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dustydigger
Posted 2017-10-27 12:30 PM (#16412 - in reply to #14868)
Subject: Re: The Pick & Mix in 2017		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		I managed to crack on with my challenge reads this month.
Jane Yolen's Mythopoeic Award winner of 1985 Cards of Grief was a fascinating look at earth anthropologists making a study of a First Contact world,earnestly confident that they will make a minimal effect on that world.Well depicted world setting but little characterization.Well,after all it was only 144 pages long,amazing how much interesting stuff was packed in there! lol. Ah,the good old days,when books were short but packed with ideas....
In Damon Knight's Mind Switch (aka The Other Foot) a reporter visiting the Berlin Zoo to view a new alien inmate finds their minds swapped Mostly we follow the culturally naive alien in the human's body as he battles to cope with our bewildering culture.Ase cute deeply ironic ending is a final twist in an amiable rainy afternoon read. That makes 25/27 Grand Masters of Science Fiction read in my WWEnd challenge. I only need to read a Michael Moorcock and a James E Gunn to complete that list. Not looking forward to the Moorcock,havent got more than 30 pages in on any of his works! James E Gunn will be more fun I think......next year.......
Really enjoyed Amanda Steven's follow up to The Restorer,The Kingdom. The heroine can see ghosts,and we learn much more about her background while she battles against witches.Nicely spooky at times. I have acquired book 3,The Prophet,and will read it near the end of the month for my Halloween Spooky Read challenge.
Also read Larry Niven's The Smoke Ring,the follow up to The Integral Trees,pleasant enough but often difficult to follow exactly.
Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon,a short story collection set in an Irish bar where various aliens from thegalaxy a well as aliens from American sciety come to tell their tales.Under that guise Spider is obviously working out his difficult emotions in connection with the Vietnam war,and the dire straits of American society in the 70s.A few too many puns for my tastes,and the rather sentimental and would be hopeful thoughts on the futureof the book at the tail end sat uneasily with the bleak tone of the rest of the book under the humour. But a amiable enough read for this female Brit. Probably a whole lot more resonant for US males I should imagine.
C J Cherryh's Serpent's Reach had that bleak,dark sort of tone that much of her hard edged early fiction,like The Faded Sun trilogy, I wish I had read this many years ago,before I read much of the Alliance -Union cycle,because this tale really gives an understanding of just why the Alliance abhorred the whole idea of programmed humans,the azi. Good stuff. Last year I read 40,000 in Gehenna,which gave us glimpses of the azi,and now I think I really need to reread Cyteen,which I read early on back in the late 80s,before I had read more than the Chanur saga. I am sure it will make much more sense now. There's one book already on next year's list! lol.

Well,I am FINALLY finished my Pick N' Mix for 2017,80/80 read.!! Its been an interesting year,I've got closer to my plan to read all the Hugos (two more on the agenda for this year,then the remaining dozen for next year). I am down to ten Nebulas left so maybe next year I will complete them all!Some awfully big tomes there,the books get thicker by the decade.
Well done to those who have finished the challenge - Abalone,daxxh, Elizabeth R, - and of course our glorious Weesam an awesome lady indeed! lol
Some others are very close indeed,like Ann Walker,39/40,ScoLgo 37/40,and sushicat 19/20 .Several other Pick N Mixers have only 5 or 6 books to read,so here's hoping they finish! Keep it up
WE have read 668 books between us this year,excellent.two moremonths to go!

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