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What are you reading in December?
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-02 5:46 AM (#4362)
Subject: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		Here we go again! I am trying to read down my TBR .I have 26 books on the shelf,want to cut it down so as to add all the new books for the 2013 challenge! The science fiction on the agenda for this month are
Charles Stross - Halting State
Alan Moore - Swamp thing
China Mieville - City and the City.
Not so much reading this month what with Christmas preparations,baby sitting etc,but also I am preparing my lists for various challenges next year,including the Guardian list.Well I am assuming we are doing that list?
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Administrator
Posted 2012-12-02 10:00 AM (#4365 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: RE: What are you reading in December?



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dustydigger - 2012-12-02 5:46 AM I am preparing my lists for various challenges next year,including the Guardian list.Well I am assuming we are doing that list?

Actually we decided against the Guardian list for next year's challenge.  Much too limiting over all.  We'll be announcing the new challenge in a few weeks.  Right now, we're working out the rules and laying the groundwork behind the scenes for it.

As for December reading, I'm wrapping up my GMRC list with 2 books: Farmer in the Sky by Heinlein, which I'm almost done with already (it's a short book) and then Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement will be my 12th!

After those I'm dying to finish off the Apotheosis trilogy with Messiah by S. Andrew Swann.  It took me a bit to get into the first book but by about the half way point I was sold.  I read the second book in just a few days.  It's an action packed page turner.

I've got some good vacation time coming up so I expect I'll be able to get a few more books in so I'm going to treat myself to some Patrick O'Brian and read The Yellow Admiral (vol 18), The Hundred Days (19) and Blue at the Mizzen (20) to finish out my thrid reading of the Aubrey/Maturin Series.  Yes, they're that good!  In fact, I'm already planning to read them again in a few year's time and I'm lusting after this lovely boxed set.

 

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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-02 2:12 PM (#4366 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		Aarrgghh! Now he tells me we are NOT doing the Guardian list.when I have fully worked out my Pyramid.45 books with the majority from the Guardian list.carefully co-ordinated with my other challenges on Shelfari.Huh. Oh well,I'll show it to you anyway,and i will probably still try to do it,and see wht can be saved from the wreckageThe Pyramid starts with a category of one book,and increases by one each step.It covers SF,fantasy and horror,and is a pretty fun list.Started with Poe since he was such a seminal influence in so many areas
1. The Onlie Begetter
Edgar Allan Poe - selected short stories

2. Double Helping of Zelazny
Roger Zelazny - Doorways in the Sand
Roger Zelazny - To Die in Italbar

3. Lurkers in the Dark
H P Lovecraft - selected stories
Arthur Machen - selected ghost stories
Algernon Blackwood - selected stories

4. Gothic Chills
Hugh Walpole - Castle of Otranto
Matthew Lewis - The Monk
Sheridan Lefanu - Uncle Silas
Henry James - Turn of the Screw

5 Woman authors
Ursula Leguin - The Dispossessed
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Herland
Joanna Russ - The Female Man
C J Cherryh - Intruder

6. In a Galaxy Faraway
Ian M Banks - Consider Phlebas
Ian M Banks - Player of Games
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space
Stephen Baxter - Timeships

7. Hooray for the Hugos!
Arthur C Clarke - The Gods Themselves
Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
Arthur C Clarke - Foundations Edge
P K Dick - The Man in the High Castle
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
David Brin - Startide Rising

8. Flights of Fantasy
Raymond R Feist - Magician
Orson Scott Card - Seventh Son
William goldman - The Princess Bride
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Stephen King - The Gunslinger
Piers Anthony - A Spell for Chameleon
Laini Taylor - Days of Blood and Slaughter
Peter Beagle - The Last Unicorn



Edited by dustydigger 2012-12-02 2:14 PM
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DrNefario
Posted 2012-12-03 7:40 AM (#4367 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		Weaveworld is not in a galaxy far away. It's in Liverpool.

(Actually, reading up about it, more of it might take place in a secondary world than I remember. It's been a long time.)

For December, I am finally reading Lest Darkness Fall, to finish up the GMRC. I'd also like to polish off the Foundation trilogy with Second Foundation. Apart from that, whatever takes my fancy.
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Switters
Posted 2012-12-04 7:20 AM (#4369 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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I think I started more books in November than I finished, I couldn't find things that kept my attention. Finished Little Brother by Cory Doctorow over the weekend.

For Decemeber I'm planning on finishing The Curse of Chalion by McMaster Bujold and I've started Mirror Dance. I'm slowly enjoying Jonathon Strange and Mr Norell.

I've heard a lot of people talk about the Patrick O'Brian books. I have the first one from Audible, I think I'll give them another go.
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Administrator
Posted 2012-12-04 7:45 AM (#4370 - in reply to #4369)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Switters - 2012-12-04 7:20 AM I've heard a lot of people talk about the Patrick O'Brian books. I have the first one from Audible, I think I'll give them another go.

Very cool!  I'll warn you up front, the first book is a bit slow to get going, or at least I know a couple people that felt that way and bailed on it.  It was never a problem for me but I will say that later volumes are more streamlined and move faster.  That could be because the characters and O'Brian's style are familiar by then.  I hope you like 'em.

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Emil
Posted 2012-12-04 11:29 AM (#4371 - in reply to #4370)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia		I'm reading Cryoburn, and Lovecraft. Currently there is little time for reading in my new life as farmer.
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Scott Laz
Posted 2012-12-04 2:15 PM (#4372 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado		Just finished Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity, and am tentatively starting Ursula Le Guin's Always Going Home as the last book for the GMRC. I picked it because it's one of the Broderick/Di Filippo 101 Best; it looks interesting but daunting--quite long, and experimental in format for a novel (it seems to consist of individual stories, poems, reports, etc., that together make up a sort of anthropological report on a future culture, if I'm not mistaken). The semester's end is coming, so hopefully I'll have time to digest it before the end of the month! Also completed Pete Townshend's memoir Who I Am, a thoughtful autobiography that fans at least will find fascinating.

I've also thought about reading O'Brian, having heard raves about him for years. Someday!

@dusty: Looks like some great selections in that pyramid. I read all four books in your "Gothic Chills" section recently, and those are a nice overview of that type of novel. The Monk is one of the wildest things I ever read--I'm still kind of astounded by it two years later...
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-05 10:57 AM (#4374 - in reply to #4372)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		I have tended to avoid O'Brian because its such a long series,its daunting.I was browsing around scoping out the nautical genre,and what a massive number of authors and books there are! Especially among we Brits,which of course have an ancient naval tradition..It can be very brutal,and hard to take,but its also great that it was carried over so nicely into science fiction too! ''Hornblower in Space'' as I call them.
@Scott. I am really going to enjoy the gothic books,perfect winter weather books IMO.I have started Wilkie Collins Woman in White,and while not actually gothic it has similar overtones.I am thoroughly enjoying it.Love the melodrama of victorian stuff,epistolary modes,and the stately elegant prose.I am also about to reread Poe's Pit and the Pendulum.The man was just a bundle of supersensitive nerves! Unfortunately,when reading about the Inquisition I am either cringing from the horror,or else I get an irrepressable picture in my mind of John Cleese and Co as the Spanish Inquisition in Monty Python,and want to giggle.Makes for an interesting reading experience,to say the least.Thank heavens it is very short,and I know the ending
@ Dr.Nefario - oops about Weaveworld.I checked and I copied off the wrong list.It should have been Poul Anderson's Tau Zero.Couldnt get much further away than in that book!
@ Emil - good to hear from you.thought you were lost in the bush! What is the weather situation there? My husband's family in Uganda are battling an horrendous drought,so they are very worried.Everywhere now is either having drought or floods
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Emil
Posted 2012-12-05 1:36 PM (#4375 - in reply to #4374)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia		@Dusty, yes, Namibia is also experiencing a drought, following three or four years of record breaking rainfall. During the dry winter months the whole farm burned down, so we are desperately looking to the heavens for rain in order to recuperate the grace lands for the cattle. We have irrigation for the maize and wheat and are looking to expand on this bu adding two more systems, which means our reliance on rain for this is minimal. But the cattle remains a concern. Hence it's difficult to find time to read whilst setting this all up and driving between the various farms where we've moved about 300 heads of cattle for better grazing. We've had about 100mm rainfall, which is far below the usual averages this time of the year! I guess much of my sf reading on climate change is hauntingly become science fact!!!

At least in the evenings for one hour I have escape the concerns with Miles Vorkosigon!

I did manage to finish both the GMRC and Outside The Norm before moving to Namibia.
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justifiedsinner
Posted 2012-12-06 12:03 PM (#4376 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Taking a break from the Helliconia series (I thought Helliconia Summer was a bit of a slog) and started on The Fall Revolution series. Just finished the first: The Star Fraction which was a fun read.
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DrNefario
Posted 2012-12-10 8:01 AM (#4384 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		I finished Lest Darkness Fall the other day, to complete my GMRC. I enjoyed it, and was a bit surprised to find the book was that old, being first published the same year my last set of time travellers (Blackout/All Clear) went back to.

I have now picked up where I left off in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, at War of Honor. So far, it has been annoying me with its lengthy explanations of the political state and not much happening. It's also very long, and I'm not sure I have the patience. I hope it picks up soon.
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Emil
Posted 2012-12-10 12:39 PM (#4385 - in reply to #4384)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia		@DrNefario yes, i gave up the ghost on that one about halfway through. From my reading experience, it did not improve and remained quite a trudge.
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-11 1:48 PM (#4394 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		@ Dr Nefario.I very much enjoyed On Basilisk Station,but book by book Honor's part got smaller,the politics and skulduggery got greater - and so did the size of the books. Very disappointing.I found myself skip- reading War of Honour,only reading the sections with Honor herself and ignoring the yawnmaking politics.What a disappointing tail off to what started as a great series!.I much preferred,as a plot driven fan,the Elizabeth Moon Heris Serrano series.and David Feintuch's excellent Midshipman's Hope and its sequels.Even David Drakes rather anodyne Lieutenant O'Leary's sequence.At least they all have action,adventure and lots of flash bang wallop,not reams and reams of boring political infighting.I've never been so disappointed in the development of a series as in the Weber Harrington saga.What a disappointment!
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DrNefario
Posted 2012-12-14 7:34 AM (#4404 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		I feel like I need to get through War of Honor to "unlock" the two spin-off sequences, although I don't know if they're any better.

I have the first Serrano trilogy waiting on one of my eReaders, but I haven't got round to it, yet. I enjoyed the Feintuch books, and am ambivalent towards the O'Leary books having read the first one earlier in the year.

Luckily, I have already beaten my challenges for the year, so I can afford to inch my way through War of Honor. As long as I don't start wondering what I'm missing elsewhere.
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-14 4:28 PM (#4407 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		I am almost finished a reread of Jim Butcher's Fool Moon,for a challenge.My least favourite Harry Dresden book.Too downbeat,too much emphasis on his constant beatings,and not enough leavening of humour.After this Butcher adjusted the characterization of Harry much more sympathetically,and our dearly beloved battered white knight becomes recognizable
I am also about 40 pages into Charles Stross Halting State,which is quite amusing.Had to give up on Swamp Thing for the moment till I locate my magnifying glass.The small print,in dull colours on a dark background is just too difficult for my eyes,even after ''renovation''.Will try later.
Cant wait for January to start my ''Pyramid'' of golden oldies
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jfrantz
Posted 2012-12-19 11:02 PM (#4416 - in reply to #4375)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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I did manage to finish both the GMRC and Outside The Norm before moving to Namibia.


Wow, good for you for sticking with the Outside The Norm reading list Emil!
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dustydigger
Posted 2012-12-21 2:25 PM (#4417 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		Just completed China Mieville's enjoyable Hugo,BFSA<and WFA winner,The City and the City.I liked it better than Kraken,but had the same niggle.Mieville introduces some excellent ideas,which later seem to fizzle out or prove to be red herrings,so I finish with a slight feeling of disatisfaction.But City has a likeable good cop hero,a well developed mystery,and a most intriguing setting,that I would hesitate to explain.Check out the reviews for that.:0)
Have just done my seasonal reread of Dickens A Christmas Carol.Love this book,and after watching every possible adaptation several times,I think I know all the dialogue by heart.Gave up watching the Alistair Sim version of 1951 on TV,still one of the best,because of the godawful colorization. The master Director of Photography has made the most painstaking effort to exploit black and white film,and has arranged the eerie and menacing shadows in the old house just so.Then some idiot comes along and gives scrooge robin's egg blue eyes,and a puce dressing gown for his confrontation with Jacob Marley.This year I ignored the TV and watched it on line.A smaller picture but no blood boiling high blood pressure from the sight of Scrooge in a sky blue coat! ;0) Enough to make anyone say Bah Humbug
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Emil
Posted 2012-12-31 9:13 AM (#4459 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia		I'm now reading Wild Cards I.
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Scott Laz
Posted 2012-12-31 1:57 PM (#4463 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: RE: What are you reading in December?



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Location: Gunnison, Colorado

 

Finished out the month (and the year) with Big Planet by Jack Vance, Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin, and an excursion into the pulp time machine with the second issue of Unknown magazine (April 1939). This issue has "The Ultimate Adventure" by L. Ron Hubbard, which anticipates de Camp and Pratt's Incomplete Enchanter with the story of the discovery of a pseudoscientific method for transporting a person into the world of a book (Arabian Nights, in this case). Also included is de Camp's “Divide and Rule” (which concludes in the May issue), a couple of forgettable supernatural stories, and an overlong and excruciatingly boring novelette by early pulp mainstay Arthur Burks, in which the Roman gods argue among themselves about the growing destructiveness of human warfare. Unknown has yet to hit its stride, and John W. Campbell points out in his editorial that things will get better as authors come to better understand what he's looking for in the magazine...

 

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DrNefario
Posted 2012-12-31 3:12 PM (#4465 - in reply to #4362)
Subject: Re: What are you reading in December?



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Location: UK		I finished War of Honor on Christmas Eve, and have also managed to squeeze in Second Foundation before the year's end. I liked Second Foundation a bit more than Foundation and Empire and a bit less than Foundation, I reckon, but overall I still think it's a dumb idea badly told. And I've still got to read Foundation's Edge for the Hugo list (only 9 to go).

I've been posting all the books I read in 2012 on Facebook, for all my friends, colleagues, family and schoolmates to see. I'm not planning to do that in 2013, so I finally felt able to start Mage-Guard of Hamor by LE Modesitt Jr. Its title was just a bit too much for me to want to put on public display to non-genre fans.
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