Books, books, books...

[namman siggins]

Between is my book of the year. I said in an earlier post, but I related to that book a lot.

The Fishermen is great.

Right now I'm reading The Ploughmen & The Moors Account.

[dibs]

David Mitchell on Earthsea.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/david-mitchell-wizard-of-earthsea-tolkien-george-rr-martin

[Nappi]

I'm about 100 pages into A Brief History of Seven Killings, and I'm absolutely loving it so far.

 

I'm always wary of novel that follow more than one character, because often one or more of the threads or characters are not that interesting, and the different stories take way too long to converge. This novel takes a different approach in which the protagonists act as sorts of security cameras that cover the same events from different perspectives and through different sets of filters. This choice is immensely successful, and gives you a nice sense of what it might well have been living in different parts of Kingston during that period.

[agorman]

I'm finishing up Dear Life by Alice Munro after seeing it's praises sung here a while back and have been just floored by her writing. I don't know that I've ever read anything quite like it.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Next I'm hoping to start Tenth of December which I've been meaning to get to for some time.

[seamus2389]

I fininshed radiant state the third and final volume of Peter Higgins fantastic Wolfhound century. This series is one the best and most orginal I have read in years. This review best sums up what is so good about the series.

 

With Radiant State, it becomes clear that Peter Higgins is working with similar mythic material to China Miéville (in some of his work) and Max Gladstone: the mythos that forms the most visible substrate in his work are the myths of modernity and the fantasies of progress.

 

Higgins  takes bits and pieces of 20th century Russian history in particular the unrest of pre-WW1 Russia, WW2 and the siege of Leningrad and the Space exploration of the 50's and 60's. He creates a  nation known as the Vlast, ruled by an authoritarian regime engaged in a losing war and dealing with revolutionaries in particular the man known as Josef Kantor. Kantor is a revolutionary who wants to create a new Vlast whose purpose is to  is  fulfill his Futurist/Nietzshean goal creating a superior humanity who will spread across the stars leaving behind an obsolete world and people.

 

Some passages in the book remind me of a Girl is a half formed thing or Gene Wolfe's book of the New Sun which Higgins cites as a major influence. The series as a whole reminds me of Red Plenty in terms of both being  fables of the USSR where Red plenty (another influence and whose author reviewed it) is based in actual USSR history while Wolfhound century uses it's as basis for a very different yet recognizable state.

Radiant State is conscious of itself as literature. It doesn’t want you to lose sight of it as a made thing: instead, it uses style and register to direct your attention. Sometimes to mislead. Sometimes to emphasise. Often to highlight the mutability and the strangeness of its magic and its machines: to subtly layer in questions of what it means to be human and when does human become something else, to challenge the costs and myths of progress.

 

This is a something about this series that reminds Moby Dick, the stars my destination and the  Book of the New Sun (which Higgins lists as an influence). I think it is a feeling of unease or a feeling that what you are reading isn't "normal" or usual. Part of it is that all these books have a particular focus on people with a devotion to a belief/goal that they follow/seek regardless of the cost to others although how that plays out isn't the same in the different books.

 

 

 

PS- The titles of the books - wolfhound century, truth and fear, radiant state (possibly one of the best titles I have ever seen) is also fantastic. They perfectly fit the particular books as does wolfhound century as a name for the whole of it and here is a short but interseting interview with Higgins

[Woodfella]

I'm finishing up Dear Life by Alice Munro after seeing it's praises sung here a while back and have been just floored by her writing. I don't know that I've ever read anything quite like it.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Next I'm hoping to start Tenth of December which I've been meaning to get to for some time.

Ive had Dear Life for ages and have tried to start it a few times but other things got in the way. Must go back. Think I got as far as the first 2

[Woodfella]

Double post, sorry

[osmosisch]

I'm finishing up Dear Life by Alice Munro after seeing it's praises sung here a while back and have been just floored by her writing. I don't know that I've ever read anything quite like it.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Next I'm hoping to start Tenth of December which I've been meaning to get to for some time.

Yesssss

one of us one of us one of us

[Argobot]

I am slowly buying first edition Alice Munro hardcovers that I find in used bookstores, so that now I generally have two copies of the same Alice Munro book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

but really

[agorman]

Ive had Dear Life for ages and have tried to start it a few times but other things got in the way. Must go back. Think I got as far as the first 2

 

Go back! It's really something else. Some passages hit uncomfortably close to home for me. This one from Pride that particularly devastated me.

 

"There was still that strange hesitation and lightness about her, as if she was waiting for her life to begin.

She went away on trips of course, and maybe she thought it would begin there. No such luck."

[tberton]

Ive had Dear Life for ages and have tried to start it a few times but other things got in the way. Must go back. Think I got as far as the first 2

 

Don't feel the need to read all the stories in order. The first couple are the weakest, in my opinion. The last four - the autobiographical ones - are my favourites.

[Trip Hazard]

Finished China Mieville's The Scar . Not even 6am yet so will post coherent thoughts later, but I loved it

[seamus2389]

Finished China Mieville's The Scar . Not even 6am yet so will post coherent thoughts later, but I loved it

 

I think that is my favorite of his Bas-Lag novels. Not sure why but the sword cutting with possible instance of it's existence is part of it.

 

Cureetnly reading his newest short story collection - 3 moments of an explosion and it is a very interesting mix of "convential" short stories and shorter more experimental stuff like a story that timestamps of trailer about the war between crawling zombies and a human- walking zombie alliance

[Mangela Lansbury]

I really liked Perdido Street Station a lot, but I don't think I ever read anything in the series after that. What are the highlights? The Scar (which I bought at one point, and then it sat on my shelf until I got rid of it in a moving purge) and what else?

[feelthedarkness]

There are just the three (PSS, Scar, Iron Council), and I think I liked Scar the best. I don't think he can do much wrong though. Also, I like Embassytown best of his work. 

[osmosisch]

Mieville's City and the City is my favourite work of his. It's got a fascinating premise, and instead of making it the focus of the book, it's a mysterious backdrop/ingredient for a more simple story. Lovely writing as well.

[Trip Hazard]

The City and the City is next on my list.

 

The first thing of note about The Scar is that it is a big book, and not fast paced. At first I was a little wearied having read many pages with nothing much happening, but when events do happen in this book they are hugely significant and have usually been built up over many chapters. I believe the very first chapter introduces a mysterious presence, not to be mentioned again until about the halfway point, to give an example.

 

Bellis Coldwine is a great protagonist, whose character is always true to herself (the same can be said all characters) and the antagonist, too, is exceptional - he's weasely and dishonest and cowardly, but he's also courageous and self-assured. I'd liken him somewhat to Steerpike from the Gormenghast novels. It was well done how his aims aligned somewhat with Bellis', but his methods made that an unstable partnership. 

 

There are some interesting larger ideas as well: what is possible and what is, and how faint is the distinction between what might have been and what was, as made evident in the lethal possibility sword.  

 

It's beautifully written as well, fantastic imagery and description and attention to detail throughout. The action scenes, too, are spectacular.

[JamesGoblin]

I have somewhat unusual habit of either dropping a book after only 10-15 pages or re-reading the same one for 4-5 or even more times (especially if I like it a lot) and/or (re)reading more of them simultaneously.

Besides some "boring" chess ones, I'm currently going (on and on...) through some 20th century Serbian writers (typically never even translated to English, thus no point in giving titles, I guess), Proust's "In Search of lost Time" and Camus' "The Stranger".

[seamus2389]

Mieville's City and the City is my favourite work of his. It's got a fascinating premise, and instead of making it the focus of the book, it's a mysterious backdrop/ingredient for a more simple story. Lovely writing as well.

 

He wrote the re-launch of dc's dial h for hero a couple of years ago which was fantastic in part because the "hero's" power was phone that turned him into an endless parade of  Mievillean superheroes like the living embodiment of Victorian smoke pollution or a giant slug only to then reveal all these are actual heroes from other universe who are basically being kidnapped by the dial h hero. 

[Gormongous]

I recently read two sci-fi trilogies. In a way, they demonstrated what a weirdly limp and useless term "sci-fi" is as a genre designator, because they were as different as can be.

 

The first was the Southern Reach trilogy, also called the Area X trilogy, by Jeff VanderMeer. Apparently, this was the subject of some online buzz a year or so ago and, although I'm skeptical of "buzz" in general, it's totally justified here. These books are short, totaling maybe four hundred pages altogether, but they make up for it in psychological weight. I would call them more "supernatural horror" than traditional sci-fi, although they do center around presumed contact with an alien lifeform. The incredible, terrifying otherness of that contact is what makes these books absolutely golden, especially when it's steeped in a consciousness of Southern culture and gender politics that feels very savvy and kind to its characters. I don't even really want to go into the details, just check it out if any of the words that I've said look good.

 

The second was the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. You've probably seen it if you've ever been in the sci-fi section of a bookstore, it's three thousand-page volumes in solid green, orange, and blue. Honestly, I was crazy about this book for the first eighteen hundred to two thousand pages. It has a very clever premise: a secular, spacefaring, post-scarity society discovers by random chance that the afterlife exists, or at least a hell, when angry souls appear and begin possessing people. The clash between science and faith is done quite well, surprisingly, considering the spine-breaking verbosity of the prose. I didn't even mind the eight hundred pages of scene-setting in the first volume before anything actually happens, because it reminded me of the good old days when trilogies were everywhere and it was accepted that things could take a lot of time.

 

Still, the books soon wore out their welcome and the entirety of the final volume was tedious for me. First, there were just too many characters, many of whom were introduced for a one-off viewpoint and then kept around because Hamilton seems to have made a commitment with himself to follow every character's story to its (often) boring end. Second, some of the conflicts were interesting, even the nature of the afterlife, but most were boring. Having Al Capone resurrected, without his syphilis, as the principal antagonist was dumb and made no commentary on either him in particular or history in general, especially since no other known figures from the past (besides a certain first mate from the HMS Bounty) made an appearance. It was just a gimmick, really. Finally, Hamilton clearly had no ending in mind, which probably contributed to the length of the trilogy. The setting, as it starts out, is a small confederacy of planets still in political and social flux, with only two alien races that (to Hamilton's credit) are legitimately mysterious and hold no magical MacGuffins or anything. Nevertheless, near the end of the third volume, suddenly the number of alien races increases (again, to Hamilton's credit, in interesting ways) and a god-device shows up that explains the entire cosmology of Hamilton's fictional universe to the most Mary Sue of the characters and then fixes everything for everyone, with an overlong epilogue showing that everyone (even the deceased) are happy.

 

It wasn't bad, but it needed an editor. I almost think it a shame that it's so long, because reading it makes me think of the possibilities that other writers could find in Hamilton's vision. It's not like there's a shortage of things to borrow, in that great mass of text...

[osmosisch]

I had that precise same reaction to Hamilton's magnum opus. It still holds a soft spot in my heart though. He was sort of a gateway drug to Iain Banks for me.

 

Vandermeer's thing is alienating creepiness, I love his Ambergris works as well for that. I'll have to check out Southern Reach.

[Gormongous]

I had that precise same reaction to Hamilton's magnum opus. It still holds a soft spot in my heart though. He was sort of a gateway drug to Iain Banks for me.

 

I imagine that Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn hold that place for me with fantasy literature, but with fantasy literature. I've been extremely reluctant to reread them or to track down any critiques of them because of that. Hamilton is good, considering how huge the Night's Dawn trilogy is and how early he wrote it in his career relatively speaking, but it's definitely from an age that's passed and will never return, for me.

 

Vandermeer's thing is alienating creepiness, I love his Ambergris works as well for that. I'll have to check out Southern Reach.

 

Reading the Southern Reach trilogy felt like having a migraine come on while I was recovering from a fever. It wasn't a sensation I seek out, but it was unique and gripping in the extreme. I hope you enjoy it, if you happen to read it!

[osmosisch]

I imagine that Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn hold that place for me with fantasy literature, but with fantasy literature. I've been extremely reluctant to reread them or to track down any critiques of them because of that. 

Haha, that's an excellent parallel. Way-too-long but with some fascinating ideas. MS&T blew me away when I first read it, and considering that I was also in the middle of the Wheel of Time books back then, they actually felt concise and well-paced.

 

I've read most of Williams' stuff since then, and have enjoyed most of it, though I'd definitely rate the quality lower these days, having read some better stuff.

[Trip Hazard]

Southern Reach sounds great, will read it soon

[namman siggins]

Southern Reach really got under my skin--especially all of Annihilation--and unnerved me. It was definitely my favorite series of 2014.

 

When Control is hallucinating, and he sees Psychologist with Area X behind her ready to invade Southern Reach agency. FUCK! That scared me.

 

Right now, I'm going through The Moor's Account and  The Book of Night Women

 

The Book of Night Women is a hard read because of how it's written: 
 

 

"Every negro walk in a circle. Take that and make of it what you will. A circle like the sun, a circle like the moon, a circle like bad tidings that seem gone but always, always come back.”

 

But once you get into the flow of the language, it's quite hypnotizing.

 

It's a painful read though.

 

“People think blood red, but blood don't got no color. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.”