What book (s) are you reading now ?

I’ve just had to ‘postpone’ reading Behave by Robert Sapolsky as its genuinely too hard for me – I was kind of expecting an intellectually challenging romp through neuroscience and psychology for the layman, not degree level stuff!   So thats on hold.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous I’m now halfway through Life by Keith Richards – absolutely hilarious plus loads of easter eggs if you are a blues guitar nerd. Can’t belive  I never read it before.

I always think that Lovecraft’s actual writing is a bit heavy-handed for me, but a lot of the writers who he inspired use that background much better

Lovecraft had views that aren’t so acceptable these days, and his style of writing is a bit stiff, but as someone once said, the past is a different country, they do things different there. I haven’t read any of his works for years, but I was a bit disappointed when Guillermo del Toro decided to put production of ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ on the back burner.

I’m also reading an Adrian Tchaikovsky, Doors of Eden. About parallel evolution and crossovers between different Earths where life evolved differently. Very good.

Currently reading one of his ‘Children of Time’, I’m about halfway through. Two following books, ‘Children of Ruin’, and ‘Children of Memory’.

Drawing an awful lot from David Brin’s Uplift books, who gets properly name-checked as well. The Uplifting, using a nanovirus, was supposed to rapidly ‘uplift’ animals to sentience, in this case primates on an embargoed Earth-adjacent planet, to save them from human interference while human civilisation goes to shit and the remaining humans head for other star systems.

Trouble is, the planet only had invertebrates, no primates. Spiders and ants, Portia spiders, particularly, tiny jumping spiders, which are a lot smarter than they have any right to be…

Very engaging book, the spiders are particularly well drawn as characters. And I love jumping spiders!

I haven’t read any of his works for years, but I was a bit disappointed when Guillermo del Toro decided to put production of ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ on the back burner.

The Colo(u)r Out of Space film is actually pretty good – Nicolas Cage, schlocky B movie stuff.

Currently reading one of his ‘Children of Time’, I’m about halfway through.

Someone bought this for me, and given the heft I expected ‘hard’ scifi – and it is kinda ‘hard’ I guess? But as you say, really engaging despite the robustness of the ideas (and the reliance on huge spiders), incredibly readable. Reminds me to add the sequels to my Amazon watchlist. Will also check out Doors of Eden.

Really goes to show that sci-fi is doing really well at the moment. I love the older 60s/70s scifi – Larry Niven, Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Frederik Pohl, your man with the leprosy in the fantasy world (Thomas Covenant?), and absolutely devoured them all when I was younger. Going back to them now though a lot of them really are more about the ideas than the writing; some of Heinlein’s stuff is unreadable tedium for about 300 pages, Niven was only ever any good with co-authors (rereading the original Ringworld I was struck by how boring it is – it takes 3/4 of the book before they hit the Ringworld!), and so on. They were such good ideas, but the writing often didn’t do them justice. I remember reading a “meteor is hitting the Earth” book (possibly Rendezvous with Rama, although I remember it being more Niven-y) about 30 years ago that talked about using gene editing to develop a corn variant that produced biodegradable plastic rather than edible food – and now we’re actually approaching a point where these ideas are coming to fruition.

Whereas today’s sci fi has really gripping ideas (Mielville, Tchaikovsky, Reynolds, all the rest) AND the writing to really keep you engaged and deliver the narrative that the ideas deserve.

I really loved “Children of Time”, thought the second one was ok, but far from fantastic like the first. I need to re-read the first two to know the characters for the third, fine if you can read them back to back but not after a year. So rarely hear anyone talk about the uplift novels, I didn’t realise he name checked Brin (ahh the ship name).

Just read his City of Last Chances, and though I enjoyed it, I didn’t engage with the characters like I would with Abercrombie or Miéville book.

Currently struggling to find anything interesting, so am re-reading some of my older audible stuff (Scalzi and more Tchaikovsky)

I’m reading Saevrus Corax Deals With The Dead by KJ Parker, pretty much by mistake, it was cheap on amazon. I’d forgotten that I read KJ Parker’s 16 Ways To Defend A Walled City and found it pretty annoying. And this one’s annoying too. But good fun, loads of stuff gets called Pratchettey but actually this comes close at time, usually people fixate on the throwaway jokes but not so much on the wider wordplay and Parker definitely nails a lot of that.

But at the same time it’s annoying, everywhere the main character goes in the world they bump into an old friend or relative or archnemesis, sometimes the same one several times, as if there’s only about 20 people in this entire fantasy world, everyone else barely exists. And it’s just constant “we are doomed… unless the exact right thing happens at the exact right time” which of course it does every time. But still, quite enjoying it and glad I picked it up by mistake. it’s definitely a Romp or possibly a Caper and not a Serious Fantasy Novel but that’s OK.

CountZero
Full Member

Lovecraft had views that aren’t so acceptable these days

They weren’t very acceptable at the time, either, even fellow antisemites thought him tasteless and extreme. But it’s also got to be seen in perspective, he was completely out of his mind. He wasn’t just terrified of jews and black people and especially “interbreeding”, but also cracked windows, fish, brick walls with curves in, the cold, fat people, deserts but ALSO swamps and oceans and lakes, anything that’s normally sensibly sized but has become really big (such as large buildings), jelly, New England, drums (whether being played or not- but not the sound of drums, the drum itself), the colours grey and green (he had the exact same colourblindness as me, and found it absolutely disturbing that he couldn’t see some greens as other people saw them, his eyes lying to him!), dying old, dying young, not dying, acute angles, and any passage of time longer than about 20 years. (he loved anything he saw as reliable, respectable ancient history but couldn’t stand forgotten or ambiguous history) And even the racist thing was steeped in irrationality- he didn’t just have a problem with white people and black people “breeding”, he had a problem with any sort of mixing of colours, he couldn’t drink tea if he’d seen the milk being mixed in for instance. And he ended up marrying a jew of course.

And obviously all that madness went straight into the books, exaggerated to make his irrational phobias more reasonable, hence… “The nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh…was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.” It’s all there, covered in the green jelly his mum made him eat. Which is what makes them memorable of course, most people have to invent the crazy stuff.

I’m making my way through the Penny Royal trilogy from Neal Asher. I’m on War Factory right now. They’re alright. I preferred the Cormac books. This trilogy makes the characters feel a little flat; I’m not really attached to any of them. Banks did a much better job giving the AIs and drones personality.

Just started reading ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’. First thoughts are that it’s f*****g brutal!

Lovecraft had views that aren’t so acceptable these days

I was going to write a one-liner, but erm, @Northwind seems to have beaten me to it…

Cooper and Szreter ‘After the Virus’, she’s an economist and he’s a history professor at Cambridge. Just started it and it is extremely well written and it comes with an endorsement from David King.

But it’s also got to be seen in perspective, he was completely out of his mind. He wasn’t just terrified of jews and black people and especially “interbreeding”, but also cracked windows, fish

Thanks for that – fascinating stuff that I knew nothing about. I’ll google more when I have time later.

I quite like him but find a little Bill Bryson goes a long way. I must say though, I do enjoy a @simondbarnes beer shot.

This week I finished Unbeaten, by Mike Stanton – a decent biography of Rocky Marciano.

Finished the Warrior Prophet, middle book of Scott Bakker’s prince of nothing trilogy.

Gets compared to Malazan a lot and it measures up thus far, imho – brings the epic. A little on the edgey side so wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

I’m making my way through the Penny Royal trilogy from Neal Asher. I’m on War Factory right now. They’re alright. I preferred the Cormac books.

I’m currently making my way through the Ian Cormac books by Neal Asher 🙂 Just about to finish no.2, then next up is either no.3 or  Paper Cuts by Ted Kessler.

Read a couple of Thursday Murder Club books – quite good fun. Now on to Red Mars. The first of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

My Dad bought me the third book in the 90s and I never got around to reading the first two.

Yesterday I started Ready Player One. Read three chapters in the bath. Today I’m throwing it in the charity shop bag. If you’re absolutely in love with gatekeeping ’80s pop culture you’ll probably love it. There were the bones of a story in there, possibly, but I don’t know who for. It’s too YA to be for actual adults, while actual YAs have literally no connection with a decade that started thirty-odd years before they were born.

Yesterday I started Ready Player One. Read three chapters in the bath. Today I’m throwing it in the charity shop bag.

+1. I tried reading it a few years ago and found it very dated. Lots of YA gaming books seem to be similar or at least have a very generic plot that I find unengaging.

Finished the Warrior Prophet, middle book of Scott Bakker’s prince of nothing trilogy.

Gets compared to Malazan a lot and it measures up thus far, imho – brings the epic

Interesting. I’ve heard of Bakker but don’t know his work. I read Gardens of the Moon 20 years ago and found it utterly bonkers. Attempted Deadhouse Gates several times but couldn’t get on with it as it follows a different set of characters/plots and was bending my mind. Revisted it a month ago on Audible and again gave up. I get why people dig Malazan, but it can take a lot of effort to follow everything.

Recently finished Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming and The Secret Hours by Mick Herron – both espionage novels, but in very different styles. Both great though – Kennedy 35 is the third in a trilogy inclding Box 88 and Judas 62. I picked up Box 88 at random in the charity shop and one sleepless night I started reading and found I couldn’t put it down. I finished it and went to the bookshop later the same day to get the sequel it was so good. His earlier books are worth checking out too, though as always you can really see the evolution of his style.

The Secret Hours is set in the same canon / universe as Mick Herron’s Slough House / Slow Horses books, and readers may recognise some characters, but is unrelated and can easily be read as a stand-alone novel. Very much worrth checking out.

Currently reading “All The Light We Cannot See” which was bought for me as a present – probably not a book I would have bought for myself, but one I’m really enjoying.

I just finished the Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, a fairly standard fantasy quest type thing made great by its characters and writing. Well, mostly made great by its protagonist if I’m honest. Fantasy loves celtic inspirations but usually that means welsh ellllfs, here we’ve got a main character that feels like he’s from a council estate in Limerick. I ended up narrating the whole thing to myself in Bobby Fingers’ voice. It petered out a bit but I absolutely loved the first half.

I think I just want a series where Kinch Na Shannack joins obvious d&d player groups and follows them around going ah everything’s shyte, you’re all eejits.
“I will carry the ring to Mordor!”
“You have my bow!”
“They say I have to come with you on this stupid quest or they’ll kill me ma”
“And my axe!”

Most recently I read Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds. Bought because my Waterstones points were about to expire and I love the Revelation Space books. It was good but it just didn’t draw me in like the RS books did, it may be because it took me forever to actually finish reading it so I did have to go back and re-read sections so I knew what was going on.

I have some of the Thursday Murder books to be getting on with for now, read the first one ages ago so might start there.

Currently most of the way through Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin, I like how he’s handled the Octopi, although I rather prefer squid as far as cephalopods go, I can sort of see a connection between the spiders and the octopuses. I can’t see where the book’s heading, keen to see how the various situations resolve, and as I’ve bought all three as downloads I can jump straight into the last one.

I found a zebra jumping spider that had got into my bedroom, on the open window sill. Very difficult to encourage it to go back outside when they can jump so well. At one point it jumped down into the well in the centre of the frame – I had to use a couple of cocktail sticks either side of it to get it to jump up; it went up and straight outside.
I find them really engaging little creatures, I can’t bear to harm them, which goes some way to explain why I’ve been enjoying these books so much.

The Amazing Adventures of Stick Daring.

https://www.stickdaring.com/

It’s the story of a circumnavigation of Britain in a Laser/ILCA dinghy.  I am about half way through but it was a bonkers idea and the execution of it was if anything even madder.

I know there’s a few dinghy sailors on here, it’s worth putting your nose in. Actually it’s worth reading for the adventure alone the mode of transport is really just part of the story.

Aren’t they, like, the size of a mattress?!?

Aren’t they, like, the size of a mattress?!?

If you mean a Laser then yes, about 13 feet long, low to the water, very wet to sail and really quite tippy. They also have a teeny rudder and they tend to punish mistakes quite quickly by throwing you in the water.

The guy who did it was a very accomplished Laser sailor but even so.  😬😬😬

Interesting. I’ve heard of Bakker but don’t know his work. I read Gardens of the Moon 20 years ago and found it utterly bonkers. Attempted Deadhouse Gates several times but couldn’t get on with it as it follows a different set of characters/plots and was bending my mind. Revisted it a month ago on Audible and again gave up. I get why people dig Malazan, but it can take a lot of effort to follow everything.

Prince of Nothing is way more focussed than Malazan – actually channels a little bit of Lord of the Rings, which sounds like a horrible recommendation in this day and age, but he does it very skillfully. Worth a look if you found Malazan too fragmentary.

A big difference, though, is that Erikson is brilliant with character and dialog – as good as Abercrombie, there’s great humour in the books which is essential for grimdark imho. Bakker doesn’t write like that and the two I’ve read are very black in parts and meant to stay like that.

Good pointer on Children of Ruin – I quite enjoyed Children of Time, despite the bleakness it’s quite fun. So I’ll add Children of Ruin to the list to get secondhand

Currently re-reading Shades Of Grey (no, not 50) by Jasper Fforde, ahead of the sequel which has finally been released.

Is that where people can only see certain colours? If so, I really enjoyed that – that guy has one HECK of an imagination! 🙂

Just finished

Nuclear War: a scenario

Amazingly good book, sickening, horrendous and scary but also incredibly interesting and readable.

Tchaikovsky’s, Children of Ruin

Great series of books. TBH I haven’t read a bad book by Adrian Tchaikovsky who’s currently my favourite sifi author. His latest comes out tomorrow iirc.

Is that where people can only see certain colours? If so, I really enjoyed that – that guy has one HECK of an imagination! 🙂

Yep.  I need more Jasper Fforde in my life.  The sequel is Red Side Story and I’ve only been waiting about 15 years for it.

Is that where people can only see certain colours? If so, I really enjoyed that – that guy has one HECK of an imagination! 🙂
Yep.  I need more Jasper Fforde in my life.  The sequel is Red Side Story and I’ve only been waiting about 15 years for it.

Oooh – is it out yet?? I still think of that book quite often; unfortunately ran into the same issue that the wife saw me opening it on Kindle and thought it was 50 shades of grey…

Jasper Fforde is great though; the other one of his I remember a lot (but forgot the title) is the one set in Wales where everyone hibernates (and is furry). Lots of quirky fun!

Just remember to always take your fork with you…

Finally got round to reading Dune and really enjoying it.

More importantly, reading The Wild Robot* and it’s an excellent read. An adult would get through it in no time but there’s proper drama and suspense! Also need to read it before the movie comes out later in the year.

*technically its with the kids, but would happily read it without them.

I was reading a long series off Fforde’s – book detective ones. Really clever but I got distracted. Best go back and finish them and now I have a new recommendation ^^

Was also recommended  “Will Save the Galaxy for Food”  by Yahtzee Croshaw which I enjoyed, and the follow up (not quite so much). He’s a games designer apparently and that definitely comes through the way the story is narrated.

Now @cougar has reminded me Spotify includes audiobooks I’ve started Rory Stewart’s bio and have Normandy ’44 by James Holland and Dominican by his brother Tom queued up. I think I own them both but have travelling/hols coming up so audio it is.

Oooh – is it out yet??

It is indeed, came out a couple of months ago.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Side-Story-long-awaited-bestselling-ebook/dp/B09RPG3XMN

I recently finished Cal Flyn Islands of Abandonment, it was excellent (I’m sure someone on here recommended it)

Anyone got a recommendation for similarly themed book?

On an apocalyptic theme I can highly recommend Nuclear war: a scenario also recommended by monkeyboyjc above, absolutely terrifying, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser and Chernobyl History of a tragedy. Not the cheeriest reading obvs!

Currently reading Chums by Simon Kuper which shows how a small group of Oxford Tories have taken over the key political positions in the UK. So far, so good and you can clearly see where the likes of Johnson and Cameron got their early experience of politics and their debating skills.

Finally got round to reading Dune and really enjoying it.

Do they all whisper constantly in the book too?