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Thank you! This seems like it's a bit of a departure from his usual storytelling.

Finished Caves of Steel, I wasn't impressed as I thought I would be, I mean it was ok, but felt that his robot stories had more punch when they were shorter, since each one tried to make a single point. Here of course there had to be more points (and more worldbuilding, and of course the mystery, which I didn't solve before the reveal). It wasn't bad, just didn't get the hype :)

Now, back to a series that did live up to the hype, Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

I also finished The World Beyond, which turned out to be short story about where you need to get really big so you can get around faster than light travel (I guess if your legs are a light year long, a single stride would cover that...or something). On to the last story in the omnibus - Wandl the Invader by Ray Cummings, which brings back characters from the first story in the collection.

Finished reading The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) by N.K. Jemisin. Great follow up and award winner. I also read The Sixth Wicked Child (4MK #3) by J.D. Barker. It’s the stunning conclusion of the trilogy with a very satisfying ending. I am reading Sharp Ends (First Law World #7) by Joe Abercrombie. It’s a collection of thirteen short stories. I plan to read The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi next. They will publish it on March 22, 2022. Can’t wait, I’m going to start reading it on that day.

I finished Rise of Empire with pleasure, and I am starting now to read the 3rd volume, Heir of Novron.

Pierre wrote: "I finished Rise of Empire with pleasure, and I am starting now to read the 3rd volume, Heir of Novron."

That one's the best.

It really is! Although The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter is a close second.

Audrey and Michelle: Thanks for your comments. Do you then recommend that, after finishing Heir of Novron which completes the Ryiria Revelations, I also read the Chronicles?

Pierre wrote: "Audrey and Michelle: Thanks for your comments. Do you then recommend that, after finishing Heir of Novron which completes the Ryiria Revelations, I also read the Chronicles?"

Yes!!

Unless you want to do Legends of the First Empire first; either way. Each volume of Chronicles is designed as a standalone, so new readers can read any of them in any order and not be lost. We should be getting more books in that series eventually.

I have finished The Reckoning: The Day Australia Fell. A well-written military thriller, but the required suspension of disbelief was a little high for me - how easily the Indonesian forces defeated the Australian forces, and America deciding not to honour the ANZAC treaty. Also, no explanation given as to why Indonesian invaded Australia.

About halfway through Xenocide. Between the Ender series and the Dune series there is no lack of coverage for last year's "religion" BINGO slot, which is ironic because last year I did gods/angels/demons but most books on those topics didn't really touch on religion, it just took those elements and made them fantasy characters that were interchangeable say with vampires or werewolves. But these SF books really look at the nature of religion itself, how it influences us which was what I was looking for last year :) Maybe this isn't surprising since science and religion are considered to conflict but authors can try to show how they co-exist...or dive even deeper into the contrast between the two.

As part of my "classics I haven't read" theme I've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: By Lewis Carroll and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, which are way more trippy and sort-of-funny than I thought they'd be.
As part of the same reading theme, I am now doing a bit of the old ultra-violence with A Clockwork Orange. I'm only a few pages in but about 1 word in 4 is not an actual word; I feel it's going to get very tiring very fast.

I'm also listening to Seveneves which is both my first audiobook and my first Stephenson book. On the audiobook part, it's read by Mary Robinette Kowal who's an author herself, she does a very good job and is funny when she does male voices and/or accents. On the book itself, somewhere in there is the definition of long-winded and explanatory, but so far (over 50% in) it's interesting, especially as there is some politics going on.

I just finished Isolate today. It was really good. I gave it a 4 star review here:
/review/show...

I liked a lot of elements of Seveneves, but he got some basic physics wrong, and that annoyed me, and it rambled at times.

I read the Alice books a bunch of times as a kid; a lot of adults reading them for the first time seem to find them too weird.

Bryan wrote: "... I am now doing a bit of the old ultra-violence with A Clockwork Orange. I'm only a few pages in but about 1 word in 4 is not an actual word; I feel it's going to get very tiring very fast...."

They're slang often based on Russian, IIRC. Most make sense in context pretty quickly. I didn't find it any worse than talking to a teenager. Make sure to check that your edition is complete. The early US editions left the last chapter off (all 2 pages of it) & that completely changes the point of the story. That's what the movie was based on. It's a great story either way, though.

It's interesting that you're doing "classics I haven't read" theme. For the past few years I've been rereading classics that I haven't read for a really long time. Reading many of them as a teenager or in my early 20s is far different than reading them 40 years later. All 3 you mentioned held up well & I got a lot more out of them. A few were still unreadable, but most were far better. Fahrenheit 451 really shined.

I have started reading The Einstein Prophecy, which I borrowed as part of my Amazon Prime membership. It starts as a fairly standard Dan Brown style "professor investigates things" story, but the blurb indicates there is likely to be some supernatural elements. The most unusual thing so far is that it's set in 1944.

Finished Xenocide, I didn't think Card could pull it off a third time, and for the first say 100 pages I felt it wasn't as good as the other books...and then it picked up and it had the same emotional power that the other two books had. Though I have to admit sometimes the technobabble got so complex that it was a bit like reading Dune which also gets pretty hard to grasp the concepts presented. But still some very cool ideas.

I wasn't planning to read this next but Minority Report was on TV so while it's fresh in my mind I can compare to the original. I missed the group read where we had read this book, only acquiring it afterwards. Now I can catch up - The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories By Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. I might use this for my anthology BINGO slot, not sure yet. I was planning on using it for a multi-author anthology.

Audrey wrote: "I liked a lot of elements of Seveneves, but he got some basic physics wrong, and that annoyed me, and it rambled at times."

Yes, I enjoy it but one thing I can say is that an editor wouldn't need to be particularly ruthless to cut about 20%.


Audrey wrote: "I read the Alice books a bunch of times as a kid; a lot of adults reading them for the first time seem to find them too weird."

I'd never read them but I had some recollections from the Disney movie I must have seen as a kid; I did not remember all the wordplay, the absurd (which I did enjoy, I did not find them too weird but it's probably a good thing they're short books), etc. I wonder whether I'd simply forgotten them/was too young, or Disney omitted them.


Jim wrote: "They're slang often based on Russian, IIRC. Most make sense in context pretty quickly. I didn't find it any worse than talking to a teenager. Make sure to check that your edition is complete. The early US editions left the last chapter off (all 2 pages of it) & that completely changes the point of the story. That's what the movie was based on. It's a great story either way, though."

Yes I thought some words sounded Russian, unfortunately my Russian is about non-existent so that didn't help me. Context helps but not on every occurrence, you have to build your own mental dictionary (I'm often "wait, which one was razdraz again?". Sentences like "I was surprised and just that malenky bit poogly to sloosh Dim govoreeting that wise" definitely keep the reader alert.
Thanks for the info about the last chapter, I'd read that the movie's ending differed from the book's but I'd assumed that it was Kubrick's choice. My copy seems to include the last chapter.


Jim wrote: "Reading many of them as a teenager or in my early 20s is far different than reading them 40 years later. All 3 you mentioned held up well & I got a lot more out of them. A few were still unreadable, but most were far better. Fahrenheit 451 really shined."

Yes, I've re-read Fahrenheit 451 and Martian chronicles and they've held up really well (F451 is downright terrifying, it reminds me of Jonathan Nolan saying, about Person of interest, that it started as a sci-fi show then became a documentary). It seems Bradbury's prose as well as his stories are timeless.

Bryan wrote: ""I was surprised and just that malenky bit poogly to sloosh Dim govoreeting that wise"

That has got to be a line from Jabberwocky...or maybe Dr. Seuss. If it wasn't for the reputation of ultra-violence I might give A Clockwork Orange a read, it's a classic after all, but I've got other things to read first. There are definitely other books where you have to learn the lingo but I've never seen one sentence so packed full :)

Bryan wrote: "Person of interest, that it started as a sci-fi show then became a documentary"

I loved that show, and....yeah, scary when bits and pieces of your dystopias (1984, F451, etc) stop becoming speculative and start becoming reality. Terms like "fake news" just make me think of Newspeak and Doublethink. Also depressing when a classic SF author describes his vision of a utopic future (e.g. Asimov describing a central system to share information access through terminals in your home) and we get...Facebook (he was of course picturing Wikipedia, so we didn't get it all wrong). Shared information is only as good as it's source and he didn't consider it being abused :)

I think that 'malenky bit poogly,' sentence is just like what happens when I'm not paying attention to autocorrect...�

Bryan, here's a dictionary for "A Clockwork Orange".

Bryan wrote: "Audrey wrote: "I liked a lot of elements of Seveneves, but he got some basic physics wrong, and that annoyed me, and it rambled at times."

Yes, I enjoy it but one thing I can say is that an editor..."

Disney Alice is very unlike Carroll Alice. Here's an interesting discussion:

Mary wrote: "Disney Alice is very unlike Carroll Alice."

Definitely! I saw the Disney movie around age 3, and it terrified me and gave me nightmares for years. I didn't see it again for many years and mostly forgot it. Meanwhile, I read it a number of times, and that's what I remember best now. If you are a fan of Alice, I recommend The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition.

Cloud-Castles by Dave Freer

Let's just say the difference between the story The Minority Report and the movie is...significant :) Of course the story is way too short to fill two hours of movie time, but other than the concept and some names, there wasn't a single event that matched up, right up to how the story ends. But then it's been my experience that Dick's stories tend to end on the more pessimistic/depressing side of things.

I had to laugh when in the very first line the character thinks "I'm getting bald. Bald, fat and old". Was just picturing Tom Cruise agreeing to play that role...

I also read the story Autofac...as I was reading it I was like, "this reminds me of a Bradbury story I saw on TV", then realized nope, the TV show I was thinking of was Dick's Electric Dreams so it was in fact the same story :) Ever since I saw the series I meant to read those stories, now of course I've half forgotten the episodes but still kind of neat to stumble across one of them by mistake. It was a weird sensation getting clear visuals of scenes from a story I was sure I'd never read before!

Last night I finished Not Dead Yet: The Memoir by Phil Collins. This was such a nostalgic read! It described his joining of Genesis with Peter Gabriel as the lead, his many works, and his personal life. I wasn't able to review it properly last night but I hope to today after work. I have a slew of highlights that I need to address and I was too tired last night to go through them :)

*drumroll* Starting on the last book in the original Dune saga with Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert

The Lost War by Karl K. Gallagher

My review of Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

/review/show...

I just read the newest book in The Others series, Crowbones. What a terrific addition to one of my favorite series. @Jim, that was a great review on Isolate! @Robin: autocorrect for the win! haha! @Andrea WTG!! I did not make it.

I'm reading The Tiger and the Wolf. Who has read it and wants to talk?

Stella Atrium

Today, I read Servant Mage. I actually read it for the Bingo challenge for a book "published in 2022," but turns out it was published in '21. So! I moved it to "new to me author" I really liked it, and will look for more to read by this author! No great hardship to find another 2022 book. I am anxiously awaiting the new Mercy Thompson book, also a favorite series, so I can use that! @ Stella, I haven't read it but it looks really good. What did you think?

Starting The Forever War

Audrey wrote: "Starting The Forever War"

That's one of my favorites, especially in comparison with Starship Troopers which it is a rebuttal to. The different attitudes of a foot soldier who served in the Vietnam War & the 1960 to a peace time naval officer & the patriotic decades of the 50s.

It looks like it was published toward the end of the Vietnam War, when it must have felt like that war would never end.

I have finished The Einstein Prophecy. It's a fairly low-key horror story, based on Christian mythology. Set in 1944, against the backdrop of World War II and the Manhattan Project, the author has taken some historical liberties, but nothing too egregious. A lot of readers may not even notice them. It maintained a fairly slow pace throughout, but I enjoyed it.

I have started reading The Massacre of Mankind

Finished reading Chapterhouse: Dune...I think I reached a limit of Herbert's writing style where you have people talking to each other, trying to read between the lines and coming up with great insights based on the other person twitched an eyebrow or not, all of which is more or less incomprehensible to the reader.

It's also clear he intended to write another book, since it leaves some loose ends dangling. Will see what the son ends up doing to fill in that gap, I'll be starting his books next month but it will be prequels for a little while before I get to the sequels.

Now, each month I was determined to read at least one hardcover, to determine if it was wasting space on my shelves or was actually a keeper, so this month's will be The Technologists by Matthew Pearl which is actually a historical novel but since it's about the origins of MIT, I felt it had enough of a tech vibe to be included in an SF-themed year :) Unlikely I'll finish it in 4 days, but maybe it's a fast 100+ page a day kind of read.

Folktales of Chile by Yolando Pino-Saavedra

Finished The Forever War.
Started a thriller, The Last Flight.

Audrey wrote: "Finished The Forever War"

Are you planning to go back and read the rest of the trilogy Audrey? Or just finish with The Forever War? I know he wrote them 25 years later.

There's more?? I will have to look into it. It was good.

Audrey wrote: "There's more?? I will have to look into it. It was good."

Yep, Haldeman wrote Forever Peace in 1997 (23 years after The Forever War) and Forever Free in 1999.

I finally finished The Fifth Season. A review will follow reasonably soon...�

Tony wrote: "Yep, Haldeman wrote Forever Peace in 1997 (23 years after The Forever War) and Forever Free in 1999."

I wasn't impressed by either one, but I always seem to have issues when an author extends a work a decade or more later. Usually it highlights how much their style has changed & I rarely find it does for the better. Most authors get wordier & their stories lose the impact of the original. In this case, I didn't think the world needed extending.

Jim wrote: "Tony wrote: "Yep, Haldeman wrote Forever Peace in 1997 (23 years after The Forever War) and Forever Free in 1999."

I wasn't impressed by either one, but I always seem to have issues when an author..."

I found that to be the case when Robin Hobb made another trilogy 20 years after the last. They were terrible!