What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Unless you're in the Amberverse. Then they are the magic thing that gets things done.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Do we need a thread for epic scifi? I go back to Skylark of Valeron. (Read it when I was in high school, c.1965.)

Skylark of Valeron
1949 novel by Edward Elmer Smith (E. E. "Doc" Smith)
Skylark of Valeron is a science fiction novel by the American writer E. E. Smith, the third in his Skylark series. Originally serialized in the magazine Astounding in 1934, it was first collected in book form in 1949 by Fantasy Press. Wikipedia

 

[catsmate]

Do we need a thread for epic scifi? I go back to Skylark of Valeron. (Read it when I was in high school, c.1965.)

Here it is:

Skylark of Valeron (Skylark #3)

'Valeron' takes us more or less straight on from the end of the last volume, although we see the denouement from the perspective of Duquesne, who has captured a Fenachrone war-vessel and is hiding among their fleet.

www.fadedpage.com

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, I read all of them back in high school. (Class of '69*)

*And did we love wearing sweaters with "69" on them? Yeah, school boys are easily amused.

 

[alfaniner]

Finished Four Past Midnight, a collection of Stephen King novellas. Two of them are rather similar, but he does have a lot of repetition over his oeuvre, sometimes even in the same story.
One thing I came across is the phrase "acting out didos", which means something like "playing pranks". He used it at least six times in the different stories. Perhaps it's a regional thing (local to writers living in Maine, perhaps) but I'd never heard it before.
I have liked some of his books for their length but a couple of these stories could have used some editing. Many times I'd be thinking "Just get on with it!!!". Lots of exposition late in the stories which might have served better up front, of by being cut out completely.
He does have a frustrating way of generating "tension" by not revealing things that should be in the narrative. "He called the proprietor and asked two simple questions." It didn't say what they were. If it was done in a reveal later in the story I didn't associate it.
I have one more of his I got as a freebie - a big hardback over two inches thick. (Rose Madder) But I think I'll be reading something else before tackling that one.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Niven and Pournelle, "Known Universe", worth a read. (Dozen or so books relevant to that Universe.

 

[Spektator]

Finished Four Past Midnight, a collection of Stephen King novellas. ....
One thing I came across is the phrase "acting out didos", which means something like "playing pranks". He used it at least six times in the different stories. Perhaps it's a regional thing (local to writers living in Maine, perhaps) but I'd never heard it before.....

it's an old-fashioned term. My great grandmother would scold us: "If you want to cut didos, go out in the back yard!" Don't know why Yankees act them while Southrons cut them or "cut up didos." I have heard "cutting up," too. Didos are mild annoyances, playing too loud, bouncing a basketball off the living-room wall, hot wiring Uncle Fudd's Packard. *Cutting up" I heard generally as a a post-hoc explanation: "How did Claud die?" "Aw, he was cuttin' up and drove his John Deere head-on into a Peterbilt."

 

[xterra]

I grew up in Maryland, a long time ago. We used "cut/cutting didos."

We pronounced the second word as dye-doughs, not dee-doughs.

 

[Worm]

Just finished the first 8 Dept Q novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Overall, they are very strong, though there are some slightly odd choices in character development. The last one I read (Victim 2117) jumped the shark slightly with our two main protagonists (mid-level Danish police officers) becoming embroiled in an international terrorist plot ranging across Europe and ending in Germany. The plot itself was sort of fine (though a little contrived at times), it just didn't feel very Dept. Q, which is nominally there to handle 'cold' cases.

 

[arthwollipot]

Finished Storm Front (the Dresden Files). Interesting. A little bit edgy. Worth a second look. Now starting on Mistborn.

 

[Spektator]

The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart

One more recommendation from Amazon, this YA novel is quite long and involves four orphaned children whom the titular Mr. Benedict takes under his wing so he can groom them to be spies. Not at all creepy.

The children are Constance Contraire, Kate Wetherall, George “Sticky” Washington, and Reynard “Reynie” Muldoon. Each is a gifted child, and each has special abilities. The diminutive Constance lacks stature but has remarkable perseverance and clarity. Kate dresses weirdly (she keeps a bucket tied to her belt) and even at a young age is a veteran of the circus, athletic, quick-thinking, and strong. The completely bald Sticky Washington appears timid and uncertain but has an eidetic memory (things stick in his mind, get it?_ and genius-level intelligence. Reynie Muldoon is the most ordinary-looking member of the team but has a quick and perceptive mind and can solve puzzles as well as lead and unite a group effort.

Attracted by an advertisement asking for gifted children to apply for membership in Mr. Benedict’s organization, each solves the problem of first finding the location of the contest, preparing for the contest (bring only one pencil!), and taking a puzzling sort of exam, each gains admission. As it happens, an enigmatic fellow named Ledoptha Curtain has come under Mr. Benedict’s suspicion by setting up some sort of operation on Nomansan Island, and the four have been selected to travel there and spy on Curtain and figure out how he plans to Take Over the World!

If you haven’t tumble to it, the book bulges with word puzzles, ranging from Morse code to anagrams, intricate puns, and ciphers to obscure historical references. The pacing feels off. Too many times, the characters make plans they never bring into action, Reynie (the protagonist) frets and the narrator tells, rather than shows, his emotions, and Mr. Curtain twirls his imaginary mustache. The illustrations and to some extent the characters seem drawn from John Bellairs, the dynamics of the School Fer Eevil from J.K. Rowling, and the puzzles derived from Ellen Raskin. The plot has plenty of suspense and action. Alas, these sections come amid stretches of wheel-spinning.

Okay, I’d say, but for a YA book it became tiresome.

 

[Olmstead]

Continuing my delving into Thomas Hardy's poetry, I've encountered another poem I really like. It's a short one, titled "In a Museum", and it subtly combines paleontology, music, human imagination, and cosmology:

In a Museum
I
Here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There’s a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
II
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird
Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending
Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,
In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I have just finished reading the first two (by date of publication) Brother Cadfael novels, written by Ellis Peters (a pen name of Edith Pargeter). She began the series when she was 64 years old, and continued until she was 81 or thereabouts.

The Cadfael novels are mysteries phrased as historical fiction, set in Shrewsbury during the first years of The Anarchy (which started circa 1135; from a North American perspective, that's contemporary with the Chaco culture; Acoma's Sky City was first inhabited circa 1145).

I'm sure many here are familiar with Brother Cadfael from television, but these books were the first I've known of the character or of The Anarchy.

 

[catsmate]

I have just finished reading the first two (by date of publication) Brother Cadfael novels, written by Ellis Peters (a pen name of Edith Pargeter). She began the series when she was 64 years old, and continued until she was 81 or thereabouts.

The Cadfael novels are mysteries phrased as historical fiction, set in Shrewsbury during the first years of The Anarchy (which started circa 1135; from a North American perspective, that's contemporary with the Chaco culture; Acoma's Sky City was first inhabited circa 1145).

I'm sure many here are familiar with Brother Cadfael from television, but these books were the first I've known of the character or of The Anarchy.

An excellent series.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Here it is:

Skylark of Valeron (Skylark #3)

'Valeron' takes us more or less straight on from the end of the last volume, although we see the denouement from the perspective of Duquesne, who has captured a Fenachrone war-vessel and is hiding among their fleet.

www.fadedpage.com

Here what is?

 

[catsmate]

Here what is?

???
The text of Skylark of Valeron.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

???
The text of Skylark of Valeron.

Read it. Sixty years ago. Salt is precious, isn't it?

 

[catsmate]

Read it. Sixty years ago. Salt is precious, isn't it?

Useful stuff. But by Valeron arenak was obsolete.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Still love the Wheelmen of Aldebaran.

 

[Helen]

Jenny Diski, On Trying to Keep Still (essays with bits of memoir, and reflections on aging, and misc. Lots of misc.) She's a brilliant, funny, ironic, grumpy, and very reluctant traveller, as usual, who goes to Swedish Lapland, and complains incessantly about the cold (which I hated her for today, in the sweltering heat).

If you haven't read Diski, you should. You miss out on a unique voice, if you don't. And she was very, very funny!