Our reads in November 2022

Dusty's TBR in November
SF/Fantasy reads
Keith Laumer - Retief of the CDT
Lloyd Alexander - Book of Three✔
Paul Cornell - The Severed Streets
Laken Cane - Broken Moon ✔
Nathan Lowell - To Fire Called ✔
Seabury Quinn - Malay Horror ✔
Richard Marsten - Danger : Dinosaurs! ✔
Richard Marsten - Rocket to Luna✔
Milton Lesser - Spacemen,go home ✔

from other genres
Robert B Parker - Crimson Joy ✔
Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None ✔

Today I should start the first volume of The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Beyond Lies the Wub. After working through thirteen of his novels this year and loving many of them, I'm interested in his short fiction, of which I believe I have never read any.

Barring surprises from the Library Hold Fairy this month's line-up looks like: Tiassa, Kundo Wakes Up, Too Like the Lightning, and Extractionist.

>2 Stevil2001: The wub is clearly one of the funniest aliens I've read about.

>2 Stevil2001: I am very fond of the title story in that volume.

>4 bnielsen:, >5 pgmcc: Just read the title story. That was a delight!

Still working on The Law by Jim Butcher and The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie.

I'll be finishing Orbit 1. 60's scifi was weird!

I'm reading about August Kitko and the mechas from space. It started on Earth but moved to one of the colonies.

I have about 60 pages remaining in Shriek: An Afterword. Not quite as compelling as City of Saints and Madmen but still very good. Before continuing with Finch, I think I will dig into some Ken Macleod next with Cosmonaut Keep.

Added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2022 to my rotation. This is going to be a slow read for when I burn out on reading.

Have started On Blue's Waters.

Starting Kallocain for a reading challenge.

Finished with Too Like the Lightning; clever, but clever will only take you so far when you can't make yourself care about the characters. Will be fair and try the second book in the quartet, assuming that the world-building part of the program is over and that maybe the plot will really take off.

I'm reading The Stars are Legion. I really enjoyed The Light Brigade and I hope that this is comparable.

>11 seitherin: I've been considering subscribing again to either Analog or FSF, is it worth it?

Currently reading East of Eden, which is very good so far.

>16 Karlstar: Totally a judgment call. I've been away for FSF for a couple of years so I thought I'd give it another go as filler for when I feel like reading but don't want to commit to a book. I've only finished the first story in the issue I picked up and it was . . . odd. I couldn't recommend a subscription, but I might suggest picking up whatever the current issue is just to see if it suits you.

>16 Karlstar:. About a week ago, I found FSF on Kindle unlimited.

>17 seitherin: >18 daxxh: Thanks, I keep forgetting those magazines have e-reading options.

Started a re-read of The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross - the Laundry Files are my comfort read.

In the middle of a long-overdue re-read of The Left Hand of Darkness.

>21 ChrisRiesbeck:, I should maybe try to read that one myself again. I didn't really "get it" when I read it in my twenties, might have more luck now.

>21 ChrisRiesbeck: I read it when it came out and loved it. My re-read is also long-overdue.

>22 Cecrow: Same here, I read it then but didn't think it was all that great. I recently read The Hainish novels, so I'm ready.

I decided to go into the way, way back machine and read The Complete Robot.

>24 Karlstar: into the way, way back machine

I made a similar decision in 2017 and I wasn't disappointed: for me, largely a re-read.

>22 Cecrow:, >23 pgmcc:, >24 Karlstar:, >25 elenchus: Halfway through and I think it's great. I have no memory of it from before except I liked it, but I can't believe I understood it very well.

>26 ChrisRiesbeck: I need to re-read LeGuin's Hainish cycle. It has been decades and I remember really enjoying The Dispossessed and being really affected by The Left Hand of Darkness. I never did get to The Telling or Four Ways to Forgiveness.

Been reading light kindle unlimited fluff while rather ill the last two weeks. Next week hope to read Laumer's Retief of the CDT and Paul Cornell The Severed Streets. Plus a reread of Hal Clement's Needle

The World We Make just became available to me, courtesy of the Library Hold Fairy, so that's the next novel after I finish up The Extractionist.

>28 dustydigger: Hope you feel better even without the alien character in Needle to help you out.

>30 rshart3: EEK,I'd rather be sick than have an internal visitor like that! lol.
I do like good old pulpy 50s SF though,Hal Clement is an old favourite.
I am thinking over themes of reading for 2023,and over on WWEnd I am eyeing the good old Ace Doubles lists there,two books in one which you flip over to read the other book. I remember having some really really tatty Doubles way way back,and I think these nostalgic old reads could make for great palate cleansers between the award winners and heavier stuff. Short too!!! Why are modern books so very very long. Has no one ever heard of editors these days? :0)

>26 ChrisRiesbeck: Good to know, it is past time for me to add The Left Hand of Darkness to my re-read list.

>31 dustydigger: Oh yes, Ace Doubles. I've enjoyed many an Ace Double in my days. Not to mention the difficult decision on which way to shelve them. :-) I'll bet there's a forum on them somewhere....

>33 rshart3: They are very collectible,no matter how tatty.

Finished up The Extractionist, which turned out to be a pretty good cyber-punk thriller; I'd be happy to see this story extended at least into a trilogy.

Started The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021). Plenty of new-to-me names to take a look at, so hoping for a good mixture.

>31 dustydigger: >33 rshart3:. I just bought a bunch of Ace Doubles and will be going back for more. They are old and musty and on the bottom shelf of a stuffy space that isn’t air conditioned and in a very humid environment - a permanent stall at the flea market. (Love this place!) I want to get as many as possible before a hurricane comes through here (a definite possibility). I am specifically looking for one with a dark blue planet on the cover. I don’t remember the title, only that it sounded good back when I was in 7th grade.

The books I am reading now are non-genre and are kind of sad, so I need something fun and more adventurous. These should be just the ticket.

>36 SChant: The editor's trials and tribulations in getting to Chicago this year for worldcon were an adventure in and of themselves!:

https://file770.com/?s=Ekpeki&submit=Search

>37 daxxh: Hi daxxh!. Over on WWEnd they have publisher's lists of all the Ace Doubles series,perhaps you will recognize the cover there. :0)

>37 daxxh: A Yank at Valhalla / The Sun Destroyers maybe?

>39 dustydigger:. I checked out the Ace Doubles list on WWE and I think >40 AnnieMod: is right. It might be The Sun Destroyers. I will hunt that one down. I think I will do a Pulp Challenge next year in addition to my usual as incentive to read all these Ace Doubles I have acquired.

Almost finished The Andromeda Anthology by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot. It's a two-volume novelization of an old (early 60s) BBC series.

>42 NurseBob: And I think the BBC series was deleted to reuse the expensive video tapes :-)

>43 bnielsen: LOL! Actually I've seen a few grainy episodes on Youtube, not sure if the whole series can be found there though.

>44 NurseBob: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_for_Andromeda confirms my memory:

Archive status

As was common practice at the time, the BBC's copies of the serial were junked after broadcast and the bulk of the serial still remains missing. In 2005, a 16mm film print of the sixth episode, "The Face of the Tiger", was donated to the BBC archives by a private collector.

I've read some of Fred Hoyle's books and he liked this idea of having another civilisation send out information that might destroy/take over/help whoever finds and deciphers it.

ETA: The wikipedia article has a nice phrase: "embodied malware from space".

Finishing up my re-read of The Complete Robot. Just as good as I remembered. All about the robots, definitely not about the humans.

I've started my second Vorkosigan novel, The Vor Game.

Evan Hunter's Danger: Dinosaurs! ,written under the name Richard Marsten,in the juvenile Winston SF series was a fun exciting adventure story.Now reading a Seabury Quinn short story Malay Horror

Finished The Left Hand of Darkness re-read, started McDevitt's Odyssey.

Just finished On Blue's Waters and enjoyed it. Clearly, Wolfe came up with the idea for this book towards the end of The Book of the Long Sun and rushed the last part of that because this is so much better. Horn is a complex character, if no more reliable than any other Wolfe narrator, and the setting is subtly strange and familiar by turns.

Now reading Iain Banks' Raw Spirit, a Novacon acquisition, and realising that this is the closest we're ever going to get to a Banks autobiography. I'd previously thought that this might have to be shelved with my Scottish books, but it definitely belongs with the novels. We get a full account of the Brighton Metropole Hotel Scaling Adventure and confirmation from the man himself that yes, he was an extra in the final scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. All that and he namechecked two people I count as friends.

>50 RobertDay: Horn is a complex character, if no more reliable than any other Wolfe narrator
Less than many, I'd say!

>50 RobertDay: I really need to reread Book of the Long Sun and then continue with the Short Sun books.

>50 RobertDay:
I really enjoyed Raw Spirit. For a start, it was Iain; secondly, he was writing about a number of places I know; and thirdly, he mentioned people I have met with him.

It is a long time since I read it.

>36 SChant: Glad to find out about this! Thanks for sharing it.

>16 Karlstar: How about Clarkesworld?

Re: magazines: Our public library gets Asimov's SF Magazine and Analog and the issues circulate. I'd really like them to get Clarkesworld. (Did I spell that correctly?)

Worcester Public Library's SF Book Club just read Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi for November and is moving on to The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell for December.

I finished Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris trilogy this week with Finch. The preceding volume, Shriek: An Afterword, moved rather slowly, as did the beginning of Finch, but once I settled into the final volume lots of loose threads came unsnarled as the action picked up.

Cosmonaut Keep is an excellent Ken Macleod novel. I loved the dual story-lines and how they came together at the end. No real surprises as it was obvious in the early going where things were headed, but Macleod really pulled it together beautifully. Now continuing with Dark Light.

Also starting a re-read of Alternate Routes and Forced Perspectives in anticipation of the third Vickery & Castine book, Stolen Skies.

>57 ScoLgo:

I agree Cosmonaut Keep is admirable, but Engine City is the best of the three, to the extent that I'm jealous of you eventually reading it for the first time.

I have myself slowed on Ambergris, taking a detour to read The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin (finished and posted review last weekend). But I'm looking forward to getting it going again.

>58 paradoxosalpha: >57 ScoLgo: Currently reading and really enjoying Entangled life : how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures, which is much more accesible than I'd feared, and I'm starting to think I should next start the City of Saints and Madmen volume that's been sitting on my to read shelf for a few years now.

Just finished Memoria The Nova Vita Protocol Book 2 by Kristyn Merbeth and getting into Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

And yes, it's been a long time since I posted here. Life happens...

I'm starting the last Scholomance book by Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves.

>60 ThomasWatson: Hi Thomas,wonderful to see you here. :0)
How is the writing going?

Just burned through All Systems Red in two sessions and loved it. Now taking a break from genre with a history of the Cuban missile crisis.

>62 dustydigger: It's going very well, which is part of what's kept me out of various social media. Working a day job while writing and promoting books required cutting back on certain things. But I'm "retired" now (in the day job sense, not as a writer) so I can cut myself a little slack these days.

Glad to see you're still working your lists!

>64 ThomasWatson: Happy retirement!

(Day jobs do get in the way of other important things, like reading and writing.)

>65 karenb: But not anymore! ;-)

>55 AmyMacEvilly: I'm not familiar with that one.

Finished up The World We Make. Probably not Jemisin's best novel, but even her only okay books are better than a lot of folks' best.

>68 Shrike58: I just downloaded that one. Looking forward to reading it.

I finished Tiassa the other day, and was reminded why I had stopped reading this series for awhile, as it seemed as though Brust was slipping into pot-boiler territory.

>69 ThomasWatson: Will be interested in hearing your response.

I just finished The Peripheral by William Gibson. I enjoyed it but I found it a difficult read. Gibson often writes so sparsely expecting the reader to do a lot of work figuring out the local idioms, acronyms, and who is talking at any given time. The clues are there - I could figure it out - but it does take work. Does the contribute or detract from the reading experience? I guess it depends. Gene Wolfe often does the same thing, but I find his writing more enjoyable. Still, The Peripheral was a fascinating take on time travel and how things could go down with climate change. Now I can watch the Amazon Prime adaptation.

I immediately started Greg Bear's Blood Music which I have never read. It has been sitting on my shelf to read for years. His recent death prompted me to finally take it off the shelf.

https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/greg-bear-1951-2022-sci-fi-author-a...

>68 Shrike58: I've been looking forward to that one. And as you say, all of Jemisin's work is often better than that of some other writers -- and always worthwhile to read, to me.

>72 Neil_Luvs_Books: I loved Blood Music when I read it. I'm not a big re-reader, but it's definitely a candidate for me. And for a Greg Bear book, it's a good one.

I just started the YA fantasy In the Serpent's Wake, the sequel to Tess of the Road, which I very much enjoyed.

Currently reading the debut novella Grievers by adrienne maree brown. It's a love letter to a city (Detroit), and activists, and grassroots communities. It's also got a mysterious deadly pandemic (NOT Covid or airborne), and it's full of grief and grieving (so the title isn't kidding).

Just finished Od Magic by Patricia McKillip. Another good stand-alone fantasy. Not sure what's up next on the list.

Finished Glory Lane, started Lud-in-the-Mist.

I'm pausing Ambergris after the first component volume, to pick up Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. In non-sf reading, I recently finished and reviewed The Book of Monelle.

I am currently reading The Madman's Library, delightful and creepy all in one. While this is a work of nonfiction, I just love reading books that make me go "WHAT!!", gives me the same sense of wonder as a really good technical science fiction book.