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 The Pick & Mix in 2017Jump to page : 1 2 3 Now viewing page 2 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
  General Discussion -> Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge | Message format |
dustydigger |
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 Elite Veteran Posts: 1031  Location: UK | Thomas,I will certainly keep Leviathan Wakes in mind,since I certainly enjoyed your last recommendation,Charlie Stross's Singularity Sky,,even if it was totally bonkers! lol. I particularly liked the heroine's luggage! Reminded me somewhat of Terry Pratchett's Luggage in Discworld  This morning I finally received my latest C J Cherryh acquisition,Cuckoo's Egg and Serpent's Reach in one volume.I have so many books that I need to read soon so as to return to the library,but I am eyeing up the Cherryh already,my fingers twitching.I have wanted to read these for years but the prices here in UK are plain ridiculous,so this edition sent from USA for the princely total sum of $3.46 is a wonderful find. My Cherryh books are now spilling onto a second bookshelf. I've now read 35 of her books,and have only about 6 more of her SF to read. Not sure if I will ever read her fantasy novels,that genre isnt really a favourite of mine. I suppose you are waiting for Convergence to come out in a few weeks. I of course am waiting for the paperback Visitor. You know how I always grumble at being a year behind you! Cant afford the hardback price,so I always have to wait for the paperback a year later  | ||
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | |||
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| Leyra'an |
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 Regular Posts: 53  Location: USA | "Totally bonkers!" It certainly was! I have pre-ordered Convergence.  | ||
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | Finished Neal stephenson's Snow Crash. My first attempt back in 2012 was not a happy one,but this time,with a much greater knowledge of the development of SF I found it much more understandable,though still bonkers! lol Still think its one for the boys,but I quite enjoyed the very dark humour and the offbeat characters,even reading about the ancient Sumerian myths,though I was irritated by the rather ridiculous linguistic/computer theory underlying the story,very unbelievable,and the info dumps were rather clunky and awkward.The book took a very long time to take off,and the ending was a bit abrupt,but it was an OK read,considering I dislike dytopian set books as a rule.Always depressing that mankind is always getting much worse in the future,especially in books written in the 90s.Dooma nd gloom everywhere  Edited by dustydigger 2017-03-06 3:19 AM | ||
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| Mervi2012 |
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| daxxh |
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| Mervi2012 |
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | Sorry,havent had time to post on here,family and medical matters intervening. It took forever to read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age,which I liked even less than Snow Crash. I found the writing style awkward,full of infodumps,and unnecessarily complex and obtuse,with a rather silly plot. Sorry NS fans,he's just not my cup of tea! More enjoyable was the unusual blend of murder mystery/philosophical/future tech mix of Robert J Sawyer's Terminal Experiment,fast paced but with sympathetic characters and some thought provoking themes Dan Simmons Endymion was fun and exciting,though of course not equal with Hyperion(but what is?) Loved Clifford D Simak's Time is the Simplest Thing.,yet another great book by this author who could effortlessly marry plot,sympathetic characters and serious themes - in only about 200 pages! lol. SF fans should make real efforts to keep such authors in the public's regard.. Highly recommended Books in progress include Jack McDevitt's Starhawk,and Greg Bear's Dinosaur Summer - and A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories for relaxation! | ||
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| Leyra'an |
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| Mervi2012 |
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| Leyra'an |
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | Oops! Nearly 2 months since I posted here,too many real life interruptions to the reading. So,what have I read? Read the first two of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy,Annihilation and Authority,which were OK reads,but nothing really special IMO.May read Acceptance this month V E Scwab's A Darker Shade of Magic was an excellent YA novel.Different realities overlap in London,the characters are well done,the dialogue sharp and witty,and the action often brutal.Highly recommended David Brin's Infinity's Shore was an engaging followup to Brightness Reef,where we saw eight Uplifted races getting along well on an obscure world,till the universe crashes into their peaceful life. I am attempting to read book 3,Heaven's Reach,where we are back in space with our old friends on the starship Streaker,but I am a bit disappointed on Brin dropping all those interesting threads on the planet,and I'm finding the book a bit stodgy and slow moving. Far too many bitty POVs for my taste. Loved C J Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg,and enjoyed her 17th Foreigner book,Visitor,though the shrugging off of the Kyo strand was disconcerting to say the least! We waited through 10 books for the continuation of book 6,Explorer,and it was gone in the blink of an eye,despite a most intriguing plot development..Maybe Cherryh will come back to it later,hope so. Enjoyed James White's hospital in space story,Star Healer. The previous couple of books in the series were rather dull,but this one,back in the hospital setting saw our Dr Conway making his first steps as a Diagonostician I have been on a nostalgia kick in May,rereading after many years,indeed many decades,some of Bob Heinlein's excellent short stories,including All You Zombies,By His Bootstraps,and He Built a Crooked House. Think my brain has finally stopped bleeding after all the time travel shenanigans! lol..Of course all that diverted me from my proper WWEnd challenges. I need to get back into the Defining Books of the 1990s challenge. For 1997 I have Haldeman's Forever Peace and James Patrick Kelly's Think Like a Dinosaur, a well regarded selection of his short stories. I had forgotten just how satisfying a top quality AF short story is,it packs such a punch and can stay in the memory for decades. Hope you are all doing well with your Pick N Mix challenge. I have achieved 43/80 of my challenge. And the whole group of 22 active participants have read no less than 368 books. Good work | ||
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| Leyra'an |
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| Mervi2012 |
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Veteran Posts: 100 | Unfortunately, Pierre Paval's "Cardinal's Blades" wasn't as absorbing as I expected. It had interesting elements but it just didn't gel together for me. But it had quite a twist at the end so I might continue with the series at some point. Sadly, Michael Flynn's sci-fi book "the January Dancer" was similar in that regard: lots of interesting ideas and I really liked the frame story structure but the characters just didn't grab me. On the other hand, I throughly enjoyed Mercedes Lackey's "the Fairy Godmother" and Seanan McGuire's "Reflections". Both have characters who are trying to stop fairy tales from happening because fairy tales aren't healthy for most people. Lackey's book is set in a secondary fantasy world with plenty of fantasy and magical elements. It also has a single main character, Elena, who is essentially a Cinderella until she becomes a fairy godmother's apprentice. It's a Luna imprint so there's a romance, too, but the inevitable prince doesn't appear until about half-way through the book. This is my first Lackey book and I can see why people love her books. "Reflections" is a sequel to McGuire's "Indexing" which is set mostly in our real world. Henrietta and her team of agents work for a Bureau. It's an urban fantasy with an X-Files feel. No prominent romance (which is the way I like my UF ).Edited by Mervi2012 2017-06-21 5:45 AM | ||
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| Leyra'an |
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | Ihave had a hectic time lately,so I havent read all that much,and got behind with the posts againI Whe I tried Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace last year,and as the early part seemed to a war book,dark and downbeat,and I had been very lukewarm about the other Forever War books,I abandoned it. Reading it now for my Defining Books of the 90s challenge over on WWEnd I persevered and was a bit surprised and relieved when after about 100 pages it veered off into a tale about group trying to to prevent a Doomsday weapon getting into the hands of a religious fanatic,and a method of turning humankind into pacifists! Fast paced action,but as ever with Haldeman I dont find his plot scenarios very credible. But at least it was a fast moving adventure,and a mere 350 pages. That is very small among most 90s books. lol. I found Nicola Griffith's Slow River absorbing and interesting stuff. Never read a book before where the heroine works in a futuristic sewage works! lol. Griffith deftly interweaves three different time frames by a variety of tenses and POV,which took a while to get used to,and there was a lot of lesbian sex(it seemed that almost every character was a lesbian!) which was a little uncomfortable for my tastes,but it was an excellent read with a sympathetic flawed heroine.. Finished Theodore Sturgeon's famous short story ,Microcosmic God.A brilliant scientist/engineer,Kidder has developed an amazing array of useful inventions and cures(including a cure for the common cold!) and while he devotes all his time to science on his private island his venal banker has become immensely rich producing all the useful things Kidder so carelessly invents. But he greedily wants even more,and the scientist Kidder's latest invention could make its owner ruler of the world - and the banker wants that power for himself.Unbeknownst to anyone, Kidder has developed a synthetic life form, which he calls "neoterics." These creatures live at a greatly accelerated rate, and therefore have a very short lifespan and produce many generations over a short period of time. This allows Kidder, by presenting them with a frequently changing environment, to "evolve" them quickly into highly intelligent lifeforms who fear Kidder and worship him like a god. Kidder can control his neoterics' environment, and thus force them into developing technology far beyond that of humans. While earlier inventions had been his own, Kidder created the neoterics with the intention that they would become the source of many newer and greater inventions. What makes such a strong impression on me in this story is the cold scientific inhumanity of Kidder,much more shocking than the venality of the banker.The story was written in 1941,years before the horrific experiments of Mengele etc were revealed,but we today cant escape the thought of scientists shaking off all ethics to focus on their thirst for knowledge and power.I wont soon forget Kidder poring over his little creatures,devising callous experiments on them,while accepting their worship. Gene Wolfe said this was the first SF story he ever read,and claims''it all was pretty much downhill from there''. Finished,FINALLY, Jeff VanderMeer's Acceptance. a reasonable end to the Southern Reach trilogy I suppose,though not very cheery to say the least! I only liked one character in the whole series,the lighthouse keeper,never got fully engaged with the series at all,and was irritated by the style,(mentioning an important point,going on without comment while looking into the rambling thoughts of bland characters I didntcare about,then returning with a little more detail pages,chapters or even in another book later!)Interesting premise,but not written in a style I enjoyed,or at least was willing to invest thought and effort into following very carefully.It took an awful lot of slow close reading,so its a relief to have finished :0) I am now reading Ken McLeod's The Cassini Division,Zelazny's Madwand,and Randall Garrett's Too Many Magicians,a Lord Darcy book That makes 53/80 titles read for the Pick N Mix challenge,and 474 for the gang as a whole. Excellent! Wonder if we can reach 800 for the year? Edited by dustydigger 2017-07-14 5:25 AM | ||
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| Mervi2012 |
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Veteran Posts: 100 | Too bad you didn't like VanderMeer's trilogy, dustydigger, but I guess it would a boring world if we all liked the same things. I hope you enjoy Garrett's book. I've read all the Lord Darcy short stories and really enjoyed them. I haven't read Zelazny's Madwand so I'm curious to know what you'll think of it. I've enjoyed most of Zelazny's work. I finished Anders' All the Birds in the Sky. I really enjoyed the quirky opening with the six-year old main characters who are both already social outcasts, but disliked some of the choices around 3/4 of the book and didn't like the ending. On the other hand, I listened the second book in Mercedes Lackey's Five hundred kingdoms series, One Good Knight, and enjoyed that a lot. This one is a riff on various dragonslayer fantasy stories. The romance was very understated. | ||
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| Weesam |
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| Mervi2012 |
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| dustydigger |
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| dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1031 Location: UK | August was a mixed bag' Hooray! With relief I finished Terry Goodkind's rather peculiar Wizard's First Rule. Started off your typical standard fantasy, a young man,the Seeker, sets off with the Mother Confessor and a wizard to locate a magic box and protect it from an evil wizard who needs it to rule the world. Cue a long dangerous journey and many adventures. So far so normal. Then after 500 pages of this it turns into sado-masochism,long descriptions of torture and cruelty - even from the heroes! Ick.Not at all my cup of tea. 800 pages of this book was ample time for me to decide NOT to read anymore Goodkind. :0( It was with relief and great pleasure I turned to the excellent War for the Oaks,the 1988 Locus Best First Novel award winner.It was written by Emma Bull at a time when the modern urban fantasy sub genre was starting out. That was the time when Charles De Lint and Mercedes Lackey were producing works linking the faerie world with ours,especially in connection with music.Good stuff. I wonder why, when I find standard high fantasy a somewhat boring turn off, I should like UF so much? I just really like the whole premise,the ''what if the worlds of fantasy were really true,and came to interact with our own? Would we love them,hate them,maybe be eaten or destroyed by them?''.I tend to lean to the tough side,nasty vamps, weres,demons,tricksy fae et al being faced by kick butt humans,not the paranormal romance side. Sorry to say I struggled with Octavia E Butler's Parable of the Talents. I put off continuing straight on from Parable of the Sower which was quite harrowing with its pretty tough dystopic setting. After three months break I have pushed myself to read this sequel,and its even darker than the first one. Rape, slavery and torture are the norm,with child molestation and murder for variety.I was not enamoured of the protagonist in the first outing,and I find her very very irritating. Plus I find the Earthseed philosophy/religion barely credible,and her as a saviour/prophet type frankly risible. I gritted my teeth to drag myself through over 450 pages of cruelty and viciousness without any leavening of hope or humour,and was glad to finish with it. Are ALL of Butler's books about slavery and cruelty?Will be taking a break from anymore of her books for the rest of the year. Hal Clement's Needle was about an alien blob of matter which has invaded a young schoolboy and together they are searching for another blob ,an alien criminal also infesting a human. It is hiding in one of the boys friends and neighbours,but which one? Good fun but not meant to be serious or portentous! Light relief after Earthseed! Finished Vonda MacIntyre's The Moon and the Sun,Louis XIVs glittering Versailles - with sea monsters. Historical fiction is one of my least enjoyable genres so I may be a little unfair to the book.Yet another quirky Nebula winner,you never know what you are going to get! lol It was an OK read,but I found all the intrigue of the glittering court etc a bit too detailed,but McIntyre has an engaging style,strong storytelling skills and she always gives credible motivations to her characters.I always enjoyed her Star Trek stuff,about the only books in that arena I have read.and I loved her Dreamsnake too. Good job there was a a dramatis personae at the beginning,all those princes and their complicated names and titles meant constantly returning to it for about the first couple of hundred pages. The heroine was totally unrealistic of course for the time.A scientist,brilliant artist,excellent composer,mathematician all rolled in one,though she has been confined to a convent school for years so I dont know how she developed all these skills in that repressive environment.Then her being completely innocent and uncomprehending of the often sordid society around her seemed more than a tad naive.But it was still an absorbing read. Just different from MacIntyre's other works. Right now I am nearing the end of Dan Simmons Rise of Endymion,alternately fast paced adventure,hair-raising horror and heavy duty philosophy and science,which are a bit over my head. Its several years since I read Hyperion,and probably a reread of that work would have made for an easier read. About 150 pages to go.Also in progress Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss,and N K Jemisin's Broken Kingdoms. Another case of several years since reading the first book,A Hundred Thousand Kingdomsand so its proving a bit difficult getting up to speed,I've forgotten so much and the names are bewildering me! lol. Hope you are all doing well with the challenge,Pick N' Mixers. I've now completed 67/80 for the challenge,and altogether we have read 563 books . Excellent! | ||
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| daxxh |
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| Mervi2012 |
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Veteran Posts: 100 | dustydigger - 2017-08-31 10:32 AM .Not at all my cup of tea. 800 pages of this book was ample time for me to decide NOT to read anymore Goodkind. :0( We had very similar experiences with Goodkind. I'm also staying away from his books. It was with relief and great pleasure I turned to the excellent War for the Oaks,the 1988 Locus Best First Novel award winner.It was written by Emma Bull at a time when the modern urban fantasy sub genre was starting out. That was the time when Charles De Lint and Mercedes Lackey were producing works linking the faerie world with ours,especially in connection with music.Good stuff.. I also really enjoyed "War for the Oaks" a few years back but I haven't read De Lint. Maybe I should try him at some point? Are ALL of Butler's books about slavery and cruelty? I haven't read her Parable books but I've heard enough about them to know I wouldn't like them. I have read her Xenogenesis books ("Dawn", "Adulthood Rites", and "Imago") and those are pretty solid science fiction. Humans are almost extinct and an alien race, the Oankali, want to try to rebuild them. I don't remember any slavery elements but Lilith, the first (and for a long time only) human, is completely dependent on the Oankali for survival. But the Oankali aren't cruel at all, they're just different. Maybe you could check out some reviews to see if you'd like them? Finished Vonda MacIntyre's The Moon and the Sun,Louis XIVs glittering Versailles - with sea monsters. Historical fiction is one of my least enjoyable genres so I may be a little unfair to the book.Yet another quirky Nebula winner,you never know what you are going to get! lol I liked that book better but I like historical fiction a lot and the Sun King is one of my favorite historical people. | ||
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