What are you reading?

[Matt D]

Is it as anti-humanist as the first law?

[supremebve]

The Shattered Sea trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is really good. Maybe better than the First Law series (which it has nothing at all to do with). When you think you've got on top of things and you know what's happening and where it's going, and then you realise that you actually knew precisely bugger all about what was happening. But it's not a twist book, like some M Night Shyamalan/ Vince Russo rubbish. It's just a really good story (three stories) that makes perfect sense in retrospect, but you don't see things coming at the time.

I listened to Half a King on Audible and liked it a lot.  I honestly don't know where it is going next which is always a good feeling with a trilogy. 

 

How fast does he write? This is his second trilogy in the last decade.

[AxB]

Pretty much a book a year. Half a War (third book) came out before I realised Half the World (second book) had. Also Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country are basically a 'what happened next' follow-up to the First Law trilogy, but you couldn't really call them a second trilogy as such. But yeah, nine books since 2006.

 

Is it as anti-humanist as the first law?

 

I think the thing with the First Law series was, even though they made a great point of it being an atheistic kingdom, Bayaz himself was basically an interventionistic God, who for some reason chose to present himself as a man and not encourage people to worship him as the supreme being he actually was.

[Matt D]

It was really bleak though.

 

First Law is a long road to the ultimate futility of even trying.

[AxB]

Shattered Sea isn't like that. People who have no agency can gain some (quite a lot of it in some cases), and people who wield a lot of power can lose everything. But not all of them do. No spoilers here... I hope someone else reads the trilogy soon, because there's a lot of spoilery things that I'm not even going to put in spoiler tags right now.

See, some people can't resist clicking on them, even when they know it could ruin their future enjoyment. So I'm keeping schtum on them.

[Cliff Hanger]

After talking to him at Dragon Con a couple times and being really impressed with him, I am finally giving John Hemry/Jack Campbell a try. I got the first Lost Fleet book, DAUNTLESS, on Audible and have been listening g to it during cardio. So far I like it a lot, it has a lot of the same tropes as other major military space opera franchises but makes them feel fresh and exciting. The fact that he's a career Naval officer helps, I suspect.

Meanwhile I am working my way through the galley proof I got of A CALL TO ARMS (Timothy Zahn's second book in Honor Harrington prehistory.) It was really enjoyable right up until Travis Long (the first book's sole protagonist) came into the spotlight; I don't hate him or anything, but he's not much fun and watching him shoot himself in the foot by being Mr. By The Book No Matter What is annoying in a totally different way than intended. Still enjoying the higher-level political chess and the bits following the villain, but I wish we could either spend less time with Travis or fast forward his character growth.

My next nonfiction audiobook will be my third straight Jon Ronson, as I embark on THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

[Liam]

Once I read the booker prize nominees for this year, I really should read a Jack Campbell book. Picked about 6 of them up for 99p each on a Kindle sale.

[Roman]

I finished Shaun Hutson's Relics. Repetitive and sometimes downright bad and eye-rollingly cliché writing, bland characters, boring story. The one thing it had going for it was graphic gore, but I'm not a fan of that. It bores me. I want to be frightened, and gore leaves me indifferent. It also doesn't help that it had very graphic dogfights, and that's one of the things I loathe most in life. So unless you're a big fan of gore, stay away from this one.

 

And now it's time to read Tom Franklin's Poachers. Thanks again for the recommendation, OSJ. I can't wait.

[odessasteps]

Starting Rafa Honigstein's book on german football.

[OSJ]

Shaun Hutson... I shouldn't speak ill of my comrades-in-arms, but the man is a hack's hack. He doesn't even do graphic gore very convincingly.

 

My recent reading is work related but very rewarding nonetheless, I'm preparing 160,000 word collections of both Richard Wilson and Robert Sheckley, so I've been re-reading even the most obscure (and in Wilson's case early space-opera stuff). Sheckley started out as a brilliant satirist who just happened to use science fiction as his vehicle. Wilson started writing bang-bang shoot 'em up westerns in outer space and within a few years evolved into one of the most thought-provoking writers in the field. And he could bring the funny when he wanted to, just a tremendous talent. In both cases I could have twice the word limit and I'd still be leaving out good stuff.

 

For pure enjoyment, there's a new Simon Clark novel due out this month, Simon always delivers the goods. Surprised he hasn't caught on with a major US publisher as of yet.

 

 

 

I finished Shaun Hutson's Relics. Repetitive and sometimes downright bad and eye-rollingly cliché writing, bland characters, boring story. The one thing it had going for it was graphic gore, but I'm not a fan of that. It bores me. I want to be frightened, and gore leaves me indifferent. It also doesn't help that it had very graphic dogfights, and that's one of the things I loathe most in life. So unless you're a big fan of gore, stay away from this one.

 

And now it's time to read Tom Franklin's Poachers. Thanks again for the recommendation, OSJ. I can't wait.

[Cliff Hanger]

Just started THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, my third Jon Ronson book in 6 months. It's making my brain hurt to think of all the taxpayer money that went into "psychic intelligence".

[assfax]

I've dipped a little into this H.P. Lovecraft shit and the scariest thing about these things is that second where I realize I'm drifting off to sleep and wake up startled like I'm slipping on ice.  SHIT SUCKS. I know books are bad when I fall asleep reading like I'm in school. I got this complete collection ebook thing.  I started off chronologically but had to start skipping around to stuff that at least sounded good and I'd heard of.  Like, that first story was a dude finding a treasure map that led to nothing but reimbursed him for his expedition.  I understand that was an early story but geez. At least I remember Sword of Parmagon. Polaris was unfocused.  Dagon was OK but definitely established the formula.  "I write this correspondence of a nature which I daren't speak as to lead to complete discombobulation. etc...".   The Herbert West shit was funny and also showcased that old-time racism that I'd heard about.  Are there more stories where he isn't writing 'found footage' letters about things which should not be spoken aloud?  I read a bunch of the old REH Conan stories and they were awesome.  Tons of blood and monsters and nudity. Plus there is like, space aliens in those old Conan deals. Tower of the Elephant?  He's always like, "the coldness of interstellar space". It's kind of how Slan had all these suprisingly advanced nuclear ideas way back in the goddamned. Even on the shit I already knew from Savage Sword it was still great to read Frost Giant's Daughter.  That still has power no matter how you approach it.

 

Say awful abode a thousand times.  You can make a career out of it.

 

I know old books aren't bad because they're old.  It's because they are bad. 

 

 

Other shit I've read recently. 

 

I got a little into Hamsun's Hunger but I just wasn't feeling another dense "romantic writer in poverty" deal after the exuberance of Ask The Dust.  Maybe it gets different but I'm doubting it.

 

 

 

Gunslinger:  Eh, I guess I thought more was going to happen.  I'll Probably read the rest eventually.  This shit along with that Lovecraft garbage was on a .txt file I wrote last year indicated shit I wanted to read in 2015.  Along with "Mark Twain Shit" and "Pound Cantos".

 

Bentley Little:

Mailman: this is different than the short story.  It boils down to this

The Store:  Probably his best concept.  I mean as soon as it got into a weird blind sex thing we all knew what the fuck was goin' on.  Dumb nebulous ending.  Didn't extrapolate on any of the actual weird things that happened.

The Ignored:  Great concept when it hits.  Really gets dumb with the ending.  What was with the evil clown sticking his cock in his wife's mouth?  Also, cardinal sin of mentioning another better book to explain shit "Great God Pan"

The Town:  Had the kernel of an interesting idea with some seemingly well researched or at least intrinsically understood subjects of obscurity.  It boiled down to an evil gremlin.

The House:  Some great stuff, mostly fluff.  Could've been 100 pages shorter.  I guess I understood why the intro happened but still kind of lame and unexplored.  No need for the repetition.

Death Instinct:  EVIL RETARD.  I was kind of expecting a Giallo ending seeing how easy it is to figure it out.  Lots of unnecessary fluff.  What was with all the phallophobia?  I mean I know why they had all the evil serial killer brother shit but it meant nothing!

Dispatch:  Now we're talking.  I'm maybe 200 pages in right now but this is like a fantasy Ham on Rye.  This has the makings of an unqualified recommendation.

 

I read the first two books in this Night Angel Trilogy.  I'm pretty sure this is my first foray into these "epic" 1200 page "epics".  I really liked how magic was used.  The weird anime relationship shit kinda clogged up the pacing.  "Oh, I'm this immortal assassin but if we happened to oh I don't know... KISSSSS" SHIT. 

[Jingus]

Were you reading a chronologically-ordered story collection? Just about all of those were his earlier stuff, when Lovecraft was still fairly raw and hadn't really found his groove yet. (And the "found footage" style of writing wasn't just him, it was a popular stylistic technique that tons of writers, especially horror writers, used ad nauseum throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.)

Throw away that old junk and get some of his later, better material. "The Outsider" is a nice five-pages-and-done intro to what the man was really all about. If you dig that, then his longer story-novellas "The Shadow over Innsmouth", "The Dunwich Horror", "The Whisperer in Darkness", "Dreams in the Witch House", "The Colour Out of Space", and "At the Mountains of Madness" are all far superior examples of why people actually like Lovecraft, compared to the admittedly-lame rookie crap that you've already seen.

[Reed]

The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox by Nina Burleigh. You know how people think the Hae Min Lee case is complicated and a bit of mess? Yeah, that's got nothing of this one. Seriously: There is are all these pieces evidence...and each one tells you an entirely different thing.  It got ridiculously sensationalized because it featured all these good-looking young people, but, at it's core, it is genuinely a fascinating case.  

 

Like Burleigh says here, the cops did have a valid reason to be suspicious of Knox (her and her boyfriend's story changed multiple times), but they were also a bunch of sexist pricks who were out to get her for having sex a lot, being attractive and doing cartwheels.  It even gets to the point they let the Guede guy, who 100% wielded the knife and committed the act, off relatively easy (he'll likely be out in 7 or 8 years) just so they can go after Knox on a not-very-solid murder accomplice charge. 

 

I don't know: My vague guess was always Knox and the boyfriend didn't have anything to do with the murder itself, but helped cover it up for some reason. 

[OSJ]

I've gone on this rant before, usually in authors' forums, but chronological collections are the crutch of the unqualified and unoriginal editor, and the hallmark of a writer who doesn't have the fucking common sense that God gave a ground squirrel. The problem with such collection should be obvious to even the obtuse fucker in he room, the idea of a collection is to showcase the author at their best, even if you are doing a "complete stories of" there are ways to minimize the impact of the weakest material (this is why I get paid what I do, I know how to do this, and if I may pause a moment to blow my own horn, toot fucking toot! Quite frankly, I do this better than anyone else now or ever. You want a collection to start with a story that grabs the reader and makes him or her take the book to the cash register. You want to end the collection with a story that makes the reader say "I need more of this, right now!"

 

A chronological collection is guaranteed to do a lot of things, but these two rather important things are not things that it does; instead, it does things like: Shows when the writer was in a rut creatively and revisiting the same territory because he/she could get away with it. Shows when the writer was struggling to find their own voice and was writing workshop stories. (Workshop stories are the lowest common denominator of commercially viable fiction, they neither reap nor do they sow, they are just there. You can sell them, you can probably sell them consistently, and if you do, you know those anthologies that get published and on the cover the copy will say "New stories from Edward Lee, Bentley Little, Simon Clark, Lucy Taylor, John Pelan, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Wilum Pugmire and others. Guess what? You get to be one of the "others" now and forever, sweetie, and isn't that special. A chronological collection will also show when a writer has run out of steam, not all do, but some have tragic life events like a stroke that leaves them functional, but takes away something very precious that they can't get back. A big collection of Keith Laumer's "Retief" stories is a joy to read. Laumer had a stroke about two-thirds of the way through his career. Knowing this and reading a chronological collection of "Retief" stories will make you cry. Okay, enough of that; time to see what the Emperor is really wearing...

Since I frequently write fiction that borrows from or builds on concepts frequently utilized by H.P. Lovecraft, I might be accused of rather savagely biting the hand that feeds me, but so it goes... When we strip all the hype and chase the Cthulhu geeks who read no other type of fiction out of the room so that the adults may converse, we can share an inconvenient truth. H.P. Lovecraft as writer was not all that and a bag of chips; August Derleth forgot more about the technique of writing than Lovecraft ever learned. Derleth wrote about people because he was people. Lovecraft was a terrified observer of the human race from afar and didn't understand what he was seeing most of the time. From a creative and artistic standpoint to say nothing of a humanistic standpoint Clark Ashton Smith was so far ahead of Lovecraft in every single important creative aspect as to make the mention of them in the same breath a grievous insult to Smith. Robert E. Howard wasn't simply one of the greatest American fantasy writers, he was well on the way to being one of the greatest American writers. The dude was thirty when he offed himself. Thirty. He had already had a career that most writers would envy by the time many of us were selling our first stories. To compare Lovecraft to Howard is like comparing Mario Mendoza to Barry Bonds. both men played the same game, but there was a profound difference in the way they played it.

Bottom line. Lovecraft wrote about a dozen very good to excellent stories (many of which Jingus cited), a whole bunch of mediocrities that ended with something like: then I saw it, the unspeakable, he had failed to flush or close the lid and I saw then that which man was never meant to see... I ... can...write...no...more...)

In all seriousness, the Arkham House edition of The Dunwich Horror really contains all the Lovecraft that you'll ever need and that is essential. Don't want to spring for a $30 hardcover, fine, look the contents up on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and then find a comparable paperback, they are out there. Those dozen great stories get endlessly reshuffled like Robert Johnson's blues and packaged with less-significant material, but if you take a little time to shop, you'll strike paydirt.

[J.H.]

After having finished Deadhouse Gates, Im' holding off on the next Malazan book. Trying to think of somethign to read that suits my interests. No new Dresden until next year. I'll wait until Deember to start on the next Malazan and Robert E. Howard and HP Lovecraft are long dead so new material from them is... unlikely.

 

I'm open to recommendations for reading material of the non-comic book variety so pitch away!

 

James 

[OSJ]

Well, how about some great Lovecraftian material not written by Lovecraft? The Cthulhu Mythos have produced some really awful crap, but there have also been bright spots that were as good or better than the original source material... One guy that (sadly) gets overlooked is John S. Glasby... I grew up thinking that Ramsey Campbell was the first Brit to write Mythos fiction, followed by Brian Lumley. Campbell is the gentleman who inspired me to become a writer, as I discovered his first book, The Inhabitant of the Lake, written by Campbell when he was 16, and published when he was 18. I got the book in 1970 when I was 13 and remember it was the first Arkham House book that I bought that wasn't at least partly by Lovecraft. Anyway, for years I thought that Ramsey had broken new ground by setting Mythos stories in the UK, then I found out about John S. Glasby. Glasby was one of the most popular sf/horror/fantasy/western/adventure/you-name-it authors of the 50s and 60s. He often wrote entire issues of magazines under a variety of pseudonyms. We didn't hear much about him in the States because most of his work was for John Spencer/Badger Books who did not export their products. Glasby wrote a couple or three books' worth of Mythos stories and had come to an arrangement with August Derleth to publish at least one collection in 1971. The manuscript was sent back to him in the UK for some minor revisions with the deal to be signed upon receipt of the revised book. While the manuscript was in transit back to Arkham House, August Derleth had the exquisitely bad timing to drop dead of a heart attack. When Glasby's manuscript reached Arkham House there was no one with authority to buy anything until the estate went through probate. And that was that until the 1990s when Glasby started writing Mythos stories again... There are now enough to fill four pretty good-sized books and two of them have just been published: The Brooding City and Beyond the Rim. I liked them enough to put my name on the editions as part of the Dancing Tuatara Press line and if you liked Lovecraft's good stuff, then you'll probably like these a great deal. Glasby was the real deal and more people should know about him. www.ramblehouse.com or if you want one of the fancy signed copies, e-mail me at [email protected] and I'll hook you up. The signed copies usually go for $45, but if you say that you saw it here, I'll let you get them for $35 each, just don't tell anybody. ;-)

[J.H.]

I not only appreciate the recommendation OSJ but love the background info even more!

 

Thank You1

 

James

[bobholly138]

Finally finished The Plutonium Blonde  by John Zakour & Lawrence Ganem. Was pretty decent. Kind of  a hard boiled detective but set in the far future. But with lots of comedy thrown in. After you get use to the authors strange cuss words subs it is fun.IE DOS is used instead of damn and GATES is shit.

[OSJ]

I not only appreciate the recommendation OSJ but love the background info even more!

 

Thank You1

 

James

 

One of these days I should collect all of my essays and such and reformat into a sort of personal history of the horror genre. Who knows, it might even sell ten or twenty copies... ;-(

 

Speaking of Lovecraftian stuff, even though I always say I'm done writing Mythos stories, when money gets waved at me, I am weak, so weak... Anyway, I have two invites that I need to polish off over the next month, one is to utilize the Derleth Mythos, which other than his failing to understand the basic concept had some well-developed ideas. The other is really interesting, a story drawing from Lovecraft's revisions, such as "The Horror in the Museum", "The Curse of Yig", etc.  Living out here in the high desert, I can think of all sorts of cool things to do with Yig, not the least of which is tying Yig to Robert E. Howard's "Worms of the Earth". We'll see if I can pull it off.

 

Oh, and for those interested in such things, I just got a dream gig. I get to put together a two-volume set of the Complete Clark Ashton Smith. I am fucking stoked. I realize Night Shade Books just did the complete Smith in six volumes a few years ago, unfortunately, from a design standpoint, the books suck. Text running in to the gutters, at least six lines too many on a page, just an unpleasant reading experience that could have been easily avoided by adding about thirty pages to each book. The cost in paper would have been so minimal as to be unworthy of mention, talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. For probably less than $100 per book they could have produced a very nice product that would have been the definitive edition of Smith. As it is, we got something that made me regret selling off my Arkham editions even though they relied on corrupt text from Weird Tales. Anyone that thinks Farnsworth Wright was a good editor just needs to compare Smith's originals with the butchered versions that saw print. Wright's ham-fisted editing was enough to make Smith pretty much quit writing prose. Anyway, these two volumes will be kind of spendy, but I guarantee that they'll be worth it, I'm using Smith's original manuscripts wherever possible (about 85% of the stories), and Centipede Press does lovely books, simply works of art. Probably going to take a couple of months hard work getting everything organized the way I want it. Logically, one can start with Hyperborea or Atlantean stories, then work up through Averoigne, contemporary tales, SF within our solar system, SF and otherworldly tales from beyond our solar system and then finally back to the dying earth of Zothique. At least that's my thinking thus far as it allows for starting and finishing with really top-drawer stuff. The stupidest thing to do would be chronological order where you start and finish with his weakest material.

[Roman]

I finished Tom Franklin's Poachers last night. I enjoyed most of the stories in the collection, but about half of them felt incomplete to me -- or I am just too stupid, which is entirely possible (and more likely), to grasp the underlying messages. What did particularly impress me was Franklin's ability to convey a very specific oppressive mood that was a mixture of social decay and a latent, omnipresent threat. It felt like you were crouching underneath some kind of potentially hostile presence and you needed to tread carefully. It's difficult to explain.

 

The short story 'Poachers' itself was probably my favourite one, although it almost felt like a Southern Gothic version of a Matthew Reilly novel (but with infinitely better writing). Franklin's great at setting a mysterious, oppressive, ominous mood and populating his stories with interesting characters, which helped lift the story with its cliché Mythical Ultimate Badass villain above the usual stories of that kind. But... I'll be damned if he wasn't a great character. Franklin's definitely an author I want to read more of.

[OSJ]

I've been waiting to see what you would think of Franklin and I don't know that I would say the earlier stories were incomplete as much as it may be a misnomer to call them "stories". A few seemed like nothing more than long vignettes heavy on atmosphere to set the reader up for the titular piece. (Perhaps, I'm giving Franklin way too much credit here.)

 

Speaking of social decay and oppressive mood, I just learned that there are not one but two completed novels that William Gay left behind after his death. The first has just been published, it appears that the British edition may have preceded the US by a couple of weeks for those who care about such things; me, when in doubt, follow the flag (US author = buy US edition; UK author = buy UK edition). Anyway, the new novel is Little Sister Death and while Gay can be credited with skirting around the horror genre just on the basis of his overwhelmingly oppressive atmosphere and situations, this one is a make no bones about it, genuine, bonafide horror novel. I am stoked! I've spent a decade wondering what it would be like if Gay just cut loose and wrote a genre horror novel and apparently he did! (I do wonder when it was actually written, as I can see an agent doing everything possible to discourage the publication of such...) Gay wasn't quite at that level where one can write whatever the hell they feel like and their publisher is going to back them 100%. You pretty much have to be Stephen King or Cormac McCarthy to pull that off (witness McCarthy's "daily double" of pulp crime fiction (No Country for Old Men) and apocalyptic SF/Horror (The Road). That sort of stunt would have been career suicide for just about anyone else.

[Cliff Hanger]

I finished THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS today. Having read 3 Jon Ronson books in 4 months, I'd rank them as GOATS followed by SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED and THE PSYCHOPATH TEST in the rear (it's still worthwhile, but it suffers from mission creep).  There are a couple more to get to, but I think I'm going to take a break and not do THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS until I finish some of my Audible backlog from when I had a subscription.

 

My book club is doing SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES this month. I'm looking forward to it, since it's the one major Bradbury I never quite got to.

[The Unholy Dragon]

Something Wicked This Way Comes was a weird experience for me. It feels so familiar since there's a ton of derivative works, yet it's still got these little things that make it stand out above all those derivative works. It's honestly one of my favourite books.

[Reed]

To Die For by Joyce Maynard. I always liked the movie so I figured I'd give the book a try. It reminds me of Gone Girl, with the rashamon from-different-views style of storytelling. It does clear up some stuff the movie left hanging and expands on things that were only hinted at. There's a lot of stuff about the class system.