[May] What are you reading?

[Mallus]

Just finished:

Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick. Charming SF/Western/folkloric tall-tale fun, and The Best of Cordwainer Smith, which is all the best Instrumentality of Man stories.

Put down and need to get around to finishing:

Mieville's The Scar.

Coming up: Moby Dick. Never read it. Feel I should. If it has half the laughs that Billy Budd had I'll consider it time well spent.

Need to buy:

Sequel to The Golden Age --Phoenix Exultant maybe???

McSweeney's pulp anthology edited by Michael Chabon.

 

[Bob Aberton]

Moby Dick. Never read it. Feel I should. If it has half the laughs that Billy Budd had I'll consider it time well spent.

Not trying to discourage you, but Moby Dick isn't exactly a lighthearted book...it was written after Melville's works took a decided turn toward the more solemn.

I mean, by all means read it, it's a wonderful book. But it's really more of a deeply allegorical, richly symbolic, almost epic story (tragedy, really), not at all a funny book...at least I didn't find much to laugh at...but I loved the book all the same.

 

[Mallus]

Not trying to discourage you, but Moby Dick isn't exactly a lighthearted book...it was written after Melville's works took a decided turn toward the more solemn.

Thanks, but I was kidding.

Well, not entirely, I really did laugh out loud reading Billy Budd. I couldn't help but read it as some wierd kind of metaphysical Popeye cartoon. There a kind of disregard for Character in favor of Idea that struck me as cartoonish, a kind of solemnity and sense of Import that I couldn't help but read as a kind of parody {I know that demonstrates my limitation as a reader, not Melville's as a writer...}. I just couldn't take a book with a character named Captain Truth seriously, though I enjoyed it immensely.

 

[krunchyfrogg]

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix

Very interesting stuff. Nothing in these movies is by accident.

 

[Nightfall]

Just read through "The Last Hero" by Terry Pratchett. (Been meaning to read it for a while now) Let me say, if you love Discworld, you'll love this. Almost everyone is there AND you get to see all the Gods of the Disc. (Fate and the Lady have nice pics but Blind Io isn't too shabby either.) The illustrations are great (plus the fact Leonard of Quirm is involved, so you know it's deadly. )

 

[CCamfield]

I worked my way through King Solomon's Mines and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a while back, and have yet to find a copy of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.

There are editions of The Invisible Man from Dover ($1.50) and Bantam Classic ($4.95) listed on amazon. If you don't want to buy from there, you can always note the ISBN and place an order at your local bookstore.

I'm currently re-reading The Saint in New York (1934) by Leslie Charteris. Fun, pulpy stuff in which the British adventurer cleans up the top ranks of the New York mob within 48 hours.

 

[Piratecat]

I'm reading three books at the moment:

Interesting. Nothing in Icelandic? Are there any good sci fi/fantasy authors who write in Icelandic?

 

[thatdarncat]

Re: I finally have something to mention!

I love Zahn, if you like his SW books at all try his other stuff if you haven't already.

I read Icarus Hunt in one sitting at the local library. Great read and a fairly decent, inventive (to me at least) story.

I'm currently (re)reading two Diane Duane books: To Visit The Queen and Door Into Fire.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Interesting. Nothing in Icelandic? Are there any good sci fi/fantasy authors who write in Icelandic?

Nope.

Well, we get a heatly doze of viking stories every year, we're
kinda obsessed that way, of very varying quality (very, goes
from sucks really terribly to quite good), but else there's nothing
except for stuff thought of for kids (also of very differing quality).

Some of it gets translated though. The majority of the Tolkien
works have been translated, one book every couple of years
(it's actually better IMO on Icelandic than on english) and some
Terry Prachett stuff (oddly, actually nearly everything except the
Discworld stuff) but the translations are very bad. There's a lot of
translated stuff with a lot of unicorns in it, generally really dull
(and I've noticed, alway written by women and always translated
by women, I wonder what the demographic for these books are?).

So no. Not much stuff in Icelandic.

 

[Pielorinho]

Mieville's The Scar.

Coming up: Moby Dick. Never read it. Feel I should. If it has half the laughs that Billy Budd had I'll consider it time well spent.

So you're following up Mieville's dark fantasy novel set on the open seas with Melville's dark fantasy novel set on the open seas? Interesting.

You've read Perdido Street Station, right? I'm a little evangelistic about that book.

And Jonathan Carroll is worth reading. Really weird, sort of like a stylistically elegant Kurt Vonnegut, but worth reading.

Daniel