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Pick and Mix 2015
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-03 4:31 PM (#11697 - in reply to #11695)
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spectru - 2015-11-03 1:48 PM
I read the first two Ancillary books, but now I have started the third one, immediately after finishing the second, as it became available for download from my library as an audiobook. The narrator is a woman with a British accent - probably the same one you abandoned. And, with it, I joined the new Audiobook Reading Challenge.


The woman who narrated Justice is named Celeste Ciulla. She didn't have an British accent that I can remember. The narrator I find listed for Mercy is Adjoa Andoh so maybe that's the one you're listening to. As soon as I get off of work today, I'm heading to the library to pick up Mercy! Excited to live in the world for a bit longer before finishing out the series.

I do most of my "reading" via listening to audiobooks so the Audiobook challenge is going to be awesome for me! It's amazing how a good narration can really add or detract from the material. I listened to the book Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier for the Keep Calm and Read SF from Down Under and the 2015 Trick or Treat challenges and it was f really fun for me! I live in the southwest US but the book takes place in 1930's Sydney Australia and was read by Australian voice actors, really helping me feel in the world of the book. And with lines like "in the sweltering January sun," I felt truly immersed in this world so different from my own.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-03 5:26 PM (#11700 - in reply to #9182)
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devilinlaw - 2015-11-03 5:31 PM The woman who narrated Justice is named Celeste Ciulla. She didn't have an British accent that I can remember. The narrator I find listed for Mercy is Adjoa Andoh so maybe that's the one you're listening to.
</p><p> </p><p>Adjoa Andoh narrated Sword and Mercy, but not Justice. I think it's unusual to change narrators mid-series. Perhaps you weren't the only one not to care for the audiobook narrator for the first book.</p>

Edited by spectru 2015-11-03 5:30 PM
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-03 6:05 PM (#11703 - in reply to #11700)
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spectru - 2015-11-03 3:26 PM
Adjoa Andoh narrated Sword and Mercy, but not Justice. I think it's unusual to change narrators mid-series. Perhaps you weren't the only one not to care for the audiobook narrator for the first book.


I appreciated the effort put into it and even the work by Ms. Ciulla to create the unique delivery of her lines but it was just difficult to stay focused with her near-monotone. The character voices she used did not have this same lack of emotional quality at all but since the story is told from the POV of a ship's AI, the majority of the narration is in the same vein.

For me, it's similar to when I read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I appreciate artistically that the main character is obsessed with what everyone is wearing but I don't really want to read through pages and pages of descriptions of everyone clothing labels. Or when I tried to read Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore for the first time. I had a hell of a time getting through the first part because the narrative is told in a first-person perspective by a prehistoric man who is dimwitted even by the standards of his own tribe. Artistically it was interesting to read, "A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I's feet and wetting they" (this is the first sentence in the book), but fifty-six pages in this same style was exhausting.

Artistically, I appreciate what these authors/performers are doing. Practically, however, it can be a bit hard to digest.
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-07 2:42 AM (#11730 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: Las Vegas, NV		Since we were discussing the Imperial Radch trilogy here, I thought I'd share this write up about the books on Slate.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/11/ancillary_mercy_re...
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-07 8:39 AM (#11731 - in reply to #11730)
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devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 3:42 AM Since we were discussing the Imperial Radch trilogy here, I thought I'd share this write up about the books on Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/11/ancillary_mercy_re...

 

That's an interesting commentary, devilinlaw. and it also ties into the controversy at the last Hugo awards conference.

I'm about halfway through Ancillary Mercy, the third book in this trilogy. Leckie's excellent world-building, beginning with Ancillary Justice, can be a little difficult to get into at first, because of the AI and ancillaries, and multiple bodies being one person. And of course there is the gender thing. But the bottom line is: this, the whole trilogy, is as good a science fiction novel as I have read in a while.

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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-07 12:19 PM (#11732 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: Las Vegas, NV		Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-11-10 10:26 AM (#11776 - in reply to #9182)
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My next Pick-and-Mix read was Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation.
I've read a couple of VanderMeer's books before and really enjoyed them. Even though this is more horror, I enjoyed it, too. It was really creepy at places and I liked the POV character.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-10 11:21 PM (#11791 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		I completed Jack McDevitt's Seeker,about antique hunters(tomb robbers?) looking for an ancient space ship and a lost colony. It was OK,quite fun,but I found the long time periods very unrealistic. Searching for plastic artifacts from 9000 years before time of the story,which is still a couple of hundred years ahead of our time?No real serious attempt at worldbuilding over 9000 years in the future,the world is very like today.Enjoyable fluff really,but I just cant see how this was a Nebula winner,and Campbell nominated!
I really was charmed by Jack Finney's romantic take on time travel,Time and Again. Very little time travel,the details of the time transfers are sensibly glossed over.this is an elegy to 1880s New York. One little thing that gives us a bit of a frisson is that the Dakota building is repeatedly mentioned and admired,in a book written 9 years before John Lennon's death.Charming and romantic.I found it better written than Finney's more famous Body Snatchers.
The book is delightfully illustrated ,the old pictures fitting beautifully into the story. Much better that in Ransom Riggs Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,for example.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-11-12 11:36 AM (#11808 - in reply to #9182)
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I finally finished Vicki Pettersson's Scent of Shadows. I liked the main character but the setting didn't work for me.

Edited by Mervi2012 2015-11-12 11:37 AM
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-13 2:26 PM (#11816 - in reply to #11808)
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Location: UK		@Mervi. I read the first 3 of the Zodiac series,but somehow I stayed lukewarm about them.I wasnt happy with the stark settings,in junkyards etc,and I didnt really warm to the main character. My library only got the first 3 books in the series,and no more,so that was that.Didnt bother me,I much prefer Patricia Briggs,Chloe Neill,Nalini Singh,Jim Butcher,Ben Aaronovitch and the like in the UF area.
I just acquired Rosemary and Rue,the first in the Toby Daye series. Is the series worth reading?
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Weesam
Posted 2015-11-13 3:11 PM (#11817 - in reply to #11816)
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Location: New Zealand		I thought Rosemary and Rue was quite good. A little different from the norm, but that is a good thing in my book. I didn't totally fall in love with them like I did with Ben Aaronovitch's series, but I am still quite happy to keep reading them.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-11-13 3:28 PM (#11818 - in reply to #9182)
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Toby Daye is one of my favorite fantasy series (UF or otherwise). However, I didn't fall in love with the series until book 3. It clearly improves as it goes and I'm still eagerly waiting the next one.
My library doesn't have any of Pettersson's books and I still have lot of unread books of my own, so I won't continue with the series. It's a bit of a shame because I love superhero stuff and had high hopes for it.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-16 6:55 AM (#11836 - in reply to #11732)
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devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 1:19 PM Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch.

 

devilinlaw - I read your review of Ancillary Mercy.  You mentioned that your favorite character was Presger Translator Zeiat.  Having heard the audiobook, I didn't know how to spell her name, and she had the most annoying voice.

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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-16 11:08 PM (#11853 - in reply to #11836)
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spectru - 2015-11-16 4:55 AM

devilinlaw - 2015-11-07 1:19 PM Yeah, I haven't been able to really sink my teeth into Mercy it yet due to my scheduling constraints but this weekend is going to be all about the Radch.

devilinlaw - I read your review of Ancillary Mercy. You mentioned that your favorite character was Presger Translator Zeiat. Having heard the audiobook, I didn't know how to spell her name, and she had the most annoying voice.



That is most unfortunate. Perhaps I would have found her less enjoyable had her voice been annoying? I'm not sure, but I loved her absolute...alieness. It was very clear that whatever their appearances may be, the Presger Translators are not human at all. Dlique, in Sword, was more mischievous than Zeiat and I loved how she was very visibly relieved that she was not Dlique but rather Zeiat. I found the whole Presger view and treatment of humans and their translators fascinating. Not only was a it a bit of comedic relief but it has bleak pitilessness right beneath the surface. Zeait ends up helping Breq and company as much out of her own self interest as for any other reason.

Edited by devilinlaw 2015-11-16 11:10 PM
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-11-23 3:06 AM (#11891 - in reply to #9182)
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My next read was Philip K. Dick's Martian Timeslip. Unfortunately, it wasn't to my tastes.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-24 4:27 PM (#11893 - in reply to #11891)
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Location: UK		So far I have read Man in the High Castle,Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,and Galactic Pot Healer,and cant say I was really taken with any of them.His books appear many times on many WWEnd lists,so is it just me? lol. On the SF Masterworks list there are no less than 11 out of the 144 books by this one man. No one else comes near,I dont think.. I have to read A Scanner Darkly for the Defining Books of the 70s list.I will ration PKD to one book a year! lol
Finally completed David Eddings Queen of Sorcery,it took me nearly 3 weeks,I could never read more than a chapter at a time. I am not a fantasy fan. Lord of the Rings is so imprinted on my mind I find most high fantasy to be weak shadows. All these decades and Tolkiens shadow is still towering over the others! Ah well,the Eddings at least completed my 100th book read in SF/F this year.
At the moment I am really becoming fascinated with Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth. Damn,those old writers could undertake weighty themes,and clothe them in rivetting stories - often less than 200 pages long! I was a bit dubious about the 1970s,but all three of the books so far - Finneys Time and Again,this Silverberg book and the fast and furious adventure tale,Laumers Dinosaur Beach are all great reads.I am so enjoying the whole challenge,its great fun.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-24 5:33 PM (#11894 - in reply to #11893)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		Mervi2012 and dustydigger

Philip K Dick is weird. I think either you like him or you don't. He is one of my favorites, but I can't tell you why, though I don;t care for his later stuff. Dick was deep into drugs for awhile and was heavily enfluenced by the drug culture - A Scanner Darkly comes directly from this. Martian Time slip I think is one of his more straightforward science fiction novels. Some of his stuff is just outright bizarre. After you've read a good bit of his stuff, you are helped by being more familiar with Dick and that makes it easier to appreciate his weirdness.
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-24 8:18 PM (#11897 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: Las Vegas, NV		Dick was an interesting guy. After 1974, he suffered from a number of hallucinations and believed that his mind was being invaded by a rational alien presence, and at another point by the spirit of the prophet Elijah.

I'm reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? next month for the Science Fiction Masterworks Reading Challenge (more of a book club, really).

Edited by devilinlaw 2015-11-24 8:22 PM
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Weesam
Posted 2015-11-24 9:55 PM (#11899 - in reply to #11897)
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Location: New Zealand		Congratulations Dustydigger for finishing your 100 books. I also am not a massive fan of PK Dick. I find some I kinda like, but most I just finish with a "what was that". I have read quite a few of them this year in an attempt to figure out why people like him so much, but I am lost.

At one time in my life, around 30 years ago, I devoured the David Eddings books. I'm not sure if that was because I thought they were good, or because I had a lack of reading material available to me at the time and anything I got was going to be good. I find them less interesting now.

I have really enjoyed the 70's challenge as well. I liked a lot of those old 70's books, and Robert Silverberg is a particular favourite.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-25 4:51 AM (#11902 - in reply to #11899)
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Location: UK		Thanks Weesam,nowhere near you - you must have read 300 books this year! - but pretty good for me. SF/F has certainly dominated my reads this year,accounting for over 100 of my 182 total reads,thanks to the Defining Books challenge mostly. We owe a massive thanks to Jim for his excellent lists. I have also been eyeing the new resource,books arranged by year. I have already added an awful lot of books to the TBR!
My library system has no less than 27 P K Dick novels in stock,hidden away in the vaults of the book depository for posterity. Yet they dont have a single Silverberg. Nearly 20 Heinleins,but not a single C J Cherryh.No Sturgeon,or Sheckley,Budrys or any of those oldtimers. I am so happy I found the Open Library site,which has a huge number of those old authors available for borrowing.Without them I couldnt do the challenge at all,unless I bought at least six books. A pensioner with a big family just hasnt the cash for that.Now I can look forward to some interesting reading,free :0)
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Weesam
Posted 2015-11-25 5:44 PM (#11915 - in reply to #11902)
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Location: New Zealand		It has always been strange to me what library's decide is important to keep and what isn't. Not having any Silverberg seems very odd, and quite sad as a do like a good Silverbob, and far prefer him over Dick or Heinlein. I am in the fortunate position of having plenty of time and disposable income so haven't had to resort to the library often (which is a good thing as our library is currently in pieces, with huge numbers of books stashed away in mostly inaccessible warehouses).

I have really enjoyed getting to know the defining books from Jim's lists. I'm tempted to go pick out my books for the 80's challenge now! It's been interesting reading a lot of older books interspersed with my newer books, almost like seeing the evolution of SF from then to now.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-11-26 3:46 AM (#11924 - in reply to #9182)
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My next Pick&Mix read was Cherie Priest's Fiddlehead. I've enjoyed the whole series and this was mostly a satisfying conclusion. The political and rotter plotlines were resolved but the characters were different so no resolution from them.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-26 3:10 PM (#11928 - in reply to #11924)
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Location: UK		Wow! Just finished Robert Silverberg's fantastic Downwards to the Earth for the 70s Defining Books challenge and I loved it! Great writing,lofty themes,a really great world setting and interesting aliens. Highly recommended. Another Silverberg up next,A Time of Changes. Then a nostalgic guilty pleasure reread,Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. I am also halfway through Joe Hill's first Locke and Key book,Welcome to Lovecraft,very dark and downbeat to say the least. I probably wont continue the series,just read it for my graphic novel/manga thread over on my Shelfari challenge.Only half a dozen books to finish there,then I can concentrate fully on the 70s Defining Books challenge.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-26 4:00 PM (#11929 - in reply to #11928)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		Robert Silverberg is an excellent author. I read A Time of Changes a while back - it was good. Dying Inside is great. The Book of Skulls also is very good. I need to read Downwards to the Earth.

Edited by spectru 2015-11-26 4:02 PM
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Weesam
Posted 2015-11-26 10:50 PM (#11937 - in reply to #11929)
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Location: New Zealand		Dying Inside, Downwards to the Earth and A Time of Changes are my favourite Silverberg. I highly recommend them also. I first read Dying Inside and Downwards to the Earth 27 years ago and I have never forgotten the affect they had on me. A re-read of them this year confirmed to me that my younger self was right to place these two on my personal shelf of literary awesomeness.

I haven''t gotten to his Majapoor stories yet. Has anyone read them?
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