Third Perpetual Book Thread

[SnoopCatt]

And now you can join the rest of us, chanting "C'mon..... C'mon!!!" while pacing back and forth in front of a book store for the next couple of years, waiting for the next one.

Fortunately Daniel and Ty are a fair bit more productive than George R. R. Martin

 

[SnoopCatt]

Just finished reading Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Czajkowski), and thoroughly enjoyed it.

and the best thing? I've not read anything else of his, so I have - literally - a lot to look forward to

 

[SnoopCatt]

Well, after two false starts, I finally made it past the first couple of chapters of The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, all the way to the end. Great idea. Terrible execution. The only reason I was able to finish it is because I watched the TV series and I was playing the game of matching plot points and characters.
I'd have to be very bored before I would contemplate the other books in the series.

<edit> I can't believe it won a Hugo Award - must have been pretty thin offerings that year.

 

[SnoopCatt]

Started reading Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari today. Might take me a while to finish, because I'm pausing after each chapter to let the ideas settle into my mind before starting the next one.
Also, I keep going back to re-read sections to make sure I understand what he is saying - not because it is poorly written (it's not), but because he keeps referring to "the naive view", so you just know that some of the ideas coming up are going to be nuanced and non-obvious.

 

[SnoopCatt]

It reminded me of the body horror stuff with the proto-molecule in The Expanse.

Yeah, I got that vibe too - are you still you when parts of your body are stuff that isn't you?

 

[SnoopCatt]

Just finished The Mercy of Gods in 4 days. Yeah, I can see why it gets the hype. Reading a book in 4 days is incredibly fast for me.

Now currently reading James S. A. Corey's The Mercy of Gods and it's such a delight. I'm about halfway through.

I've just finished it. Not my favourite novel of theirs. I liked the way the utterly different moral framework was handled, but I found the character development underwhelming, and as a result, didn't really care what happened to any of them.

 

[SnoopCatt]

Counter argument - I liked it a lot, and am extremely curious to see where it goes next. I will agree that the characters aren't as memorable as Holden and Amos and Bobby but we also had 6 to 9 books with those characters to grow on us.

It is a very different story though. And by the end I really wanted to know where it is going.

That's a fair point. I re-read Leviathan Wakes the other day, but it's impossible to un-remember what I already know about the characters.

Counter counter argument: I felt like it was unbalanced - I think it could have done with more material from the PoV of the non-humans to add some weight and perspective from their sides of the story. We only got little snippets here & there from the swarm and their allies, and almost nothing from the Carryx until the end.

And I too want to know where it is heading, but this book felt more like a really really long prologue rather than a story that could stand on its own.

 

[SnoopCatt]

Ooh, this just arrived!

 

[SnoopCatt]

'kay, so I've finished Polostan, and it has a similar vibe to Cryptonomicon - mostly fictional characters, but set in real events and interacting with real historical figures (there's a clever little easter egg at the end of chapter 8). I'm really looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Next up is something completely different: Cherrywood by Jock Serong - will be fun to read a novel set in a city I know very well.

 

[SnoopCatt]

That didn't take long.

Looks like the shortest Stevenson book since zodiac.

Just over 300 pages in the trade paperback edition. Yes, it's not nearly as thick as many of his other novels. There is probably a bit less of the extremely detailed exposition one often sees in his writing - but still enough for it to be recognisably his voice.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I finished Bacigalupi’s The Doubt Factory last night. I have thoughts.

That reminds me - I read and enjoyed The Windup Girl, and I should check out what else of his is available from the library.

 

[SnoopCatt]

This got me thinking do others have stress reads and what books would they be. I'm thinking about rereading the Hitchhiker Guide series since it's obviously excellent and completely absurd just like our times. Does here have a go to stress read?

HHGG is an excellent choice. I tend to get deeply immersed in whatever I'm reading, which I guess is 'de-stressing' (not distressing). But my go-to list for re-reading when I want to temporarily forget about the shit state of the world includes any of the Discworld novels, and any of the 44 Scotland Street novels.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I've just finished Limberlost by Robbie Arnott. A beautifully crafted novel about a boy living in rural Tasmania during WW2. Not a lot happens and sometimes that's exactly what you want in a book.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I've been listening to Seveneves.

Julia's rebellion is central to the overall plot of the book-- keep reading.

I have mixed feelings about that book. The second half was really enjoyable, but the first half should have been edited more ruthlessly.

 

[SnoopCatt]

That is a fair assessment of nearly all of Stephenson’s work, I feel.

True, but I can re-read The Diamond Age, or Anathem, or Cryptonomicon, or Fall, and really enjoy going deep into the weeds.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I'm rapidly approaching the end of Use of Weapons, and I'm not sure if I going to even bother finishing, much less go on to the rest of the Culture novels.

I want a book to tell a simple straightforward story, not have to wade through depths of meaning and philosophy.

Use of Weapons is written using a fairly unconventional structure - definitely not a simple straightforward story.

If you are willing to give Iain M. Banks another shot, I would recommend The Algebraist, which is not a Culture novel but is set in a universe with a similar level of technology. It's a bit more conventional and doesn't have too many hidden subtexts to wade through.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I've just finished reading Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Set in New York City in 1938, it reminded me of The Great Gatsby but with a female protagonist. Delightful.

 

[SnoopCatt]

Out of curiosity, How common is it for you folks to buy a book when you want to read it vs. checking it out from a library?

We basically live by the library, but I have coworkers that buy everything they want to read.

I really value having a local independent book shop in my neighbourhood, so I almost always buy books that I want to read.

 

[SnoopCatt]

Used, new, or both?

There are several local-to-me used book sellers, but only one that sells new books. And that one? Is the size of a postage stamp, comparatively. There are some large independent shops up in Santa Barbara or over in LA, but it's a long drive to those.

New.

I won't say that I'm lucky to have two bookshops in my local shopping strip, because when I moved in, there were three.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I have been struggling to muster the enthusiasm to read for quite a while now, but I think I'm finally on the mend. The book that cracked it was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which I absolutely devoured in about six hours straight.

Since then I've read: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (science fiction without the science); a couple of novels by Elizabeth Strout; The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (comically implausible a la John Wick); and am currently halfway through The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon, which is both playful and unsettling.

 

[SnoopCatt]

I'm about a third into This is For Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee (with Stephen Witt).

So far it is mostly rehashing Tim's education and work at CERN, the history of the early web, standards, browser wars, etc. The style is a bit folksy for my taste, but that's OK.

I'm hoping that in the second half, he will speak more to the emerging problems with the internet, how it has been hijacked by corporate interests, and how to return power to the people (as the title suggests).