July - what are you reading?

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Exceedingly well written, and at its peak toward the middle, one of the best horror novels I've ever read. Brilliant buildup of suspense leading to a shocking and terrifying reveal. Especially when I was reading it at 1:00 AM. Only, it's not really intended as horror, it started slow, and the resolution was anticlimatic. Overall, I liked it better than I expected and didn't mind the somewhat odd, if period-appropriate, late-19th/early-20th century socialist agitation nearly as much as I would have thought, but it definitely wasn't as good as I thought it would be for a while.

I was intrigued by this book for the first hundred pages. Then I started to wonder if there was going to be a payoff. Halfway through, I started to think the author had a bad case of ADD. It started to feel like the homebrew world of someone who never had a cool idea he didn't have to use, but then it would be abandoned when the next shiny idea popped up. And it had, bar none, the worst ending. It was one of those "I can't believe you wasted several hundred pages and hours of my life to drop that ending on me" moments.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I just started the Malazan series. I'm only about 50 pages in, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Being dropped into the middle of things with minimal exposition makes me feel kinda lost, but in a good (kinda Tim Powers) way.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Very interesting! I definitely agree that it started slow: I tried rereading it and was never able to get back into it. But I disagree that it's not intended as horror. To the extent that it fits any genre, I think horror is a very comfortable fit for it. And the anticlimactic resolution was something I really enjoyed: it kept the story uneasy and off-balance, which was part of why the horror was so effective. I can see how that wouldn't be to everyone's tastes, though.

Well, it certainly wasn't classified as horror by publishers (nor, to the best of my knowledge, by the author).

As to the anticlimactic resolution, what I mean is:

Spoiler

The invincible Lovecraftian monsters that terrify demons, go toe to toe with the awesomely enigmatic Weaver, prey on every non-weaver sentient and wipe out the city's community of psychic-parasite handlingers... get pwned first by the randomly created AI machine god, then by the protagonists' lucking onto a clever trap, then by the mob's trained moth-killing unit. It ruined the awful mystique of the slake-moths, making them, as Ramza says of Queeklain in FFT, "Just another monster." One has to wonder how incompetent the demons must be if they couldn't muster a blast of moth-destroying hellfire, fire in sufficient quantities being enough to kill the things.

Lin's and Yag's unsatisfying fates, on the other hand, were about what I expected and a function of 'literary' rather than 'horror.' Not my preference, but not a surprise and not really a problem.

 

[Aholibamah]

Currently I'm reviewing material for the History of Christianity class I'm going to be teaching this fall semester. This means I am reading personal works by Erasmus, Augustine, Noktur the Stammerer (great name), Tacitus, Josephus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Francesco Petrarca, Bernard Gui, John Milton, Blaise Pascal, John Wesley, and so on. However I've got selections of writings so really this is not as much as it seems, more like reading two somewhat long books. I also need to brush up on the Acts of the Apostles. However this is sort of work writing (though I do enjoy it)

I wish I could read "A Song of Ice and Fire" afresh all over again, I'm impatient for the next book in the series to come out. Probably one of the best fantasy novel series I've ever read. At the moment I was thinking of picking up something by China Mieville but I hear such mixed reviews that I'm wary--I'd love to find something fresh and exciting in the fantasy genre to read.

Anyway I'm finishing up Joan Slonczewski's Daughter of Elysium which is the sequel to A Door into Ocean. Her books are actually rather interesting though they are slow paced and often about conversations about philosophy and biology. This almost sounds boring except that the tension of intrigue accompanies this. Slonczewski actually is a biologist which has made her sci fi a little more solid than that of some.

I loved and hated the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The first three books seem to me to be better than the last three. On the one hand I loathed Thomas Covenant and on the other hand found him fascinating and reluctantly saw something of myself in him. The books were deeply moving to me.

 

[Tetsubo]

The Woods Hole Cantata: Essays on Science and Society by Gerald Weissman

 

[Jubilee]

I'm listening to The Amber Spyglass this week, and I have No Humans Involved waiting for pickup at the library to start soon. I want to pick up the latter half of the Nightside novels by Simon R Green, more of Elizabeth Peter's Amelia Peabody series, some Tanya Huff novels, and The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After: Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent Families Regarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Level (how could you not want to read a book with a title like that?) for the next month or two..

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Just finished the Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. I'm now reading his Singularity Sky.

Did you know this guy created the githyanki?

And Slaad

Once your done with Singularity Sky you have to read Iron Sunrise I'm not sure it's quite as good as the first but it really fills out the universe.

 

[billd91]

The Boat by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim. And despite the author's criticisms, I think the movie Das Boot captures the feel of the book quite well.

I'm also reading Harry Potter books to my son as bedtime stories. And when the new one comes out, it'll be family story time. We'll all crowd into the bed and I'll read it there. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[Capellan]

I'm reading a collection of works by Edgar Wallace, who was one of the most successful and prolific authors in the UK (and indeed, the world) during the period 1905-1933.

Amongst other things, Wallace had a story credit on the 1933 version of King Kong, though Wikipedia asserts that he "was taken ill soon after his arrival in Hollywood and died without writing a word" of the film.

 

[jonesy]

I'm currently reading Catch-22, A Study in Scarlet (which is the one Holmes I've always managed to miss somehow), and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

So far I think Catch-22 would be better with more Yossarian in it. Can't have too much Yossarian.

Just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which was freakin awesome, so I'll probably check out more of his stuff.

There's more of Shadow in Fragile Things, and the other short stories are excellent too.