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Pick and Mix 2015
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-09-17 1:14 PM (#11334 - in reply to #9182)
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I continued with another Elizabeth Marshall Thomas book The Animal Wife. It's an independent sequel to the previous book; set among partly the same characters but about 10 years later with a different main character. Sadly, I didn't like it as much as Reindeer Moon.
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spectru
Posted 2015-09-20 9:32 AM (#11352 - in reply to #11334)
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Mervi2012 - 2015-09-17 2:14 PM

I continued with another Elizabeth Marshall Thomas book The Animal Wife. It's an independent sequel to the previous book; set among partly the same characters but about 10 years later with a different main character. Sadly, I didn't like it as much as Reindeer Moon.


I'm not familiar with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. Her two books you read are her only ones listed on WWEnd. Do you recommend her? Are there other authors to whom she compares?
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-09-20 4:43 PM (#11356 - in reply to #11352)
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I've only read these two books. I recommend the Reindeer Moon to anyone interested in a realistic portrayal of that time period (Stone Age) but it's not typical adventure fantasy. And if you like it, I think you'll probably enough Animal Wife, too.

I found her writing style easy to read. I haven't read Stone Age books in ages so I don't know anyone to compare it with.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-09-25 8:56 AM (#11388 - in reply to #9182)
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My next read was Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Snipers.
It's a murder mystery with time travel elements. It's split between Vienna 2005 and Vienna 1913. Rusch has an effortless and no-nonsense writing style which I like a lot. This isn't a thriller by any means. It centers on a historian in 2005 who tries to find new evidence for series of murders done in 1913.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-10-08 10:27 AM (#11458 - in reply to #9182)
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Next up was Seanan McGuire's newest October Daye book: A Rose-Red Chain.
I love the series and this was a good addition. Not one of the best but still highly entertaining.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-08 10:46 AM (#11459 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		Hi Mervi,and a belated welcome to the group. Sorry I havent been around for months,major health problems,and I havent been around to discuss reads or post any notes on my reads.Thank you for helping Spectru and a few others keeping the Pick n Mix thread alive!.Not bad,17 participants who have read 244 books,and reviewed an amazing 149 of them. Good work folks.
Sorry people,my major abdominal surgery,while healing well,makes sitting at a computer still a big pain in all senses,so it may be a little while before I get back on form. At least I have had a lot of time for reading during convalescence,so I am nearing the end of my challenges.
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spectru
Posted 2015-10-08 9:03 PM (#11460 - in reply to #11459)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		Hope you fully recover soon, dustydigger. Even though I finished the challenge, I enjoy the interactivity of this Pick and Mix forum topic.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-09 2:51 AM (#11461 - in reply to #11460)
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Location: UK		Thanks,Spectru. Next year perhaps I should make the ''whole sweetshop'' category a whole lot bigger for the avid readers. Of course we would never corral the voracious Weesam,I think she is around the 300 mark already! Sheesh!. But several people could encompass a bigger number than 40. We'll see.
As for interactive,WWEnd unfortunately doesnt do much of that!
Its the same in other sites,the SF fans are the most reluctant to discuss their reads for some unfathomable reason. I cant say anything about it. Early in the year I tried to at least comment on my books and sometimes other people's,but the last 6 months have been horrendous,I could barely get on to add my reads,never mind reviews!So I appreciate those who have made the effort
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spectru
Posted 2015-10-09 9:52 PM (#11464 - in reply to #11461)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		I'm in some reading groups on goodreads, including one on science fiction. The activity in those groups waxes and wanes, sometimes dying out altogether. WWEnd isn't the same kind of site. It's all about lists. I rely on WWEnd to find books and authors. The folks who run this place have done a great job of putting it together, and the seem to be improving it all the time, and there's still room for more improvement.

This pick and Mix thread is one of the most active - your setting up of the challenge made it so. But there hasn't been much in the way of real interaction, of discussion, back and forth. Maybe you're right about science fiction readers.

I kind of stopped posting here about books - wasn't generating a lot of reaction, and after all, I've completed the challenge; and I didn't want to be a thread hog.
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Mervi2012
Posted 2015-10-10 2:30 AM (#11465 - in reply to #11459)
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dustydigger - 2015-10-08 10:46 AM
Sorry people,my major abdominal surgery,while healing well,makes sitting at a computer still a big pain in all senses,so it may be a little while before I get back on form.


That sounds terrible. I, too, hope that you'll heal soon. Thanks for the challenge!
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pauljames
Posted 2015-10-11 7:38 AM (#11466 - in reply to #11465)
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Location: scotland		Finished the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. Now reading the short stories.

Overall I enjoyed the series. The first book was my favourite. And the last my least. Some very nice idea's happened and there was some good characters, however it is not a very challenging read as it is aimed at young adults, so for me not really that dense(which I like) not really something to get your teeth into.

I would like to discuss more about sci-fi reads. I am new to the genre and have only read between 10 and 20 with half of these from the SF masterwork list. I will read more of these in the future. I would next like to start Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
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spectru
Posted 2015-10-11 9:24 AM (#11467 - in reply to #11466)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		Armada by Ernest Cline

Cline wrote Ready Player One. I'm about halfway through - Armada is like a mash-up of Ready Player One, Ender's Game, and The Last Starfighter. So far, it's an entertaining science fiction novel. I'm enjoying it.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-15 1:27 PM (#11500 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
Far into the future in a Dying Earth setting, the torturer Severian continues his travels, carrying with him the ancient executioners sword Terminus Est and a gem of extraterrestrial power, the Claw of the Conciliator. Cast out from his Torturers Guild and exiled, the world of the New Urth is explored through his travels, with the seeming promise of some destiny he is required to fill.
Hmmm...... I thought Shadow of the Torturer was fabulous,with its brilliantly realized world and the fascinating central character,and its scintillating style and originality. There are lots of good things in this second episode of Severian's tale,and it is interesting to see how he becomes a very different seeming person as he reveals more about himself.While seemingly telling a straightforward - if bizarre - tale we are certainly seeing different ,less likeable aspects of his character. Talk about unreliable narrators! The style is as hypnotic as ever,each scene sharply described,yet the whole thing becoming rather hallucinatory. But I found this book too episodic,and I became irritated at times by the disparate events,and there seemed at times to be obfuscation just for obfuscation's sake. I will take a break for a few months before I continue the saga. A little disappointing after I was so eager to read it
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spectru
Posted 2015-10-16 9:32 PM (#11505 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		I haven't read any Gene Wolfe. I have The Fifth Head of Cerberus on my to-read list. don't really know what to expect from Wolfe - I imagine kind of a blend of SF and fantasy.
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pauljames
Posted 2015-10-17 7:36 AM (#11508 - in reply to #11505)
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Location: scotland		I read Book of The New Sun a few years ago and the third book The Sword of The Lictor was my favourite. Most of it Severian journeyed around and met some bizarre people and so many strange things and places occured. I was really drawn in by all this and it totally absorbed me. The fourth was different and probably the one I liked the least. Overall I think the series is one to be marvelled at though it is not everyone's cup of tea. I will re-read some time as there is so much in this series that I believe I missed first time round.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-22 5:21 AM (#11537 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		I recently finished Fred Pohl's Man Plus,which I enjoyed very much,and thought well deserved to be on the SF Masterworks list. So I was a bit disconcerted to say the least when checking the reviews that most people found it dated bland,poor. Ah well,one man's meat,as they say! here is my view;
Just completed Fred Pohl's Man Plus about the trials and dilemmas of a man being adapted to live on Mars. World overpopulation has led to mass starvation in the third world,and the superpowers are on the brink of nuclear war. The US decide to start looking into the possibility that the world may be nearing its end. The ruthless,coldblooded way in which the politicians and scientists approach their task is truly chilling.There are a lot of manipulators in this tale,and the book is intense and harrowing at times,with a neat twist at the end. Fred Pohl at his misanthropic best. Not a lot of likeable characters here,but the book,barely over 200 pages is packed with interest. Of course the science is way off - it is only now that we are seeing the world as pre and post computer proliferation. Here the computers are very few,and room sized. Its a major feat to produce a back pack computer,and it has to be linked to a huge computer in orbit above for the new Martian to use it. But the book is really involved with the thoughts and sufferings of the poor human undergoing all this,so the book is still readable today. Deserves its place on the SF Masterworks list. Up there with Way Station and The Long Tomorrow as my most interesting reads of the year. Excellent.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-22 5:59 AM (#11538 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		Just thinking about readers disparagement of old science fiction techology and the like. They find it laughable or annoying. If you only want the latest in technology you had better not read anything more than two years old! lol.Todays cutting edge SF premises will be old hat very soon. I dont mind if the science is outdated. For instance,I get a lot more pleasure exploring the ochre plains of Barsoom riding with John Carter and Tars Tarkas,green and many armed,than the turgid boring political conspiracies etc of Kim Stanley Robinson,which is probably heresy in most people's eyes! It was fun back when characters would nonchalantly pop out ,jump in their own little rocket and jet off across the universe. Once the expense,complexity and sheer immensity of preparing for real space flight became obvious,a whole swathe of delightful old SF subgenres almost completely disappeared .I like reading SF for the adventure,the often serious and still pertinent themes, and working out the angst and preoccupations of the times the books were written. As for the dodgy science,hey,we can always claim that this book depicts an alternate universe where certain things never happened. After all,we have a whole subgenre,Alternate History where Hitler won the war,there was no Reformation,etc etc.
I am now researching my reads for next year,and the vast majority are from the 50s and 60s.I find the oddities fun quaint and charming. ,and I enjoy staying in the past with my SF reads. To each his own.
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spectru
Posted 2015-10-31 1:19 PM (#11636 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

I read this, the second novel in the trilogy, six months after having read the first. Now I regret letting so much time elapse between the readings. Ann Leckie really shows her stuff. The complex culture, the intricate etiquette, is on on par with Ursula K Le Guin. We certainly got a taste of this in Justice; In Sword it is exquisitely detailed. This is a novel of political intrigue, as good as any in the genre. Leckie will surely be recognized as a master.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-10-31 2:09 PM (#11638 - in reply to #11636)
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Location: UK		Spectru,I too really enjoyed it,actually perhaps more than the first book,as I often got irritated with the gender obfuscation,which was overdone IMO. Sword was able to fix much more on plot and characters,with a more straightforward story,not fancy literary frills.. Looking forward to Ancillary Mercy.whenever it finally arrives in my library. There were precisely two copies of Justice,one copy of Sword available,so fingers crossed we even get Mercy . lol. The hardback wont even come out here in UK till January 2016,and any library edition even later
















uktill January 2016,.
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-10-31 6:18 PM (#11644 - in reply to #11638)
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dustydigger - 2015-10-31 12:09 PM
Spectru,I too really enjoyed it,actually perhaps more than the first book,as I often got irritated with the gender obfuscation,which was overdone IMO. Sword was able to fix much more on plot and characters,with a more straightforward story,not fancy literary frills.. Looking forward to Ancillary Mercy.whenever it finally arrives in my library. There were precisely two copies of Justice,one copy of Sword available,so fingers crossed we even get Mercy . lol. The hardback wont even come out here in UK till January 2016,and any library edition even later


I have Ancillary Mercy on the hold shelf waiting for me at my library but due to my work schedule clashing with the schedule of the library, I won't be able to pick it up until Tuesday evening (today is Saturday). I'm itching to read it since Leckie did such a great job building the culture of the Radch so intricately in Sword. As far as the "gender obfuscation" in Justice, you should read this answer she gave to a reader question about Radch gender neutrality on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/questions/202347-while-i-understand-the-co...

I think her perspective is thought-provoking but I can also sympathize with your point of view, especially in Justice, where we are introduced to the cultural of the Radch for the first time. Sword was able to ditch a lot of the confusing pronoun games of Justice since it takes place entirely in Radchaai space, unlike Justice.
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dustydigger
Posted 2015-11-01 5:01 AM (#11653 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		Thanks so much for the link,Devilinlaw,very interesting. I bet Leckie had a lot of fun frustrating the common gender - and genre - expectations of her readers. I fell into the trap immediately. Toren,chief of the guards,ship AI? Got to be male(hey,I read pre 1960 SF on a regular basis,thats where I formed my expectations lol),so the possible love interest would probably be female. Of course reading the book would give me a headache!
Seriously though I just found that the author spent so much time being evenhanded about gender that characterisation was a bit lacking. I wasnt totally convinced that a society could really be so evenhanded that they would ignore gender differences so entirely. Thats why I preferred Sword,we got more action and worldbuilding.
Got to admit I am not much into issue based fiction. Bring back the Big Dumb Objects and Bug Eyed Monsters . Oh dear, I am surely showing the biases of a grumpy old woman,arent I?

Edited by dustydigger 2015-11-01 5:07 AM
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DrNefario
Posted 2015-11-01 8:43 AM (#11654 - in reply to #9182)
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Location: UK		I liked the pronoun thing. It was one of the two big thought-provoking ideas of the novel, alongside the multiple bodies thing. I do occasionally like my thoughts to be provoked. I guess I just assumed everyone was female until proven otherwise. I wonder if I'd even have noticed anything was weird if everyone had been "he".

But yes, I was very relieved that Sword lived up to the first book.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-01 9:57 AM (#11657 - in reply to #11653)
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Location: Fort Myers, Florida USA		<p>Leckie's treatment of gender in these novels is strange. It takes some getting used to. For me, I don't think it added to the reading enjoyment. The novels are good despite the gender issues. Leckie's explanation also leaves a bit to be desired:"...they know gender exists, but it's not really a thing they care much about. They care about it, maybe, as much as we care about hair color." We may not make much of hair color, but we don't refer to everyone as 'Red', either. I noticed that occasionally, when referring to an ancillary, the characters used the neutral pronoun 'it', however the reference may have been to the ship of which the ancillary was a segment. I think if parent instead of mother, child or offspring instead of daughter, sibling instead of sister, and the masculine pronouns, he and him, had been used throughout, the gender ambivalence might not even have been noticed by many readers. References to romance would have, perhaps, been assumed to be homosexual, whereas in using the feminine pronouns, romantic interactions are left ambiguous. There was only one case of disambiguation: In referring to her sibling, Queter called him her brother, but in the Radche language, he was she. </p><p>This gender ambiguity is much less bothersome in the second book than in the first.</p>

Edited by spectru 2015-11-01 10:01 AM
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devilinlaw
Posted 2015-11-01 2:22 PM (#11664 - in reply to #11657)
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Location: Las Vegas, NV		I started listening to the audiobook version of Justice and just could not get through the first few chapters. It wasn't the book, it was the delivery. The narrator had this weird inflection when she was talking and I realized that she was using the tonality of an ancillary, flat, emotionless and an oddly rising inflection of voice at the end of every sentence. Artistically, I really appreciated that level of dedication to world creating and character of the audiobook production but it was so difficult to listen to for any extended period of time. The narrator was female so I guess that influenced my visual of the character of Breq from the get go, even when I stopped listening to the book and read it instead.
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spectru
Posted 2015-11-03 3:48 PM (#11695 - in reply to #11664)
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devilinlaw - 2015-11-01 3:22 PM I started listening to the audiobook version of Justice and just could not get through the first few chapters. It wasn't the book, it was the delivery. The narrator had this weird inflection when she was talking and I realized that she was using the tonality of an ancillary, flat, emotionless and an oddly rising inflection of voice at the end of every sentence. Artistically, I really appreciated that level of dedication to world creating and character of the audiobook production but it was so difficult to listen to for any extended period of time. The narrator was female so I guess that influenced my visual of the character of Breq from the get go, even when I stopped listening to the book and read it instead.

I read the first two Ancillary books, but now I have started the third one, immediately after finishing the second, as it became available for download from my library as an audiobook.  The narrator is a woman with a British accent - probably the same one you abandoned.

 And, with it, I joined the new Audiobook Reading Challenge.

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