trying to get into Gibson's new book, Agency.  It's a pre-re-sequel to The Peripheral.

It's okay if you're into cyberpunk.  The weird thing is that this stuff would seem totally fresh coming from another author, but I've read all of the Sprawl and Bridge novels and so far the meta plot from The Peripheral / Agency feels like ground we've trodden over before. 

I would've expected the Father of Cyberpunk to be far ahead of the curve, but the books worth checking out if only to watch Gibson openly sneer at today's politics and note his derision of the internet as it has slowly transformed from the untamed frontier of cyberspace into the multiplex shopping mall of the naughts.

[odessasteps]

You know things are bad when JT is checking the board from home. 

[AxB]

I finished The Affirmation. It was frustrating, in the end. You could say he painted himself into a corner, but that would be to disregard that the whole thing is an intentional exercise in corner painting. Probably the worst possible book to read during a pandemic as it's basically a stark warning about the mental affects of isolation and spending too much time in your own head (although the narrating character was already struggling with mental health before the isolation got to him). The bits about how he thinks he understands other people, that he puts the other people in his life into his manuscript but changes their names, but actually they aren't based on the people he thinks they're based on, because they're all based on him... That seems more like a meta-story of a novelist having a crisis of confidence about his own ability to inhabit characters, and his empathy levels in his real life. 

It's another one of those, if you're into the idea of writers playing with the form and trying to deconstruct narrative theory, you might find it interesting. I'm not saying you'd like it, necessarily, but you'd find it interesting. But if you're looking for a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, in that order, steer well clear.

I'm now reading Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J D Barker.  Too soon to say.

[OSJ]

9 hours ago, AxB said:

I finished The Affirmation. It was frustrating, in the end. You could say he painted himself into a corner, but that would be to disregard that the whole thing is an intentional exercise in corner painting. Probably the worst possible book to read during a pandemic as it's basically a stark warning about the mental affects of isolation and spending too much time in your own head (although the narrating character was already struggling with mental health before the isolation got to him). The bits about how he thinks he understands other people, that he puts the other people in his life into his manuscript but changes their names, but actually they aren't based on the people he thinks they're based on, because they're all based on him... That seems more like a meta-story of a novelist having a crisis of confidence about his own ability to inhabit characters, and his empathy levels in his real life. 

It's another one of those, if you're into the idea of writers playing with the form and trying to deconstruct narrative theory, you might find it interesting. I'm not saying you'd like it, necessarily, but you'd find it interesting. But if you're looking for a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, in that order, steer well clear.

I'm now reading Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J D Barker.  Too soon to say.

I'm with you to a point... The Affirmation is not a good novel, it is however, an interesting book. If there's one book that sums up Priest's career as a writer this is probably it, though he has written far better books frequently. What do I mean by that? Just what you touched on, the meta aspects of the book really ring true when you consider the bulk of his work (particularly The Prestige), Priest is at times a brilliant writer and at times a frustrating one, but he's never, ever boring.

[AxB]

They announced all the Libraries in the County are going to be closed indefinitely from Monday. So I got loads of books out today, on the basis that I might have months to read them, rather than three weeks.

[OSJ]

What am I reading specifically? Why simply the best SF/Fantasy debut novel since Scott Lynch gave us The Lies of Locke Lamora a few years back. The book in question is Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and it has everything a fan of the swashbucklng genre could possibly want, lots of swordplay, lesbian necromancers, intrigue and court politics, and a lead character who can best be described as (a.) a hot redhead or (b.) a demon that will eat your heart. No she's not REALLY a demon, but a kickass warrior with a fondness for porno mags, what's not to like?My only regret is that the sequel doesn't come out until June and I'm going to finish this today or tomorrow depending on how much work I decide to shine on.

[Contentious C]

On 12/16/2019 at 1:31 PM, J.H. said:

The announcement came from Jim Butcher this morning!
July 14th 2020, we finally get Peace Talks, the new Dresden book.

Now I just ant to hear something from Scott Lynch about the status of The Thorn of Emberlain (which he completed and submitted in the spring) and 2020 might be a grand year for reading

James

According to some crap I saw on Amazon - and now confirmed - it looks like 2 DF books.  Peace Talks, then Battle Ground in September.

[JLSigman]

Been having trouble focusing on new stuff (can't imagine why), and a friend recommended just doing re-reads. Futzed around a bit, couldn't think of anything, then remembered I had an old copy of The Briar King by Greg Keyes that I'd been meaning to go back through. It's really good, I have three of the four in the series. 

[OSJ]

I am showing some remarkable restraint, my pal Bill Schafer, the head honcho at Subterranean Press told me that I should check out Alix Harrow's novel The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I almost fell into the same trap as I did with Gideon the Ninth, here's a couple of nice copies on ABEBOOKS for $50-something, okay that's double cover price, which is irritating , but my fault for dropping my subscription to Locus and assuming that just because I edit the Weird Fiction Review that I'm going to hear about everything. Anyway, just before I click the button I realize that the listing says "fifth printing"! Okay, that shit will never do, so I scroll through more listings and finally find a signed first printing that's fine/fine (this means both book and dustjacket are for all practical purposes fresh as a daisy)... $500.00!!! WTF??? This thing just came out this year and is commanding as high a price as Tim  Powers' The Anubis Gates or Dan Simmons' Song of Kali or Hyperion. The problem with this is that these three books have had nearly forty years to establish themselves as bonafide classics of their respective genres. I'm sure Alix Harrow is good, but I'm not about to drop $500 to find out. I may break down and settle for a later printing, but right now things are starting to pile up...

I figured that between Tamsyn Muir books (the 2nd doesn't come out until June), I'd try Bill's other rec, Joe Abercrombie. Now Bill did publish some of Abercrombie's work in the past, but he's not involved in the new series , (though he may do an edition later), this one is starting out with a signed edition and is already in multiple printings so I didn't mind paying a total of $51.00 at all! I also picked up a 10th anniversary set of his first three novels set in this universe (which sounds really, really cool) and the total cost was around $70.00 with shipping. The books aren't here yet, so I'm not sure what I've got... My friend who is my usual hook-up doesn't carry Abercrombie because the guy is a Scot and thus his books usually come out in the UK a week or so ahead of the American release and there's no room for even a slight mark-up to make things worthwhile. When I told him the cost, he said that was impossible as he was going to give me the usual buddy discount we bestow on each other (about 40% off going rates) and that my cost for the 10th Anniversary  Edition (which is what I supposedly have coming) would have been $375.00 or $125.00 each. Again we have a case where the true firsts are in that $500 range. So I don't know what I've got... The listings made no mention of the books being signed , (which is kind of a major selling point), and none of the on-line bibliographies make mention of an unsigned variant. The seller isn't a specialist like my bro at Barsoom Books, but rather a big discount house like Books a Million or Save With Sam, which means it's a waste of time calling them for added information as the staff aren't book people, rather the usual run of first job in retail types who would just as soon be selling pet food or shoes. So there's an ever so faint possibility that I've scored a nearly $400 set of books for around $70.00, we shall see... 

In the meantime, while waiting on this set and Abercrombie's story collection set in this universe I picked up Jim Blaylock's novel length adventure of Langdon St Ives,  I will mention that Jim and I used to be close friends back in the day when he Powers and Jeter were the founding fathers of steampunk and I was the first guy to publish Powers and Blaylock in hardcover, which while it doesn't make me a founding father of steampunk,  I guess I'm the crazy uncle of steampunk or something... Anyway Jim and sort of lost contact over the years, our careers just going in different directions, but I've always enjoyed his books,just happened to have fallen behind, so I started River's Edge with my usual high expectations, and uh, well... I'm half-way through and I'm not sure what to say; I can't invoke the eight deadly words: IDCWHTTP (I Don't Care What Happens To These People), because it's Langdon & Alice, the Frobishers, Finn, Bill, and the rest of the usual gang of eccentrics, but this is just a slog. The plot seems to be centered around a fancy paper mill that's polluting the surrounding environs something fierce, and there's a good bit of murders to cover up activities or is something even more sinister going on? Lord, I hope so, otherwise I'm going to be pissed. As always, the writing is charming though situations are a little grimmer than what I expect from Jim and he's got half a book  to pull out the stops and have some really crazy-ass Victorian magic going on... We shall see, as Jim himself is fond of saying, "In for a penny..." I shall persevere, but damn that Abercrombie book looks tempting...

My publisher just called and wants me to assemble two Frank Belknap Long collections and a Fritz Leiber SF collection by next Friday... Yes, of course I can do that...Oh, web copy fot three major releases? Oh, why the fuck not... I'm going to read some Blaylock first... 

[Curt McGirt]

Been meaning to mention this for a bit but didn't want to encourage people to be more bummed than they already are... Anyway, I read A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe for free online, which you can find with a Google search. Even though it was written about the London Plague of 1665 it might as well have already been written about what's going on today. If anything besides depressing, it's sobering and will hold up a mirror to some current truths and serious possibilities for our future, if you can handle it. 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[Control]

I’m currently reading Vernon Subutext book 1, and quite enjoying it. Our aging hero, a former record store owner, loses his apartment and tries to manage by couch surfing with a bunch of now middle-aged former punks, many of whom he hasn’t seen in years. Best I can describe the author is a female Michel Houellebecq.

[JLSigman]

On 4/17/2020 at 8:00 AM, JLSigman said:

Been having trouble focusing on new stuff (can't imagine why), and a friend recommended just doing re-reads. Futzed around a bit, couldn't think of anything, then remembered I had an old copy of The Briar King by Greg Keyes that I'd been meaning to go back through. It's really good, I have three of the four in the series. 

Starting the second book (in paperback, and lolsob my glasses are 4 years old and focusing is FUN let me tell you). Changed my short review on Goodreads for the first one to switch the Games of Thrones reference (because boy has that not aged well) to a Memory, Sorry, and Thorn by Tad Williams reference.