Now reading...

[Jazzmoose]

This combines the first three Lafayette O'Leary novels under one cover. Like most Laumer, nothing earthshaking, just fun to read.

[A Lark Ascending]

Only know about this bit of history in passing. Fascinating story.

[BillF]

Excellent book. But then, I've never been disappointed by Simak.

Thought you would have read that one, Jazzmoose! So far, seems really good stuff. Got it from a list of greatest science fiction books.

[BruceH]

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Not as good as it's reputation, of course, but better than I remembered.

I'm sort of half-tempted to read the full, expanded version (from 1991), which is 60,000 words longer. However, I suspect the editors did Heinlein a huge favor.

That's usually the case, but in this case, I think the expanded version is much better. I read it when it came out in '91, and thought the additions made the novel flow a lot better, and cleared up some dangling questions.

I read the "expanded" (unedited) versions of "The Puppet Masters" and "Red Planet" and in both cases found some of the "extra" material intriguing, but overall preferred the shorter, edited versions. I've also heard that the shorter, originally published version of SIASL is now out of print and the only version you can now buy is the expanded one. If this is true, it strikes me as a little odd, to say the least.

Nice cover. Never seen that particular edition.

[jazzbo]

I decided to re-read this one when I pulled it from the shelf and read this sentence from the Introduction:

When you find you can go neither backward nor forward, when you discover that you are no longer able to stand, sit, or lie down, when your children have died of malnutrition and your aged parents haven been sent to the poorhouse or the gas chamber, when you realize that you can neither write nor not write, that you are convinced that all exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you should stand still like the hummingbird.

Henry Miller is always an inspiration for me.

Edited June 30, 2011 by jazzbo

[A Lark Ascending]

Just started:

First 50 pages are fascinating.

[paul secor]

David Abbott's The Upright Piano Player

Why do so many novels start very promisingly and end disappointingly? This one could have used a good editor.

[alankin]

Carl Hiaasen - Double Whammy

[paul secor]

Just finished reading Donald M. Marquis' In Search of buddy Bolden.

[ejp626]

Just wrapped up PKD's Radio Free Albemuth. It was a little wearying. I suspect I won't care much for Valis, which has many of the same pre-occupations but is considerably longer. I think I did order a copy a while back, however.

I'm about halfway through Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, which is about Bombay/Mumbai. There is definitely some interesting material, though overwhelmingly depressing (sort of like a non-fictional Rohinton Mistry). I do think he needed a much tougher editor, however, as it seems really 40-50% longer than it should be. It would be a really effective 200-250 page portrait of the city. At 500+ pages it is just much too much.

[BillF]

[aparxa]

Pythonesque!

[jazzbo]

Just wrapped up PKD's Radio Free Albemuth. It was a little wearying. I suspect I won't care much for Valis, which has many of the same pre-occupations but is considerably longer. I think I did order a copy a while back, however.

VALIS, though similarly pre-occupied, is quite different. Dick misunderstood his agent's suggestions and rather than make a few revisions he completely reworked the material. I think VALIS is superior to Radio Free Albimuth.

[ejp626]

Just wrapped up PKD's Radio Free Albemuth. It was a little wearying. I suspect I won't care much for Valis, which has many of the same pre-occupations but is considerably longer. I think I did order a copy a while back, however.

VALIS, though similarly pre-occupied, is quite different. Dick misunderstood his agent's suggestions and rather than make a few revisions he completely reworked the material. I think VALIS is superior to Radio Free Albimuth.

Ok, I'll keep that in mind. It turned out that I got the LoA volume which includes VALIS, A Maze of Death, The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

[alankin]

Portrait: A Life of Thomas Eakins by William S. McFeely

An interesting moderate sized biography. Enjoyable read.

[ghost of miles]

Ted Gioia's revised edition of THE HISTORY OF JAZZ.

[jlhoots]

Daniel Silva: The English Assassin

[TWilson]

Just started this one. A friend suggested I give it a try.

[ejp626]

Just started this one. A friend suggested I give it a try.

This one is fun and maybe the next two in the series, but after that there is a pretty steep decline. Weird thing about P. Anthony is that his series get worse (and more ridiculous) as he goes along. Not sure why this is. Most writers of massive serial works are pretty consistent (the master Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Donaldson, Michael Moorcock, and even Zelazny (consistent within series though I would agree the later books of Amber are a steep drop off from the first series)). Terry Pratchett has seemed to get better as time goes on and his fictional universe expands. But Piers definitely gets worse. The Xanth series is completely unreadable now. The only other equivalent I can think of is Philip Jose Farmer who had a solid 4 books in the Riverworld series and then kind of got bored and squeezed out another two (I think) that were a major stylistic change and certainly a disappointment for me.

[Jazzmoose]

I agree on Anthony completely. I only have two of his books on my shelf, On A Pale Horse (and I'd stop with that one in the series if it was me...) and my favorite of his by far, Macroscope. I used to have the early trilogy, Orn, Ox and Hegelmeyer or whatever it was, but never managed to get too far into it.

[jazzbo]

Another Amerotke mystery. These are good, but his crown jewel is the trilogy about the Amarna period.

[TWilson]

Just started this one. A friend suggested I give it a try.

This one is fun and maybe the next two in the series, but after that there is a pretty steep decline. Weird thing about P. Anthony is that his series get worse (and more ridiculous) as he goes along. Not sure why this is. Most writers of massive serial works are pretty consistent (the master Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Donaldson, Michael Moorcock, and even Zelazny (consistent within series though I would agree the later books of Amber are a steep drop off from the first series)). Terry Pratchett has seemed to get better as time goes on and his fictional universe expands. But Piers definitely gets worse. The Xanth series is completely unreadable now. The only other equivalent I can think of is Philip Jose Farmer who had a solid 4 books in the Riverworld series and then kind of got bored and squeezed out another two (I think) that were a major stylistic change and certainly a disappointment for me.

Thanks fo the input, greatly appreciated. My friend that reccomended the P.Anthony book had pretty much the same take on the quality of the series. He has read them all but felt that after the first 3 or 4 the writing was getting weaker. Funny that you mentioned the Riverworld series of books, the same friend had suggested those to me as well.

[ejp626]

Nice cover. Never seen that particular edition.

I can't seem to link to it, but I have City with the 1981 cover (you can see this on Amazon: City)

Anyway, I decided this would be a good book to read one last time and give away. I'm just not enjoying it nearly as much this time around. I think it's because he is sort of a utopian at heart (at least in this book). If food was unlimited and energy was unlimited, there would be huge surplus workforce. In a utopian society, people would have near-infinite leisure. In a distopian society, unproductive people would be culled. Given what I have seen over the last twenty years, I know which way the U.S. would go, and it wouldn't be in the direction laid out in City. For me, the most convincing futurologist is the very distopian Paolo Bacigalupi, who has a couple of novels out now. My gut feeling is that a clear majority of SF writers end up with futures that are mostly utopian in terms of the political economy that governs the overall society, even if that society is then threatened by internal or external forces (particularly bug eyed monsters).

I'm also halfway through Jack Hodgins' Innocent Cities. It's a little slow going at first, but it definitely picks up. Here's a pretty decent summary:

Set in Victoria, B.C., in 1881, Innocent Cities brilliantly weaves together the lives and lies of an entire community. Logan Sumner is a young widower and architect who dreams of transforming the tiny port city of Victoria into one of the great cities of the world. ... Sumner awkwardly courts the daughter of James Horncastle, an inveterate gambler and the swaggering proprietor of The Great Blue Heron Hotel. Their lives ... are changed forever when a mysterious widow from Australia arrives in Victoria with startling revelations from her past.

This book in particular strikes me as having similarities with Peter Carey's work, specifically Oscar and Lucinda and The Tax Inspector. So if you are a Peter Carey fan, this might be one to check out.

Edited July 18, 2011 by ejp626

[jlhoots]

Out Of The Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis On Rock Music

[aparxa]

Starting Jules Vallès's trilogy and rereading of L'Enfant.