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Our reads in November 2021
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dustydigger
Posted 2021-11-01 3:46 AM (#23512)
Subject: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: UK		Another month,another pile of books,and maybe extra effort to get through 2021 TBRs.
And start thinking about next years plans.
Happy reading!

Dusty's TBR for November
SF/F reads
Sheila Finch - The Guild of Xenolinguists
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Cixin Liu - The Dark Forest
Brian Aldiss - Hothouse
Algernon Blackwood - The Campof the Dogs

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daxxh
Posted 2021-11-01 7:27 PM (#23516 - in reply to #23512)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		Currently reading The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel. I need to finish Idylls of the King and The Mabinogion.

I have recently discovered hicksusedbooks.com. I will have lots of new stuff to read soon.

I am already thinking about next year's challenges
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dustydigger
Posted 2021-11-14 3:21 PM (#23538 - in reply to #23516)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: UK		Clive Barker's Weaveworld was not too bad,but it was far too long at 752 pages! lol.. And was a bit too near horror for my wimpy tastes.
I'm sorry,I may be dense but I cant understand the fuss about the Three Body Problem series.I found Three Body Problem so bland that 3 years later all I remember of it is the endless history lessons of Mao's era,and the VR game the conspirators used to communicate with each other. As for Forest,I have never seen a more incredible plot,cardboard characters with difficult to differentiate chinese names,bewildering illogical antics of characters,or just silliness in general.Obviously I am missing the whole point somehow,but dont care.Its irritated me to death! lol.Obviously chinese SF is way over my head,but I will not be progressing to Death's End. Not my cup of tea at all.
N K Jemisin's short story Emergency Skin was a nicely ironic take on artificial intelligence,space colonisation and several other things packed in a mere 29 pages.Good fun.
Alan Dean Foster's To The Vanishing Point was a nice palate cleanser after the travails o f The Dark Forest.cheerful light froth bout a family who pick up a hitch hiker on their way to a vacation in Vegas. Soon they end up in alternate realities,even the gates of Hell,and have lots of hair raising adventures.Just mindless fun.
I am now reading Fifth Head of Cerberus,typical fascinating but bewildering Gene Wolfe,and have started Doc Smith's very dated but still enjoyable Grey Lensman.
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spoltz
Posted 2021-11-27 7:34 PM (#23558 - in reply to #23538)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: Beaverton, Oregon, USA		Hey folks,

Sorry I've been away so long. I kinda fell out of the habit of posting here. Last month, I decided to read all the Mythopoeic and World Fantasy Award winners that I haven't read yet. That's about 80 books. Expecting it to take me about 2 years. So far, November has been prolific. I've read a lot. Here's the list:

Digger - Ursula Vernon - loved loved loved this graphic novel about a wombat engineer digging a tunnel who ends up in a temple of Ganesh and in a world of mythology.
The Crystal Cave - Mary Stewart - beautiful book but was a little bored by it.
The Uncertain Places - Lisa Goldstein - Fun almost fluff journey into faerie in a modern urban setting
Thomas the Rhymer - Ellen Kushner - More traditional journey into faerie by a minstrel.
The Antelope Wife - Louise Eldritch - Complex narrative made it difficult to enjoy this mix of Native American mythology in modern Minnesota.
Replay - Ken Grimwood - Excellent "Groundhog Day" trope five years before the movie came out.
A Midsummer's Tempest - Poul Anderson - Thick accents spelled out made this a trudge for me. Almost DNF.
The Stress of Her Regard - Tim Powers - Vampire novel with Lord Byron, the Shelleys, and John Keats in the mix.
The Folk of the Air - Peter S. Beagle - Rather disappointing first novel after The Last Unicorn. Sort of a Society for Creative Anachronisms tale mixed with real magic and faerie.
Something Rich and Strange - Patricia McKillip with Brian Froud illustrations - Beautiful long novella about water faeries tearing a couple apart.
The Wood Wife - Terry Windling - Wonderful book about American Southwest spirits, inspired by Brian Froud.

I'm currently reading McKillip's Solstice Wood which is good so far and will probably start Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart before the month's out.
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dustydigger
Posted 2021-11-30 4:23 PM (#23563 - in reply to #23558)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: UK		As ever with Gene Wolfe I was fascinated and involved in the stories whilst understanding very little of it! lol'
I am 2/3 of the way through Brian Aldiss Hothouse,but I get irritated with it and usually put it aside for a week or so to I calm down. I am not very scientific minded so can accept a lot of dodgy ideas in SF,and I do understand Aldiss is not at all bothered about making his novel of the far future scientifically accurate in the matter of evolution,(hehas a very different agenda)but even my easygoing tolerance is badly stretched in this fix-up novel.I manage about 50 pages of this preposterous scenario,and have to leave it for a week or two and then return for another foray through the 1000 mile long banyan tree forest.
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daxxh
Posted 2021-12-01 11:57 AM (#23564 - in reply to #23563)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		I read more non-SF/F this month. What SF/F I did read was as follows:

The Body Scout - ok.
Idylls of the King - good. wish it hadn't taken me 6 months to read this as it was quite good and i kept forgetting what had happened between readings.
Le Morte D'Arthur - very good. This was a reread. I have always loved this one.

I have three more King Arthur books to read to finish the challenge. I really want to read the other two books in Mary Stewart's trilogy (which seems to have added at least one, maybe two more books), but I have not been able to find them.

Edited by daxxh 2021-12-01 11:59 AM
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dustydigger
Posted 2021-12-11 8:00 AM (#23578 - in reply to #23512)
Subject: Re: Our reads in November 2021



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Location: UK		Finished Brian Aldiss Hothouse,after numerous picking up,reading a dozen pages,getting annoyed at it,and throwing it aside.
Aldiss has scant regard for science,his takes on the evolution of mankind in the far future dying earth are rather bizarre,but he couldnt care less.I enjoyed this comment on Wikipedia;
''James Blish called the stories "utter nonsense", and chastised Aldiss for ignoring basic rules of physics. The magazine editor actually sought scientific advice about one aspect of the book. He was told that the orbital dynamics involved meant that it was nonsense, but the image of the Earth and Moon side by side in orbit, shrouded with cobwebs woven by giant vegetable spiders, was so outrageous and appealing that he published it anyway.'' lol.
Aldiss is never my cup of tea really. I have been putting off the Heliconia sequence for literally decades,and I think 2022 will NOT be the year I read it. I need a break from Aldiss!
Now I need to get on with some challenge titles that need to be read soon - aarrgghh! less than 3 weeks of the year left. I need to read 5 more books to reach the 100 mark for my 2021 reads challenge here on WWEnd. actually I have read more than 100,but some were classed as self published so are not on WWEnd,which is irritating......
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