What BOOK(s) are you reading?

I read THE HANDMAID'S TALE, which is funny and sad and scary and bland. I gotta believe there are some folks out there that would be OK with the ideas in that book, and that's fucking scary. Also read ORYX & CRAKE, which is a solid take on the utterly meaninglessness that pervades a culture bathed in every sensation from youth without any constraint.

I am currently reading Six-Gun Tarot, by R.S. Belcher. Magic/steampunk in the Old West. 50 pages in, and I feel that it is a tolerable read. It might get good, but I doubt it.

Watch this, I'm gonna send up the Jeb-signal...

I read Seveneves, the new novel from Neal Stephenson.

Now, we've discussed Stephenson a lot in this thread (and on blogs and such), and I'm way too lazy to go back and link them all. But all y'all know I'm pretty critical of his stuff most of the time.

This one I was really impressed by, right up until the bitter bitter end of the book. It didn't flop like a fish at the end like some of his books do, the wrap-up was really pretty good. However, some shit just got sort of silly right at the end. Sort of like Anathem, but not quite that level of goofy.

The first two-thirds of the book might be the best stuff he's ever written. Seriously. It's hard to discuss too much without spoilerizing it all, but the Moon is destroyed on page 1, and things sort of deteriorate from there. That's the scale Stephenson's working with.

From an engineering dork perspective, it's fantastic. Lots of orbital mechanics, robots, crazy Russian cosmonauts, and frantic jury-rigging of major things. Engineering with limited resources against hard time barriers is a constant theme of the book.

Here's what really sold it for me: Stephenson has finally learned how to write dialogue between equals. The book is packed with people who are excellent at what they do, and they talk to each other like professional adults (almost all the time). Usually, when it's exposition time in a Stephenson novel, one character has to carry the "idiot ball", while the genius explains everything as if the target (and the reader) is five. That's immensely frustrating to me, and this book is almost devoid of it. It sneaks in a bit towards the end, but not enough to bother me much.

Anyway, highly recommended. I'd say it's as good as anything he's written, it's right up there with The Diamond Age to me as my favorite of his novels. Once it gets more consumption, I'd like to chat more about it, but I really don't want to spoil it for other readers. Go get it. Read it. Come back. I'll be here.

Read the Sisters Brothers, which I think a lot of people would enjoy here. It's a funny, dark, enjoyable read.

Gary Sax wrote: Read the Sisters Brothers, which I think a lot of people would enjoy here. It's a funny, dark, enjoyable read.

Read it a few years ago when it was a hit in Canada. Loved it.

Currently reading "Ancillary Sword" the second in a series by Ann Lecke. I really really enjoyed the first book "Ancillary Justice". It's not an easy read at first as the point of view of the character seems to be at different places but all at the same time. Stick with it, things become clearer as the story progresses. Fantastic stuff and enjoying the seocnd so far.

Currently making my way through Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Really enjoying it and I like the use of footnotes as a world-building tool.

I just couldn't get into Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell. I gave it the obligatory 100 pages and gave up.

It sits there looking at me.

I may give it another go.

I'm still reading bfkiller's post to the boardgames thread

This was what I did on my summer vacation - sat on the beach, got sunburned, and read my Kindle.

If you liked James S.A. Corey's Expanse series, Nemesis Games is out there now. If you liked the other Expanse novels, this one is good too. If you haven't read The Expanse series, I'd recommend it.

Max Barry's Lexicon was a hoot. Killer poets FTW.

I didn't find Seveneves to be nearly as good as Not Sure did, above. I liked Anathem, and reamde . I even liked The Baroque Cycle trilogy, and AFAICT it just kind of stopped. But it turns out that there is such a thing as Too Much Infodump for me. I thought that there was a good 4-500 page book in there, intermingled with 400 pages of spaceflight engineering.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle of the band 'The Mountain Goats. If you know the band you know that a novel which is an extended character study of a damaged person is not unexpected. It's beautifully written, with sentences that leap out and stun you.

RobertB wrote: Max Barry's Lexicon was a hoot. Killer poets FTW.

Anything from Max Barry is excellent. I liked Lexicon a lot as well, kind of a departure from what he's written before. I'd recommend all of books to all of F:AT.

I didn't find Seveneves to be nearly as good as Not Sure did, above. I liked Anathem, and reamde . I even liked The Baroque Cycle trilogy, and AFAICT it just kind of stopped. But it turns out that there is such a thing as Too Much Infodump for me. I thought that there was a good 4-500 page book in there, intermingled with 400 pages of spaceflight engineering.

Was it really that long? I read it on my Kindle, and it didn't seem nearly that long. The infodump has never been a problem for me (I'll admit the fascination with chains goes on a bit long). The "just kind of stops" is a pretty typical Stephenson ending. He tends to stop not when everything is resolved, but at a moment of brief story stability.

There is no such thing as too much spaceflight engineering for me. But that's me. It's a valid criticism, because he dumps a lot of stuff on the table, but that's generally the good part of Stephenson to me, and I'll happily wade through the bad characterization and "idiot ball" dialogue to get to the ideas. I thought the stuff I dislike was toned down and the stuff I like was at the forefront in this book.

I found Reamde to be way too long for what it was, and the entire MMO subplot was boring and useless to me. That novel hung together on a billion coincidences, which was frustrating. Anathem was really good until the last quarter where it becomes space heroes. There was also some clanger of a plotting problem towards the end that ruined the book for me, but the details have been blissfully erased my memory. TBC has really great stuff in it, but suffers so much from the "idiot ball" problem it was difficult for me to take seriously. Those books desperately needed some editing. That said, I still want to give them a re-read again someday.

I read SEVENEVES too! Signal received! It maintains the strong Stephensonian traditions of

1. Explaining the shit out of everything, often not well.
2. Ending abruptly.

The best embedded explanations are in THE BAROQUE CYCLE and CRYPTONOMICON. He explains some really cool stuff by and large through the characters and their interactions. Compare with REAMDE, wherein he explains boring stuff ("Hey guys, I learned about guns, so let's talk about guns for 100 fucking pages"), and SEVENEVES where he explains cool stuff, but sometimes with just the most threadbare connection to the characters. It's a little Tom Clancy. I think this explanation stuff is what makes his books seem to end so fast. When he stops spending every other page explaining things, the narrative moves at light speed comparatively and completes.

All that said, it explores an incredibly cool idea and is worth reading. I liked it a lot more than REAMDE and it's somewhat a return to form.

///
I also read THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler. A post-apoc dystopia set in SoCal. Pretty topical given the Water Wars that are sure to commence shortly.

I picked up an annotated DRACULA from the library. Should be good. I hear it's got vampires in it.

I read DO NO HARM, non-fiction ramblings by an arrogant neurosurgeon. Meh. Airport reading.

I re-read most of GENIUS, the biography of Richard Feynmann. He was a smart fucker. I like books about smart people. See also THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY and Macrae's JOHN VON NEUMANN.

--ed
I wanted to add a comment after reading Not Sure's reply above. I think ANATHEM explores the coolest fucking idea Stephenson ever looked at. I completely loved the first 1/3 to 1/2 of that book. The concept of the cloisters is remarkable and deep and I recommend it to anyone. I just wish he did something with that background instead of what he ended up with (as noted, it is space heroes). I have some kind of idea kicking around in my head for folks to re-write endings to books inspired by ANATHEM. I want a database where folks can state, "After Chapter 6, switch to this" and finish the book. Sometimes the authors can't be trusted with the ideas they have originated.

It's a book thread explosion!

I forgot, I also read The Water Knife, which is Paolo Bacigalupi's new novel. Jeb mentioning Water Wars reminded me of it, since it's the setting of the book. Outright water wars and states-rights madness in the desert Southwest. I liked it a lot, but I always like Bacigalupi's collapse stuff. Pretty good, and it shouts out (repeatedly) to Cadillac Desert, which is the Silent Spring of water policy and criminally under-read out here in dryland.

Dr_Mabuse wrote:

Southernman wrote:

Dr_Mabuse wrote:

Southernman waaaay back in Sep 2009 wrote: Ha - time to own up. I'm still reading Gene Wolfe's 'Book of the New Sun' series that I talked about way back in March in the other book thread - I've nearly finished The Shadow of the Torturer ... the first book (oh dear).

Good on ya Tom, I finished the first book and stopped part way through the second early in the summer. It just didn't work for me.

I'm determined to finish them - mainly because (from memory) I don't think I ever worked out clearly what it was all about when I had finished. Hopefully 20 years of worldly experience (tempered by alcohol induced braincell loss) will stand me in a better position to take it in ... probably not.

Well when you do figure it out, oh aged and wise one, please enlighten me. I had no fucking clue what was going on in the 2nd book, once I saw started reading the "play" they were enacting I was done.

I gave up on the second book a few years ago (I admitted I find it difficult to read these days), about the same time I started reading a great book written at the time, so lots of insights not coloured/changed over the years, on the North African campaign of WW2 - 'The Desert War' by Alan Moorehead. Once again I only read it now and then (more then) but can report that I have nearly finished it, it's written incredibly well (reads like a novel sometimes than war reports) and really does give a different political and social view of the time as well as accurate commentary on the fighting in that campaign ... I may have a small party when I do finish